Longarm #399 : Longarm and the Grand Canyon Murders (9781101554401) (15 page)

Both men were armed, but it was Seth who started the play by clawing for his holstered pistol. Trouble was, Frankie was blocking his line of fire.

Longarm’s hand shot across his belt buckle and tore his own gun out of his holster. He fired in one smooth, practiced motion. His first bullet caught Frankie as the man was going for a derringer in his vest pocket. Frankie’s body slammed back into Seth, whose aim was knocked off target. A bullet from Seth’s gun cut through Frankie’s knee and then Longarm was emptying his gun as both men were knocked backward into the hallway in a shower of bright red blood.

* * *

The next afternoon Longarm, Heidi, and Carrie stood apart from the heavyset Shirley. Two stoic men who had been on Frankie’s payroll finished digging three graves not fifty yards from the rim of the Grand Canyon. Longarm had thought about having the bodies returned to Flagstaff for a proper burial, but the Arizona afternoon temperature was very warm and the corpses would have been badly decayed by the time they were delivered to a mortuary.

“Drop them into the holes and cover them up,” Longarm ordered.

When the bodies were covered, Longarm asked, “Anyone here care to say a few words of forgiveness?”

No one cared to say a few words, but one of the sweating workmen muttered, “At least they’ll have a view of the canyon.”

“Not from five feet under,” Longarm said.

“What about the hotel?” the other workman asked. “Frankie didn’t have any relatives.”

“Then it belongs to his fiancée.”

“Miss Carrie Blue?”

“That’s right. When a man without any relatives is engaged, the law says that everything he owns goes to his fiancée.”

Both Carrie and Heidi looked over at him, but neither one said a word. Longarm had made that up, but he figured he would find a way to make it stick so that Carrie Blue…and maybe John Wallace…would assume ownership of the hotel. Things like this happened all the time, and if anyone had earned the hotel and a chance for a new life and hope, it was Miss Carrie Blue.

“When John Wallace arrives with his stage, tell him
what I said and that Heidi is going back to Flagstaff on his stagecoach.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “I’ve decided to stay right here until you come back from inside the canyon. Carrie and I can handle this place until you return. The Potters have decided to stay and catch the first stagecoach back to Flagstaff.”

“Long way for them to come and not actually go down into the Grand Canyon.”

“They said they’ve seen enough of it already,” Heidi told him. “We all have.”

“Are you sure?” Longarm asked.

“Positive,” Heidi replied. “But I’ll be here when you return.”

Longarm couldn’t help but smile. “In that case, I’ll be taking one of the horses and getting along down to Lees Ferry.”

He didn’t bother watching as the last shovelfuls were tossed on the three graves. Frankie, Seth, and Al Hunt had been rotten to the core, and he suspected that they’d probably conspired to kill more than one unsuspecting sightseer for their money and jewelry. The single, fatal mistake they’d made that had put an end to their scheming and deadly ways was that they should have stuck with robbing and killing tourists instead of a United States marshal.

Longarm bought a jug-headed roan gelding for thirteen dollars and a battered saddle for four, and a few more government dollars got him a bridle, blankets, saddlebags, provisions, and five pounds of grain to keep Old Red moving and upright.

“Are you
sure
this horse will get me all the way down to Lees Ferry?” he asked the grizzled prospector and hunter who wandered along the south rim looking for gold and collecting hides and horns. “He looks like he’s about ready to fall over and die.”

“Aw, don’t you worry, Marshal! Old Red is a fine horse, and he’s good for another five years at least.”

The roan was mangy and underweight, and his head was larger than most lady’s suitcases. “How old is he?”

The man threw up his hands and shook them at the clear blue sky. “I ain’t gonna tell you no lies, Marshal. Fact is, I don’t know how old he is. Not as old as me, because he’s a smooth mouth and…”

“He’s nearly lost all his teeth! Isn’t there a better horse around here I can buy?”

“Nope. Mr. John Wallace told me that you gave his favorite buckskin mare away to a Navajo. I wouldn’t sell an Indian a good horse.”

“The Navajo kid and his family saved my life! It’s the least they deserved.”

The man scratched his bearded face and shook his head. “You might just see it that way, but I surely don’t. So do you want to buy Old Red…or not?”

“I’ll buy him, but if he doesn’t get me down to Lees Ferry and back I want a damned refund.”

“No, sir! Once you buy a horse…he’s yours. That’s the way we look at it in these parts.”

The buckskin-clad hunter and prospector smiled to reveal that, like his horse, he was almost toothless. “Tell you what, Marshal, it’s only about forty miles down to Lees Ferry. Might be you’d like to hike it down and back. Course, comin’ out of the canyon can be a little tiring, but…”

“Sold,” Longarm growled and reached for his wallet.

In a half hour he was ready to ride. Heidi gave him a kiss and hug, then Carrie Blue did the same. “Marshal Long,” Carrie said, “I don’t know how to thank you for what you did for me…and all of us.”

“Frankie, Seth, and Al Hunt were filled with bad intentions,” Longarm told the two women. “I did the Arizona Territory a big favor and saved the taxpayers money by not having them take up jail or court time.”

“But,” Carrie said, “I mean about the hotel and what you said about me ownin’ it.”

“Do you know if Frankie ever even recorded a deed at the county courthouse for the ownership of this property?”

“I don’t believe that he did,” Carrie said. “Frankie just sort of took what he wanted and then did things legal-like only if he was forced to do them.”

“Then if I were you,” Longarm suggested, “I’d see if I could buy a legal claim to this hotel and the land it sets upon.”

“I don’t have any money. Well, only a hundred dollars or so, and that sure won’t buy me either the land or the hotel that it sits upon.”

“Maybe,” Longarm said, looking at Heidi, “you can find an investor either in Heidi or even John Wallace. Think that might be possible?”

Heidi nodded.

Carrie Blue giggled. “I think it might be! John needs this hotel to have a place to take his stagecoach passengers, and he told me before he went back to Flagstaff this last time that he wished like anything he could have talked Frankie into selling it to him.”

“Well there you go,” Longarm said.

“Be careful,” Heidi pleaded, looking up at Longarm. “Just come back alive and ready to join me on the train back to Denver.”

“That is my full and sincere intention,” Longarm assured the beautiful woman. He grabbed the saddle horn. “Brace yourself, Red!”

When Longarm jammed his foot into the stirrup, the roan gelding sort of widened his stance and stiffened all fours. When Longarm mounted, the horse wobbled for an instant, then turned its big head around to gaze at Longarm with a big eyeball.

“So long,” Longarm told the women. “You too, Mr. and Mrs. Potter!”

The couple waved, and Longarm nudged the gelding with his boot heels. Old Red lurched forward and started moving about as fast as frozen molasses coming out of a jar.

Longarm banged his heels against the animal’s rib
cage. “Come on, Red! If you don’t walk any faster than that, winter will catch us before we get to the bottom of the Grand Canyon!”

Old Red picked up the pace a little, and Longarm twisted around in his sorry saddle and waved the women and everyone else good-bye. He saw that someone had put little wooden crosses over the three fresh graves. Nice gesture, but Longarm didn’t think it was appropriate given that those three were probably already roasting in hell.

It took him the best part of a full day to reach the bottom of the Grand Canyon and then get a Mormon to ferry him across the Colorado River. Down inside the Canyon the air was hot and humid and the roar of the river was overpowering and constant. Red and pale brown layers of ancient and broken rock climbed like a giant staircase everywhere you looked. The Colorado River was running low after the heavy spring flooding that had left driftwood and marks twenty feet up on the walls, but even so the water was way too deep to swim a horse across, even a young one. Longarm reckoned that Old Red most likely wouldn’t have gotten halfway across before giving up and sinking like a stone.

“How are you doin’ today!” the burly young man who skillfully guided the big raft across the river shouted.

“I’m doin’ fine.”

“Here for the fishin’?”

“Nope.”

“Gonna ride the rapids, are you?”

“Not unless I have to.” Longarm clung to a rope affixed to a stanchion bolted to the raft. Old Red snorted and stomped, looking uneasily at the brown, roiling water.

“Water always this muddy?” Longarm called to the young man, who was working a big single oar off the back of the raft.

“Yep! I’ve heard some say it’s muddier than the Ole Mississippi, but I never seen the Mississippi, so I couldn’t tell you if that was true.”

“It’s true,” Longarm shouted over the river’s thunder.

The young man was working hard, and as the raft made its way at an angle across the current, Longarm could see that it was going to beach right at a dirt track that led down from between a tall, red-stone canyon.

When the raft grated against the gravel and sand, shuddering to a stop, Old Red showed more life than usual and stampeded off onto solid ground. Longarm damn near lost control of the horse, but he doubted the roan would have run any farther than the first patch of grass.

“Not much of a horse you got there, mister. On an old horse like that you might have a hard time getting back out of this big canyon.”

“I expect he will surprise all of us and climb out like a mountain goat,” Longarm replied, tightening his cinch and swinging up into the saddle. “I’m looking for the raft company where I understand some people were murdered a few weeks ago.”

The young man blinked and shaded his eyes as he stared up at Longarm. “You’re a lawman, I expect.”

“That’s right.”

“Thought you were from the first moment I laid eyes on you ridin’ down from the other side. Where you from?”

“Denver.”

The big, sandy-haired kid smiled. “I heard it’s a nice town. The biggest I ever seen was Salt Lake City. Went up to see a girl named Sarah, but she’d already been
married off to an elder about twice her age. I’m still a bachelor, but they’ll find me a suitable wife before much longer, and I hope she ain’t real ugly or fat. I’m only twenty and I’d like to be a farmer someday, but I’ll never be able to afford the land and machinery it takes to work a place. No farm, no wife, no future for me, I’m afraid.”

Longarm formed an instant liking for the strong young lad. He had a full beard and his forearms were corded with muscle and his legs were like tree stumps. “You live here at Lees Ferry?”

“Nope. I live in a cabin little ways upriver. Live by myself without as much as a dog. In the spring, this ferry crossing is mighty busy and the river is high and most dangerous. I’ve been workin’ here two years and only lost one wagon and team.”

“Any people?”

The young man’s blue eyes fell and his smile died. “I was just a helper learnin’ this job when the raft flipped and we lost six…two parents and four kids. It was a mighty sad time for a while.”

“I need to find out what has been going wrong down here,” Longarm said, deciding to confide in the young man.

“Meanin’ you’d be lookin’ for Judge Milton Quinn and his young wife.”

“That’s right. Have they shown up?”

“Nope. Not alive or dead. They’re still just missin’, and I believe they’ve long since fed themselves to the fish.”

“Who should I talk to about all this?” Longarm asked, paying an extra dollar for the information.

The young man pointed downriver. “There’s a cabin, lodging, place to buy food and supplies…It’s a store, with little shacks for sleepin’ in, but the prices are mighty
high. They run rafting trips out of a cove right there and horseback rides for tourists up into the canyons and other places.”

“I see.”

“My name is Jacob Young.”

“Any relation to your prophet Brigham Young?”

The young man laughed. “Half of our community are related in some way to the prophet. Me, I’m so distantly related that they hardly know I exist except in the big books at the temple.”

“Well, my name is Marshal Custis Long and I appreciate the information you’ve given me.”

“You just watch yourself, Marshal. Those people down there where I told you are a den of thieves and cutthroats. They’re only in it for the money. Godless people and worse.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“Anyone in these parts would freely give you the same warning.”

“If these people are so…so mean and moneygrubbing, how come a man as important as Judge Quinn and his young wife would come and have anything to do with them?”

Jacob Young shook his head. “There are those who won’t have anything to do with us Mormon folks. No sir, they’d rather consort with thieves, liars, drunks, whores, and Satan-lovers than deal with us.”

“And that’s why Judge Quinn and his wife went to these people?”

Jacob shrugged his broad shoulders. “You’d have to ask them about that…but most likely it’s too late to ask them about anything. Mostly, Marshal, I’m just being an honest and God-fearin’ man who is trying to warn you that those people won’t respect you or your badge. You
go among the godless and they’ll show you no quarter, federal officer or not.”

Longarm thanked the young Mormon again and rode on down the trail. He came to a fork where one track led up into the canyon where he’d been told the Lee Family still lived, but he took the other fork in the road, the one that followed the big, muddy river west, deeper and deeper into the mighty Grand Canyon. The walls were closing in hard over him and the sun was gone, leaving him in shadow. But even in shadow the air was stifling and hot. And try as he might, Longarm couldn’t shake a bad feeling that he was riding into something both sinister and deadly.