Longarm and the Lone Star Legend

by Tabor Evans

  "I won't deny it, Jessie," Longarm said softly, feeling his heart pounding. They stood like that for a moment, as close as a man and woman could be, fully dressed, and in public. Longarm grew dizzy from the perfume scent rising from her cleavage just visible where the undone buttons of her silk blouse allowed the sheer material to gape open. "Go find out what Ki has to tell you," he said, his voice sounding too thick in his ears.

  Jessie laughed, and Longarm hurried her on her way with a light and loving pat across the round swell of her ass, so nicely but demurely emphasized by the snug green tweed of her skirt.

  "Wait for me here," she winked.

  Longarm watched the eyes of every man in the crowded room follow her walk, and he fought down the irrational jealousy he felt. Relax, old son, he chided himself. There ain't enough bullets in the world to shoot all the men who find themselves mesmerized by Jessica Starbuck. A lot of the cowboys lining the hard wooden benches were passing around pints and flasks of hard stuff. The governor was babbling on about something, up there at the podium, but everybody was clearly waiting for Jessie to reassure them concerning their financial and personal security. How the hell was this young woman ever going to handle it all? Longarm thought about her vow to continue the war begun so long ago between her father and his European enemies. What some man ought to do, old son, is rope in that female and make an honest wife out of her. Longarm flicked the ash off of his cheroot. That's what some damn fellow ought to do, he thought. Except that he'd then have to spend the rest of his life taming her — and Jessie would most likely give as good as she got. But hell, that don't sound like a bad life, at all.

  Of course, a man couldn't go traipsing around the West risking his life to enforce the law if he had a wife and maybe a family waiting for him at home. Billy Vail had often said that a man of Longarm's experience ought to be overseeing the work of others and not riding out himself to match his gun against riffraff.

  "Whoa, old son!" Longarm laughed, so loudly that several nearby fellows turned to look at him. Let's eat this apple one bite at a time, he thought. If he didn't wrap up this case mighty quick, he and Billy would be looking for work, never mind promotions. With a sigh of relief, Longarm turned his thoughts back to the present. The depths of his feeling for Jessie surely did frighten him some.

  She was talking with Ki now. As he waited for her to return, he thought over what she'd said.

  Well, the girl was only partly right. She'd told Longarm a little something about Ki's past while they were waiting for Doc Brown to finish patching him up. Ki was only half Japanese, of course. His daddy was a true-blue, hot-blooded Yankee. Come to think of it, his Japanese mama couldn't have been an unemotional cold fish, not the way she'd chucked everything to marry the man she loved. Ki's sense of honor, his pride, his sternness — all of that had been forged into him by the harsh, stoic samurai code. But Ki's heart was as warm-blooded, passionate, and loving as any man's; Longarm could tell that just by looking at the fellow, and the way he looked at Jessie. What a war there was going on inside the man? And it was a war Ki could only lose. How long before his heart beat itself to tatters against the warriors steel-clad code, or before that code shattered into gleaming shards against Ki's heart?

  Jessie came back into the hall, but there was a determined intensity in the way she brushed by Longarm on her way up the narrow aisle to the front of the room. She sashayed up that aisle like she owned the place. Thinking about it, Longarm was amused. Most likely she did own the place.

  He began to elbow his way toward the front of the hall. He made good time. As usual, folks who had a mind to complain usually swallowed their gripes when they saw who it was that wanted to get by.

  Ki seemed to materialize out of the mob just as Longarm reached the front of the hall. The expression on his face was earnest and troubled.

  "Longarm, what I told her upset her greatly. I myself don't understand the significance…" He was about to say more, but both he and Longarm were abstracted by a momentary disturbance.

  One of the cowboys sitting in the front row reached out for a handful of Jessie's backside as she began to climb the steps leading up to the speakers' platform. The drover was clearly drunk, the situation far from serious, but both Longarm and Ki took an instinctive step forward to come to her aid. They were too slow.

  Jessie, smiling, intercepted the cowboy's lurching grasp. She took his wrist in her two hands and twisted. The cowboy yelped in surprise as he found his entire body following the direction Jessie had set for him with just that one twist of his wrist. He landed flat on his back on the floor, looking up — totally flummoxed — into the laughing faces of his chums.

  "It is called jujutsu," Ki said, anticipating Longarm's query. "A good defense form for a woman. Leverage means more than strength." He winked. "Perhaps you would like to learn jujutsu, eh, Longarm?"

  "Old son," Longarm replied honestly, "I'd learn anything you've got to teach."

  The governor was still trying for some semblance of order, but now the crowd was so far gone on whiskey that not even the appearance of Jessie on the platform could quiet it down.

  "I'm sorry," flustered the governor to her, pounding his gavel.

  "You've been away from the heartland too long." Jessie laughed. "That itty-bitty hammer of yours is going to get us no attention."

  Before the nearby Texas Ranger could react, she'd plucked a revolver from one of the holsters crisscrossing his waist. "This is a Texas gavel. She pointed the pistol toward the ceiling and fired a single shot. The blast echoed loudly.

  The noise in the room ceased abruptly as all heads turned toward the platform. Jessie handed the smoking revolver back to the chagrined Ranger. There was an ugly black hole in the ceiling, and flakes of plaster were still wafting down like an early snowfall.

  "Now that I've got your attention," Jessie began, shouting out her words loud and clear, "let me straighten a few things out. because right now I don't have a lot of time. It's no secret that my daddy staked about every one of you, and it's no secret that these days, now that my daddy's gone, you're all wondering just when those notes are going to be called due."

  She paused then, to let every man in the hall ponder his own financial situation, and how he could keep his outfit going and still meet his commitments at the loan desk of the Starbuck bank.

  "Miss Jessie! Your daddy understood that we'd need time to be able to pay it all back," one of the ranchers shouted out. "Give us a straight answer. When will those loans come due? I…"

  A chorus of agreeing shouts drowned out the rest of what the man had to say. Jessie held up her hands to silence them.

  "The answer is never." She watched the stunned men trying to absorb what they thought she'd said. "The Starbuck holdings belong to me now. Your notes belong to me. Just as my daddy built this town to honor my mama's memory, I'm going to do something to honor my daddy's memory. All of you will be receiving your notes back, and they'll be marked 'paid in full.'"

  As the hall erupted into cheers, the governor, looking a sickly shade of green, hissed, "Young lady, this is not what I advised you to do this afternoon." He glanced uneasily at the crowd, but they were all shouting and stomping their boot heels to beat the band. There was no danger of their overhearing his stern lecture. "You have no right…" he started to say, but cut himself off as Jessica glanced sharply at him. "What I mean is, not even the Starbuck empire can function without the cooperation of local and federal government agencies."

  "Is that a threat. Governor?" Jessie drawled.

  "It's a warning," the man said grimly. "I already explained all this to you. If you don't properly divest yourself of your Starbuck holdings, you're going to leave yourself wide open to the kind of senseless violence that struck down your father…"

  "I've just found something out. Governor," Jessie cut him off. "I've just found out that my suspicions were correct, and that my father's death was far from 'senseless violence,' as you put it. My father was murdered in a premeditated
act of revenge. I now know what manner of weapon was used against him, but that's not really my concern. I know who killed him, and I know exactly why. The violence is not going to stop. Governor, not after tonight, when I kill the man who was directly responsible for my father's death, and not for a long, long time. My father's enemies were — are — many. Their goal is to wipe all traces of the Starbuck name from the face of the earth. I will not let that happen."

  The Governor, gone suddenly pale, opened his mouth to say something, but Jessie had turned back to the podium to face the crowd.

  Longarm, standing just below them, had not been able to hear their exchange through the noise coming from behind him. But as he watched the governor stand sweating, looking for all the world like a hooked fish just pulled from the water, flopping about, totally out of its element, Longarm thought. Gov, you may be wearing an expensive suit, and you may be the highest office holder within a thousand miles, but you've got the look I've seen on countless men, from cow thieves to murderers.

  "The governor seems to be troubled by something," Ki murmured beside him.

  "He looks guilty as hell, don't he?" Longarm said through pursed lips. "Old son, that apple we've been nibbling has gotten pretty well gnawed down to the core. Just what the hell did you tell her?"

  Before Ki could answer, Jessie began once again to address the crowd. "I ask only one thing in exchange: that we pull together to make the roundup the biggest and best ever, even by Texas standards!" After a roar of applause, she continued, "The cattle we sent East have been promised to Europe. We're going to help feed the world. Now there are some good old folks in Europe, folks like us, but there are also some who'd like to see our roundup fail, so that they could buy up our land. They're quite willing to let their own people go hungry if it'll mean our land values get depressed and we have to sell cheap, just to stay alive ourselves. It's damned villains like these folks I'm talking about that had my father killed, because they saw his death as the first step in establishing their own cattle spreads right here in Texas!"

  "One of them fellas came 'round to talk to me, Jessie!" A rancher shouted. "A blond man, talked real funny. Hell, I thought I'd have to sell just to meet my debts…" He climbed unsteadily to his feet, obviously drunk. "Until tonight, that is. Ya-hoo!" He pulled his pistol, intending to blast a companion hole to the one Jessie had put in the ceiling, but as his gun bobbed and waved in drunken circles, less boisterous neighbors disarmed him.

  "After the roundup, we'll all have our profits!" Jessie declared. "You'll all be able to put that money back into your outfits. Our herds will grow. We'll be able to keep what is ours, what we've worked for. Texas for Texans. Texas for America!"

  This time the cheers that went up were deafening. Longarm, standing next to Ki. fought to make himself heard. "Son, you've got to fill me in on what's going on." Longarm watched the governor suddenly scurry from the stage. "Strange, you'd think a politico would want to stand up there absorbing some of that cheering and clapping."

  Ki pointed. "Even his Texas Ranger guards have been taken by surprise."

  Indeed, the two Rangers were still on the platform as the governor quickly descended the steps to disappear through a side door.

  "He left like a man wanting to get away from something nasty that might be happening," Longarm mused. Right then he got one of those feelings down along his spine. A man couldn't learn to have those feelings; all he could do was survive enough sticky situations to develop the facility. "Ki! Get up there and get Jessie off the platform…" he began, but stopped. Ki couldn't hear him. The samurai had already launched himself toward the podium. Longarm saw Jessie's eyes lock on to the approaching form of her bodyguard. Her smile faded…

  She scanned the faces of the crowd until she saw Longarm. Then she pointed over Longarm's head, to the bank of opened windows. "There!" she screamed.

  Longarm whirled, his Colt in his hand. Outside, in the dim glow of the street lamps, there sat mounted on a horse a figure garbed in a canvas duster. The long coat effectively hid his form. His hat was pulled down low over his brow, and he wore a bandanna mask over the bottom half of his face. Some sort of rifle was resting across his saddle, its barrel pointed toward the windows.

  The mystery rider raised his weapon to his shoulder. Longarm did not have a clear shot; too many people were between him and those damned windows!

  Then the rider fired his weapon. And fired, and fired, and fired it…

  There was a high, chattering snarl as the weapon's muzzle spouted blue fire. The upper windowpanes rattled in their frames for a split second before the hail of bullets shattered them, spewing splinters and knifelike chunks of glass into the hall.

  Longarm threw himself to the floor shouting, "Get down! Get down!" to whoever was still calm enough to listen. The men in the hall were tough, but none had ever experienced such firepower before. The gun kept on firing, chewing a line of bullet holes along the wainscoted walls, bursting wall-mounted oil lamps, so that flaming oil fell into the stacked furniture. Smoke and tongues of flame began to rise.

  "Fire!" somebody screamed, only adding to the panic. The men, most of them drunk, were stumbling and falling to the floor, none of them hit, but all panic-striken as they waved their hands in front of them like picnickers trying to ward off a swarm of angry bees.

  From out of the corner of his eye, Longarm saw Ki leap from the floor to the platform, easily clearing the six feet necessary to sail over it, scooping up Jessie as he began his descent to the other side. A split second later the firestorm of lead splintered the podium that Jessie had been standing behind into kindling. One of the Texas Rangers had thrown himself from the platform, but the other had both his guns drawn. He was a brave man, furiously returning the mystery rider's gunfire above the heads of the huddled crowd.

  The line of bullet holes chewing up the paneling behind the platform abruptly dipped. The black holes being punched into the wall changed to red as they skipped across the chest of the Ranger. The man was jolted backward like a boxer absorbing a fast series of jabs. His revolvers clattered to the floor as he slumped against the wall to slide slowly down into a sitting position, his eyes wide and disbelieving as he stared first at the blood seeping from the holes scattered across his shirtfront, and then at nothing, as he died. Ki, meanwhile, had Jessie safely cradled in his arms as he plunged downward toward the floor. At the last second Ki twisted around, so that Jessie was above him as they slammed onto the hard planking. He'd straight-armed her so that he'd absorbed every bit of the shock of their landing. A lesser man would have been knocked senseless from the impact. But Ki had her safely huddled in a far corner of the room before Jessie had even figured out just how she'd been spirited out of harms' way.

  During the time the rider's weapon was trained on the hapless Texas Ranger, Longarm had begun to make a move for the door. The rider had spied Longarm's movement, and now the seemingly endless stream of bullets was chewing up the floorboards just behind the lawman's heels.

  The rider had been aiming high on purpose, Longarm realized. He only tried to kill those who attempted to return his fire, or in some other way attack. Except for when he'd shot at Jessie. If Ki hadn't managed to snatch her up out of the way. the rounds that had turned the podium into sawdust and splinters would have cut her to pieces as well.

  The fire, now burst into full flame. The meeting hall was fast filling up with choking smoke. If something wasn't done, and in a hurry, Longarm realized, a whole lot of smoke-blinded, half-drunk men would find themselves running like a herd of stampeding cattle, straight into that rider's incredible gun.

  Longarm swung around the doorjamb. crouched low, feeling the hot wind of those rounds as they buzzed by, far, far too close. He took a bellyful of splinters — and was grateful that was all he took — as he slid along the woodplank sidewalk, just trying to get to a place where he could at least fire back effectively.

  Another came loping around the corner. He was dressed the same as the other man, and
his weapon was the same as well. The gun's wooden stock was shaped to hook over the user's shoulder, as it took both hands to fire the weapon. The riders, like Indians, used their knees to guide their horses. Two hand cranks, one on either side of the gun's breech, worked the action, reminding Longarm of the foot pedals on a bicycle he'd seen in Denver.

  The two riders rode in a long circle, raking their guns back and forth along Main Street, shattering windows and tearing up walls and doors. A third rider joined them, just as the roof of the Cattlemen's building burst into high, orange flames.

  The three riders — drunk with power — began whooping and shrieking like Comanches. Their guns chattered on, stripping the box-planted trees of their leaves and bark and boughs as their weapons filled the air with a high whine. The burning building cast an eerie, flickering crimson light on the scene as the flames crackled loudly. Sarah had been ravished. The town named after Starbuck's wife had been raped. Sarah, along with its fine schools, picket fences and proud, church steeple, had been turned into Hell.

  Shiloh, was all Longarm could think as the sky became stained with flame. Shiloh, and how futile all attacks were against a Gatling gun…

  Longarm, still pressed belly-down against the sidewalk, saw Farley and two of his deputies come running toward the riders. They were firing their revolvers as they ran, which meant that they didn't have a hope of hitting anything. One of the riders turned his weapon on the trio. The rounds kicked up dust, and then the two deputies began to flail the air, jerking and twitching like men suddenly struck with the palsey. The rider, laughing, flicked the barrel of his gun like a hose, and like a hose's nozzle, the gun sent a stream of lead splashing Farley's way. The town marshal's pistol went flying as he twirled in the air to come slamming down into the street.

  All three riders had watched the local lawmen go down. Longarm used the distraction to launch himself off the elevated sidewalk and into the street, toward the men.