LONGARM.

By Tabor Evans.

CHAPTER 1.

One gray Monday morning it was trying to rain in Denver. A herd of wet Texas clouds had followed the Goodnight Trail north, tripped on the Arkansas Divide, and settled down to sweat itself away in the thin atmosphere of the mile-high capital of Colorado.

In the Union Yards a Burlington locomotive sobbed a long, lonesome whistle as Longarm awoke in his furnished room a quarter of a mile away.

For perhaps a full minute, Longarm stared up from the sagging bra.s.s stead at the smoke-begrimed plaster. Then he threw the cover off and swung bare feet to the threadbare gray carpet and rose, or, rather, loomed in the semidarkness of the little corner room. Longarm knew he was tall. He knew he moved well. He didn't understand the effect his catlike motions had on others. His friends joshed about a man his size "spooking livestock and making most men thoughtful with them sudden moves of his." But Longarm only thought it natural to get from where he'd been to where he was going by the most direct route. He was not a man who did things by halves. A man was either sleeping or a man was up, and right now he was up.

Longarm slid over to the dressing table and stared soberly at his reflection in the tarnished mirror. The naked figure staring back was that of a lean, muscular giant with the body of a young athlete and a lived-in face. Longarm was still on the comfortable side of forty, but the raw sun and cutting winds he'd ridden through coming west as a boy from West-by-Virginia had cured his rawboned features as saddle-leather brown as an Indian's. Only the gunmetal blue of his wide-set eyes, and the tobacco-leaf color of his close-cropped hair and longhorn moustache gave evidence of Angloon birth. The stubble on his lantern jaw was too heavy for an Indian, too. Longarm ran a thumbnail along the angle of his jaw and decided he had time to stop for a professional shave on his way to the office. He was an early riser and the Federal Courthouse wouldn't open until eight.

He rummaged through the clutter atop the dresser and swore when he remembered he was out of soap. Longarm was a reasonably clean guy who took a bath once a week whether he needed it or not, but the sociable weekend activities along Larimer Street's Saloon Row had left him feeling filthy and his mouth tasted like the bottom of a birdcage. He picked up a half-filled bottle of Maryland rye and pulled the cork with his big ivory-colored teeth. Then he took a healthy slug, swished it around and between his fuzzy teeth and cotton tongue, and let it go down. That took care of dental hygiene this morning.

He poured tepid water from a pitcher into a cracked china basin on a nearby stand. Then he spiked the water with some more rye. He dipped a stringy washrag in the mixture and rubbed himself down from hairline to shins, hoping the alcohol would cut the grease enough to matter. The cold wh.o.r.e-bath stung the last cobwebs from his sleep-drugged mind and he felt ready to face another week working for Uncle Sam.

That is, he was ready, but willing was another matter. The new regulations of President Hayes's Reform Administration were getting tedious as h.e.l.l, and lately, Longarm had been thinking about turning in his badge.

He scowled at himself in the mirror as he put on a fresh flannel shirt of gunmetal gray and fumbled with the foolish-looking shoestring tie they had said he had to wear, these days. Back when U.S. Grant had been in the catbird seat, the justice Department had been so surprised to find a reasonably honest lawman that they'd been content to let him dress any old way he pleased. Now the department was filled with prissy pink dudes who looked like they sat down to p.i.s.s, and they said a Deputy U.S. Marshal had to look "dignified."

Longarm decided that the tie was as pretty as it was likely to get and sat his naked rump on the rumpled bed to wrestle On his britches. He pulled on a pair of tight, knit cotton longjohns before working his long legs into the brown tweed pants he'd bought one size too small.

like most experienced hors.e.m.e.n, Longarm wore neither belt nor suspenders to hold his pants up. He knew the dangers of a sweat-soaked fold of cloth or leather between a rider and his mount moving far or sudden. By the time he'd cursed the fly shut, the pants fit tight as a second skin around his upper thighs and lean hips.

He bent double and hauled on a pair of woolen socks before grunting and sliding his feet into his low-heeled cavalry stovepipes. Like the pants, the boots had been bought a size too small. Longarm had soaked them overnight and put them on wet to dry as they'd broken in, molding themselves to his feet. Like much of Longarm's working gear, the low-heeled boots were a compromise. A lawman spent as much time afoot as he did in the saddle and he could run with surprising speed for a man his size in those too-tight boots.

In boots, pants, and shirt he rose once again to lift the gunbelt from the bedpost above his pillow. He slipped the supple cordovan leather belt around his waist, adjusting it to ride just above his hip. Like most men WhO might be called upon to draw either on foot or mounted with his legs apart, Longarm favored a cross-draw rig, worn high.

It hardly seemed likely that his gun had taken it upon itself to run low on ammunition overnight, but Longarm had attended too many funerals of careless men to take such things for granted. He reached across his buckle for the polished walnut grip and drew, hardly aware of the way his smooth, swift draw threw down lively on the blurred image in the mirror across the room.

He wasn't aiming to shoot himself in the mirror. He wanted to inspect one of the tools of his trade. Longarm's revolver was a double-action Colt Model T.44-40. The barrel was cut to five inches and the front sight had been filed off as useless sc.r.a.p iron that could hang up in the open-toed holster of waxed and heat-hardened leather.

Swinging the gun over the rumpled bed, Longarm emptied the cylinder on the sheets, dry-fired a few times to test the action, and reloaded, holding each cartridge up to the gray window light before thumbing it home. Naturally, he only carried five rounds in the six chambers, allowing the firing pin to ride safely on an empty chamber. More than one old boy had been known to shoot his fool self in the foot jumping down off a bronc with a double-action gun packing one round too many.

Satisfied, Longarm put his sixgun to rest on his left hip and finished getting dressed. He put on a vest that matched his pants.

Those few who knew of his personal habits thought Longarm methodical to the point of fussiness. He considered it common sense to tally up each morning just what he was facing the day with. Before bedding down he'd spread the contents of his pockets across the top of the dresser. He made a mental note of each item as he started stuffing his pockets with a calculated place on his person for each and every one of them.

He counted out the loose change left from the night before, noting he'd spent d.a.m.ned near two whole dollars on dinner and drinks the night before. The depression of the '70s had bottomed out and business was starting to boom again. He was overdue for a raise and prices were getting outrageous. A full-course meal could run a man as much as seventy-five cents these days and some of the fancier saloons were charging as much as a nickel a shot for redeye!

He dropped the change in his pants pocket and picked up his wallet. He had two twenty-dollar silver certificates to last him till payday unless he ran into someone awfully pretty. His silver federal badge was Pinned inside the wallet. Longarm rubbed it once on his woolen vest and folded the wallet. Then he slipped on his brown frock coat and tucked the wallet away in an inside pocket. He wasn't given to flashing his badge or his gun unless he was serious.

He dropped a handful of extra cartridges into the right side pocket of his coat. The matching left pocket took a bundle of waterproof kitchen matches and a pair of handcuffs. The key to the cuffs and his room went in his left pants pocket along with a jackknife.

The last item was the Ingersoll watch on a long, gold watch chain. The other end of the chain was soldered to the bra.s.s b.u.t.t of a double-barrelled .44 derringer. The watch rode in the left breast pocket of the vest. The derringer occupied the matching pocket on the right, with the chain draped across the front of the vest between them.

Longarm tucked a clean linen handkerchief into the breast pocket of his frock coat and took his snuff-brown Stetson from its nail on the wall. He positioned it carefully on his head, dead center and tilted slightly forward, cavalry style. The hat's crown was telescoped in the Colorado rider's fashion, but the way he wore it was a legacy from his youth when he'd run away to ride in the war. Longarm "disremembered" whether he'd ridden for the blue or the gray, for the great civil war lay less than a generation in the past and memories of it were still bitter, even this far west. It didn't pay a man to talk too much about things past, out Colorado way.

Ready to face the morning, Longarm let himself out silently, slipping a short length of wooden matchstick between the door and the jam as he locked up. His landlady was supposed to watch his digs, but the almost invisible sliver would warn him if anyone was waiting for him inside whenever he returned.

Longarm moved through the dark rooming house on silent, booted feet, aware that others might still be sleeping. Outside, he filled his lungs with the clean, but oddly-scented air of Denver, ignoring the slight drizzle that he knew would blow over by noon.

His furnished digs lay in the unfashionable quarter on the wrong side of Cherry Creek, so Longarm crunched along the damp cinder path to the Colfax Avenue Bridge. He noticed as he crossed it that Cherry Creek still ran low and peaceable within its adobe banks. He hadn't thought the unusual summer rain was worth his yellow oilcloth slicker--it figured to last just long enough to lay the dust and maybe do something about that funny smell. Longarm prided himself on his senses and liked to know what he was smelling. He could sniff a Blue Norther fixing to sweep down on the Prairie long before the clouds shifted. He could tell an Indian from a white man in the dark and once he'd smelled lightning in the high country just before it hit the ridge he just vacated. But he'd never figured out whY, in winter, spring, summer, or fall, the town of Denver always smelled like someone was burning autumn leaves over on the next street. He'd seldom seen anyone burning leaves in Denver. Aside from a few planted cotton woods in the more fashionable neighborhoods there were hardly enough trees in the whole d.a.m.n town to matter. Yet there it was, even now, in the soft summer air. That mysterious smell was sort of spooky when a man studied on it.

On the eastern side of Cherry creek the cinder pathways gave way to the new red sandstone sidewalk they were putting down along all the main streets these days. Colfax Avenue had gas illumination, too. The town was getting downright civilized, considering it had been another placer camp in the rush, less than twenty Years before. Longarm came to an open barber shop on a corner and went in for a shave and maybe some stink-prettY.

His superiors had taken to commenting on a deputy who reported to work smelling like Maryland rye, and the bay rum George Masters, the barber, splashed over a paying customer didn't cost extra.

He saw that the barber already had a customer in the chair and sat down to wait his turn. A stack of magazines was piled next to him and, deciding against Frank Lesley's Ill.u.s.trated Weekly, he picked up a copy of Ned Buntline's Wild West magazine. Longarm didn't know what the people who put it out had in mind, but he considered it a humorous publication.

He saw that there was another yarn in this month's issue about poor old Jim Hick.o.c.k. Old Jim had died in Deadwood d.a.m.ned near five years ago, but they still had him teara.s.sing around after folks with a sixgun in each hand. For some reason they kept calling Old Jim "Wild Bill."

There was a comical article about crazy Jane Canary, too. The writers called her "Calamity Jane" and had her down as Jim Hick.o.c.k's lady love. Longarm chuckled aloud and wet his thumb to turn the page. The last time he'd seen Hick.o.c.k alive he'd been a happily married man, and the last gal on earth Jim or any other sane man would mess with was Jane Canary. If anyone really called her "Calamity," it was probably because they knew she'd been tossed out of Madame Moustache's parlor house in Dodge for dosing at least a dozen paying customers with the clap!

Longarm saw that the barber was about finished with the first customer and he put the magazine aside. As the other man rose from the chair, George whipped the barber's cloth aside and Longarm saw that the customer's right hand was on the b.u.t.t of the Walker-Colt riding his right hip.

Longarm crabbed to one side. His own gun appeared in front of him as if by magic, trained on the stranger's bellyb.u.t.ton. Longarm said, "Freeze!" in a soft, no-nonsense tone.

George was already well to one side with a swiftness gained from cutting hair this close to the Larimer Street deadline. The man, half out of the barber's chair, s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand from the b.u.t.t of his holstered revolver as if it had suddenly stung him and his face was chalky as he gasped, "Mister, I don't even know you!"

"I ain't sure as I've seen you before, either, old son. You got a reason for coming up out of that chair grabbing iron, or were you just born foolish?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. I was shifting Captain Walker, here, to ride more comfortable-like!"

"Well, that old hog leg's a heavy gun and what YOU say's almost reasonable, but hardly common sense. if you aim to wander through life with that oversized sixgun dragging alongside, you'd best learn not to make sudden moves toward it around grown men!"

The other, perhaps ten years younger than the deputy, licked his lips and said, "Mister, I have purely lernt it! I swear I never saw a gun-slick draw so fast before! I don't know who you are, but you must surely have one dangerous job!"

"My name is Custis Long and I'm a Deputy U.S. MarshaL which can leave a man thoughtful. Where've I seen you before, friend?"

The youth moved clear of the barber chair, keeping his hands well out to both sides as he smiled and answered, "I doubt as you've seen me at all, Marshal. My handle is Jack Robinson and I just came up from Texas. I'm riding for the Diamond K, just outside Of town, these days. And that sixgun trained on my middle is making me a mite skittish, dang it!"

Longarm nodded thoughtfully. Then he lowered the muzzle to his side as he asked the barber the price of the cheroots in the open cigar box on the marble counter. George said they were a nickel each, so Longarm said, "Have a smoke on me, then, Tex. I'll allow we was both still half asleep, so lets part friendly and forget it, hear?"

The cowhand clumped over to the counter and helped himself to a cheroot, saying, "that's right neighborly of you, Marshal. Am I free to mosey on?"

"Sure. You don't aim to give me a shave, do you?"

They both laughed, and as Longarm took his place in the chair, the younger man left. Longarm stared after him thoughtfully until his booted footfalls faded up the walk outside. The barber brought a hot towel, but Longarm motioned it away and said, "Ain't got much time, George. Just run your blade through this stubble and I'll be on my way. Don't want to report in late again and I ain't had breakfast yet."

The barber nodded and started to swivel the chair around to face the Mirror.

Longarm shook his head and said, "Leave her facing the doorway, George."

"You still edgy about that young cowboy, Mister Long? He looked harmless enough to me."

"Yeah. He said he was from Texas, too. I'll take this shave sitting tall, if it's all the same to you."

The barber shrugged and went to work. He knew the deputy wasn't a man for small talk in the morning, so he lathered Longarm silently, wondering what he'd missed in the exchange just now.

The barber was still stropping his razor when the open doorway suddenly darkened. The youth who'd apparently left for good was back, with the Walker-Colt gripped in both hands and his red face twisted with hate.

Longarm fired three times as he rose, pumping lead through the barber's cloth from the short muzzle of the.44 he'd been holding in his lap, as the barber dove for cover. When George Masters raised his head, Longarm was standing in the doorway, the cloth still hanging from his neck and the smoking .44 in his big right fist as he stared morosely down at the figure sprawled on the wet sandstone paving in the soft summer rain. Masters joined the lawman to stare down in wonder at the death-glazed eyes of the stranger who'd left his Walker Colt inside on the tiles as he fell. Masters gasped, "How did YOu know, Mister Long?"

Longarm shrugged and said, "Didn't, for certain. He's changed a mite since I arrested him down in the Indian Nation four or five summers back. He shouldn't have said he was from Texas. It came to me who he was as he was walking away. He was wearing high plains spurs. That's how he come back so quiet. Most Texans favor spurs that jingle when they walk. His hat was wrong for Texas, too."

"My G.o.d, then you was waiting for him all the time?"

"Nope. just careful. Like I said, it was a good five years back and I could have been wrong. A man in my line arrests a lot of folks in five years."

Their discussion was broken off by the arrival of a uniformed roundsman of the Denver police department. He elbowed through the crowd Of People by now gathering around the body on the walk and sighed, "I hope somebody here has an explanation for all this."

Longarm identified himself and explained what had happened, adding, "here's what's left of one Robert Jackson. He'd changed his name ba.s.s-akwards to Jack Robinson but he hadn't learned much since I beat him to the draw a few years back. He'd gunned a Seminole down in the Indian Nation and was supposed to be doing twenty years at hard labor in Leavenworth. I don't know what he was doing in Denver, but, as you see, he don't figure to cause n.o.body much bother."

"You're going to have to come down to the station house and help us make out a report, Deputy Long. I hope you don't take it personal. I'm just doing my job."

"I know. I got a job to do myself, so let's get cracking. The boss is going to cloud up and rain all over me if I come in late again this morning."

The sky had cleared by the time Longarm left the police station and resumed his walk up Colfax Avenue. Up on Capitol Hill the gilded dome of the Colorado State House glinted in the rain-washed sunlight, but the civic center, like the rest of Denver's business district, nestled in the hollow between Capitol Hill to the east and the Front Range of the Rockies, fifteen miles to the west.

Longarm came to the U.S. Mint at Cherokee and Colfax and swung around the corner to walk to the federal courthouse. He saw he was late as he elbowed his way through the halls filled with officious-looking dudes waving legal briefs and smelling of maca.s.sar hair oil. He climbed a marble staircase and made his way to a big oak door whose gold leaf lettering read, UNITED STATES MARSHAL, FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF COLORADO.

Longarm went inside, where he found a new face seated at a roll-top desk, pounding at the keys of a newfangled engine they called a typewriter. Longarm nodded down at the pink-faced young man and said, "You play that thing pretty good. Is the chief in the back?"

"Marshal Vail is in his office, sir. Whom shall I say is calling?"

"h.e.l.l, he knows who I am. I only asked was he in."

Longarm moved over to an inner doorway, ignoring the clerk as he bleated, "You can't go in unannounced, sir!"

Longarm opened the door without knocking and went in. He found his superior, Marshal Vail, seated behind a pile of papers on a flat-topped mahogany desk.

Vail looked up with a hara.s.sed expression and growled, "You're late. Be with you in a minute. They've got me buried under a blizzard that just blowed in from Washington!"

Longarm sat on the arm of a morocco leather chair across the desk from his superior and chewed his unlit cheroot to wait him out. It seemed that all he ever did these days was wait. A banjo clock on the oak-paneled wall ticked away at his life while Longarm counted the stars in the flag pinned flat on the wall over Vail's balding head. Longarm knew there were thirty-eight states in the Union these days, but his eyes like to keep busy and the marshal wasn't much to look at.

In his day, Marshal Billy Vail had shot it out with Comanche, Owlhoots, and, to hear him tell it, half of Mexico. Right now he was running to lard and getting that baby-pink political look Longarm a.s.sociated with the Courthouse Gang. There was something to be said for working in the field, after all. Vail wasn't more than ten or fifteen years older than Longarm. It was sobering for Longarm to think that he might start looking like that by the turn of the century if he wasn't careful about his personal habits.

Vail found the papers he was looking for and frowned up at Longarm, saying, "You've missed the morning train to Cheyenne, G.o.d d.a.m.n your eyes! What's your tall tale this time, or did you think this office opened at noon?"

"You know a feller called Bob Jackson supposed to be doing time in Leavenworth?"

"Oh, you heard about his escape, eh? He's been reported as far west as here and I've got Cottin and Bryan looking for him on the street."

"You can tell 'em to quit looking. He's bedded down peaceable in the Denver morgue. I shot him on the way to work."

"You what? What happened? Where did you spot him?"

"I reckon it's fair to say he spotted me. He must have taken it personal when I arrested him that time, but I can't say his brains or gun hand had improved worth mentioning. The Denver P.D.'s doing the paper work for us. What's this about a train to Cheyenne?"

"Slow down. You're going to have to make a full report before you leave town on the escaped prisoner you just Caught up with."

"All right, I'll jaw with that jasper you have playing the typewriter out front before I leave. Who are we after in Wyoming Territory?"

Vail sighed and said, "I'm sending you to a place called Crooked Lance. Ever hear of it?"

"Cow town, a day's ride north of the U.P. stop at Bitter Creek? I've seen it on the map. I worked out of Bitter Creek during the Shoshone uprising a few years back, remember?"

"That's the place. Crooked Lance is an unincorporated township on federally owned range in West Wyoming Territory. They're holding a man with a Federal want on him. His name's Cotton Younger. Here's his arrest record."

Longarm took the sheet of yellow foolscap and scanned it, musing aloud, "Ornery p.i.s.sant, ain't he? Says here Queen Victoria has a claim on him for raping and gunning a Red River breed. What are we after him for, the postal clerk he gunned in Nebraska or this thing about deserting the Seventh Cav during Terry's Rosebud Campaign against the Dakotas?"

"Both. More important, Cotton Younger is reputed to be related to Cole Younger, of the James-Younger Gang. Cole Younger's salted away for life after the gang made a mess of that bank holdup in Minnesota a couple of years back. Frank and Jesse James are still at large, and wanted for everything but leprosy."

Longarm hesitated before he nodded and said, "I can see why you'd like to have a talk with this Cotton Younger, Chief, but does picking up and transporting a prisoner rate a deputy with my seniority?"

"I didn't think so, either, at first. You know Deputy Kincaid, used to work out of the Missouri office?"

"Know him to say howdy. He working this case with me?"

"Not exactly. Like you said, it seemed a simple enough ch.o.r.e for a new hand. So I sent Kincaid up there two weeks ago."

"What happened?"

"That's what I want you to find out. I can't get through to Crooked Lance by wire. Western Union says the line is down in the mountains and both Kincaid and his prisoner are long overdue."

Longarm consulted his watch and said, "I can catch the afternoon Burlington to Cheyenne, transfer to the transcontinental U.P. and maybe pick up a mount before I get off at Bitter Creek. Who do I report to in Crooked Lance?"

"Wyoming Territory was sort of vague about that. Like I said, the settlement's in unincorporated territory. Apparently a local vigilance committee caught Cotton Younger riding through with a running iron in his saddle bags and ran him in as a cow thief. They were holding him in some sort of improvised jail when they asked the territorial government for a hanging permit. Wyoming wired us, and from there on you know as much as I do."

"vigilantes picked him up, you say? He's lucky he's still breathing regular. I don't care all that much for vigilantes. Not many left, these days."

"I gathered the folks in Crooked Lance are leery of lynch law, too. I'd say their so-called committee is just an ad hoc bunch of local cowmen. The town itself is a handful of shacks around a post office and general store. I don't know how in the h.e.l.l Kincaid could have got lost up there."

Longarm got to his feet and said, "Only one way to find out. If the wire's up when I get there I'll let you know what happened. If it ain't, I won't. Figure on me being back in about a week. I'll need some expense vouchers and a railroad pa.s.s, too."

"My secretary will take care of that before you leave. Would you like to take a couple of extra hands with you?"

"I work as well alone, Chief. No sense getting spooked till we find out what happened. Kincaid and his prisoner might well be on their way this very minute and I'd play the fool teara.s.sing in at the head of a posse for no good reason."

"You handle it as you've a mind to, but for G.o.d's sake, be careful. I don't aim to lose two deputies to... to whatever!"