“That’s crazy. You never seen me before!”
“Oh, yes, I have. I’ve seen you come whining and I’ve had it out with you in many a dark alley. The other day I killed you in a barber shop. Sometimes you’re tall, sometimes you’re short, and the features may shift some from time to time. But I always know you when we meet. You always have that innocent, wide-eyed look and that same self-pity in your bullshit. I know you good, old son. Likely better than you know yourself!”
“You sure talk funny, mister.”
“I’m a barrel of laughs. You just set while I saddle up the mounts. We’re almost to the high prairies near the south pass and we have to ride a full day out in the open. You reckon you know how to sit a McClellan with your hands behind you, now? Or do I have to tie you to the swells?”
“I don’t want to be tied on. Listen, wouldn’t it make more sense to wait for dark before we hit open ground?”
“Nope. We have them others coming at us through the trees right now. I figure we can get maybe ten, twelve miles out before they break free of the trees. I’d say they’ll be here this afternoon. By then we’ll be two bitty dots against the low sun. The course I’m setting ain’t the one they’ll be expecting, but there’s no way to hide our trail by daylight. If we make the railroad tracks sometime after dark, they’ll cut around the short way, figuring to stop any train I can flag down.”
“What’s the point of lighting out for the tracks then, if they’ll know right off what your plan is?”
“You mean what they’ll think my plan is, don’t you?”
CHAPTER 15
The moon was high, washing the surrounding grasslands in Pale silver as the prisoner sat his mount, watching Longarm’s dark outline climb the last few feet to the Crossbar of the telegraph pole beside the tracks. He called up, “See anything?”
Longarm called back, “Yeah. Campfire, maybe fifteen miles off. Big fire. Likely a big bunch after us. Leastways, that’s what they want me to think. You just hush, now. I got work to do.”
Longarm took the small skeletonized telegraph key he’d had in his kit and rested it on the crossbar as he went to work with his jackknife. He SPliced a length of his own thin wire to the Western Union line, and spliced in the Union Pacific’s operating line, next to it.
He attached a last wire and the key started to buzz like a bee, its coils confused by conflicting messages on the two lines he’d spliced into. Longarm waited until the operators up and down the transcontinental line stopped sending. They were no doubt confused by the short circuit. Then he put a finger on his own key and tapped out a rapid message in Morse code. He got most Of it off before the electromagnet went mad again as some idiot tried to ask what the hell was going on.
Longarm slid down the pole, mounted his own stolen horse, and said, “Let’s go.” He led them west along the right-of-way. He rode them on the ties and ballast between the rails. The horses found it rough going and stumbled from time to time. As the bay lurched under the prisoner, he protested, “Wouldn’t it be easier on the grass all about?”
Longarm said, “Yep. Leave more hoofprints, too. Reading sign on railroad ballast is a bitch. That halo forming around the moon promises rain by sunup. Wet railroad ballast is even tougher to read.”
“What was that message you sent on the telegraph wire?”
“Sent word to my boss I was still breathing and had you tagging along. Told him I wasn’t able to transport you by rail and where I was hoping to meet up with such help as he might see fit to send me.”
“We’re headed for Thayer Junction, right?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, hell, we’re at least ten miles northwest of Bitter Creek and headed the wrong way. You reckon we’ll make Thayer Junction ‘fore the rain hits?”
“For a man who says he don’t know many train robbers, you’ve got a right smart railroad map in your head. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask: where did you figure to run a cow you stole in Crooked Lance? It’s a far piece to herd stolen cows alone, ain’t it?”
“I keep telling everybody, I was only passing through! I had no intentions on the redheaded widow’s cows.”
“But you had a running iron for changing brands. A thing no cow thief with a brain would carry a full day on him if it could be avoided. So tell me, were you just stupid, or did you maybe have one or two sidekicks with you? If there were sidekicks who didn’t get caught by the vigilantes it would answer some questions I’ve been mulling over.”
“I was riding alone. If I had any friends worth mention in that damned valley I’d have been long gone before you got there!”
“That sounds reasonable. I sprung you solo. A friend of yours with the hair on his chest to snipe at folks would likely be able to take out Pop Wade, or even the two I whopped some civilization into. That wasn’t much of a jail they had you in, Younger. How come you didn’t bust out on your own?”
“I studied on it. We’re doing what stopped me. I figured a couple of ways to bust out, but knew I’d have Timberline and all them others chasing me. Knew if they caught me more’n a mile from the Widow Stover and some of the older folks in Crooked Lance they’d gun me down like a dog. Timberline wanted to kill me when they drug me from the brush that first day.”
“He does seem a testy cuss, for a big man. Most big fellers tend to be more easy-going. What do you reckon made him so down on you, aside from that running iron in your possibles?”
“That’s easy. He thought I was Cotton Younger, too. Lucky for me he blurted the same out to the widow as she was standing there. When he said I was a wanted owlhoot who deserved a good hanging, she asked was the reward worth mention, and the rest you know.”
“Timberline’s been up here in the high country for half a dozen years or more. How’d he figure you to be a member of the James-Younger gang?”
“The vigilance committee has all these damned reward posters stuck up where they meet, out to the widow’s barn. That’s their lodge hall. Understand they hold a meeting there once a week.”
“Sure seems odd to take the vigilante business so serious in a town where a funeral’s a rare occasion for an all-day hootenanny. While you was locked up all them weeks did you hear tell how many other owlhoots they’ve run in?”
“Pop Wade says they ain’t had much trouble since the Shoshone Rising a few years back. Shoshone never rode into that particular valley, but that’s when they formed the vigilantes. They likely kept it formed ‘cause the widow serves coffee and cakes at the meetings and, what the hell, it ain’t like they had a opera house.”
“Kim Stovers more or less the head of it, eh?”
“Yep, she inherited the chairmanship from her husband when the herd run him down, a year or so ago. Pop Wade’s the jailer and keeps the minutes ‘cause he was in the army, one time.”
“And Timberline’s the muscle, along with the hired hands at his and other spreads up and down the valley. You hear talk about him tracking anyone else down since he took the job?”
“No. Like I said, things have been peaceable in Crooked Lance of late. Reckon they’re taking this thing so serious ‘cause it beats whittling as a way to pass the time. You figure it should be easy to throw them part-time posse men off our trail, huh?”
“They’d have lost us long ago if we only had to worry about cowhands. I’m hoping that Mountie joined up with ‘em, along with Captain Walthers and the bounty-hunting Hanks family. Mountie’d be able to follow less sign than we’ve been leaving.”