"Shut up. I don't aim to say that twice."

Longarm dozed off. He might just have rested his mind a few minutes. It wasn't important, as long as it worked. In about an hour he lifted his head, saw the prisoner was where he'd last seen him, and felt ready to face the world again.

But he was not an unreasonable taskmaster. Longarm knew others might still be tuckered while he was feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, so he let the prisoner snore as he smoked a cheroot all the way down, chewing on his own thoughts. He had no way of knowing some things, but when in doubt, it paid a man to consider the worst, so he tried to decide just how bad things could possibly be. The idea that the others had simply given up never crossed his mind.

The midget and his woman had sold them out. The reason could wait for now. Timberline and the Crooked Lance riders would be following, if only because Kim Stover insisted. Certainly the Mountie, and probably Captain Walthers, would be tracking them, too. Either with the posse or riding alone. Whoever was tracking would have picked up the sign at sunup, not that long ago. At best they'd just be over the first rise outside of Crooked Lance, a good eight to ten hours behind him, even riding at a breakneck pace. They would have to ride more slowly than he had, because they'd have to watch the ground for sign. They'd have to scout each rise before they tore over it too; they knew he had guns and could have dug in almost anywhere. Yes, he and the prisoner were in fair shape for a cross-country run. Anyone following would have some trouble on catching up.

Longarm started field stripping and cleaning the Winchester in his lap as he considered what he'd be doing if he was riding with the vigilantes instead of running from them. He decided to appoint the Mountie, Foster, as the most dangerous head of a combined posse, which was the worse thing he could picture tracking him. An experienced lawman wouldn't just follow hoofprint by hoofprint. Sergeant Foster would know he and the prisoner were well-mounted with a good lead. The Mountie would try to figure out where they were headed and ride hard to cut them off.

All right, if he was Sergeant Foster, where would he guess that a U.S. Deputy Marshal and his prisoner would be headed?

Bitter Creek, of course. There was a jail in Bitter Creek to hold Cotton Younger till a train came by. If the Mountie had gone in with the vigilantes and told them that, Timberline's boys, or maybe a third of them, would be riding directly for Bitter Creek, planning to keep him from boarding the eastbound U.P. with a prisoner he hadn't paid for.

The next best bet? A run for the railroad right-of-way, well clear of Bitter Creek, with hopes of flagging down a locomotive. He'd be set up nicely for an ambush anywhere along the line if he did that. So the Union Pacific was out. Too many unfriendly folks were expecting him to take Cotton Younger in that way.

As if he'd heard Longarm call out his name aloud, the prisoner rolled over and sat up, muttering, "I got to take a leak. You'll have to take these irons off me, Longarm."

Longarm placed the dismantled Winchester and its parts carefully on a clean, flat rock before he got to his feet. He walked over and hauled the prisoner to his feet. Then he unb.u.t.toned the man's pants, pulled them halfway down his thighs, and said, "Leak away. I gotta put my rifle back together."

"Gawd! I can't just go like this! I'll wet my britches!"

"You do as best you can. I don't aim to hold it for you."

The cow thief turned away, red-faced, as Longarm squatted down to rea.s.semble his rifle, whistling softly as he used his pocketknife screw driver.

The prisoner asked, "What if I have to take a c.r.a.p?"

"I'd say your best bet would be to squat."

"Gawd! With my hands behind me like this?"

"Yep. It ain't the neatest way to travel, but I've learned not to take foolish chances when I'm transporting. You'll get the hang of living with your hands like that, in a day or so."

"You're one mean son of a b.i.t.c.h, you know that?"

"Some folks have said as much. I got my rifle in one piece. You want me to b.u.t.ton you back up?"

"I dribbled some on my britches, d.a.m.n it!"

"That ain't what I asked."

Longarm crooked the rifle through his bent elbow and went back over to pull the prisoner's pants up, b.u.t.toning just the top b.u.t.ton. "Since there's no ladies present, this'll save us time, when next you get the call of nature. It'll also probably drop your pants around your knees if you get to running without my permission."

"You're mean, pure mean. As soon as I can talk to a lawyer I'm gonna file me a complaint. You got no right to torture me like this."

"You'll never know what torture is, until you try to make a break for it. I got some jerky and biscuit dough in my saddle bags. As long as we're resting the mounts, we may as well eat."

He took the prisoner to another flat rock near the hobbled army mounts, sat him down on it, and rummaged for previsions. He cut a chunk of jerked venison from the slab, wrapped it in soft sourdough, and said, "Open wide. I'll be the mama bird and you'll be the baby bird."

"Jehosaphat! Don't you aim to cook it?"

"Nope. Somebody might be sitting on a far ridge, looking for smoke against the sky. Besides, it'll cook inside you. One thing I admire about sourdough. You just have to get a bite or two down and it sort of swells inside you. Saves a lot of chewing."

He shoved a mouthful into Cotton Younger and took the edge from his own hunger with a portion for himself. After some effort, the prisoner gulped and asked, "Don't I get no coffee? They gave me coffee three times a day in that log jail."

"I'll give you a swallow from the canteens before we mount up again. Tastes better and lasts you longer if you're a bit thirsty when you drink."

He took his Ingersoll out and consulted it for the time. "I'll give the brutes a few more minutes, 'fore I saddle and bridle 'em. I've been meaning to ask: do you reckon they was really fixing to hang you, last night?"

"They never said they was. Pop Wade was sort of a friendly old cuss."

"Somebody told me Timberline was tired of having you on his hands. How'd you get along with him?"

"Not too well. He'd have hanged me that first day, if the redheaded lady and Pop hadn't talked him out of it."

"Hmm, that midgets game gets funnier and funnier. Did he really offer you a deal to spring you from the jail in exchange for Jesse James?"

"I told him I'd put him onto Jesse James, but I was only trying to get out of that place. I got no more idea than anyone else where that rascal's hid out."

"Let's see, now. He sends me to get killed. Then, amid the general congratulations, him or Mabel slips you out, they put a barlow knife against your eyelid to gain your undivided attention. It figures. It ain't like they had to transport you out of the valley. They just wanted a few minutes of Apache conversation with you. Once they knew where to pick up Jesse James, you'd be useless baggage to dispose of. h.e.l.l, they might even have let you live till the vigilantes found you."

"d.a.m.n it, I don't know where Jesse James is hiding!"

"Lucky for you I come along, then. I suspicion you'd have told 'em, whether you knew or not. That Cedric Hanks is a mean little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, ain't he?"

"You still think I'm Cotton Younger, don't you?"

"Don't matter what I think. You could be Queen Victoria and I'd still transport you to Denver to stand trial as Cotton Younger."

The owlhoot's expression was sly as he asked, cautiously, "Is cattle rustling a federal charge, Longarm?"

"No. It's a fool thing to say. You rustle up some grub or you rustle apples as a kid. You don't rustle cows, boy. You steal 'em! If you ride with a running iron in your saddle bags, it's best to be honest with yourself and call it what it is. Cow theft is a serious matter. Don't shilly-shally with kid names for a dangerous, dead-serious profession!"

"If I was to admit I was a rustler--all right, a cow thief--named Jones, would you believe me?"

"Nope. I ain't in a believing business. You don't know what fibbing is until you've packed a badge six or eight years. You owlhoots only lie to decent folks, so you seldom get the hang of it. In my line, I get lied to every day by experts. I've been lied to by old boys who gunned down their own mothers. I've taken in men who rape their own daughters. I've arrested men for the sodomy-rape of runaway boys, for torturing old misers for their gold, for burning a colored man to death just for the h.e.l.l of it, and you want to know something? Not one of them sons of b.i.t.c.hes ever told me he was guilty!"

"Longarm, I know I've done wrong, now and again, but you've got to believe me, I'm only..."

"A professional thief who's done more than one stretch at hard labor. You think I don't recognize the breed on sight? No man has ever come out of a prison without that whining, self-serving look of injured innocence. So save me the details of your misspent youth. I've heard how you were just a poor little war orphan, trying as best he could to make his way in this cruel, old world he never made. I know how the Missouri Pacific stole your widowed mother's farm. You've told me about the way they framed you for borrowing that first pony to fetch the doctor to your dying little sister's side. You've told me every time I've run you in."

"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 bulls.h.i.t. 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 pa.s.s 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 gra.s.slands 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 h.e.l.l 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 gra.s.s all about?"

Longarm said, "Yep. Leave more hoofprints, too. Reading sign on railroad ballast is a b.i.t.c.h. 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, h.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.sing 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 d.a.m.ned 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 d.a.m.ned 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 h.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.s 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."

"Jesus! You reckon this rough ride down these d.a.m.n tracks will throw him off?"

"Slow him, some. Hang on, we're getting off to one side. I see a headlamp coming up the grade."

Longarm led his mounted prisoner away from the track at a jogging trot until they were well away from the right-of-way. Then, as the sound of a chuffing locomotive climbed toward them on the far side of a cut, he reined them to a halt and said, "Rest easy a minute. Soon as the eastbound pa.s.ses I'll unroll my slicker and a poncho for you. I can smell the rain, following that train at a mile or so down the tracks."

"We're right out in the open, here!"

"That's all right. The cabin crew's watching the headlamp beam down the tracks ahead of 'em. Folks inside can't see out worth mention through the gla.s.s lit from inside. Didn't your cousin Jesse ever tell you that?"

Before the prisoner could protest his innocence again the noisy Baldwin six-wheeler charged out of the cut and pa.s.sed them in a haze of wet smoke and stirred-up ballast dust. Longarm waited until the two red lamps of the rear platform were fading away to the east before he put Captain Walthers's poncho over the prisoner and started struggling into the evil-smelling stickiness of his own tightly rolled, oilcloth slicker. He smoothed it down over his legs, covering himself from the shoulders to ankle but didn't snap the fasteners below a single one at the collar. He'd almost been killed once, trying to draw his gun inside a wet slicker he'd been fool enough to b.u.t.ton down the front.

In the distance, the locomotive sounded its whistle. Longarm nodded and said, "They've stopped the train to search for us. Means one of 'em flashed a badge or such at the engineer. Means at least five minutes for them to make certain we didn't flag her down for a ride. I'd say the searching's going on about six or eight miles from here. Must be the Mountie leading."

He heard a soft tap on his hat brim and smiled saying, "Here comes the rain. Hang on."

He led off, south-southwest, away from the track and up a gentle grade in the growing darkness of the rain-drowned moonlight. The prisoner called out, "Where in thunder do you think you're going? The railroad hugs the south edge of the gap through the Great Divide!"

"We're on the west side of the divide, now. All this rain coming down is headed into the Pacific save what gets stuck in the Great Basin twixt here and the Sierra Navadas."

"Jehosaphat, are we bound for California?"

"Nope, Green River country, once we cross some higher ground."

"Have you gone plumb out of your head? There's no way to get from here to the headwaters of the Green, and if there was, there's nothing there! The Green River's birthed in wild canyon lands unfit for man or beast!"

"You been there, Younger?"