Longarm 241: Longarm and the Colorado Counterfeiter (15 page)

Longarm went back across the wall, passing Early's body, and got up next to the stone mansion. He was looking for a window or any sort of opening that would allow him to see any part of the house inside. He began skirting the place to his left. It was rectangular. He got to the comer and turned south. He came to a door, and assumed it was the back door off the kitchen. He very gently tried the knob. It felt locked. He tried no further, but kept going down the line of the building. There were any number of windows, but they were higher up than he could comfortably reach. They were all covered with some kind of curtains on the inside. The back had no other door but the kitchen door.

He turned the comer of the south side, and started down the short side of the rectangle. He was a little surprised to see a stairwell halfway down. They were white wooden steps, and they ran up to the second story to a door. He had not expected that. For the moment, he had no intention of climbing up to the door. But it was there, and he knew it was there, and it looked like a way to get in. The only question was whether it was too obvious a way to get in.

He turned a comer again, and went down the front of the house. The first part was very much like the back, blank walls with high windows. But then he got to the porch, a big stone and concrete porch, with a good high concrete railing around it. Naturally, that led to the front door. He had been through there. The size of the door being what it was, he doubted that he could shoot his way into such a place. He did not bother to go up on the porch. Instead, he backed away from the house to get a clear view of the flat roof, to see if perhaps anyone was surveying his movements from on high. But there was nothing there, just the dark outline of the house against the dark sky.

He stood for a moment in thoughtful contemplation of the situation. Then he walked toward the south end of the mansion. He walked cautiously, looking behind him every step or two and to his open side. When he got to the end of the building, he stopped and looked carefully for a moment, searching for any sign of movement. He had decided that the stairway up to the second floor was perhaps his best method of entry. He felt pretty sure that the door at the top of the stairs would be locked. But if he had to break a door in, it was probably going to be the least conspicuous and perhaps the furtherest away from wherever Ashton and whoever was with him were located.

He slipped around the comer of the building, and went to the middle of the end wall, looking at the flight of stairs that rose up. The steps were painted white. They stood out in sharp contrast to the darker rock that made up the walls on either side. The door, he could see, did not enter straight ahead, but rather to his left. As he entered, he would be entering toward the front of the mansion. He had no idea what he would find if he were able to get the door open. He didn't know if he would be entering a bedroom, a storage room, a counterfeiting operation, or a room with more shotguns. All he knew was that he had to do something.

He started up, taking slow steps, one at a time. Surprisingly, the stair steps were wooden, but they were big heavy planks, so that they didn't creak or give. Nevertheless, he went slowly and carefully, his rifle at the ready, watching the door at the top of the landing. Every step or two, he looked behind him. If someone wanted to trap him, this was an ideal place to do it. If a figure suddenly appeared in the opening at the bottom of the stairs with a gun in his hands, he didn't much know what he could do, just try to be a little faster.

Halfway up, he could see that the door was not like the others. It was not a big, heavy, varnished affair. Rather, it too was painted white and, as near as he could make out, was made out of ordinary wood. It looked like a door you might see in a house in town. Longarm kept walking, climbing until he reached the landing. Except for the door, there was nothing else around him, just the rock of the building. The door was just there. A blank white expanse of wood. It didn't look particularly reinforced. He reached out with his right hand, holding his rifle in his left, and tentatively touched the knob. It was just a knob. With his fingers, he gave it a gentle, partial twist to the right. It went easily enough. He quickly stopped and knelt down. The door might be thin enough to fire through, and if someone saw the knob turning, they could fire through the frame of the door and kill themselves one dumb U.S. deputy marshal.

It was clear what had to be done, and he got himself ready to do it. He cocked the rifle hammer and rose from his knees so that he was on the toes of both feet. Then he made himself into as small a ball as he could. Then he reached up, turned the doorknob, and pushed the door hard.

It swung wide. The room before him was black dark. But as he looked, there suddenly came two explosions so close together that they sounded like one. There were muzzle flashes. He could hear the bullets sing over his head. Two men, two shots about four feet apart. Without aiming, he fired the rifle from his hip at where he had seen the first flash, and then levered a shell into the chamber and fired where he had seen the second muzzle flash. He dropped the rifle, drew his revolver, and fired, double-actioned, four shots, aiming low into the room. After that, he scuttled forward as fast as he could and flung himself flat.

Without further movement, he reached behind him, took the spare gun out of his waistband, and stuck the one he was using into his holster so that he had a handful of loaded gun. He had heard the distinct sound of bullet slugs hitting flesh. He had heard that sound too many times to be mistaken. It was a dull thump that only a bullet hitting something firm yet soft would give. Longarm lay quietly, holding his breath, listening as hard as he could. There was not a sound in the room. Eventually, he was going to have to find out what had happened to the men who had fired the guns at him.

Very cautiously, he got to one knee, the revolver pointed in the general direction where he had seen the guns fired. He reached into his shirt pocket and got out one of the big matches he had been using to light the dynamite. He felt the floor. It was hardwood. Longarm pulled back the hammer on his revolver. When he struck the match, he wouldn't have much time to think about what to do.

In the sudden blaze of light that the match made, he saw one man lying flat on his face, a gun held loosely in his hand. He wasn't moving or breathing. There was a door on the other side of the room that was half open. There was no one else there. Longarm did not believe that the man on the floor had fired one shot and then jumped four feet to the other side and fired another. He walked across the little room, looking. Sure enough, leading through the door he could see a pattern of bloodstains that someone had left from a wound that was leaking, most likely, from a .44 cartridge.

Longarm struck another match and looked down at the dead man. He was just ordinary-looking. He could have been one of those that had met him and had been sent to kill him. He looked like all the rest of those young, hard ranch hands that Ashton had hired.

The only problem was that he wasn't supposed to be there. According to the men he'd talked to, there was nobody left but Early, but there was one and there was one that had gotten away. The question was, how many more of them were between him and Ashton and the counterfeiting?

Longarm pushed the half-open door open fully. Again, there was the dark. He crouched swiftly, but no gunshots rang out. Instead, he noticed a pencil-thin line of light running along the floor a few feet to his right. From other speckles of light running up toward the ceiling, he could tell it was a door into a lighted room. It gave him pause. He had no idea what opening that door was going to uncover. For a moment he stood in the anteroom that lay between the two rooms. Finally, he shrugged. With his revolver at the ready and the rifle in his hand, cocked and loaded, he reached out and felt around gingerly until he located the knob. It too turned easily to his touch. He shoved at the door with a quick hard motion, leaning hard up against the wall as he did so as to be as much out of the line of fire as possible. Nothing happened.

He carefully put his eye around the doorjamb. Just across the room, some fourteen feet by fourteen feet, he saw a man lying on his back, propped up against the wall next to yet another door. The man had a grimace on his face and both of his hands were clutching his thigh. Longarm could see the trail of blood on the floor that led out of the room he had just left and to under the man's leg where he lay. He had a gun, but it was a few feet away on the floor. Longarm moved in swiftly, holding his rifle at the ready. The man just glanced up at him and grimaced.

Longarm leaned down and flipped the man's revolver away. Then he looked at another one of the hard-faced young gunmen who had hired out to Ashton. The gunman looked steadily back at him. He said, his voice choking,

“I'm bleeding to death. You've got to get me some help.”

Longarm stood looking down at him. He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guarantee you're bleeding to death and you ain't far to go. You should have put a tourniquet on that.”

The young man's face twisted. “I don't know how,” he said.

“Tell you what. I'll put one on you if you'll tell me what's ahead and where Ashton is and what I've got to go through to get to him. Is that a deal?”

The man nodded quickly. “Hell, yes. What choice do I have?”

Longarm said, “You have the choice between lying and telling the truth. If you lie, I'll find out about it and I'll come back and undo any good I've done. Do you understand that?”

The man said, “I don't owe that sonofabitch nothing. He paid us a little extra to stay on and try to stop you. He didn't think you were very smart.”

Longarm half smiled. “I don't reckon you boys who've been working for him ought to be talking about who's smart and who's not.”

“Damn it! Are you going to help me or not?” The man raised a weak voice. “I'm bleeding!”

Longarm reached into his pocket and took out his big clasp knife. He opened the blade, and the man stared at him, frightened.

Longarm said, “Don't get nervous. I ain't fixing to stick you. I've got to find something to make a tourniquet out of, and I was thinking about your sleeve. Wait a minute, what size belt are you wearing on your britches?” He reached down, lifted the man's gun belt up, and looked at the belt that was run through the loops of his jeans. It was a narrow belt about the right size. He unbuckled it and pulled it, with some effort, out from under the man. After that, he quickly ran it under the man's leg and worked it up until it was up to the very top of his thigh. Longarm buckled it back again, but there was a great deal of slack in it. He needed something to twist it with. The room had several packing crates in it with wooden slats. With the butt of his rifle, he busted one of the slats, got it loose, and worked it off, and then with his knife, peeled it down until it was not quite the size of a twelve-inch ruler. He ran that through the looped belt and twisted it until it began to put a pressure on the man's groin. He knew that was where the big blood vessel was, and he knew that was where you had to shut the blood off.

The man's face was going chalky white. His eyes were afraid. “Is it doing any good?” He had taken his hands away so Longarm could work, and the blood had almost been gurgling out when Longarm first started putting the tourniquet on. Now that he had it tight, the blood ceased to flow. Longarm guided the man's hand to the piece of wood. He said, “You've got to keep this tight. This is what is shutting off the blood and keeping it inside you so that it can't run out that hole in your leg. It's got to coagulate. Now, you've got a rough time ahead of you. Tell me the truth so I can get my business cleared up, and then I can get back here and bandage you better. What you need is that doctor in town, but you couldn't get there by yourself.”

The man's face was still pale. He said, “Has it stopped bleeding?”

“Yes, but you've lost a lot of blood. I don't understand what you two were doing in that room in there.”

The man said through clenched teeth, “We were just supposed to watch that door in there and shoot anybody who came through it. That's all we were told. Mr. Early gave us an extra hundred dollars apiece for staying on for a couple more days. If we plugged you—I reckon it was you—we were going to get an extra five hundred, so naturally we jumped at the chance.”

“All right. What other surprises do I have? First of all, where is Ashton?”

“As far as I know, he's in his big office,” the man said. “Do you know where that is?”

“Yeah, it's downstairs on the other end of the house.”

“That's right.”

“Who else is here?”

“Well, there is his woman and her servant. She may be the woman's aunt for all I know. And then there is two men downstairs.”

“Is that all?”

The man nodded slowly. “Yeah, that's all. All the other women left.”

Longarm said, “They told me there was five men trying to get out. That only accounts for four.”

“Early shot the other one. Slim somebody. He wouldn't go along with it. Said he'd get out somehow. Early shot him with that shotgun of his, I reckon as some encouragement to us so we'd give him a helping hand.”

“What kind of hands are those boys downstairs?”

“Good ones.”

Longarm said, “Where are they?”

“I think both of them are watching the back door. One of them may be watching the front door. Early was real certain that the attack would come from the staircase you came up.”

Longarm stood up, wiping his hands, where he had gotten some blood on them, on his jeans. “Well, here's what you need to do. I don't know if you can tell when fifteen minutes is up, but you need to loosen that tourniquet for about two or three minutes. If you don't, you'll get gangrene in your leg. Then you tighten it up for another fifteen minutes. Understand that?”