Longarm 244: Longarm and the Devil's Sister Page 2

  But the two of them stood ready on the stairs for a million years, and when something finally happened, it happened without warning.

  A heap of gunfights started that way.

  Chapter 2

  As old soldiers knew the hard way, you got to be an old soldier by pussyfooting on patrol and charging all-out when they might know you were coming. So the gunslick who’d trapped himself atop the rain swept roof retraced his steps with a vengeance and a Schofield .45 in each fist as he kicked the door in, saw he was not alone at the head of the stairs, and went down noisy, with four sixguns blazing in homicidal intent.

  The obvious border Mex in a soaked-through charro outfit blew Billy Vail’s hat off with one wild round and plucked at Longarm’s coat tails with another as he gathered three rounds of more sincerely aimed .44-40 to his breast and fell back out the door to stare up into the falling rain with a sheepish little smile.

  Longarm snapped, “Cover me!” as he dashed through their gunsmoke, out the door and across the wet gravel-covered roofing tar to hunker behind the dubious shelter of a skylight frame. When nobody pegged a shot at either of them, Billy Vail broke cover to leapfrog beyond Longarm as far as another shedlike exit to the roof above another stairwell. And so it went until they’d worked their way to the far end to discover they had the whole soggy expanse to their soaking selves.

  Down below, the streets of Downtown Denver seemed filled with wet faces staring up at them through the rain. A meat wagon from County General had just reined in by a side entrance with the hides of its team steaming. Billy Vail suggested they get back inside before they wound up in the hospital their ownselves. Longarm glanced off to the west, where the nearby Front Range was lost to view in the shimmering silver curtains of the gullywasher as he wistfully wondered how the late Elsbeth Flagg might have responded to an invite to a sunset view in dryer weather. As he followed Billy Vail over the Mexican sprawled half in and half out of the doorway they’d dashed out of, he quietly said, “I want the rest of ’em, Billy. I got personal reasons.”

  Vail had hunkered by the body in the rain and started going through the pockets of the Mex rider’s charro outfit as he quietly replied, “I saw her laid out on the floor downstairs, old son. They nailed at least half a dozen others in that wild fusillade and some of them have to be as dead or dying. So I don’t see how we could get out of tracking the bastards, serious, whether we wanted to or not. Judge Dickerson was sure pissed off about all this.”

  Vail found a wallet and opened the wet leather to add, “I seem to owe Old Mexico an apology. This murderous cock-sucker wasn’t no fucking greaser. He was a fucking Indian. A Mimbres off the San Carlos Agency, according to this ration card from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”

  Longarm stared soberly down at the man they’d killed as he quietly said, “Ain’t no such thing as a Mimbres from the San Carlos Agency, no matter what the BIA tries to tell ‘em. I reckon only a Mimbres could explain why this is so, but when Washington decided to consolidate all the so-called Apache at San Carlos in ’75 the Mimbres who liked things better around Ojo Caliente, well east of Apache Pass, allowed they’d as soon stay put.”

  Vail got up to step inside, still waving the dead man’s ID as he demanded, “How come this here late Ramon Kayitah was registered as a Mimbres with the San Carlos Agency if he wouldn’t live there?”

  Longarm stepped in out of the rain as well, dryly observing, “He wasn’t living there. We just now killed him in Denver. Victorio is off the San Carlos Agency this spring with his own Mimbres and a whole lot of pissed-off Mescalero from New Mexico as well. The BIA resettled some few Mountain Apache or NaDéné over in the Arizona Desert, as long as they had young Johnny Clum as an agent they could get along with. Sort of. Since Clum was forced out by sterner politicos who found him too flexible, they’ve had a tougher time controlling NaDéné. That’s what Washington calls it when they get to pick the color of your shit and tell you where to shit it. Controlling.”

  Vail found his wet hat on the stairs and bent to pick it up and put it back on as he decided, “Well, nobody had the late Ramon Kayitah all that controlled and for all we know the others could have been Indians as well. I keep telling you children not to leap at conclusions. But I just did it my ownself, knowing Devil Dave Deveruex was half Mex from the Pecos Valley and assuming his pals were from down home.”

  Longarm followed him down a stairwell still reeking of gunsmoke as he reloaded along the way, observing, “You could be doing it some more, no offense. One full-blood running with mestizo vaqueros works as well as an Irish-Mex off a Tex-Mex land grant running with a whole tribe of Indians. There’s this Denver bakery I stop by on the way home, now and again, owned and operated by full-blooded Arapaho. The name they’re going by, these days, would be Plimmons. They didn’t have to move to the east with the more feathersome Arapaho in ’75 because they chose to be self-supporting and law-abiding residents of this here state capital.”

  Vail snorted, “Are you saying that son of a bitch we just had to gun down like a mad dog could be defined as law-abiding?”

  Longarm shrugged and answered, simply, “We both accepted him as a Tex-Mex rider until he lay dead on the roof, didn’t we? My point is that there’s more than one way to leave an Indian reserve. For every Victorio or even Chief Joseph there must be a dozen disgusted Indians who just get a haircut, dress up more natural, and find something else to do. Like baking bread, herding cows, or riding the owlhoot trail with other outlaws of uncertain ancestry.”

  Vail led the way back into Judge Dickerson’s cleared court, where a smell of gunsmoke and spilled gore still lingered as the last of the bodies were being carried out.

  His Honor came toward them, still wearing his black cotton robes and the expression of a man who’d just caught his wife in bed with a hired hand. Before Vail could tell him they’d nailed at least one of the gang, His Honor roared, “Why are you both fucking the dog here at the scene of the crime? The bastards are long gone! Why haven’t you gone after them?”

  Vail growled, “We just come down from gunning the one who run up on the roof. What was Your Honor thinking of when them three gun-toting strangers entered his courtroom all dressed up like border buscaderos? Weren’t you fixing to sentence Devil Dave to any time at all?”

  The iron-gray hanging judge declared, “All right. There’s blame to go around, and you say you got at least one of them, Billy?”

  Vail smiled modestly and confessed, “Longarm, here, put just as many rounds in him. His name was Ramon Kayitah. Assimilated Mimbres Apache, living white. Living Mex, least ways. We’re still working on who or what the other two might have been. Their charro riding outfits and buscadero gun rigs fit the escaped prisoner’s home range in the lower reaches of the Pecos Valley. We now know that Frank and Jesse James lit out for Clay County and their Missouri kith and kin when that Northfield raid went sour on them, so ...”

  Longarm pointed out. “Frank and Jesse rode west into the Dakota Territory when they ran into all that trouble in Minnesota.”

  Vail shrugged and said, “Whatever. The point is that Frank and Jesse finally wound up back home with their momma and we know Dave Deveruex grew up on a land grant his own widowed momma still grazes a swamping herd on, with a shithouse full of Tex-Mex help a growing boy with Tex-Mex features could blend into pretty good. So just in case we fail to find him and his other pals holed up here in Denver I mean to wire a ranger captain I used to ride with before the war and...”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.” Longarm cut in.

  The two older men stared at Longarm as if they suspected him of farting in church. Billy Vail said, “I thought you just told me you had a personal hard-on for Devil Dave Deveruex, old son.”

  Longarm said, “I do. That’s why I want to catch him instead of making him look bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to his Tex-Mex admiration society. Lawmen private and public have tried in vain to cut the trails of Frank and Jesse within a day’s ride of their known home addres
s. In ’75 the Pinkertons lobbed a fire bomb through their momma’s window and only managed to cripple her and kill their nine-year-old half-brother, Archie Samuels.”

  He let that sink in before he added, “Their unwanted kin were sitting there like trusting lambs because neither Frank nor Jesse were home at the time. They’ve never been home when the law comes calling because no lawman can ride a furlong into Clay County without some kissing cousin letting Frank and Jesse know the law’s riding in. The Texas Rangers have to know Devil Dave hails from that land grant in the Lower Pecos Valley, don’t they?”

  Vail nodded and said, “Well sure they do. How did you think we knew that much about him? The mean little cuss commenced his wild career by shooting a colored cavalry trooper during the Reconstruction. The kid allowed the Good Lord had never created horses to be rode by Ethiopians. Nobody in West Texas was talking to the state police imposed on them by the Reconstruction. So Devil Dave’s next victim was a white carpetbagger the Good Lord had endowed with a money belt, a diamond stick pin, and a gold watch. But that was then and this is now.”

  Judge Dickerson made a wry face as he nodded reluctantly and said, “President Hayes in his infinite wisdom ended the last vestiges of the Reconstruction back in ’77, and, as soon as those Texas rebs were back in the saddle, they disbanded those state troopers and brought back those dad-blamed rowdy rangers!”

  Then he remembered who he was talking to and quicky assured Billy Vail he was only referring to those Texas Rangers who’d ridden for the Confederacy, after the times young Ranger Vail had ridden under Captain Big Foot Wallace.

  Vail was explaining how other Scotchmen had called Big Foot Wallace “Sandy” when Longarm cut in to steer them back on more recent trails by saying, “My point is that nobody’s ever been able to throw down on Devil Dave Deveruex or find a soul who’s ever heard of him on or about his own home range. If we know this, he knows this. If he makes it out of Colorado, no matter where else he may circle, he’s likely to wind up along the Lower Pecos, sooner or later.”

  Vail and the judge exchanged glances. Vail turned back to his senior deputy to patiently but firmly demand, “Make up your mind. I just now said I could wire the rangers down yonder and you asked me not to because you want Deveruex and them two other killers caught? What am I missing here?”

  Longarm said, “The best way to catch him. Neither you nor me nor a company of rangers backed by a squadron of cavalry would ever cut that local hero’s trail in his own neck of the chaparral. But it’s going on market-herding time in Texas. It’s a logical time for an out-of-work cowhand to drift in, looking for work, and I can still rope and throw if I have to.”

  Judge Dickerson grinned wolfishly and said, “By jimmies I’ll write you a federal warrant that ought to stand up in Old Mexico. It can’t be lawful anywhere to shoot up a courtroom while a trial’s in progress!”

  Vail knew West Texas better. He frowned dubiously and said, “I’ll go along with it if you’ll take Smiley and Dutch along with you. Lord knows they both look more like saddle tramps than our current civil service dress code allows, and Smiley might pass for a Mex at drygulch distance, being part Pawneee and all.”

  Longarm shook his head and said, “That would be dumb, no offense. Anybody can see that no lawman would ride in alone if he had one lick of sense. As soon as I look like I have somebody covering my back I commence to look suspicious. After that I’d as soon work alone and not have to worry about covering anyone else’s back.”

  “It’s too big a boo. You ain’t riding into that nest of vipers all alone!” said Billy Vail, as if he meant it.

  Then young Henry, the squirt who played the typewriter in their office down the hall, came in with the blue-uniformed Sergeant Nolan of Denver P.D.

  Henry said, “Deputy Gilfoyle just reported in from a quick canvas of the neighborhood. The rain had swept the streets clear until we had all that gunplay. A swamper at the Parthenon Saloon stepped out into their back alley, got wet without seeing anything, and stepped back in the doorway just as three men came arunning. Swamper makes it two Mex riders in charro outfits and a dapper young gent in a suit but no hat.”

  “That was them.” Billy Vail decided, adding, “Which way did they go?”

  Henry said, “The swamper can’t say. He ducked inside entire as soon as one of the vaqueros slapped leather and cussed at him.”

  Sergeant Nolan consulted the notebook he was holding in one hamlike fist as he volunteered, “One of your lads made it over to our precinct house with the news of the breakout a tad too late. We’d been keeping an eye on three unusually prosperous Mexican strangers in town. Our watch commander’s sent a detail to the rooming house they were staying in near the Union Station. We’re going to be as surprised as the rest of you if they haven’t checked out without leaving any forwarding address. I knew them three were up to no good, what with their fancy Mex outfits and no visible means of support. But every time we arrest some stranger on suspicion of vagrancy we catch hell from the Magistrate’s Court if they can show the judge two dollars or more in cash.”

  Another copper badge in blue came in to report to Sergeant Nolan on their suspicious strangers. Longarm and the others listened as Denver P.D. exclaimed, “They were long gone when we got to that boarding house, but we may have cut their trail. According to the landlady, one of the Mexicans she recalls as Ramon told her they had a train to catch, so he wanted her to give him back some room rent he’d advanced her. She told him hell would freeze over first and then their leader, a gent she recalls as a Mister Hogan in spite of his Mex features, cussed at Ramon in Spanish, told her to keep the money, and the three of them lit out. She thought they were running for that train in the rain. We sent Ryan over to the depot in the unlikely event it was three other Mexicans shooting things up over here at the federal building.”

  As if to prove his point two more copper badges trudged in, soaked to the skin in soggy boots. The one who had to be Ryan gasped, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it’s a grand day for the ducks and we just missed the murtherous trinear by a falt go leth! They told us at the stesean that two greasers and a white boy boarded the Burlington express north to Cheyenne and the cross-country Union Pacific and all and all!”

  Nolan said he’d wire Cheyenne P.D. Ryan said he already had. Longarm said, “We proved up on the roof that the one called Ramon was sort of dumb. Neither Devil Dave nor the smoother vaquero called Hogan are as apt to run into a likely trap. They’ll get off somewhere betwixt here and Cheyenne and go to ground in some hideout they’ve had plenty of time to set up. So don’t that give me time to make it to West Texas a spell before they get there themselves? I mean, if I managed to be taken as a harmless drifter who was already there instead of riding in after them ...”

  Billy Vail cut in to say, “I know what you mean. It’s worth a try. But you’re sure as shit bucking the odds, you stubborn young cuss!”

  Chapter 3

  The late Ramon Kayitah had proven on the roof that rushing ahead thoughtless could take as much as fifty years off a man’s life. Hence, even though old Billy Vail could be a mother hen to his deputies, his orders to do some homework on Devil Dave Deveruex before he tried to beat him to his own back door made a heap of sense.

  Longarm hadn’t been taking notes as he’d sat closer to the late Elsbeth Flagg, watching her take notes. So it made him feel sort of odd as he sat in the judge’s chambers after closing time, going over a dead gal’s transcribed and typed-up court records by lamplight as the wind and rain kept trying to open the windows to the dark outside.

  The bare facts of Devil Dave’s most recent outburst down by Pike’s Peak only told him that the young Tex-Mex was a mad dog with an itchy trigger finger. It didn’t prove he was good or bad in a gunfight. Most any sort of gun-hand could blow away bank tellers or innocent bystanders who weren’t fighting back.

  The longer yellow sheets, or criminal record, of the mean squirt took up a heap more paper than the transcripts of his unfinis
hed trial. It was impossible to tell whether that poor gal they’d killed out yonder in the courtroom had typed the earlier transcripts. All court records were worded in that same sedate way, without a lick of emotion as they described such earlier misdeeds as gunning a town drunk, just to see how long it would take anyone to notice he lay dead instead of drunk in a gutter. Longarm knew the dead gal had read that, whether she’d typed it or not. He wondered how she’d felt about the prisoner as she’d sat there recording his trial, looking cool as a cucumber, and now she lay down at the morgue on a cold zinc table, and if they didn’t pump some formalin in her veins and stick a cannula up her ass to drain her guts, she was fixing to look just awful before they could get her home for her kin to bury.

  He leafed through the yellow sheets to where they began with the one son of an otherwise respected family gunning that colored trooper and then bragging about it. Other offenses followed, one right after another, with none of them making financial sense. From the bare-bones background offered in old warrants and arrest records Longarm had the Deveruex y Lopez clan of Val Verde, Terrell, and Crocket County, Texas, owning many a cow, grazing many an acre under a modest army of hired help ruled by the widow of the late Sean Deveruex and managed by the older daughter of the house, a Señorita Consuela Deveruex y Lopez, as she signed the checks. There was nothing saying why Devil Dave’s big sister had been left in charge. But that wasn’t too tough to figure. What was tougher to figure was why Devil Dave had taken to holding up banks instead of just acting crazy mean. Maybe there’d be something explaining that in those land office files he’d asked old Henry to rustle up before he went home.

  Longarm glanced up hopefully when the door swung open. Then he saw it wasn’t old Henry standing there with two arms full of dusty ledgers.