Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds

by Tabor Evans

  "There must be a way," Sheriff Tegner suddenly decided, spilling almost as much as he was pouring as he insisted, "Never trusted that P.S. Plover. Never will. What sort of a name might Plover be? It sure sounds odd for these parts!"

  Longarm gently took the bottle from the befuddled older lawman as he said, "You got to watch them Anglo-Saxon bankers, Sheriff. But I'm a peace officer, not a bank examiner."

  O'Brian suggested a bank examiner might be able to figure a way to fiddle the books in order to show withdrawals taking place after rather than before a depositor died.

  Longarm shrugged and said, "You gents feel free to examine all the bank ledgers you want. Meanwhile, I'd rather work on suspects, red or white, who've threatened me directly. Marshal Vail never sent me here to investigate Banker Plover, and Plover surely couldn't have been expecting me to. Yet sinister cusses have been trying to stop me ever since I left my home office, and to tell the truth, it's getting tedious as hell."

  Sheriff Tegner didn't answer. He put his head down on his desk and commenced to blow small caraway-scented bubbles.

  O'Brian grinned at Longarm and murmured, "I thought it was Irishmen who couldn't handle the creature. Where do we go from here, pard?"

  Longarm said, "You go anywhere you like. One of us has to stay here until at least one of this old gent's own deputies shows up."

  O'Brian seemed sincerely puzzled as he demanded, "How come? Neither of us ride for Brown County, and it was his own grand notion to get drunk on duty."

  Longarm sighed and said, "Neither of us are running for re-election this fall, and he was trying to be friendly. What do you have to do that's so all-fired important with the afternoon sun so low?"

  O'Brian said, "Send a wire back to my real boss for openers. Now that we've talked I ain't sure whether they want me to stay and back your play or head on home. No offense, and I know you're supposed to be good, but you don't seem to have any play in mind."

  Longarm only shrugged. He didn't want another lawman, or any man at all, backing his play with pretty Vigdis Magnusson, now that the bank had closed for the day and most everyone but Viggy would be on their way home before long.

  CHAPTER 24

  After the man from Saint Paul was gone, Longarm helped himself to some wanted flyers, took another seat, and smoked and read the ugly statistics of wanted men and women until, a million years later, that senior deputy he'd already met came in, nodded morosely at the top of the sheriff's gray head, and muttered, "I see we've been into that old aquavit again. Thanks for holding the fort, Longarm. I can handle it from here, as long as nobody sets fire to the church or robs the bank!"

  Longarm rose so they could shake hands and part friendly. Then he picked up his Winchester and headed for the Western Union himself.

  He hadn't heard from old Jay Gould as yet. The railroad robber baron was doubtless already dining on fish eggs and green turtle back East, where it would be suppertime by now. But good old Whispering Smith, riding herd on gold shipments out of the Black Hills for the U.P. line, had wired he knew the Bee Witch well. Only her real name was Miss Judith Wright and she'd been a Union spy for old Allan Pinkerton's Secret Service.

  But Whispering Smith said she hadn't stayed with Pinkerton when the gruff old Scotsman started his private agency after the war. Smith said the sly old colored gal worked free-lance for both railroad and land-developing outfits, having been taught to make pretty good contour maps when she wasn't pretending to be a laundress, a midwife, or some other sort of harmless dumb coon.

  Longarm had already figured what the sly old gal had been up to in these parts. He wired Whispering Smith an urgent request to ask all about and find out whether the dusky old detective gal was alive. He explained he wasn't interested in any other secrets she or her real outfit might want to keep.

  After that, knowing in advance how Viggy's notions of supper were doubtless better for her waistline than his own, Longarm stopped at a stand-up beanery to down some Swedish meatballs and potato pancakes with two mugs of black coffee.

  Feeling refreshed by his light snack, Longarm consulted his pocket watch and decided it was safe to take his saddle gun to the bank. Viggy let him in, as he'd expected, but giggled at his saddle gun and said, "I surrender, dear. Everyone else has been gone for some time, so where do you want to come, on that same chesterfield in the rear office?"

  Longarm chuckled, hauled her in, and kissed her with enthusiasm inspired by chastely thinking of other women all that damned day.

  But then he said, "There's no sense having to get dressed over and over when it's this close to sundown to begin with and I got some bank examining to do whilst there's still some daylight."

  The beautiful blonde sighed and said, "Pooh, I thought you were only after my body. Didn't you go all through that ledger for last December last night, darling?"

  He said, "I did, and I'm pretty sure I made out no more than two styles of handwriting. But I'd like to make certain, so..."

  "I can tell you who made each entry, dear." She led the way around to the backs of the teller's cages as she continued. "You just missed them. I thought it was me you were interested in. But we have two more tellers, and we naturally transcribe all our daily transaction in the day book for that month at the end of every working day."

  As she hunkered down to rummage for that ledger from the year before, Longarm said, "Hold on. Did you just tell me old P.S. Plover would have never made any entries in his own handwriting?"

  She panted, "Here it is. I thought you'd finished with the clumsy old tome. Why would Mister Plover be making entries in deposits and withdrawals, dear? He's the manager."

  Longarm started to make a dumb objection. But he could see without asking how the front office would tally all the real cash on hand in person before locking it in the vault overnight.

  Viggy rose to full height and flopped the heavy gray ledger atop the long work counter running the length of the teller's hidey-holes. As she opened it for him she idly asked what they were doing. So he brought her up to date on that old drunk and the missing colored lady as he found the entries dealing with the both of them. Then he sighed and muttered, "Thunderation! Neither withdrawal seems to have been tampered with, other entries above and below them confirm the dates for both of them, and worse yet, the two withdrawals on different days were recorded in different scripts!"

  Viggy put a polished nail to the paper, saying, "This would have to be Mister Spandau's handwriting. Isn't it pretty? Mister Quinn writes clear enough, I suppose, but he's not as tidy a penman as Mister Spandau."

  Longarm said he didn't care, and asked if any one teller got much time alone back there.

  Viggy thought and decided with a giggle, "Playing detective is a lot of fun, albeit I'd still rather play house. I see what you suspect one of us sneaks of doing, dear. I suppose it would be possible for one teller to alter the books whilst the other was out of the cage to heed the call of nature or run some other quick errand. But he'd have to be awfully fast as well as awfully clever, don't you agree?"

  Longarm swore under his breath and nodded. "I sure wanted to arrest me a banker too. Another lawman I was just jawing with had the same motive for my demise figured out. But old folks do withdraw all their savings and leave town or get run over by a dray."

  She asked if he was through back there. He kissed her again and said he was ready to play house instead of bank examiner. So she led the way back to that chesterfield.

  But once they got to old Plover's office the sunset was peeking fire-engine red through the drawn blinds. So Longarm repeated what he'd said about just getting undressed once the right way, with her grand old bed to play on once they had.

  She dimpled and stopped trying to unbuckle his gun rig as she told him she agreed it was time they got out of this ridiculous vertical position.

  They slipped out the back way and moved along a back street in the gloaming. Off in the distance, a train whistle seemed to be mourning the death of another day. But Longarm kn
ew it was that eastbound he'd have had to wait for if he'd taken that clerk's suggestion about modern transportation. When Viggy asked what he'd just chuckled about, he told her, "I'd be crossing the Sleepy Eye trestle aboard that train about now if I hadn't checked today's timetable and met up with a buckskin pony that was more convenient. Don't know whether they'll be stopping at Sleepy Eye or not. Either way, they'd have been letting me off here even later."

  As they approached the entrance to her own alley Viggy hesitated and murmured, "I might have felt better leading you and that rifle to my back door after dark, dear. It's not that I'm ashamed of anything exactly, but it's still awfully light out, and..."

  "I know about small-town gossip," he said, not wanting to upset her by telling her a widow was talking about them clean across town. But he never argued when she shyly suggested he let her go on ahead and then come on down that alley alone after it got a mite darker.

  He said he'd hold up a cottonwood with his back and smoke a couple of cheroots while she went on ahead to turn down the covers.

  She glanced about, then stood on her toes to kiss him some more before she turned and scampered off in the gathering dusk like a kid out for mischief on Halloween.

  Longarm chuckled as he turned his back to that cottonwood, cradled his Winchester over one arm, and reached for a smoke. But he'd barely lit it, and taken no more than a half dozen drags on it, when the soft gloaming light lit up with a hellish glare and the earth underfoot was shaken by a horrendous blast that just had to be dynamite, a heap of dynamite, going off too close to keep Longarm from wailing, "Aw, shit, don't let it be that, Lord!"

  But it was. Shattered wood had been set ablaze down the alley, and he could see the empty smoke-hazed gap where Viggy's carriage house had stood long before he got that far. So he didn't join the crowd of confounded neighborfolk gathering like flies around a cow pat as he spun and tore the other way, with the Winchester '73 at port arms. He levered a round of.44-40 in its chamber as he heard that eastbound train's huffing and puffing off to the west. He beat it into the New Ulm depot with time to spare, though, and was only half surprised to find the so-called Deputy O'Brian alone on the open platform.

  O'Brian didn't act surprised to see him. He said, "Howdy, pard. I figured the bastard who set off that bomb would head for here to catch that train too."

  Longarm said, "Well, sure you did. How did you know someone just rigged a mess of dynamite to go off when a lady I was escorting home tried to open her damned door?"

  O'Brian tried, "I heard the explosion, of course. Just like you, I figured Laughing Larry Lucas had blown some damned something up and that he'd naturally have his getaway planned in advance."

  "You're under arrest for the murder of Miss Vigdis Magnusson, a gal who never done no harm, you son of a bitch!" Longarm swung the muzzle of his Winchester to cover the impostor, adding, "Go for that side-draw, please, if you think I'm fooling. Otherwise you'd best give me some answers pronto. Who sent for you and how come?"

  Laughing Larry lived up to his nickname by laughing like a fool hyena and demanding, "What if I tell you to just guess?"

  Longarm said, "I reckon you'll get gut-shot trying to escape. You don't seem to grasp this situation, you comical cuss. I am mad as hell and I'd rather kill you personally, gruesomely, than let you die quick and painless on the gallows or even talk your way back into another nut house. But I'll still take you in alive if you'd like to say who else I want to arrest for what you just done!"

  Laughing Larry looked really loco as the headlight beam of that train pulling into the station etched his grinning features in harsh yellow light and shadows black as sin. But Longarm was still trying to reason with the half-crazed killer when Laughing Larry suddenly spun on one boot heel like an awkward ballet dancer and bolted for the far side of the tracks just as the locomotive's big barn-red cowcatcher was about to plow between them.

  Longarm fired, of course, and hit the fugitive felon low in the right hip, to send his holstered six-gun flying as he spun again to land spread-eagled on his back, both boot heels hooked over the far rail as the big locomotive hissed to a stop to block Longarm's view.

  So he was tearing around the front end of the train as he heard a voice from the engineer's cabin wailing, "Lord have mercy! I think I just ran over a passenger!"

  He was right, Longarm saw, as he moved down the far side of the big steel drivers through clouds of hissing steam. For he found the killer he'd just shot stretched out on the ballast, spurting blood from both severed stumps while he laughed like hell.

  Longarm lay his Winchester aside on the ballast and whipped off the dark bandanna he'd been wearing in place of a sissy tie as he told Laughing Larry to lie still. He was knotting the now-bloody calico as tight as he could around the killer's right shin when the amused or more likely hysterical cuss laughed some more and asked if Longarm wanted to race him down to the far end.

  Longarm reached for the killer's own shoestring tie as he told him not unkindly, "I feel your foot-racing days are done. But we may be able to stop the bleeding, and weren't you fixing to tell me who else I have to thank for all this tomfoolery?"

  Laughing Larry just giggled, lay back, and closed his eyes. Longarm still knotted the tie around his left shin, even though it wasn't bleeding that hard now.

  Sheriff Tegner and two deputies came around the front end of the locomotive with lanterns. As they joined Longarm and Laughing Larry, the older lawman said, "Thanks for standing by as I recovered from them caraway seeds. Somebody just blew Vigdis Magnusson to bits all by herself, despite the old biddy across the alley, and how come I see Deputy O'Brian laying there so still? Is he dead?"

  Longarm nodded soberly and said, "I reckon. He wasn't the real Sean O'Brian from our Saint Paul office. He was the one and original hired killer he'd come all this way to warn us about!"

  Sheriff Tegner swung the beam of his lantern over the blank face of the figure at their feet, marveling, "That's Laughing Larry Lucas? How come? Why would he go to all that trouble warning you he was in town if, all the time, he meant to blow you up the way he did Miss Vigdis and all them other victims?"

  Longarm said, "He wasn't out to tell me. He was out to tell you. Would you have tried to stop a friendly fellow lawman from reporting my murder federal after you'd already said yourself you suspected they were worried about me at the bank a fellow victim worked at?"

  Sheriff Tegner allowed he might not have.

  Longarm continued. "He'd have come to New Ulm aboard that earlier westbound today. He'd have had plenty of time to scout around and pick up some gossip about the man they'd hired him to kill before he ever paid that false courtesy call on you. When I got in like a big-ass bird with his saddle gun already out, Laughing Larry grabbed the chance to throw me off guard whilst casting suspicion on Banker Plover, see?"

  Sheriff Tegner grumbled, "Not really. Them same gossips said that blonde you were sparking had been sparked by her boss in the past. So who's to say he might not have sent away for a tougher cuss because he was jealous but afraid to take you on man to man?"

  Longarm shook his head and said, "The hired killer. I was wondering about cigar smoke and how such a sweet little thing wound up in position to outrank and supervise two full-grown bank tellers. But had Plover been that serious about his part-time play-pretty..."

  "How do you know they were only playing part of the time?" asked the county deputy Longarm knew best.

  Longarm was aware of others drifting in for a closer look now, so he kept his voice down as he replied. "I happen to know she had heaps of playtime of her own. This dead dynamite expert knew it as well. He slipped over to her known place of residence to set up his infernal device with me as the intended target. But there was a chance the other gent you just mentioned could have come calling and been as unpleasantly surprised. So how often does a hired killer either lay suspicion on a true client or blow him all to hell with dynamite?"

  The sheriff said that made sense. But his senior dep
uty pointed out that Laughing Larry had been a homicidal lunatic.

  Longarm shrugged and said, "Anything's possible, once you toss out all the remotely sensible reasons to kill folks. It's possible anyone here in Brown County could have sent for a hired killer just to see whether I died with my eyes shut or open. But if it's all the same with you, I'll start with more logical suspects."

  Sheriff Tegner blinked and asked, "You mean you got some good as Banker Plover?"

  To which Longarm could only reply, in a weary tone, "How would you like me to list 'em, alphabetical or numerical?"

  CHAPTER 25

  It was just after midnight when Longarm finally made it back up the river to that raft and told Mato Takoza not to flap those raggedy buzzard wings and moan at him like that.

  The spunky little breed acted mighty happy to see him, once she knew who'd come calling at that hour. But she'd have likely acted as happy whether she'd meant it or not. So Longarm held a few things back until she was making him happy inside the shanty, bare-ass with her on top. Then he told her he had some other happy surprises for her, and rolled her on her back to open her wide and probe her deep as he told her he'd been scouting her old Bee Witch, as he'd promised her he would.

  Long-donging anyone that pretty would have been easy in any case, but she'd been extracting honey all afternoon and smelled like she had, even after an afternoon swim in the chalky river water. She took all the organ-grinding inspired by all those Wasichu gals through a long chaste day as a personal compliment. So when she threw both her arms and legs around him to crush him tight against her tawny tits, he kissed the side of her neck and murmured, "I like you too. Now I have some questions to ask, and before you answer, I want to give you a couple of tokens of good faith."

  She demurely asked what he wanted to know, and assured him she would never lie to him, never.

  He murmured, "Don't see why not. We lie to you folks all the time."