“How do you know he has a gun, Longarm?”
“I don’t. But I never track, trusting to a man’s good nature. Put out them embers and keep together. He ain’t got a mount. He may decide he needs one and you likely know by now, he’s a slippery little imp!”
He left them to debate the matter and started ahead, making out a scuff-mark here and a heelprint there, until he came to the bank of the stream.
“Wading in water so’s not to leave tracks, huh? Poor little bastard. Don’t you know how cold it gets up here at night?”
He assumed his quarry would come out on the far side. Nine out of ten did. A distant, steady roar, far up the slope, told him there was a waterfall within a mile. Taking into account the size of the strides Cedric took, a mile in icy snow-melt seemed about right. Longarm shoved the sharp end of the pine knot in the mud beside the stream, leaving it glowing there as a distraction visible for a good distance. Then, swinging wide, he ran up the slope through the trees. He ran until his lungs hurt, and ran some more, making no more noise than he could help in his soft-soled boots over spongy, fallen fir needles.
He was out of breath by the time he reached the waterfall, and anyone making better time would have to have longer legs. The midget’s only chance was that he’d been gone longer than Longarm figured.
He hadn’t. After Longarm had squatted near the lip of the falls for about five minutes, he heard a splash downstream and the crunch of a wet boulder under foot. He waited until a barely-visible movement caught his eye across the falls. Then he said conversationally, “Evening, Mister Hanks. Going someplace?”
The darkness exploded in a flashing roar of brilliant orange. Longarm knew, as something smashed, hard, into the wood above his head, that the little bounty hunter had stolen someone’s saddle rifle.
He fired back, rolling away from where he’d just been, as another shot flared across the stream, followed by the patter of little running feet.
Longarm ran across the slippery lip of the falls, calling out, “Hold on, old son! You’re turning this into serious business!”
His quarry fired again, aiming at the sound of Longarm’s voice. The shot went wild, of course, since Longarm knew enough to crab sideways after sounding off. He fired back, not really expecting to hit a savvy gunfighter in the dark by aiming at the flashes. He noticed that the little man had fired and crabbed to his right both times as a broken twig betrayed his next run. He kept running uphill, too. It figured. A man that size hadn’t seen army training or he’d know more about dismounted combat in the dark. The first thing you learned from old soldiers was that most men crab to the right and instinctively run uphill when they’re lost in the dark.
Longarm got behind a tree and called out, “Cedric, I’m pure tired of chasing you! You drop that thing and come back here!”
A bullet thudded into the trunk. The ornery little cuss was shooting to kill. So Longarm let out a long coyote-wail and gasped, “Gawd! I’m hit! SomebodY help me! I’m hit in my fool leg!”
Then he moved quietly off to one side and waited.
Something crunched in the dark. What seemed like ten years later, Longarm heard another sound, closer. The little cuss was serious!
Longarm decided to end it.
He fired blindly in the direction of the last sound, moving to his left as he levered the Winchester and watched the bright wink of the other’s rifle. Then Longarm fired, not at the flash, but to its left as he was facing. He heard a thump and the sound of a metal object sliding downhill over roots and pine needles, followed by some thrashing noises and a low, terrible curse. Then it became very quiet.
Longarm counted, “One Mississippi, two Mississippi to a hundred. Then he moved in, knowing that not one man in a thousand plays possum through a hundred Mississippi’s.
He heard harsh breathing, which was either somebody dying or damned fine acting. So he circled uphill and approached quietly from the far side.
In the almost-total darkness Cedric Hanks was only an inkblot against a blackboard. Longarm moved in, squatted, and put his Winchester’s muzzle against the blur before he said, quietly, “I’m fixing to strike a light. One twitch and this thing goes off.”
“You’ve done me, you big bastard!” the midget groaned.
Longarm held the match well out to the side, anyway, as he thumbnailed its head aflame. Then he whistled and said, “Smack in the chest. You’re right, mister. You’re dead.”
“You big bully! I never had a chance.”
“Sure, you did. You could have stayed put. What made you make such a fool play, Hanks? Your best bet would have been to face the charge in court. As your wife, Mabel, didn’t have to bear witness against you, and vice versa.”
“Mat bitch woulda sold me to save her own twitching ass! Why’d you put that light out? I can’t see a thing.”
“Nothing to look at,” Longarm soothed, holding the lighted match closer to the little man’s glazing eyes. He said, “Mister Hanks, you are done for and that’s a fact. Before you go, would you like to give me Mabel’s ass?”
“You already had it, you son of a bitch! Everybody’s had her. She was always sayin’ mean things about my size. How tall I am, I mean.”
“She’s a tart, all right. Did she gun Kincaid, or was it you?”
“I don’t know who she might have gunned in her time. You know who broke her in? Her own stepdaddy. Ain’t that a bitch?”
“Yeah, but let’s stick to serious crimes. When did you learn the man in Crooked Lance wasn’t the real Cotton Younger?”
“Don’t josh me, damn it. You know he was Cotton Younger.”
“Let’s try it another way. Who sent you out here? Who were you working for?”
“I told you, damn it, we was working it on our own, for the reward!”
“Then why did you and Mabel try to get rid of me?”
“It was her idea. She said she’d seen you once before, when one of the other gals in this… place she worked, pointed you out. She knew you were trying to steal our chance at the reward. Shit, you know the rest.”
“After she missed me on the streets of Bitter Creek, you worked out that old badger game to take me in bed, huh?”
“Sure. If you ask me, she enjoyed the screwing part best. I was to creep in and do you after she’d wore you out. I told her you looked like a hard man to wear out that way, but she said she’d give it her best.”
“All right, how’d you do Kincaid? Fall in with him on the trail and maybe finish him off as he was dozing restful in her arms?”
“I told you, I never seen this damn Kincaid!”
“What about that lawman from Missouri?”
Cedric Hanks didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
Longarm closed the dead man’s eyes and got to his feet, heading down the slope. The little man would have been a messy load to carry. The cowhand who’d been careless about leaving firearms about could fetch him when he came to pick up his rifle.
Longarm made plenty of noise and called out, “It’s me, coming in!” as he approached the campsite. As others crowded around, asking all sorts of questions, he called out, “Let’s get some light on the subject. It’s all over.”
Someone kicked ashes off the banked coals and threw some sticks of kindling on. They blazed up. Longarm looked at Mabel Hanks, kneeling by an aspen sapling with her wrist chained to it, and said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. Your man is dead. Before he passed he named you as the murderer of Deputy Kincaid. He died before I could find out about the others, but…”
Then Mabel Hanks was screaming like a banshee and fighting her handcuffs like a chained grizzly as she glared at him insanely, calling him a mother-loving son-of-a-whore for openers. Then she really started talking dirty.