by Evans, Tabor
“See you, Doc,” Butter said, donning his hat and following Longarm out of the office. As both men strode west, Butter said, “Well, he don’t look good, but at least he’s still kickin’. Any chance we could try him and hang him here?”
“Don’t I wish, Roscoe,” Longarm said. “Don’t I wish.”
* * *
Longarm and Butter retrieved their mounts from Humperdink’s rear paddock and saddled the mounts themselves as Humperdink worked on another coffin—this one for the wolfer, Dave Ross, who was laid out on planks stretched across a pair of sawhorses just inside the double front doors. The dead man’s long, gray hair blew around in the morning breeze as Longarm and Butter walked their mounts out the barn’s double doors and into the street.
“If you’re off to fetch me some more business, Marshal,” Humperdink said with a wink and a grin, “I sure do appreciate it! I could eat a T-bone every night of the week!” He laughed.
“Shut up, A.J.,” Butter admonished. “You just concentrate on gettin’ ole Dave in the ground before he starts stinkin’ up the place!”
Longarm gave a wry snort as he turned the smoky gray around, grinding his heels into the gelding’s flanks. He and Butter galloped eastward along the broad main street still filled with charcoal shadows, as the sun was only just now peeking above the eastern horizon.
They rode hard for a time, then walked their horses, knowing they could have a long ride ahead of them and wanting to save the beasts. Around nine o’clock, Longarm shed his buckskin mackinaw, for the sun was well up and turning the day warm. They didn’t pay much attention to the trail for the first hour’s ride, because Bethany and her father, Reverend Todd, had come upon Laughing Lyle farther east. It was after leaving there that Longarm would begin scouring the trail again for any sign of the outlaw having left it to hide the saddlebags.
Probably, Laughing Lyle had known he was running out of steam shortly before he’d finally passed out from blood loss and exhaustion, and had hidden the saddlebags only a mile or so east of where he’d finally collapsed. At least, that’s what Longarm hoped. Otherwise, he and Butter might have to backtrack all the way to Finlay’s. The federal lawman certainly wouldn’t mind seeing the lovely Alva again, but he had to keep his nose to the grindstone, so to speak.
The last thing he wanted to do was return empty-handed to Denver. Getting the saddlebags back to Stoneville was first and foremost on his mind. Bringing Laughing Lyle to justice was second. However, another night with Alva or the lovely Bethany was a close third.
A little after ten, he and Butter approached the place where Longarm had seen the marks in the trail where the Reverend Todd and Bethany had picked up Laughing Lyle. He and Butter spooked a couple of coyotes that had been hunting in the brush on the trail’s north side. The brush wolves went loping off to the west and north, one glancing indignantly back over its shoulder. Longarm drew rein and stared down at the marks in the trail, which had faded considerably over the past day or so but were still visible.
“This is the place, eh?” Butter said.
“Yep.” Longarm started to boot his gray along the trail, but then he turned his attention back to something he’d spied on the ground near where Laughing Lyle had lain unconscious.
“What is it?” Butter said.
Longarm swung down from his saddle and, holding onto the gray’s reins, knelt beside a large brown splotch near where the trail from the north entered the main one. Longarm removed his right-hand glove and touched two fingers to the splotch, rubbing the dirt around between them.
“Blood?” Butter asked.
Longarm nodded.
“Well, the doc said ole Lyle lost a barrelful.”
“Yeah, but this blood here is a good three feet from where Laughing Lyle fell in the trail.” Longarm pointed at the bloodstain marking where a body had lain. “See there? How could more of his blood get this far over here? I mean, the man couldn’t have been spewin’ the stuff or he’d be dead by now for certain-sure.”
“What the hell you think it’s from, then?” Butter said from his saddle.
Remembering the two coyotes, Longarm looked into the brush and rocks inside the pie-shaped wedge of ground where the two trails came together. Glancing back along the trail, he spied two broad furrows to his right. They angled off the trail and into the brush.
Frowning curiously, silently admonishing himself for not having noticed the tracks the day before, he walked through the brush, following the two furrows. Crusty brown blood drops spotted the brush on either side of him, and on several rocks, as well. Ahead lay a low, natural embankment. The furrows rose up the embankment, as did Longarm.
He gazed down the other side and drew a breath.
He let it out in a surprised whistle as he studied the dead man before him, lying back down and parallel to the bank. He was a tall, slender, severe-looking man with a thin salt-and-pepper mustache and even thinner salt-and-pepper hair. He wore black wool trousers, a black coat over a black clergy vest, and a clerical collar. Thick blood had crusted around a large hole in his chest—an instantly killing shot through the heart.
Whoever had shot him from point-blank range and rolled him down the bank had seen fit to cross his powdery white hands on his flat belly, however. Good of ’em, Longarm thought. Damn nice.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Roscoe Butter, who had followed Longarm and now stood beside him atop the bank. “That’s Reverend Todd!”
“Had a feelin’ it might be.” Longarm glanced at Todd and ran a hand across the back of his neck, wincing at the growing perplexity of his visit to Nowhere. “I thought you said the good reverend and his charming daughter had hauled Laughing Lyle to town?”
Butter turned his shocked, rheumy brown gaze to Longarm. “I thought they did! Or, at least, I figured they did. I never saw the reverend myself. Only the girl.”
Butter swabbed his forehead with a handkerchief, looking perplexed, then snapped his fingers together loudly. “Come to think of it, she mentioned somethin’ about her father trampin’ off home before I got there, as he’d caught a chill during their ride and thought he might be comin’ down with somethin’!”
Longarm’s ears began ringing in shame and confusion. He’d let the little bitch hoodwink him into believing she was nothing more than an innocent, frustrated girl hemmed in by her remote environs as well as her preacher father. But there was nothing innocent about Miss Todd. No, sir. Somehow, she’d aligned herself with Laughing Lyle his own self, and either she or Laughing Lyle had shot the reverend right here where he and his daughter had come upon the killer passed out on the trail.
How that had come to pass, Longarm had no idea. And he still had no idea where the saddlebags were, but something told him now, in light of Reverend Todd’s murder, that the saddlebags were a whole lot closer to Nowhere than he’d at first thought. In fact, they could have been under the bed that he in his idiocy had allowed Bethany to lead him to and in which he had in fact fucked her!
“Roscoe,” Longarm said, ears burning as he turned and began tramping back toward the horses, “I do believe we’d best hightail it back to Nowhere.”
Butter jogged, breathing hard, to keep up. “What’re you thinkin’, Longarm? You think Laughing Lyle killed the reverend in front of his own daughter?”
“Either that or, seeing the saddlebags and knowin’ her pa would have none of the stolen loot, she killed him herself.”
“Holy shit!”
“That’s likely what the reverend said.” Longarm grabbed his gray’s reins and toed a stirrup. “Appropriate last words, given the circumstances.”
As Butter swung into his own saddle, the older lawman said, “Don’t you think we’d best haul the reverend back to town?”
“We’ll send Benji for him with a buckboard. I want to get back to Nowhere pronto. Miss Todd has some very pertinent questi
ons to answer!”
As Longarm rammed the heels of his cavalry stovepipes against the smoky gray’s flanks, Butter gave a grunt behind him. The grunt had not yet died on the town marshal’s lips when a rifle’s shrieking report reached Longarm’s ears. Smoke puffed south of the main trail, from atop a long, low hill spotted with clay-colored rocks, rabbit brush, and piñon pines.
Longarm glanced behind and to his left to see Butter grabbing his upper left arm and pulling back on his claybank’s reins with the opposite hand. At the same time, the horse reared, screaming shrilly. As Butter yelled and tumbled out of the saddle over his horse’s left hip, Longarm checked his own horse down while reaching for his Winchester.
Smoke puffed again on the top of the low ridge, and the bullet screeched passed Longarm’s left ear as he slid the Winchester from its saddle sheath. Another slug seared a hot line across the outside of his right knee, tearing his pants. His horse reared just as Butter’s had done and just as he’d grabbed his rifle, finding him unprepared.
He lost hold of the reins, tumbled backward, and rolled off the horse’s hindquarters, the ground coming up hard to ram against the back of his head and shoulders as another bullet plowed into the trail about six inches to his right, blowing sand and gravel in his face.
“Holy shit!” he heard Butter intone as the town marshal’s horse gave another shrill scream and fell in a heap beside him.
Chapter 14
As his horse galloped off up the trail, Longarm saw his rifle lying in the brush. He pushed off his elbows and heels and dashed toward it, but when he was two feet away, the rifle on the ridgetop thundered twice more, and two slugs hammered the trail in front of Longarm’s own Winchester.
He cursed as he threw himself behind a rock. Climbing to his knees and spitting grit from his lips and mustache, he glanced at Butter.
The marshal lay on his back, clutching his left arm with his right hand and groaning, breathing hard. His horse had fallen on his left leg. He tugged on it, trying to tug it free, but there was no doing. Blood dribbled from the horse’s left eye as it lay on Butter as though it had fallen from the sky.
The town marshal was a sitting duck, so Longarm took advantage of a lull in the shooter’s firing. He leaped over his covering rock, grabbed his rifle, and racked a round into the breech. Snugging the Winchester’s brass butt plate to his right shoulder, he aimed at the tan hat crown he could see rising just above the ridge, and the bristling rifle barrel.
He fired three rounds, watching his slugs blow up dust near the hat and rifle. One spanged off a rock to the shooter’s left. He thought he saw the hat jerk, as though the ricochet might have clipped the dry-gulcher.
Then the hat and rifle disappeared behind the ridge, and Longarm ran over to Butter.
“How bad you hit, Roscoe?”
“Not bad, but galdangit, I can’t pull my leg free from beneath my damn hoss!”
Longarm glanced once more at the ridge. The hat and the rifle barrel were there again, the rifle leveling on him and Butter. A chill raked Longarm. He shouted, “Hold on!” and, on one knee, fired two shots again quickly toward the shooter. The dry-gulcher’s own rifle stabbed smoke and flames, and the slug plowed into the back of the already dead horse, causing it to jerk a little.
Longarm fired again, until his Winchester’s hammer pinged on an empty chamber. Then he tossed the long gun aside and, keeping one eye on the ridge, positioned himself behind Butter, snaked his arms under the town marshal’s, and pulled. Butter groaned, throwing his head back painfully, gritting his teeth. On Longarm’s second hard yank, Butter’s leg came free.
“Goddamn!” yelled the town marshal.
“You got a blue tongue—anyone ever tell you that, Roscoe?”
“Also got a goddamn twisted ankle!”
Longarm dragged the man into the brush on the far side of the trail from the shooter, then ran back to the town marshal’s horse and slid his Spencer repeater from the saddle boot. “Gonna borrow this for a minute, Roscoe!” he said, working the rifle’s trigger guard cocking lever to rack a live cartridge into the breech.
Longarm leaped over the dead horse just as another slug plowed into the trail nearby, followed a quarter second later by the angry bellow of the shooter’s rifle. Longarm ran into the rocks and shrubs, heading toward the ridge and thinking that the ambusher had more determination than talent.
Two slugs plowed up sand and grass on each side of him, and then he dropped to a knee, aimed the Spencher, and fired.
The rifle leaped and roared, smacking his shoulder. The slug loudly hammered the rock to the shooter’s left. Longarm fired again and then, not seeing the tan hat or the rifle, took off running toward the ridge, pumping his arms and legs, carrying the rifle in one hand. He jerked his gaze back and forth from the terrain in front of him to the top of the ridge, and then, not seeing the tan hat, he ran up the hill.
It was low but steep. By the time he was halfway to the top, Longarm was breathing hard, the taste of copper in his mouth, and silently cursing his three-for-a-nickel cheroot habit.
Six feet from the top, he slowed his pace and aimed the rifle straight out from his shoulder. Two more steps and he could see the gap in the rocks from which the shooter had fired on him and Butter. All that was there now was a slight indentation of an elbow and a knee, and ten or so brass cartridge casings.
Hooves thudded.
Longarm lifted his gaze to see a horseback rider galloping up the next ridge beyond him. The shooter was too far away for Longarm to make out many details except the tan hat and a black vest over a blue shirt. Saddlebags flapped across the long-legged, white-stockinged, calico horse’s hindquarters.
Longarm dropped to a knee, but just as he got the Spencer aimed, the shooter plunged over the top of the opposite ridge and disappeared down the other side. The hoof thuds dwindled quickly.
Longarm lowered the rifle, raking air in and out of his lungs and off-cocking the Spencer’s hammer. He stared after the fled shooter. Who the hell was he? Just one more of Dave Ross’s ilk, out to drill him for the same reason that Ross likely had? Or maybe someone Bethany Todd has sent.
He wondered if the saddlebags the dry-gulcher was packing were the ones containing the Stoneville loot.
Damn puzzling.
Ignoring his previous self-scolding, Longarm dug a cheroot from his coat pocket as he gained his feet, turned, and started back down the hill. He fired a lucifer to life on his holster, touched the flame to the cigar, and had it going to his satisfaction as he gained the hill’s bottom and was tramping back toward the trail.
Ahead, Butter sat on a rock, extending his left leg and leaning forward with his right hand on that thigh. He’d knotted his neckerchief around the opposite arm. His hat was off and his teeth shone between spread lips as he stared across his dead horse at Longarm.
“You get that son of a bitch?” he asked as Longarm stepped onto the trail.
The federal lawman shook his head. “No, but we’ll see him again. How’s your leg?”
“Just twisted. I’ll live.”
“Too bad about your horse.”
“Yeah, he was a good horse.”
Longarm hated to see animals killed for no reason. Just as frustrating was the fact that he and Butter would now have to ride double on their return to Nowhere, which meant that if they didn’t want to kill the gray, they’d have to take it slow. It would probably take them twice as long getting back as it had coming.
And that meant there was no way in hell they’d be able to catch up to the horse-killing dry-gulcher, though he’d been headed back in the direction of town.
Longarm puffed his cigar as he found his hat and loaded his rifle. He set the long gun on his shoulder and headed off in search of his horse. He found it cropping bunchgrass a quarter-mile north of the trail, his McClellan saddle hanging down
its side.
He reset the saddle and blanket and inspected the horse for wounds and grazes; pried a stone out from beneath its right front shoe with his pocketknife, then deemed the animal sound and rode it back to where Butter was smoking a cigarette, where Longarm had left him.
“Hate to leave my saddle,” the town marshal said, looking down at his horse as he limped toward the gray.
“Benji’ll fetch it for you when he fetches the preacher.”
“That saddle’s about all I own that’s worth anything—that, my six-gun, and the old Spencer.”
Longarm helped the older man onto the gray behind him, then, cursing under his breath in frustration once more at the long, slow trip they had ahead of them, he booted the horse forward at a fast walk.
* * *
It was nearly dusk when Longarm topped a rise and saw Nowhere spread out before him, slanting down the bench aproning out from the southernmost ridge of the Organ Range. The sun was about halfway down on the settlement’s far side, and shadows angled out from the buildings lining both sides of the street.
As Longarm gigged the tired gelding forward, he looked around carefully, half-expecting, as he’d half-expected all the way back to town, for the bushwhacker to show himself again. Darkening alley mouths would be a good place to affect another ambush, as would a second- or third-story window.
“What the hell?” Butter said, riding behind him and pointing straight ahead toward Humperdink’s livery barn on the far side of the town. The barn’s double doors were open wide, and a lighted lantern glowed inside, half-silhouetting the big, burly, overall-clad frame of the liveryman/coroner. “Looks like A.J.’s workin’ overtime. That ain’t like him. He usually kicks off around three and heads over to the Nowhere for beer and a free sandwich.”
Longarm shuttled his gaze from the jostling figure of Humperdink apparently nailing another coffin together, to the Nowhere Saloon. Tension emanated from the half dozen men milling outside the place, smoking and drinking and speaking in hushed tones, glancing up the street and toward its other side. The horses tied to the hitch racks fronting the saloon seemed to sense the men’s anxiety, for they fidgeted around, switching their tails and tossing their heads.
