Longarm and the Stagecoach Robbers

Beaten to the Punch . . .

Longarm tried the door but it was locked. He studied the cheap lock for a moment, then took out his pocketknife and opened the sturdy main blade. He slipped that between the door and the frame and made contact with the lock bar.

Pressing forward to give the tip of the blade some purchase on the cheap steel of the lock, he prised the bar sideways until it cleared the mortise. The door swung open easily after that.

The room inside was dark but the moaning continued to come from it. Longarm reached into his vest pocket for a match and snapped it aflame with his thumbnail.

He strode forward, found a lamp in the middle of a small table, and lit it. Lamplight flooded the tiny room to disclose Will Carver, his face a pulped mass of blood, lying on the floor in front of the fireplace.

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LONGARM AND THE STAGECOACH ROBBERS

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2014 by Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-14481-1

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Jove mass-market edition / December 2014

Cover illustration by Milo Sinovcic.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

United States Marshal William Vail looked up from the telegram on his desk, a scowl flickering across his normally bland expression. He peered at his deputy and said, “I have some work for you, Long.”

“Not more warrants t' serve, I hope,” Deputy Marshal Custis Long said.

“No, Longarm, I just got this. It's a gang that has been robbing the mail. They've hit the Carver Express Company twice in the past month, and the local law isn't doing anything to stop them. At least not according to what the express line people believe. That could just be a matter of personal differences. I wouldn't venture an opinion about that. But there is no question that robbery of the mail falls under our jurisdiction as a Federal crime. I want you to go look into it.”

“Carver,” Longarm repeated. Then he shook his head. “Don't think I'm familiar with that line, boss.”

“Yes, you are, just not by that name. Carver bought out Henry Blaisdell up in South Park. You knew Henry. This is the same deal under a different name. But they took over Henry's mail contract along with everything else,” Vail said.

“Ah, them I know,” Longarm conceded. “Two robberies of the mail?” he asked.

The balding but still lethal U.S. marshal nodded. “Yes, and that makes it our business, not just Carver's.”

Longarm nodded. A tall man with seal brown hair and a sweeping handlebar mustache, he was a study in brown and black. The deputy wore a brown tweed coat, a calfskin vest, and brown corduroy trousers tucked into black stovepipe boots. Perhaps more important, he also wore a black gun belt strapped around narrow hips, the holster carried on his belly canted for a cross-draw and containing a double-action Colt .45 revolver.

He reached into his coat for a cheroot, bit the twist off, and spat the bit of tobacco into his palm but, seeing Billy Vail's scowl, did not light the slender cigar.

“I'll grab my bag an' catch the next train up to Fairplay,” he said.

Vail nodded. “Henry has the schedule,” he said, the Henry this time referring to his clerk.

Fairplay was the major mining community in the South Park area. The railroad had recently reached it. The rest of the surrounding area of South Park was served by the stagecoach line formerly owned by Blaisdell and now, apparently, by Carver. Under either ownership, the mail contract gave the government a certain amount of authority and privilege.

“If you find that you need help,” Vail said, “it's as close as the telegraph line. Keep that in mind.”

Deputy Custis Long nodded. “Don't I always.”

“As a matter of fact, no, you don't always,” Vail said. “But do keep it in mind this time.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” Longarm told him. The tone of his voice suggested that he did not at all mean it. But the prudent thing was to say it anyway.

Longarm touched his forehead with one finger in salute, then left Billy Vail's office. He retrieved his flat-crowned, snuff brown Stetson from the hat rack in the outer office and stopped at Henry's desk to collect a fistful of expense vouchers before he headed home to get his carpetbag.

“There won't be another passenger coach up-bound until tomorrow,” the helpful clerk told him, “but if you hurry, you can catch the ore cars going to Fairplay. The only passenger leaving this evening is going to Silver Plume and that isn't even the right direction. You want the Como route. But if you want to catch that one, you'll need to hurry.”

“Do I have time to get my bag?” Longarm asked.

“If you rush, you should make it.”

Longarm hurried out of the stately Federal Building on Denver's Colfax Avenue and hailed a cab. He climbed onto the metal step at the side of the passenger compartment and gave the address of his boardinghouse.

“And hurry. There's something extra in it for you if you get me to my train on time.”

“You got it, gov'nor,” the hack driver said.

The man applied his whip and got Longarm home in record time.

“Wait here. I need to grab my bag and be right back.”

“Say, I've heard that one before. Once you're gone, mister, I won't ever see you again,” the cabbie said with a grunt of disgust.

“Shit, if you don't think I'm telling you the truth, mister, climb down from there and come with me,” Longarm suggested.

The driver took him up on it, stepping down from his driving box and clipping a weight to his horse's bit. “All right, now where?” he said.

The man followed Longarm into the boardinghouse and upstairs to Longarm's room. His carpetbag was always kept packed and ready for travel so it was only a matter of moments to grab it, take a last look around to make sure he was not forgetting anything—although he probably was—and head back downstairs.

“All right. You wasn't lying to me,” the cabbie admitted. He seemed almost disappointed to discover that his fare had been honest about his intentions. “Now where?”

“Train station,” Longarm said.

“Which one?”

“Fairplay.”

“I'll have you there in jig time, mister,” the cabbie promised as he unfastened the horse from its tether and mounted the driving box. Longarm entered the cab, and the driver took up his lines and cracked his whip over the horse's ears.

True to his word, the man delivered Longarm to the train depot just in time for him to catch the up-bound string of now empty ore cars. They would load through the night and bring mineral-bearing ores back down to the Denver smelters the next day.

There was no passenger accommodation, but as a deputy United States marshal, Longarm was entitled to passage amid the smoke and cinders in the caboose.

Longarm handed a generous tip to the cab driver, picked up his carpetbag, and headed for the depot.