Longarm spotted a horse tied at a hitch rail about twenty yards away and sprinted to it. He tore the reins free, then jumped into the saddle and took off after the woman fugitive. If Lucy had been a man, he would have pulled his six-gun and winged her in the shoulder.
Blood was pouring from his nose as he followed Lucy through town heading due east toward the Kansas plains. Fortunately, the horse he had commandeered was faster than Lucy's mare, and he managed to overtake her about a mile out of town. She was giving it her best try, however, and he had to admire her determination when he finally came abreast of her and grabbed her long reddish-brown hair and nearly jerked her out of the saddle.
"Rein in, damn you!" Longarm shouted. "Rein in!"
But Lucy wasn't about to rein in. She tried to hit him in the nose again, but she was off balance and swinging back over her shoulder, so there was no power in her punches. For his own part, Longarm had had about enough. Lucy Ortega had embarrassed the hell out of him before half of the citizens of Denver, probably broken his nose, and forced him to steal another man's horse.
"That's it!" Longarm stormed as his patience snapped and he dragged Lucy off the back of her running horse.
She hit hard and bounced a good two feet, then rolled over and over. When Longarm finally got the horses stopped, he dismounted and hurried back, sure that maybe the witch had broken her fool neck in the fall.
"Get up," he ordered, not taking any chances with her.
"I can't," she moaned, "I think I broke my back."
When she whimpered and attempted but failed to get up, Longarm's anger turned to concern. He bent down to help her, but the wildcat jumped up and made a grab for his sidearm. Longarm knocked her hand away and pushed her face down into the dirt. He climbed onto her back, wiped his bloody nose, and hissed, "You have tried the limits of my considerable patience! I'm not giving you an inch of slack between here and Yuma."
Lucy struggled for a moment under his weight, and when it became apparent that she could not budge, she relaxed. "Get off of me, you big, bloody lummox."
Longarm climbed off. He drew his handkerchief from a back pocket and covered, then squeezed his nose.
"Dammit, I think you might have broken it," he snorted.
"You should have let me go," Lucy said. "I'll be nothing but trouble. I didn't kill my husband and I'll be damned if I'm going to rot in some territorial prison."
Longarm blew his nose free of blood. He had a canteen tied to his saddle and he used that to wash his face. "Let's go," he ordered. "We're taking that horse back to town and then we're on our way to Arizona."
"I wonder," she said, helping herself up into the saddle, "what terrible wrong you committed to be picked for this job."
Longarm mounted his horse and gathered the reins of the animal he'd commandeered. "I was told that this would be a plum of an assignment."
"You can't be serious!"
"I am," he insisted. "My boss, Marshal Billy Vail, painted a pretty rosy picture of you. He said you were young, beautiful, and a lady."
"Well, I'm sorry!"
"Don't be," Longarm said, deciding that his nose wasn't broken after all. "Two out of three isn't bad."
Lucy stared at him with his bulbous red nose, and then she actually smiled. "Even with a big red nose you are sort of good-looking. What's your name again?"
"Custis. Deputy Marshal Custis Long."
"Well, Custis. I'm an innocent woman."
"Sure."
"I am!" she protested. "But then, I'm certain that everyone claims to be innocent."
"Nearly," he admitted.
"Do you have any idea why we're going to Yuma by way of Prescott?"
Longarm scowled. "No."
"I've got enemies in Prescott who want to make sure that I never go to trial so that I can prove my innocence."
"You mean they want to kill you?"
"Exactly."
"I don't know about any of that. All I know for sure is that they say you shot and killed your husband."
"That's not true!"
"You can tell your story to the judge, lady. I'm just a poorly paid deputy marshal doing my job."
"Poorly paid I can believe. But you weren't selected as my escort because you are the boss's favorite."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Just that you'd better watch out," she said. "I'm giving you fair warning that I'll try to escape any way I can."
"You can't."
"And," she continued, ignoring him, "be aware that, if we actually reach the Arizona Territory, there are people who will stop at nothing to see me dead."
"Why?"
"Because," Lucy said, "my poor husband was a very rich man without any heirs except myself. And, if I'm judged guilty in a court of law, they'll strip away my inheritance. The ranch as well as all my husband's other assets will go to his thieving shirttail cousins and uncles. But I won't be judged guilty. And that's why they'll want to kill me."
Longarm looked sharply at her. "Are you trying to tell me that these 'shirttail cousins and uncles' murdered your husband in order to get his assets?"
"That's right."
"Any proof of that?"
"No," she said after a long silence. "After it happened, I was in shock and vulnerable. Instead of acting in my own behalf and trying to find proof that I was not guilty, I panicked and ran. I got all the way to Denver, and it was just bad luck that I was caught at the train station."
Longarm inhaled deeply and then exhaled slowly. "I tell you something, Lucy. I never met a prisoner that didn't try to play on my sympathy and then stick it to me the minute my back was turned. Now, I don't know if you are guilty as sin or innocent as the Virgin Mary, but I do know that I've got a job to do and that's all that matters."
"Is it?" she asked, eyebrows arching upward. "Can you just blindly carry out your instructions regardless of my guilt or innocence? Regardless of what is right and what is wrong?"
"That's not for me to decide."
She snorted with disgust and shook her mahogany mane of hair. "You seem like a more intelligent man than that," she said. "I'd hoped for better."
"Too bad," he said as he touched spurs and led them galloping back into Denver to return the horse he'd taken in order to catch her.
When they arrived in town, Billy Vail was in the street trying to calm the horse's owner, a tall, burly man who looked to be a freighter or a businessman of dubious background.
"There!" Billy said to the irate man. "I told you that my deputy would bring back your horse."
"You thievin' sonofabitch!" the big man cursed, grabbing the reins out of Longarm's hands. "I ought to drag your ugly ass offa that sorrel and beat your head in."
Longarm ground his teeth in silence. "I'm sorry, but my prisoner would have escaped if I hadn't taken your horse." The big man stared at Lucy. "She's your prisoner?"
"That's right."
The man doubled up and guffawed so loud that he sounded like a braying mule. Longarm could feel his temperature rising to the boiling point, but he was determined to conduct himself in the honorable tradition of an officer of the law. If he could.
"Deputy, I'll take that pretty wench off your hands!" the big man roared.
Now Longarm had had enough. He started to dismount and shut the braying fool up, but Billy raised a hand to arrest his motion. "Custis," Billy said, "I'll handle this."
And as Longarm watched, Billy moved over to the big man and stomped down on his foot.
"Hey!" the man cried, hopping up and down. "That hurt, you little..."
Billy's fist blurred upward in a tight arc that ended in the big man's gut. It was a short, powerful uppercut, and Longarm could have sworn that it lifted the big man an inch off the ground. When the man bent over double and began to gasp for air, Billy hammered him to his knees.
"Thanks again for the use of your fine horse, sir," Billy said in a cheery voice. "It was an act of generosity and a real public service. Now, good day! And also to you, Custis, and especially to you, Miss Ortega."