Longarm 241: Longarm and the Colorado Counterfeiter Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Teaser chapter

  TOO LATE, MR. EARLY!

  Longarm stepped over the low stone wall and walked near to where the man was lying. He kicked the shotgun a little further away. He was amazed to see that the man with three heavy slugs in his chest was still breathing. Early said, “Wha ... Who... are ...”

  Longarm said, “Does it really matter, Early, who I am? You’re going fast, so I reckon you don’t need to know all that bad. You just made a bad mistake. You should have shot me when you had the chance.”

  He hadn’t finished speaking when Early closed his eyes and stopped breathing. Longarm jumped back across the wall to retrieve his rifle. He took a moment to reload the empty chambers of the spare gun he had been using. He stuck it back inside his waistband at the small of his back. It was a position that seemed to work fairly well.

  DON’T MISS THESE

  ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES

  FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts

  Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him... the Gunsmith.

  LONGARM by Tabor Evans

  The popular long-running series about U.S. Deputy Marshal Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.

  SLOCUM by Jake Logan

  Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.

  BUSHWHACKERS by B. J. Lanagan

  An action-packed series by the creators of Longarm! The rousing adventures of the most brutal gang of cutthroats ever assembled—Quantrill’s Raiders.

  LONGARM AND THE COLORADO COUNTERFEITER

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / January 1999

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1999 by Jove Publications, Inc.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole

  or in part, by mimeograph or any other means,

  without permission. For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-17889-8

  A JOVE BOOK®

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to

  Jove Publications, Inc.

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  Chapter 1

  Chief Marshal Billy Vail said, “Longarm, I’ll tell you one thing. This is the damnedest situation I’ve ever run into in all my years behind the law.” He was standing at the window of his office in the Federal Building in Denver, Colorado. He looked back over his shoulder at his deputy and said, “Custis, I still don’t believe it.” He turned back to the window and pointed. “But there is a man sitting in a fine home, a hundred miles from here on a mountain just outside of Silverton, Colorado, counterfeiting twenty-dollar bills, and nobody’s been able to do a damned thing about it. What do you think about that?”

  Custis said, “Well, Billy, I don’t know what to think about that. It don’t seem possible to me either. I mean, not in these modem times. I could see where in the old days they could make a fake greenback or one of the gold bank notes, but I just can’t see where anybody would have the equipment or the ability or the skill to counterfeit any kind of bills, much less a twenty-dollar bill that is going to get a good looking at.” He was seated in front of Billy Vail’s desk with his boots up on a nearby chair. His full name was Custis Long and he was a deputy marshal in the Federal Marshals’ Service. He had worked for Billy Vail more years than either one of them cared to count. He had the wounds to show for it, but his face, weathered as it was, still could show the care and concern of a man dedicated to his duty.

  Longarm was his nickname. It came from the fact that his last name was Long, and because there was no record of any criminal ever outrunning his reach. You could run and you could hide and you could sit on a mountaintop. You could dig a hole in the ground, you could go under the water. You could find a closet in a room in the biggest city you could think of, but sooner or later, Custis Long was going to show up with his “long arm of the law” and take you to justice. The nickname was used by his friends and enemies alike. It didn’t bother him. He had never particularly cared for the name Custis anyhow. Sometimes, when Billy Vail was displeased, he could make the name Custis sound like the worst cuss word a man had ever heard.

  Now, sitting there, Longarm was relaxed and smoking a cigarillo. He was a little over six foot tall and a little under two hundred pounds. His face said forty, but his body, which was hard with muscle, said thirty. His age didn’t really matter. He had been a lawman long enough that his body and his brain knew what to do at the right times.

  Billy Vail turned from the window and came and sat back down at his desk. Longarm was grateful. Billy wasn’t very tall, but when he was standing up and Longarm was sitting down, the small chief marshal seemed to tower over him. Longarm didn’t care to have his boss tower over him at any time, especially when he figured a very unpleasant assignment might be heading his way. Billy Vail said, “Yes, the man is counterfeiting twenty-dollar bills, as hard as that is to believe. There’s too much proof. There’s been too many of them recovered. They’re first-class work. I guarantee you, I could pass one off on you right now and you’d never be able to tell it.”

  Longarm took his boots off the chair and dropped them to the floor with a clunk. He said, “Ha! Ha! I reckon that ain’t so, Billy.”

  Billy Vail looked up at him. “Oh, is that right? Have you by any chance got a hundred-dollar bill on you?”

  Longarm gave him a slow look. “Yeah, I’ve got one on me. Just by chance, I do.”

  “Where did you get it? Win it in a poker game? Or from shipping horses at government expense that you done brought back here to sell.”

  Longarm said, “Now, don’t start that old stuff again, Billy.”

  “All right, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” Billy said. He reached in his back pocket and took out his wallet. From it, he took six twenty-dollar bills. “I’ll give you these six twenties for that hundred. If there’s anything wrong with any of them, I’ll give you your hundred back if you can show me which one. You’ll be ahead whichever twenty or forty or sixty dollars that you’ve got. How’s that for a deal?”

  Longarm sat up straight and reached in his pocket, saying, “Done. I guarantee you I can spot your bogus twenty-dollar bill. You give me to understand that you’re going to give me six twenties and I’m going to give you a hundred. If any of them are counterfeit, I get to keep the rest of the twenties and I get my hundred back. Is that correct?”

  Billy Vail nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Hand them over.”

  Longarm took the six twenty-dollar bills, handing his hundred to his boss, and then sat back down in the chair. One by one, he looked the bills over. Some of them were worn, some of them were fairly new, but they all looked genuine to him. A
fter a moment, he put the bills together neatly, folded them, and then stuffed them into his pocket. “Billy,” he said, “I just made twenty bucks off of you. That may well be the first time I ever got in your pocket.”

  Billy Vail looked at Longarm and chuckled quietly. He ran his hand through his thin graying hair. “So, you figure that you’ve got the best of it, do you? You figure that you’re money ahead? Is that a fact?”

  Longarm nodded. “Now, I know that you’re about to tell me that I made a mistake, that two or three of these bills are counterfeit, or maybe all of them are bogus, but I’m not going to believe you. A man don’t make a mistake about as big a bill as a twenty. Twenty-dollar bills are too hard to come by. Most folks I know give them a damned good looking over once they get their hands on one. No, I’ll stand still on what I have.”

  Billy Vail laughed out loud. He leaned back in his chair and threw his arms into the air. “Oh, boy! I’ve got you, Longarm. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow.” He leaned forward. “Three of those bills are real and three are counterfeit. You just took a forty-dollar bath is what you just did, Longarm, and I’m just happy as hell to give you the news.”

  Longarm sat back comfortably and gave Billy Vail a satisfied look. He said, “Shame on you, Billy, though I have to say it’s just about what I expected. You and I both know that all six of those bills are genuine. You just hate to admit that I didn’t find one or two that looked peculiar to me so you could have had a big laugh at just how much I knew. Now, isn’t that the case of the matter? You’ll feel better for it.”

  Billy Vail chuckled again. “Longarm, I got those bills from a Treasury agent that was here at the bank. He made a dot of ink in the bottom right-hand corner of three of those bills. Get them out and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Those three are bogus. Not worth the paper they are printed on. And by the way, it is a hell of a grade of paper, though not as good as what Uncle Sam uses.”

  Longarm gave his boss a skeptical look. “Billy, you are trying to put one over on me and I’m not going to stand for it.”

  “Go on, get those bills out. Hold them up to the light and take a look at them.”

  Still suspicious, Longarm took the six twenties out of his pocket. He had no trouble locating the three that had the small ink dot in the lower right-hand comer. But they didn’t look or feel any different than the other three. He looked up, half smiling. “Billy, that ain’t going to work. All these bills are good ones.”

  “Hold them up to the light.”

  Reluctantly, Longarm took one of the so-called bogus bills and one of the supposedly real ones and held them both up toward the window, looking at them. Billy Vail said, “Look real close. You can see small lines running through the real ones. That’s the thread that’s in the paper that the United States Government makes money out of. It’s got cloth in it. Those counterfeit ones don’t. They’re straight paper.”

  Longarm glanced first at one bill and then at the other, adjusting them so that each had more light passing through. Very dimly, he could see the small veins of threads that Billy Vail was talking about in one bill. He laid it in his lap and took up another one that was supposedly good. Again, he could see the threads. He examined the third supposedly good bill, and then the other two that had the telltale dots in the comer. There were no threads in them, or in the first ink-dotted bill.

  Longarm said, “I’ll be damned, Billy. You sonofabitch, you just snookered me out of forty bucks. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Taking a man’s money who works as hard as I do.”

  Billy Vail shook with laughter, though none came out of his mouth. His eyes were dancing and he was busy slicking back his thin hair. “I knew you’d be too sure of yourself to pass up this good thing,” he said. “Well, you just got taken, Longarm. I hope you enjoy it.”

  Longarm looked down at the money in his lap. “Well, that’s fine and well that you took me, but I don’t see how the average citizen out there on the street is going to be able to tell one of these bills from another. How did they find out in the first place? How did anybody know these were counterfeit?”

  “Well, the Treasury Department, which operates a lot of banks, has a lighted piece of glass which they can run a bill over. In an instant, they can see if it’s the right kind of paper. If they don’t see what they are looking for, they know that something is wrong. That’s the way they’ve gotten on to this fellow. They’ve traced him to where he is.”

  Longarm slowly put the money together, folded it again, and tucked it back into his pocket. “You mean to tell me that they know who is doing this?”

  Billy Vail nodded his head. “That’s a fact. They know his name, which is Ashton, and where he lives. He’s got one hell of a spread up in the mountains on the other side of Silverton.”

  Longarm said, “What’s his first name?”

  “I think it’s Vernon, but he gets called Vern. Anyway, he’s run out about two million dollars. That’s what the government figures. That’s a hell of a piece of money that he’s put over on United States citizens. I’m told that place of his looks like a palace and he has Hell’s own men up there working for him. He’s really got it set up.”

  Longarm said, “Well, why the hell don’t they go in there and just shut him down? How come he’s still operating?”

  Billy Vail raised his eyebrows. “That, my friend, is where you come in.”

  A small frown passed across Longarm’s face. He reached in his pocket and got out a cigarillo and a match, lit the match and then the cigarillo, and slowly drew on it while he studied his boss’s face. He said, “What the hell are you talking about, Billy? It comes down to me? This is a United States Treasury problem. If this man is supposed to have run off two million dollars of those bills, they’ve got themselves a pretty good case. One lonesome deputy marshal ain’t about to go in there and upset his apple cart anywhere near as good as the Treasury Department and the army and a half-dozen calvary detachments.”

  Billy Vail shook his head. “No, it can’t be done that way. Now, listen. I’m telling you, this thing has been got at from every way there is to get at it. They’ve figured it from every angle. Let me tell you, the Treasury Department has been on to this fellow Ashton for a good while. But he’s slicker than goose-grease. He ain’t going to be taken easy.”

  “Why don’t they just crash in there and shut him down?”

  Billy Vail shook his head slowly and looked at Longarm as if he was ignorant. “Custis, don’t you ever listen? By the time they got to getting at him, he would have hid his moneymaking machinery and all his paper stock and everything else somewhere back in those mountains where they could never be traced. He’s got thirty or forty or fifty hired hands in that place. There ain’t but one way to get at it, and that’s straight up a canyon. There’s going to be one hell of a fight before they can get to the castle this man lives in. By that time, there ain’t going to be any evidence.”

  Longarm lifted his hat and scratched his head. “Well, how does the sonofabitch get it out of there?”

  “That part ain’t hard.” Billy Vail shrugged. “A pack mule, a wagon, you can haul a whole lot of twenty-dollar bills.”

  “And he’s just passing these things right and left?”

  “All over the country. They’ve found them in Ohio, they’ve found them in Pennsylvania. They get passed around. He’s in a nice location and he’s hard to get at.”

  Longarm said, “What I don’t understand is how this gent can make counterfeit money so good.”

  “Well, that’s the question that the Treasury Department wants the answer to. They don’t know who made the plates that these bills are printed on. Somebody must really know how to do the engraving on those plates. If they had the paper stock from the United States Government, you couldn’t tell his from ours.”

  Longarm leaned over slightly. “You said this was going to be up to me. You are not sitting there telling me that you expect me to go up to some hideout with forty or fifty hire
d pistoleros and bring back the bad man and all his boodle. You’re not saying that, Billy, are you?”

  Billy Vail chuckled. “Sounds a good deal to me like you’re saying it.”

  “Well, that’s just plain damned foolishness,” Longarm said with a little annoyance in his voice. “How in the hell do you expect me to get past all those guns? How do you expect me to get to this Vernon Ashton when a detachment of calvary can’t even do it. That’s silly. Billy. That’s just damned foolish.”

  Billy Vail looked at him with his dry eyes and said coolly, “Custis, when you hired on with us, the idea was that you were supposed to do what you’re told. Have you heard about anything changing since then?”

  Longarm stared back for a moment. “No, you old sonofabitch, you know damned good and well nothing’s changed. But you’re giving me a damned near impossible job.”

  “They gave it to me, and if I didn’t have you to give it to, I’d have to do it. But I’m the chief marshal here, so that gives me the right to say that youhave to go do it.”

  “How?”

  Billy Vail shook his head again. “I don’t know how. If I knew how, I could take anyone of the new hands and send him up there to do it. You’re the most experienced. You’ve got the best record and you keep telling me that you’re the best deputy marshal that I’ve got. If you were me, wouldn’t you give yourself the job?”

  Longarm sighed. “You slick-talking sonofabitch. I’m just glad I ain’t a woman. You’d have your hand in my britches before I knew what had happened.”

  “There ain’t any chance of anybody taking you for a good-looking woman. They wouldn’t mistake you for anything but what you are, which right now is somebody occupying my office when they ought to be out of here.”