“You could always take the stage,” Burke said with a shrug. “Of course, there won’t be another one for three days, but...”

  “Point me to the nearest livery stable,” Longarm said grimly.

  He went back to the depot and picked up his rifle, carpetbag, and saddle before going in search of the stable. Burke had given him good directions, and Longarm found it with ease. The place was a big barn on a side street, with corrals behind it. Inside the office, Longarm found an old man with bushy white whiskers, sitting behind a desk with his booted feet propped on it. The old man was reading a yellow-backed novel by somebody named Stark, and he put the book down reluctantly when Longarm came in.

  “Somethin’ I can do you for?”

  “I need a couple of good saddle horses,” said Longarm.

  The old man shifted his feet off the desk and put them on the floor. He sighed again as he placed the dime novel facedown on the desk. “Goin’ to swap from one to the other and do some fast travelin’, huh?”

  “That’s the idea, old-timer. Can you help me or not?”

  The old man pushed himself to his feet. “Don’t get so impatient. Ever’body’s turn for the boneyard’ll be here soon enough.”

  “You own this place?”

  “Nope. Just the hostler. But I know the horseflesh we got, sonny, don’t you worry ’bout that. Come on.”

  The old man limped out of the office. He led Longarm down the wide aisle in the center of the barn, between the rows of stalls, and stopped in front of one of the enclosures. Inside the stall was a sturdy-looking buckskin mare.

  “I know she don’t ‘pear to be made for speed, but she’s got a good pace to her when she gets to goin’,” said the old man. “And she gets her strength back quick once you swap out and ride the other hoss for a while.”

  “All right,” said Longarm, who was a pretty good judge of horseflesh himself. “What else have you got?”

  “Back here.” The old man led the way to another stall, this one in the rear comer of the barn. As he stopped in front of the stall, the horse inside reared up and slammed its hooves angrily against the side wall. Longarm’s eyes narrowed as he studied the animal, a rangy, mouse-colored gelding with a darker stripe down its back.

  “Sort of touchy, ain’t he?”

  “Yeah, he’s a devil, all right. You want to keep an eye on him all the time, or he’ll reach over and bite a hunk out of you. But once you got a saddle on him, he settles down a mite, and he’ll run all day if you ask him to.”

  Longarm was a little dubious about the dun. It reminded him too much of other rambunctious mounts he’d had in the past. But he nodded again anyway, unwilling to waste any more time. “How much to rent both of them?”

  “You aim to go far?”

  Longarm didn’t know the answer to that. He would go as far as the job took him. He said, “I’ll see that they get back to you, don’t worry about that.”

  “If you don’t, the fella who owns this place will have the law on you.”

  “I am the law, old-timer,” Longarm told him. “U.S. deputy marshal out of Denver.”

  “You don’t say. Well, in that case, I’ll give you the special guv‘mint rate, which is the exact same as ever’body else pays.” The old man named a price. Longarm thought it was a little steep, but he didn’t have time for haggling either.

  “Done,” he said. He hefted the McClellan saddle. “I’ve got my own saddle, but I’ll need blankets and harness.”

  “I’ll fetch ’em from the tack room. You goin’ to put the hosses over in the hotel corral till you get ready to leave?”

  “I’m not staying at the hotel,” Longarm said regretfully. “I’m riding out as soon as I find a store where I can rustle up some supplies.”

  “Lord, you must be in an all-fired hurry.”

  “Let’s just get these horses ready to travel,” suggested Longarm.

  Ten minutes later, the price having been paid and the saddle put on the buckskin mare, Longarm rode out of the stable leading the lineback dun. The old man called after him, “If you’re lookin’ for supplies, go on down the street to Mc-Greevey’s. My brother runs it.”

  “Much obliged,” Longarm told him. Now the old man could go back to his dime novel.

  Longarm had no trouble finding McGreevey’s Emporium, and a short, stout, bald-headed, pink-cheeked man with a high-pitched voice was inside behind the counter. He greeted Longarm by saying, “Howdy, mister. What can I do you for?”

  “I’m riding down to Tucumcari. Need supplies for the trip.”

  “Well, let’s see, what’ll you need to fix you right up?” The man started gathering up staples, including a small side of bacon and some beans and flour and sugar and salt.

  Longarm said, “Don’t forget the Arbuckle‘s, and throw in a couple of airtights with peaches in ’em. And a couple with tomatoes too.” As long as he was going to be doing some hard riding, he might as well eat good along the way.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Longarm paid for the supplies and hefted the burlap bags in which the storekeeper placed them. Outside, he tied the bags together and slung them over the back of the dun, which didn’t take kindly to being used as a pack animal. The horse showed his disapproval by twisting his head and nipping at Longarm’s shoulder. Longarm stepped back quickly, just in time to avoid the slashing teeth.

  “Keep it up and I’ll introduce that thick skull of yours to the butt of my gun,” Longarm muttered. The dun didn’t seem impressed by the threat, probably with good reason. If Longarm clouted him over the head, it would probably just break the gun butt.

  Longarm swung up into the saddle and followed Raton’s main street until it left the settlement and turned into a southbound road. The trail paralleled the railroad tracks for a couple of miles through a broad valley in the Sangre de Cristos, then forked with one branch continuing to follow the railroad toward Santa Fe while the other veered off to the southeast. That was the stage road to Tucumcari, Longarm knew. He took a firm grip on the reins of the dun that he was leading and heeled the buckskin mare into a fast trot.

  The mountains fell away behind him as he rode over a broad, open plain. That prairie stretched a long way, clear over into the Texas Panhandle until it dropped off at the edge of the Cap Rock. The country Longarm was heading into was pretty much lawless; most of the big ranchers in this part of New Mexico Territory had established themselves by rustling raids over the line into Texas. Or if they didn’t steal the cattle themselves, they bought rustled herds that had been driven across the border.

  Longarm wasn’t after rustlers on this trip, though. All he wanted to do was find Nora Canady. That would mean pushing the horses as hard as he dared and riding at night so that he could reach Tucumcari not far behind the stage.

  The day grew hotter as it went along. During one of the breaks when he was resting the horses, Longarm took off his coat, vest, and tie and tucked them away inside one of the bags of supplies. He stopped at midday just long enough to build a small fire and fry some bacon. That would have to do for now. Tonight, when he would call a halt for a couple of hours before riding on, he would cook some biscuits as well as more bacon.

  During the day, Longarm saw a few riders in the distance, probably cowhands checking on the herds that roamed this vast, unfenced wilderness. None of them paid any attention to him. He didn’t encounter any traffic along the road, which was a little surprising. He had thought he might run into a pilgrim or two. Obviously, not too many people traveled between Raton and Tucumcari, and those who did must usually take the stage.

  What was a young woman like Nora Canady doing traveling through this country that was pretty much the ass-end of nowhere?

  By late afternoon, Longarm’s balls were aching again from the seemingly endless hours of riding. He was determined to push on as long as he could stand it, however, and a little later, as the sun sank beneath the western horizon and dusk began to gather, he spotted lights twinkling up ahead in the distance. Had to be a settlement, he decided. There were too many lights for it to be a ranch headquarters.

  Longarm’s brain commenced to waging war with itself. After a long day in the saddle, it would do his injured privates a world of good to spend the night in a regular bed. There might be a hotel in that settlement, even if it wasn’t fancy. On the other hand, he had planned to stop for just a couple of hours, eat some supper and grab a little sleep, then resume his pursuit of Nora Canady. Save some time or take it easy on his aching balls? That was the question, thought Longarm, and at this moment, it seemed every bit as profound a dilemma as anything that fella Hamlet had chewed the scenery over in that old play.

  Well, there was bound to be a saloon in that town, he told himself. He’d have a drink first and then decide what to do.

  But instead, he had walked into more trouble, because that kid with the Dragoon Colt had taken one look at him and pulled that hogleg, and then Longarm had been forced to kill him, and now Longarm found himself standing at the bar in this nameless saloon in a little New Mexico town that was evidently called Ashcroft.

  “A bride?” repeated the bartender, snapping Longarm’s thoughts back to the present. “Did you say you’re looking for a bride, mister?”

  Longarm shook his head. “It’s a long story,” he said.

  “Well, I don’t know that there’s anybody here in town you’d actually want to marry, but there’s a gal or two who’d be glad to pretend to be your wife for an hour or so. Of course, it’d cost you.”

  Longarm smiled faintly. “So does getting hitched, from what I’ve heard.” He tossed back the rest of his drink. A scraping sound made him look around. A couple of men were dragging the body of the kid out of the saloon. The sound came from his boot heels dragging along the floor-boards. They went out, and the bat-wings flapped back and forth for a few seconds as if waving farewell to the dead man.

  “The stage that runs from Raton to Tucumcari comes through here, doesn’t it?” Longarm asked the bartender.

  “Sure does. You’ve missed it for this week, though. It came through day before yesterday, won’t be another one for three days.”

  Longarm nodded. Even riding hard all day, he hadn’t managed to shave much off the lead that Nora had on him. Well, that decided things, he told himself. He would push on and ride several hours tonight.

  He rattled a coin on the bar and said, “Much obliged. Sorry about getting blood on the floor.”

  The bartender shrugged. “You didn’t have much choice in the matter. Billy was just too damned foolish to live, I reckon.”

  Longarm couldn’t argue with that, although it had been his experience that most folks, at one time or another, were too foolish to live, including himself. Some were just luckier than others.

  He pushed through the bat-wings and stepped out onto Ashcroft’s rickety boardwalk. The town had just one street, and the businesses were all lined up along one side of it. There were a few shacks on the other side of the street, all of them just dark hulks at this time of night. Folks turned in early around here. The saloon, a small cafe, and the hotel down the street were the only places still showing lights. Longarm turned toward the cafe. He had to eat anyway before he pushed on. Might as well take a break from his own cooking and make his supplies last longer.

  He had only gone a couple of steps when flame lanced from a gun muzzle across the street and something sang wickedly past his ear.

  Chapter 8

  The glass in the saloon’s front window shattered in a million pieces as Longarm flung himself forward. He landed hard on the boardwalk, the Colt already in his hand as he sprawled out. He knew all too well what had hummed past his ear. Too many bullets had come his way for him not to recognize their song.

  He had seen the muzzle flash from the comer of his eye. It had come from one of the shacks across the street. He triggered a pair of shots in that direction, then scrambled to his feet and ran a couple of steps to a water trough, which was the nearest good cover. As he bellied down behind the trough, the rifle across the street blasted again and a slug thudded into the thick wood. From the sound of the shots, the man gunning for him was using a Spencer carbine, Longarm decided. That meant he probably had five shots left before he would need to reload. That was three more than Longarm had.

  Longarm had an ally, though. The bartender came bursting out through the bat-wings carrying an old Sharps. “Where’s the son of a bitch who shot out my window?” he bellowed.

  “Get down!” Longarm called to him. “He’s over there across the street!”

  The fella with the Spencer had already cut loose at the bartender, though. The bullet missed narrowly and smacked into the wall next to the door of the saloon. The bartender whipped the Sharps to his shoulder and pulled the trigger of the buffalo gun. It boomed like a cannon and threw a slug damned near as big, and the recoil knocked the bartender back a step. At the same time, Longarm fired again toward the spot where he thought the rifleman was.

  That was enough for the bushwhacker. Longarm caught a glimpse of him in the moonlight as he ducked back around the comer of the shack. The man was tall and lean and wore a broad-brimmed hat and a long duster. A second later, Longarm heard rapid hoofbeats.

  The bartender came down the boardwalk toward Longarm. “You all right, Marshal?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Longarm replied as he pushed himself to his feet. The hoofbeats had just about faded away already. “That fella’s in a hurry.”

  “Damn good thing for him too,” growled the bartender. “I had the glass for that window freighted all the way out here from St. Louis. It was the only window that big between Amarillo and Santa Fe. Do you know how much it’s going to cost to replace it?”

  “Wouldn’t have any idea.”

  “Was that bastard shooting at you?”

  “I reckon so,” said Longarm. “It was my head his first shot nearly took off. I’m sorry about your window, by the way.” He shook his head ruefully. “Next time somebody ambushes me, I’ll tell ’em to be more careful where they’re aiming.”

  “Well, I reckon it ain’t your fault, Marshal.” The bartender clapped a hand on Longarm’s shoulder. “Come on back inside and have a drink on me. Say, you think we winged that fella?”

  Longarm shook his head. “He was moving mighty spry when he lit a shuck out of here. Didn’t look hurt to me.”

  “Me neither, more’s the pity.” The bartender paused, then asked, “Do folks shoot at you like that all the time?”

  “Not all the time,” Longarm said dryly. “But too often for my tastes.”

  Well, the murder attempts were up to four now, Longarm thought as he rode out of Ashcroft an hour later: two in Denver by the man named Ross; once on the train by the deceptively innocent-looking Emily Toplin; and now these shots out of the darkness from an unseen, unknown stranger.

  Could the rifleman back in Ashcroft have been Badger Bob McGurk? Longarm asked himself as he chewed on an unlit cheroot. After a moment, he shook his head. The bushwhacker had been too tall to be McGurk, unless ol’ Bob had grown half a foot while he was in prison. McGurk wasn’t big, just mean and deadly. That was one reason he’d picked up the nickname Badger, that and his ugly, pointed face and the white streak in his dark hair. He just looked like a badger, Longarm recalled, and had the disposition of one as well.

  Longarm could have written off the attempts on his life by Ross as being connected to McGurk’s grudge against him, since the men had been cell mates. But for the life of him, he couldn’t see a woman like Emily Toplin being involved with somebody like McGurk. And he couldn’t tie that tall stranger in with McGurk either. Somebody else wanted him dead. Maybe Ross had been working for whoever had sent Emily and the fella with the Spencer after him. Longarm recalled Billy Vail saying that Ross had been in trouble already since being released from prison. The law even suspected that Ross had killed a couple of folks. It could have been pure coincidence that somebody hired him to put a bullet in Longarm. Ross might not have even known that McGurk had busted out of prison.

  Lord, it was all too complicated, Longarm told himself as he rode along on the dun, having switched the saddle from the buckskin before leaving Ashcroft. The moonlight made it easy to follow the stage road, and he felt himself getting sleepy. But he could push on for a while longer before rolling in his soogans for a couple of hours of sleep.

  The thing of it was, the only case he was working on at the moment was the disappearance of Nora Canady. And only a few people knew he was looking for the young woman, chief among them being Billy Vail, Bryce Canady, and Jonas Palmer. Longarm would trust Vail with his life. Canady and Palmer were a different story. Either of them could have sent the killers after Longarm.

  But why would they do that? Both men had seemed desperate for him to find Nora and bring her back to Denver.

  Longarm scrubbed a hand over his face and yawned. Maybe the answer to that question, like the answers to all the other questions, lay with Miss Nora Canady.

  He was going to have a long talk with that young lady when he finally caught up with her.

  Nobody tried to kill him the rest of the night, which meant it was pretty successful, Longarm thought the next morning. He had ridden until well after midnight before making a cold camp, then was up before the sun and on the trail again after a quick breakfast. He wished he had a bottle of rye so that he could have added a dollop to his coffee, but the Arbuckle’s served as a pretty good eye-opener by itself.

  Late in the day, he crossed the Canadian River, which meant that he wasn’t too far from Tucumcari. The town was bigger than Ashcroft, he knew, but still not what anybody would consider a city. He had his doubts that Nora would still be there, but he supposed it couldn’t hurt to hope.

  Longarm rode into town a little after dusk. Several people were still on the street, so he looked them over closely. None of them were Nora Canady, nor did he catch sight of a tall man in a broad-brimmed hat and long duster. When he spotted a sign on a small frame building that read SHERIFF’S OFFICE, he veered the buckskin toward it.