Longarm #396 : Longarm and the Castle of the Damned (9781101545249) (6 page)

Longarm's interest quickened.

“I'm trying to remember where that would've been.”

“Would it help your memory if I was to set you up to a drink?” Longarm asked.

The fellow smiled. “I'm not trying to cadge drinks off of you, mister. I can buy my own. No, I'm really trying to recall . . .” He snapped his fingers and grinned. “Now I recollect. It was out at the Birdwell ranch. The missus was saying something to her hired help. Called her Netty. I never heard what her right name might be, but I'm sure about that much.”

The bartender tipped the bottle of rye over Longarm's glass to refill it and said, “If Chuck says it, you can take that to the bank. I've never known him to be wrong.”

“I wouldn't go that far,” Chuck said modestly. “It's just that I get around a lot. Meet plenty of folks. Pretty much everybody around here actually.”

“That's the truth,” the barman injected. “Chuck here is a vet'rinarian. Doctors just about every horse or cow in the county.”

“Only those that need it,” Chuck said. “I keep trying to find a way so I can charge my fees for every animal, but for some reason the cattlemen don't much cotton to that idea.” He laughed and took a deep pull on his beer.

“I'd be happy to buy you another of those,” Longarm offered.

“Thanks, but I have to go. There are some sick sheep over south a way.”

“Before you go, would you mind pointing me to this Birdwell place you mentioned?”

“I'll be glad to. Step outside with me and I'll tell you how to get there.” He looked at the bartender and nodded, “Thanks, Jerry. I'll see you this evening, right?”

“Right,” the barman said, taking Chuck's mug down from the bar and dropping it into a basin of soapy water. Longarm noticed that he left the glass of rye where it was, rather than assume Longarm would be leaving after he got directions to the Birdwell ranch. Longarm definitely liked this place.

“Now about this Birdwell place . . . ?” He followed Chuck out onto the boardwalk that fronted the saloon.

It looked like he would not be in and back out of Medicine Bow in one day, but duty trumped comfort in Longarm's view, so he retrieved his carpetbag from the railroad depot and asked the clerk there where he could put up for the night.

“Oh, we got a hotel. It isn't much of a place, but it serves the purpose. Cheap this time of year too. When the buyers are in and the cattlemen are shipping, that's another story entirely. The price goes up, but the place fills up anyhow. Let me tell you how to get to it,” the clerk offered.

Five minutes later Longarm was standing at the counter of a small and rather shabby hotel a block off the wide main street.

“Will you be staying long?” a skinny kid with freckles and big teeth asked. Probably the proprietor's son, Longarm guessed.

“No idea,” Longarm told him. “When I leave, I'll give you a voucher for payment.”

The kid scowled. “I don't think we can do that.”

“Sure you can. It's a U.S. government pay voucher. Good as gold anywhere.”

“I'll have to ask my mom about that.”

“Fine, but in the meantime just give me my room so I can get on about my business.”

“I suppose I can do that.” The youngster turned toward the board where a dozen or so keys were hanging on small nails. “Front room or back?” he asked.

“Whichever is quieter,” Longarm said.

“That would be in the back then. We sometimes get some rowdy folks in the streets. Not so much right now, but there are times.” He took a key down from the wall and handed it to Longarm. “Room four,” he said. “Upstairs in the back. Do you want me to carry your bag up for you?”

Hoping for a tip, Longarm thought. “No, thanks. I got it.” He accepted the key and thanked the boy.

Going up the stairs in the ramshackle little hotel was one of the more dangerous things he had done lately, he was sure. The steps were warped and creaked alarmingly when he put his weight on them. He stayed close to the banister so he would have something to grab on to should one of the treads give way underfoot. As it happened he was able to reach the top without plunging to his death. That was a relief until he remembered that he would have to take those same steps to get down again.

Room number four was tiny, with a narrow iron bedstead and a small washstand that held a basin and an empty pitcher. There was a thunder mug beneath the bed. Hooks on the wall served in place of a wardrobe. Still, the room was spotlessly clean, the pillow fluffy, and the sheets smelling—he sniffed them to be sure—of laundry soap and sunshine. He had stayed in far worse places than this.

Longarm deposited his bag by the foot of the bed and immediately hazarded the staircase again. The kid was sitting on a ladder-back chair in what passed for a lobby, a book open in his lap and a pad on foolscap and a sharp pencil in his hand.

“Studying something?” Longarm asked.

The boy smiled. “Yes, sir. I'm going to be an engineer. Come fall, I'll be away to college.”

“Good for you, son. Your mom must be proud of you.”

The boy shrugged. “Truth is she's kind of mad about it. I won't be here for the fall shipping, so she'll have to take on hired help.”

Longarm grinned. “Hired with actual money, is that it?”

“Yes, sir. But I'm set on what I want. I'm going to lay track and build bridges. I'm going to build wonderful things.”

“With that kind of attitude, you will indeed do those things,” Longarm said. “Not to change the subject, but could you tell me where I can hire a horse?”

“Yes, sir. There's a livery just one street over and three blocks down.” He pointed.

Longarm hadn't thought the town big enough to
have
three blocks in any direction, but apparently he was wrong about that. “Thank you, son. Sorry I disturbed your studies.” He touched the brim of his Stetson and strode out of the little hotel in search of that livery barn.

Longarm wasn't sure if he had walked into a livery stable or a social club. There were five old men sitting on chairs that looked like they must have come from a trash heap. Two of them were playing checkers. All were scratching their whiskers and spitting tobacco juice. Longarm smiled. It is a good thing to have friends.

“Gentlemen,” he said, touching the brim of his Stetson and bowing his head in deference to their ages.

“What can we do you for, sonny?” one of the checkers players asked.

“Need t'hire a horse,” Longarm told him.

“Cash money?”

“As good as. I can offer you government scrip.”

“What are you, a surveyor or something like that?”

“Deputy U.S. marshal,” Longarm said.

The old fellow grunted and stood, unfolding a lean and lanky frame. He was bowlegged and bewhiskered and looked old enough to have been neighbors with Methuselah. “I expect a U.S. marshal ain't likely to cheat me. All right then. Let me show you what I got. Billy, don't you be moving any of my pieces there. I know where ever' damn one of them sets, and if you try and cheat me I'll take a strop and whup your ass.” He turned his attention back to Longarm and said, “This way.”

They went behind the barn, to a set of corrals. A dozen head or so of tall, handsome mules were there. So were three broad-rumped horses. “Take your pick,” the old man said.

“You know 'em,” Longarm said. “I'll trust your judgment.”

The old boy took a catch rope down from a peg on the barn wall and deftly shook out a small loop. As easy as if he were tossing a pebble, he made his throw. The loop dropped neatly over the head of a seal brown that was built like a bulldog, broad in both rump and chest and with a good forty-five-degree angle on the shoulder, suggesting a reasonably comfortable trot. Not that any trot is really comfortable.

He bypassed a much more handsome—or anyway much flashier—black and a tall, red roan in favor of the rather drab brown horse. “You got anything against riding a mare, Marshal?”

“No, sir. Not unless she's in season.”

“This one ain't. She rides good and she's steady.”

“If you recommend her, that's good enough for me,” Longarm said. “I'll be needin' tack on her too. I didn't expect t'need a saddle this time out, so I left mine back in Denver.”

The old man cackled. “Helluva town, Denver. I been there a couple times. Can't hold a candle to San Francisco, though, when it comes to raising hell. You ever been to San Francisco, Marshal?”

“I have,” Longarm said with a nod.

“Got me some fine memories in San Francisco.” His grin widened. “Denver too for that matter. And Evanston. Why, I could tell you some things.... You ever smoke any of that opium stuff? I tell you true, Marshal, a pipe of that shit and a couple of those little China girls they got over there and a man could think he'd died and gone to Heaven.”

While he was jabbering on, the old fellow was busy selecting a saddle from several hung on racks inside the barn, taking down and sorting out a bridle and reins, then getting the blocky little mare tacked up and ready to ride.

“I'm gonna be charging you a dollar a day for the horse and fifty cents for the gear,” he said when he handed the reins to Longarm. “You take care with this little girl and bring her back sound when you're done with her. We can settle up then.”

Longarm adjusted the stirrups, gauging the length against his arm, then stepped into the saddle.

The brown stood steady but stepped out nicely with a touch of the heel.

Longarm touched the brim of his hat to the old fellow again as he rode away from the livery.

Now, if he could just find this Netty person, maybe he could get a handle on why Moses Arthur was murdered.

Longarm judged he was about halfway out to the Birdwell place when a bullet whined past his face. Seconds later he heard the sound of the shot. By that time he had reined the brown to a halt and turned, intending to shout at the simpleton whose careless shot came so near.

It was only then that he discovered the shot was not a careless one. It was deliberately calculated to kill.

A second bullet followed that first but was as poorly aimed as the other had been. This slug struck the brown mare in the side of the head. She dropped instantly, taking Longarm down with her.

He kicked free of the stirrups before the dying horse hit the ground. He rolled away, then scuttled back again so he could hunker down behind the horse's body.

His Colt was in his hand although he had no conscious memory of drawing it.

A wisp of white smoke hanging in the air above an outcropping of gray granite showed him clearly enough where the shots had come from, but the distance was impossibly far for a handgun.

A little too far for a rifle too, at least for a rifle aimed by whoever it was who shot at him. Obviously the shooter was not a marksman.

A really good shot might have been able to score a solid hit at that distance. Longarm estimated it to be a little more than two hundred yards. That range was certainly doable with something like a .50-100 buffalo gun, but with a .44 cartridge in a saddle carbine, a cartridge designed to be used in revolvers, shooting at that distance was a matter of wishes and luck.

This time the luck was on Longarm's side.

He lay there, tight against the seat of the saddle where he would be protected, waiting for the shooter to come down to admire his handiwork, but that did not happen. Instead the sun sank lower and lower, eventually striking Longarm directly in the eyes.

And then it was gone, taking the lingering daylight with it. Once the light was gone the night chill settled in. Longarm shivered and, disgusted, shoved his Colt back into leather.

The shooter, whoever he might have been and whyever he wanted a deputy United States marshal dead, was long gone now, and Longarm had not gotten so much as a brief glimpse of him.

Longarm stood, leaned down, and brushed himself off, then set about the rather unpleasant task of pulling the old liveryman's saddle and bridle off the dead horse.

Longarm's feet hurt. Hurt like hell, in fact. He hated to think how they would have felt had he been wearing the tall heels and high arches of the boots normally favored by cowhands and wranglers. His cavalry boots were intended to allow troopers to fight dismounted and thus made the pain considerably less than it might have been.

Even so . . . his feet hurt like hell, and he would have been very pleased to one more time run up against the bastard who shot at him.

Longarm was not striding out quite as comfortably as he had to begin with and his feet were kicking up dust, as he made his way up the lane from the gate to the Birdwell place. It was just as had been described to him back in Medicine Bow: a set of tall gateposts with a board mounted overhead. There was just enough light from the stars and moon to let him make out the stylized bird burned into the board, flanked by Flying B brands on either side.

The ranch headquarters consisted of a large and handsome two-story main house, barns and sheds on one side of the ranch yard, and the cookhouse and a low-roofed bunkhouse on the other side. Longarm wearily headed for the owner's home.

No lights showed anywhere on the place. But then it was probably well past midnight now. Sensible folks would be abed.

Longarm mounted the steps onto a porch that ran across the front of the Birdwell house. He chose a wicker-back rocking chair and settled into it, tipping his hat over his eyes and crossing his arms. With any sort of luck he should be able to catch a little sleep before the family—and perhaps this mysterious Netty—woke up.