She gulped, took her buggy whip from its socket, and they were off and running. Longarm ran, too, back to the corral to get his saddle. The sounds of her wagon wheels had faded away by the time he had everything he owned except some blankets he no longer wanted secured to old Ramona. He forked a long leg into the saddle and said adios to the tedious surroundings that had cut his lead on Black Jack Junior a whole damned day.
When Ann heard the sound of his following hoofbeats as she was topping a distant rise, she reined to a stop to wait for him. As he joined her he said, “Keep going. At a trot. We got too many miles to cover if we run ‘em. Do you reckon that gray is good for forty miles, non-stop?”
She said of course not and he said, “They won’t think to follow wagon wheels and hoofmarks before they’ve studied on it some. They’ll be trying to cut the trail of our only living passenger, and those who know him know he don’t keep a mount.”
Both she and the man cuffed behind her tried to ask what he was talking about at the same time. “Shut up, Dan Hogan,” he said. “You’re nothing but a favor to less disgusting folk, even if you had the brains to understand.” Then he told the woman, “There’s no Wyoming court that wouldn’t hang him, manslaughter or no. They hang you for horse theft under local custom. But I’m a federal deputy and there’s a federal court at the county seat of Lander. Federal law takes a less draconian view on anything less than murder in the first degree. So I mean to turn him in to the U.S. government in Lander and point out that he never had the brains to premeditate anything.”
She gasped and said, “Oh, you darling man!” Even the prisoner behind her perked up, until she asked how much time they’d likely let him off with.
Longarm said, “Twenty at hard, if he’s lucky. That still saves Little Dan from having to say he saw his daddy do the rope dance, when future friends and possible in-laws ask. It ain’t half as awkward to just say kin is… ah … away.”
She nodded and said she’d see that the lad was taken in by decent folk, later. “That shouldn’t be hard. The boy’s nigh full grown, and I noticed that, even reformed, his dear old dad didn’t work half as hard at fixing up the cabin back there.”
“Can the boy still claim it as his own?” she asked.
“Nope. It’ll revert to the land-office as an unproven claim. But nobody with a lick of sense would have tried to nest in mountain cow country without no cows, in any case. Given a few years as an honest young cowhand, Little Dan ought to be able to buy a way better spread on his own. It was with hopes I might be able to keep him honest that I undertook this mad adventure. Lord knows how much more of a lead I’m giving that infernal killer I’m supposed to be looking for.”
She shot him an arch look in the moonlight and said, “Fess up. You can’t fool me, Custis Long. Under all that gruffness you’re just a nice gent, aren’t you?”
“Damn fool is the term you are searching for. And I’ll get even gruffer if that other killer kills again whilst I’m wasting the taxpayers’ time on this killer who’s only half serious about it.”
The prisoner protested again that he’d never meant to kill anybody, let alone his beloved Blanche. Longarm told him he shouldn’t have hit her so hard, in that case, and added that he didn’t want to hear about it any more. “Save your tears for the federal judge. Let’s take this downgrade ahead a mite faster, Miss Ann. For if that posse catches up with us, they might just hang all four of us in the enthusiasm of the moment.”
They rested and watered their stock every hour or so, but just the same it was getting harder to make them keep going by sunrise, and they were only a little better than halfway. Longarm stared morosely at the trail ahead as they reined in for a breather and told Ann, “You look like you’ve been dragged through the keyhole backwards, too. We’re going to have to camp a spell.”
He pointed at the open and gentle slope off the trail to their east. “Drive over to them pines up the slope. I filled my canteens back at the homestead, and camping any closer to a trailside stream invites all sorts of casual company for breakfast.”
She waited until they were almost a quarter of a mile off the wagon trace before she called out, “Wouldn’t it make sense to go on into the uses, Custis?”
“Not hardly. Anyone coming along now is sure to see where we turned off through this dew-covered grazing. If they see us, camped at a modest distance for talking to, they might ride on by. If they wonder why we seem to be hiding in the trees, they might not. Anywhere along about here will do as well.”
She stopped and he reined in. Both ponies lowered their heads to inhale some dew-wet mountain meadow. Longarm dismounted and helped her unhitch her gray before he unsaddled Ramona and put them on their grazing leads. They were only a few yards from the tree-line. Longarm said, “This grass will be dry enough to sit on by the time we all take a stroll in the woods and bust out the iron rations after all. I see no need to build a fire.”
She didn’t answer. She was heading for the trees. Neither he nor Big Dan Hogan asked why.
Longarm moved around to unfasten the one cuff from the wagon spring as he told his prisoner, “You can hold it till she gets back. Then we’ll both go take a leak.”
The prisoner didn’t answer. He was staring at the body of his dead wife. Longarm had put her aboard with her face covered, but the bouncing had moved the tarp out of the way, some. Longarm covered her waxen face again and said quietly, “She won’t spoil too bad in this mountain air before we get her to Lander.”
Hogan gagged and said, “She looks so… so dead.”
Longarm moved to steady him as they got his feet to the ground, saying, “Don’t go crying about it again. You must have cried a gallon or more by now, and not a single tear made up for any of the tears you made that poor gal shed.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Hogan sobbed. “I don’t care if they hang me, now. I deserves to be hanged more than once for the way I treated that poor little gal.”
The other, more lively gal they were traveling with came out of the trees about then, staring down at the grass as if she was looking for something. Longarm told his prisoner, “Our turn. This way,” and led him out of Ann’s path, up into the same woods.
When they’d both watered the pines Longarm stared thoughtfully about and decided, “I reckon I’d best cuff you to a stout branch and leave you here for now. We’ll pick a low one so’s you can stretch out on the pine needles if you want. I’ll bring you some grub and water.”
The prisoner asked why. Longarm just cuffed him to a low-grown limb and left him to figure it out. He was more polite when Ann asked him, back at the buckboard. He said, “If he ain’t with us, when anybody asks, we won’t be fibbing when we say he ain’t with us, see?”
She told him he was smart again. He stood by the buckboard, opening cans on the tailboard with his pocket knife, as she got her own tarp from under the seat and spread it on the grass nearby. He mixed the contents like a barkeep until he had three cans filled with the same concoction of cold canned beans and tomato preserves. He excused himself a moment and took the prisoner’s rations to him in the woods. He handed the can to Hogan and said, “This may hold you. You don’t need water with such slop. If you hear loud voices from back here, don’t call out to ‘em. Miss Ann and me hardly ever yell. Savvy?”
Hogan had had time to guess the plan. He said he meant to stay quiet as a church mouse. Longarm told him that might not be quiet enough and went back to join Ann on her tarp.