He made a point to thank both men for their help once the rig was delivered and Aggie was aboard it. The outfit she’d selected was a light two-wheeled cart drawn by a high-stepping gray gelding in fancy harness. There was even a purple plume set atop the headstall, for cryin’ out loud. Longarm felt almost embarrassed to get onto the seat beside Aggie in a turnout so silly.
He felt doubly so because she had quite automatically helped herself to the driving side of the seat and had the reins and whip in hand.
Fortunately, nothing lasts forever. Including embarrassment.
Longarm crawled onto the seat beside her and reached for a cheroot. He winked at the men who worked at the livery, and propped a boot onto the gracefully curved splashboard in front of him. “Wake me when we get there,” he said, and tipped his Stetson down over his eyes.
“I don’t understand,” Agnes Able whispered. She sounded, and looked, completely befuddled. “I can’t... I can’t believe this, Longarm.”
He grunted and jumped down off the cart.
The truth was that he wasn’t half so amazed as Miss Able. Although he would have had to admit to being at least a little bit surprised. After all, not many community leaders were as dumb as these folks in Snowshoe seemed to be.
Longarm stalked across an expanse of flat gravel to the gate and looked inside, even though that was done mostly for the sake of formality. The gate was standing open, and it was plenty obvious that there wasn’t anybody around. Not guards and not prisoners either.
This mine and the newly erected stockade around its shaft opening were empty. Empty and vacant and no sign whatsoever of the Ute Indians who’d been held there.
“They were here... I guess it was the day before yesterday would have been the last time I saw them,” Aggie said. She too had climbed down from the cart, and came to stand beside him. She kept staring with disbelief inside the empty stockade and shaking her head from side to side. “I drove up and talked with Bray Swind and some of the other Indians. That was after I'd received the telegram saying my writ was granted and that you would be coming to serve it. The people
were all so happy. They were anxious to get back into the mountains. Now ... this. I just can’t believe it, Longarm. I truly can’t.”
“An’ I can’t blame you for that neither. Stupid bastards to try an’ pull something like this. How long d’ they figure they can hide out from the Ewe Ess gov’ment?”
“I thought Boo had more sense than this, Longarm. I truly did.”
“I believe you, Counselor.” He pulled out a cheroot and lighted it without remembering to offer one to Aggie. But then it simply wasn’t normal or proper for a man to have to remember to offer a cigar to a lady. “You don’t s’pose ...,” he ventured, then shook his head and allowed the sentence to die uncompleted.
“What is that, Longarm?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Look, why don’t you wait here a minute. I’m gonna take a look inside that mine before we start back down.”
“What’s the matter, Longarm? Never saw inside a mine shaft before?” she asked in a teasing tone. Then she saw the seriousness in his eyes and guessed the reason why he wanted to look inside. One hand flew to her throat, and she gasped. “No. You can’t think ... no.” She shook her head quite firmly. “They may be foolish, Longarm, but they are not maniacal. They wouldn’t have done anything like ... that... to innocent people. Not that.”
Longarm grimaced and turned away to spit. “Nobody’d slaughter innocent folks,” he agreed. “But you gotta remember, Aggie, that these idjits are thinking of your Ute clients as savages an’ murderers. Not as innocent folks who happen t’ be Injins. So I reckon I’ll take a look inside there ’fore we start back again.”
The lady lawyer looked like she might burst into tears at any moment. She spun away from Longarm and went stumbling back toward the waiting cart.
Longarm ambled forward. The upper levels of this mine were obviously abandoned and empty now, and he felt no threat of danger here. His only fear was that somewhere
inside the earth there was a newly made mass grave and a supply of helpless Utes to fill it.
If the town fathers of Snowshoe turned out to’ve been that incredibly stupid ...
“Well?”
Longarm shook his head. “Nothing.” But he didn’t consider the hour he’d just spent underground as time wasted.
“Thank goodness,” Aggie said. The relief was plain in her expression. She too must have been having thoughts about where the Utes might have disappeared to. And bodies were all too easily disposed of in abandoned mine shafts.
Longarm lighted a smoke for himself, this time remembered to give her one too—he was soon going to have to replenish his supply if this kept up—and pulled his tweed coat back on. It hadn’t been warm down in the mine, not hardly, but it had been stuffy. He’d felt better without the coat.
“Where would you suggest we look for your clients next, Counselor?” he asked.
Lawyer Able frowned and nibbled at her lower lip while she thought about the question. “I don’t know,” she said after taking what seemed a rather long time to come up with so unimaginative a response.
“No idea?” he prodded.
“There are so many places they could be, you see. Old prospect holes. Isolated cabins. There are even natural cave formations in this part of the country. Ancient ruins too if you believe some of the stories. I really wouldn’t have any idea where Boo might have taken them.”
Longarm grunted.
“We have to find them, Longarm. Those Indians haven’t done anything criminal. They are entitled to their freedom. No matter what Boo and his silly male friends may think.”
Longarm grunted. He wasn’t in any position to argue with her. Hell, what she said was exactly what he’d come there to enforce.
Of course Billy Vail hadn’t entirely had it in mind that the subjects of the writ in Custis Long’s pocket would disappear once he got there.
“Do you believe that, Counselor, or are you only wanting to rub those male friends’ noses in something of your doing?”
Aggie stiffened, her shoulders drawing back and her nose hiking skyward. “That is a disgusting thing for you to say, Deputy.”
“It was just curiosity. Nothing personal.” He’d begun to suspect, though, that Lawyer Able was much less interested in the welfare of her clients than she might have been. Otherwise how could she have lost them in the first place? And once they were lost, how could she not be ranting and raving and demanding a confrontation with the police chief and town fathers down in Snowshoe? As it was, fancy sentiments notwithstanding, she seemed content to sit there in the sunshine like they were on a picnic instead of a mission of justice.
“I do not appreciate that sort of curiosity, Deputy.”
“I’m sorry,” he lied.
She sniffed. “Very well then. Shall we start down now?”
“In a minute.” He took a slow loop around the crudely constructed stockade, which he guessed had been recently built for the purpose of containing the Utes, as there wasn’t any reason to put such a rig around a mine.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for sign. See if I can track along behind them.”