Longarm and the Train Robbers (20 page)

"Once."

"Good!  We'll
strap on a couple pairs and go for a walk in the woods. It's just
up the tracks about a mile, but you won't be able to reach the
wrecked cars.  They tumbled far down in a frozen
gorge."

"That's what also
happened at Laramie Summit," Longarm said.  "These boys that are
derailing the trains aren't delicate or fair-minded, are
they?"

"No," Pettibone
said, "they damn sure aren't."

It took the better
part of an hour to reach the site of the train wreck, and there
really wasn't a lot to see once they arrived, but then Longarm
did not need to see much.

"The method of
derailment is the same," Longarm announced.  "They dynamited the
track just as the locomotive passed over it."

"Not dynamite,"
Pettibone corrected.  "They used nitroglycerine."

"at?"

"It's banned
because of its instability and power.  The Central Pacific had to
resort to its use when they were building the Sierra summit
tunnels. Nitroglycerine has so much power that it once leveled an
entire city block over in San Francisco.  The stuff is extremely
unstable but very, very powerful.  It would take several cases of
dynamite to lift a locomotive off the tracks, but just a jar of
liquid nitroglycerine."

"All right,"
Longarm said, "I'll go along with that.  But so what?"

"I've been
checking on every chemist in California and Nevada.  One of them
has to be mixing and handling that stuff.  I'm expecting a
telegram any day that will link Senator Howard to a criminal who
also happens to be a skilled chemist."

"Why don't we just
keep an eye on the senator?"

"Because he is too
smart to ever get personally involved in this.  He'll use
intermediaries.  The only way we nail him is to catch someone who
deals with him and is willing to testify against the senator in
court."

"So where do you
suggest we start?"

"We start with
your list of names.  Are you ready to give them to me
now?"

Longarm supposed
he was.  One by one, he reeled off the names that Fergus had
given him, and as he did so, Pettibone's grin widened.

"You like what
you've heard?"

"Damn right I do! 
Big Tom Canyon, Two-Fingered Earl, Shorty Hamilton, and most all
the others are living in a cabin not twenty miles from here.
They're at the north shore of Lake Tahoe."

it was Longarm's
turn to grin.  "You don't say!"

"I do say.  But
we'll never get them arrested without evidence."

Longarm patted his
six-gun.  "Evidence is usually found at the source. I'm going to
that cabin and find it."

"Whoa!" Pettibone
cried.  "You can't just..."

"Just
what?"

"Go busting in
there!"

"Watch me,"
Longarm said.  Pettibone was better on snowshoes than Longarm and
managed to get in front of him.  "You don't even know which cabin
they're at."

"I'll find it. 
You said it's the north shore of Lake Tahoe.  Now kindly step out
of my path."

Pettibone shook
his head.  "Tell me, Deputy Long, have you always been so
headstrong and impetuous?"

"I'm not one for
planning and jawin' a whole hell of a lot, if that's what you
mean."

"That's exactly
what I mean."

"Are you coming or
not?"

"I'm coming,"
Pettibone said, "though I'm half afraid that you're bound to make
my wife a widow."

"You can stay if
you want," Longarm told the man.  "I'll not hold it against
you."

"That's mighty
kind, but I wouldn't miss this roundup for anything."

"How can we get
there the quickest?"

"By not taking off
these snowshoes."

Longarm nodded. 
"I've got a rifle back at your depot and if you have a shotgun or
something, that might help."

"I do have
one."

"Are you any good
in a gunfight?"

Pettibone expelled
a deep, frosty breath.  "I honestly do not know.  I'm pretty good
with my fists."

"You'll do,"
Longarm decided, working on intuition and professional judgment. 
"Now let's find that cabin!"

CHAPTER
17

Longarm had never
spent such a miserable afternoon as he did that day trying to
keep up with Bruce Pettibone on snowshoes.  The railroad
detective was inexhaustible, and seemed intent on driving Longarm
until he dropped. Fortunately, the air was crisp and the trail
already broken and mostly leading downhill.  They skirted Bald
and Lookout Mountains to the southwest and crossed any number of
frozen creeks as they hurried through the heavy pine
forests.

When the sun began
to slide behind the mountains and Longarm still could not see
Lake Tahoe, he shouted, "Hold up there, dammit!"

"What's wrong?"
Pettibone asked, his breath coming in short, frosty
bursts.

"What's wrong is
that you're about to kill me!"

"But this is all
downhill!"

"Uphill or
downhill, I'm bushed!"  Longarm adjusted his Winchester, which he
had rigged on a sling and thrown over his shoulder.  "I don't
figure I want to go much farther today.  Pettibone, what do you
say we make a camp and get an early start in the
morning?"

"You mean sleep in
this damned snow?"  Pettibone looked appalled.

"We can make a dry
camp if we start preparing it before dark.  Maybe cut some pine
boughs and-"

"Listen,"
Pettibone said.  "Storms up here come fast and frequent in the
winter.  Now, even if I had enough blankets--which I don't--I
wouldn't even consider spending the night out here."

"Then what can we
consider, being as how I'm about to collapse from
fatigue?"

Pettibone looked
up at the dying sun.  "I say we have just another three miles to
the lake.  Their cabin is at Agate Bay and we could be there soon
after dark."

"Yeah, but what is
the damned hurry?"

Pettibone looked
disgusted.  "It's just that, since you decided we should do this,
I'd like to get it done."

"There's no sense
in charging into all those men half-cocked," Longarm said.  "In
any case, I'm too damned cold and tired to be any good in a
fight."

Pettibone swore
under his breath.  "All right," he finally said.  "A friend of
mine has a summer cabin just up ahead.  We can stay there for the
night and leave early in the morning."

"Fine."

Longarm followed
the railroad man on down the hill, and they struggled on for
about another half hour before they came to the cabin.  It wasn't
much, and Pettibone had to break a window to get inside.  But
there was some food and blankets and even chopped
firewood.

Much later, fed
and warmed by the fire, Longarm smoked a cheroot and said, "I
rode with a nice fella up from Reno in the train's mail
car."

"That'd be Liam. 
Did he offer you a drink of that Irish whiskey?"

"He did," Longarm
said.

"Then that's why
you ran out of steam.  Strong spirits rob a man of his vitality,
you know."

"Are you a
Mormon?"

"No, but I am a
teetotaler.  I swore off the stuff when I saw what it did to my
father.  It turned him into a raving maniac.  He finally shot
himself when I was about sixteen."

"I'm sorry to hear
that."

"Don't be.  It was
the best thing he could have done for the family.  It also taught
me never to forget how fast liquor can ruin a good
man."

"Do you smoke?" 
Longarm patted his coat pocket.  "I've got a couple more
cigars."

"Nope."

Longarm shook his
head.  "Pettibone, if you don't drink and you don't smoke, then
you might as well be a Mormon."

"Listen to you,"
Pettibone said with amusement.  "Why, you were gasping like a
locomotive out there on the trail!  It's that tobacco that robs
your wind and ruins your lungs."

"A man has got to
have a few pleasures in life."

Pettibone studied
Longarm in the firelight.  "I'll bet you have pleasures aplenty
with the ladies, isn't that so?"

"I like 'em fine,"
Longarm replied.  "But someday I might settle down and have a
family.  Like you."

"I don't think
so."

Longarm curbed his
annoyance.  He didn't understand how this man could make such an
important assessment, given that they were almost
strangers.

"I was a sheriff
once," Pettibone said after several minutes of strained
silence.

"For a
fact?"

"Yes.  It was on
the Comstock Lode.  I was, for a few short and exciting months,
the sheriff at Gold Hill."

"Sure, I've been
through there dozens of times.  Why'd you quit?"

"I killed an
innocent man," Pettibone said quietly.  "His only crime was that
he was drunk."

"Did he go for his
gun?"

"A knife.  I
thought he was passed out and when I reached down to drag him
into a chair, he probably thought I was about to steal what
little money he had left in his pockets.  So he yanked out his
knife and stabbed me in the side."

"Then he wasn't
innocent if he used a knife against you, Pettibone."

"Oh, yes he was! 
You see, he didn't know what he was doing.  And instead of
kicking his boots to wake him up first so that sort of thing
didn't happen, I just grabbed him.  To make matters worse, when
he stabbed me, I instinctively slammed the heel of my hand up
into his nose."

Pettibone shook
his head, his expression bleak.  "It was pure reaction. There
were dozens of witnesses and they all said that I was just trying
to push him away, not drive nasal bones into the drunken man's
brain."

Longarm smoked in
silence.  He could see how troubled Pettibone was over this
unfortunate death, and felt sure that everyone had already said
all the consoling words but none of them had counted.  In Bruce
Pettibone's mind, he was guilty of murder.  Not a vicious or
premeditated murder, but a murder caused by ignorance.

Pettibone looked
up suddenly.  "You've killed a lot of men, haven't
you?"

It wasn't a
question and Longarm didn't reply.

"Doesn't it bother
you?"

"Sometimes." 
Longarm blew a smoke ring at the fire.  He could hear the wind
through the pines outside and he was very grateful that they
weren't camped in the freezing snow.

"Will it bother
you tomorrow if we have to kill those train robbers?"

"Not a whit,"
Longarm growled.  "You saw the results of what they did to the
train at this end.  Well, it was about as bad at Laramie Summit. 
They killed women and old men.  They didn't even know who they
killed, and they didn't care that some of them lived for a while
in the freezing cold and died in pain."

Longarm looked
hard at Bruce Pettibone.  "Listen to me," he said, his voice
taking on an edge.  "If you haven't the stomach for the fight,
then you should return to the depot in the morning.  I don't need
a good family man who hesitates and gets himself killed for
nothing."

"Maybe we can get
the drop on the whole bunch and take them without firing a single
shot."

"Not very damned
likely," Longarm said.  "The odds are that we will have a
gunfight.  The odds are that unless we drop two or three in the
first volley, we won't live to see spring.  So you need to decide
if you are ready to fight or not."

After a long few
minutes, Pettibone said, "I'll fight if they don't
surrender."

"You just have
that shotgun cocked and ready.  In your mind, figure to unload
both barrels.  Otherwise, you're a dead man.  Mark my words,
Pettibone. The outlaws we are going to brace are tough, and they
sure won't be willing to surrender so they can march to a
gallows."

Pettibone nodded. 
"I guess that's probably the best way to look at it."

"It's the only way
to look at it," Longarm told him.

Longarm fed the
fire until it was hot, and then lay back on his blankets and
drifted off to sleep wondering if he or Pettibone would survive
the next day.

"Wake up,"
Pettibone said, jostling Longarm.

Longarm sat up out
of a dead sleep and looked around.  For a moment he forgot where
he was, but then he spotted Pettibone.  He could see that the
railroad detective had rustled up and cooked some breakfast. 
Biscuits, salt pork, and mercy, even coffee.

"I ought to bring
you along on these manhunts more often," Longarm said when he was
served a heaping breakfast plate.

"Well, you
complained so bad last evening about being weak and exhausted
that I figured I'd better try and get your strength back if we're
to have any chance of surviving the day."