by Tabor Evans
"Good enough," Longarm said.
"But you must be out by noon," the clerk reminded him.
"Actually, I'll be out very early in the morning," Longarm told him. "Why don't I pay now?"
"That'll be three-fifty, including the stable charge," the clerk replied, and in answer to Longarm's wince of surprise, he added, "Tomorrow it goes up to five dollars." He said it like a boast. "Do you have any luggage?"
"Just my saddlebags," Longarm said. "Send a boy around for my horse, would you."
"Right away," the clerk said. "Here's your key."
Longarm took it and went outside to fetch his bags and rifle. The clerk eyed the Winchester as Longarm reentered the hotel, but said nothing.
After stashing his property in his room, Longarm went back downstairs and out to visit the town marshal's office. It was fast becoming early evening, but Longarm wanted to gather whatever information he could, so as to be able to start out bright and early the next day.
He had to cool his heels awhile outside the marshal's office. Several deputies were receiving some instructions before beginning their rounds of the town. Longarm knew he had to reveal his identity as deputy U.S. marshal to Sarah's chief law officer, but he'd prefer that the several deputies not know who he really was. There was most likely a small newspaper office stashed away somewhere in Sarah. A loose-lipped local deputy would be all it would take for the news of Longarm's arrival to make town headlines. After that it would only be a matter of time before word got back to those officials in the Nation's Capital who were in charge of the case.
Once the deputies had left, Longarm entered the marshal's office. The marshal, a big-bellied man — what was it about desks and bellies that seemed to go hand in hand? — had his head down and his eyes fixed on a report written on yellow paper.
"Be with you in a minute," he grumbled, his voice a Texas version of Billy Vail's.
Longarm used the time to look around the office. A door to the rear, just behind the marshal's desk, led to the cells. Along one wall was a rack of rifles and shotguns, all securely locked in place by a length of chain threaded through their trigger guards. On the opposite wall hung a motley assortment of wanted flyers, from the federal government and neighboring states, as well as from private organizations like the Pinkertons. Several straight-backed chairs stood scattered about, but Longarm, who had done more than his share of sitting during the trip, preferred to stand. As the marshal tended to his desk work, Longarm read over the duty roster that told which deputies were supposed to be on patrol, and where.
"What can I do for you?" the marshal finally asked.
When Longarm turned to face him, he saw with some satisfaction that the town marshal was staring at him with narrowed eyes. Unlike the hotel clerk, the lawman probably knew how to judge a man.
"My name's Custis Long, and I'm a deputy U.S. marshal, working out of Denver," Longarm explained, pulling out his wallet and flipping it open to show his badge.
"My name's Farley. Pleased to meet you, Deputy," the town marshal said, standing up to shake hands. "Guess I know why you're here," he said shrewdly. "Though I'd thought the army was going to handle this."
"Well, sir, I was passing through the region, and got sidetracked to take a look-see around," Longarm fibbed. "Incidentally, I'd appreciate it if you kept my job to yourself. I can work easier that way."
Farley nodded. "Whatever you say. Grab a chair and tell me what I can do to help."
"First off, I'd like to know the results of your investigation of Starbuck's murder," Longarm said, turning a chair around and straddling it horse-style, folding his arms on top of the back rest. "If you've got any reports I could borrow to read…"
Farley cut him off gruffly. "No reports."
"Why not?" Longarm asked, surprised.
"Damn it. you're federal, Long, so you ought to know that my jurisdiction ends at the town limits. The shooting took place on Starbuck's spread. That makes it a job for the Rangers "
"I understand. Marshal," Longarm said quietly, as Vatl's words echoed in his mind. This case is too big for any local law… Any law officer who stuck his neck out by getting involved in something as serious as the Starbuck assassination risked having his head cut off for incompetence if he failed to find the culpnts. It made perfect sense that Farley was less than anxious to involve himself with a hot-potato case like this one.
"Don't get me wrong, Marshal," Longarm continued, "but the Rangers — and they're good boys — are better suited for stomping a range war or shooting it up man-to-man with a bunch of cow thieves. Investigations ain't their meat."
"My jurisdiction ends at the town limits," Farley repeated stubbornly.
"Yes, sir," Longarm said wearily. "How do I get to where it happened?"
"That's easy," Farley said, obviously relieved. "Just take Main Street out of town past the Cattlemen's building. It becomes a trail that cuts across a creek a few times. That's Goat Creek. It, along with Goat Lake, is fed by an underground spring hereabouts. Anyway, you just follow that trail for about two hours. You'll see a number of cutoffs that lead to various spreads, but stay on the main trail. Eventually you'll hit a granite outcropping, and alongside it a wooded rise. You're on Starbuck property at that point, and you're also where it happened. Mr. Starbuck was riding past that outcropping when they all fired down on him."
"You really believe fifteen men shot him up, Marshal?" Longarm asked skeptically.
"See for yourself, Deputy," Farley muttered. "Everybody else in Sarah has. Place has become a regular sightseeing spot. Reckon they'll run tours out to it once the Easterners start arriving tomorrow," he added in disgust.
"You haven't answered my question," Longarm persisted. "What's your opinion? From one lawman to another."
Farley shrugged. "Starbuck lived big his whole life. It makes some kind of sense to me he would die big as well." The marshal shrugged. "Hell, Long, hand me a guitar and maybe I'll write a ballad about it," he chuckled.
"Sarah's a strange name for a Texas cow town," Longarm said, to change the subject.
"That was the name of Starbuck's wife. She died long ago, over in Europe it was. Alex Starbuck built this town. Figure he had the right to name it what he wanted." Farley tugged a pocket watch out of his pants and glanced at it. "I'm due somewhere. Deputy. Anything else I can help you with?"
"Just one thing," Longarm said, getting to his feet. "Point me toward a place to fill my belly."
"Best grub in town is at Leda's," Farley smiled. "Two doors down from the Union Saloon," He rose. "I'll walk you down since I'm going that way."
"Thanks just the same, Marshal," Longarm said. "But I'd just as soon not attract attention by being seen with you."
"I get it," Farley replied with a wink. "Go on, then. Don't worry. My lips are sealed."
Longarm thanked him and left the office, strolling down the block past the Union Saloon, to a small cafe with LEDA'S painted across the window. Inside, he had a decent, uneventful meal of steak and eggs, despite the fact that beef was the most expensive thing on the menu. It made Longarm smile. No cattleman liked the taste of his own beef — not when that very slab, shipped on the hoof to the East, could put dollars in his pocket.
After dinner, Longarm stopped at one of the saloons and bought a bottle of Maryland rye, which he took with him back to the hotel. Once in his room, he undressed, and after scattering a few balled-up sheets of the hotel's stationery between his double-locked door and his bed, to give him some advance warning should an unannounced visitor try to enter, he stretched out upon the crisp, fresh sheets of the fine four-poster, and took a few sips off the top of his bottle.
Five minutes later. Longarm was sound asleep. Maryland rye was not as sweet as a mother's lullaby, but for Longarm it worked just as fine.
Chapter 4
Dawn's first flush broke pink, as radiant as a pleased woman's blush, before that rosy glow bled down into the pearly gray that marked the real start of the day. Longarm walked silently
down the stairs, so as not to disturb the other guests. The hotel seemed to rise and fall with the rhythmic breathing of so many sleeping people.
His saddlebags over his shoulder, and his Winchester in the crook of his arm, Longarm stopped off at the desk to hand his key to the weary night clerk who was about to go off duty. Then he left the lobby and walked around the side of the hotel to the stables.
The young kid who was supposed to keep watch over the mounts was sleeping curled up on a bale of hay. That was fine with Longarm. He'd rather saddle his own horse anyway. Saddling your own horse was like buying somebody a drink: it broke the ice between two old boys who wanted to be friends.
The stable boy stirred in his sleep behind Longarm as the tall deputy finished fitting his Mexican bridle into place over his gelding's nose. As Longarm tied his saddlebags to the brass fittings of his saddle and slid his Winchester into its boot, the boy woke up.
"Sorry, mister," the kid yawned, rubbing his eyes. "I was supposed to do that for you."
"No problem." Longarm handed him a nickel just so the kid wouldn't feel bad, and began to lead his mount out past the stable doors.
"If you wait a bit, mister, there's coffee," the boy called after him. "The pot's all ready to go on the stove. I've just got to start the fire."
"No thanks, I'm in a hurry," Longarm replied. A hot mug of black coffee would have been just the thing to wash out of his bones the last syrupy remnants of sleep, but Longarm was concerned over Farley's remark that the site of Starbuck's shooting had become a tourist attraction. If that was true, Longarm wanted to get there nice and early, so he'd have an hour or so to poke about the site undisturbed.
Longarm kept his gelding to an easy trot during the ride out. It was going to be a warm, sunny day, and since Longarm had no idea where he and the horse were going to spend that evening — except that he knew for sure that Canvas Town was out of the question — he did not want the horse exhausting itself. He didn't mind the possibility of camping out for the night, and in fact he sort of relished the idea. He had dried beef, flour, coffee, and salt, to go with a compact little cook set in one side of his saddlebags, he had his bottle of Maryland rye. There was plenty water from old Goat Creek available for both him and his mount, and he figured the gelding could make it through the night without starving by grazing on the fine grass that covered the prairie in a thick carpet.
During the couple of hours it took to reach the site, passing the cutoffs Farley had warned him about, and splashing through the creek as it cut across the trail, Longarm actually began to look forward to a night under the stars. The groundcloth wrapped about his bedroll was all the shelter he'd need for the coming warm, rainless night.
The ground all around the granite outcropping had been stamped down by the hooves of countless horses and the iron rims of buckboard and wagon wheels. Farley had been right. The place looked as if everybody in Sarah had taken a ride out to the spot where Alex Starbuck had met his end.
Longarm dismounted, merely dropping his horse's reins to the ground. The army mount had been trained to stay in place when its reins trailed.
"Well, fellow," he told the horse, "maybe this ride out was a waste of time after all." Longarm stood with his hands on his hips and shook his head. The place was as dirty as a street gutter back in Denver.
Cigar butts and chewed-up, dried-out plugs of tobacco littered the ground around the boulders, while candy wrappers had been jammed into the crevices and fissures veining the rocks. Over on a flat surface of granite, some cowpoke had chiseled an endearment to his sweetheart.
But there was one piece of evidence that no amount of gruesome touristing could erase or deface. Longarm ran his fingers across the wide swath of nicks and scratches gouged out of the boulders by the hail of bullets that had ended Starbuck's life. From their number, it did seem that the assassination had been the work of a small army of bushwhackers. By studying the angle of the scratches, he tried to determine the direction from which the deadly fusillade had come. He tilted his hat to one side and laid his cheek against a boulder, sighting along one especially deep gouge.
He found himself looking at a high, wooded rise a little distance from the outcropping. He straightened up and squared his hat on his head, pondering. There was no sense in looking for rounds that might have ricocheted off the rocks. Any such bits of lead would long since have been taken as souvenirs by the local folk. But it would be a long, hard, sweaty climb to the top of that hill. Longarm couldn't be sure, but he'd lay fair odds that no sightseers had troubled to haul their asses up that slope on the off-chance of finding a few cartridge cases. Farley and his deputies might have thought of doing that, if they'd bothered to ride out and take a look around, but they hadn't.
As the first lawman to poke around the scene, Longarm figured he had a good chance of finding a slug casing — or a bunch of them, assuming that a number of men had participated in the ambush. Of course, there was always the chance that the murderers had cleaned up after themselves, but remembering to do something like that took cool logic, and such things usually fled a fellow's mind after he'd murdered a man.
Yep, it was time to climb, Longarm decided grimly. "Don't go running off to do anything interesting without me," he told the gelding as he untied the flap of his saddlebag, extracting a pair of leather gloves to protect his hands during the climb. The gelding tossed its head and then lowered it to resume its stoic stance, as if Longarm's unneeded admonition had hurt its feelings.
It took Longarm a half hour to reach the top of the rise. He'd left his frock coat down below, but he'd nevertheless soaked through his shirt and vest as he threaded his way through clumps of post-oak and blackjack, and scrambled on all fours over wide belts of crumbly sandstone and slick marble. Finally he reached the top, which was a surprisingly pleasant area, thick with soil and studded with dense groves of hickory. There was brush everywhere and — thankfully — a cool gurgle of pure water slithering out from between two boulders, so that Longarm could slake his thirst and douse his sweaty head.
Refreshed, Longarm began his search for those shell casings. He sighted down at the granite outcropping, using his own gelding to give him some perspective. It was just about a hundred yards to where Starbuck would have been, certainly an easy enough shot for a band of men armed with rifles. Longarm was surprised that so many of the rounds they'd fired had gone off target…
He kept his eyes fixed on the ground as he ambled from one side of the likely ambush area to the other. Grasshoppers fiddled away, playing their sleep-inducing song, and from somewhere in the trees a mockingbird lived up to its name, its callous laugh seeming to suggest that anyone who would bother to come up here without the help of a set of wings was a damned fool…
And then Longarm found the shell casings. Except that what he found was just plain, damned crazy.
There, within a two-foot radius, were some thirty shell casings, almost as if they'd been piled up, neat as you please! Longarm bent to pick one up. He examined it, and then another, and a third. All were small caliber .25's, and all had…
Longarm was startled by the dull, thudding rush of a pair of warblers taking off from a stand of brush. He turned his attention back to the cartridge casings as some small part of his mind registered the fact that the grasshoppers had suddenly grown quiet…
He threw himself to the ground as the report of a handgun echoed. The round ricocheted off a rock, which would have been spared its wound by Longarm's head if he'd been a fraction of a second slower in reading the warning given him by the birds and bugs.
The rocks had distorted the sound of that gun, so that Longarm didn't know where his attacker was firing from. He hauled himself to his feet, his Colt in his hand, but still feeling as naked as a newborn babe, standing out in the open, with his ambusher hidden from view.
Another shot thwacked into the rock just behind Longarm, flecks of granite stinging his cheek. Then, out of the corner of his eye, to his left, he saw movement: a man's hatless figu
re dashing from one stand of trees to the next.
Longarm snapped off a shot in the fellow's direction, not really expecting to hit anything, but simply to let his adversary know he was mad. He began to move in that direction, thinking that as fast as that man had been, he had gotten a good look at him. The man had not been holding or wearing a gun…
Damn decoy, and I've fallen for it, Longarm chided himself, even as he heard the noise and twisted his head to his right, in time to see a blue-denim-clad blur streaking toward him. Before Longarm could bring his gun around, the blur rammed into the backs of his knees, sweeping his feet out from under him. Longarm fell hard. His Colt went clattering off somewhere.
He was flat on his back when the blue-denim man sat squarely on his stomach. Longarm bucked him off, but not before realizing that the fellow he was bucking was a her — he'd had enough womanly bottoms straddling his belly to know another when he felt it.
"Just hold on," Longarm managed to shout as he rose to his feet, but not before the other one, the hatless, gunless man, came at him. Longarm brought up his fists to meet the attacker, but was totally unprepared for what happened next. The fellow jumped about five feet off the ground to snap out a barefooted kick at Longarm's head!
Whip-fast as Longarm's reflexes were, the kick still grazed the side of his skull. He fell back, dazed, but awake enough to jam his boots into the other fellow's rock-hard stomach as the man dove toward him. Longarm kept his knees locked as he jackknifed his legs, sending the man sailing past. He was pleased with this old-as-the-Virginia-hills "wrassling" move, but disappointed at the way his attacker managed to land as lightly as a robin on the soles of his feet. The girl, meanwhile, was crawling rapidly on all fours toward the revolver that had fallen out of her holster.
These two might just manage to kill him, Longarm realized, before he even got a chance to arrest them. He reached into his vest pocket and came out with his brass-plated, double-barreled .44 derringer. He thumbed back the hammer of the little gun. the metallic click freezing both of his attackers.
