Longarm and the Stagecoach Robbers (4 page)

Longarm awoke well before dawn. He felt considerably refreshed although his jaw ached like he had been kicked by a mule. And perhaps he had, at that.

He washed and dressed quickly and went downstairs and out into the chill of the predawn. The air felt good. The warmth in his belly from a hearty breakfast at the café felt even better.

Longarm presented himself at the Carver Express Company office in time to help Will put the four cobs into harness.

“Thanks, but you didn't have to do that,” Charlise told him.

“Have to, no. Want to, yes,” he said with a smile. “An' if you don't mind, I'll ride along on the run today. If nothin' else, it will give me an idea of what your route is like.”

“Of course. Even if I didn't want you to ride, you have the right. That is specified in the mail contract. Federal officers have that right,” the lady said. She turned and called out, “Will, Mr. Long will be your passenger today.” Turning back to Longarm she asked, “Do you want to ride up top like a shotgun guard or inside the coach?”

“Up top, I think,” he said. “I want t' be able to see as much as possible an' pester Will with questions when I think of 'em.”

“Fine. Would you like a shotgun? I'm not expecting trouble, but the sight of you might keep any highwaymen away.”

“Thanks, but no shotgun. If there's robbers laying in wait, I wouldn't want to keep the sons o' bitches away. I'd rather they come in where I can get to 'em and put a stop to this nonsense.”

“All right then. We do have two passengers who are ticketed to Lake George. One of them is pretty,” she said with a smile.

“But I bet she's not as pretty as you,” Longarm told the lady.

Charlie began to blush. She turned away quickly and retreated into the safety of the office, Longarm grinning behind her.

“Hyup, boys. Hyup!” Will snapped the popper on his whip above the ears of his near-side leader and the team stepped out, the coach swaying and lurching behind them.

Longarm grabbed hold of the rail beside the driver's perch. He had forgotten what it felt like to ride on top of a coach. The outfits were tall and ungainly and very badly sprung on leather slings. To the uninitiated, they felt like they might tip over sideways at any moment.

Will Carver chuckled at his side, evidently having seen Longarm's unintended grasp at safety. “You get used to it,” he said with a smile.

“Either that or die of a heart attack,” Longarm told him, only half joking. From up so high above the road, the side-to-side movement was exaggerated and felt dangerously uncontrolled.

“This morning,” Will said, “we'll go down to Bailey first, then swing back through Lake George and Guffey before we come back north to Hartsel and Fairplay. Tomorrow we reverse that and go the other way around.

“There really isn't much point in going down through Guffey. We almost never have any passengers going there or boarding down there, but the grade to make it up the bluff from the floor of South Park to the plateau where Lake George is, is just too much for the horses to manage. Too steep, that is. So we take the longer but easier route through Guffey.”

Longarm nodded. He was still clinging to the iron railing as if his life depended on it. And Will was still laughing at him.

By the time they left the open ground around Fairplay and entered the pine forests above Bailey, Longarm was more comfortable on the driving seat. A little.

They pulled to a halt in front of a log building set amid a dozen others just like it, all of them shaded by the surrounding pines.

“This is the general store and post office,” Will explained as a bearded man in bib overalls walked out the front door and nodded to the young man. His beard was so long it almost completely covered the blue denim bib. His dark hair was tousled and he was barefoot.

“This is Tom Rickets. He's the postmaster here.” Will grinned. “Among other things. About the only thing Tom doesn't sell is women. He says you have to go out and find those on your own.”

To the two passengers in the coach below, Will called, “This would be Bailey. We won't be stopping but a minute, so if you want to ride on to Lake George you'd best not get out.”

Will handed a thin packet of letters down to Rickets and received a handful in return. He took a moment to sort the letters into the appropriate mail pouches then touched the brim of his hat and nodded to the Bailey postmaster.

Will picked up the driving lines of his team, but Rickets said, “Wait a minute, Will. You have a passenger going to Fairplay.”

Rickets returned to his shack and led a young woman out. It was obvious what the lady—girl, really—did for a living. She was all feathers and ruffles and gaudy face paint, and Longarm could smell her perfume from on top of the coach.

She carried a small valise. Rickets did not help her with it, and she was having trouble lifting it to the roof of the tall coach, so Longarm jumped down and took it from her.

“Thank you, sir.” Her voice was barely a whisper, and when she climbed into the coach, she shied away from the other passengers as far as she could get and still be in the same cabin with them.

Longarm climbed back onto the driving box with Will and again took hold of the guardrail. But not with such a death grip this time. He was almost getting used to the swaying and bumping by now.

“This stretch from Bailey down to Lake George is where the highwaymen have been lying in wait,” Will cautioned. “You might want to keep your eyes open now.”

“Actually I've been keeping them closed,” Longarm said, deadpan. “Out of stark terror caused by your driving.”

“In that case I'm doing something right today,” Will said, once again snapping his whip over the ears of his leader.

They broke out of the pines on a long flat above a rickety cabin. Will removed his hat and ran a hand over his forehead. “Thank God,” he said. “No highwaymen this time.”

“I got t' admit,” Longarm told him. “I'm disappointed.”

Will gave him a look of shocked disbelief. “You
wanted
to be robbed?”

“Damn right,” Longarm said, nodding. “I want t' see those jaspers in front o' my pistol. Put the bastards in cuffs and be done with this shit. I want t' put an end to these robbers, Will.” He smiled. “Which is not to say I want you or your mom to be troubled. But I really was hoping they'd show themselves today.”

“Well, if you put it that way, I have to agree,” the young jehu said.

“When do we get to Lake George?” Longarm asked as the road curved toward the lonely shack.

Will laughed. “We're here.”

“This?”

“Yep. This is it. There isn't really a town, just this general store. We have a corral out back where we keep the change of horses. And over there is a sort of barracks. In wintertime there are work crews up here cutting ice for the market down on the flatlands. Manitou and Colorado Springs and places like that. It's a wonder there is a lake up here considering how much of it they haul away in the form of ice each year. You'd think they would haul it all away one of these days. In the meantime, you have Lake George. And Beaver.”

“There's beaver in the lake?” Longarm asked, incredulous.

“No, of course not. The Beaver I'm talking about is Beaver Jones. God knows what his real name is, or was. Everybody knows him as just Beaver. He has the store up here. Maybe someday Lake George will become a city but not yet.”

Will drove the coach around to the back of the shack and stopped beside a sturdy corral where four heavy-bodied cobs stood swishing their tails.

He leaned out to the side and called down to the passengers, “All out for Lake George. And ma'am, you might want to get out and stretch your, uh, limbs while I change horses. It will be a half hour or so before we pull out for Fairplay.” He sat upright and turned to Longarm. “The folks going on down to the flatlands wait here for the through coach. It comes up Trout Creek Pass and Hartsel. I don't know what will happen when the railroad makes it on down the pass. There sure won't be any reason to keep that coach running.”

“Your route intersects with that one,” Longarm said.

Will nodded. “Twice. Once here and once at Hartsel.”

“That's what I thought. But why . . .”

“They run a six-horse hitch so they can make it up that grade at the edge of the plateau. Even so if the coach is heavy loaded, the passengers sometimes have to get out and walk up. We only use four horses so it's much easier for us to go down through Guffey and around that way.”

“That makes sense,” Longarm said.

Will climbed down to the ground and began unclipping the horses from his hitch. Longarm got down and helped him exchange that team for the horses waiting inside the corral.

“We have to fill the hay bunk, too,” Will said, “and fill the water trough as well. Beaver doesn't do any of that, but he does allow us to use the corral.”

“Where do you get your hay?” Longarm asked.

“There's a fellow, lives below Florissant. We contract with him to keep us supplied. Back home, of course, there's no problem finding hay. There are a number of outfits who cut hay on the flats around Fairplay and Hartsel. Grain, that's another story. It's no problem now that the railroad is running. We have it shipped up by rail nowadays.” Will led one of the big horses out of the corral and began inspecting its hooves prior to putting the harness onto the animal.

Charlie was standing outside the tiny express company headquarters when Will and Longarm pulled in that evening.

“So how was your trip, Marshal?” she asked, half teasing and half serious about the inquiry.

“I enjoyed it just fine,” Longarm said, climbing down from the driving box. He looked up at Will and said, “I'll be along in a minute. I want t' help you with the feeding and cleaning up.”

Will drove the coach around to the back of the office. Longarm brushed himself off and turned to Charlie. “That's a good boy you have there.”

“Don't I know it,” she said. “I wouldn't be able to make it without him. He is a true blessing.”

Longarm reached into his pocket for a cheroot, bit off the twist, and lit his smoke. He eyed Charlie critically.

“Is there something wrong, Marshal?”

He smiled. “I'd kinda forgot what a fine-looking woman you are, that's all.”

“You also forgot that I can't abide smoke,” she said, ignoring the compliment.

“Oops. Sorry.” Instead of putting the little cigar out, though, he stepped around to the other side of her so the breeze would carry his smoke away from the lady.

Charlie went inside the office—perhaps to get away from him and his smoke, although she did not say anything more to him about it—and he took a moment to admire the swish of the befeathered whore who had been their passenger since Bailey. That one looked like she would be a wild ride, the sort that made a man want to strap his spurs on extra tight before he mounted her. Not that he was interested in buying any female company at the moment.

Longarm finished his cheroot then walked around back, where he helped Will with currying the four horses and checking their feet, then feeding and watering all four of those plus the four others that would be used for the reverse route come morning.

And when all that was done, there was still harness to inspect, clean, and oil and the coach itself that had to be checked and the axles greased. Will even crawled beneath the big coach and looked at the thorough braces before he was satisfied that all was well.

“You treat those horses like they're your children,” Longarm told him. “Hell, you treat them better than a good many men treat their human children.”

“I just want to make sure things are as good as I can make them. I don't know if Mama told you, but we don't have so much of a margin that we can afford for anything to go wrong around here,” Will said.

“She told me,” Longarm said. “There isn't anything I can do to help you out with the company, but I sure as hell hope I can do something about these robberies.”

“Join me for a drink?” Will said.

Longarm nodded. “With pleasure.”

Longarm spent the next several days riding on top of the stagecoach with Will Carver, but there was no sign of the highwaymen. He did, however, come to know and like the young driver. And he met the men Will dealt with along the Carver Express Company route.

On Sunday the coach remained parked behind the company office, while the horses stood quietly in their stalls.

Longarm slept late, past six o'clock, then rose and shaved. He bundled up his dirty clothes and carried them down to the Chinese laundry on his way to a café for breakfast.

He dawdled over a platter of beefsteak and fried potatoes then walked over to the sheriff's office to see if Bud Jahn had returned yet. He had not.

“I don't know when the sheriff will be back,” Deputy Tommy Bitterman told him. “But, say, could you hold down this desk for a few minutes while I go take a leak? Please?”

“Sure, I can do that,” Longarm said.

Bitterman disappeared almost before Longarm got the words out of his mouth. Longarm smiled. He had been in such a situation before and remembered well the discomfort.

He also knew better than to expect the deputy back in “a few minutes.” Bitterman would take advantage of this respite for every bit as long as he thought he could get away with.

It was all fair game when a man was trapped on boring duty on a Sunday morning, Longarm knew, so he leaned back, crossed his legs, and lit a cheroot.

Two minutes later all hell broke loose.

A young man came larruping into the sheriff's office, hatless and breathless and wild-eyed.

“Where . . . where's Tommy?”

“I'm settin' in for him,” Longarm said. “What's the matter?”

“A deputy. We're needing a deputy. There's . . . a fight. Somebody's gonna get killed, sure as shootin'.”

Longarm came around in front of the desk. He was not sure what Sheriff Bud Jahn's rules were about leaving the place empty—there were prisoners in the jail back there, after all—but apparently this was an emergency. And anyway, Bud's rules were not Longarm's rules and his best judgment would just have to do.

“Show me,” he barked, and the fellow turned and started back down the stairs at a good clip.

The fellow led the way to a saloon four blocks distant. Even before they arrived, Longarm could hear the commotion that was going on inside.

There must have been a dozen men or more involved in a wild melee. Fists were flying. Anyone on the floor was apt to get his head kicked in. Empty bottles, glass mugs, chairs, anything and everything constituted a weapon.

A man who Longarm assumed had to be the bartender—he was wearing a stained apron anyway—was down on the floor, bleeding heavily from a split in his scalp. It was obvious there was no one else interested in keeping order.

Longarm flipped his wallet open and hung it in the breast pocket of his coat with the badge showing bright and prominent. Then he waded into the fight, grabbing people by the scruff of the neck and hauling them upright, growling instruction for them to shut the fuck up and move aside, moving on to the next man.

He whittled the size of the fight down one by one until he came to the last man swinging. That one was the size of a small mountain. Or maybe not so small.

The fellow was huge. He was wearing shirtsleeves with only the sleeve garters holding them up because what remained of his shirt was hanging down around his waist. He was gleaming with sweat. And somehow he retained his hat, which was a soiled and much battered derby.

Tall as Longarm was, he had to look up when he confronted this one.

“Screw you, pipsqueak,” the mountain roared as he lunged for Longarm's throat.

Longarm grabbed for his .45, reversed it so the flat of its butt was a club, and whacked the big man on the temple. The blow rattled him. Longarm could see that. But it did not put him down.

Longarm ducked under a wild sweep of the big fellow's right fist and whacked him again with the butt of the heavy revolver. This time his eyes crossed, but he still did not go down. Instead he swung at Longarm again.

This time Longarm did not quite get out of the way. The fellow's fist landed like the kick of a mule. A rather large and angry mule.

Longarm felt things go fuzzy for a moment there. It was obvious he was not going to stand toe to toe with the big fellow, so he stepped in close and whacked him yet again. As hard and as solidly as he could manage.

The derby must have cushioned the blow to some extent, but Longarm gave it everything he had. And this time the fellow went down. It was like seeing a tree fall. His eyes rolled up in his head so there was nothing but white showing, and he toppled face forward, out before he ever hit the floor.

Longarm walked over to the bartender, who was sitting up with his back against the front of the bar—the wrong side for a bartender to be on, which he would undoubtedly agree with.

“Are you all right?”

The bartender looked up at him. It seemed to take the man a few moments for the fact of Longarm's presence to register and for him to see the badge that hung on the front of Longarm's coat. He shook his head and blinked. “I will be,” he said.

“Want a hand up?”

“I . . . give me a minute.”

“Sure,” Longarm said, turning away to look over the room.

Two men in rough clothing were behind the bar drinking free whiskey as fast as they could gulp it down.

Longarm motioned them aside. They took a look at the badge and set the whiskey bottles down then scurried out from behind the bar.

Half a dozen other men were picking up chairs and slumping into them. A fair amount of blood was flowing. It probably was a good idea that the sawdust on the floor was thick and could absorb it all. Men were doing what they could to stanch the bleeding, but it was obvious that the local doctors would have some stitching to do.

The big fellow sat up, shaking his head. He looked up at Longarm. “Did you do this?”

“Uh-huh,” Longarm told him. “D'you want to let be? Or would you like t' cool off in the jail instead?”

“You ain't taking me to jail now?”

“Not unless you need it,” Longarm said.

The big man grinned. “Shee-it, mister, but you got a punch.” Apparently he did not remember or had not seen that it was the butt of a clubbed revolver and not a fist that put him on the floor.

“I'm really not going to jail?”

“No, you're really not.”

“Thanks, mister. I owe you one.”

Longarm was not entirely sure how he meant that. Owed Longarm exactly what? Regardless, the fight had gone out of him now and he seemed willing to let it go, at least for the moment.

The bartender had climbed groggily to his feet and was back on the correct side of the bar for him. He sighed heavily and began assessing the damage.

Longarm waited around long enough to be reasonably sure that the party was over then hurried back to the sheriff's office, where he was supposed to be.