by Tabor Evans
“You don’t know who did it, Custis,” Helen ponted out. “Surely you of all people would understand the need for proper evidence when it comes to things like this.”
He took a deep swallow of the whiskey and scowled. “Yeah, you gotta have proof and all that bullshit. But that’s talking ’bout the proper law. That’s when some other son of a bitch’s ox is being gored. Now it’s me an’ mine, and that makes it feel a whole lot different.”
Longarm sucked on his cheroot for a moment and then tossed back the rest of the rye.
“You look angry, Custis.”
“Hell, I am. I am well and truly pissed off, Helen. You should’ve seen the mess they made. An’ they wasted a hell of a lot of beer an’ whiskey too. I’d think you would be madder’n me about it all. After all, you’re the one who is paying the bills over there.” He gestured in the general direction of the Star Saloon.
“If it helps solve my problem,” Helen said, “it will be worth every penny and then some.” She smiled. “Besides, it should be a good investment in the long run. Right now my whole livelihood depends on these whorehouses. It isn’t a bad idea to own a saloon or two. You know. In case some stupid old bastard decides he can regulate people’s morality by outlawing whoring. No one has ever been able to stop it, not in all of history, but they keep trying. All they manage to do is to drive it underground. But it still goes on. It always will.”
“Of course,” Longarm agreed. “You got any more o’ this whiskey, darlin’? I could use me a refill.” He held his glass out for Helen to freshen.
“What will you do now, Custis?” she asked.
Longarm shrugged. “Damn if I know. But don’t you worry none. I’ll think of something.”
Chapter 48
Bucky Doyle was behind the bar at the Star when Longarm returned to the saloon that night.
“I didn’t realize it was so late,” Longarm told him. “Robert has gone home for the night?”
Bucky nodded. “He left about an hour ago. Is that all right?”
“Of course,” Longarm said. “I know you can handle things. Has anything important happened?”
“Not really. Jimmy finished fixing the tables. He had to replace a couple of the table legs, but most of them could be put back on. I went ahead and paid him out of the cash drawer. I hope that’s all right too.”
“Just fine,” Longarm assured him. “Give me a deck of those cards, would you.”
Longarm took the cards and a beer to one of the reconstructed tables and sat down to play a little solitaire and watch over the place.
Not that he actually expected more trouble, but . . .
“Aw, shit!” he blurted as a fight broke out in the back of the place.
Between two of the whores!
The two of them—he could not immediately see which two—were down in the sawdust, rolling, punching, pinching, and, as far as he could tell, biting each other too.
These were not some of Helen’s best whores, and Custis Long simply did not know how to ride herd on them in order to prevent the occasional outburst.
He jumped up, leaving his unfinished game of cards and a couple inches of beer.
“Hold on there, you,” he barked, standing over the pair of scrapping hookers. He grabbed the shoulder of the one who happened to be on top and yanked the painted bawd away from a younger and much prettier girl.
“This cunt was trying to steal my man,” the older whore bawled.
“He likes me better, you old bitch.” The younger whore—she called herself Jenny but her real name could have been anything except that—scrambled to her feet and made a lunge for Beauty, who in fact was no beauty and probably never had been.
Longarm shoved Beauty aside and intercepted Jenny’s assault. “Calm down, dammit, the both o’ you.”
He looked around at the ring of curious onlookers who had gathered in the back of the room to watch the women fight. “Who is it that’s the cause of all this?” he demanded.
A slim, rough-dressed miner stepped forward. “Me. I think.”
“Do you want one o’ these girls?” Longarm asked.
“Not now I don’t,” the miner said, washing his hands of the whole thing.
“Billy!” the older whore bleated. “You and me, Billy. You’re my date, honey.”
Billy gave the whore a look of pure disgust, turned, and left the place.
“What about me, Billy?” Jenny called after him. “Don’t you want me now?”
Apparently he did not, for he left the Star without looking back. Longarm did not blame the man. It would take a complete idiot to get into the middle of that mess a second time.
“Now you see,” he told them. “You get to fighting like that an’ nobody makes any money. Including me. Now settle down or I’ll have to get rid of you.”
“You can’t do that,” Beauty said. “We don’t work for you.”
“You do as long as you’re workin’ this place,” Longarm snapped.
“Fine. Then I quit. You don’t know a damn thing about how to handle us girls,” Beauty screamed.
She was probably right, Longarm conceded. He did not know jack shit about whores or how to handle them. Thank goodness for Helen Morrow and her expertise on the subject.
Beauty stormed out of the Star while Jenny just looked frightened. Longarm suspected that Jenny had nowhere else to go and no place else to turn, while a whore Beauty’s age likely had plenty of experience to draw on. He had been told that she even had a husband and children somewhere in town.
“All right, everybody,” he said, raising his voice. “Fight’s over now. Finish up with whatever you’re drinking. I’m shutting the place down for the night. We’ll be open again tomorrow morning bright an’ early.”
Chapter 49
Longarm’s eyes felt gritty, as if someone had thrown a handful of sand into them. His back ached and his butt was sore. He had spent the night in the saloon, trying to stay alert but dozing off in fits and starts. In the pale light of morning he felt like shit.
He stood, knees cracking loudly, and hobbled over to the bar, where the remains of last night’s free lunch stood in fly-specked grandeur. Longarm cut off a chunk of hard, yellow rat cheese. The cheese was dry and begged for something to help wash it down—a trait that made it ideal for a saloon to offer—but all he had behind the bar was beer and whiskey. Neither of those sounded particularly appetizing at that hour. What he wanted was a breakfast, not hard cheese.
Hard cheese would just have to do for the time being.
He heard a key turn in the lock on one of the front doors.
Longarm had his Colt in hand when Bob Ware came inside. He quickly slipped the .45 back into its leather. He doubted that Ware had noticed.
“Boss. What are you doing here at this hour?”
Longarm yawned. “Mornin’, Bob. I, uh, I spent the night here. Thought it was just possible the vandals who broke us up the other night might come back an’ have another go at us.”
“I take it no one showed,” Ware said.
“No, but the sons o’ bitches might come again. If they do, I want to get a look at them. Maybe throw a little lead in their direction an’ get back at them for all the damage they done.”
“Will you be spending more nights here then?”
Longarm nodded. “Some.”
“Would you like for me to stay with you?”
“No.” Longarm smiled. “One of us needs to be awake to tend the bar during the day. I’ll be leaning on you to do that for the next little while.”
“Whatever you want, Boss. But you look awfully tired,” Bob Ware said.
“At the very least I’m gonna bring me a pillow so my ass won’t hurt so bad. These damn chairs are hard in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Ware said, “I can take care of things now, Custis. Why don’t you go home and get yourse
lf some sleep? Lord knows you look like you can use it.”
“Use it an’ then some,” Longarm agreed. “All right. I’m gonna go grab some sleep. I’ll be back, oh, after lunch. I’ll relieve you then an’ take over until Bucky gets here for the night shift.”
“Take your time. If worse comes to worst, I can always eat the free lunch,” Ware said.
“Just stay away from the cheese. It’s terrible,” Longarm said over his shoulder. He was already on his way to the Pickering and the comfort of a proper bed.
Chapter 50
On Sunday, the fourth night of Longarm’s vigil, he heard boots on the boards a half hour or so after Bucky extinguished the lamps and locked up.
Longarm’s first thought was relief. He had had a niggling question whether Bob Ware or Bucky Doyle might have in some way been complicit in the destruction. Ira Collins had recommended them, after all, and Longarm barely knew them.
Either of the men could have tipped off the vandals. Both knew that Longarm was keeping watch inside the Star overnight. If someone tried to break in now, it meant that Bob and Bucky were both loyal. So in a way it was a relief to hear the approach of someone now.
He waited. Heard the dull crunch of the lock and mortise being shattered by a pry bar. Saw the intrusion of pale moonlight when the door swung open. Saw two dark shapes fill the doorway and half heard the whispers as the pair felt their way awkwardly into the deeper darkness indoors.
“No, wait. Careful. There’s something here. Don’t trip over it,” a voice whispered.
“You got a match?” the other answered.
“Yeah. Where’s a lamp?”
“Over here. I found a lamp but I got no match.”
“Just a second. I . . . There.”
Longarm heard the scrape and saw the sudden flare of light as the match was struck and quickly applied to the wick of a wall lamp.
“Shit, I burnt my fucking finger,” one of them mumbled before he adjusted the lamp wick to a bright yellow butterfly.
“Where do you want to start, eh?”
“First thing, I want to set aside some of these bottles of whiskey. We can take a few with us when we leave.”
“Good idea. Those would be over . . . Oh, shit!”
Longarm peered at them over the barrel of his .45. “Evenin’, boys.”
In the light they had so helpfully provided he could see that these were the same two he had seen in Ira Collins’s outer office. They were, or so he presumed, George Stepanek’s cronies.
“Stand easy now, an’ I’ll find you each a nice jail cell to sleep in,” Longarm said.
Not that he had any idea where he might find that jail cell. Or any lawman tending it. There was neither jail nor lawman in town here, although he supposed he could put the two in handcuffs, load them onto the next train through, and cart them off to some larger burg for trial.
He would worry about that later. His first priority now had to be the handcuffs. Everything else would come after.
“Hands high an’ turn yourselves around, boys,” he said.
The fellow who had lighted the lamp, a tall, beefy man with a red complexion and heavy stubble that was just short of being a beard, dutifully lifted his hands shoulder high.
The other, however, hesitated. He was thin and wiry with dark blond hair and a carefully trimmed pencil mustache.
“Don’t . . . ,” Longarm warned.
Too late. The fellow snatched his pistol out of its leather.
He must have thought himself quick with a gun. And in fact he was very fast.
On the other hand, no one is faster on the draw than a .45 that is already in hand and aimed at him. It was a lesson learned the hard way.
Before the intruder’s revolver cleared the leather, Longarm’s Colt belched flame and smoke.
And lead.
The slug hit the son of a bitch high in the belly, just under the breastbone, just under the heart.
The man grunted, the sound driven out of him with the impact. He looked down at himself, his expression puzzled with disbelief.
By that time his companion stood transfixed, hand poised over the grips of his gun but panic showing plain on his face. He hesitated, then spun around, and bolted for the open doorway.
Longarm could have dropped the son of a bitch. His finger tightened on the trigger, but at the last instant he chose to hold his fire. He knew who the man was and could find him when he wanted him.
In the meantime . . .
He put another bullet into the first man, who still had his gun in hand.
Longarm’s slug raised a puff of dust from the fellow’s coat, the bullet striking low on his right side. The impact turned him half around. His knees sagged and then let go altogether, dropping him to the floor. He toppled facedown into the sawdust, his not-quite-fast-enough Colt unfired.
Longarm crossed the saloon floor in a hurry and kicked the man’s gun away—he was dying but not yet dead and might still have found the strength to pull a trigger—before kneeling beside him.
“Your partner ran out on you,” Longarm said. “Where’s he gone?”
The dying man was ghostly pale, his skin yellowed and filmed with oily sweat.
“Where?” Longarm repeated.
If the man heard, he gave no indication of it. His whole attention was directed inward. Likely thinking of his own belly and the fact that he could no longer draw breath.
There was practically no blood coming from his wounds. There must have been plenty flooding his gut, but it was not leaking outside of his body.
At the last moment he looked up at Longarm. Then the life went out of his eyes and he exhaled for the last time on this side of the great divide.
“Shit,” Longarm mumbled. He wanted to talk to the intruders, not kill them.
He was not going to talk to this one, that was certain. There was, however, the other.
Longarm stood and stepped out into the cool evening air. A three-foot-long pry bar was leaned against the wall where the two had left it. He shoved his Colt back into his holster and looked up and down the street, wondering which way the other vandal had fled.
The only sound in the night was the very distant wail and rattle of a train rolling through the darkness.
The depot, Longarm thought. If that man really wanted to get away, there were only two directions he might logically go. One would be toward Ira Collins, seeking sanctuary from his boss. The other would be toward getting the hell out of town. And a train would present the best opportunity for that.
If he ran to Collins, Longarm would be able to find him at his leisure.
And if to the train . . .
Longarm pulled the broken door shut behind him and started a slow and cautious walk toward the railroad depot, alert just in case the rabbit had not gone to ground but wanted to show some fight instead.
Chapter 51
There! A dark shape detached itself from the shadows at the loading chutes and scuttled hurriedly to a boxcar just as the train began to move, pulling away from the depot.
Longarm had been sitting on the platform keeping watch for more than an hour. Now the wait was paying off.
He stood and hitched up his britches, then stepped forward to stand beside the tracks.
He waited as the cars began to clatter past, keeping his eye on the car where the shadow had disappeared. There were four boxcars in this train. The one he wanted was the second.
As it reached him, Longarm grabbed the open doorway and swung up into the dark car. The man he wanted to talk to was somewhere in—
The back end of the car was lighted up as the muzzle flash of a pistol shot flared bright, and a large-caliber bullet slammed into the wood of the siding not two feet from Longarm’s head.
Longarm’s response was immediate. His .45 came into hand and he returned fire.
Longarm’s Colt was already in hand this time, and his return fire was almost instantaneous. He threw his shot close beside the muzzle flash from the back of the car.
The rumble of iron wheels was loud and the car shook and clattered as it passed over the rails.
Longarm threw himself forward, seeking the shadows away from the open doorway. He waited but the noises around him were too loud for him to expect to hear anything short of another pistol shot, and he could not see the figure at the back of the car.
There was no exit other than the open door, and Longarm could clearly see anything or anyone approaching that. By the same token if he moved to the back of the car, he would likely be silhouetted against the doorway.
He knelt, revolver in hand. And waited.
Chapter 52
Longarm ambled back to the depot. The next train back to Helen’s town was due in ten or twelve minutes. He had had plenty of time while he waited to have breakfast, clean his .45, and stroll around this town.
He would have liked to get some sleep, but that would have to wait, lest he miss his train connection. And he damn sure did not want to walk back. He had come a good eighty or a hundred miles during the night, sharing the otherwise empty boxcar with a dead man.
Not that he had been sure about Ira Collins’s man, whatever the hell his name had been. He had not relaxed his vigilance until daybreak. That was when he discovered that his shooting during the night had been more lucky than accurate.
His bullet had taken the fellow high on his left leg. It tore through an artery, and the man bled to death, probably within ten minutes or less. There was a hell of a lot of coagulated blood pooled on the floor of the boxcar.
Longarm had gotten off the train the next time it stopped. He left the dead man where he was. Someone would find him eventually.
As for Ira Collins and George Stepanek . . . he had a bone to pick with those two.
And he intended to take the matter up with them as soon as he got back.
