took off. Iâm sorry about your window, by the way.â He shook his head ruefully. âNext time somebody ambushes me, Iâll tell âem to be more careful where theyâre aiming.â
âWell, I reckon it ainât your fault, Marshal.â The bartender clapped a hand on Longarmâs shoulder. âCome on back inside and have a drink on me. Say, you think we winged that fella?â
Longarm shook his head. âHe was moving mighty spry when he lit a shuck out of here. Didnât look hurt to me.â
âMe neither, moreâs the pity.â The bartender paused, then asked, âDo folks shoot at you like that all the time?â
âNot all the time,â Longarm said dryly. âBut too often for my tastes.â
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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 olâ Bob had grown half a foot while he was in prison. McGurk wasnât big, just mean and deadly. That was one reason heâd 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 McGurkâs grudge against him, since the men had been cell mates. But for the life of him, he couldnât see a woman like Emily Toplin being involved with somebody like McGurk. And he couldnât 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.
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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 Arbuckleâs served as a pretty good eye-opener by itself.
Late in the day, he crossed the Canadian River, which meant that he wasnât too far from