Longarm and the Deadly Restitution (9781101618776) Read online

  “You too,” Longarm replied, reaching into his coat pocket. “Cigar?”

  “Depends on what you’re smoking on this trip. Sometimes you’ve got Cubans that I’d kill for . . . other times you’re smoking stinky cheroots that would gag a maggot. So which is it today?”

  “I’ve got some good cigars from Kentucky. Not the quality of the Cubans, but they’re far less expensive and I like them fine.”

  “Then I’ll have one. Sit down, Custis. I’ve got some hot coffee left over from yesterday. Want a cup?”

  “No, thanks. We just had a good breakfast and I’ve already drank more coffee than usual.”

  “What’s the ‘we’ you’re referring to?”

  “Oh,” Longarm said, instantly regretting the slip of his tongue. “I’m traveling to Reno with a friend.”

  “Man or woman?” the marshal asked, a smile of amusement on his craggy face as he lit his cigar.

  “Woman.”

  “Serious about her?”

  Longarm lit his own cigar and had to smile. “Jeez, Otis. What are you, a romantic or something?”

  “Well, I’m a happily married man, and I just naturally think that my friends ought to have the same happiness and benefits that I enjoy every single day.”

  “Those benefits being?”

  Now it was Otis who smiled and blushed. “Never you mind, Custis. What brings you here and why are you taking a woman all the way to Reno?”

  “It’s a long story,” Longarm answered, “but I’ll give you the short version.”

  In a few minutes Longarm had explained about the Raney brothers and the mayor of Denver’s driving desire to have them brought to justice for murdering his wife and a Baltimore policeman many years ago. When he finished, he said, “The woman I’m with can identify the Raney brothers . . . or at least that’s what she says.”

  “I’ve certainly heard of Mayor Tom Plummer. Never heard anything bad about the man.”

  “He’s a good man, all right. We hired his son to be a federal marshal, and he wasn’t on the job but a short time before he was involved in a bank holdup that nearly got him killed. Anyway, I feel kind of responsible for things, and that’s why I’m going to hunt down the Raney brothers and either kill them or bring them to justice.”

  “I see.”

  “There’s one other thing I should tell you,” Longarm said, puffing on his cigar. “I voluntarily gave up my badge to do this job.”

  “But why!”

  Longarm studied the ash at the tip of his cigar. “I just felt that it was something I needed to do, so that I could take whatever measures were necessary to bring those brothers to justice.”

  Marshal Appleton frowned. “I hope you’re not planning to just kill those brothers rather than arrest them and see that they get a fair trial.”

  “I’ll do whatever I need to do,” Longarm said. “The truth is that it would be almost impossible to get justice for the mayor’s murdered wife or that Baltimore policeman after all these years. The only living witness is the mayor’s son, and a lot of juries might take into account that he was a very young boy when his mother died and that he could be mistaken.”

  “I see.”

  “What I came by here for, in addition to making sure that you’re keeping out of mischief, is to ask if you have ever heard of the Raney brothers. Or arrested them.”

  “I never arrested anyone by the name of Raney . . . but they might have changed their names.”

  “They most likely did,” Longarm agreed. “And I knew your having arrested them was a long shot, but I felt I needed to ask.”

  “I did arrest a pair that looked like brothers,” the marshal said after a moment. “They had robbed a couple of drunks and beat them up so badly that they almost died. I’d never have caught the pair except that there were a few witnesses who were so shocked at the savagery of the attack that they decided they had to come and report it to me. I took a pair of deputies with me, and we found the pair in a whorehouse across the tracks. They were dead drunk and raising hell, and I had to whip one with my pistol because he was such a brute.”

  Longarm was suddenly very interested. “Describe them for me, Otis.”

  “Well, let’s see. They were big bastards. Probably each weighed about two-fifty naked. And they were naked when we got the drop on them.”

  “Clean-shaven or bearded?”

  “Bearded. Black beards with some silver in ’em.”

  “Anything else you remember?”

  “No. We handcuffed the pair and let them dress before we brought them over to our cell. They stayed about two days and were bailed out by Jim Stanton, who owns a freighting business down—”

  “They’re the ones,” Longarm interrupted. “The Raney brothers.”

  “Well,” Appleton said, “they didn’t tell me anything about being brothers, but they sure looked a lot alike.”

  “How long ago were they here?”

  “Let’s see. Maybe a few months ago.”

  “What name did they give you?”

  “I forget. Sorry.” Appleton stood up. “But the judge keeps a record of everyone that comes before him. He would have their names written down and filed.”

  “That would be Judge Quinn?”

  “Yep. He’s still on the bench and just as crusty as always.”

  “Can I find him at the courthouse?”

  “Sure can.”

  Longarm came to his feet. “We’re catching the westbound, and I believe it pulls out of your town around noon.”

  “That’s right. It’s usually right on time, so don’t be late and miss traveling with that woman. Is she single and pretty?”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  The marshal of Cheyenne chuckled. “Might be I’ll wander down to the train depot just to get a look at her and decide if you’re worthy of her, Custis.”

  “Do that,” Longarm said, knowing he was being ribbed and not taking the bait.

  “She a respectable woman?”

  “As respectable as I’d care to travel with,” Longarm said, heading out the door.

  • • •

  The courthouse was close by, and Longarm went there directly. After he entered the building, he was taken to see the judge, who greeted him warmly. “How are things down Denver way?” the judge asked.

  “They’re fine.”

  “I heard that you people had one hell of a botched up bank robbery.”

  “Yeah, it was a bad one,” Longarm said.

  “Heard that the mayor’s son was involved.”

  “You don’t miss much, do you, Judge?”

  “No, I have a lot of friends in Denver, and you know that I visit my sister there every month or two. I like Denver, but I like Cheyenne better . . . or at least I would if the damned wind wasn’t always blowing about fifty miles an hour.”

  It was a joke, and Longarm laughed. “Judge, I’m here unofficially, and I’m tracking a pair of brothers that Marshal Appleton said he brought before you on charges of drunkenness and serious assault.”

  “That happens almost every Saturday night in Cheyenne. Can you be more specific?”

  Marshal Appleton says that they were brought before your bench a couple of months ago. They were brothers . . . big men with black beards probably in their forties. I have also been told they have a meanness that is hard to miss.”

  “Oh yes, I remember them now.”

  “It would help me if you have the names they were using.”

  “I can provide that from my files.”

  “I’m leaving for Reno at noon. This pair might be in Rawlins or they might be in Gold Hill on the Comstock Lode.”

  “Well,” the judge said, “they’re not here and good riddance to them. The two men that they beat and robbe
d were in bad shape for weeks after the attacks. I would have thrown the book at them except they were bailed out and they promised to leave town on the first train.”

  “I see.”

  “Let’s go into my office and I’ll look up the names they used,” Judge Quinn said, climbing out of his chair and heading for the office.

  • • •

  Ten minutes later, Longarm had the names that the brothers had used. “Dirk Pierce and Harold York,” he said. “Not too creative.”

  “What were their real names?” the judge asked.

  “Dirk and Harold Raney.”

  “You’re right. Not very imaginative.” The judge studied his slim file. “Not anything here that I can tell you in addition to the names and their crimes. They listed their occupation as mule skinners, and since they were bailed out by a local freight company, that is probably true.”

  “It is,” Longarm said. “Thanks for your help, Judge.”

  “I don’t know if I was any help at all.”

  “There is always the chance that they kept those last names when they left town.”

  Longarm hurried back to the hotel, where Milly was already packed and waiting in the lobby. She looked nervous. “My gosh, Custis, the train is leaving in fifteen minutes!”

  “Plenty of time for us to catch it.”

  “You don’t leave much margin for error, do you?”

  “Never have,” he said, grabbing up their bags and then paying his bill at the hotel counter. By the time that was finished, he glanced at a big old wall clock and saw that the Union Pacific was pulling out in about seven minutes.

  They heard the train’s whistle for the last call, and then they were racing down the street toward the depot.

  “Damn you, Custis, I don’t like this!”

  “Sorry!”

  The train was just starting to move when they hopped on board, gasping for breath.

  “I’m not very happy with you,” Milly grumped.

  “Let’s go to our sleeping compartment, where I’ll really make you run out of breath,” Longarm told her with an impish smile.

  Milly blushed and jammed an elbow into his ribs as they moved down the aisle and the train began to pick up speed.

  Chapter 18

  “I never saw such ugly country in all of my life,” Milly declared one morning as their train pulled out of Winnemucca, Nevada, still chugging westward toward Reno, yet 165 miles away. “Can anything live out in this high desert?”

  “Sure,” Longarm said. “Wild mustangs do well out here and so do the Paiute Indians. You’ll see jackrabbits. Once in a while a coyote or deer.”

  “Well, if you say so,” Milly replied, “but this is ugly country.”

  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Longarm said. “We’re used to the high Rocky Mountains, and there isn’t much to compare to them or to the Laramie Mountains. But when we get to Reno, you’ll see the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and they’re handsome and thick with pine. This time of year there will be a lot of snow up on the peaks and there even may be a good deal in Reno.”

  “What about on the Comstock Lode?” she asked. “Is it high and green and likely to be covered with snow?”

  “No,” Longarm told her. “It can snow up on the Comstock, but not too much. It is dotted here and there with a few piñon and juniper pines that survived the miners that came in and basically lumbered off all the timber for their square-set mining and for cabins and campfires. The Comstock Lode sets on Sun Mountain, and you’ll rarely see a bleaker or more barren mountain and surrounding country.”

  “People always go where the gold and silver is to be found, I guess.”

  “That’s right. The Comstock Mines produced one of the greatest bonanzas ever found in America. In fact, I’m sure you’ve heard of Dan DeQuille and Mark Twain. They were reporters on the Comstock Lode, working for the famous Territorial Enterprise, and later DeQuille wrote a huge and popular book called The Big Bonanza. It was a fine read, and of course we all know about Mark Twain’s great success.”

  “Yes, but I’ve never read his work.”

  “You should someday,” Longarm said. “Twain has a wonderful sense of humor and way of describing things; once you get started on his books, they are about impossible to put down.”

  “Well,” Milly said, “mostly I’m just sick of riding this train across a landscape that looks like it stretches all the way out to hell and back.”

  “We’ll be pulling into Reno this evening,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’ll take a stagecoach up to Virginia City. Gold Hill is just down the other side of the mountain a short distance.”

  “But you say that the Comstock Lode is on the decline?”

  “That’s right. The forty-niners swarmed to the gold streams along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the late forties and fifties, and when the California gold camps finally went bust they made this amazing discovery of silver and gold on the Comstock Lode. But while the forty-niners worked rivers and streams with their gold pans, long toms, and sluices, when they came to Nevada to work the Comstock, many were shocked to find that it was all about deep and hard rock mining.”

  “So how did they get to the ore if it was deep underground?”

  “Some dug holes and others hacked out tunnels into the mountains and found some gold and silver. All over the hillsides, you can see little mounds of mine tailings that look like giant gopher piles, but most of the Comstock’s wealth was brought up from great depths by steam engines that lowered men and supplies into deep holes in the ground. Some of the biggest mines went down hundreds and hundreds of feet.”

  “Sounds like it was a terrible life for the miners.”

  “It was,” Longarm agreed. “A lot of miners died on the Comstock, in mine cave-ins, and some hit pockets of boiling water down below and were scalded to death. But most died of pneumonia because they’d come up from the steamy depths hot and sweating and then in winter be hit by the cold, frigid air. That sudden temperature change killed them off like flies.”

  Longarm remembered all the cemeteries around Virginia City. “You see, the deeper a mine went the hotter it became,” he explained. “I was down in one of the mines, and at five hundred feet the temperature was well over a hundred degrees. It was about as tough a place to work as I’ve ever seen.”

  “What about Gold Hill?”

  “It always competed with Virginia City, and there were some rich mines down in Gold Canyon, but it never became a very large city. Still, I’m sure that there are still mines all over the Comstock Lode that are being worked profitably. It’s just that they’re not producing nearly what they did in the sixties and even the seventies.”

  “I sure hope that the Raney brothers are still there.”

  “Me too,” Longarm said. “Or at least that if they aren’t there, we can find out where they went next.”

  “We really need that ten thousand dollars the mayor will pay us.”

  “I suppose,” Longarm said, gazing out the window.

  “You don’t seem very sure of it.”

  Longarm shrugged. “I don’t know, Milly. I’ve never had a lot of money or even much of a wish to be wealthy. I live a simple life and make enough as a federal marshal to buy most of what I want or need.”

  “But wouldn’t you like to have a lot of money? Enough money to buy a business or to maybe travel to Europe?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well how about we go to New York City or to New Orleans by floating down the Mississippi River on a paddle-wheel steamer? Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

  “Actually, that sounds a lot more fun to me than traveling to Europe. I’d soon get bored sitting around on an ocean steamship for weeks.”

  “We have plenty of time to sort it all out,” Milly said, slipping her a
rm through his own. “And I was thinking that we ought to go back to our compartment and enjoy the motion a few more times.”

  “Ha! You’re insatiable.”

  “Yeah, but don’t you love it?”

  In reply, Longarm took her hand and led her out of the dining room and down to their small, private, and rocking bed.

  • • •

  “Reno! Next stop is Reno, Nevada!”

  Longarm and Milly finished their last bout of energetic lovemaking just as the train pulled into the station. A feeble winter sun was just sinking into the Sierras, and when they grabbed their bags and stepped outside, the temperature was already near freezing.

  “It’s cold here!” Milly complained, looking around at the snow and ice. “You didn’t tell me it would be worse than Denver.”

  “I don’t know if it’s worse or not,” Longarm said, taking her arm. “Let’s go find a hotel room on Virginia Street near the Truckee River.”

  “As long as it’s not too far to walk in this cutting wind and the rooms are heated.”

  “We’ll have a nice dinner at the Domino Hotel, and a few glasses of whiskey and wine will set us up and get the blood warmed in a hurry.”

  “Lead the way!”

  They tromped through the snow and slush with their heads lowered to the icy wind. When they got to the Domino Hotel, where Longarm had stayed several times in the past, they hurried inside to where a huge stone fireplace was roaring in the lobby and people were seated on fine leather couches and sofa chairs.

  “This is really nice,” Milly said, admiring the marble floors and high-beamed ceilings. “But isn’t it kind of expensive?”

  “It is beyond what I normally am willing to pay for,” Longarm confessed. “But we’ve been on a train for three days and nights and I just felt that we needed a little luxury. Besides, the steaks and ribs here are the finest around.”

  “Any seafood?”

  “I’m sure that it’s on their menu,” Longarm said, leading Milly over to the registration desk, where a slim man waited, with round eyeglasses and slick hair parted right down the middle.

  “Good evening!”

  “Good evening,” Longarm said. “We need a room.”