So Longarm was inspired to chuckle and began to throw back his head and sing, at an easy trot..,
Farther along, we'll know more about it.
Farther along, we'll understand why.
Cheer up, my brother.
Walk in the sunshine.
We'll understand it all, by and by.
Two young Mormon gals, hanging up washing in their railed-in yard, giggled and joined him in the next chorus without looking his way as he rode by. He knew they likely figured he was a Saint as well. There were times, over here in the delta, he almost wished he was. Both of them were pretty as pictures, and while they'd just started frowning on it at the Salt Lake Temple, a Saint could marry up with
as many pretty gals as he felt up to supporting out in the Mormon countryside, where spoilsports weren't as likely to ruin the chances of Utah Territory becoming a full state of the Union.
He soon found himself singing alone again in the open country south of the modest settlement. For the first three miles, or about as far from his own doorstep as your average farmer wanted even his barley, the dirt road ran sunbaked between open fields and winding irrigation ditches. Irrigation had to accommodate to the lay of the land this close to the Wasatch Range to the east. But the stock pastures and open range further south offered more cover to anyone lurking within rifle range of the road. So Longarm heeled his mount to a thoughtful lope that might make him a tougher target even as it got him by each rocky outcrop or thick clump of new-growth timber sooner.
That was one of the worries left over from the first flush of pioneering. Once the country around a settlement had been scalped for timber and firewood, lots of second-growth weed trees tended to reclaim the parts nobody was using at the moment with thickets of stickerbrush and trashwood better for hiding in than anything else.
Second growth was good for birds, rabbits, and even deer, which inspired country folks who still hunted for the pot to cut back less of the barely useful shit. They'd left lots of aspen, he saw, with a few round autumn leaves still fluttering like gold coins in the least breeze, as if to keep anyone passing from spotting more sinister movement amid their closely packed trunks of greenish gray.
But once he'd put a good ten miles between himself and town, he began to feel better about the aspen and juniper clumps all about him on the open range that was now ungrazed. For despite more cover near the trail than he'd have tolerated had he been managing the Overland Line, the rolling country behind him was open enough for him to assume nobody was following him, and no matter how sore he'd made that whiskey-running bunch back yonder,
he'd only told one greenhorn, an outsider, where he might be headed.
There seemed no way on earth for anyone with a guilty conscience to be laying for the law by the trail ahead, and thus Longarm was as astonished as alarmed when he topped a rise to see a flash of sunlight on metal amid some aspen flutter ahead. He rolled out of his saddle, Winchester and all, just as a high-powered round beat the report of its express rifle through the shallow gap between the cantle and swells of an already battered army saddle.
That rifle round would have surely done more damage to Longarm's left hip than the sunbaked dirt did to his right one when he hit it with his carbine butt as well and rolled away into the shin-deep grass on the west side of the trail.
He did that because the son of a bitch who'd just tried to dry-gulch him was firing some more from those aspen over to the east of the trail.
As his paint turned tail and ran back toward town with its eyes rolling and reins dragging, Longarm saw his unseen enemy hadn't been trying to kill him. He'd simply spooked the pony for a better shot at his intended target. Longarm knew this for certain when that distant rifle spanged again and his poor hat, which he'd parted company with on the way down, soared skyward amid shattered straw and dirt clods to his left. He knew his real position had to be hidden better by the tall dry grass all around. He was already prone with his elbows spread and his Winchester cocked and aimed the right general direction. So he held on to his edge by not even breathing hard enough to stir the springy stems above him.
A million years crept by. Then a distant voice called out to him, "We see you there, stranger! Stand up with your hands polite and tell us what you're doing in these parts!"
Longarm did no such thing. Assholes who fired on anyone using a public right of way in broad day could hardly
be trusted not to gun another asshole who gave them such a swell chance.
The same voice called out, "I swear we'll open fire if you ain't on your feet by the time I counts to ten!"
So Longarm waited as the cuss in those trees to his east counted aloud, then fired again and again in the general direction his poor old hat had been headed. Longarm figured from the rate of fire that the rascal had a single-shot breech-loading .51 without a scope sight. He was firing too blind at the limit of his effective aim. Those awesome express rounds would kill at over a mile if they hit, but in practice an average shot was doing better than average if he could hit anything at three hundred yards.
Judging by the sun dazzle he'd spotted just in time, Longarm had the range figured at more like five hundred, which was another good reason to keep his own peace with the grass stems all around. He knew that even if he'd been able to see the son of a bitch, his Winchester's effective range was two hundred. So he had to get a good bit closer, or the asshole would have to get closer to him, before it would be a fair fight.
Another voice, a tad further south, bawled, "Cut wasting that expensive shot and ball, Pearly. I think he's already hit."
The high-powered rifle spanged again before the original rascal called back, "He'd better be, now that you've yelt my name to the four winds, you stupid kid!"
The stupid kid yelled back, "Aw, shit, I'll go look if you're too yeller-bellied. Pearly."
The one who seemed to be called Pearly called back, "Don't you dast! That ain't no ragged-ass sheepherder over yonder, kid. Pappy told us not to take no chances with this old boy, and he'd skin me alive if I was to get you kilt instead."
The one called Kid digested that, then called, "Well, we can't just wait here like sparrow birds on a telegraph wire till someone else comes riding along, can we?"
Longarm didn't see why not. But nobody was asking him. So he offered no suggestions as he lay there, dying for a smoke.
A grasshopper landed on the barrel of his Winchester and began to wash its front legs with tobacco juice spit, as if to tease a poor soul forced to do without as the sun rose ever higher. Longarm muttered, "Just you wait, Bug. We'll be having our first frost most any morning now at this altitude, and you know what the ant warned you grasshoppers about in that old tale by Mister Aesop."
The grasshopper paid him no mind. So he knew he was holding as still as he needed to. Critters always noticed movement before a human might. The older of the humans responsible for this dumb fix bawled out, "Come back here, you fool kid! We can't even be sure where he landed in all that deep grass!"
So Longarm knew what was headed his way long before the grasshopper near his front sight suddenly spooked and went whirring off on wings of black and gold. Longarm simply raised the sight until it was aimed at blue sky just above the amber tips of the screening grass. Sure enough, a tall gray hat preceded a tanned moronic face into Longarm's dead aim, to wind up dead and in point of fact sort of messy as Longarm blasted away point-blank while the dumb jaw commenced to drop at the sight of its own impending demise.
As the kid's shattered skull jerked backwards from under its big gray hat Longarm was already rolling sideways. So he wasn't at all where he had been when that more careful as well as more distant rifleman fired sensibly but too late at the haze of gunsmoke left by Longarm's deadlier shot.