She began to stroke it harder as she demurely replied, “I guess so. But there only seems to be one side around here. There’s Queen Kirby and those Indians she wants you boys to get rid of for us all. No white folks around here are at feud with Queen Kirby, and the Indians don’t have any property anyone can grab without the government’s say-so, right?”
He snubbed out the cheroot and rolled back on top of her as he decided, “That’s about the size of it. But I’ll be switched if I can see anyone hiring her own well-paid army to fight Indians pro bona—meaning a free public service in lawyer talk.”
Then he was too busy to talk, and she wouldn’t have been listening in any case, as they both went deliciously loco some more.
CHAPTER 16
The next few nights were as nice, or nicer, with Trisha proving a real sport about experimenting in bed or anywhere else he could think of. But the days went tedious as hell, with those infernal raiders neither moving on to fresh fields of action nor offering a stand-up fight. It was almost as if the painted rascals were out to taunt the white eyes in and about Camino Viejo; for they seldom hit more than half a day’s ride in any direction, and always seemed to double back and hit some more every time it seemed they’d ridden on.
Everybody Longarm talked with seemed as bewildered, whether they worked for Queen Kirby or her neighbors. Some were more jealous than others, but nobody was on really bitter terms with the hard-faced but jovial redhead.
Some Western Union riders repaired the wire to Santa Fe. It was cut somewhere else the same day, as if the Indians had been watching.
Longarm watched for smoke signals as he led patrols out on both sides of the river, trying in vain to cut the Indians’ trail, with just enough sign hither and yon to let you know they were still around without saying exactly where.
Then it got worse. Wes Jones, leading his own patrol south along the riverbanks, came upon what was left of old Pappy Townsend and the bunch he’d led all the way to Santa Fe and back in search of the man who’d gunned their young kinsman Jason up at Loma Blanca. When Jones brought them back, stacked like bloated cordwood on a buckboard, it was generally conceded they’d have been far better off staying up in Loma Blanca. One could only hope the bodies had been stripped and carved up that thoroughly after they’d been killed.
Queen Kirby ordered eight pine coffins in a hurry for the bunch of them, and sent them on their way north, more dignified if not a whiff sweeter-smelling under the sunny New Mexico sky.
When he told Trisha about it later, the pale blonde turned paler and said she was scared, which sounded reasonable. Then she pleaded with him to take her away from such savage surroundings, which he would not, he told her, because he wasn’t fixing on going anywhere before he learned what was going on.
They were getting undressed at the time, of course, so she tried to take unfair advantage of him, on her knees beside the bedstead, as she said, “Pooh! You told me you were a lawman, not the hired hand of a silly old thing whose only crime is that overdone henna rinse! You told me just the other night that neither gambling nor whoring are federal offenses, lucky for us, and everybody shoots to kill at Apache, save for the army.”
He sighed and said, “I’ve noticed that. Some officers seem to go along with the Indian policy of the moment, whilst others like to preserve the species, lest a son still in West Point graduate to find no hostiles of his own to hunt. I sometimes feel we’d have been kinder in the long run to follow the Mexican or Canadian Indian policies. I know it saves a heap of money to just leave Indians be when they ain’t bothering nobody, and arrest them as outlaws when they are.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t talk with her mouth so full. He lost interest in what was going on everywhere else on earth that night.
It was downstairs in the dining room the next morning, her serving him more sedately with ham, eggs, and an innocent expression, when he told her, “Don’t pack your bags just yet. But I reckon I could get us out of here aboard my two livery nags by way of the far side of the river and up to the railroad inside the reservation line. I doubt like thunder we’d meet many reservation-jumpers on or about the reservation they’d jumped. So by now nobody else over yonder should know whether to be sore at me or not.”
She looked so puppy-dog eager he quickly added, “Hold on. I never said I’d be able to c you all the way back to Denver with me, and I ain’t even fixing to cross the river till I check just a few more angles out.”
She bent over to pour him more coffee as she asked what else there could be to find out about a sort of informal but sensible enough way to cope with any sort of wild and woolly killers.
He said, “We’ve been whittling away at where those raiders could be holing up by day to raid at night. But like you said yourself, fighting Indians for fun and profit ain’t my regular occupation.”
None of the few others having breakfast seemed to be listening, so he confided, “I just want to wire some questions hither and yon about old Queen, her boyfriend Wes, and a couple of her other old boys. She and the one who says he used to be called Slim tend to sound like a pair of carnival barkers when they get into a two-sided conversation. They lard their jargon with so many terms I can barely understand, and I’ve spent some time with carnival folk.”
She pouted. “I was wondering where you learned to contort a poor girl into such dirty positions. Is that what you’re planning to do to that old redhead as soon as you get the chance?”
He laughed incredulously and said, “Not hardly, albeit she does remind me of somebody prettier from a time gone by. I’ve been busting brain cells trying to remember. Neither of us would have forgotten a long-ago love affair, despite her bull about having met me before in San Antone.”
Trisha said, “Goody! Does that mean you’ll still let me French you if we meet like this a dozen years from now?”
He sighed and said, “Honey, you can do that when I come back to you this very evening, should that be your pleasure as well. Meanwhile, I think I may have seen a younger Queen Kirby’s face on a tintype or sepia-tone. It’s possible she resembles some male relation on file. In either case, that carnival or theatrical background may narrow the target area down. I know some theatrical agents I can call on and, of course, the Pinkertons keep files on grifters, bunko artists, and such, because they provide security at so many state fairs and such.”
Trisha had to go serve somebody else. He didn’t care. He’d only been musing aloud with the only person he could trust with his musings in these parts.
He finished breakfast and ambled over to the card house. Queen Kirby and her Wesley hadn’t shown up yet. Longarm had learned the others called the man in black her Wesley after hearing some shocking comments by old boys who’d overheard sloppy noises through door panels from time to time.
Longarm hadn’t asked for further details. It was enough to know who might be making sloppy noises with whom. Everybody acted sort of disgraceful at such times, and some said the real queen, Victoria, favored that Scotch butler, John Brown, because it saved time behind closed doors with the two of them wearing skirts.