He told himself the rascal was long gone. Then he warned himself that somebody else could be in much this same position, having much these same thoughts, yonder in that stickerbrush. So he’d made up his mind to out-wait the son of a bitch if it took all day when he heard distant hoofbeats, over to the east, more in line with the wagon trace he’d been following.
He rolled the other way to risk a peek over the jawbone of the dead paint. She smelled far better at that end, and he had a clear shot at the gap where the trail crossed the winding brush-filled draw that bastard had been lurking in.
It seemed to take forever. Then he spied two familiar riders on familiar mounts. Lash Flanders and Silent Knight were headed toward him, riding the same cow ponies they’d ridden out on the evening before. They were walking their stock, and slowed down even more when they spotted the downed pony Longarm was hiding behind.
He called out, “Watch your left flanks! Somebody just pegged a shot at me from them hackberries to the south!”
Silent Knight called back, “We heard it. Sounded like a big-fifty buffalo rifle. Is that you, Buck Crawford?”
Longarm allowed Silent was probably right about the rifle. He rose from behind the dead mare, Winchester held politely but still primed and cocked as he strode toward them.
They dismounted and walked their ponies over to the draw with him to scout for sign, or at least that was what Silent Knight said they aimed to do.
He might have been sincere. He was the one who found some scuffed-up leaf litter and a spent big-fifty cartridge under a flowering hackberry. Lash Flanders was first to spy hoof marks further along the draw. Longarm read horse apples and browsed cottonwood shoots as indicating the place where the drygulcher had left his or her own mount tethered to creep closer to the wagon trace with that rifle.
The missing piece of the puzzle hadn’t ridden far along the shady floor of the draw. It was easy to see where he, she, or it had forged up a grassy bank to beeline toward the Junction. The three of them agreed it was a bitch to read sign in springy big blue-stem once the dew had burned off. Later in the summer, the stems no cow had eaten would be dry enough to break off at ground level when a pony loped over them. But right now, as Silent Knight observed, the sneaky rascal could get back to town and fade into the bustle before anyone could cut enough trail to matter.
Longarm agreed, and asked how far he might be from that old Nesbit place.
Silent Knight said, “Not more than a quarter mile. You can see it from the next rise to the east. But why were you headed yonder? Rose Cassidy charges too dear for her horseflesh, and neither she nor her sassy daughter can be had for any price.”
Lash Flanders said, “He knows because he’s tried. Why don’t you let me ride you postern back to town?”
Longarm replied, “I’d be obliged if one of you would drop my saddle and bridle off for me at the livery and tell ‘em I’ll be calling for ‘em later. But I reckon me and this Winchester will just mosey on and see what them female horse traders have to say about all this shit.”
Chapter 10
A man on foot was an unusual sight in cattle country. So country critters tended to act mighty surprised as Longarm trudged on with his Winchester cradled over one forearm, the sun now warmer and the wagon trace dustier than he’d noticed from that saddle.
Small gray grasshoppers with butterfly wings kept popping from the dust ahead of him to buzz like prairie rattlers as they landed a few yards on and waited for him to catch up so they could repeat the process. He flushed more than one jackrabbit from the long grass to either side of the trace, and they lit out and kept going, seeing as he was packing a rifle. He knew any Western schoolkid could tell you jackrabbits only ran about as far as you could throw a ‘dobe if you weren’t packing a gun.
Redwings cussed him from the telegraph wires overhead as he passed weathered pole after pole, at longer intervals than he recalled on horseback. Most of the cows grazing hither and yon in the distance were content to just stop grazing and stare pensively as he passed by. But one frisky yearling lowered its long horns, stuck its tail up, and mock-charged until Longarm got tired of waving his hat and stomping a boot. He let it get close enough to smack across the muzzle with his Winchester muzzle, and when it ran off bawling, he dusted its behind with a shot aimed low to make sure it remembered a man on foot was still a man. Livestock had to be taught their place when they started acting sassy, and some schoolkid cutting across the prairie on foot might not have a rifle next time.
He suspected the sound of his gunshot had carried when he topped the long gentle grade to see that anyone out in the yard of the low soddy ahead had surely ducked inside. But a dozen ponies were regarding him with interest over the sun-silvered rails of the big corral out back.
As he strode down the shorter and steeper slope beyond the crest, the door of the soddy opened a crack and a yellow dog poured out to charge uphill at him, barking and snapping like a rabid coyote with turpentine under its tail.
Longarm didn’t shoot it. Knowing he could any time he really had to put a confidence in his walk, and maybe his smell, that a full-grown yard dog who’d been kicked a few times recognized. So it stopped in the wagon trace a stone’s throw away, but remembered its sworn duties as a yard dog enough to bristle and growl just awful.
Longarm kept the same pace, saying, “Howdy, dog. If you bite me you will never bite another soul. If you treat me right I’ll treat you right. Like the Indian chief said, I have spoken.”
Despite his blunt words, the tone they were said in soothed the snarling dog considerably. So it stopped snarling, and just moved back to keep the same distance between them, wagging its tail uncertainly. Longarm kept talking to it in the same tone as he proceeded toward the unwelcoming soddy, knowing the dog didn’t understand how it was being cussed as long as the tone was firm but gentle.
Anyone who worked livestock learned to talk like that unless he enjoyed getting kicked, gored, or bitten. Few hands who’d ever gentled a bedded herd at night with a chorus of “Lorena” or “Aura Lee” understood why those vaudeville folks with white buckskin chaps sang such wild and woolly “cowboy songs.” For it would only take one serious whoop to start a stampede on a stormy night, and nobody sang to cows as they were whooping them up a loading chute.
He got within pistol-fighting range of the soddy, with the dog now trotting at his side, before the door opened a crack, a shotgun muzzle was poked out from inside, and a worried female voice called out, “Go away! My momma ain’t here and I ain’t allowed to talk to any strangers when my momma ain’t here!”
He’d been told Rose Cassidy had a full-grown daughter. But he’d have taken her for a kid of, say, six or eight if she hadn’t opened wider to peer out at him from the height of, say, five feet two.
He stopped where he was, Winchester aimed at the dust between them, and called back, “I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Maureen. But I only want to see what you look like, and if you ain’t the lady I’m looking for, we’ll say no more about it until your mother gets back.”
Maureen Cassidy, if that was her, demanded in a suspicious little-gal voice, “Are you looking to peek at my titties and play with my ring dang doo, mister? Momma says that now that I’m a woman grown I have to make sure no boys peek at my titties or play with my ring dang do!”
“Your momma’s advice makes a heap of sense,” Longarm replied in a soothing tone, now that he saw he was dealing with either a feebleminded gal or a good actress. He said, “I don’t want to see your private parts, Miss Maureen. Just let me see your face. I hear tell you got a pretty face. Is that the truth?”