Longarm heard stirrings inside the house before any lights came on. Through the open window close to his rocking chair he could smell a hint of baking bread and coal smoke. Obviously the Birdwell cook was up and busy.
He stood, his knee cartilage popping, and carefully made his way down the steps in the near-dark of an approaching dawn. He was fairly proud of himself; he only tripped twice as he went around to the back of the house.
There was a small utility porch on the back with a stand and washtub andâamazinglyâa hand pump where the cook and washwoman could draw water. Longarm could see a little better by the time he got to the back of the house, either because his eyes were better adjusted or because of the increasing light. He climbed the three steps onto the porch and lightly knocked on the back door.
Moments later the door was opened and light flooded the utility porch. “
SÃ
?”
Longarm frowned. No one had suggested that his missing Netty was Mexican.
“Are you called Netty, ma'am?” He would have said it in Spanish but could not recall how to do that. After a few seconds he snapped his fingers in annoyance with himself and said, “
Es su nombre Netty
?”
The cook shook her head and answered, “
Mi nombre es Maria
.”
“Shit,” Longarm mumbled.
Maria raised her eyebrows.
“No, not . . . not you, ma'am. Mr. Birdwell. Can I see Mr. Birdwell, please?”
Haltingly, Maria said, “The mister he not up.”
“When he gets up, when he's awake, tell him there is a deputy United States marshal out here that needs to see him.” The words sailed completely over the woman's head, but when Longarm produced his badge and showed it to her, her eyes went wide and she grabbed a handful of apron and skirt before whirling around and dashing inside the house.
The back door remained open, and Longarm could hear Maria's footsteps pounding on a staircase somewhere inside.
He leaned against the door frameâit had been a long and tiring nightâand waited. Quickly, very quickly, a tall man with a mop of unkempt gray hair appeared.
“What is this about you putting Maria under arrest?” he asked.
Longarm chuckled. Then explained. Birdwell turned his head and called out something in Spanish that was much too rapid for Longarm to follow. Then he opened the door wide and said, “Come inside and have some breakfast with us. My wife may be able to help you. She will be down as soon as she is dressed. In the meantime you and I can have some coffee.”
Longarm smiled. “I can't tell you how good that sounds.” He removed his Stetson and stepped inside Maria's kitchen.
Chapter 17
“I had just cause to fire her and that is all I shall say on the subject,” Ophelia Birdwell said, her chin high and lips primly compressed. Mrs. Birdwell was a rather stern woman andâLongarm sought a way to think of her charitablyânot handsome. She was, in fact, homely. Figure like a beer barrel and a face that would stop clocks. Longarm marveled that Birdwell could abide waking up to that sight.
Of course it was always possible that Mrs. Birdwell was a great asset to her husband. The poor sap might be getting up before dawn and sneaking out of the bedroom so he did not have light to see by. Imagining this woman naked . . . Longarm shuddered at the thought.
He raised his cup and took a swallow of the coffee, reached for another biscuit and the honey pot. Biscuits and honey. By themselves not a bad way to start the day, and this meal included pork chops and fried potatoes too. He finished his third chop and, stuffed, pushed his plate away. He even refused Maria's attempt to refill the coffee.
“I'm full t'the top and thank you both,” he said. “You been most kind.”
“Sorry we couldn't help you,” Birdwell said. “The hands will be ready to ride out by now. My foreman is a man named Jess Moore. Tell him you're to have a horse to get you back to town. Just leave it at the livery and one of us will pick it up the next time we're in.”
“That's might nice of you,” Longarm said. He meant it quite sincerely. He had expected it, of course, but it was not something Birdwell was required to do. “I got one of the livery's saddles back there by the dead horse, so if you'll give me the loan of a bridle an' bit, I'll ride your animal bareback that far.”
“Fine. Tell Jess what you need. He'll fix you up.” Birdwell checked his watch and added, “You should go find him now before he rides out.”
“Yes, sir, and thank you again for your help.” Longarm bowed to the lady of the house and added his thanks to her too.
Ophelia Birdwell sniffedâhe suspected that expressed the woman's attitude toward many things in her lifeâand nodded acceptance of his gratitude. Lordy, he could not imagine . . . He shook his head to clear away that sort of thinking. Shit, the mere thought of fucking Ophelia could put a man off sex for weeks. Months, maybe.
“Please to excuse me, folks.” Longarm turned and left, by the front door this time.
Feeling considerably better than when he'd walked into the yard, he ambled over to a corral where half a dozen hands were saddling their mounts in anticipation of the day's work. These boys had it easy. It was already full daylight and they were just now getting started. A good many outfits had their hands riding out in darkness. Getting back after dark too, some of them.
“Hello, mister,” one of the men said as he pulled on the cinch of a short coupled horse the color of mustard. “Where'd you come from?”
Longarm ignored the question and asked one of his own. “Which one of you is Moore? The boss sent me to find him.”
The cowhand shot his jaw in the direction of a gangly, balding man with a scraggly mustache and legs that were bowed so wide a calf could likely run through them without touching on either side. “That's Jess.”
“Thanks.” Longarm went over to the ranch foreman and introduced himself.
Moore appeared to be skeptical about turning one of his horses over to a stranger, so Longarm explained his mission, but only mentioned losing the livery horse. He did not explain how.
“All right. If the boss says so.” He turned his head and shouted, “Lafferty. Rope out that gray that Petey rode yesterday. This gentleman is gonna take it to get back to town. Put a bridle on it but no saddle.”
The man named Petey nodded, tied his horse to a fence post, and went back into the corral.
Moore looked back to Longarm and said, “Did you find out what you need to know about Netty?”
“No, not really. Mrs. Birdwell just said she was fired for cause. She didn't say what cause.”
Moore chuckled. “I'll just damn well bet you she didn't.”
“Sounds like there's a tale that I should be knowin' about this,” Longarm said.
“Yeah, but it ain't one that you'll hear spoken about inside that house,” Moore said with a nod toward his employer's handsome home.
“And that tale would be . . . ?”
“Netty is no spring chicken, but she's a handsome woman, no doubt about it.” He laughed. “The boss, he thought so too. He got to tapping some of that. Getting it right regular, I guess, until the battle-axe walked in on the two of them one evening when she was supposed to be asleep in bed. The way I hear it, she woke up and was thirsty, so she went downstairs to tell Netty to fix her tea and a snack. She went into Netty's room off the kitchen there, and what does she see but Jim Birdwell's hairy ass humping up and down and Netty underneath him squeaking and squealing like she always done.” Moore's grin got wider. “That was the last of Netty on this place. Damn near the end of Jim too. I'll bet he hasn't had a piece of ass since Netty got thrown off the place.”
Longarm chuckled and said, “It sounds like you know something about how Netty acts when someone is in the saddle with her.”
Moore shrugged. “She's a good woman. Don't mistake that, Marshal. It's just that she likes men. Likes to please. And she isn't selling it. It's more like with her it's, um, a
friendly
thing, I suppose you could say.”
“Any idea where I could find her now?” Longarm asked.
“Oh, hell yes.” He laughed. “Soon as Coon Morgan heard she was available, he hired Netty to cook for him and his two hands.”
“Coon?”
Moore nodded. “You'll understand the name soon as you see Coon. He has these dark, dark circles around both his eyes. Makes him look like a raccoon. I think he's been called that since he was a pup. I got no idea what his right name would be. All I ever heard him called was Coon.”
“Can you tell me how to get to his place?” Longarm asked.
“Easy as can be,” Moore said as the hand named Petey led a barrel-chested gray horse out of the corral and gave its reins to Longarm. “What you do is to go over this way . . .”
Chapter 18
Longarm needed to go to Coon Morgan's ranch so he could speak with Netty, but he needed that saddle first, so he detoured back along the road to Medicine Bow until in the distance he could see the carcass of the livery stable's brown mare.
The dead horse was barely visible under a moving blanket of magpies and buzzards. But then in nature nothing goes to waste. Less than a day after the mare was killed she was about half-eaten. A few more days and there would be nothing left but bones. And the coyotes would soon scatter those all to hell and gone.
Longarm sat balanced atop the borrowed gray for some time while he studied the country in a broad circle, with the brown's carcass at the center.
Whoever it was that shot at him yesterday could well have returned to plan another ambush, with the saddle and bridle as bait that Longarm could be expected to return to. If there was a trap, Longarm had no desire to walk into it.
He sat and watched for the length of time it took him to smoke a cheroot, then he rode the rim of that imaginary circle, staying a quarter mile or so out from the mare and examining every rock, shrub, and cactus that might conceal a man with a rifle. He found nothing, but only when a very careful search was concluded did he rein the gray gelding toward the dead horse.
A dark cloud of flapping, squawking, fluttering birds filled the air as Longarm's approach frightened them away from their meal.
By the time he threw his leg over the gray's neck and slid down to the ground, he was damned glad to be standing on his own hind legs again. Riding bareback just was not as comfortable as being able to relax in a good stock saddle.
It took only moments for him to saddle the gray. He hung the mare's bridle on the saddle horn, put his foot in the stirrup, and mounted. Damn but it felt good to have leather between him and the horse, and it felt even better to have stirrups to take his weight instead of having to use his thigh muscles constantly.
“Now then,” he muttered aloud, “let's see can we find Coon Morgan's place now that I've gotten away from the track Jess Moore pointed out for me.”
The gray horse twitched its ears at the sound of his voice.
Man and horse were not fifty yards from the brown mare's carcass before the carrion eaters began to return.
Chapter 19
Coon Morgan had a rawhide outfit with a long, low dugout for a ranch headquarters and three more smaller dugouts that likely served as a bunkhouse and storage. An adobe brick oven stood beside a pavilion, a shake roof supported on four tall posts. A long table sat beneath the roof of the pavilion, and there was a raised fire pit with an iron grill over it at the end opposite the brick oven.
A set of corrals, haystacks, and sorting pens lay beyond the dugouts. Half a dozen horses stood, hipshot and tails switching, close to a partially filled hay bunk.
It was past midday when Longarm rode into the yard. Smoke rose from the oven, and there was a woman bending over a washtub stirring clothes with a long wooden paddle. The tub sat well off the ground, resting on more adobe bricks. She had a fire built beneath the tub to boil her wash water.
Longarm stopped the gray horse short of the woman and her washing so as not to billow any dust over her clean clothing. At his approach she set the paddle aside and waited to see what this newcomer wanted.
Longarm remained in the saddle while he touched the brim of his Stetson. “Ma'am.” He nodded.
“Hello.” She was a handsome woman, he noticed. Tall but with a good figure. Gray hair pulled back in a bun. At the moment she was not displayed to best advantage as she was red-faced and sweaty from working over the boiling water. Wisps of hair strayed from her bun, and her apron was smudged with ash and soot. Still and all, she had strong features and pale gray eyes that were strikingly intense.
“My name is Custis Long, ma'am, deputy U.S. marshal outa Denver. I'm lookin' for a lady named Netty.”
“Good Lord!” she blurted. “Have I done something wrong?”
“Are you Netty?”
“I'm Elizabeth Whorle,” she said. “Most everyone calls me Netty. Always have.”
“May I step down, ma'am? I'd like to talk to you.”
She took a double handful of apron and wrung the cloth as if trying to squeeze water from it. “Mercy,” she said. “I've forgot my manners. Yes, please, do get down. Are you hungry, Marshal? Can I get you something to eat?”
“I could eat,” he said. Breakfast at the Birdwell place had been a good many hoursâand milesâago, and while of course he could stand to wait until he got back to Medicine Bow for his supper, he really would rather not. “You're mighty kind, miss.”
“Just call me Netty.” He wasn't sure, but he thought she might be making eyes at him. “Sit down at the table there, Marshal. I'll find you a bite and then we can talk.”