Longarm #398 : Longarm and the Range War (9781101553701)

by Evans, Tabor

  Neither Tyler nor Longarm rose with him. And neither let his hand stray far from the hammer of the double-barreled shotgun he was holding.

  “Explain it to them,” Tyler said.

  “I’ll do that,” Cruikshank responded. He touched the brim of his hat, nodded, and quietly left the sheriff’s office.

  “Whew,” Longarm said when Cruikshank had gone. “Reckon I can breathe somewhat better now.”

  “Me too,” Tyler said with a shudder. “I think from now on one of us needs to be sitting down here with a shotgun handy. I’ve never lost a prisoner to a lynching and I don’t want to start now.”

  Longarm nodded. “Yes, sir.” He lighted a cheroot and said, “I’ll sleep here tonight. Meantime I’m gonna go finish that shave I didn’t quite get this morning.”

  Chapter 26

  Longarm did not like the noise he was hearing coming from Rosie’s saloon, the one that catered to the Basque shepherds and to locals who were more interested in getting laid than in simply drinking and playing cards or billiards.

  When Longarm stepped inside to take a look, shotgun still in hand, the entire place became suddenly silent. He walked to the bar, the crowd of patrons—there must have been a score of them—parting before him like the Red Sea parting at the exodus.

  “Beer, Marshal?” the bartender asked.

  Longarm nodded, laid a dime down, and faced away from the bar, leaning his back against it and holding the stubby sawed-off in the crook of his left arm. He slipped his right thumb behind his belt buckle, which put it just two or three inches from the butt of his Colt. “Gentlemen,” he said to no one in particular.

  One of the Basques stepped forward and rattled off something in his own tongue. Longarm was just as happy that he did not understand a single word of what became a rather long diatribe, no doubt discussing Longarm’s forebears, mental deficiencies, and sexual habits.

  After a minute or two of that, Longarm turned, picked up his beer, and saluted the complaining Basque with his mug before taking a long, throat cleansing swallow.

  He looked across a sea of dark hair and floppy hats but found no sign of Eli Cruikshank. That was probably just as well, he decided. If Eli had been there, he would more than likely have wanted to translate what the loudmouthed Basque was saying, and then Longarm would have felt honor bound to be pissed off by the whole thing.

  He finished his beer and asked the bartender, “Can you understand what they’re saying?”

  The barman shook his head. “Not a word of it, Marshal.”

  Longarm did not know if the man was lying to him or not. He had no choice but to let it go, however.

  The Basque finally shut up. Longarm saluted him with his beer mug again and walked out of Rosie’s.

  It occurred to him as he left to wonder if there was a Rosie somewhere in Dwyer. Or perhaps the name referred to the owner’s lost love somewhere.

  Not that it mattered.

  With a sigh, he returned to the barbershop, where he found that Bert was still occupied with the corpse of the recently departed.

  This just was not Custis Long’s day.

  Chapter 27

  Longarm’s whiskers were just long enough to reach the itching stage. He either had to get a shave soon or resign himself to another three or four days of damned near unbearable itching. Bert was off tending to a corpse, however, and Longarm did not want to go back to Tyler’s house to fetch his own razor. It would not be seemly for him to be there alone with Nell while John was camped out inside the sheriff’s office watching over Julio Altameira.

  Nope. It just was not his day.

  Still, life crawls forward whether we want it to or not, whether things are turning out the way we wish or not. Longarm belched, lighted a cheroot, and walked over to the café for an early lunch.

  He ate, then had them fix up a basket of biscuits and ham to carry over to Tyler, who was parked in his office with a shotgun across his lap. Longarm was behind the courthouse, close to the stairs leading down into the basement, when a commotion caught his attention.

  Someone was shouting—cussing, he guessed by the sound of it—at the front of the big stone building.

  Longarm set Tyler’s lunch down on the top step and walked around to the front to see what the trouble was.

  He grimaced with displeasure when he saw a knot of six Mexican goatherds confronting two Basque shepherds. All of the men were armed. A pair of shaggy, black-and-white dogs accompanied the goatherds, while the Basques held a large brown cur on a rope leash.

  The men were jawing at one another, and the Basques’ dog was straining at his restraint, ready to do battle with the other dogs. Or, for all Longarm knew, the animal was ready to fight the Mexicans.

  “Shit,” he mumbled aloud. “This could be the start o’ that war.”

  He trotted across the ragged and weedy courthouse lawn to the benches where the men were standing and snapping at one another.

  Longarm was about to say something to them when one of the Mexicans spoke and his dogs lunged for the brown that belonged to the Basques.

  Within seconds the brown dog had one black dog at its throat and another biting and snarling at its flank.

  The Basque who had hold of the brown dog’s leash shouted and jumped back, letting his dog go so it could defend itself.

  For a moment the two groups of men were too intent on watching their dogs fight to pay attention to each other.

  Each group began loudly exhorting their animals.

  The dogs meanwhile were tangled in a barking, snapping, snarling whirl of dust and flying fur.

  Despite being outnumbered two to one, the brown dog appeared to be getting the best of the fight. It shook a black-and-white dog off and laid open a hind leg of the other Mexican dog, then attacked the first black-and-white head-on, driving the dog into the dirt and taking a grip on that one’s throat.

  The Mexicans saw their dogs down and bleeding, possibly dying. One of them raised his rifle and shot the brown dog in the body.

  Instantly the Basques had their rifles up and appeared to be ready to shoot too.

  Chapter 28

  Longarm charged in between the two groups—a move that he later, when he had time to think about it, found to be remarkably stupid, considering that he was stepping between two armed and volatile camps—yelling and motioning with the barrels of the sawed-off for them to put their guns down and back off. Amazingly, they did.

  “You,” he said, motioning to the Mexicans, “go. Vamoose. Andale. Whatever the fuck those words are. Anyhow, git!” He pointed toward Doris’s saloon and made hand motions to shoo the men in that direction.

  One of the black-and-white dogs was dead, its throat ripped out by the brown, but the other was only bleeding from a deep gash in its hind leg. That one likely would live, even be able to return to work if someone sewed the wound closed. The surviving dog was picked up by one of the Mexicans, who draped it over his shoulder while another man stanched the wound with a handful of dust and a wrap of his bandanna.

  The brown dog was still alive but barely so. The Basques shot furious glares—but only looks at this point—at the retreating Mexicans. They knelt beside their dying dog, and one of them dropped into the dirt of the street and pulled the animal’s head into his lap. The dog licked his hand twice and then died. Longarm could see tears on the man’s cheeks.

  The other Basque stood and took a fresh grip on his rifle.

  “I wouldn’t do that, old son,” Longarm warned.

  The Basque glanced once at the stern expression on Longarm’s face, shivered, and let his rifle drop, muzzle down. After a few minutes the two Basques picked up their dead dog and walked away.

  Longarm looked up at the imposing McConnell County Courthouse and pondered what the hell he could do to keep warfare from breaking out around it.

  He stood there for perhaps five minutes before he squared his shoulders and with a grunt set off at a rapid pace.

  He went to Doris’s saloon and
marched inside. The Mexicans who were drinking and talking there turned quiet and sullen at his appearance among them.

  “Who’s the owner here?” he demanded of the man behind the bar.

  “In the back,” the man said, inclining his head in that direction.

  “Get him,” Longarm snapped.

  “It’s a her not a him,” the barman said.

  “Fine. So get her. An’ do it damn quick.”

  “What makes you think I’ll . . .” The bartender shut his mouth when he saw the deadly cold stare he received from the lawman. “Uh, yes, sir. Right away.”

  Longarm did not have long to wait. Seconds after the bartender disappeared into the back, a woman emerged in his place behind the long bar. She was on the cloudy side of middle age, with her hair done into a tight bun and wearing a throat-high, long-sleeved charcoal-colored dress. Her face was marred by the sort of tracks left by a past bout with a pox of some sort. She did not look particularly welcoming.

  “What do you want, Marshal?” Her voice was rough enough to cut wood.

  “I’m closing you down,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. By the authority vested in me, I am hereby declaring this saloon closed.”

  “Why . . . you can’t do any such of a thing.”

  “The hell you say,” he replied. “I’ve just done it.”

  “How long do you want me to close?” she asked.

  “Until I tell you otherwise,” he told her. “Until we can figure out a way t’ keep these Meskins an’ Basques from killing each other.”

  “I don’t have anything to do with that,” the woman rasped.

  “Maybe not direct you don’t,” Longarm agreed, “but the whiskey an’ beer you’re servin’ in here sure helps t’ fire’em up. So I’m shutting your doors for the duration. I’ll come back and let you know when you can open up again.”

  “The town council will have something to say about this,” she snarled. “Then we shall see about this supposed authority of yours.”

  “Until then you’d damn sure better close down and stay shut,” Longarm told her.

  Without any further argument, he spun on his heels and marched out again—on his way to Rosie’s to deliver the same message to keep the Basques from getting liquored up with false bravery.

  When he was done there, with much the same unhappy compliance, he returned to the rear of the courthouse to finally retrieve John Tyler’s lunch.

  The basket was where he had left it. The food was not. But some very contented town dogs were lolling in the shade not very far away.

  No, sir, it just plain was not his day, Longarm figured, as he turned and headed back to the café to get the lunch basket refilled.

  Chapter 29

  “Where’s my dish towel, damn you?”

  “I lost it.”

  “Then you’ll damn well pay for a new one.”

  Longarm sighed. “Put it on my bill.”

  “Damn right I will.”

  “Now, make me another lunch an’ load it in this basket, will you. The first one got the same kinda lost as your dish towel.”

  The café owner grunted. “Give me a minute. And this time don’t lose the damn towel.”

  “I promise,” Longarm assured the man. Five minutes later he walked past a group of sullen Mexican goatherds, descended the stairs to the courthouse basement, and rapped twice on the door before he opened it.

  Sheriff Tyler was behind his desk with a shotgun aimed squarely at the doorway. It would take a concerted effort for anyone to get inside, and people would have to die for the task to be accomplished. Longarm doubted that the Mexicans were so attached to their compadre Altameira that they were willing to risk death in an attempt to free him.

  “I brought you some lunch,” Longarm said, hefting the basket. “Actually I brought you two lunches. Some town dogs got the first one.” He filled Tyler in on what had taken place on the street earlier.

  “Figured it ain’t a good idea for either crowd to be get-tin’ liquored up today, so I shut down both Doris’s and Rosie’s places. Told ’em I’d let them know when they can open up again.”

  “You know, don’t you, that you have no authority to do such a thing,” Tyler said.

  Longarm grinned. “D’you know, that’s the same thing they told me at both them places.”

  “Yes, but you really don’t.”

  Longarm shrugged. “They’re gonna take it up with the town council, whenever that will be. If the town council says they can reopen, I’ll appeal to whatever judge rides this circuit. That should hold things off plenty long enough for us to get this bullshit resolved, one way or the other.”

  “Dogs are important to those people,” Tyler said. “I’m surprised they didn’t start the ball there in the street this morning.”

  “They come awful close, John. Awful close.” Longarm set the food basket on the desk in front of Tyler.

  “Thanks, but Nell brought my lunch down to me.”

  “Shit, I shoulda thought of that.” Longarm peeled back the towel laid over the top of the basket, reached in, and brought out a slice of ham and a biscuit. He carefully separated the biscuit into top and bottom halves, put the slice of ham in between and leaned back while he enjoyed a second lunch himself. He damned sure was not going to try to return the lunch to the café. Not after those dogs carried the first one off.

  “What I can’t figure out, John,” he said, crumbs of flaky biscuit trickling down onto his vest, “is why these two bunches are so set on fightin’ one another. It ain’t like there isn’t grass an’ water enough for both of ’em in this valley. You would think they could get along, no more than there are of them and as much grass as there is up there.” He sighed. “Maybe Anthony and me can get a handle on it all when we ride up there tomorrow morning.”

  Longarm finished the basket lunch then stood. “I’m gonna go see if that barber is done fooling around with the mortal remains of . . . what was his name? Corrales? . . . so’s I can get me a shave before I scratch my damn chin bloody. Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll come back here an’ bunk down in that vacant cell back there, so I’ll be able to take over the guard duty from you this evening. If anything happens, give a shout. I’ll come running.”

  “I don’t really expect any trouble,” Tyler said, “but it’s good to know you will be back there anyway.”

  Longarm picked up the now empty basket and headed for yet another trip to the café.

  Chapter 30

  Longarm returned to the jail feeling considerably less itchy and smelling of Pinaud Clubman. The goatherds and one dog were still gathered at the front of the courthouse, but they were quiet. Sullen but quiet. He considered running them off with the threat of loitering charges—if there was such a thing in Dwyer, and if there was not, there should be—but that might only make things worse. At least if they were that close by, he knew where they were and what they were up to. If he sent them somewhere else, there was no telling what trouble they might get into.

  He settled for letting them get a good look at him and at the McConnell County deputy’s badge he had pinned to his coat. The badge more than made up for his lack of Spanish; it spoke volumes in any language.

  He stood at the top of the steps down into the sheriff’s office for a few moments then went down, rapped lightly on the door, and went inside.

  “Everything all right?” Tyler said.

  Longarm nodded. “So far so good.”

  “Are those Mexicans still up there?”

  Longarm nodded again.

  “Do you want to get Anthony to talk to them?”

  “No,” Longarm said, “I don’t think so. They aren’t causing any trouble, really, and I figure they’re just there to stay close to their pal Julio. They ain’t all worked up in a fury or nothin’. I don’t think they got thoughts o’ breaking him out or anything. Though I expect they might think of that if they was to get all liquored up. Which is why I shut Doris down. The less th
ey drink, the better off we are.”

  He yawned and stretched. “If you don’t mind, John, I’ll go back there to your cells an’ lay down. Get a little shuteye. I’ll try an’ wake up in time for you to go home and have one of your lady’s fine meals. Then you can come back and relieve me in the morning so’s Anthony and me can try and make some sense of this feuding an’ fussing.”

  “Go ahead,” Tyler said.

  “One thing, John. Was I you, I think I’d bolt that door. If they do get worked up and try to bust Altameira out of here, they’ll come in a rush.”

  “All right, Longarm. You have more experience with this sort of thing than I ever want to.” Tyler stood and took his shotgun with him while he went to the door and locked it, then slid the bolt closed for that much extra security.

  Longarm touched the brim of his Stetson in Tyler’s direction then went back to the cells, where Julio Altameira was moping in a corner. If the man was this depressed from being in a county cell, Longarm suspected he would not do well once he got into the brutal confinement of a prison.

  Of course the stupid son of a bitch might get lucky and be hanged instead.

  With that cheery thought in mind, Longarm removed his hat and coat—but kept the county’s shotgun close to hand—and lay down on the hard and too short bunk to get a little sleep while he had the chance.

  Later, John Tyler brought him one of Nell’s homemade dinners—a huge step up from what Longarm was accustomed to—and he locked up for the night. He then spent a boring evening sitting at Tyler’s desk, and about one o’clock he returned to the empty cell to catch some more sleep while he had the chance.

  Chapter 31

  Longarm woke up with Helen Birch on his mind and a raging hard-on in his britches. He had a thirst that was almost as demanding. The Mexican prisoner in the adjacent cell was sitting on the bunk staring at him, but Longarm did not know if that was because Altameira was afraid of what the lawman might do . . . or if the sorry son of a bitch was in awe of Longarm’s tent pole–sized erection.