Longarm and the Horse Thief's Daughter

by Tabor Evans

  He had seen no one in Bedlam he had ever encountered before. No wanted criminals who could have recognized him and assumed that he wanted them.

  Of course just because he had seen no one like that, it was always possible that some wanted felon could have seen him and made the assumption.

  Longarm sighed. This was some damn vacation he was having. He would have to remember to thank Billy Vail when he got back to Denver. Hell, working would be a relief after this vacation.

  With that thought in mind, he drifted back into a light and fitful sleep.

  Chapter 19

  No one shot at him when he led his animals around the stand of aspen and down toward Bedlam. Longarm considered that to be something of a plus.

  He walked into the town and back to that same cook tent.

  “Twenty-five cents, mister. Cash only, no credit.” It was the friendliest greeting—and the only one—he’d gotten that morning. He paid the quarter and plucked a tin plate out of the washtub beside the money man.

  This time he had remembered to bring his own knife, fork, and spoon out of his pack.

  Breakfast turned out to be flapjacks, all you wanted, with a ladle of sorghum syrup poured over them. He had had worse.

  Longarm hunkered down and placed his plate on his knees, then proceeded to fill up. The hotcakes were thin but tasty, but the syrup had too much of a sulfur flavor for his taste. All in all, not bad.

  After he finished gorging himself, he walked down beside the creek and had a smoke.

  He was just walking back up toward his animals, wondering if he could find Frank Nellis’s camp—and for that matter if he might find Frank Nellis—when it happened again.

  Some sorry son of a bitch threw a shot at him.

  He caught a glimpse of rapid movement off to his right. Looked that way and saw the familiar figure of the thief in the bib overalls and red undershirt.

  This time the man had a rifle in his hands and was taking aim. At Longarm.

  Chapter 20

  Longarm did not really want to kill the man, despite the asshole’s habit of shooting at people he did not like.

  Longarm snapped off two shots, one beside each of the fellow’s ears. The idea was to discourage him.

  It did. Sort of.

  At least it made him turn tail and run. But the idiot kept shooting; he stopped every few yards to turn and fire back at Longarm.

  Fortunately he was a dreadfully bad shot. His bullets came fairly close, but they did not connect.

  Longarm’s worry was that if the thief kept this up, sooner or later he would get lucky. At which point Custis Long would be terribly unlucky. Sooner or later one of those slugs was going to hit, hit either Longarm or somebody else. Either of those would be bad. Longarm certainly did not want some bystander to be hit any more than he wanted to take a slug himself.

  The only real defense he had, Longarm figured, was to properly discourage the son of a bitch.

  He fired again, coming close to the man but careful to avoid hitting him.

  The man must have heard the whip-crack of Longarm’s bullet sizzling past his ear, because he turned and ran. Ran across the flimsy wooden bridge to the other side of the creek and up the side of the hill on the far side. He disappeared into the dark mouth of a mine opening after first tossing his rifle aside.

  Longarm followed, stopping every once in a while to encourage the retreat by sending another .45 slug close to his heels.

  At the entrance to the dark and narrow mine, Longarm was stopped by a burly fellow in overalls. The man had a clipboard and an official air about him. He grabbed Longarm by the arm and yanked him to a stop.

  “Are you after Henry?” he asked.

  “I’m after the fella that just ran in here. I got no idea what his name is.”

  “His name is Henry. You could say he’s our town bully.”

  “And you could say,” Longarm said, “that Henry is about to get his ass whipped.”

  “That’s fine,” the miner said, “but you aren’t going in there with that pistol you’re carrying.”

  “And why the hell not?” Longarm demanded.

  “Because those cartridges are explosives, and explosives cause concussion, and concussion like that can start a cave-in. There’s four men in there . . . no make that five if you want to count Henry . . . that I’d just as soon not see die in a damn cave-in. And that’s to say nothing of the month or so it might take to dig it all back out again. So bottom line is, if you want to go in after Henry, be my guest. But you aren’t taking that gun in there with you.”

  Longarm frowned. But he removed his gunbelt and laid it beside Henry’s rifle. “Satisfied?” he asked.

  “Yup,” the miner said. “Oh, one more thing. You don’t know this place. You might want to take one of those carbide lamps.” He grunted. “That’s if you want to see past the end of your nose once you get more than a few paces in.”

  There was a pile of the small but amazingly powerful little lamps inside a shack beside the mine entrance. They were worn on the head like caps. The miners generally strapped them around soft caps. Longarm picked one up and examined the thing.

  “Here, let me light it for you,” the helpful fellow—Longarm assumed he was the foreman—said, taking the lamp and striking a match.

  In broad daylight the lamp seemed to give off no light at all, but Longarm knew that once he was in darkness he would appreciate the bright glow. “Thanks, mister.”

  “Mind a piece of advice?”

  “As long as I don’t have t’ promise to take it.”

  “Our Henry is a brawler. Nobody likes him, but nobody can whip him either. If you find him, take him fast and take him dirty, because that’s what he’ll try to do with you. Here.” The fellow bent down and picked up a chunk of wood that was about three inches thick and three feet long. “If you can find him, use this.”

  Longarm whistled. “You boys play rough, don’t you?”

  “Neighbor, our Henry won’t be playing. If you go in there, he’ll try and kill you.”

  “He’s been doing that already, damn him,” Longarm snapped. “I’m tired of it. It stops here.”

  “Good luck to you then.” The foreman stepped back and touched the brim of his soft cap.

  Longarm took a deep breath. And entered the world of the miners.

  Chapter 21

  The adit—it was not a tunnel; tunnels go all the way through something—was roughly square in shape, four-and-a-half feet tall and approximately four feet wide. Longarm had to crouch to pass through.

  He crabbed his way forward. After fifty feet or so the light from the adit mouth disappeared and he had to rely on the headlamp to see his way. The beauty of the simple lamp was that it pointed wherever he looked, allowing him to see another twenty or thirty feet ahead. If he turned his head to the side, the light turned with him.

  The bent-over posture he was required to adopt was hard to maintain. He discovered that every few minutes he had to stop and hunker down on his heels in order to rest his thigh muscles. Then, refreshed, he could go on again, using the chunk of pine like a cane to ease a little of the strain on his back.

  The adit had walls, ceiling, and floor of roughhewn rock, chipped painfully out of the live rock by men with chisels and hammers. Longarm could scarcely imagine the effort that had been required to complete that work for hundreds, perhaps for thousands of feet into the mountain. It had all been done, of course, to follow a vein of valuable ore of some mineral or metal.

  He still did not know what they were mining here. Probably silver, but it could have been for any number of other minerals instead.

  Right now his chore was to mine one asshole named Henry, who was hiding somewhere underground. One murderous asshole, he reminded himself. The man had already tried several times to kill him. It was a habit Longarm wanted to break him o
f.

  The adit twisted left and right, up and down. Curiously, the floor was soft underfoot. He did not take time to examine the layer of brown padding spread on the floor.

  Then the answer to what it was came to him. Came in the form of a string of burros plodding toward him out of the darkness, each of the eight small, shaggy animals carrying bulging packsaddles of raw ore.

  That, he realized, explained the height of the opening. It was just high enough to accommodate a burro and just wide enough to accept the burro plus the width of the ore sacks it carried.

  The intelligent little animals were making their journey with no human hand guiding them. Obviously they knew where they were going. Longarm had to drop down to hands and knees and press himself hard against the cold, stone wall at his side in order to let the string of burros pass.

  He reached an opening to his left which turned out to be a larger, taller expanse where a large pocket of ore had been removed. The light from his lamp showed nothing but stone walls and on this floor rock chips instead of the burro manure that carpeted the main line.

  There was no sign of Henry or of any other humans. Back in the main line he traveled perhaps another hundred yards before he encountered lights and voices. He came upon a group of four miners, each wearing a headlamp, with a collection of hammers, chisels, and pry bars at their sides.

  “You lookin’ for Henry?” asked one of the men, with such a grimy, rock-dust–covered face that Longarm was sure he would not recognize the fellow after he washed.

  Longarm nodded, causing shadows to dance in front of him. “I am.”

  The man eyed the chunk of wood in Longarm’s hand, then pursed his lips to point with. “About fifty feet in there’s a branch to the left. Take it.”

  “Thanks.” Longarm touched a finger to his forehead and moved past the men, who were taking a break with sandwiches and bottles of coffee.

  He moved slowly in until he came to the side opening the miner had mentioned. The adit branched straight left and sloped upward to the right.

  Longarm paused there.

  Left, the man had said.

  Too easily? Henry, after all, was one of their own. And Longarm was a stranger.

  Longarm knelt for a moment to ease aching muscles not accustomed to this cramped posture.

  Then he moved forward. Into the right-hand adit.

  Chapter 22

  If the would-be assassin was in there, he was sitting there with no headlamp marking his position. But then he knew this mine. And he did not want to be found.

  Henry was the sort who preferred to murder without exposing himself to danger. That, Longarm thought, was the hallmark of a coward. Low, cunning, and sneaky. But cowardly. That seemed to describe Henry to the proverbial T.

  There was no point in trying to be silent, Longarm realized. Not with his headlamp throwing a cone of light twenty feet in front of him. The bastard would be able to see him coming a hundred feet away.

  He bent low but craned his neck to throw the light as flat and as far as possible. If he gave in to the fatigue of the bent-forward position and allowed his head to drop, that threw the light from his lamp onto the floor, practically at his feet, doing nothing at all to help him search for danger lying ahead.

  Every few feet he had to stop, drop down onto his heels, and peer around as best he could.

  Henry was somewhere ahead. He was sure of it. Well, fairly sure. He could have been wrong back there. The miner taking his lunch break could have been telling the truth about which way Henry went.

  Longarm did not believe that. But then he had been wrong about things before now. He could well be wrong again here. If he were, that would allow Henry to get behind him, perhaps to flee from the mine while Longarm was still busy looking for him inside.

  It was a risk. All Longarm could do was to use his best judgment and go on. And right now his best judgment was that his quarry was somewhere close ahead, waiting there to kill him with his bare hands.

  Longarm spotted a shard of rock on the floor. It was long and thin, roughly the size and shape of a spike. Or a dagger.

  He lay the piece of wood down and picked up the sliver of stone.

  It occurred to him—too late—that he should have counted the number of hammers back there where the workmen were resting. Two teams of cutters? Probably. So there should have been two hammers in addition to two chisels. He had passed right on by without paying attention to the tools the men had with them that he might have made use of. A fatal mistake? It could have been.

  There was no time to worry about that now. He had the stone knife. Henry might have . . . almost anything. Anything other than a firearm, that is.

  Longarm craned his neck to look at the ceiling. It seemed solid to him, but the miners knew their trade far better than he ever would. If they said the rock was rotten and could come crashing down with the concussion from a gunshot, he was inclined to believe them.

  Henry would know that too and would not risk death in a cave-in by trying to sneak a gun past the others.

  When he attacked—if Longarm could find him—the man would come with anything at hand, rocks or knives or clubs . . . anything.

  The adit Longarm was in opened up into a chamber where a large amount of ore had been removed from a concentrated area. He was able to almost, not quite but almost, stand erect in it. The change was a relief to his aching back.

  He stood there for a moment, back arched, his lamp playing a cone of yellow light onto the ceiling.

  He heard something. A faint skittering on the rock floor.

  He looked down again—barely in time to see the big thief from the day before charging for his throat.

  The man held a chunk of rock in his fist.

  A rock bludgeon against a stone knife. Their combat had come down to Stone Age weapons in a modern-age fight to the death.

  Longarm braced himself for the onslaught and involuntarily let out a low-pitched war cry as his enemy closed with him.

  Chapter 23

  The fight was swift and brutal, over in almost an instant. The big man swung his heavy rock at Longarm’s head, intending to crush Longarm’s skull with one hard swing.

  Instead of pulling back, which Henry anticipated, Longarm drove forward, dropping underneath that roundhouse swing and jabbing Henry in the gut with his sharp, pointed shard of stone.

  The stone knife was wrenched out of his hand when Henry turned, grunting loudly.

  Longarm was so close that he could smell garlic heavy on the big man’s breath.

  When Henry pulled his bludgeon back, he grazed Longarm’s ear and knocked Longarm’s head lamp completely off, sending the carbide lamp tumbling to the floor, where it gave off a ghostly light.

  Longarm grappled with the bastard.

  Henry’s hands groped for Longarm’s throat, but Longarm clenched his hands together and drove them upward, knocking Henry’s hands away.

  Longarm pummeled Henry in the face and throat, drawing blood and a roar of rage.

  Henry succeeded in grasping Longarm by the throat. He squeezed. Longarm could feel his consciousness fading. His vision turned red and blurred.

  He knew if he did not break the hold soon he would die. He managed to get a grip on Henry’s little finger. He pulled. Hard. He heard the distinctive crack of a bone breaking, and Henry let out another roar.

  More to the point, his grip on Longarm’s throat loosened a little.

  Longarm shifted his grip from the broken finger to Henry’s wrist. He twisted and pulled, ripping that hand away from his throat so he could grab the other wrist with both hands. He twisted, forcing Henry’s hand away from his throat and down.

  Longarm elbowed the man in the face. He felt cartilage snap. Felt the hot rush of blood flooding over him.

  Henry cried out again but not so strongly this time. The big man seemed to weak
en. He sagged to his knees, coming down almost on top of Longarm’s headlamp.

  Longarm stepped back, his breathing heavy after those few seconds of mortal combat.

  The glare of light from the carbide lamp showed Henry slumped on his side. The stone knife Longarm had been carrying was buried half its length into his gut, high under his ribs. The man must have been bleeding internally ever since that first clash of bodies.

  Henry gasped for air, mouth forming an O like a fish tossed onto a riverbank. One hand lifted as if in surrender.

  It was no surrender. He tried in vain to punch Longarm but no longer had strength enough to throw the fist. His hand fell helpless across his body.

  His mouth opened and for a moment Longarm thought he wanted to speak. Instead a gout of blood, dark in the light from the fallen headlamp, spilled out of his mouth to saturate his beard and dribble down onto the rock floor.

  He clearly was dying.

  Longarm rocked back onto his heels, gasping for breath himself. He shook his head.

  “A waste,” he said, his voice coming out halfway between a croak and a whisper. “What a stupid, fucking waste.”

  Longarm dropped down, sitting with his back pressed against the rock wall. He picked up the headlamp and put it on, then sat with the man called Henry until the man’s breathing stopped and his eyes glazed into the blank sightlessness of death.

  When Longarm’s breathing had returned to normal, he knelt and closed Henry’s eyes, then started back out toward the mine entrance.

  He encountered the four workmen on his way out, the patient little burros following close behind them.

  “Your buddy is back there,” he told the men. “You can haul his ass out; I’m not gonna do it for you.”

  All four blinked, uncomprehending.

  Longarm crouched low until the last burro was past, then resumed his low duckwalk back to sunlight and fresh air.

  Chapter 24

  Her husband had made a find of some sort, Jane Nellis had said. Presumably then the three raiders wanted his claim as much as, or more than, whatever they might have been able to rob from the site.