Longarm and the Cry of the Wolf (9781101619506) (10 page)

Crazy Kate? They said she'd been bit by the same wolf that had torn her beau apart.

An uneasy feeling churned in Longarm's belly. Suppressing it, holding the blankets and the plate in his left arm against his chest, clutching the rifle in his right hand, he dropped down off the porch steps and angled across the street to the marshal's office. He had to set his rifle down to open the door with his right hand.

When the door withdrew into the office, two shadowy figures stood before him, about ten feet away. They were dressed in heavy coats, and they were both holding pistols on him.

“Come on in, Mr. Lawdog, suh,” said one of them in a thick Southern accent. “We're gonna be needin' a key to get our pal Goldie out of the lockup down below.”

Beneath the Southerner's drooping hat brim, he grinned and clicked his pistol hammer back.

Longarm scowled, silently cursing himself. He should have been more careful. He'd been so preoccupied with the wolf that was continuing to howl once every fifteen or twenty seconds that he'd forgotten about the human wolves out to break Goldie out of the lockup.

“Cannady said get in here, mister!” barked the man to the left of the first man who'd spoken. “My cousin's waitin' down below. We ain't got all night!”

Longarm glanced at his rifle leaning against the jailhouse's outer wall and then stepped into the marshal's office. A third man who'd been standing behind the door came up and gave him a hard shove, sending him stumbling into the office, and clamped a hand over one of the sandwiches on the plate atop the blankets.

“We aim to haul our asses out of here while we still can,” the man behind him said in a tight voice that was also pitched with a Southern accent. He bit into the sandwich and chewed. He was a short, stocky gent with an eye patch and a ragged beard. Longarm recognized him as the killer known as Henry Paul Winedark.

“You mean before the full moon?” Longarm said, glancing at the trapdoor, which was open. “You're a tad late. Best be careful—Goldie got bit.” He gave a wolfish smile, winking. “Might be a werewolf.”

Just then, as though to add a chilling theatrical effect to Longarm's words, the wolf loosed its cry from on high. The long, mournful howl swooped gently down over Crazy Kate and sort of ricocheted off the main street before beginning its slow ascent back toward the rocky peaks from which it had come.

The three outlaws stiffened, and each glanced toward the front window or the open door. Winedark tossed the sandwich outside and kicked the door closed, while the second man who'd spoken, Goldie's cousin, whom Longarm recognized as Tater Clark, said, “Key!”

“I don't have it.”

“Sure enough you have it.” Tater walked toward Longarm. He wore gloves, but the fingers had been cut from the glove on his right hand, making it easier to grasp the long-barreled Colt he now held level with the lawman's belly. He was a pug-faced rapscallion with a thick, red scar running down from beneath his battered Stetson to a tight knot beneath his chin. “Hand it over or I'll drill a forty-five hole through your belly button. Love to, in fact. Get you off our trail once and for all.”

Longarm knew they'd clean his clock before they left here no matter what he did. Which meant he had to act fast. His mind raced through his options while he maintained a calm expression, saying, “I'd be obliged if you fellas got Goldie out of my
hair
once and for all. But it ain't gonna happen, old son. For the last time, I don't have the key.”

The first man who'd spoken, Cannady, opened his mouth to speak again but stopped when Goldie yelled from the Wolf Hold, “Bring the fuckin' key, boys. What're you doin' up there? Invitin' ole Longarm to a hoedown?”

Cannady shouted at the hole in the floor, “He says he don't have it.”

“
He has it!
” Goldie returned, his voice shrill with impatience. “
Get it from him and let's haul our asses outta this wolf-haunted town!
”

Tater continued toward Longarm, extending his left hand. “Hand over the hogleg, lawdog.”

Longarm looked around for a place to set the blankets and the plate on which the remaining sandwich lay. “No, you just hold on to them blankets,” Tater said, reaching forward to grab the remaining sandwich. He chomped into it and said around the mouthful of meat and bread, “But I'll lighten your load just a little.”

“Quit fuckin' around, Tater,” said Cannaday. “Get that key off him.”

“I'm waitin' for him to hand over his hogleg.”

“Ah, for chrissakes,” Cannady said, striding forward and raising his pistol. “Just shoot the son of a bitch. We'll take it off his carcass.”

Tater chuckled, spitting out chunks of bread and meat, as he stepped out of Cannady's way. “Here goes, Longarm,” Cannady said, smiling grimly, dark eyes flashing devilishly in the flickering lamplight. “End of the trail. I reckon this'll make me right famous, won't it? Hell, I might even get written up in them penny dreadfuls.”

Longarm's belly tightened as the man leveled his Remington .44 at the lawman's head, squinting one eye to drill a slug just above the bridge of Longarm's nose. Longarm was a quarter second away from lurching forward to do whatever he could to save his life, when footsteps sounded on the boardwalk fronting the jailhouse. The door behind the three outlaws opened suddenly. Behind Cannady and his cocked Remington, Longarm watched as Zeena Radulescu walked into the jail office with a corked stone jug and two stone mugs in her hands.

All three outlaws, including Cannady, swung their heads toward her suddenly. They swung their guns around, as well, likely expecting Frank Calvin and his giant deputy, Emil.

“Zeena, drop!” the lawman shouted as he let the blankets and plate fall to the floor. At the same time, he bolted forward and wrapped his left arm around Cannady's long, slender neck while chopping his gun arm down with his other hand.

Cannady screamed and triggered his Remington into his right boot. He didn't have time to scream again before Longarm jerked back hard on the man's hand, evoking a sharp
pop!
as Cannady's neck broke like a dry tree branch.

As the other two men swung back toward Longarm, he drew Cannady back against him, using the man for a shield. He grabbed the Remington out of Cannady's suddenly slack fingers and hastily aimed it at Tater Clark, who fired his own pistol at the same time Cannady's roared, the two reports together sounding like an iron rod rapping against an empty tin rain barrel.

Clark's bullet hammered into Cannady, causing the fast-dying brigand to jerk against Longarm's chest. As Longarm's own slug punched a quarter-sized hole through Tater's right cheek, jerking the bulldog's head back sharply, Winedark loosed an angry holler and fired his own Colt twice.

Both of those rounds also punched the slack-headed Cannady back against Longarm. Longarm fired the Remy once, twice, three times, causing John Paul Winedark to scrunch up his lone eye and bellow miserably while dancing a bizarre two-step around and back out the open door and into the street. Zeena had dropped her coffee jug and mugs and thrown herself to one side, but now she rolled onto a hip and watched as Winedark fell in a pile about six feet away from the jailhouse.

Outside, a horse whinnied.

“What in hell?” Frank Calvin's voice said above the clattering of a wagon approaching the marshal's office.

Longarm flung the dead Cannady aside and knelt down beside Zeena, who was staring at the smoking pistol he still held in his hand. “You're good with that thing.”

“Ah, that was nothin'.” Longarm clutched her shoulders, raking his eyes across her, looking for bloody wounds, for she might have caught a ricochet. “You all right?”

She nodded.

Outside, the wagon stopped clattering, and Frank Calvin said, “Longarm, that you shootin' my place up?”

“Bustling night, Marshal.” Longarm helped Zeena to her feet then picked up her coffee jug and both mugs. “None of 'em broke,” he said, handing them to her.

She swept her dark brown hair from her eyes and drew a ragged breath. “Miracle of miracles.”

Longarm went outside to where Calvin and Emil were climbing down from the wagon they'd parked parallel to the hitch rack, a few feet from where Winedark lay facedown in the hard-packed street, being dusted with the fine snow that was falling from a passing cloud, though the moon still shone. The killer had rolled onto his side and was fishing his second pistol out of its holster, breathing hard and cursing.

Longarm shot him through the head. He supposed he could have snatched the gun out of the outlaw's hand before the killer leveled it on him, but John Paul Winedark was going to die anyway. Why put him and Longarm through the trouble of getting him tended? The federal had heard enough of Goldie's caterwauling.

Calvin and Emil, who towered over the silver-mustached town marshal, stood looking down at the dead brigand. Calvin looked at Longarm, frowning, the snow slanting in beneath his black hat brim and catching in his grizzled brows.

“Goldie's pards,” Longarm said.

“Wolf bait now,” said Calvin.

Longarm looked at him and his giant deputy. “Where you two been?”

“We took the wolves to a ravine northeast of town, decided to keep watch over 'em in case their pards came to inspect. Wolves will do that, sort of hang around the fallen amongst 'em. Figured we'd take a few down, cull the herd.”

“Did any show?”

Calvin shook his head and glanced at Emil. “Load up Longarm's dead. We'll house 'em in the stable till tomorrow then take 'em out to where we hauled the wolves. No point in hirin' the undertaker to bury 'em.”

As Emil brushed past Longarm to pick up Winedark, the federal lawman regarded the local incredulously. “Won't that just attract more wolves?”

Calvin had started into the marshal's office. “You wanna bury 'em, Marshal Long, then you bury 'em. Personally, I don't think it's such a good idea to remain outside long enough to dig a grave and sing a prayer over known killers.” The town marshal glanced around. “Any other trouble this evenin'?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” Longarm said. “Busy damn night. Not long after you and Emil left, an old friend by the name of Kansas Pete Durant tried to bore me a third eye. One I couldn't see out of even with glasses.”

“Damn, Longarm,” Calvin said as Emil, having tossed Winedark into the back of the wagon like so much trash, ducked into the marshal's office to retrieve the other bodies. “You sure do attract trouble. Honestly, I wish you'd leave.”

“I'd love to oblige you.”

“Any idea when that could happen?”

“Possibly tomorrow, wolves permitting.” Longarm was reluctant to leave Catherine and her hunting party, as something told him they might need help getting out of here. But he had a job to do, and that didn't include acting as caretaker of a passel of drunken mucky-mucks.

“Takin' your prisoner?”

“Of course.”

Calvin stepped to one side as Emil ducked through the door with Cannady draped over one shoulder and tossed the neck-broke outlaw into the wagon with Winedark. “Might have to take him in chains.” The local lawman slanted an eye at the moon angling westward. “He just might turn.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Longarm said, his skeptical grumbling belying his apprehension. He canted his head at the marshal's office. “Mrs. Radulescu's inside. She has coffee for Mrs. Leonard. I brought extra blankets over from the saloon.”

“Ain't that sweet of both of you.” Calvin snorted, habitually belligerent, and walked inside the jailhouse. “Good Lord,” he raked out above the clomping of his boots. “Smells like the devil's blood in here!”

“Why do you have so damn many wolves around here, Calvin?” Longarm asked later, after the marshal had gone down and opened David Leonard's cell door for Zeena. “Personally, I've rarely seen such an infestation. Those I did see were out on the prairie, when there was a white-tail explosion. Or around hide-hunting camps where there was plenty of fresh meat and hides lyin' around.”

Longarm leaned back in his chair and scratched a lucifer to light on his thumbnail. Touching the flame to the end of a fresh, three-for-a-nickel cheroot and puffing smoke, he added, “I've seen a coupla mining camps stalked by wolves, when the miners had hunted most of the game out of the area and they weren't buryin' their trash proper, to keep the smell down, but that was only a small pack. Five, maybe six wolves. Seems to me you must have several packs convergin' here on Crazy Kate.”

He waved the match out. Smoke wafted papery blue in the light of the lantern flickering atop Calvin's desk.

The marshal sat in his swivel chair fronting the desk. His hat was off, his silver hair matted down close to his head. He sat back in the chair, his thick, red-brown hands, the nails black with caked grime, laced over his flat belly clad in a blue plaid shirt over a red longhandle shirt. He wore a blue neckerchief knotted to one side.

Emil had driven off in the wagon loaded with dead men. Calvin appeared to study the floor thoughtfully, pondering the federal lawman's question. Finally, he looked up at Longarm faintly bleary-eyed, weary. “You see, I was as puzzled as you were, once upon a time. 'Cause I ain't from here. I'm from off a ranch over on the west side of the Sangre de Cristo range. Owned the place . . . until I was rooted out by bigger cattlemen. My wife was dead, so I had nothin' much to do or live for till I wandered through Crazy Kate and saw they needed a town marshal.

“That was six years ago,” Calvin continued, staring out the window above his desk. “I been here since. And I can tell you that at least during that six years, this country has been plagued by wolves. Maybe not as many as now, but wolves always have caused trouble hereabouts. All through the San Juans, but around Crazy Kate especially. At first, I figured it was because the valley's so deep and long and there happens to be several packs callin' it their territory, and during the long winters these packs got used to preyin' on men and livestock. They're a sneaky bunch, so they've avoided hunters.”

Calvin continued to stare out the window, beyond which the moon hung like a giant, glowing globe. He'd started a fire in his bullet-shaped stove, and the stove's iron ticked as it heated, the flames sounding like snakes slithering around in a croaker sack.

Longarm drew deep on his cigar and blew a long plume toward the empty cells crouched in the shadows at the back of the jailhouse. “You said you
figured
that was happening. Now you're dead certain these ain't just your regular brand of wolves runnin' around.”

He looked at the town marshal, who turned his head slightly toward him. A fire sparked in his eyes, and he drew a hard breath as he said, “This town is cursed, Longarm. I'm tellin' you, it's cursed. The folks who first settled here brought said curse with 'em from Eastern Europe.”

He shook his head slowly, keeping his red-rimmed eyes pinned on the federal lawman. “I know you won't believe that, so I don't know why we're havin' this conversation. Hell, talk to Zeena about it. Mrs. Radulescu. She knows!”

“Oh, I heard what she has to say about it.”

Frustrated, Calvin shook his head.

Longarm frowned at the man, genuinely puzzled. “Why in the hell are you hangin' around here, if you're so scared?”

“Here's why.” Calvin stared even harder, more penetratingly, at Longarm. “Because once you're here for a while, you become cursed, as well. If you leave here, you'll just take it with you. That's why you best get the hell out of here, Mr. Federal Lawdog. Before the curse gets inside of you, too. And believe me, it's a curse you don't never wanna be cursed with! Once you're cursed, it'll follow you wherever you go!”

The ladder beneath the hole in the floor creaked. Longarm saw the top of Zeena Radulescu's head, and he got up quickly and walked over to give her a hand up the ladder. She brushed dust from her coat and glanced between Longarm and the local lawman, then arched her brows. “Sounded like a very serious conversation, gentlemen.”

“I guess you could say that,” Calvin said. “How's the boy?”

“None the better for being down in that hole, Frank. Isn't there some other way? I mean, even if he changes, he—”

“You know the rules, Zeena,” the lawman said. “Anyone bit around the time of the full moon is locked in the Wolf Hold until we know for sure that he . . . or she, for that matter . . . is not one o'
them
out there.” He pointed at the moonlit window over his desk.

Zeena sighed and glanced at Longarm. “He's a stubborn man, our marshal.”

“That he is.”

“Oh, well. He should be out of there in a few hours. He's a tough young man. He'll make it.”

“Unless he turns,” Longarm said, probingly, giving a grim, lopsided smile.

“Yes,” Zeena said. “Unless he turns.”

“And then he gets a silver bullet.” Longarm glanced at Calvin, who merely sat in his chair, boots together on the floor, knees spread, hands still entwined on his belly. Calvin didn't nod. His resolute eyes were answer enough.

Zeena brushed a hand across Longarm's bloodstained buckskin mackinaw, something to remember Cannady by. “I can get that blood out, if you like. Follow me over to the Black Wolf?”

“The Black Wolf?”

“That's my place of business, Marshal Long. Zeena's Black Wolf House of a Thousand Delights. My sign is tastefully small. You might have missed it.”

“Go on over,” Calvin said. “You'll like it over there, Longarm. Zeena's fixed the place up nice, made it a special haven for men on nights like this one here. A wolf-on-the-prowl kinda night.” He lifted one cheek in a devilish half smile. “Less you got somethin' else goin' on over at the Carpathian?”

Longarm glanced at Zeena, who gave him a similarly foxy smile. Obviously, she'd seen Catherine Fortescue and had rightfully ascertained Longarm's relationship with the girl.

He thought he should head over there and see how Catherine was doing, since she'd been wolf-bit, but she was likely asleep. He'd wait and check on her later. There was still plenty of night to get through, and he might as well get his coat washed out. It was the only one he had, and it wouldn't be fitting for him to go around with it bloodstained.

“I'd be obliged for your assistance, Mrs. Radulescu,” he said with a courtly nod of his head, and went over to retrieve his Winchester from where he'd leaned it against the wall by Calvin's desk. He racked a fresh round in the chamber, lowered the piece, and off-cocked the hammer. He looked at Calvin, read the man's mind, and said, “It ain't silver, but I reckon it'll have to do.”

He turned to Zeena and hooked his arm. “Shall we, Mrs. Radulescu?”

“We shall, Marshal,” the woman said, taking his arm and allowing him to lead her out of the marshal's office.

“You two kids have a good time,” Calvin said behind them, as Longarm closed the door.

He and the woman started along the street toward Zeena's Black Wolf House of a Thousand Delights. They were halfway between the jailhouse and the sporting parlor, which was just down from and on the same side of the street as the Carpathian, when the wolf called from the direction of the lofty convent. Zeena gasped slightly and stopped for a moment, swinging her head to the north.

“Crazy Kate, you think?” Longarm asked.

“Think?” Zeena said. “Marshal Long, I know.”

Longarm frowned. “You really think a woman, even a crazy woman, could kick up such a racket? And sound that much like a wolf?”

Zeena regarded him as though he were a particularly thickheaded schoolboy. “Yes, I do.”

“Have you seen her?”

“No. I don't think anyone's seen her since they took her up to the convent. Only the nuns, and they don't grant access to anyone not their own. But rumors come from there, mostly about Katarina.”

They continued walking along the south side of the street, heading toward the dimly lit whorehouse that was a relatively unadorned three-story building with a balcony on each of the two upper stories. The blazing moonlight held it in dark silhouette.

“Rumors about how she becomes a werewolf during each full moon?” Longarm asked her as they mounted the parlor's narrow front porch. There was a small shingle attached to the front wall, to the right of the house's door, that had a wolf's head burned into it along with the name:
ZEENA'S BLACK WOLF HOUSE OF A THOUSAND DELIGHTS.

“That's right. I can tell you it frightens the nuns terribly, but they keep her locked in a tower room away from the main part of the convent. She does no harm when she turns, they say, though several nuns haven't been able to endure the strain of it, and ran away.”

Longarm followed Zeena through the front door and into a red-carpeted lobby. Oil lamps burned in wall brackets, illuminating several paintings—secured to the walls—of wolves. The frames and the faded paintings themselves looked old, probably having come from the Old Country. Some depicted the wolves dancing on their hind legs with children.

There was also a sculpture of a black wolf's head serving as the newel post for the stairs that rose at the hall's rear, beyond several closed doors. There was a small, horseshoe-shaped, hotel-like desk in front of the stairway. No one sat behind it. Longarm figured that was probably Zeena's customary spot.

The place was eerily quiet except for the very faint singing of what sounded like a very young girl, to the delicate patter of a piano, somewhere in the building's upper reaches. The air was rife with the smell of candles, incense, and the slightly spicy-musky odor of what could only be opium.

No wonder everyone was so quiet, Longarm thought. They were either singing or hopped out on the midnight oil.

Zeena turned to Longarm. “Take your coat off. I have a Chinese gentleman who can get that blood out without a trace. He uses a combination of wax, lard, and a few other things I don't even know the names of.”

Longarm shrugged out of the coat. She took it and disappeared down the hall beyond the stairs before returning a moment later, turning to the stairs, and placing one foot on the bottom step.

She looked back at him obliquely. “Might as well join me for a drink while Li Yu works on the blood. I have to tell you, though, Marshal, that no other man has ever visited my room. I am the madam here, which means I have a certain decorum to maintain. My clothes never leave my body during working hours.”

“I'll behave if you will.” Longarm grinned and doffed his hat. “And I reckon since I'm bein' bestowed such an honor and privilege, you might as well call me Longarm.”

Fifteen minutes later, they'd had a drink in her large room adorned in the same wolf motif as that in the first-story hall, with a fire crackling in a stout hearth, and they smiled at each other from their brocade-upholstered chairs positioned on opposite sides of a round wooden table clothed in silk.

Longarm tossed the last of his brandy back, stood, and began to get undressed.

She stood, as well, and began doing same, her cheeks flushed, seeming a little breathless. Longarm didn't doubt she hadn't had her ashes hauled in a while. She and he both knew it was time. That's why they hadn't said one word to each other during the fifteen minutes they'd sipped their brandy and stared into the fire, enjoying the sensuous heat radiating from the fire like a soft, warm hand.

“What about the girl?”

“What girl?”

Zeena laughed wryly. “That's why I haven't done anything like this since my husband passed four years ago. Out of sight, out of mind. That's the way it is for you, isn't it?”

“I reckon it is if we haven't made any promises.” Zeena's breasts were heavy but firm, her body pale and fine. It wasn't a taut young body, but a full, mature one with some extra flesh on it that owned its own, earthy allure.

Longarm hung his cartridge belt and pistol on a bedpost. “You lure me over here for a tongue-lashing?”

“I lured you over here because you're damn handsome. Big and manly. Any woman would like to be held by you. I suppose it harkens back to when we were all living in caves and we women were driven to the best of men for safety, and to father the stoutest offspring. I don't know.”

Zeena laughed and sat on the edge of the bed naked, wearing only a gold neck chain with a small wolf figurine carved from obsidian dangling from it between her breasts. “Maybe it's because you're just passing through and I'll never see you again after tonight.”

Her eyes widened as he tossed away his balbriggan bottoms and stood before her naked. “Oh,” she said, huskily, her voice catching a little. She laughed. “Oh, yes, that will do nicely.”

She dropped to her knees before him and ran her admiring eyes up and down the throbbing length of his cock, caressing it tenderly with her fingertips. Longarm could feel her hot breath on him.

“Oh, yes,” she breathed. “This will do just fine.”

She nuzzled his scrotum and then slid her tongue up the underside of his cock so slowly that he thought he was going to grind his toes right through the thick, plush carpet beneath his feet. Desire jetted in him. He squeezed his eyes closed. Her tongue slid up to the end of his cock, and then the heat and wetness of her mouth closed over it and slid slowly, slowly down, taking nearly all of him.

Longarm heard himself groan.

When she'd brought him to the edge of the cliff, he stepped back away from her and sucked a long, calming breath. She looked up at him, kneading his taut belly with her hands.