Smith used his handkerchief to mop cold sweat from his brow. He was starting to shake with the chills. “I … I don’t know,” he muttered. “Betty, what do you think?”
“I think he’s right,” she replied, staring at the ranch house. “There are men watching us. I can feel their eyes. They may even have looking glasses and have recognized me.”
“Okay,” Smith said, leaning his head back on the seat cushion and breathing heavily. “Let’s wait until dark then.”
“Mind if I dismount, hobble my horse, and let him graze while we wait?” Longarm asked. But Smith had already dozed off into a fitful sleep.
“Sure,” Betty finally said, examining her man’s bandaged shoulder.
“Has the wound reopened?” Longarm asked.
“Yes.”
“He might very well bleed to death,” Longarm said. “He needs to get back to that doctor you found in Cortez.”
Betty shook her head. “If we do not kill Tom here, then he will come to Cortez and kill us!”
“Not if you give me a gun and let me arrest him first.” Longarm dismounted. “It’s the right thing to do, Betty.”
“No! You would put Jim in prison!”
“I think he’d get a fair trial and … if what he said about the commissioner is true and he really didn’t kill him … well, he’d soon go free. Especially if I made the case that, when the chips were down, he acted responsibly and allowed me to finally do my duty.”
“What about the other members of the gang that he has already killed?”
“Self-defense,” Longarm told her. “You killed one of them too, remember? I’ll write up the report saying that you had no choice but to kill Dave Marble. Trabert. Red Skoal. They’re all cut from the same rotten bolt of cloth.”
“How do I know you are not saying this just to trick me?”
“You’re going to have to have a little faith,” Longarm told the worried woman. “It’s your call and you need to make the right one.”
She pulled Smith’s coat back and again gazed at the blood-soaked bandages. Longarm saw her bite her lower lip, and she was stiff with anxiety.
“I’m a man of my word,” Longarm said quietly. “And I can arrest Tom Marble as well as anyone else waiting in that ranch house. Trust me.”
“All right!” Betty jumped down from the buggy with a six-gun and rifle. She strode up to Longarm saying, “Here! Go and kill them all!”
“Not unless I have to,” Longarm said, examining both weapons. “Betty, you did the right thing. And if I should go down, you turn this buggy around and head for parts unknown. Don’t go back to Cortez because Tom will follow you there.”
“I’m afraid that Jim is bleeding to death!” she cried. “And there is nothing I can do to stop it!”
Longarm went to examine the man. The wound was hemorrhaging and the inside lining of Smith’s coat was soaked with fresh blood.
Longarm pulled off his own coat, then his shirt, which he tore into strips. “Maybe I can cinch this thing down tight enough to stop the bleeding until we get back to the doctor.”
“We are grateful and … and I think that you are a good man.”
“Thanks,” he said, knowing it might already be too late to save The Assassin’s life. “Let’s just hope that I won’t become a dead one.”
Longarm waited until sunset before he mounted Splash and started off to circle the ranch house. The pounding of his heart seemed much louder than the pounding of Splash’s swiftly moving hooves.
When he came to within a hundred yards of the cabin, Longarm dismounted and hobbled the paint, then went the rest of the way on foot. He reached the back of the cabin and stopped to listen, but could hear nothing. Even so, he knew that Tom and at least one other man was waiting.
Longarm waited about a quarter of an hour, and then he slipped around to the front of the cabin. He picked up a rock that lay beside the foundation and hurled it at a rusting five-gallon milk can that lay discarded in the yard. He missed the can, but the rock skipped across the ground and slapped one of the tied horses, causing it to jump back and snap its reins.
A muzzle flash exploded from the cabin’s doorway, and Longarm jumped out and fired almost point-blank. He heard a scream, and then another man jumped out shooting wildly. Longarm jumped behind a water trough and fired three rounds at the sprinting silhouette. He heard his slugs hit the man twice. The silhouette staggered badly and grunted in pain, and Longarm shouted, “Stop! I’m a United States deputy marshal and you are under arrest!”
In reply, the man twisted around and fired in Longarm’s direction, narrowly missing him. Longarm returned fire as the man crawled into his saddle and began to flee. Taking careful aim this time, Longarm drilled the fugitive in the back. He watched the big silhouette lift up in his stirrups, then throw his hands high into the air. After that, the fugitive tumbled off his running horse and crashed to the ranch yard, where he lay still.
Longarm lit a match and hurried to the doorway of the cabin. The first man he’d killed was an Indian, probably the Navajo horse thief working with Tom Marble. The second man was Marble himself and he was very dead.
A few minutes later, Betty whipped the buggy into the ranch yard and then slewed it around to a shuddering halt.
“Marshal!” she cried, a rifle pressed to her cheek and shoulder. “Is that you?”
“it is,” Longarm assured her.
“Thank heavens!” she cried, jumping down and giving him a big hug.
Longarm held her tight for a few moments, and then he went inside to find a lantern. While rummaging about in the cabin he heard Betty wail, and he hurried back outside with the lantern still unlit.
“What is it!”
“He’s dead!” she cried. “Jim is dead!”
It was true. The Assassin had bled to death, just as Longarm had feared. The best that could be hoped for was that the mysterious Jim Smith had at least enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing the last of the Marble Gang was also dead and justice had finally been served.
“Betty,” Longarm said, again drawing the grieving woman close, “I’m sorry, but maybe it all worked out for the best.”
“How can you say that!”
“Because,” Longarm softly answered, “I know he would have never been able to stop judging and killing those he thought deserved to die.”
Betty pulled away in the moonlight and glared up at him. “You know this because, except for the badge, he was like you!”
Longarm figured that she was a mite closer to the mark than he cared to admit, so he nodded, allowing Betty to rush back into his arms and have a good cleansing cry.