“He’s a fidget,” Mrs. Higgins announced. “Just fidgets night and day. Commences fidgeting in the mornin’ an’ don’t let up till he’s snorin’.”
Higgins gave her a dark look. “You’d fidget too if you had the weight on your shoulders I got on mine. Never can tell what might be about to happen round here.”
Longarm cleared his throat and gave him a hard look. Higgins dropped his head and looked guilty. He said, “Canned beans is all right, but I’ll be glad of spring and be able to get the real thing.”
After lunch Longarm caught Rita Ann by the arm and walked her out the front door before she could disappear into the back with Mrs. Higgins. She put her hand over her eyes against the sun. “It’s too hot,” she said.
“Not as hot as some other things I know.”
She gave him an innocent look. “Why, whatever are you talking about, Mr. Long?”
“Brushing my teeth.”
“Didn’t you get your teeth washed this morning?”
“Well, yeah, once I got my strength back. But it seemed like I had a little interference there for a few moments.”
They had stopped a few yards from the front of the station. She said, “Didn’t you like it?”
In spite of himself he blushed slightly. “Well, of course I liked it. Any man who wouldn’t like that would have to be dead from the waist down. But look here, what makes you slip up on a man like that?”
She shrugged. “I just like what I like when I want it.”
“I don’t even know your last name.”
She gave him an impish look. “Would that make it better if you did? Would you be able to say, ‘Oh, Miss Smith, that’s wonderful.’” She said it in a high falsetto and laughed.
“Damn you, girl,” he swore. “You are the beatenest woman I ever run into. Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do when you get to Phoenix? You’ll still be in the same fix.”
She cocked her head and eyed him. “You gave me to understand that I had a job with you. How come I won’t have a job of employment in Phoenix as well as here? And where is all them things I’m supposed to be writing down?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Well of course you’ve got a job with me. The only thing is, I got to take off for some rough country in New Mexico. Look at a ranch out there.”
“Well, where are your headquarters? Can’t I go there and wait? Do whatever work I’m supposed to do? Ain’t they in Phoenix? Big cattleman like you ought to have a headquarters in a going town like Phoenix.”
“I thought you didn’t believe I was a cattleman.”
“I don’t, but as long as you want to say it, it’s my job to agree with you. Isn’t that my job, to be agreeable?”
He cleared his throat, feeling awkward. “Truth be,” he said, “my headquarters are up in Colorado. In Denver.”
“I bet it’s nice there. Think I would like it?”
He looked away. “Oh, hell, Rita Ann, now you are teasing me.”
“No, I’m just trying to get you to say that the money you gave me was a handout. Wasn’t it? You didn’t think I’d take it if you didn’t make up some cock-and-bull story about a job.”
He swerved his head back to her, stung. He said with heat in his voice, “Let’s just wait and see, missy, whether there’s a job or not.” He dug down in his jeans and came out with his roll. He peeled off a twenty-dollar bill and tried to put it in her hand.
She put her arms behind her back. “I don’t need any more money. And I didn’t do what I did for money. I did it because I liked it and because I wanted to.”
“You are going to take this,” he said. The scooped top of her blouse was slightly open. Before she could react he shoved the bill down inside. Then he stepped back. “Just like you, I did that because I like to and because I want to. You can’t just have it your way.”
She studied him through slitted eyes for a second, and then she stepped up close to him. She put her hand on his cheek and stretched up and kissed him softly on the lips. She left her hand there for a second. “You’re a sweet man.” Then she dropped her hand, turned on her heels, and walked back into the station.
He said, “Hey, wait a minute! I still don’t know your last name.”
Over her shoulder she said, “I have to go churn now. I’ll tell you some other time.”
Longarm stared after her, biting his lip. Somewhere, somehow, sometime, a broken, woebegone, timid little woman in a dowdy gray dress had gotten a hand up on him. He didn’t know the how or the why of it, but he was damned if he was going to let the situation continue. When he danced, he liked to be the one doing the leading, even if he wasn’t certain what the tune was.
It was late afternoon. Longarm was sitting in the Higginses’s front room reading a week-old newspaper when he heard talking from the common room. It was men’s voices, several of them. He recognized Mister Higgins’s high-pitched gabble, but the others were strange. He wondered if the doctor had come in to try and cadge some real whiskey, but there was more than one strange voice and he knew it couldn’t be the Mexicans. He got up from the easy chair he’d been sitting in and walked over to the door that opened on the common room. He peeked through the little slit that the door made where it was hinged to the wall. It wasn’t much of a view, but the men were moving around and, one by one, they came into view.
They didn’t appear to be anybody special, just three rough-looking characters who’d come in out of the sun. Higgins was behind the bar, pouring out whiskey for them. Longarm strained to get a sight of any of their gun rigs. One turned in just the right way, and Longarm could see that he was wearing a cutaway holster and a well-cared-for large-caliber revolver. But the thing that caught his attention was that the man had a tiedown on his holster. A tiedown was a little leather thong attached to the outside of the holster. A man could pull it up and loop it over the butt of his revolver to keep the gun from jostling out when he was riding in rough country or doing anything else that might cause the gun to fall out. A cutaway holster did not envelop much of the revolver, just the barrel and about halfway up the cylinders. It was made that way to facilitate getting the gun into play as quickly as possible. Men who did business with revolvers wore cutaway holsters, and men who did business with guns in which they were constantly on the move and had to be ready for anything, wore tiedowns on their cutaway holsters. These were not ordinary cowhands or workingmen passing through. A cowhand wore a holster that nearly swallowed his pistol. Since he seldom needed it, other than to shoot an occasional rattlesnake or drop the lead steer in a stampede, he was more concerned with not losing it. But these men did not want to lose an instant in the use of their weapons.
Longarm could feel little warning signals going off in his head. What were three gunmen—and that’s what they appeared to be—doing showing up at a relay station in the middle of nowhere? A relay station that might be passing along a half-a-million-dollar bullion shipment? And with Carl Lowe just escaped from prison? Longarm did not like the way matters were shaping up at all.
He wanted a look at their horses. He wanted to see if he could tell how far they had come, what quality animals they were, and if the men were leading pack animals. But there was no way out of the Higginses’ living quarters except through the door he was at, and he did not want the men to get a look at him, not just yet. He turned and went into the back where Mrs. Higgins and Rita Ann were taking turns working at the churn. He got Mrs. Higgins’s attention and motioned her to follow him. He led her into the front room with her wearing a worried look. “Is something gone amiss, Mar-Mr. Long?”
He said, “Sylvia, there are some men out at the bar drinking whiskey. I need to speak to Herman, but I don’t want the men to know I’m here. I want you to go out and, just as casual as you can, tell Herman you need him in the back for a moment. Can you do that?”