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

  Her bush, blond and luxuriant, peeped out beneath the hem of her chemise.

  Silently chortling, Longarm wakened the girl by dipping a fingertip beneath that bush and into the soft, rubbery slit he found there.

  Marthabelle’s sky blue eyes snapped open. There was a moment of hesitation as she came back from sleep. Then she smiled. “Bastard,” she whispered.

  “Bitch,” he responded.

  “You stood me up last night.”

  He shrugged. “I was busy.” He had been playing cards but knew better than to offer that as an excuse. He was not going to lie to her either, although he could have claimed some urgent mission connected with his work. Marthabelle would have believed him, but Longarm was not fond of lies or of liars. “So I came tonight.”

  He bent down to kiss her, but Marthabelle rolled her face to the side. “Don’t. You’ll muss my makeup and it takes forever to put on.”

  “What does all that stuff feel like?”

  “Like crap, actually. It’s like wearing a mask. Ugh!”

  Longarm settled for lifting the hem of her chemise and kissing her nipples, one by one and back again.

  “Oh, my. It’s a shame we don’t have more time. Come to think of it, what time is it?”

  Longarm produced his Ingersoll and told her.

  “The maid will be here to help me into my costume in twenty-five minutes.”

  He grinned. “That’s plenty of time.”

  “You can’t, love. It would ruin my hairdo even if you didn’t touch the makeup.”

  “Goodness, the things you women go through to make yourselves beautiful for us men. Stand up.”

  “What?”

  “Up. Get your pretty ass off that couch.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Marthabelle stood, a questioning look lifting her eyebrows and putting a faint crease into the greasepaint and powder on her forehead.

  “Now turn around,” Longarm said, taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face the couch. “Bend.” He gave her a gentle push, bending her over.

  “Oh, no,” she said.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “There isn’t time.”

  “If you say so.” By then his fingers had slipped between the cheeks of her ass to again find and fondle the opening to her pussy.

  Longarm knew the girl. Knew her responses. He laughed. “You’re already so wet you’re damn near dripping your juices on the floor. It’s a wonder it ain’t running down your legs. An’ right pretty legs they are, if I do say.”

  “Custis. No.” But Marthabelle’s body betrayed her words as she wriggled her butt and moved back onto his probing touch. “Really, dear. The time.”

  “Shh.” His cock was out, standing tall and hard as stone. He pressed a hand between her shoulder blades to push her a little lower. With his other hand he spread the cheeks of her ass, and crouching, he positioned the head of his cock at the entrance to Marthabelle’s pussy.

  A slow shove, a tiny bit of resistance, and then her body opened itself to him.

  Longarm slid full-length into the sweet, wet heat.

  Marthabelle moaned softly and pushed back against him so as to take him deeper inside herself. “Oh,” she muttered.

  “So big.”

  “D’you mind?”

  “I love it. You know I do. Hush now, dear. Pay attention to what you are doing.”

  Longarm laughed a little. And set about finishing what he had just started.

  After all, the maid would be coming in twenty-five minutes. He figured to be coming a little sooner than that.

  Chapter 4

  “What time is the next stage to Dwyer?”

  The stage line clerk looked up from his newspaper and said, “Eleven o’clock.” Longarm already had his watch in hand before the clerk added, “Tomorrow.”

  “Say what?”

  Newspaper still in hand, the clerk said, “We have northbounds rolling out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, southbounds coming back Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Nothing going nor coming on that route on Sundays. This here being a Tuesday . . .”

  “Right. I get the picture. Tomorrow.” Longarm thought for a moment, then asked, “If you have an overnight turnaround for that coach, why d’ you start so late in the day? Why not early morning?”

  “That’s for the mail. Our contract calls for us to carry mail headed that way, and we don’t get the pouch until the overnight mail has got here and been sorted. So we wait until we have that ready to go.”

  “That explains it, thanks. Can I leave some of my gear here until that coach is ready then?”

  “Sure. Just set it inside the cage here. Nobody will bother it.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  The clerk nodded and went back to his reading. Longarm deposited his saddle, saddlebags, and rifle inside the office portion of the stage depot but kept his carpetbag with him while he went in search of a room.

  That requirement was satisfied easily enough, and within half an hour he was out on the streets of Cheyenne with a day to kill and no duties to fulfill until he caught that northbound coach in the morning.

  He found a saloon that had provided pleasant diversions in the past and dropped in.

  The bartender nodded and said, “Rye whiskey, isn’t it, friend?”

  “You have a good memory,” Longarm said. “Yes, it’ll be rye.”

  “Bottle or glass.”

  “Just a glass.” He dug into his pocket and laid a quarter down. The barman dropped the coin into his apron pocket and slid a bowl of peanuts down the bar to Longarm before pouring a generous measure of excellent rye and placing that next to the peanuts.

  Longarm picked up the glass and inhaled the bitingly sharp aroma of the whiskey before tasting it. He nodded to the bartender appreciatively and swallowed a good third of the rye, then reached for a peanut roasted in the shell.

  He was on his second whiskey and probably twentieth peanut when he heard a commotion in the street outside. There were shouts, then gunshots. Two in quick succession followed by a brief pause and then a third shot.

  “Sounds like trouble,” the bartender said. “I hope they don’t bring it in here.”

  “Watch this for me, will you?” Longarm said, pushing his still nearly full glass across the bar.

  He turned and headed out to see if there was anything that needed his help.

  Chapter 5

  Longarm stepped through the batwings onto a board sidewalk and stopped there. It took no great powers of deduction to see what the shooting had been about. It was no robbery gone bad but appeared to be simply a private matter between two men.

  One was down on the ground, his revolver lying in the dirt some feet away, while the victor stood over him with his six-gun still in hand. Both men were in the middle of the street.

  Around them time seemed to have stopped. All movement had come to a halt, people standing still and staring.

  The two combatants were perhaps thirty feet away from Longarm. The one on the ground struggled to a sitting position and said something to the other. Whatever it was it was too low for Longarm to overhear.

  Longarm reached inside his coat for a cheroot, nipped the twist off with his teeth, and spat out the bit of tobacco. He extracted a match from another pocket, snapped it aflame with his thumbnail, and lighted his smoke. He flicked the spent match into the street and was about to return to the drink he had abandoned inside the saloon, figuring the Cheyenne police could handle this. There was no reason for him to become involved.

  That intention went by the boards, though.

  The winner of the shoot-out cocked his revolver and raised it. The man took deliberate aim and carefully squeezed off a shot into the chest of the man who was already down.

  That gentleman cried out and was driven back down onto the ground. He probably was dead by the time his head bounced off the hard-packed dirt.

  The shooter looked around before wheeling about
and trotting away down the street and into an alley.

  “Son of a bitch,” Longarm mumbled. He looked around himself, expecting to see a Cheyenne law dog come running. After all, there had been more than enough shooting to attract the attention of one, and generally Cheyenne police were quick to respond to trouble. This time there was no one.

  With a sigh of resignation, Longarm stepped down off the sidewalk and went to see if the man who was down might still somehow be alive and in need of help.

  As expected, though, the only help the fellow needed would be provided by an undertaker. He was gone, his eyes open wide in the shock of his final moments, staring sightlessly now toward a clear blue sky.

  Drying blood was visible high on the dead man’s right shoulder. That would have been the first bullet he took, the one that knocked him down onto the street. A smaller stain was visible on his chest, directly over his heart. That would have been the murderous, deliberate killing shot when he was already down and out of the fight, his pistol lying several feet away.

  He had been young, barely old enough to shave, and handsome, with curly blond hair and downy cheeks. Tonight some mother would likely be grieving for her boy and some girl weeping for a love that might have been.

  The detail that made Longarm’s blood run cold, though, was where that second bullet had been so precisely placed.

  The young man wore a six-pointed star on his chest.

  The bullet hole was in the exact center of that badge of office.

  The dead boy had been an officer on the Cheyenne police force.

  Chapter 6

  “Of course I’d recognize the son of a bitch was I to see him again,” Longarm told the Cheyenne police lieutenant, a man named Walters. He had not given a first name when he introduced himself. “He has dark hair, drooping dark brown or black mustache. ’Bout five-foot-nine or -ten. Dark eyes kinda wide set. Ears set close to his head. Red and white checked shirt and calfskin vest. Brown corduroy britches. Knee-high muleskinner boots. Remington revolver worn high on his right hip. Wasn’t wearing a hat when I saw him. Neither was your man, which suggests to me that the two o’ them was indoors someplace not real far from this spot when they stepped outside and drawed on one another. What else d’ you want to know?”

  “Ever see him before?” Walters asked.

  Longarm shook his head. “Nope. Not in person nor on any wanted poster. I’m pretty sure about that.”

  “Look, Long, I realize you have no jurisdiction about this and no responsibility, but it bothers me that you just stood there and let someone murder one of my people in cold blood.”

  “Well, fuck you,” Longarm snapped. “Like you said, this ain’t my jurisdiction. Far as I knew it was a personal matter between two civilians, an’ you folks would take care of it. When I found out the boy was one o’ yours, I came and found you so’s you,” he stared Walters in the eye, “so’s you could finally figure out that one o’ your people was dead. And now you’re gonna piss in my face like some part of it was my fault. You go to hell, Walters, and all your kith and kin along with you.”

  For a moment Walters bristled. Then the tension went out of his shoulders as he visibly got control of his emotions. “You’re right. Of course you are right, Long. It is just . . . Lawrence had such promise. He was so proud of his badge. He wasn’t on duty this morning. He is . . . I mean was . . . a night officer.”

  “So where would he have been to get into this dust-up this morning?” Longarm asked. “Find that place and it might go a long way toward finding out what happened. And who the shooter is.”

  “Yes. Of course. I . . .” Walters looked like he had no idea which way to turn next.

  “Did the boy drink heavy or maybe was he the sort to fight over a whore?” Longarm asked.

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Boss,” a shout interrupted. “Hey, Lieutenant. Over here,” called a police officer wearing a brass-buttoned blue coat, tan trousers, and a blue cap like a railroad conductor’s but with a brass medallion on the front. “We found something.”

  Walters turned away and hustled over to his man. Longarm trailed along close behind out of simple curiosity.

  “Jimmy was in Sol Heidrich’s saloon, Lieutenant. Him and some other fellow got into a squabble over which of them would go upstairs with that redheaded new girl. The guy saw her first, but she was sweet on Jimmy and wanted to go with him. The two of them argued about it and the fellow called Jimmy out. Insulted him pretty bad, I guess. He didn’t have no choice but to walk outside with this fellow.”

  “Who was the man?” Walters asked.

  The officer shook his head. “No one in there knows, Lieutenant. Far as anybody could tell he was just some horny fellow passing through. Drover maybe or some bummer off the trains. Passenger or the like, but he wasn’t a regular and nobody in there heard him give a name.”

  “The girl? What does she say?”

  “That’s Skinny Sally, Lieutenant. You remember her. Tall and, well, skinny. She says Jimmy Lawrence was a regular. Says she was sweet on him too. Let him have her for half price. But she doesn’t want us to let Sol know about that or he’ll give her a hiding so she won’t be able to sit for a week. She never seen the other guy before.”

  “All right, thanks.” Walters turned and almost bumped into Longarm before he saw the tall marshal standing immediately behind him. “You? What are you doing here? This is none of your business, Long.”

  “Of course it isn’t,” Longarm agreed, “but I thought you might find it helpful if you had hold of somebody that could identify the killer.” He shrugged. “Reckon I was wrong about that.” He politely touched the brim of his Stetson and turned away.

  “Wait,” Walters said. “You’re right, and if we catch somebody, we will get you to identify him as Lawrence’s murderer.”

  Longarm grunted. “I’ll be in that place ’cross the street or else at the Carter House until tomorrow morning. Then I’m taking a stage out of here.”

  “I may want you to stay over until we catch up with this individual,” Walters said.

  “Sorry, but that ain’t gonna happen. I got my own duties to attend to. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got half a whiskey an’ a bowl o’ peanuts waiting for me over there.”

  “Wait,” Walters ordered. “I am requiring you to stay here as a witness. I can lock you up if necessary. I can get a judge to issue an order.”

  “Like I said before,” Longarm said with a smile, “fuck you, mister.” He walked away without offering any argument about it.

  By then an ambulance had arrived, pulled by a handsome pair of bay cobs. The attendants were placing the young police officer onto a stretcher to carry him away somewhere. Longarm again thought of the boy’s mother and how terrible her day was about to become.

  Chapter 7

  Longarm finished his whiskey and another one just like it, then had lunch and a stroll around town—halfway keeping an eye out for the man who had shot Officer Jimmy Lawrence—then wiled the rest of the day away with a selection of newspapers from back east.

  He ended the day with another few whiskeys and a long, sound sleep. In the morning he had time for a leisurely breakfast and a shave in a friendly barbershop before heading over to the stagecoach depot. He did not hear from Lieutenant Walters or anyone else from the Cheyenne Police Department. If any local judge had issued an order for him to remain in Cheyenne, he did not know about it. Not that he’d really expected to hear anything, but it would have been good if they could have caught the shooter. Longarm hated the idea of any lawman being gunned down like Jimmy Lawrence was. As Walters had pointed out more than once yesterday, though, young Lawrence’s death was not in Longarm’s jurisdiction.

  He reclaimed his saddle and other gear from the stage station and headed out the door.

  “Wait, mister,” the ticket agent called after him.

  Longarm stopped and turned around. “Yes?”

  “Your ticket. You don’t have a ticket.”

>   With a sigh, Longarm set his carpetbag down to free a hand. He pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to the badge there. “Deputy U.S. marshal,” he said, “travelin’ on official business.”

  Part of the line’s mail contract required that federal officers have unfettered use of the coaches.

  “Sorry, sir. You go right ahead.”

  When the time came, the coach turned out to be a rather tired and rickety army surplus mud wagon pulled by a four-up of little Spanish mules. There was no luggage shelf, and the roof was not stout enough to carry any serious weight, so luggage had to be piled at the front of the coach. Longarm tossed his things in with those of the other three passengers and climbed inside.

  The seats were nothing fancier than a hard, wooden bench along each side of the coach and facing inward, toward the other bench. Entry and exit were from the rear.

  A young couple sat pressed tight together on one bench. They had the look of a pair of youngsters traveling on a honeymoon, the girl probably still in her teens and the boy not much older. Whoever they were and wherever they were bound, Longarm wished them long life and happiness. He nodded and touched the brim of his Stetson when he climbed into the coach from the open doorway at the rear.

  He chose a seat as far as he could get from a very obviously unwashed “gentleman” on the other bench. The man smelled. Of sweat and puke and Lord knew what else. He had the appearance of a man who was at the ass end of a weeklong drunk. Longarm hoped the fellow would not turn out to be a talkative sort.

  The jehu and the station agent stopped at the back of the coach and peered in. “Everybody settled and comfortable?” the jehu asked. He was a middle-aged fellow, slender as a whip and probably as tough as one too. He had a long, jagged scar that ran from the corner of his left eye down onto his neck. “We’ll be stopping every twenty miles or so. We’ll be moving fast, so hang on tight, folks.”

  The station agent said nothing, but he did check his watch and said something to the driver, who nodded and came forward. The coach shifted on its leather slings when the jehu climbed onto the driving box and took up his lines.