Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

So he kept doing it right, dull as it felt, with the snow now deep enough to crunch under his boots, inspiring him to circle a mite slower, his bored brain racing in circles as it considered all his recent adventures and tried to make some sensible pattern out of them.

Nothing sensible seemed to work. Plodding on, trying not to think about some other recent adventures lest he have to plod on through wind and snow with a full erection, Longarm managed to come up with a few really wild patterns. He knew the head docs had a name for a poor soul who took every possible plot against him as probable. So he decided that while it was possible some kith or kin of that rich pain in the ass he'd shot back in Denver had it in for him, there was simply no way in hell old W. R. Callisher's friends or relations could have killed that lady of the little locket—long before he'd shot Callisher, from the smell of her.

The same reasoning let everyone connected with this expedition off the same hook, even Pearly, The Kid, and their mysterious Pappy, as soon as one considered how long Scotch spinster gals had been vanishing in these parts.

"Back up," he warned himself aloud. "You don't know that poor lady of the locket was one of them vanished Scotch spinsters till you show her locket to someone who can say for certain. For all you really know she was a happily married Bulgarian, or far more likely a Mormon homestead gal killed, or may haps just left out there, by . . . Aw, shit, this ain't getting us nowhere and we need more damned/acr^!"

The wet swirling winds didn' t offer any. They just kept getting wetter. The damned snow was starting to mix with rain by the time Longarm decided it was time to wake young Jeffries and his watch.

When he got back to the snow-covered pile-up on the crest of the rise, he found all the damned dudes had beaten him under the covers. He was more disgusted than annoyed when Senator Rumford told him Jeffries and his own bunch had already gotten up and moved out through the trees.

Longarm peeled out of his slicker and slipped into his own roll before he could get wet, taking off the bumpier stuff as he lay under the waterproof top tarp. It wasn't easy to get comfortable. But it had been a long day, not even counting the earlier screwing, so the next thing he knew he was screwing a Scotch spinster on a big plaid-covered bedstead by broad day

while Dame Flora and her maidservant made snide comments and old Angus played on a bagpipe.

Then, before he could come, he was wide awake—^that always seemed to happen, dammit—zind he saw it was bright moonlight, not broad daylight, he'd been screwing in buck naked. So now he was back in his rumpled shirt and pants, needing to piss, and what time was it?

He propped himself up on one elbow, wiping the sleep gum from his eyes with his free hand before he groped for his watch in the duds he'd been using as a pillow. It was four in the morning. He'd have likely made it till morning, he felt sure, had not that break in the storm conspired with his kidneys to wake him so early, and if he could just fall back to sleep quickly, he might not have to crawl out of this nice warm roll just yet and . . .

"Aw, shit, let's get it over with," he decided, tossing a flap of tarp aside to haul himself on out. He saw everyone around lay dead to the world in the moonlight as he hauled his boots on over his socks. He figured right McBride and Pearson would be on watch with their bunch at this hour. He didn't call out to them lest he disturb the others closer. He reached for his Winchester, without having to think about it, and rose to find a politer place to piss.

That was easy enough to decide on, since he already knew where the stock was tethered, downwind. He naturally wanted to piss on the far side of the stock. He might have spooked them passing too close in tricky light. So he circled wide, on rain-soaked pine duff one could have crossed silently in Dutch clogs, and nobody knew he was there as he heard Pearson insisting, "I say now's the time. It'll soon be light again, and you know that son of a bitch can get those son-of-a-bitching Shoshoni to track us if he asks 'em to!"

Longarm forgot about pissing as he flattened his shadowy shape against a pine just as the voice of McBride replied, "I know what the Indians will do for a Saltu they trust. That's why I say we've got to do him before we light out. None of the others can do shit once we're over a rise or more, but that

savvy bastard's got to die here and now!"

Longarm was pretty certain he knew who they were talking about before he heard Pearson protest, "It's too big a boo. Pappy. You can't gun a man in the middle of a camp, in tricky light, without risking all sorts of return fire!"

McBride said, "Bullshit. The sky's cleared entire and that moon is shining almost bright as an overcast day. I can see all of you plain as hell now,"