Longarm and Kid Bodie (9781101622001)

by Evans, Tabor

  “I’m not sure that you could have stopped Bodie,” Longarm told her. “The boy is very determined, and it’s clear to me that Bodie hates being told what he can or cannot do.”

  “Even so,” Nurse Winslow said, “I might have been able to reason with him.”

  “No sense in talking about it,” Longarm told her. “Let’s get moving.”

  Longarm hated to do it, but there was no choice but to go tell Sheriff Miller that Bodie was missing and probably wandering around lost in Denver.

  * * *

  “What!” the sheriff bellowed a short time later. “What do you mean the kid is missing?”

  “He ran off with his dog.”

  Sheriff Miller rose from his office chair and pushed up face-to-face with Longarm. “You promised to bring the boy to me first thing after breakfast this morning. I’ve been here waiting since ten. Not only didn’t you arrive on time, you couldn’t even control the boy, and now I’ve got to spend my department’s time and money hunting for the kid and his damned wolf dog.”

  “Don’t bother,” Longarm snapped as he headed for the door. “I’ll find him and bring him by later.”

  “Yeah, just like you promised to bring him by this morning!”

  “Go to hell,” Longarm hissed.

  “I’m going to see if I can get your damned badge taken away from you!” Sheriff Miller roared. “I’m going to the Federal Building right now and demand to your boss that you be suspended without pay and then fired!”

  Longarm whirled around in the doorway. “If that happens, then we’ll both be looking for jobs, because as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, you’re going to lose your reelection, Sheriff. You’re a disgrace to our profession.”

  Sheriff Miller howled something, but Longarm didn’t hear it over the slam of the door.

  * * *

  Bodie and Homer were lost and very tired. It had grown late in the afternoon, and the sky was dark with the threat of a storm. Bodie had wandered for hours through the city and then found himself in the neighborhoods, some of which were seedy and unsafe. Hard-looking men stared at him, but with Homer at his side, no one approached Bodie or made any attempt to approach him, out of fear of the huge dog.

  It would be dark and storming soon, and Bodie knew that he needed to find a safe and dry place to spend the night with Homer. But where? There were so many people here that he felt almost overwhelmed by all the hustle and bustle. His mother had once told him that big cities were bad places to be and that they harbored the worst of mankind. Ruby had warned him to avoid them when he grew to be a man and to find small towns, where people were nicer. Bodie had never quite understood how his mother knew anything about big cities. In all the days of his childhood they had lived in a succession of small towns. And after their experiences there, he considered it to be impossible for people to be any more money-grasping or deceiving than those he’d known over the years.

  “We need a place to hole up and hide while I figure this out,” Bodie told the dog. “And you need to rest and get strong again.”

  Homer managed to wag his tail, and Bodie sat down on a low fence and thought hard about what he needed to do to protect himself and his faithful companion and only real friend.

  “I’ve got it,” he said at last. “We’ll go find a big livery barn and sneak into it to be with the horses. We’ll sleep on the hay or straw, and maybe I can even get hired cleaning stalls or currying horses. Give us some time to get you feeling better and me to save us a little more money so we can go back to western Nevada. Maybe even back to Bodie.”

  Bodie had already decided that he needed to return to the only town that he’d ever really gotten to stay long enough to know. His mother might even have returned to Bodie, or if not there, maybe gone to Virginia City up in the north, which was a place Ruby had taken Bodie many times in her wanderings and search for some permanency in their difficult life.

  So Bodie turned, stood, stretched, and headed up the street leading into the heart of Denver. He’d passed quite a few livery stables, and he was just sure that at least one of them would give him and his dog a place to sleep in safety tonight and offer him a job and a little money in exchange for his hard labor.

  * * *

  “I don’t need any damned help,” the liveryman growled. “I can’t afford to pay you a cent so take that big wolf and get movin’!”

  Bodie turned and headed on down the street. He’d entered two livery stables and been told both times to git. Still, he was hopeful, even though it was starting to rain hard and cold. At the Rocky Mountain Livery, footsore and weary, Bodie finally caught a break. “You a good worker, boy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You a thief?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that. What about that dog?”

  “We go together,” Bodie said simply. “He won’t harm any stock and he is quiet.”

  “Good watchdog?”

  “None better.”

  The owner of the stables was an old, rumpled bachelor in his sixties, once large but now stooped from years of hard work. He was lean and his hands were huge.

  “You eaten lately?”

  “Bought some scraps for myself and Homer this morning. Nothing since.”

  “Well, I was just settin’ down to some beans and cornbread. I cook my own inside the barn, where I got a little place to sleep and live. You can’t stay there, though.”

  “We’d do fine in a hay pile.”

  “Let’s get out of this rain. My name is Otis. Otis Redman. What be yours, boy?”

  “Bodie.”

  “Last name?”

  “Stock.”

  “Huh. Where your ma and pa be?”

  “I never knew my pa, and my ma is gone or maybe in a town way out in eastern California called Bodie.”

  “Bodie from Bodie, huh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, come on in and I’ll feed you and the dog. You’re so thin and poor-lookin’ it’d take two of you to make a shadow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come along then, Bodie. I’ll get you fed and some clean horse blankets for you to dry off with and then sleep under. We can talk tomorrow morning about what I might be willin’ to pay in wages.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No cause for thanks, Bodie. You’ll earn your keep here or you’ll soon be sent packin’.”

  Bodie and Homer were fed beans spiced up with chili peppers, and although Homer didn’t really take well to them, he ate them anyway. Bodie thought they were real tasty, and the cornbread was still warm, and Otis had honey.

  “Feelin’ better now?” Otis asked when they’d cleaned the pot.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re too young to be off on your own, kid. You and that dog . . . By the way, who shot or stabbed him?”

  “Bad fella,” Bodie said, not wanting to explain his part in a killing.

  “Dog bite the man that shot him?”

  “Yes he did. Homer about took his leg off.”

  Otis threw back his head and laughed because he thought that was real funny. When he’d finished laughing, he lit a pipe and told Bodie some long ago stories about Denver and some women that he’d loved and lost. Bodie and Homer both fell asleep listening to the lonesome old bachelor rattle on and on.

  Chapter 5

  “We’ve looked everywhere,” Longarm told Gloria that evening at the Belmont Restaurant. “I even checked the freighting companies, along with the railroad and stagecoach lines. No one has seen Bodie or Homer.”

  “If they had, they’d have remembered,” Gloria said. “So where do you think that they’re hiding?”

  “I have no idea.” Longarm was both baffled and discouraged. Even worse, true to his word, Sheriff
Miller had visited his boss at the Federal Building and raised hell about Longarm’s role in the triple shooting. He’d demanded that Longarm be stripped of his badge, but of course Billy Vail had flatly refused. Still, it was a problem both for Billy and the department, so Longarm desperately needed Bodie to come forward and tell his version of the shooting.

  “What happens now?” Gloria asked as she used her fork to idly play with her salad.

  “We keep looking,” Longarm told her. “If Bodie hasn’t left Denver, then sooner or later he’ll be spotted. I’ve told everyone to get in touch with me the minute they see the boy and his dog. Someone will be getting in touch with me sooner rather than later.”

  “What a mess!” Gloria exclaimed. “And what a turnaround regarding Ida and Rose and their feelings for Bodie.”

  “Yes,” Longarm agreed. “I think they realize that Bodie never had much of a chance to succeed in life given the erratic and irresponsible behavior of his mother all the time the boy was growing up.”

  “Do you think Bodie is salvageable?”

  “I’m certain that he is,” Longarm replied. “I was pretty wild myself when I was Bodie’s age.”

  “But surely you must have had a far superior upbringing.”

  “I did,” Longarm admitted. “I actually had very fine and respected parents back in West Virginia. Back when I was growing up things were pretty stable, until the War Between the States. But where Bodie was raised in the wild boom towns of Nevada and California, there would have been no stability. Probably very few schools or churches. The kid would have been hard-pressed in those places to find a good man to pattern his life after.”

  “I sure hope that the boy is all right.” Gloria fretted. “I feel kind of responsible for his welfare and I’ve never even laid eyes on the boy or his dog.”

  “They’re quite the pair,” Longarm mused aloud. “Bodie and Homer are both thin as rails and ragged.”

  “It’s storming out tonight,” Gloria worried, obviously too distracted to enjoy her meal. “Do you think that they’re huddling under some wagon or boardwalk trying to keep warm and dry?”

  “No,” Longarm answered, wanting to reassure her. “Bodie strikes me as being a survivor. He’s going to know that his dog is weak from loss of blood, and he did steal those thirty dollars from Dr. Winslow. So if Bodie needed to rent a room tonight and buy something to eat for himself and for Homer, he’d have enough money to do so.”

  “Too bad he turned out to be a thief.”

  “Yeah,” Longarm said, “but if you’d heard his story as I did, you’d understand that Bodie is a kid that will do whatever he has to do to take care of himself and that wolf dog.”

  “I wish that I could help you look for him, but I’ve got the shop to see after.”

  “I know and that’s fine. I’m very sure that within a few days, if Bodie and Homer don’t decide to leave town in the dead of night, we’ll get a sighting. And when we do, I’ll make sure that Bodie doesn’t get away from me again.”

  “Sounds like Ida and Rose might like to take him into their beautiful home.”

  “Maybe,” Longarm said, not too sure if the pair of women really understood the enormity of taking in a boy and his dog that were so independent, undisciplined, and headstrong.

  Longarm and Gloria went back to his place and made love, but their deep concern about Bodie’s welfare and whereabouts meant that their lovemaking was more restrained. Gloria was still highly aroused, as was Longarm, but neither of them seemed up to a bout of wild and frequent lovemaking like the one they’d experienced the night before.

  * * *

  In the morning, Longarm headed for work, and when he entered Marshal Billy Vail’s office, he was told to close the door behind him so that they could speak in private. Billy came right to the point. “Custis, I’m getting a lot of grief and pressure from Sheriff Miller, who swears that you’ve been derelict in your duty. He says that you haven’t even come by his office to file a formal report on the shootings.”

  “He’s right,” Longarm confessed. “I’ve been so busy hunting for Bodie that I just haven’t taken the time.”

  “Well, do it as soon as you leave this office,” Billy suggested. “We’re feds, and we have enough trouble dealing with the local authorities without you rubbing the sheriff the wrong way.”

  “He’s worthless and isn’t going to get reelected. In a couple of months Clyde Miller will be just a bad and fading memory.”

  “That is probably true,” Billy agreed, “but even so I’d like to be able to say that we kept our end of the bargain when it came to being cooperative.”

  “I’ll go see him right away,” Longarm promised.

  “So where do you think this kid has gone?”

  “I don’t know. Bodie could have left Denver, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Longarm shrugged his broad shoulders. “Just a hunch. I believe that Bodie really wanted to see his grandmother and aunt. And I think he’ll do that before he leaves town.”

  “Are they aware that the kid might pay them a sudden and unexpected visit?”

  “They are.”

  Billy frowned. “I’ve heard rumors that the grandmother, Mrs. Ida Clark, is in very poor health. A boy with blood on his hands might be enough of a shock to put her in the ground.”

  “I know.” Longarm came to his feet. “Billy, I’ve been everywhere and I’ve told everyone that they need to let me know the minute they spot the boy and his dog. Trust me . . . they both stand out and will show up in a day or two at the most.”

  “I do trust you, Custis. And you need to file a report in my office regarding your role in the shootings. Have you done that yet?”

  “No.”

  “Then please do so before you go to visit Sheriff Miller.”

  “Okay,” Longarm said, hating any kind of paperwork.

  Billy Vail suddenly relaxed. “Custis, it may cheer you up a bit to know that I’ve learned that the pair of men involved in the shootings were hardened criminals. They’d been in and out of Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado prisons for years. I don’t know a thing about the late John Stock, but I suspect he was simply a random victim and that the kid and the dog were caught up in the gunfire. However, I still find it hard to understand how a boy that young could shove a derringer into someone’s chest and pull the trigger. I’ll try to reserve my judgment until after I’ve read your report and talked to the boy.”

  “I was there, and after watching what happened to John Stock, it isn’t so hard to understand. If you’d also seen it, you would have done exactly what Bodie did . . . kill the son of a bitch.”

  “All right,” Billy said quietly. “Write your report and then go and do whatever you have to do to smooth Sheriff Miller’s feathers.”

  “I absolutely can’t abide that man.”

  “Neither can I,” Billy replied, “but as you said, he isn’t going to be reelected, so just do what I’m asking.”

  “Okay.”

  Longarm left the office and went to his desk. There were three other deputies in their small offices, and all of them nodded in greeting but were wise enough not to pester him with questions about the shootings. Longarm sat down at his desk, picked up his pen, and began to write out the official office report. Finished, he read over his words, decided that they were adequate, left the report with a secretary and then headed for Sheriff Miller’s office.

  * * *

  “So,” the sheriff said when Longarm walked in, “you’ve finally decided to pay me a visit. What a big fucking honor!”

  “Cut the bullshit.”

  Longarm didn’t wait to be invited to sit and pulled up a chair, while noting that the other two deputies in the office were now all ears. “What do you need to know from me?”

  Miller’
s contemptuous smile faded. “I want to know everything. And after I’ve heard your version of the shootings, I’ll decide if I’m going to arrest you or not.”

  “Arrest me?” Longarm asked with genuine amazement.

  “Yeah.”

  Longarm laughed, and it wasn’t a nice sound. “Sheriff, if you’re really dumb enough to try to arrest me, you will either wind up in the hospital or the morgue. Do I make myself clear?”

  Miller’s beefy face turned scarlet red and he nearly choked with anger. Finally, he gained control of himself and managed to say, “Just give me all the damned facts.”

  Longarm spent the next ten minutes telling the sheriff and his two nosy deputies exactly what had happened out on Colfax. He omitted nothing but did not go into any great detail. When he was finished, he didn’t wait to answer questions but came to his feet and headed for the door.

  “I’m not through with you!” Sheriff Miller yelled.

  “Yes you are,” Longarm called back over his shoulder.

  “I want that boy in my custody!”

  “Can’t find him right now,” Longarm said, turning back with a cold smile.

  “Custis, if you’re hiding him for some gawdamn reason, I’ll have your balls sliced off and fed to the hogs.”

  “If you don’t stop threatening me and my job, I’m going to kick your fat ass up between your shoulder blades right here in front of your two worthless deputies.”

  Miller’s jaw dropped, and his deputies, probably feeling they had to make some kind of show of loyalty, came out of their chairs and moved toward Longarm as if they were going to give him a fight.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Longarm warned, his words bringing the pair to a standstill.

  Longarm turned and headed out into the street. He’d looked everywhere he could think of for Bodie yesterday, and now he had to think of some new places that the kid and his dog might be hiding. For the sake of Bodie’s welfare and immediate future, he needed to find the kid before Sheriff Miller, or else the boy would be caught up in a legal and jurisdictional situation from which he might never recover.