Longarm #398 : Longarm and the Range War (9781101553701) 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

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  DON’T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Business End of a Six-Gun . . .

  “You’re under arrest,” Longarm said. “Now shuck that gunbelt and turn around with your hands behind your back. We’ll all take a nice little ride and I’ll send you back to Cheyenne direc’ly.”

  The shooter did not have sense enough to leave a bad situation alone. He had to make it worse.

  He went for his gun.

  It was the last mistake he would ever make.

  Longarm’s hand flashed and his Colt belched lead, flame, and smoke.

  The .45 bucked in Longarm’s hand once, twice, a third time.

  The gunman was driven backward with each shot. Then his legs buckled and he pitched forward, facedown in the dirt beneath his feet.

  “I wish you hadn’t done that,” Longarm muttered.

  “What the hell is going on back there?” the jehu shouted.

  “Just taking care of business,” Longarm said.

  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 Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis 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.

  DIAMONDBACK by Guy Brewer

  Dex Yancey is Diamondback, a Southern gentleman turned con man when his brother cheats him out of the family fortune. Ladies love him. Gamblers hate him. But nobody pulls one over on Dex . . .

  WILDGUN by Jack Hanson

  The blazing adventures of mountain man Will Barlow—from the creators of Longarm!

  TEXAS TRACKER by Tom Calhoun

  J.T. Law: the most relentless—and dangerous—manhunter in all Texas. Where sheriffs and posses fail, he’s the best man to bring in the most vicious outlaws—for a price.

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

  LONGARM AND THE RANGE WAR

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / January 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Cover illustration by Milo Sinovcic.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-55370-1

  JOVE®

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Chapter 1

  Deputy United States Marshal Custis Long stepped around behind Marshal William Vail’s broad desk and pulled the roller blind down about halfway, peered back at his boss for a moment, and tugged it about six inches lower.

  The United States marshal for the Department of Justice’s Denver District watched Longarm throughout this odd sequence, then spun around in his swivel chair to follow Longarm until his best deputy had resumed his seat with a grunt and a nod.

  “Mind if I ask what that was all about?” Vail inquired.

  “The light, Billy.”

  “What about the light?”

  “It was reflectin’ off your pate.”

  “My pate?”

  “Right. Pate. It’s—”

  “Dammit, Long, I know what a pate is.”

  “Right. Well the light was shinin’ off yours. Got in my eyes. That kinda hurt, you see an’ . . .”

  Billy Vail, it was true, was bald as a hard-boiled egg. In fact he looked as innocent as a cherub, with his pink complexion and round face. The truth was that he was as hard-boiled as any of his deputies and more so than most, having come up in the lawing business first as a town constable, then a town marshal, and later a Texas Ranger. A good one too by all accounts. Now he sat behind a desk in a comfortable chair and issued orders to other men with one hand, while dealing politics with the other. Custis Long, better known as Longarm to friend and foe alike, would not have traded places with Billy for love or money.

  “Shut up, Long. I
didn’t call you in here to tell me jokes.”

  “Bein’ blinded ain’t no joke, Billy. Why, I recollect a time—”

  “Will you please be quiet and listen to me?”

  Longarm took the hint—a rather broad hint—and clammed up. He crossed his long legs, reached inside his coat for a slender, dark brown cheroot, and proceeded to prepare it to smoke. He nipped the twist off with his teeth and spat the bit of tobacco into his palm, then struck a Lucifer on his boot sole before carefully lighting the cheroot.

  While Longarm was so occupied, Billy Vail explained, “I got a wire this morning from Sheriff John Tyler of McConnell County, Wyoming Territory. Do you know it?”

  “I know the county. It’s prett’ nigh due north from here, almost to Montana. I been through there a time or two. Don’t know any Sheriff Tyler, though. He any kin?”

  “Kin to whom?”

  “President Tyler, of course.”

  “Dammit, Long . . .”

  “Sorry, Billy. I’m just in a good mood, that’s all.” He had won almost fifty dollars playing poker the previous evening and felt rather good about that.

  Vail shook his head. “Sometimes, Custis, I think I like you better when you’re in a shitty humor.”

  Custis. The boss had called him Custis. Longarm knew that was a sure sign that he better straighten up and be quiet. So thinking, he physically straightened himself on the office chair, planting both boots on the floor and holding the smoldering cheroot down at lap level. “Yes, sir. Sorry.”

  “The problem in Dwyer . . . Before you ask, Dwyer is the county seat up there . . .”

  Longarm indeed had already known that, but he had no intention of speaking up to say so.

  “The problem is a range war that seems to be developing among the stockmen in McConnell County.”

  “Sheepmen and cattlemen, I suppose,” Longarm drawled, smoothing the ends of his dark brown handlebar mustache.

  “Actually, smart aleck, it is not along the normal lines of these things. This time it is between sheepmen and goatherds.”

  “Goatherds? You’re shitting me,” Longarm said, his eyes going wide and his jaw dropping just the least little bit.

  “It sounds like that, I know, but according to Tyler they are deadly serious about this. I don’t know the specifics, but the man’s wire, brief though it is, claims there could be blood shed by the bucketful if something isn’t done, and he just is not capable of doing it. He did not say why, but he makes it clear he is powerless to stop the war.”

  “Any idea how many are involved in this thing?” Longarm asked.

  “No idea, but it must be serious for him to call on us.”

  Longarm leaned back and stared at the ceiling in deep thought, then dropped his chin and looked at the boss again. “There’s no train up that way so’s I’d best take the night train to Cheyenne an’ a stagecoach north from there.”

  “Good. Henry can give you travel vouchers, of course.”

  “Uh, one thing, Boss.”

  “Yes?”

  “Who’s going with me?”

  “Do you see anybody else in this room, Custis?”

  “No, sir.”

  “That’s right. The reason you don’t is that I have no one else to send with you. You’ll have to do this on your own.”

  “Shit, Boss, I was hoping for some backup this time. Besides, I thought it was just you Texas Ranger boys that had the ‘one riot, one Ranger’ policy. When did we go an’ adopt that?”

  “When the attorney general asked me to take charge of this office.” Billy snorted, then stood and gathered some papers out of his top drawer. “Now if you will excuse me, the district attorney and Don Fenster are waiting upstairs to chew me out.”

  “If you don’t mind, Boss, I’ll stay down here and get that stuff from Henry.” He grinned. “Though you know that otherwise I’d be right in that room with you, telling those boys how wrong they are to be chewing on your ass.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Billy grabbed his hat on the way out, leaving Longarm to amble out into the front office, where the marshal’s chief clerk was laboring over some paperwork.

  “Reckon you know what I’m here for,” he said.

  The slender, bespectacled Henry pointed to a sheaf of already prepared vouchers with one hand while with the other he shuffled through a side drawer in search of something else.

  Longarm picked up the offered forms, folded them lengthwise, and tucked them into an inside coat pocket. He retrieved his dark brown Stetson from a hat rack and headed out into the city, a tall, weather-beaten man wearing black stovepipe boots, striped corduroy trousers, a brown tweed coat . . . and a very large six-gun in a cross-draw rig at his waist.

  Chapter 2

  Longarm tugged his Ingersoll railroad-grade watch from his vest pocket—the other end of that same watch chain was attached to a custom-made .41-caliber derringer—and checked the time. He had, if memory served, a good five and a half hours before the northbound left for Cheyenne. That should be plenty of time.

  He practically skipped down the stone steps of the Federal Building, turned left at the corner near the U.S. Mint, and hailed a cab.

  “Where to, mister?” the hack driver asked. His horse tossed its head, throwing a stream of slobber in Longarm’s direction. Longarm ducked out of the way, and the wet goo landed on the back of a passing woman’s dress. Under other circumstances Longarm might have stopped her and offered to pay for the dress to be cleaned. But, as he was in a bit of a hurry, he ignored the little problem and crawled into the cab, giving the address of his boardinghouse on the other side of Cherry Creek as he did so.

  “Yes, sir, right away.”

  When the cab pulled up beside the picket fence at the front of the boardinghouse, Longarm bounced out with a wave and a called “Be right back.”

  “Hey!” the cabbie protested, but by then Longarm was hurrying up the steps to the porch and inside.

  He went upstairs and grabbed his carpetbag—always packed and ready, down to and including a full bottle of Maryland rye whiskey—plus his McClellan saddle, bridle, Winchester, and saddlebags.

  “I’ll be back,” he called over his shoulder to his long-suffering landlady on his way out.

  “Now where?” the cabbie asked, obviously not in such a fine humor about this fare now.

  “The Glass Palace,” Longarm said as he climbed inside the cab again.

  “Don’t even think about walking off like that when we get there,” the hack driver warned.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Longarm assured him, settling back onto the cracked oilcloth upholstery.

  The driver snapped his whip above the horse’s ears and the cab lurched forward. Twenty minutes later it came to a halt outside Jim Burnette’s Glass Palace.

  “Dollar twenty,” the cabbie called down from his perch high above the front wheels. It should have been a fifty-cent ride at most and both of them knew it.

  “Ain’t that a mite high?” Longarm countered.

  “That’s the fare. Pay it or I’ll call a cop.”

  “But I am a cop,” Longarm said.

  “And I’m the queen of fucking England. Now pay the fare, mister.”

  “Right.” Longarm dug into his pockets and produced a dollar and a half, which he handed to the fuming cabbie. “Keep the change,” he said as he turned and headed for the alley beside the run-down theater.

  The cabbie gaped in disbelief and Longarm snickered quietly to himself. That would teach the SOB to not be so quick to judge, he thought.

  He walked through the trash-strewn alley to the stage door, almost all the way back on the left.

  He had to set his carpetbag down in order to have a hand free to knock twice, pause, and knock once more. Seconds later the door opened a mere crack and an eyeball peered out at him. A split second after that the door was swung fully open.

  “Nice t’ see you this afternoon, Marse Long.”

  “Nice t’ see you too, Cleofus. Is she in?”
r />   “In her dressin’ room. Here, let me take them things. They be safe with me.”

  “I know they will, Clee.” He passed his burdens across to the porter, stagehand, all-around help inside the theater.

  “Should I announce you, Marse Long?”

  “No, I’ll surprise her if that’s all right.”

  “It be fine with me. You go on now. You know the way.”

  Longarm grinned and poked Cleofus playfully in the ribs. The old black man countered with a make-believe right cross to Longarm’s jaw. Cleofus used to be a professional pugilist and likely could still hold his own. He and Longarm were friends of long standing.

  He headed around behind the curtained back of the stage, ducked under some guy wires and through some large, painted muslin scenery panels to the three dressing rooms on the far side of the theater.

  Longarm went to the farthest of the three and paused there. He was smiling when he pushed the door open without knocking.

  There before him, reclining on a red velvet fainting couch, was perhaps the prettiest girl in Denver. Or anyway, in his admittedly prejudiced opinion, the prettiest at this moment.

  He tiptoed toward her, unbuttoning on the way.

  Chapter 3

  Marthabelle Whitcomb was resting between shows. She was made up in the broadly vivid and overdone makeup required for the stage, and her hair was hidden behind a wrap of brown butcher paper so it would not be disarranged when she lay back against the upholstery. She was wearing a loose silk chemise, a garter belt, and thigh-high black stockings. And nothing else, as was quite apparent.

  Longarm took a moment to simply look at her. Lovely. It seemed a damn shame that such fine bones and pale, wonderful complexion should be hidden beneath layers of rice powder and garish rouge.

  Nothing could hide that figure though. Long, slender legs. Narrow waist. Firm swell of breasts surmounted by tiny, rose-hued nipples.