“I don’t know how I know this. Maybe it’s because there’s something sort of smug crawling around in them innocent eyes when you don’t think I’m looking. But I think you’re too satisfied about a job well done. I think you know where Cotton Younger is!”
Longarm’s mouth went dry as he forced himself to meet her level questioning gaze, but his voice was calm as he shrugged and said, “You have a lively imagination, ma’am. I told you the man we all thought was Cotton Younger wasn’t. That don’t leave us with anyone who answers to his description, does it?”
“I thought maybe you had your eye on one of the hands from Crooked Lance.”
“Do tell? What makes you say that?”
“The midget and the woman likely gunned those other lawmen, like you said. If they were sent out to free the man they thought was Cotton Younger, that makes sense. The other man, the man who was a member of the James-Younger gang could have only been killed by the real Cotton Younger!”
“Keep talking.”
“Don’t you see? The Hankses are private detectives who’d do anything for a dollar. That old man pretending to be a Canadian would have been valuable to them as an ally. Why would they have gunned him?”
“Beats me. Why would Cotton Younger have done it, if Cotton Younger wasn’t the man in your jail?”
“That’s simple. The real outlaw’s been hiding out in Crooked Lance all this time. You know we’re way off the beaten track, and ordinarily, no one would ever look for anyone there. Then a man answering to his description got picked up by us vigilantes and you know the rest. All hell broke loose. Old Chambrun-what’s-his-name came busting in to free his kinsman, learned we had the wrong man, and started to light out. That’s when the real Cotton Younger might have killed him, to shut him up for good. The Mountie saw through the fake Canadian accent. No telling how many ways a reckless old outlaw could have been caught, later, knowing the whereabouts of a wanted man who aims to lay low in Crooked Lance for keeps!”
Unfortunately, she was hitting damned close to home, considering she hadn’t heard the dying Sailor Brown’s last, wondering protest about being gunned unexpectedly.
Longarm chuckled and said, “You’d have made a great detective yourself, Miss Kim. But you’re forgetting something. Nobody hereabouts fits Cotton Younger’s description. Timberline’s too big and the midget is a mite short. I don’t know exactly what color hair you and that other gal might have started out with, but even if it should be cotton-blonde, the feller I’m after is a man.” He didn’t think he should tell her how he knew that both she and Mabel Hanks were definitely female, so he added, “I’ve looked all the others over, more’n once. There ain’t one in a whole score of riders that would fit the wanted posters for Cotton Younger, real or not.”
“Half the men in Crooked Lance aren’t here.”
“I know. If there’s anything to your suspicion, I might look the entire population of Crooked Lance Over with a hand lens, some day. But I aim to carry my prisoners in as I catch ‘em not as I’d like ‘em to fit wishful thinking.”
“Then, in other words, you’re saying I’m just running off at the mouth!”
“well, I do see some points you’ve raised that will have to be answered if ever we get that odd-matched pair to talk. To tell the truth, I don’t know just what they were up to.”
“You don’t? Then why did you arrest them?”
“I told everybody at the time. For the murder of Deputy Kincaid. You eat the apple a bite at a time, ma’am. It ain’t my job to get all the details out of ‘em.”
“But you said you didn’t know what they were up to!”
“I meant I didn’t know why. They might have been out to set the prisoner free. They might have been after the reward, just like they said. It don’t matter all that much. you heard ‘em admit they took a shot at me in Bitter Creek. That’s against the law, no matter how you slice it. Just why they did it and who they’re working for will come out in the wash. Since the midget is the brains, and she’s the brawn, he’ll no doubt tell a few tales on her to save his neck, before it’s all over.”
“Brrr, they are a pair, ain’t they? What was that he said about having his head to some plywood, listening to you talk to somebody in Bitter Creek?”
“Oh, I don’t remember just who I was talking to, ma’am. After his wife took a few shots at me I caught him listening, is all.”
“Oh, I got the impression he was listening in on you and that slut of his. I’m starting to remember just what it was he said.”
“Well, don’t you worry your pretty head about it, Miss Kim.”
This redhead was too quick-witted to be let out without a leash! A muzzle wouldn’t hurt, either! How many of the others had she been to with her infernal speculations? She suddenly blurted out, “Oh, I remember. He said he was listening when you and that hussy were…”
“What, ma’am?”
“You told him to hush, ‘cause there were ladies present. Meaning me, I take it, since I’d hardly call Mabel Hanks a lady.”
“I thought he was fixing to cuss. He was pretty riled when I arrested him.”
“Longarm, were you and that awful woman…? Oh, I can’t believe it!”
“That makes two of us. You do have a lively mind, and a mite dirty, meaning no disrespect. The woman is his wife, Miss Kim. Allowing for her being no better than you think she is, what you’re suggesting is mighty wild, if you ask me!”
“I’m sorry, but it did cross my mind. She’s not bad-looking, and you are a man, after all.”
“Heaven forbid I’d be that kind of man, Miss Kim! Do I look like the sort of gent who’d trifle with a woman with her husband listening, watching, or whatever?”
She laughed a sort of earthy laugh and said, “As a matter of fact, you do. But I can’t see you loving up a gal who’d just shot at you, with her husband next door, listening, or not. Nobody would do a thing like that but a very stupid man, which I’ll allow you ain’t.”
“There you go. I knew you’d drop them awful notions, soon as you reconsidered ‘em a mite.”
CHAPTER 24
Somewhere, somebody was hollering fit to bust, so Longarm woke up. He rolled, fully dressed, from under his canvas tarp and sprang to his feet, Winchester in hand and headed over toward the smoldering embers of the fire, in the direction of the confusion.
He found Timberline kneeling over Mabel Hanks, shaking her like a terrier shakes a rat as he thundered, “Gawd damn it, lady! I don’t aim to ask nice one more time!”
Longarm saw the open handcuff dangling from the one still locked to Mabel’s right wrist and said, “Let her be, Even when she’s talking she don’t tell the truth worth mention.”
He shoved a pine knot into the embers and waited, squatting on his heels, until it was ablaze. Meanwhile, everyone in camp converged around Timberline and his smirking captive. As Longarm got to his feet with the torch held out to one side, Kim Stover asked, “What happened? Where’s the midget?”
“Damned if I know. my own fault. I locked that bracelet as tight as she’d go, but he has a wrist like an eight-year-old’s and we hardly arrest enough that young to mention.”
He fished the key from his pants and handed it to her. “Timberline gets through shaking her teeth loose, get him off her and cuff her to a sapling ‘til I get back.”
“Are you going after him in the dark?”
“I don’t aim to wait ‘til sunup.”
He found a tiny heel mark in the forest duff and started away from the clearing. A couple of the hands fell in beside him, anxious to help.
He said, “Go back and check to see if he lit out with anybody’s weapon. I have enough to worry about, tracking him, without having to keep you fellers from getting shot.”