Longarm on the Overland Trail (18 page)

"Have you considered him riding sidesaddle, in skirts?" she cut in.

He started to tell her that was silly until he took her suggestion. "Thunderation! That works! Even he must have noticed by now how short and small he is. Even in his wild cow duds he ain't no bigger than you are, and it stands to reason a lunatic could think he was Josephine as well as Napoleon. He come home from the army to an older sister who could be missing at least one dress. I never asked, and she might not have noticed in any case."

He thought about the way the killer had vanished so quickly with posse riders hot on his tail and grabbed her to give her a big kiss as he told her, "You're smart as hell, Lord love you. Oh, sorry, ma'am. I wasn't trying to be forward."

She smiled up at him from under her sunbonnet and told him she wasn't sore. He let her drop back in the grass as he sat up in it and stared down the slope at the shabby homestead, growling, "Your fine suggestion makes up for the day I just lost on more serious business. But I'm still sorry I ever saw that fool kid running for you."

She said, "I'm not. I mean, if you hadn't wrapped her up so well before I could get there, she'd surely have died before the boy and me arrived."

He shrugged. "That's why I wrapped her. And now I'm stuck here until we see how it turns out. How do you figure her chances, Miss Ann?"

She said, "Fifty-fifty. I can't get her to take liquids, and in this thin, dry mountain air she needs them more than she might in moister and thicker air. I've seen concussion victims wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and I've seen them just pass away without ever waking. I wish we had some way of peeking inside her skull without cutting it open. But we don't. I guess we'll always have to just guess about brain injuries."

He didn't answer. Women couldn't stand a man who didn't babble every stray thought, so she asked, "Will you have to arrest Dan Hogan if she doesn't make it?"

He favored her with a raised eyebrow. "Did you think I was sticking around to pin a medal on him? The reason gents in my line of work hate these domestic cases is that, should she wake up with him holding her hand and telling her how sorry he is, she'll never in this world press charges, and I'll have wasted all this time."

"And if she dies?"

"He's mine to keep and cherish. As the only law in sight, it'll be my duty to arrest him, of course. A lady can't forgive even a husband for killing her entire."

She sighed. "Lord knows I have little sympathy for any wife-beater. But poor Dan Hogan isn't all bad. You were so right when I heard you telling him what made him act that way. I've known them since they came out here to try homesteading. The poor man tried, at first. But he just didn't have what it takes to make a go of it in such unforgiving country. It's not his fault he's a failure. What do you think they'll do to him?"

She blanched when Longarm said flatly, "They'll hang him high. It ain't their fault he's a failure, neither, and in such a thin-settled county there won't be a man on the jury who won't have heard he's a man who beats his woman, and like as not steals beef."

She insisted, "That hardly seems just. At worse he could only be found guilty of manslaughter, not premeditated murder, right?"

He shrugged. "Jerkwater juries don't worry much about the finer points of the law. If she dies, he'll be lucky if they even go through the formalities. Wyoming is still a territory, and such local law as there may be is still sort of ad hoc. I don't like it all that much, either. But if she dies, all I can do is hand him over to the nearest sheriff. After that it'll be out of my hands."

She didn't look as relaxed, now. She said, "Well, I'll just have to make sure she lives, then," and got to her feet to sort of flounce down the slope ahead of him, not looking back, as he muttered, "I'll never figure their kind, Lord. That makes another woman mad at me for just doing my duty, damn it."

CHAPTER 12

At Ann's suggestion, they'd supped late to take some edge off the long hours of waiting ahead. She had cooked a fair supper from the wild greens and smoked beef out back, saving Longarm's iron rations for him, after all, except for the coffee. She made the coffee strong so she could stay awake and watch for a change in the condition of the battered wife in Longarm's bedroll.

It was crowded and stinky enough in the cabin with the walls fresh-chinked with wet mud and the softwood fire reeking of sap and pitch. Longarm stepped out to sit on the front steps and blow smoke rings at the setting sun. Ann came out a little later to sit beside him and murmur, "No change. I can't tell whether she's sleeping sound or dying, and poor Dan Hogan is beside himself with worry and remorse."

"He ought to be," Longarm said. "It's the boy I feel more sorry for. Having a daddy hanged is a hard thing to live down."

"I know. It would be kinder if you just shot Big Dan. But I can't let you do that, either," she told him.

He didn't want to know how she aimed to stop him from making the arrest he'd have to if the woman died. "Our two ponies have had plenty of juicy grass and herbs, out back. But I still ought to water 'em as darkness falls. Leading a horse to water is easier than toting water to a horse. So I guess I'll lead 'em down to the creek. Do you want to come along?"

She said, "I'd love to. I'm tired of just sitting about waiting for poor Blanche to go one way or the other. But the creek's a mite far. I'd best stay closer to my patient lest she go into convulsions, as they sometimes do."

He nodded, rose, and walked around the cabin to untether the stock and lead them away for some roaming in the gloaming. The creek was less than half a mile off, but it was still getting dark by the time he'd decided they'd had enough and hauled them back out of the running water. They didn't want to come back to the spread with him, so they were having some discussion about their future plans when, as Longarm was tugging and cussing, he heard running and yelling and turned his head to see what could only be Little Dan Hogan tear-assing off down the creek again, as if he'd decided to make a habit of that.

Longarm called after him. The boy didn't answer. He just vanished into the darkness toward town. Hoping he was guessing wrong about the reason, Longarm mounted Ramona bareback and, leading the dapple gray, got back up to the cabin as fast as he could.

As he dismounted out front the young midwife popped out to say simply, "She's gone."

When Longarm forgot himself in front of a lady to mutter, "Aw, shit!" Ann said, "You can say that again."

He followed her inside, where Big Dan Hogan was hunkered over his dead wife, bawling like a baby, and told the girl, "Right. You're going to have to help. Hitch your gray to your buckboard whilst I get the two of 'em out front and saddle my own mount."

"Can't you wait even a split second to turn that poor brute over to the hangman?" she snapped.

"Don't argue, woman," he said. "Split seconds is all we got to work with. That kid was running like a deer to tell the whole infernal community his mother had been beat to death by his father. Move. I'll take care of what's in here."

She picked up her black bag and ducked out the door. Longarm stepped over to the sobbing husband and put a not-unkind hand on his shoulder to shake it as he said, "We got to pick her up, my bedding and all, and carry her out to the buckboard, Dan. If you ain't up to helping, stay out of my way, and I can manage."

The bawling man couldn't even make sense, let alone help. Longarm shoved him aside and bent to pick up his dead wife's pathetic remains. "May as well leave the lamp lit. They'd only light it some more when they ride in. Follow me, in the name of the law, Dan Hogan."

The sobbing man did, protesting that he'd only meant to make his woman stop fussing at him. Longarm didn't answer. Outside, he saw that the young midwife had already hitched her cart horse between the shafts. He'd figured she'd know how, since she owned the rig. He carried the corpse over and put it behind the spring seat on the flat hickory bed. Then he made Dan Hogan climb aboard as well and reached for the set of handcuffs he carried on the back of his gun rig. He cuffed Hogan's right wrist to the left leaf spring under the seat and told him, "You can brace your shoulders against the back of Miss Ann's seat. Your skinny behind may take more of a beating from the bed, but you deserve a good spanking in any case. Make sure your wife don't bounce off, hear?"

He turned to see that the owner of the buckboard was standing there staring at him. "Get aboard, damn it. Do you know the way to the railroad stop at Lander?" he asked.

"Of course. It's the county seat. But it's so far, Custis. It must be forty miles or more," she protested.

He said, "I hope that's far enough. Get in and start driving. I'll fetch my saddle and catch up with you. What are you waiting for, woman? It was your notion to charge this dumb brute with manslaughter rather than murder. I don't like him that much. So move it on out before we have company that's sure to hate him worse than I do!"

She gulped, took her buggy whip from its socket, and they were off and running. Longarm ran, too, back to the corral to get his saddle. The sounds of her wagon wheels had faded away by the time he had everything he owned except some blankets he no longer wanted secured to old Ramona. He forked a long leg into the saddle and said adios to the tedious surroundings that had cut his lead on Black Jack Junior a whole damned day.

When Ann heard the sound of his following hoofbeats as she was topping a distant rise, she reined to a stop to wait for him. As he joined her he said, "Keep going. At a trot. We got too many miles to cover if we run 'em. Do you reckon that gray is good for forty miles, non-stop?"

She said of course not and he said, "They won't think to follow wagon wheels and hoofmarks before they've studied on it some. They'll be trying to cut the trail of our only living passenger, and those who know him know he don't keep a mount."

Both she and the man cuffed behind her tried to ask what he was talking about at the same time. "Shut up, Dan Hogan," he said. "You're nothing but a favor to less disgusting folk, even if you had the brains to understand." Then he told the woman, "There's no Wyoming court that wouldn't hang him, manslaughter or no. They hang you for horse theft under local custom. But I'm a federal deputy and there's a federal court at the county seat of Lander. Federal law takes a less draconian view on anything less than murder in the first degree. So I mean to turn him in to the U.S. government in Lander and point out that he never had the brains to premeditate anything."

She gasped and said, "Oh, you darling man!" Even the prisoner behind her perked up, until she asked how much time they'd likely let him off with.

Longarm said, "Twenty at hard, if he's lucky. That still saves Little Dan from having to say he saw his daddy do the rope dance, when future friends and possible in-laws ask. It ain't half as awkward to just say kin is... ah ... away."

She nodded and said she'd see that the lad was taken in by decent folk, later. "That shouldn't be hard. The boy's nigh full grown, and I noticed that, even reformed, his dear old dad didn't work half as hard at fixing up the cabin back there."

"Can the boy still claim it as his own?" she asked.

"Nope. It'll revert to the land-office as an unproven claim. But nobody with a lick of sense would have tried to nest in mountain cow country without no cows, in any case. Given a few years as an honest young cowhand, Little Dan ought to be able to buy a way better spread on his own. It was with hopes I might be able to keep him honest that I undertook this mad adventure. Lord knows how much more of a lead I'm giving that infernal killer I'm supposed to be looking for."

She shot him an arch look in the moonlight and said, "Fess up. You can't fool me, Custis Long. Under all that gruffness you're just a nice gent, aren't you?"

"Damn fool is the term you are searching for. And I'll get even gruffer if that other killer kills again whilst I'm wasting the taxpayers' time on this killer who's only half serious about it."

The prisoner protested again that he'd never meant to kill anybody, let alone his beloved Blanche. Longarm told him he shouldn't have hit her so hard, in that case, and added that he didn't want to hear about it any more. "Save your tears for the federal judge. Let's take this downgrade ahead a mite faster, Miss Ann. For if that posse catches up with us, they might just hang all four of us in the enthusiasm of the moment."

They rested and watered their stock every hour or so, but just the same it was getting harder to make them keep going by sunrise, and they were only a little better than halfway. Longarm stared morosely at the trail ahead as they reined in for a breather and told Ann, "You look like you've been dragged through the keyhole backwards, too. We're going to have to camp a spell."

He pointed at the open and gentle slope off the trail to their east. "Drive over to them pines up the slope. I filled my canteens back at the homestead, and camping any closer to a trailside stream invites all sorts of casual company for breakfast."

She waited until they were almost a quarter of a mile off the wagon trace before she called out, "Wouldn't it make sense to go on into the uses, Custis?"

"Not hardly. Anyone coming along now is sure to see where we turned off through this dew-covered grazing. If they see us, camped at a modest distance for talking to, they might ride on by. If they wonder why we seem to be hiding in the trees, they might not. Anywhere along about here will do as well."