Longarm sat thinking for a moment. Maybe he was worrying himself overmuch and maybe for nothing. For all he knew the man that had gotten away had not been Carl Lowe. Maybe Carl Lowe was either dead or back in prison, and some two-bit outlaw had disappeared over the horizon leaving Longarm staring after him. But Longarm couldn’t help worrying. He worried because Carl Lowe was a man to worry about. Not that he was a violent man or a gunhand or even a murderer. His history showed that he had never raised a hand against his fellow man in anger in all his life. Nevertheless, he was as dangerous a man to the economic well-being of the Southwest territories as there was around.
For most of his life Carl Lowe had been a quiet, law-abiding citizen who had worked for the Wells Fargo Company in California in its original business of transporting gold bullion from mine sites to government mints. Carl Lowe was a man of well-above-average intelligence and was of a mechanical bent. He had devised some of the first safes and strongboxes that Wells Fargo had used. In time he had become their chief designer of methods for getting gold and silver safely from one place to another. And along the way he had become something of an expert locksmith.
Then he had suddenly disappeared and, not long afterward, there had come reports from survivors of train robberies that there was a man who could take a few tools and open a safe it would have taken twenty sticks of dynamite to blow open. And do it pretty quick in the process. It wasn’t just Wells Fargo safes either. The brand or manufacturer didn’t seem to matter. This quiet little man who went to work while the rest of the gang stood around with drawn revolvers could open anything. That was a valuable man to have around. Blowing up safes was a risky business. Most robbers didn’t know much about dynamite, and they generally ended up blowing themselves and the safe and whatever money or gold there was all across the landscape.
It had taken two years of hard work, but Longarm had finally run Carl Lowe to ground. What had made him so hard to catch was that he would not attach himself to any one gang. He was a freelance and rented out his services to whoever could afford him. Then, once the job was finished, he would simply take his proceeds and disappear. After a long, frustrating search Longarm had finally run him to ground by employing the services of a sentenced bank robber who would get a reduced term in prison—if he could put Longarm in touch with the elusive Mister Lowe. It had worked. Representing himself as a man who intended to rob a train, Longarm had finally met Carl Lowe. In the course of their conversation Lowe, to make clear his value, had recited the details of his last few jobs. It had been the same as a confession and Longarm had arrested him immediately. Lowe had drawn twenty-five years in prison, but had not even served one when the prison break had occurred.
Longarm was convinced that the breakout had been arranged for only one man, Carl Lowe, and that the other convicts who’d been freed had been used to scatter and confuse the pursuit. That part, Longarm thought grimly, had worked. He’d tried to make it clear to the Arizona Rangers what the prison break was all about, but they hadn’t been willing to listen. To them, one escaped convict was the same as another. When Longarm had tried to tell them that the whole affair had been arranged by some gang needing Carl Lowe’s services, they’d looked at him like he’d fallen on his head.
But still, he did not know for sure that Carl Lowe was still on the loose. He might be dead and buried by now. He said to Higgins, “I take it there’s just you and Sylvia and the two Mexicans here?”
Higgins scratched his balding head. “Wa’l, thar’s the doctor and the hoor. Though truth be told, I ain’t all that shore he be a doctor. Stays drunk mostly. He got off the southbound stage with the hoor.” Longarm blinked. He said, “The what?”
“The doctor?”
“No, the other.”
“The hoor?”
Chapter 2
Longarm frowned, perplexed. “What in hell is a ‘hoor’?”
Higgins pulled his head back. “Why, you look long enough in the tooth you’d of run across a few hoors in yore time. I ain’t never had no truck with ‘em myself, me an’ Missus Higgins bein’ married long’s we have. But they do a right good trade amongst the single men and them as ain’t around no girls.” Longarm blinked for a minute. “Are you talking about a whore?”
“Ain’t that what I been sayin’? One of them women the ladies of the church is always tryin’ to get run out of town. One of them you pays.”
“A whore, a prostitute.”
Higgins gave him a matter-of-fact look. “Wa’l, you can dress it up in all kinds of highfalutin words if you be of a mind, but a hoor is a hoor and that is that.” He put up a hand. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I ain’t got nothin’ agin ‘em personal. I be of the live-and-let-live school. Poor girl probably got led astray somehow. This one is a mighty pitiful case. Got throwed out by her own kind. Just this mornin’. She was on the southbound coach. Was a whole gaggle of ‘em goin’ down to Gunsight to work the miners that work in the gold mines down there. I reckon them girls make more money than the miners, you take my meaning. Their lode don’t ever run out.”
“And she’s here?”
Higgins waved vaguely at the door that led off the big room. “She be back there in our private quarters takin’ a rest. Missus Higgins felt right sorry for the little thang. I reckon she got some rough treatment.”
“What happened?”
Higgins shook his head. “Damned if I know. Coach pulled in with that doctor, if he is, which I doubt, and a passel of them hoors. Was five of ‘em. They was all yellin’ and screamin’ at this young woman that be back in the bedroom. Wouldn’t let her go on with them. Seemed they was some kind of company and they fired her right here. Turns out she is in a kind of fix. Ain’t got a nickel to her name and no return ticket back north.” He shook his head. “I reckon we’ll have to try and help her some.”
“What did she do? I mean, to get the other ladies, hoors, mad at her? Was they cussing her?”
Higgins shrugged. “I never took in the whole of it. That doctor come staggerin’ up first and claimed he was sick and needed him a drink of whiskey right pronto or he was gonna cave in. I was behind the bar fixin’ him up when this young woman, Rita her name is, come through kind of lookin’ down in the mouth and tryin’ not to cry. Was Missus Higgins kind of took her in hand. Then the doctor, if he is one, passed out on me, and I couldn’t get the driver and his guard to help me load him back aboard the stage, it just bein’ a quick stop, and they went on. Them other’ns was a bunch of painted women if you ever seen any. Whoooee!”
Longarm was about to ask another question about the doctor and his wherabouts when Mrs. Higgins came in with his meal. She’d fried him half a dozen eggs and given him a good big ham steak, along with grits and ham gravy and biscuits and honey. On her second trip she brought him a pot of coffee and put a cup in front of him and one in front of Mister Higgins. For the next half hour Longarm didn’t do much talking or thinking, just concentrated on reducing the pile of groceries in front of him to a bare plate. But one thought that occurred to him as he ate was the telegraph wire. Most stage lines had one, and he’d seen the line as he’d staggered up to the station. He knew it would be a private line and was only strung from one end of the stage run to the other. But it was a method of communicating. He could have Higgins wire to the operator in Buckeye and have him wire, through the public telegraph, to Yuma to find out who had been caught and who had gotten away. It would mean revealing to Higgins that he was a deputy marshal, but he reckoned the old man would keep it to himself.
Higgins had brought him a bottle of whiskey and he’d sweetened up his coffee with it. It was nowhere near as good as his Maryland whiskey, but then he didn’t have much of that left, and there was no use wishing for steak when all you had to eat was suet.