by Tabor Evans
That strange, eerie feeling crept over him as he found himself approaching the place where he’d camped his last night on the trail. The place near young Connie’s swimming hole.
Why did the odd feeling linger that he’d only dreamed the girl?
As he made his way along the trail, with the stream on his right, a man riding a mule came toward him from the opposite direction. The man was a burly oldster smoking a stubby pipe. He wore a floppy-brimmed canvas hat, canvas breeches, suspenders, and a red plaid workshirt. The mule was pulling a two-wheeled cart loaded with firewood.
Pensively puffing his pipe, the old man, who had a thick, tangled, pewter-colored beard, bent his head to regard Longarm warily in the gathering evening shadows.
Ten yards from the old-timer and the mule, Longarm drew rein. The old-timer did likewise, blinking owlishly, naturally wary of strangers in this remote and untamed land.
“Good day to you, friend,” Longarm said, trying with an affable tone to set the old man at ease.
The old man merely nodded.
“I got a question for you.”
The old man just stared at him. The mule stretched its snout toward the bay, twitching its ears in friendly greeting. The bay shook its head, rattling the bit in its mouth.
“When I rode through a few days back, I ran into a pretty young girl with auburn hair and smoky green eyes. I was just wonderin’ if you might know where she lives.”
Longarm waited. The old man blinked as he continued to stare at him skeptically.
“I mean no harm to the girl,” Longarm said. “I just . . . well, truth be told . . . I had an odd sense about her and can’t quite explain it. I was just wonderin’ if she lives around here. I believe she mentioned a cabin around here somewhere. Said her name was Connie.”
The old man’s expression had gradually changed from stonily noncommittal to incredulous. He shook his head. “Mister, the only girl who’d match the one you just described—a green-eyed brunette—did live around here . . . until two years ago. Her family prospected up around Henrietta Pass, just south of here. A gang of outlaws wiped ’em out. Shot ’em all, burned the cabin.”
Longarm didn’t say anything. His throat felt tight as a hangman’s knot.
“The girl, Corinne, used to swim in a hole along the creek just yonder.” The old-timer pointed with his pipe stem toward a clump of trees on the trail’s right side.
He smiled with one side of his mouth. “Word was she was sorta . . . frisky, if’n you get my drift. Young, you know. Stuck up amongst them peaks with just her family, no boys around. Nothin’ but rocks fer neighbors. She used to ride the trails and swim, prob’ly tryin’ to bleed off some o’ that young sap.”
He winked.
Still Longarm said nothing.
“That’s the only girl I can think of fittin’ that description around here. Corinne McDade. But like I said, she’s dead. Dead an’ buried with her family.” The old-timer looked around. “Unless someone else has moved into this valley. I been here for the last fifteen years, though. I’d likely have seen ’em.”
Longarm looked around then, too. Chicken flesh had broken out across his shoulder blades, and he gave a shudder.
“You all right, friend?” the old-timer asked. “You look like someone just walked across your grave.”
Longarm’s ears warmed with chagrin. He must have been getting daffy in his old age. Obviously, he’d frolicked with a real, live girl. Just as obviously, the old-timer didn’t know as much as he thought about this valley.
“I’m fine,” Longarm said, giving the man an affable smile. “Thanks for the information. Well, I’ll be movin’ along. Night comin’ down fast.”
“As it always does around here, friend,” the old-timer said, booting his mule past Longarm and the bay, on up the trail.
Longarm nudged the bay forward. A minute later, he checked it down again. He remembered what the rancher Dan Garvey had mentioned almost in passing about the trouble in the valley east of Diamondback. Another family killed.
Another killing in this crazy country.
Longarm chuffed. He nudged the bay forward, put the girl out of his head. The girl he’d spent a blissful evening with here in this valley hadn’t even been close to dead. And he might have gotten a little addled two days ago, but not enough so that he’d started believing in ghosts.
Besides, she’d said her name was Connie.
Hadn’t she? He remembered now he’d had trouble hearing her because a knot had popped in his fire.
He found the place where he’d camped before, and he set up there again. He was too tired and intrigued to keep traveling. Maybe the girl would show up at her swimming hole again, and he’d have proof she hadn’t been a ghost.
He built a fire, brewed up a pot of coffee, and cooked some beans and bacon.
He’d finished eating and had cleaned his cook pan and sat down on a log by the fire to enjoy some whiskey and coffee and the day’s last cigar, when he turned his head to stare off into the velvety darkness east of his camp.
He’d heard something. An approaching rider.
Frozen, his heart stopped, he sat there staring and listening to the gradually louder thuds of the horse angling off the main trail, making toward his fire.
“Longarm?” called a girl’s voice. A familiar girl’s voice.
Oh, shit.
“Y-yeah . . . ?”
“Don’t shoot.” The girl giggled. “It’s Corinne.”
Watch for
LONGARM AND
THE HORSE THIEF’S DAUGHTER
the 418th novel in the exciting LONGARM series from Jove
Coming in September!