“Where the hell you taking me?” demanded Rainey.
“Back to Denver, so you can be tried on those federal wants. You haven’t killed anybody as far as I know, so I reckon you’ll wind up in prison for a few years. You’re a lot luckier than your partner, Rainey.”
The outlaw didn’t look like he considered himself lucky. He glowered at Longarm, and when the lawman told him to climb up on the chestnut, he said angrily, “That’s Jimmy’s horse. The Appaloosa’s mine.”
“I think you’ve got more to worry about than who rides which horse,” Longarm told him in a deceptively mild voice. “Now climb up into that saddle.”
Still complaining, Rainey did as he was told. Then he pointed at Lloyd’s body and asked, “What about Jimmy? You can’t just leave him laying out here for the buzzards and the wolves!”
“I suppose you’re right,” Longarm said. Keeping the Winchester pointed in Rainey’s general direction, he walked over to the other outlaw and hooked the toe of his right boot underneath Lloyd’s shoulder. “Since we’ve got a grave right handy …”
A powerful motion of Longarm’s leg rolled the body into the hole. Lloyd’s corpse thumped to the bottom of the grave.
“You want to cover him up?” Longarm asked.
Chapter 2
Calling Longarm a cold-hearted son of a bitch and every other name he could think of, Rainey got down from the saddle and used one of the shovels to fill up the grave. Longarm could have sent the undertaker out from Cottonwood Springs to fetch in the body, but there seemed to be a certain irony in burying Lloyd here, the sort of thing the dime-novel writers called poetic justice. Besides, Billy Vail would accept Longarm’s word for it that Jimmy Lloyd was buried good and proper, even if he didn’t like it.
“I’m liable to bleed to death before you ever get me to town,” Rainey said as he mounted up again.
“Doesn’t look like that stain on your jeans is much bigger now than it was earlier,” Longarm said. “Appears to me that wound’s not much more than a bullet burn. You’ll live to go to jail.” Longarm paused, then added, “That’s if you don’t try anything else funny. If I have to kill you for resisting arrest, my boss won’t ever question it. And I don’t mind telling you, Rainey, I didn’t want to come down here to Texas after a couple of two-bit badmen like you and your partner in the first place. My mood’s just gotten worse since I’ve been here.”
“You shouldn’t ought to threaten a prisoner like that,” Rainey whined.
“Just remember what I told you.”
If the truth were known, Longarm thought, Billy Vail hated it when he sent his top deputy after prisoners and Longarm came back with either corpses or death certificates. But the men a deputy U.S. marshal usually tangled with weren’t the sort you’d find singing hymns in a church choir on Sunday morning. A lawman out here on the frontier couldn’t avoid shooting a few fellas every now and then. So Longarm hoped fervently that Mitch Rainey wouldn’t give him any more trouble. But Rainey didn’t have to know that.
It was early autumn, and the air here was crisp and clean, which only seemed to add to Longarm’s hunger. The landscape was fairly rugged, with lots of hills and bluffs and little valleys. Cedar and post oak breaks dotted the terrain. From time to time, through gaps in the hills, Longarm caught a glimpse of a winding stream, and knew it was the Brazos River. He had crossed and recrossed the stream a dozen times in the past few days as he searched for his quarry. The summer had been a dry one, so the river was low in most places, a narrow, meandering flow that left much of the streambed dry and sandy. Further south, from around Waco on to the Gulf, the Brazos was a pretty good-sized river, but in this stretch and further west and north, in the Seven Fingers country, it didn’t amount to much except in times of heavy rain. Then it could come roaring down through these gullies in a sudden flood.
Longarm’s mind wasn’t really on the river. He rode with one eye on his prisoner and the other eye on the trail. He hadn’t given up all hope of running across that gray gelding. The jughead had taken off with all his possibles, including his own Winchester and the McClellan saddle that Longarm preferred to the stockman’s model, which was what was cinched onto the Appaloosa’s back. If he was able to recover his gear, it would improve his disposition a little.
In the meantime, he was still hungry, so he guided the apaloosa with his knees and began rummaging in Rainey’s saddlebags. “You got anything to eat in here?” he asked.
“You stay out of them bags!” Rainey yelped. “What’s in there is none of your business, Long. Hell, you’re nothing but a damned thief hiding behind a badge.”
“Oh, hush up,” Longarm snapped, irritated. “I’ve got a right to search a prisoner’s belongings for evidence—what the hell!”
He lifted his hand out of the bag and stared at the strands of glittering jewelry that hung from his fingers. The necklace and the bracelet were both decorated with an abundance of gems and precious stones. Longarm let out a low whistle.
“You put them baubles back!” Rainey shouted. “They’re not yours!”
“Where in Hades did you get any loot like this?” asked Longarm. “The way I understood it, you and Lloyd didn’t get much from those stage holdups except cash and some bonds. Unless you pulled another job recently that wasn’t in the report I read.” Longarm shook his head. “Anyway, what woman in her right mind would take a stagecoach ride wearing anything like this?”
Rainey glared at him. “Jimmy and I found that jewelry. We didn’t steal it, I swear! So it’s not evidence and you don’t have any right to keep it.”
Longarm snorted in disgust and said, “You expect me to believe you just found jewelry like this out in the middle of nowhere?”
“It’s true, I tell you. Jimmy could tell you himself—if you hadn’t shot him.”
“Yeah, and I’m sure I’d believe him too,” Longarm drawled. “If there’s any law in Cottonwood Springs, I intend to ask him about these. Maybe he’ll know where they came from.”
Rainey still looked angry, but he didn’t say anything else. Longarm was grateful for that. He put the necklace and bracelet in one of the inside pockets of his coat and resumed his search of the saddlebags. As far as he was concerned, what he turned up next was even better than a handful of fancy jewelry.
“Bacon and biscuits!” he exclaimed. “You been holding out on me, Mitch. Got a fryin’ pan anywhere in this gear?”
“Over here in Jimmy’s saddlebag,” Rainey answered reluctantly.
“When we find a good place, we’ll stop and fry us up a mess of this bacon for lunch. That sound all right to you?”
“Sure. Why the hell not?” Rainey’s tone was bitter, but Longarm ignored it.
They had been following a game trail for the past few minutes, and it led inevitably toward the river. As they came within sight of the Brazos once again, Longarm saw that the trail ended at a small clearing on the riverbank. He couldn’t have asked for a better place to make a noon camp.
The two men rode into the clearing, which was surrounded by a thick growth of post oaks and live oaks. Longarm swung down from the saddle, taking Jimmy Lloyd’s Winchester with him. Rainey’s rifle was still in the boot. “You can get down now,” Longarm told the outlaw. “We’ll be here for a while.”
Rainey dismounted, wincing as he did so. “Reckon you ought to take a look at this wound you gave me?” he asked. “I don’t want it to fester up on me.”
Longarm suspected Rainey just wanted to get close enough so that he could make a grab for a gun. With a shake of his head, Longarm said, “You’ll be all right.”