Longarm 243: Longarm and the Debt of Honor (2 page)

Henry shook his head and removed his glasses to polish them with a handkerchief he extracted from a coat pocket—Henry religiously maintained proper attire, even inside a stifling office at the height of summer—and carefully unfolded the handkerchief before giving every appearance of total concentration on that homely task, as if Longarm's story was of little interest indeed.

“Norm Wold is . . . more'n a friend,” Longarm haltingly tried to explain. “He's what you might call a... mentor. Yeah, mentor. It fits.”

“Yours?” Henry asked.

“Uh-huh. From a long time back. There was a time, see... I don't talk about it much... there was a time I coulda taken a different road from what I done. A time I coulda wound up in the wrong place with the wrong people doing some wrong things. If you know what I mean.”

Henry grunted noncommittally, and continued to pay attention only to the cleanliness of his spectacles. It occurred to Longarm that Henry looked slightly owlish and—it took him a moment to figure it out—sort of incomplete without the familiar glasses in place on his nose.

“What I mean is, I coulda wound up on the wrong side of these law-an'-order chases, Henry. Coulda, that is, but for Norm Wold. He's the one grabbed me by the collar one night an' gave me some straight talk. Didn't just talk to me, though. That wasn't Norm's way. Oh, he said all the usual words, sure. But then he up an' did something about it. Backed up his mouth with his actions. You know?”

“Not, um, actually.”

“Yeah, well, that's what he did. Norm didn't just say he had faith in me an' in what I could become. He showed it to me. Hired me for a part-time deputy town marshal. This was after I'd paid off from a trail crew driving a herd of mixed cows an' steers up from Texas, me and a bunch of other wild an' randy young assholes. We paid off an' blew our pay in no time, an' were thinking of ways we could all get rich again without having to go to all the bother of working for it. If you see what I mean.”

“Uh-huh.” Henry scrubbed at his already gleaming disks of glass some more, not so much as glancing toward Longarm.

“Yeah, well, Mr. Norm, he singled me out from the crowd. God only knows why, what he saw in me that he figured was worth saving. He found me drunk in an alley this one time, an' hauled me back to his jail, but instead of whipping my ass an' taking me before the justice of the peace like he probably ought, he let me sleep off the worst of my drunk, an' then came in with coffee and crullers an' sat me down for a talk, like I already told you. An' then he went out an' talked with the mayor an' the judge an' got them to let him hire me. I kinda suspect my pay come outa Mr. Norm's own pocket 'cause that shitty little brand-new cow town didn't have hardly any money to waste on public works at the time. Anyway, he taught me that bein' a peace officer can be a thing a man can take pride in.

“It wasn't much of a job, mind, an' it didn't last long, just long enough for me to get shut of those boys I'd been running with and get my feet back under me some. Then Norm grinned an' fed me a big dinner an' fired my ass so I'd get on back down the road where I belonged. But God, he taught me an awful lot in that little while, and I'm grateful to him still.

“Which he knows, of course. I've written to him a couple times over the years. No, don't look at me like that, dammit, I have too written to him, real letters an' everything. And I've seen him a couple times when I found myself in his part of the world. I'm still grateful to him, an' some of the lessons Norm taught me then came back an' helped sway me when the chance came to pin a badge on for real, riding for Billy here. So you can see that I'd be partial to Norm. That I'd feel I owe the man for what all he done for me.”

“I can see that,” Henry agreed.

“Right. Well, this article says that Marshal Norman Wold of Hirt County, Kansas, has been arrested an' charged with arson an' grand larceny along with malfeasance in office an' half a dozen other damn things. Can you imagine it? Norm Wold? Why, he's the most honest man I ever in my whole life met. Can't be any truth to what this article says, but obviously somebody's got it in for Norm. An' Henry, the thing is, I appreciate what Norm did for me those years past. So now I reckon it's my time to go do something back for him. I got to head back to Kansas, Henry. I got to. You tell Billy that. If I can't have the time off, well, he can let me know. I'll head for the nearest post office an' mail my badge back to him. All right?”

Henry set his spectacles carefully onto his nose and one at a time hooked the gilt sidepieces over his ears, then took still more time to fold his handkerchief and return it to an inner pocket before he responded.

“I'll tell him, Longarm. This town in Kansas. What did you say the name is?”

Longarm had to consult the newspaper again to be sure. “Place called Crow's Point, it says here.”

“Any idea where that is?”

“Not the faintest. But I'll find it, Henry. Damn me if I don't.”

“Try and be back by ... oh, hell, never mind. We'll make do somehow, ask for a continuance or something if the prosecutor thinks he absolutely has to have your testimony for the arraignment. We'll take care of it.”

“Thanks, Henry. You're a friend.”

“Don't let that get out, dang it, or every one of you lazy so-and-so's will be wanting favors from me.”

Longarm smiled. And hurried back out onto the street. He had to go by the boardinghouse to get his gear, then head to the railroad depot for the next available east-bound.

He could figure out where he was going once he was on his way.

It took a train and two stagecoach transfers to get there, but Longarm was able to find Crow's Point, seat of Hirt County, Kansas, with hardly any trouble at all. Unless you wanted to count two and a half days of hot, dusty, bone-jarring travel as trouble. If Longarm had been tired before, he was damn near a state of collapse by the time a taciturn and grumpy coach driver dumped him and his luggage onto the empty main street of the town.

Longarm had no idea what Crow's Point looked like nor how large a place it was, mostly because by the time the stage arrived—hours late thanks to repeated problems with one of the wheel hubs—it was nigh onto midnight and even the saloons, if any, seemed to have shut down for the night.

“You aren't gonna just leave me here, are you?” Longarm protested to the surly jehu on the driving box.

“Mister, if you wanta buy a ticket on to Riceville you can stay with me. Otherwise you get off here.”

“But dammit, the stationmaster has closed up an' gone home for the night. You can at least point me to a hotel or a boardinghouse, some damn thing.”

The driver let fly with a stream of dark brown juice that narrowly missed splattering Longarm's coat sleeve.

“Take your things off here or buy another ticket, mister, it don't make no never-mind to me.” He picked up his driving lines, and Longarm had to hurry to snatch his carpetbag and saddle off the roof before the stage rolled on with them still there on the luggage rack.

“Thanks a helluva lot,” Longarm grumbled as the coach clattered off into the darkness, the driver trying to make up for lost time.

Longarm scowled, realized that complaining would not do much to improve his situation no matter how often or how fervently he went back to that same dry well, and decided the only sensible thing here was to set about making things better.

The first order of business was to trim and light a cheroot. The next was to open his carpetbag and find the bottle of finest-quality Maryland rye whiskey he'd packed. A dram of that made the current misery a mite more bearable, and he corked the bottle and returned it to the protective nest of clean drawers he'd wrapped around it for travel purposes.

“Now,” he told himself aloud, “whyn't I do something 'bout a place to sleep. Damn place is sure to look better to me after a good night's rest.” He picked up his things and set off down the barren main street in search of a place—any would do—where he could spread his blankets.

 

No, he thought, Crow's Point looked better at night than in the gray light of dawn.

Longarm stood in front of the barn where he'd helped himself to a free night's lodging—a sign beside the wide doors claimed it was a livery and wagon park, but he hadn't been able to find a hostler or anyone else in charge last night—and surveyed what he could see of the burg.

He wasn't impressed.

There were a few dozen sun-weathered storefronts along the street, and scattered pretty much willy-nilly around the business district, perhaps twice that many houses. The homes did not look any tidier or more prosperous than the businesses. Longarm judged there hadn't been a paint salesman come through in a good many years, but the next man in would have a world of opportunity.

It was colorless, Longarm decided after taking a few moments to figure out what was wrong. There was no color here. The buildings were all weathered, unpainted wood. The few scrawny trees and undernourished shrubs were dry and dust-covered. If there were any flower patches to be found, Longarm couldn't see them from where he stood. Hell, even the couple of stray cats he saw slinking out of the barn—no doubt with their bellies full thanks to all the rodents he'd heard during the night—were drab and gray. He got the impression that an ordinary old yellow tomcat would have been cock of the walk in this town, and a calico likely would have made all the lady cats moan.

The nearly flat fields lying outside the town proper ran mostly to farmland, with very little of the ground left in grass. Longarm had had the idea that Hirt County in central Kansas would have been on the edge of cow country, but he could see he'd been wrong about that. Apparently this was country more given to small farms and smaller livestock holdings of milk cows, maybe a few pigs and goats, and like that. For sure this was not the sort of rollicking cow town that Norm Wold used to specialize in taming.

Shit, a dump like this was already so tame, it would take a kick in the ass just to make the residents wake up enough to yawn and roll over.

Well, in that case, Longarm thought, it was time to commence kicking.

He left his things stashed inside the barn together with a note saying he'd be along later to collect them and settle up for use of the straw pile, then headed into town.

Breakfast first—his sense of smell assured him that somewhere up ahead there was bacon frying—then he'd have to find Norm and get filled in on the bullshit charges against his old friend and mentor.

“By God there's still one thing I can be sure of,” a deep voice boomed from somewhere toward the back of the county jail. “Now I know there's at least one human person in this county that's uglier than I am.” Longarm heard a well-remembered laugh fill the sheriff's office. Grinning, Longarm ignored the young deputy seated at a desk near the front door, and hurried on back toward the cells where he could see Norman Wold behind the bars.

Behind the bars. Incredible. Longarm had expected that, of course, but he found that it shook him anyway. Norm was one of the people who put others in jail, not the other way round. Yet here he was.

And he'd changed. Lordy, but he'd changed. It had been five years or so since Longarm last saw him, and back then Norm was still the same tall, lean old fart he'd always been. Now his hair was thinning and his belly was spilling over his belt. Five years, but it looked as if Norm had aged fifteen in that time.

“Damned if you ain't still the same handsome son of a bitch you always been,” Longarm declared as he reached out to shake Norm's hand. “You haven't changed a lick since the last time I seen you.” It was a lie, sure, but what the hell.

“Just happen to be in the neighborhood?” Norm asked.

“Something like that.”

“Sure. I believe you.”

There was a slightly oily metallic sound behind Longarm that was all too recognizable. Longarm froze in place.

“Don't move, mister. Don't you move.” The young deputy's voice was shaky with fear.

“I wouldn't think of it, son,” Longarm assured him without so much as turning his head.

“Dammit, Jeremy, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Norm scolded. “It isn't polite to come up behind folks with shotguns. Not very sensible either. This here is my old friend Custis Long. United States Deputy Marshal Custis Long. You might've heard of him? Goes by the nickname Longarm?”

“Shit!” the deputy muttered.

“Believe me, Jeremy, if Longarm wanted to do you any harm, he could've shot you ten times by now. Then reloaded and done it all over again. Now be a good boy and put that scattergun back on the rack where it belongs. Then why don't you run down to Dottie's place and bring us up a pot of coffee and three cups.”

Longarm decided it was safe enough to take a look. Jeremy's shotgun was no longer aimed in the direction of Longarm's backside—it seemed a pretty safe assumption that it had been a few moments earlier—and the young man looked pleased to hear that he was invited to bring a cup for his own use.

“Yes, sir. D'you, uh, want any doughnuts or like that too, Marshal?”

Norm patted his belly and shook his head. “Just the coffee for right now, Jeremy.”

“Yes, sir.” The deputy returned the double-barreled shotgun to a wall rack and hurried away. Longarm could hear his footsteps loud and hollow on the stairs leading down to the ground floor. The Hirt County sheriff's office and jail were located on the top floor of a three-story building, above the first-floor county offices and the second-floor courtrooms and judge's chambers. Longarm had noticed that much on his way up to find Norm.