Longarm #396 : Longarm and the Castle of the Damned (9781101545249) (9 page)

It took something of a tussle, but the stableman managed to get bridle and saddle onto the dun, then handed the reins to Longarm. “All yours, mister. Bring him back when you're done with him.”

Longarm more than half suspected that the stableman was wanting to have a little amusement out of this deal. Likely he wanted to enjoy the show while one Custis Long was getting his ass bucked off the horse.

Well, if it was a show he wanted, it was a show he would get.

Longarm vaulted onto the dun's back and clamped his legs tight to the horse's barrel.

By some odd chance the dun's hind end happened to be pointed toward the liveryman at the time. The horse's powerful hindquarters bunched and both back legs lashed out. One hoof caught the livery man square in the stomach, missing his nuts by inches.

The man doubled over and Longarm quickly reined the dun away. After all, he wanted to give the idiot a lesson, not kill him.

Longarm sat the dun through four more powerful explosions of muscle and fury before he guided the horse out into the street, reining it down long enough for him to find the stirrups. Then he eased off the pressure on the horse's mouth and let it blow off some steam.

The horse had both power and spirit, and he suspected the man at the Rawlins livery stable had chosen a horse that was much better than the fellow realized.

“All right, old son,” Longarm muttered aloud. “Let's you an' me do some travelin'.”

The dun, he noticed, turned its ears about at the sound of his soothing voice. When Longarm nudged it with his heels, the horse flicked its ears forward again and set out at a swift, smooth road gait.

Longarm was smiling when he rode south toward Baggs.

There just was not a whole hell of a lot to Baggs. A handful of stores surrounded by a scattering of houses and that was it. It was fine country for cows, though, with good grass and some surface water. Not so good for farming, because of the rock lying just beneath the surface of the soil. A few windmills jutting above the skyline suggested there was water not too far underground. All in all, Longarm thought, mighty good country.

The dun stepped high and handsome down the road from Rawlins and gave him no trouble at all along the way. Indeed, Longarm thought, it was a much better horse than its owner knew. The animal just needed an easy hand and some exercise. Likely it was bored just standing inside a small pen day in and day out. Longarm had no business owning a horse, but if he did, he would want one like this.

He pulled up outside a general mercantile that had a UNITED STATES POST OFFICE sign posted in a front window. Other signs indicated the store was also a stagecoach station, a buyer of wool, a dealer in farm equipment, and a telegraph operator, plus proudly proclaiming that the proprietor was one Alvin D. Zaum.

Longarm tied the dun at the hitching rail and entered the cluttered store. A thin man, bald as a boiled egg, was behind the counter. He wore spectacles and an apron so spotlessly white as to almost blind a man from the glare. Well, almost.

“You would be Mr. Zaum, I presume?” Longarm said.

“You presume correctly, sir,” the gent in the apron said.

Longarm introduced himself.

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Marshal. How may I help you?” Zaum asked.

“I'm lookin' for a gent name of Carl Crowne or anyways his family. I'm told they have a place somewhere around here.”

“Oh, yes. Henry Crowne and Henrietta are fine folks. I've known them for some years now. You won't find any finer.”

“Could you tell me how to get to their place, please?”

“Easily done. You ride due east about eight miles then take the track south for another three and there you are. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Longarm smiled. “Two things. No, make that three. First, I'm lookin' for their granddaughter Justine. D'you know if she's out at the Crowne place?”

“That I cannot tell you. I haven't seen Justine of late, but that doesn't mean anything. She doesn't come to town very often. So what is your second question?”

“Food. Is there anyplace in town where a man could find a meal?” Longarm asked.

“Oh, now that one is easy enough. Right down the block here,” he pointed, “is a fine place. There isn't a sign posted, but you can tell where I mean by the blue roller blinds at the windows. Consuela serves excellent food at a modest price.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And you said you had three questions?”

Longarm smiled. “Yes, sir. Cigars. Would you happen to have any good cheroots? Something fresh with the tobacco not dried out yet.”

Zaum smiled right back, reached beneath his counter, and brought out a large, brown glass thermidor with a cork lid. “I have just the thing for you.”

A few minutes later Longarm was back outside, this time with a good supply of excellent cheroots in his pocket and a rumbling in his belly at the thought of food.

He found the blue window blinds Zaum had mentioned and went inside. He was immediately surrounded by the aroma of grease and spices. The place was very nearly full, but Longarm found a stool at one end of the counter and eased down onto it. Henry and Henrietta Crowne could wait another few minutes.

Half an hour later, with his belly warmed on the inside and a fresh cheroot between his teeth, Longarm walked out onto the main street of Baggs once again.

He found a small barn that sold feed and hay and purchased a gallon of mixed grain for the dun. He tied the sack of grain to his saddle for use later and led the horse to a public trough. Longarm pumped fresh water into the trough while the horse drank, and when it was done, he tightened his cinch and again swung into the saddle.

He reined the dun east.

He was about three miles out when he caught a glimpse of the slanting late afternoon sunlight glinting off polished metal at the base of a large, black gray boulder.

Longarm dropped off the saddle, putting his full weight onto his left stirrup and clinging to the saddle horn with his right hand. Ducked down low like that, he could not be seen by whoever was observing him from two hundred or so yards distant.

It was not that he knew with certainty that the ambusher he'd encountered up at Medicine Bow had followed him down here. But he was damn sure not going to bet his life against it.

“Hiyyup, horse,” he clucked. As soon as the dun quickened its pace into a run, Longarm swung back into the saddle. He leaned low against the horse's neck and got the hell away from there.

A few rather cautious hours later Deputy United States Marshal Custis Long found the Crowne homestead.

He was guided to it by a plume of dark smoke.

Of the house there remained only blackened timber and smoldering, still hot embers.

The other buildings on the place, including a small barn and a large chicken house, were unscathed.

Longarm tied the dun well away from the stench of fireblackened timbers, then looked in and around what remained of the place.

There was no sign of Henrietta or of Henry Crowne, although a hint of a scent like that of roasted meat suggested where he could find the couple.

The ashes of the freshly burned house would have to cool before Longarm could confirm his suspicions though.

The same man who'd tried to ambush him had done this? Or an associate?

Longarm scowled at the thought.

His actions, though, were outwardly calm as he unsaddled the dun and put it in a stall in Crowne's otherwise empty barn. He poured the grain into a corner trough in the stall, added a large armload of hay that he found in the loft, and carried a bucket of water from Crowne's well.

Longarm tossed more hay down and piled it into another of the four stalls to make a rudimentary bed for himself. He would not be able to poke through the burned remains of the house until morning at the very least, and he wanted to do that before he decided on his next move.

It was, he thought, a very good thing that he ate before he rode out of Baggs, because it looked like supper and then breakfast to follow would consist of cold water from Crowne's pump.

But what the hell was going on here?

Was this what Mose Arthur had been worried about? Was this what the old man wanted to tell Longarm about back there in Cheyenne?

Longarm had more questions than answers. Or he did right now. He damn sure intended to find those answers and more.

In the meantime he could count on a cold night's sleep and a hungry one.

Come dawn Longarm again watered the horse and gave it grain from a bin that he found in Crowne's barn. He also carried a peck of the grain into the chicken house, which he had discovered that morning, unscathed, and scattered it for the birds. He left the pen open so the chickens could get out to forage for themselves once he was gone. Otherwise they would surely starve to death. On the other hand, when they escaped their confinement, they would be fodder for hawks and foxes and the other natural predators.

While he was in there, he collected eggs—eleven of them, and it would be hard to find any fresher than these—for his breakfast.

He started a fire using wood from Crowne's woodpile and made a quick foray into the blackened, smoldering remains of the house to fetch a skillet that was still sitting atop Henrietta Crowne's cast iron range, likely the ranch wife's pride and joy.

That stove and a naked chimney were pretty much all that still stood upright. Everying else had literally been “burned to the ground” as the saying went.

He kicked through the mess in the vicinity of the stove and found a serving spoon to go with the skillet.

He also, much to his disgust, found what looked like the bones of a human hand, cracked and discolored by the fire but still recognizable. That would be Henrietta, he guessed. He did not look any further. That could wait until later.

Longarm was possessed of a strong stomach, but he wanted to get some food into that stomach before he got to poking around in search of bodies.

He carried the skillet and large spoon out of the ashes and rinsed them off at the pump. Stuck his boots under the flow of water too to cool them down. There were still active coals in the mess that had been a house and a home, and much of that heat had transferred through the leather of his boot soles.

He had no lard or tallow to put into the skillet, so a scant depth of water would have to do. He set the skillet over his fire and cracked the eggs—every one of them—in. With neither grease nor spatula to make the cooking easier he simply stirred the whole mess around, and once the eggs more or less solidified, he pulled the skillet off the stove.

There was probably some coffee somewhere in what was left of the house, but it was not important enough for another trip into the still hot timbers. He settled for cold water from the pump to go with his scrambled eggs and ate, grateful for a better breakfast than he might have gotten. He might have had to settle for just the cold water for his meal.

When he was done eating, Longarm found a sturdy hoe in a shed attached to the side of the barn. It would be just the thing for the necessary poking and prodding through the ashes. He took a deep breath and steeled his nerve, then ventured back into the ruins of what had been Henry and Henrietta's proud home.

“Two bodies,” Longarm said. “One man, one woman.”

Jim Dolan, Baggs's blacksmith and part-time town marshal, shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Henry would be the man, I suppose. The woman could be Henrietta or Justine, either one.”

“The grandmother,” Longarm said. “Unless the girl had gray hair. I found a few sprigs o' hair stuck underneath the skull where they was more or less protected from the flame. The hairs were silver gray.”

Dolan grunted. He was a burly man with a belly like a barrel. “Good people, the Crownes.” The big man sighed and repeated, “Good people.”

“They hadn't been killed any too long ago,” Longarm said, “or anyway they hadn't been burned all that long ago, for the house was still smokin' an' smolderin' when I got there. The ashes was still plenty hot. Call it the day before yesterday that they was killed an' their place burned down.”

“Accident, do you think?” Dolan asked.

“Not a chance. The back of the man's head was smashed in an' there was a bullet hole square in the woman's forehead.” Longarm paused. “I didn't take time to bury them. Reckon you should send somebody out to take care of that. And there's some chickens running loose. Seems a shame to let them go to feed the hawks. You might tell whoever you send to take a crate or two for them as can be caught.”

“I'll do that. Thanks.” Dolan pursed his lips, his brow furrowing in thought. Then he shook his head. “There's been no strangers coming through except you. None that didn't get right back on the stage after the rest stop here, that is.”

“You keep track?” Longarm asked.

“Of course. It's my job.” Dolan looked offended by the question. “I may not be but a small town lawman, but I do what I can.”

“There was no second male body. What about the son? Justine's daddy?”

“Carl hasn't been seen around here in two, three years or thereabouts. He's a bad one, Carl is. Did some time up to Laramie a while back. Hasn't been back to see his folks since.”

“In the territorial prison, d'you mean?” Longarm asked.

Dolan nodded. “I never did get it straight what Carl did that time. Whatever it was happened outside of the basin.” He made that sound like anything taking place outside the immediate vicinity of Baggs might as well have been happening on the surface of the moon, and surely no information could flow so far. Or be of any concern if by some fluke it did.