Longarm shivered. He was sitting on the hilltop east of the lake. He had one of Liz’s quilts wrapped around his shoulders and a .44-40 Winchester carbine laid across his lap.
He had dozed a little early in the evening but now forced himself to remain awake.
He was watching. Hoping the son of a bitch who set that fire would return and try to complete the job.
About three o’clock in the morning, judging by the wheel of the stars overhead, he heard something below.
Longarm smiled.
Someone was down there. He could not see well enough to tell who it was who had come a-calling, but there was a darker shadow among the dark shadows beneath the partially repaired water tank.
Whoever it was stayed low to the ground and kept going out from underneath the tank to the lakeshore and back again. Longarm could not tell what the son of a bitch was up to. Then it struck him. The guy was gathering fuel for his fire, pulling dried grass and piling it around the timber that supported the southeast corner of the water tower.
As silently as he could, Longarm racked a cartridge into the chamber of his Winchester.
And waited.
As soon as he saw the flare of a match he lined up the sights—convenient of the bastard to outline himself so handily—and lightly squeezed the trigger.
The Winchester bucked hard against his shoulder, and a huge blossom of fire momentarily destroyed his night vision, but down at the water tank he heard the dull thump of a falling body.
Without consciously thinking about it, Longarm quickly shifted position to the side so if someone took a shot at the muzzle flash from his carbine the shot would go wide.
There was no answering gunfire. He heard no one running away. And there were no more matches flaming.
Longarm waited a good half hour before he stood, his knee joints aching and his butt cold, and stiffly walked down to the water tower.
He reached into a pocket for a match of his own and tried to light it by scraping it against the heavy timber that was holding up the water tank, but the match would not strike.
He touched the wood and discovered it was greasy with coal oil or some similar liquid. Which explained the stink in the chill, night air.
He tried another match, this time striking it on the butt plate of his Winchester, and this time it caught fire.
Bending down, he held the match close to the body of the man he had just killed.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he muttered.
The firebug lay dead beside the water tower the man had tried to destroy, a flat-nosed .44-caliber slug square in his chest.
But why . . . ?
Longarm pondered the question for a spell, then pulled Liz’s quilt tighter around his shoulders and started walking back to town.