And the fact that they’d come without extra ammunition no longer seemed quite so silly. Hell, they hadn’t expected to use those guns for anything tonight.
They’d expected fire to do all the dirty work for them.
What they’d left tucked beside a low pile of split aspen were four tins of coal oil. Each of the tins held four, maybe five gallons of highly flammable liquid. More than enough to douse the door and windows of Aggie Abie’s cabin, and start a conflagration that would kill the occupants of the place from oxygen deprivation long before the walls and roof might collapse in flames.
In addition to the coal oil, they had come thoughtfully equipped with a brand-new box of lucifers. The sandpaper scraper-panel glued to the side of the box was unblemished. No match had yet been struck there. Longarm grimaced and turned his head to spit. It was only coincidental that he happened to spit in the general direction of the nearer of the dead arsonists.
Longarm was a practical man, though. Before he moved away he retrieved die box of matches and helped himself to a pocketful. He offered the rest to Parson, and got a chuckle in return. “No thank you, sir, I don’t smoke.”
“Good for you, man. It’s a nasty habit. Expensive too. Wouldn’t stand for it myself except that it tastes so damn good.”
“I might be able to sell that lamp oil to somebody, though,” Parson suggested hopefully. “If you don’t have a need for it, that is, sir.”
“Help yourself.”
‘Thank you, sir.”
“You wouldn’t happen t’ know who our visitors were, would you?”
“No, sir,” Parson said. ‘They aren’t from Snowshoe, I can tell you that. There isn’t man, woman, nor child who lives here that I haven’t at least seen b’fore, sir. They might not’ve seen me, Mr. Long, but it’s part of my business to see and to know ... things. If you see what I’m saying, sir.”
Longarm did see. He nodded. This man who moved so fearlessly in the night was that fat old woman’s eyes and ears. Parson was much more than merely a bodyguard to her.
“And I can tell you for sure, sir, that they aren’t from around here.”
Longarm kneaded his chin and pondered that.
Like nearly everything else connected with this deal, it made no sense.
It was the people of Snowshoe who were supposed to have a hard-on for him, dammit. Who were supposed to be so scared about the possibility that the Utes would be released from confinement and go on a rampage. Yet when somebody tried to kill him, it wasn’t anybody from Snowshoe at all who made the attempt, but some strangers that nobody around there knew.
No, he corrected himself. Strangers that weren’t from there, maybe. But that didn’t necessarily mean that nobody around there knew them.
Some body did. Somebody in particular. Otherwise they wouldn’t have come to be there at the cabin with their full tins of lamp oil and their fresh box of matches. And, oh, yes, with their murderous intent for those otherwise-innocent items. So some-damn-body around there knew them.
The question was: Who? And why?
Longarm helped himself to a cheroot, the fire to light it provided courtesy of the late arsonists. His own smoke didn’t taste as fine to him as Ames Delacoutt’s cigar had— helluva stroke of good fortune that he’d wanted to finish
that smoke instead of going straight inside and to bed; otherwise those handsomely dressed young men might have succeeded in their mission—but the nice part was that he was still alive to enjoy it.
“You said something about it being a message that brought you here tonight, Parson?”
“I wasn’t gonna forget, sir.”
“No, I don’t believe you would have. The point is, why don’t we go inside and see if we can’t get Miss Aggie t’ find us something to wet our whistles with whilst you deliver your message. Don’t know ’bout you, but this kind o’ work gives me a thirst.”
“I’d consider it a honor, sir, a real honor if a gentleman such as yourself would sit an’ have a drink with me.” “And I’d consider myself one sorry sonuvabitch if I refused to have a drink with a man who’d just saved my bacon. Lead the way, Parson, an’ the honor will be mine.”
Chapter 30
Parson seemed uneasy in the lamplight indoors where his facial disfigurement was so completely on display. Longarm turned the lamp low, and helped himself to a pair of drinks from Aggie’s supply in the office half of the cabin. The lady was keeping herself out of sight for some reason. Frightened half out of her wits probably, Longarm suspected. And that was just because there’d been gunfire outside her walls. She had no way to know that she had barely escaped an ugly death by fire.
“To your good health, Parson,” Longarm said, toasting the big man.
“Thank you, sir.”
“My pleasure.”
They both drank. Parson seemed pleased.
“Before we get down to business,” Longarm said, “I know this isn’t customary. But we’ve been through a good bit together tonight. I was wondering, Parson, if I could ask you a personal question.”
The man touched his cheek, feeling of the scarred and puckered flesh there. He shrugged and nodded. “If you really want t’ know, I suppose there’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. This happened t’ me when—”
“Whoa!”
“Sir?”
“I wouldn’t ask a thing like that, Parson. None o’ my damn business, an’ likely painful for you t’ have to call back to mind.” He smiled. “Not that the other is any of my business either. But what I keep wondering on, Parson, is
how you came by a name like that. I mean, I’m real sorry. I know better’n to pry into another man’s personal life. But the question just keeps fretting at me, if only because of how poorly it seems to fit you. And, uh, you can now tell me t’ shut up and tend to my own knitting. I won’t take any offense an’ will apologize for butting in where I got no call t’ be.”
Parson chuckled and shook his head. “This name? That’s all you’re wanting t’ know? Aw, I don’t mind telling you ’bout that, sir.”
Longarm leaned forward and topped off Parson’s glass with a shot of Aggie’s fiery applejack, then helped himself to a freshener too. The liquor—calvados had she called it?—wasn’t rye, of course. But it kinda grew on a fellow.
“You see, sir,” Parson said, “an’ I hope you understand, you bein’ an officer o’ the law an’ everything, I hope you will understand that I don’t mean to give no offense to you no more’n I took any from your question. You do understand that I hope, sir?”
Longarm nodded.
“Anyway, sir, the thing is, I kinda got a temper, sir. Which I know may surprise you but is true. An’ every now an’ then I kinda through no fault o’ my own wind up in a lockup. And when I do, well, there’s always reformers around that don’t have anything better to do than what they think is good. I expect you know the type, sir.”
Longarm nodded again and took a small swallow of the applejack.
“So when I get myself in trouble, sir, there’s always some rich reformer asshole around to take a look at my face an’ say what a raw deal I’ve got an’ so it ain’t my fault what I done, whatever it was that time, but society’s fault for bein’ mean to me, an’ next thing you know these reformers are looking for some excuse to turn me loose. So what I do once they get worked up to a certain point, see, is I drop down on my knees an’ shout a few hallelujahs an’ amens and such an’ let ’em see how I been saved through their good works. And then I start in to preaching at the other prisoners all