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Billy beamed and waddled back toward the federal building leaving all three of them to stare.

"I guess we might as well ride," Longarm said, taking Lucy's reins.

As they rode out of Denver a second time, Lucy clung to her saddlehorn. Longarm ignored the curious stares of the pedestrians, horsemen, and freighters that they passed and let the horses gallop until they began to get winded.

"How long will it take you to get me to Prescott?" she asked when they began to walk their horses.

"Maybe two weeks."

"Took me just seven days to reach the Denver train station," Lucy said with a superior smirk.

"Well," Longarm said, "you didn't have a prisoner to watch."

"That's true," Lucy said as she set her eyes on the Rocky Mountains looming up ahead.

CHAPTER 3

Longarm and Lucy rode south along the base of the Rocky Mountains. It was late in September and, high up in the deep canyons, Longarm could see that the aspen were starting to change colors. They were yellow mostly, but some were rust-colored, and Longarm knew that they would turn deep shades of red and ocher as the weather grew colder.

Lucy Ortega said little the first few days of riding. She seemed lost in her own dark reverie, and Longarm respected her wish for silence. He was content to his own thoughts, which focused on how he would spend his three weeks of vacation. He realized that there really wouldn't be enough time to float down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. So perhaps he would take a train over to Baltimore, Ohio, where he had a few friends. On the other hand, the weather might be turning to snow by then, and so it could be wiser to head south, rather than north. Longarm had always enjoyed Taos and Santa Fe, and he knew a few ladies who would be more than happy to help him pass the time.

"So," Lucy said one night as they camped in the mountains just west of Trinidad, "how long have you been a lawman?"

"About eight, maybe ten years," Longarm replied.

"You have a slight Southern accent," she said, watching him from across the fire. "Are you from the deep South?"

"West Virginia."

"Parents and family still alive?"

"You ask a lot of personal questions, don't you."

Lucy leaned back on her haunches. "I've been watching you, Custis, and I can tell that you are a very methodical man."

"How so?" he asked, turning a roasting sage hen on a stick over their fire.

"You move and talk slow, but you're pretty quick. I saw that much when you came after me on that horse you stole. You can be a hard man, can't you, Deputy?"

"I can," Longarm admitted. "This is hard country and the people I deal with aren't saints. You either have to play as rough as they want, or you don't last very long."

"Might makes right." Lucy smiled. "Is that your credo?"

"I don't know nothing about a credo, Miss Lucy. I'm just telling you the way things are."

"It sounds very grim. Can't you think of something better to do? Surely you've a few talents besides your ability to kill men and yank women from their horses."

Longarm bristled until he saw that she was taunting him. "I like what I do," he said. "I like the fact that I'm usually outdoors and pretty much answer to no one except myself."

"Oh, really? And here I thought you were ordered to escort me to Arizona. Are you saying that in actuality you volunteered to do this?"

"No," Longarm grudgingly confessed, "I was ordered."

"Then you're really just another underling taking orders the same as any clerk or wage earner."

Longarm jammed the sage hen back into the flames. "You may think that," he said, anger in his voice, "but I look at it a whole lot differently."

"Why?"

"Because I'm out in the field and there's no one around to make decisions for me. When there is trouble, I have to make the decisions and they have to be right and made in a hurry. I don't ask permission from Denver to do this thing or that. I just act, and then I take responsibility. That's a lot different than being under someone's thumb."

She studied him across the fire. "I suppose it is," she said. "But won't you be promoted someday and wind up just like that chubby little man who called you his deputy in the street back in Denver?"

"You mean that fella that cut down the bigmouth with one punch to the gut?" Longarm asked. "Sure. But Billy Vail could leave his desk and come back out into the field. He'd just have to take a demotion."

"I'll bet he never will," Lucy said smugly. "Once a man gets a taste of power in the bureaucracy, he's forever addicted. Your Mr. Billy Vail is going to remain shackled to his desk until he slumps over dead."

Longarm figured the sage hen was cooked enough. He laid it down on a piece of leather and cut off the drumsticks. They were sizzling, and the juice was pouring out of them like the sweat off a fat man in the summertime. "Here," he said.

Lucy took the drumstick, blew daintily on it, and then took a bite.

"How is it?" he asked, watching her.

"A little burned on the outside and raw on the inside," she said. "And it could use some salt and pepper and maybe-"

"Just eat," he growled. "I swear that you are a fussy lady. I guess that comes with having lived like a rich girl."

She tore off another hunk of flesh and chewed it thoughtfully for a moment before she said, "I was raised a poor girl, Mr. Long. About as poor as they come."

"I heard you were educated at some fancy Eastern college."

"That's true."

"Well, then?"

Lucy's eyebrows knit together. "I was raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the daughter of a poor but very respected doctor. We took chickens, food, sometimes a burro or an old milk cow as payment. My father was not only a doctor, but he was a humanitarian. He was too lax and forgiving and his patients often took advantage of him. My mother died in our two-room shack, and I doubt if Father even had enough money to buy the kinds of medicine that he knew she needed to ease her terrible suffering."

"Did she die of pneumonia?"

"A tumor." Lucy sighed. "She was a fine woman and her passing caused me great sorrow, but it actually broke my father's heart. He began to drink--a rather common malady in his profession. I think I would have watched him die a drunken and a ruined man if the fates had not intervened in his behalf."

Longarm tore the hen apart and extended more flesh to Lucy, who stared into the flames and her past, lost to the world. Longarm waited for her to go on, but she did not.

"What fates intervened?" Longarm finally asked.

Lucy looked up suddenly. "Oh. Mr. Albert Buckingham. He was hunting in the mountains nearby with his son, a boy of about twelve. They were from England with a full party and were hoping to get a trophy elk or grizzly bear."

"But something went wrong?"

"Very. Mr. Buckingham shot a huge grizzly, but only wounded it. Those great beasts are extremely unpredictable, you know, and never more so than when wounded."

"They will usually attack," Longarm said. "Their attack is so sudden and ferocious that men have often lost their nerve and then their lives."

"So I've heard. But this particular wounded grizzly turned and ran. Mr. Buckingham, his guides, and their dogs dashed off into the woods after it. They trailed the grizzly for about two miles and the dogs were hot for the hunt. But then, a tragic thing happened. The grizzly circled around on them and went raging back toward their camp where the boy and his nanny were resting."

Longarm stopped chewing. He could visualize the situation. An enraged and badly wounded grizzly, circlin back on its pursuers, probably to attack them from behind but instead chancing upon their unprotected camp to find a helpless woman and a boy.

"Are you sure that you want to hear the rest?" Lucy asked.

"Only if it has some kind of a connection to your Eastern education."

"It has everything to do with it," she said, continuing on with her story. "The grizzly attacked the camp and the nanny tried to protect the boy, but one swipe from the bear broke her neck. The boy ran."