Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds

by Tabor Evans

  She stared owlishly up at him. "Why should Cal be after my poor innocent sister, or even me?"

  Longarm said, "For openers, in case you ain't noticed, he's a crabby cuss running scared. He's been busting a gut pretending to be dead, and both you and your sister know him on sight!"

  She said, "Pooh, it's against the code of the trail to turn in a pal and Cal knows it."

  Longarm said, "No, he don't. Whatever the original game was, he's been acting like a homicidal lunatic ever since I dealt myself in. He tried to stop me, but I got through, and how's he supposed to know I got all those pals, including Chief, by beginner's luck? Wouldn't you be worried about someone telling tales out of school if you were the leader of a gang already suffering from some internal struggle and the law kept foiling plan after plan on you?"

  He saw those wheels going round in her big blue eyes again. So he said, "I'd be lying if I said I knew for sure whether those two he sent to the Tremont House were out to kill you or get you safely out of our clutches. Either way, I took 'em both so neat and tidy, it must have occurred to their boss that someone had tipped us off. With Flanders dead and Chief hiding out back in Minnesota, if you take my meaning."

  She had turned a shade green around the gills before he continued. "It gets worse. Whatever you and your sister had agreed to, I nailed his second in command, Chief, whilst he was supposed to be hiding safe and sound with Miss Helga at your family spread. Then I nailed Laughing Larry, no matter who'd sent for him to do me in, as neatly as if I'd been tipped off he was coming. You want some more? I just left your sister free as a bird, despite an easy chance to nail her on aiding and abetting, if not criminal conspiracy."

  The younger and prettier Runeberg sister reached down between them with a Mona Lisa smile as she murmured, "My, you have been busy, and so here we are, alone at last."

  He let her fondle his semi-erection. Most men would have. But as she did so, he smiled thinly and said, "Yep. With you screwing the same lawman who seemed so easy on your sister back in Minnesota. You can see, of course, how I'd never be able to hold you as either a prisoner nor hostile witness after getting on such friendly terms with you. So you're free as a bird to leave this little love nest as soon as you can get dressed, unless you'd rather get even friendlier."

  He could see she surely did when she rolled over on her plump knees and one hand to lower her blond head to his lap. He didn't try to stop her. Few men would have. But as he grinned down at the bobbing part of her hair he said, "That sure feels friendly. But what I meant was that I could get you out of Colorado in one piece, with no charges pending against you and mayhaps a pocketbook full of bounty money, if you'd only help me make the bad dreams of a bad man come true."

  She took her lush lips from his raging erection to impale her tiny twat on it instead as she pleaded, "You're so right about how mean old Cal can be when he thinks he's been crossed. But roll me over and do this to me right before I tell you the whole dumb story!"

  CHAPTER 28

  The next morning, having hidden the repentant outlaw gal with Madame Emma Gould, a real soiled dove who owed him some favors, Longarm got down to the less amusing chore of seducing a prosecution team and at least one senior judge.

  The meeting was held in Judge Dickerson's smoke-filled chambers, with Longarm's superior, Marshal Vail, naturally on hand to back his play unless it sounded wilder than usual.

  Once he had everybody sitting down and lit up, Longarm declared, "Before I tell you gents what I want you to do for me, I'd best tell you a bedtime story, as amended for me in bed last night."

  Vail growled, "I was just fixing to ask you why you registered at another hotel with that material witness. You told me you were out to get her to tell the truth, not go to bed with you, damn it!"

  Longarm smiled sheepishly and said, "Sometimes you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, Boss."

  The fair but firm Judge Dickerson snorted, "Never mind how he got what out of a hostile witness and let the man tell us what he got!"

  Longarm nodded thankfully and said, "Once upon a time there was this outlaw gang. Much like what we know about the James-Younger ways of pulling similar jobs, the three experienced leaders--Tyger, Flanders, and Youngwolf or Chief--stuck together and made plans, but picked up such extra help as they might need for a particular job from a way wider circle of kith and kin."

  A lawyer who'd doubtless read a recent edition of the Denver Post said, "What has any of that got to do with Elvira Carson, or with you letting her go after a night of slap and tickle?"

  Longarm said, "We call it giving them enough rope, and I got more'n slaps and tickles out of a gal who's really Margaret Egger nee Runeberg, the common law wife of the Fulton Egger you've been holding for trial as the late Frank Keller. But this would still make more sense to you if you'd just shut up and let me tell it from the beginning."

  Judge Dickerson warned everybody to be still and told Longarm to proceed. So Longarm said, "All right, moving closer to our own time, the three old pals hid out from time to time on this cattle spread close to their old stamping grounds, where they'd met as half-ass Indian fighters. The spread was owned and operated by the Runeberg sisters, at least until the younger one, pretty Miss Margaret, fell for the exciting bullshit of a part-time gang member called Fulton Egger and told the neighbors she'd be living in Chicago with somebody not quite as exciting."

  "You mean it was the Tyger gang, not the Keller gang, who tried to rob that train and-"

  "The judge just told you to be still," Longarm told the lawyer. Then he relented enough to explain. "We all know what a piss-poor train robbery that was. Young Egger got treed by the posse, and threw lots of sand in your eyes by confessing he was the leader, Frank Keller. And then you picked up a reluctant witness, coached in advance to blow the case sky high in court when the defense proved she'd been held as a trail-town whore instead of the innocent Minnesota miss she could be if she wanted. After the jury finished laughing about that, they were fixing to spring the death certificate of the real Frank Keller on the prosecution."

  There came a rumble of discontent. But Judge Dickerson, who'd had folks trying to laugh in his court in the past and didn't much approve of it, ignored his own injunction to gravely observe, "It wouldn't have worked. Horseplay in court may or may not amuse the jury. But I've been over the briefs and I'd say the prosecution has young Keller or, very well, Egger, as charged. If giving the arresting officer a false name was enough to get you off, nobody would ever be convicted. Who came up with such a sophomoric scheme to disrupt the majesty of my damned court?"

  Longarm said, "Brick Flanders, Your Honor. He was the big spender of the bunch. Tyger and Chief wanted to keep laying low, and told him his proposal to stop that train was dumb. But he tried to do it on his own, or with only his own fraction of the gang, at any rate, and we all know how that turned out."

  He saw nobody had any objections and continued. "It got worse. The murderous but somewhat cooler heads heard the gang they'd thought they were leading had robbed that payroll office up to Fort Collins, and that the high-denomination treasury notes were hot as a whore's pillow on payday night because the government had a list of all their serial numbers."

  Billy Vail just couldn't help but ask, "Which one of them was fool enough to spend one of those very treasury notes in the very county they'd always felt safe to hide out in, old son?"

  Longarm said, "Tyger and Chief were sure it was Brick Flanders. The red-bearded and glass-eyed wonder had been identified by survivors of that robbery. He denied having pulled the robbery. So he naturally had to deny spending the hot paper like a drunken sailor, and this got Tyger and Chief so mad they beat and shot him, not far from that rooming house he was found in well toasted. Margaret Egger couldn't say just how they managed to smuggle his body in and register it as the late Calvert Tyger. But she agrees with me that Tyger might have made a habit of dying in fires because he's an ordinary-looking cuss who feels better off with us not looking for
him above ground. Chief ran back to the old Santee country where, being Ojibwa, he didn't have to worry as much about being recognized by anyone who'd known him of old. Nobody from the gang bought any riding stock with a note from that payroll job. So you can imagine how chagrined they felt when I showed up as well."

  He let them all chuckle and summed up with, "Like I told the gal who told me so much, I'd just fallen in the dung heap and come up with sweet violets. But if the truth be known, I never caught but one of the three leaders with barnyard luck, and the bad one of the bunch is still at large, twice as smart and not looking half as unusual. That gal who admits to knowing him personal tried to describe him, and it sure adds up bland. I doubt any lawman would look twice at a middle-aged cuss of medium build in a not-too-plain-or-fancy business suit unless he acted unusual. So here's what I want you officers of the court to do for me. I want you to drop the charges against Fulton Egger, alias Frank Keller, for lack of evidence. Anyone who reads the Post or News ought to be able to see how that material witness running off on us leaves us with no case and-"

  "The hell you say!" one of the prosecution team declared. "We have the whole posse he surrendered to, along with the train crew they threw down on, and Jesus H. Christ, what sort of a federal prosecutor would throw in the towel over one hostile witness lighting out?"

  Longarm said, "A federal prosecutor with bigger fish to fry and an eye for an unethical but simple deal, of course. We can hold Borden and Wagner, the two gunslicks I arrested at the Tremont House, for what--twenty-four hours after we turn loose the material witness they were menacing?"

  Judge Dickerson said, "Seventy-two, on suspicion of anything. But you'd better make your other proposal a good one, Deputy Long. Why on earth would this court even consider turning loose a known member of a dangerous outlaw gang?"

  Longarm nodded and replied, "Why indeed, Your Honor? What might you think if a bunch of sneaky lawmen turned a member of your gang and his gal loose, whilst still holding other pals they had less to charge with?"

  Judge Dickerson smiled wickedly and said, "I like it. Let's try it."

  CHAPTER 29

  So later that afternoon, as Longarm and young Fulton Egger were coming out of the Federal House of Detention, a shady lawyer they'd both talked to in the past met them on the granite steps, looking a tad upset, to demand of Longarm, "Where are you taking my client now, Deputy Long? I warn you, he's never agreed to waive extradition on that old Kansas state charge!"

  Longarm smiled thinly and said, "You ain't been keeping up, Lawyer Culhane. I ain't taking this innocent child to Kansas or anywhere else as a prisoner."

  Egger stared back at his confounded lawyer, just as confounded, to say, "Don't look at me. I don't know neither. They just now told me they were dropping all charges and I was free to go."

  "With one proviso," Longarm explained knowingly. He pointed west along the busy street as he said, "Just because we don't want him on train robbing doesn't mean we want him spitting on the sidewalks of our fair city. So I'm escorting him down to Union Depot, from whence he'll be catching a Burlington Flyer clean out of my court's jurisdiction. His little woman will be waiting for him when he gets there, and I hope this has been a good lesson to the two of them."

  Lawyer Culhane stared thoughtfully at his client. "What did you and Margaret have to do in return, Fulton?"

  Egger answered truthfully enough, "Nothing. They never asked for anything."

  Longarm purred, "What might anyone want to ask a couple of pure innocent kids, Lawyer Culhane? Haven't you ever done anything from the goodness of your heart? Has dealing with the sort of clients you seem to deal with blinded you to the rights of an honest citizen? It says early on in the Bill of Rights that the accused shall be granted a fair and speedy trial. You've pestered me personally with enough writs of habeas corpus to know why we can't hold this pest."

  The short and respectable-looking member of the courthouse gang shook his derbied head. "No, I haven't. You have a way of making arrests stick, Longarm. We both know I've never pried a client loose from you for lack of evidence unless you had damned little evidence, or unless you were throwing a little fish back in exchange for..."

  "I never! I swear!" Egger shouted with an expression of dawning fear on his simple face.

  Longarm said, "Believe the boy. He's telling you the pure truth. He can write to you and settle on what he might owe you, after I get him aboard that flyer and on his way--out of our hair. We'd love to stay and chat some more, but the kid's train will be leaving around sundown, and he'd be better off eating in the depot beanery than aboard that night train. You care to come along and ask more questions? Neither one of us has anything to hide."

  Lawyer Culhane said he had some other late errands. They both knew he didn't have to say any more. So Longarm never asked what they were.

  As Longarm and Egger headed off down the street without his cheap lawyer, the unsettled outlaw suddenly confided, "Listen, we'd better not go to that depot just now. I follow your drift about my not being welcome here in Denver. I've been run out of town before. So why don't you just let me find my own way over to... You say old Margaret will be waiting for me in Omaha?"

  Longarm said, "Mebbe. I told her that would be where you'd be getting off the train I'm putting you on. I'm putting you on that train and no other because I told Judge Dickerson I would when he signed your release papers. I don't think he wants you finding your own way to the city limits, no offense."

  As they kept on walking, with Egger spooking at storekeepers sweeping the walk or passing riders dressed cow, the stockyards a few blocks away accounting for such riders innocently enough, Longarm told himself not to start tensing up before that tinhorn lawyer had had time to report to other clients. Then he considered how quickly one could whip around a corner to consult with another client at, say, a shoe-shine stand, and tensed up quickly.

  Egger tried to hold his own cards close to his vest. But as the red brick walls of Union Depot loomed just ahead the outlaw pleaded, "I don't want to wait for no train in there. You as much as told Culhane where this child would be during tricky glooming light, and I guess Margaret told you Culhane acts as lawyer for all of us here in Denver, right?"

  As a matter of fact, she had. But it would have been dumb, as well as needlessly cruel, to tell a man who'd just lost his woman that she'd even told the law how big his dong got. The big blonde, who could easily satisfy a modestly endowed man but said she'd learned to like a hung one better, could meet old Egger farther along if she wanted to, assuming he lived through what was about to transpire.

  When Egger suddenly asked why Longarm was grinning that way, the lawman said, "Just thinking how often I've caught a crook I'd have never known about had he only had the sense to leave me alone."

  As they crossed the street through the horse-drawn traffic, Egger started to make a break for it. But Longarm caught him by one elbow and spun him around, saying, "Careful, old son. You don't want to get run over by a coach an' four. I don't want to handcuff you neither, but I can and I will if you try that again!"

  Once on the sandstone walk in front of the depot, Egger sputtered, "You bastard! You're using me for bait! You never meant to turn me loose at all. But you figured Tyger would hear you had, suspect we'd made a deal to do him dirty, and come for me, right?"

  Longarm said, "Yep." He hauled the frightened man into an archway and hauled out a folded length of linen bond paper, handing it to Egger as he continued. "I told your Miss Margaret I don't play dirtier than I need to. If you want the whole truth, I think you're a useless punk. But she assured me you've never killed nobody or even stolen apples without somebody leading the way. So I can afford to let you run loose, until somebody kills you or you get a little sense. Meanwhile, there's no accounting for taste, and one of the conditions Miss Margaret made was that both of you went free in exchange for Tyger. I never said I wouldn't wire Brown County they could pick up her older sister, so remember that in days to come when and if she
says I double-crossed her. For when I make me a deal with the likes of you all, I dot every I and cross every T. After which you are on your own."

  Egger hadn't heard that last part. Even as he put his walking papers away he was weakly gasping, "Margaret made a deal to turn Cal in? Oh, Dear Lord, where can we hide?"

  Longarm led him inside the crowded depot by one arm, leaving his own gun hand free, as he said gently, "Your gal never told me where he was. She didn't know. Neither of you will have to hide from him if he gets caught. So I want you to keep a sharp eye on the folks all around and let me know if you spot Calvert Tyger, hear?"

  Egger moaned they were both going to be shot down like dogs. So Longarm led him into the depot dining hall, and bought them some chili con carne with mince pie and coffee. When Egger said he felt too sick to his stomach to eat, even seated in a corner, Longarm ate both of their orders and drank all the coffee.

  Then he consulted his pocket watch, saw it agreed with the wall clock, and said, "Pay attention lest you wind up feeling even worse, Egger. I can only watch so many ways at once, so there's an outside chance you'd get away from me if you made a break for it in the near future. After that it would be a toss-up whether I caught up with you and kicked the shit out of you, or Tyger got to you first and you wound up wishing you were only getting the shit kicked out of you."

  The pale-faced crook whimpered, "Cal's got it all wrong. Nobody I was pals with robbed that payroll office behind his back and got him so famous out this way!"

  Longarm said, "Tell him that as you lay dying. I hadn't finished your instructions. We'll be going out to the open platform now. It's early. There shouldn't be too many innocent targets in the way. I can watch you or I can watch for more important rascals. So like I said, you could likely make a dash for freedom if you weren't already free and had anywheres safer to dash. Can I bank on you acting sensible?"