Longarm 241: Longarm and the Colorado Counterfeiter (20 page)

For a moment, Ashton sagged on his knees and worked his right arm, trying to ease the pain.

Longarm said, “Hurry up.”

Ashton said, “It hurts so badly, it's going to take me a second.”

Longarm pulled out his revolver and tapped the man on his silver-streaked hair. He said, “Get busy, damn it.”

Ashton raised his right hand up with the bandaged little finger and awkwardly twisted the knob of the safe, first to the left and then to the right. Finally, he grasped the handle of the iron door and shoved it downward. There was a distinct click and the door opened half an inch. Longarm unceremoniously shoved Ashton aside and leaned down, took hold of the handle, and pulled the heavy door open. Inside was a wooden box about the size of a small loaf of bread.

Longarm said, “Is that it?”

Ashton nodded. “Yeah. There's another set in the back of the safe, but they are the backups. They are nearly worn out, so we stopped using them.”

Longarm squatted down and picked up the box. It was surprisingly heavy. He pulled it out of the safe and set it on the floor in front of him. He opened the lid. Inside were two shiny steel plates about seven or eight inches long and about four inches wide. He took one out and looked at it. It was beautifully and exquisitely engraved. It was clear even to his untrained eye that it was the front part of a twenty-dollar bill. He took out another plate, and saw that it was the reverse, the back of the bill. He put both of the plates back in the box and carefully closed it.

He stood up. “You saved yourself a lot of pain, Mr. Ashton. Now, I'm going to leave you alone for a little while.”

Panic suddenly came on Ashton's face. He said, “You are not going to leave me down here? Not with that over there!” He pointed to where Lei Chang lay dead.

Longarm said, “Look, you've got plenty of brandy and plenty of laudanum for pain. It ought to make any bad memories you've got go away. I'm not going to be gone long. I see there's a jug of water over in the comer. You'll be all right. It ain't near time for breakfast yet.”

He turned and went up the stairs that led into the pantry-like room just off the kitchen. When he got in the room, he pulled on a rope and the stairs rose up, folding so that now they looked like a section of a wooden wall. He pulled it all the way shut and the rope slipped through, so that there was no sign of a stair unless you knew where to look.

He stepped out of the room, shut the door, and locked it with the key that was there. Ashton had put up quite a howl when he had left, but Longarm wasn't too concerned about that. He wanted one more look around, and he wanted to check on the man he'd left with the wound in the thigh. He doubted if the damned fool had used the tourniquet correctly. More than likely, he had bled to death by now. But Longarm owed him at least a look. He was, when all was said and done, a United States deputy marshal, even if he did have to deal with such cur dogs as Vernon Ashton. There had been a lot of people killed over that little wooden box that he was carrying under his arm.

Inside the safe he had noticed stacks of twenty-dollar bills. He hadn't noticed if they were real or not, but he had noticed a box that was full of the same things. He didn't know too many people that kept boxes of twenty-dollar bills sitting around in their cellar. He was quite sure he was looking at a box of counterfeit twenty-dollar bills.

But that was of no concern to him. His job was nearly over. He would take a quick look upstairs at the man with the tourniquet, and unless there was a reason for him to stay any longer, he'd get on his horse and head back to town, and wrap things up and catch the first train he could back to Denver.

He mounted the stairs of the curving stairway, and went up to the second floor into the long wide hall. He walked down it, his boots sidling on the carpet, his spurs not even making a sound. He wondered where the girl had gone. He wondered where her matron or nurse or guard or chaperone—whatever they call them in Mexico or Spain or wherever she was from—was. He hadn't seen her. He walked past all the closed doors and down to the end.

He went through the short hall, and then opened the door into the storage room where the young gunman lay on the floor. One look told Longarm he was too late. The young man had slid down until he was flat on the floor. His hands had come loose from the stick he had wound the tourniquet with, and Longarm could tell that a great deal of blood had flowed. He didn't know if the young man had grown too weak to keep the pressure, or if he had kept it on too long and cut off the circulation and his leg had gone to sleep and then he had gone to sleep. Anyway, he was dead, sleeping forever.

Longarm shifted the box over under his left arm, and then turned and went out of the room, closing the door behind him. He still had one revolver in his waistband in the small of his back and one revolver in his holster. His rifle was downstairs, just off the kitchen by the door to the back, where he had killed the man with the shotgun. Longarm walked slowly down the hall, alert. In such a place, he was never certain just how many of them were there. But he felt quite safe now that he had Vernon Ashton under lock and key. A good many of them were dangerous men, but none of them were really dangerous without Ashton's money to buy their evil deeds and their evil ways. If there was anyone dangerous on the whole place, he was now in the cellar with the dead Lei Chang.

Longarm was about to let his mind start to think about the ride back to town when the door to the right suddenly opened. It was the door the girl had come out before. It was flung open so that she stood fully in the open. He could see now that she was still wearing the same housedress or nightgown, whichever way you wanted to look at it, but this time, she hadn't bothered with any buttons. Her breasts were clearly revealed, straight and erect, as was the shiny patch of fur that grew on the soft mound where her legs met.

Longarm stopped. He didn't know what to do. She was no more than six feet away from him. By rights, he should walk on by her, get on his horse, and ride on back into town and finish the job. But then, she was a job that he had twice never quite been able to finish.

He took a step toward her. Her lips parted and she stepped backward. He took another step, and she kept walking back. Soon, he was inside the door, and she had backed until the back of her legs had met the bed in the opulent room. She sat down, her dress flaring out all around her.

He stopped within two feet of her and stood staring down at her, feeling his groin get thick and his jeans get too small and that copper taste come in his mouth. There was a small table near the head of the bed. He reached over and set the box of engraved plates on it. His eyes came back to her. She was sitting there, her head back and her mouth slightly open. She ran her tongue around her lips. Her eyes were black and fiery. She leaned back further on the bed so that he could see where the black silken hairs ran into the pink flesh. Longarm took another step toward her. She suddenly raised up and began frantically trying to undo his gun belt. He took her hands away quickly. He didn't want her to know about the derringer that was concealed in the buckle. Instead, he undid the belt himself and let it fall to the floor.

He reached behind himself and pulled the other revolver out of his waistband. She attacked the belt that held up his pants with fierce energy and flying fingers. In a moment, he was standing open with his member erect. She buried her head, sinking him deep into her mouth. Longarm shivered and clutched her to him. He pitched the revolver up toward the head of the bed near the pillow. He was pushing her back, his pants down around his ankles.

She worked herself up on the bed until her head was up at the pillows. She opened her legs wide to receive him. With her soft hand, she cleverly guided him inside her. Then her legs were around his hips, and she was pulling him back and forth with a motion that was almost more than he could stand. Inside, she was so hot that he could feel the heat of her through his shirt. She was kissing him with fevered kisses with a wide-open mouth and a darting tongue. He clutched her to him, letting her do the work, only pumping in response to her thrusts. He could feel himself going up and up and up until there was a sudden crescendo. It was like the explosion of the dynamite, only it seemed bigger and louder and made more noise. It was as if the mountains all around were being leveled.

Longarm went up and up to the very top, and then tumbled down as they exploded, going boom and boom and boom, until finally there were no more mountains and no more explosions. He sagged limply on her. He could feel her wet kisses on his face. He could feel her hands clawing at his back. She was saying in his ear, “More! More!”

He gasped out when he could, “Honey, you're going to have to give me a minute or two. I'm not as young as I used to be.”

“Please, you don't let me stay like this. Please.”

She hunched up against him, trying to work him and bring vigor back to his member. He said, “Honey, you can't whip a dead horse.”

It was in that instant that he became aware of movement to the left. He turned his face quickly, half expecting to see the girl's maid or chaperone.

It was neither. It was Finley.

Longarm was so surprised, he said, “What the hell?”

Finley was holding a gun in his hand. He was just inside the door. He said, “Well, howdy, Mr. Long. You look like you're having a good time.”

Longarm said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

The man just grinned. “Well, she's just gave you a really good fucking. I'm about to give you another.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little piece of leather. Attached to it was a badge. “This may come as a surprise to you, U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long. But I'm a United States Treasury agent and I'm taking charge of this case.”

Longarm was slowly pulling out of the girl. He was conscious that he was standing in front of another man who had a gun in his hand and his pants were down. He glanced casually up along the side of the bed that was hidden from Finley's view by the girl's body. His second gun was just by her side. As he started to raise up a little, he flipped the cover over the gun so that it couldn't be seen from any angle.

His mind was in a whirl. All of a sudden the man he had thought was a stockman and a poker player and a fairly friendly fellow turned out to be a Treasury agent, one that was intent on having things his own way.

Longarm said slowly, “All right. So you're a Treasury agent. What does that mean, you're taking over the case? Whatever a case is. I've had a case of whiskey and I've had a case of the clap, but I don't know what this case is.”

Finley pushed his hat up a little bit with his left hand and gave his revolver a circular motion with his right. He said, “It means that this is all mine. It means that we are going to pretend that you never existed.”

“Exactly what do you mean by that?”

Finley grinned, and it was not particularly pleasing to see. He said, “Well, if your superiors had been giving you hell on account of you couldn't stop this one counterfeiter, you'd understand how I feel. If you were in my position and you were able to take that case yonder”—he nodded at the box of steel engravings—“into headquarters and say look here what I've got. I've got the engraving plates. I've got the paper. I've got the specimens they call the counterfeit stuff. I've got the man who done it.”

“So you plan to go in and tell them that you did it all on your own. Is that it?'

Finley smiled again. His teeth were a little yellow, Longarm noticed for the first time. Finley said, “Well, don't you think it would sound a little better if it sounded like I did it all on my own. Look at all the opposition I had at this place. Look at all the opposition I've overcome. Look at the hell of a job I did. I must have killed about fifteen or twenty of these sonofabitches. I killed Early, who was wanted all over the country, and now I have the boss man, Vernon Ashton, locked up in the cellar. Hell, it looks to me like I've done a good job. Looks like I busted up the whole ring.”

Longarm had come to his knees and was pulling up his pants, buttoning the buttons one at a time. His mind was racing. He said, “I guess I'm kind of in the way for you to be able to tell a story like that. Is that what you're saying?”

“Well, Mr. Long, I'm sure you can see the right of it. Or should I say, Deputy Long. I mean, that's going to make me a big man in the Treasury Department, doing a deal like this. This man's been giving us fits for several years. My boss has been giving me fits for several years. Now, here you are. You've done a fine job. I've admired every step you've taken.”

Longarm said, “You know, I've always had the sensation that somebody was watching me. That somebody was looking over my shoulder. I could never really see them, but I felt them.”

Finley chuckled. “Well, your feelings were right. I'm real good at becoming invisible when I need to. Yes, sir. I've watched every step you took. I knew when you left the hotel with that first load of dynamite. I saw you go up that first hill and blow that first load of rocks down on them. I thought then that you were one smart fellow. You knew what you were doing. You were going to make them so scared that they're going to come out. Then you were going to go in. You weren't going in and go up against those forty-to-one odds. No, sir. You had brains. So, I just naturally let you lead on. Tonight, I was right behind you. I took every step for you. In fact, I finished off one job for you. There was a young fellow down the hall that had a tourniquet on. That was a damn fool thing to do. What the hell did you want to leave a witness like him around for? I undid that tourniquet and let him bleed to death. That was a nice thing, don't you think?”