Longarm #398 : Longarm and the Range War (9781101553701) Page 3

  “Turn them loose, Johnny,” he called out, so apparently there was a helper who was holding the mules for him. Longarm had not noticed the third fellow until the coach lurched into motion and they passed within a foot or so of a raggedy man wearing a cloth cap and coveralls.

  The coach was not three miles out of town before the jehu shouted, “Whoa there. Whoa, you sons of bitches.”

  The young bride pretended not to have heard, while her husband scowled. Longarm suspected the young man would be having a word with the driver about his language, never mind that the girl had probably been hearing that and far worse for most of her life.

  The coach came to a rocking halt, and someone pitched a pair of saddlebags in through the side, by the young couple. Longarm could see the shoulders and torso of whoever it was, but the dust curtains on that side of the wagon prevented him from seeing the face of the newcomer until he reached the back of the coach and began to climb in.

  “Oh, shit,” the newcomer said then.

  The man who had hailed the stagecoach was the fellow who had gunned down Officer Jimmy Lawrence.

  He obviously recognized Longarm as the man who had stood watching not thirty feet away when he murdered Constable Lawrence the previous day. But then the two had made eye contact before the shooter turned and ran, before Longarm knew the fight was something other than a private matter.

  “This is your unlucky day,” the shooter snarled. “Crawl your ass out of there, mister. You’re just going to have to take the next coach north. If you’re still alive and kicking, that is. Now get out. I’m on the prod and you know I mean business. You seen what I can do and I’m willing to do it again.”

  Chapter 8

  With that young bride sitting so close by inside the narrow mud wagon, Longarm did not want to start a gun battle.

  Besides, he would rather simply arrest the shooter.

  While that asshole Walters was absolutely correct that Longarm had no jurisdiction over municipal offenses—and murder was not a federal crime—any citizen had the right to make an arrest in the absence of lawful authority.

  Well, Custis Long was a citizen. So he had as much right as anyone to make a citizen’s arrest.

  He crawled his ass out of the coach, just like the gunman demanded.

  “You being right in the neighborhood and everything,” the shooter said once Longarm had his feet on the ground behind the coach, “you might just as well hand over your wallet to me. Let me see what kind of roll you’re carrying.”

  The gunman chuckled and looked smug, mighty pleased with himself for the way this seemed to be turning out.

  Longarm shuffled sideways. He wanted to make sure the coach, and the young couple inside it, was out of the line of fire if things went south from here on out.

  “Funny you should mention it,” he said, “I was just fixing to reach for my wallet.”

  “Fine. Drag it out here. I’ll relieve you of the burden and you can start walking back to town. Time you get there to report anything, I’ll be miles and miles away from here. Those stupid coppers won’t never catch me.”

  “Actually,” Longarm said, reaching inside his coat—with his left hand—and pulling out his wallet, “actually those stupid coppers have already caught up with you.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, mister?” the gunman demanded.

  Longarm flipped the wallet open to display the badge pinned inside there.

  “Jesus!” the gunman blurted.

  “You’re under arrest, shitforbrains,” 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 directly.” He was already thinking about where he could leave his prisoner for the Cheyenne authorities to come fetch the son of a bitch. In the next town with a jail, he supposed. He himself could not take the time to return the man to the Cheyenne police but . . .

  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.

  He checked to make sure the man was dead, then began reloading with the cartridges he carried loose in his coat pocket. “Seems you have some more freight to haul to the next town where I can get a wire off to the Cheyenne police. Now help me load this fella in, will you?”

  “Just leave him there. We got a schedule to keep, you know.”

  “Then get down from there and give me a hand. We are not going to leave the man lying here.”

  “The hell you say. He’s not going on my coach and that’s that.” The jehu set his jaw defiantly then turned his head and spat.

  “Whatever you say, neighbor,” Longarm said, pulling out his handcuffs. “Turn around.”

  “Now what?” the driver demanded.

  Longarm shrugged. “I’m arrestin’ you on a charge of obstruction of justice. You can ride in the coach and I’ll drive us on to wherever I can find a jail to put you in and an undertaker for this poor son of a bitch.”

  “Wait. You . . . you can’t do that!” the jehu wailed.

  Actually the man was right. Longarm had no such authority. Probably. But he was willing to let that work itself out in front of a judge. “Turn around,” Longarm repeated.

  “All right. All right, dammit. We’ll carry him on.”

  Longarm grunted. “That’s better,” he said. He put the handcuffs away. He did not want to pile the bloody corpse into the back of the coach with the honeymooners, so over the continuing protests of the jehu, Longarm stuffed the body onto the floor of the driving box.

  “Now,” Longarm said when they were done, “let’s be rolling north, shall we?”

  Chapter 9

  It wasn’t much of a town, more like a glorified crossroads, and while it almost certainly had a name, Longarm never heard what that name might be. What it did have was a telegraph key.

  “Whilst I’m busy getting a wire off to the Cheyenne police,” he told the driver, “you can unload the corpse and put him . . . I dunno, someplace in the shade, I s’pose. Into an ice house if they got such a thing here.”

  “Me?” the jehu groaned. “You shot him. You get rid of him.”

  Longarm shrugged. “It don’t make no nevermind to me. Just leave him in the damn drivin’ box if you’d rather.”

  “Hey!” the jehu yelped. “You can’t . . .”

  Longarm turned his back and walked away in search of that telegraph.

  It was coming evening of the next day when he finally reached Dwyer, having traveled overnight with relays of the mules and changing coaches twice.

  Dwyer, seat of McConnell County, was . . . not very damned much. It was sun-baked and dusty, most of the boards and shingles on the buildings warping and untended. The only building of any substance was the courthouse, which was built of stone and had a copper-clad copola perched on top of a slate roof.

  Longarm fetched his gear out of the coach and dropped it onto the porch in front of the general store, which apparently acted as stagecoach agent in addition to selling everything else.

  A floppy-eared cur dropped its head and shyly wagged its tail at Longarm’s approach. He bent down and gave the dog a scratch behind the ears before stepping inside the store. The place smelled of cinnamon and tanned leather and something else that Longarm could not quite identify. “Howdy.”

  The proprietor looked up and said, “Come in on the evening coach, did you?”

  “I did,” Long
arm affirmed. “Now I’m needin’ a couple things from you if I may.”

  “That’s what I’m here for. What can I sell you?”

  “What I need is information,” Longarm told the man. “First off, where can I get a room for the night. Second, where can I find John Tyler?”

  “You can likely do both at the same place, seeing as how we don’t have a hotel here. Boys come in from working livestock, they most generally get liquored up and spend the nights at Rosie’s place or else Doris’s. You don’t look like a man in search of a drink, so likely you’d want a room with the Tylers. John, he’s the sheriff here. His wife is Nell. They’re good folks. Clean. Decent. They been known to take in a boarder now and then if he looks like a decent sort himself. And you’re a strong, strapping fellow. Could be you can help the Tylers around the place a little while you’re there.”

  Longarm’s left eyebrow went up at that comment. “Help them how?”

  “Oh, doing the things John can’t is all I mean.”

  “John can’t what, exactly?”

  The storekeeper leaned his elbows on his sales counter and stifled a yawn. “John can’t do very damn much right now. That’s the truth of it.”

  “The man is the sheriff of this county, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, he is that, all right.”

  “Then what . . . ?”

  “John had a run-in with a contrary horse a couple weeks back. It fell on him, and he’s been laid up in bed with a busted leg, bunch of busted ribs, and his foot broke ever since.” The gentleman smiled just a little and said, “Which makes me guess you’re the marshal John sent to Denver for.”

  “How would you know . . . ?”

  “My telegraph key,” the man said with a smug grin. “I get let in on lots of things.”

  Longarm laughed. “Right. Of course you would. Well then, can you tell me how I can get to John and Nell Tyler’s place, please?”

  Chapter 10

  John Tyler’s place was a modest two-story house on the north edge of town. It was surrounded by a whitewashed picket fence with a row of struggling rosebushes around the front porch. Longarm let himself inside the fence and waved to a man seated in a high-backed wicker chair on the forward edge of that porch, where he could see down the main street toward Dwyer’s clump of businesses.

  When Longarm got closer, he could see that the man had his left leg splinted and heavily wrapped. It was propped on a stool, and he had a pair of crutches lying on the porch floor beside his chair. He was a man of middle years and slight build. He had a book laid open in his lap and a shotgun lying on the porch floor beside his chair.

  “You must be Tyler,” Longarm said as he approached.

  “Sheriff Tyler,” the man said, emphasizing the title. For some reason he looked ready to bristle.

  “I’m Long,” Longarm announced.

  “I don’t care how tall you are, mister. Just state your business. And it better not be that you came here to act as some sort of vigilante. If I get a whiff of that sort of thing, bum leg or not, I’ll run your ass right out of my county.” Tyler sounded like he meant that too. Not that Longarm suspected he would be capable of such a thing. The growling was all bluff. It pretty much had to be, busted up as he was.

  “You didn’t get a wire about me?” he asked.

  “A wire? Why should I?”

  “From Marshal Billy Vail?”

  “Vail? I . . . Oh, hell. You’re one of Vail’s deputies?”

  “That’s right.” Longarm stepped up onto the porch and offered his hand. “Custis Long,” he said, “but most call me Longarm.”

  Tyler looked embarrassed. “I apologize for that, Longarm. It’s just . . . I guess I don’t adjust so easy to being laid up. It drives me crazy that I can’t get around. The doc says it will be weeks before I can walk again, and then it will be with this accursed splint still on my leg. Won’t be able to ride except for in a damned buggy for maybe a couple months, and this is a big county that I’m responsible for. That’s why I asked Marshal Vail for help.” He motioned Longarm toward a ladder-back rocker sitting nearby on the porch.

  “Billy said you got a war brewing between sheepmen and goatherds?” Longarm said, setting his things down and taking a seat on the rocking chair.

  Tyler nodded. “Exactly. There is some good grazing up here. Very good grass in some places, scrub in others, and one stream running through the valley those fellows are fixing to fight over. What we have are two factions. The sheepmen are Basques out of some place over there in Europe. Spain, I think, but God knows what that language is that they speak. It sure isn’t Spanish. Then there’s the goatherds. They’re Mexican. Neither bunch is all that good with speaking English. Both of them want that valley for their animals. I’ve heard rumors that they intend to arm themselves, maybe even bring in professional gunslingers, and fight it out. The winner gets the grass and the loser gets laid out underneath it.”

  “And here you sit on your front porch,” Longarm said.

  “Exactly.”

  Longarm grunted. “Then between you knowing your county and me being able to get around in it, maybe the two of us can head this off.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping, Deputy.”

  “Which reminds me,” Longarm said. “Why is it that your own deputies can’t handle this for you? Surely they aren’t choosing up sides in this deal too.”

  “I don’t have deputies. This is a poor county. We can’t afford to pay for even one deputy. And the town doesn’t have a marshal either. Unfortunately, I’m all the law enforcement there is in McConnell County.”

  “Makes it hard with you bein’ laid up an’ all,” Longarm observed.

  “Exactly.”

  “While we’re on the subject,” Longarm said, “I’ll have jurisdiction here because of you asking for our help. That’s the law. But just to keep things on the up-and-up, it might be a good idea for you to swear me in as a county deputy acting under your authority too.” He grinned. “Without pay, of course.”

  “I can do that,” Tyler said, nodding. “Tomorrow morning mayhap you can go down to the courthouse with me and we can make it official. I’ll have you sworn in by our county clerk.”

  “That settles that,” Longarm said. “Now there’s just one thing more.”

  “And that would be . . . ?”

  “The fella down to the general store said you and your missus sometimes takes in boarders. Would it be possible . . .”

  Before Longarm could finish, Tyler raised up a bit in his chair and shouted, “Nell! Come out here, old woman. We got a houseguest for you to see to.”

  Chapter 11

  John Tyler’s “old woman” looked like she was barely out of her teens and maybe not that old. She was at most half her husband’s age. She was not very pretty, a little too much on the scrawny side for beauty, but she had a grand smile and her welcome was very obviously genuine.

  “Deputy Long, you said? Well, welcome to our home, Mr. Long.” She held her hand out to shake like a man, first wiping it clean on the apron that covered a plain house-dress. Her hand, Longarm noticed when he took it, was hard and calloused. He suspected that this was a woman who took her housekeeping seriously.

  “The marshal will be staying with us for a while, dear,” Tyler informed her.

  She beamed. “How nice. John is weary of having only me to talk with. It is bad enough during the day, but at least in daylight he can sit out here and watch down the street. At night he drives me crazy.” She laughed. “All the more so because I beat him at cribbage eight times out of ten.”

  “You exaggerate,” Tyler chimed in.

  “Seven and a half then,” Nell said.

  Longarm chuckled. “Then you’ll both be glad to hear that I am a perfectly awful cribbage player.”

  “Have you eaten yet, Mr. Long?”

  He shook his head. “No, I just got in a few minutes ago.”

  Nell smiled. “Then your timing is perfect. We will be sitting down to the table as soon a
s my potatoes are done.”

  “I don’t want to put you out, Miz Tyler. You weren’t ex-pectin’ me.”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “You’ll not put us out. We always have enough for an extra plate or two.”

  “Then I reckon will join you and thanks.”

  “Bring your things inside, Marshal. I will show you to your room and start putting things on the table. When you are settled in, you can come downstairs and keep John company until I call you two to supper.”

  “You’re mighty kind, ma’am,” Longarm said, removing his Stetson as he followed Nell inside their very tidy home.

  Nell showed him to a small bedroom upstairs at the back of the house. It smelled of fresh air and sunshine.

  “Please excuse the mess downstairs, Mr. Long. It isn’t easy for John to manage stairs with his crutches so he has been sleeping on the sofa. If you need anything during the night, you can wake me. I sleep in that bedroom there,” she said, pointing toward a door at the front of the house. “I’m a light sleeper, and I am up several times during the night to check on John, so do tap on my door if you need anything.”

  “You’re mighty kind, ma’am,” he said again.

  “All right then. I’ll go back to my kitchen. I’ll call you two when supper is ready.”

  Nell gathered up her skirts and scampered down the narrow and rather steep staircase. It was no wonder Tyler could not negotiate the stairs on his crutches.

  Longarm turned back into his bedroom to unpack the few things he’d brought and prepare for the evening.

  Chapter 12

  Nell Tyler’s dinner was every bit as good as anything he could have found in the finest hotels in Denver. Maybe better. Longarm laid his fork aside and put his napkin on the table beside his plate. “That was fine, ma’am. John, you got yourself a good’un here.”

  Both Tylers seemed pleased by the compliments.

  “Cribbage, Longarm?” Tyler asked.

  “If you don’t mind, John, I’d like to wander around in the town a little. See what I run into. Eavesdrop on the bar talk. I’m sure you understand.”