Longarm - Longarm. Part 20

Longarm decided to end it.

He fired blindly in the direction of the last sound, moving to his left as he levered the Winchester and watched the bright wink of the other's rifle. Then Longarm fired, not at the flash, but to its left as he was facing. He heard a thump and the sound of a metal object sliding downhill over roots and pine needles, followed by some thrashing noises and a low, terrible curse. Then it became very quiet.

Longarm counted, "One Mississippi, two Mississippi to a hundred. Then he moved in, knowing that not one man in a thousand plays possum through a hundred Mississippi's.

He heard harsh breathing, which was either somebody dying or d.a.m.ned fine acting. So he circled uphill and approached quietly from the far side.

In the almost-total darkness Cedric Hanks was only an inkblot against a blackboard. Longarm moved in, squatted, and put his Winchester's muzzle against the blur before he said, quietly, "I'm fixing to strike a light. One twitch and this thing goes off."

"You've done me, you big b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" the midget groaned.

Longarm held the match well out to the side, anyway, as he thumbnailed its head aflame. Then he whistled and said, "Smack in the chest. You're right, mister. You're dead."

"You big bully! I never had a chance."

"Sure, you did. You could have stayed put. What made you make such a fool play, Hanks? Your best bet would have been to face the charge in court. As your wife, Mabel, didn't have to bear witness against you, and vice versa."

"Mat b.i.t.c.h woulda sold me to save her own twitching a.s.s! Why'd you put that light out? I can't see a thing."

"Nothing to look at," Longarm soothed, holding the lighted match closer to the little man's glazing eyes. He said, "Mister Hanks, you are done for and that's a fact. Before you go, would you like to give me Mabel's a.s.s?"

"You already had it, you son of a b.i.t.c.h! Everybody's had her. She was always sayin' mean things about my size. How tall I am, I mean."

"She's a tart, all right. Did she gun Kincaid, or was it you?"

"I don't know who she might have gunned in her time. You know who broke her in? Her own stepdaddy. Ain't that a b.i.t.c.h?"

"Yeah, but let's stick to serious crimes. When did you learn the man in Crooked Lance wasn't the real Cotton Younger?"

"Don't josh me, d.a.m.n it. You know he was Cotton Younger."

"Let's try it another way. Who sent you out here? Who were you working for?"

"I told you, d.a.m.n it, we was working it on our own, for the reward!"

"Then why did you and Mabel try to get rid of me?"

"It was her idea. She said she'd seen you once before, when one of the other gals in this... place she worked, pointed you out. She knew you were trying to steal our chance at the reward. s.h.i.t, you know the rest."

"After she missed me on the streets of Bitter Creek, you worked out that old badger game to take me in bed, huh?"

"Sure. If you ask me, she enjoyed the s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g part best. I was to creep in and do you after she'd wore you out. I told her you looked like a hard man to wear out that way, but she said she'd give it her best."

"All right, how'd you do Kincaid? Fall in with him on the trail and maybe finish him off as he was dozing restful in her arms?"

"I told you, I never seen this d.a.m.n Kincaid!"

"What about that lawman from Missouri?"

Cedric Hanks didn't answer. He couldn't.

Longarm closed the dead man's eyes and got to his feet, heading down the slope. The little man would have been a messy load to carry. The cowhand who'd been careless about leaving firearms about could fetch him when he came to pick up his rifle.

Longarm made plenty of noise and called out, "It's me, coming in!" as he approached the campsite. As others crowded around, asking all sorts of questions, he called out, "Let's get some light on the subject. It's all over."

Someone kicked ashes off the banked coals and threw some sticks of kindling on. They blazed up. Longarm looked at Mabel Hanks, kneeling by an aspen sapling with her wrist chained to it, and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. Your man is dead. Before he pa.s.sed he named you as the murderer of Deputy Kincaid. He died before I could find out about the others, but..."

Then Mabel Hanks was screaming like a banshee and fighting her handcuffs like a chained grizzly as she glared at him insanely, calling him a mother-loving son-of-a-wh.o.r.e for openers. Then she really started talking dirty.

Longarm saw Kim Stover staring at the raging woman, openmouthed, and suggested, "You'd best go off and stop your ears, ma'am. I suspicion she's a mite overwrought."

"For G.o.d's sake, she should be! You just said you killed her husband!"

"Yes, ma'am. He was trying to kill me, too. I was a mite better at it."

Longarm had studied women, but the longer he'd been at it the harder it was to figure them out. After having called Mabel all sorts of things, Kim Stover went over to comfort her, as the more recent widow shouted, "He was twice the man you were, you son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

Timberline sidled up alongside Longarm, asking softly, "What was that about her killing them fellers?"

"Let's put it this way: what he said to me was sort of fuzzy, but what I'll remember to the judge might put her away for a spell."

"Hot d.a.m.n! You aim to railroad him, right?"

"Now, that's putting it unfriendly, Timberline. Let's say I'm worn out tying up all the loose ends of this case and, what the h.e.l.l, I know for sure she shot at me. I'll allow it ain't neat, but at least it's enough to satisfy a grand jury and let me get on to something more worthy of my time. I don't really care if they convict her or not. I just want to be rid of this whole infernal mess!"

"You reckon any of us will get called as witnesses?"

"Why? Did any of you see her gun Kincaid or anyone else?"

"h.e.l.l, n.o.body but that old tattooed man ever got to Crooked Lance!"

"there you go. We'll just deliver the gal to the Justice Department and let them worry about her."

"You still need me as a deputy? I mean, what the h.e.l.l, one old gal don't seem to rate all this guarding, if you ask me."

Longarm shrugged and said, "We'll be in Salt Lake City by tomorrow afternoon, deputized or singing Dixie. It would be a favor if you were with me when I took her to the federal courthouse. I'll likely need a witness, transporting a female prisoner as I just did."

"A witness? Federal courthouse? You just said you wouldn't need us in court. I wish you'd make up your mind."

Longarm laughed and explained, "Not as a witness against her. As a witness for me, just while I sign her in. You've heard the mouth on her, and half the women a lawman brings in sing that same old tune of rape."

Timberline's eyes widened. Then he grinned lewdly, and exclaimed, "Hot d.a.m.n! I never thought of that! A man would get some golden opportunities in your line of work, wouldn't he?"

"People suspicion as much. A lawman with a lick of sense won't trifle with female prisoners, though. Usually, I like to bring 'em in with at least one deputy, making it two words against one. You won't have to sign statements or anything. They'll record you as my deputy and, of course, you'll get a check from the Justice Department that you can cash in Bitter Creek when you and the others get off there."

"Well, we're all headed to Salt Lake City, anyways. what's this thing about recording me?"

"You'll be in our files as a sometime law man. It won't interfere with your job at the Rocking H. We just like to keep a record on who's for or against us."

"h.e.l.l, that sounds good. Can I go on calling myself Deputy Malone?"

"Well, it wouldn't be official once I drop you off the payrolL but I doubt if you'd get arrested for it. Malone's your last name, huh?"

"Yeah, but you can call me Timberline like everybody else. They been joshing me so long with that fool name I've gotten used to it."

One of the hands came over with a worried look and said, "I can't find my saddle rifle. Anybody see a Henry.44-40?"

Longarm said, "Didn't see it, but I know where it is. Get a tarp or a waterproof groundcloth and some latigos or twine. Got another package up the slope I'd be obliged if you'd wrap for me, seein' you're wearing leather chaps. My wool britches are soiled enough as it iS."

Timberline followed Longarm and the cowhand up the slope to where their torchlight revealed the missing rifle ten yards from the toadlike body of the midget. Cedric Hanks had been ugly in life. Glaring up at them in death he looked like something that should have been carved on the parapets of Notre Dame. Timberline grimaced and said, "Funny, he looks so ugly for such a tiny thing. Didn't it bother you, Longarm? Picking on somebody so much littler than you?"

"Why should it? Never bothers you, does it?"

"Hey, I thought we'd made up!"

"Couldn't resist getting in a lick for fun. As to who was picking on who, the midget had the advantage, as well as the choice to make it a serious fight."

"Advantage? Poor horse t.u.r.d didn't come up to your bellyb.u.t.ton!"

"made me the bigger target. As you can see, we were both throwing.44-40 b.a.l.l.s at one another, so if anything, I had to aim better, since there was so much less to hit. He likely became a gun-slick in the first place when he noticed that while G.o.d created Man, Sam Colt and other gunsmiths made them equal."

Timberline watched the cowboy roll the little corpse up in the groundcloth as he shuddered and said, "My head tells me you're likely right. But I'm glad it wasn't me that killed him. Looks like Windy's wrapping up a baby!"

"Let's get back with him. It's too late to think of bedding down, 'cause the sun's creeping up on us. We'll get an early start. We can eat right away and break camp by first light."

He turned and walked toward the campfire winking up at him through the trees, feeling more morose about the killing than he'd really let on to the men behind him. It didn't bother him that the man he'd killed had been so small. It bothered him that he'd had to kill at all. He'd trained himself not to show the sick feeling these affairs left in his stomach. He'd steeled himself to eat his next few meals mechanically, tasteless as they might be. He knew why so many men in his line of work wound up with bleeding ulcers, or like poor Jim Hick.o.c.k, got to be ugly drunks toward the end.

He wasn't given to probing the dark shadows of his own mind, but he knew one night he'd dream about that ugly little gargoyle, as he had again and again, about the others he'd had to kill. It wasn't as if he felt guilty. He couldn't remember shooting anyone who hadn't deserved it. At least, not since the war. As a matter of fact, he wasn't sure why he should feel so drained after a gun fight--and disappointed.

Maybe it was just the waste. People lived such a short while at best. Man was born with a death's-head less than an inch below the soft skin of his face. By the time he was old enough to talk, he knew the graveyard waited just up the road ahead. What was it that made some men rush the process so?

He remembered that first one in the dawn mists of Shiloh, shouting fit to bust as he charged through the spring greenery into another boy's gunsights. He remembered the kick of the old Springfield against his shoulder as the world dissolved in gray-blue smoke for a long, breathless moment and how, as the smoke cleared, that other boy had been lying under a budding cherry tree with a surprised look on his face, and how the cherry blossom petals had fluttered down like gentle, pink snowflakes as the body stopped twitching. The first man he'd killed had been fourteen or so. A farm boy, from the looks of his dead hands as they lay, half open, near the stock of his musket in the cherry blossoms. It was later, when the kitchen crew brought the evening grub up to the line, that he'd noticed the ball of fuzzy, gray nothingness in his gut. He hadn't been able to eat a thing. By the second evening of the battle, he'd been hungry as a b.i.t.c.h wolf and pinned behind a stone wall without so much as a plug of tobacco to chew on. He'd learned, by the time they marched him beyond Shiloh Church through the sniper-haunted forests, not to let his feelings show. But he still wondered sometimes, late at night, who that other boy had been, and why he'd been in such an all-fired hurry to end the life he'd hardly started.

CHAPTER 25.

"The City of the Saints" lay at the base of the Wasatch Range, staring out across the desert to the west. Salt Lake City had grown some since Longarm had been there a few short years before. The outlying houses now extended into the foothills and the party had to ride for more than an hour through the town before they could get to the part they were headed for.

Little kids came out of the somber Mormon houses along the gravel road to stare at the big party riding in. Some of the kids threw sa.s.sy words or poorly aimed horse t.u.r.ds at them before scooting behind a picket fence. Longarm didn't know whether they were just being kids, or whether the Mormons were still telling them bedtime stories about how cruel the outside world could be. As long as they didn't improve their aim or throw something solid, it wasn't worth worrying about.

Timberline was leading the mount Mabel Hanks, handcuffed to the saddle horn, was sitting. Mabel had simmered down to a sullen silence, with a just-you-wait! look in her smoldering eyes.

Longarm found himself riding alongside Kim Stover, who seemed sort of quiet herself, since breaking camp. Longarm thought he knew what was bothering her, so he didn't say anything. They were riding in at an easy walk, for they were too far from the center of town to lope the rest of the way in and Longarm had warned his Wyoming companions not to make sudden motions in sight of the sometimes-truculent Mormon folk they were paying a call on.

After perhaps five minutes of silence, the redhead said with a disgusted tone in her voice "I'd as soon you'd ride with someone else, Deputy Long."

"Oh? Well, you can drop back if you've a mind too, Miss Kim. I'm up here near the head of the column 'cause I know the way to Main Street and will likely be dismounting first, at the Federal Building."

"If it's all the same to you, I mean to head direct to the depot."

"I never try to change a lady's mind, but I did offer you and yours a free ride up to Bitter Creek. I figure it'll take an hour or so to do the paperwork on my prisoner. Then I'll be free to see about getting all these hands and horses fixed with transportation."

"You're not taking that woman back to Denver?"

"Nope. They never sent me to get her. I'll let the Salt e office do the honors. Maybe ride back to Denver in one of them fancy Pullman cars. Be nice to stretch out between clean sheets for a change and I'm overdue for a good night's rest."

"I should think you'd enjoy another night with Mabel Hanks. But I suppose you've tired of her, eh? You men are all alike."

Longarm rode in silence for a time before he sighed, observing, "I might have known you gals would have your heads together on the only subject womenfolk never get tired of jawing about."

"Don't look so innocent. She told me everything."

"She did? Well, why are you keeping it a secret? Where did she say she buried Kincaid and that other feller from Missouri?"

"d.a.m.n it, she didn't talk about any murders. She told me about you and her, in Bitter Creek."

"Well, I know I can hang the sniping in Bitter Creek on her. I was hoping she'd let her hair down to another woman on the details of her life of crime."

"Don't p.u.s.s.yfoot with me, you animal! She says you had your way with her in-in a fold-up bed. She said that's why her poor little husband tried to kill you. He was defending her honor."

Longarm fished a cheroot from his vest pocket and lit it without comment.

After a time, Kim asked, "Well?"

"Well what, ma'am?"

"Aren't you going to deny it?"

"You reckon you'd believe me, if I did?"

"Of course not. Her description was, well, vivid."

"Funny, ain't it? Ten aldermen of the church could swear a man was tuning the organ of a Sunday, and if one woman told his wife he'd been at a parlor house instead..."

"Then you do deny it!"

"Ain't sure. Maybe I better study on it before I say one thing or t'other. I don't aim to have you think I'm all that wicked. On the other hand, I wouldn't want you to put me down as a sissy."

Despite herself, the redhead laughed. Then she recovered and said, "I don't think she could have made that up about you folding her up in the wall when her husband busted in on you."

"By golly, that's a good touch I'd never have come up with! Next time the boys are bragging in the pool hall, I'll see if I can get them to buy such an interesting yarn."

He puffed some smoke ahead of him, and addressing an invisible audience, pontificated, "That story about the one-legged gal in Dodge was right interesting, Tex. But did I ever tell you about the time in Bitter Creek I made mad gypsy love to this gal married to a midget?"