LONGARM AND THE APACHE PLUNDER.

By Tabor Evans.

DON'T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING.

GROUP.

THE GUNSMITH by J.R. Roberts

Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him ... the Gunsmith.

LONGARM by Tabor Evans

The popular long-running series about U.S. Deputy Marshal Long--his life, his loves, his fight for justice.

LONE STAR by Wesley Ellis

The blazing adventures of Jessica Starbuck and the martial arts master, Ki.

Over eight million copies in print.

SLOc.u.m by Jake Logan

Today's longest-running action western. John Sloc.u.m rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.

Chapter 1.

A man had to study on his drinking money when he didn't have a job. But while the Parthenon Saloon, near the place he used to work, asked an extra nickel for a needled beer, it also offered the best free lunch in town. So the former Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long was down at that end of the bar, nursing a needled beer while eating pickled pigs' feet and potato salad, when his recent boss, Marshal Billy Vail, caught up with him.

The older and shorter Vail bellied up to the bar, snapped a German-silver badge upon the polished mahogany between them, and demanded in an injured tone, "What in blue blazes did I do or say, old son?"

Longarm, as he was better known away from the federal building he'd just stormed out of, coldly replied, "At the risk of sounding like your fool echo, you told me you wanted me to sneak down the other side of the Colorado-New Mexico line and ride herd on a heap of storm clouds hoverin over La Mesa de los Viejos, which is ominously close to Jicarilla country."

Billy Vail nodded his balding bullet head. "I thought I said something to that effect just before you threw your badge in my face and lit out like a schoolmarm seven unwashed sheepherders were out to screw."

Longarm washed down some potato salad with a carefully measured swallow of expensive beer and replied, "The government signed with the Jicarilla in ink after making them move twice before, speaking of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g."

Vail seemed sincerely puzzled. "What in thunder do those Mountain Apache have to do with the ch.o.r.e I was a.s.signing you when you went loco en la cabeza on me?"

Longarm sounded really disgusted as he replied. "The Jicarilla have kept the peace since '73. They have more in common with their Navaho cousins than they have with Victorio's mixed band of bronco Mescalero and Chiricahua. Yet the Great White Father, in his infinite wisdom, wants me scouting the hornet's nest he just heaved a rock through. I swear, the War Department must have dozens of congressmen's kids who just made second lieutenant and want that pretty red-and-blue campaign ribbon, even though so many Quill Indians have sued for peace. I suppose you hadn't read about the BIA fixing to move the Jicarilla down to Tularosa Canyon, eh?"

Vail shrugged. "Sure I read about it. I read everything. The powers that be feel the army will have a better handle on the really treacherous Mescalero Apache if they move 'em over to study war no more with their Chiricahua allies at San Carlos, under tighter rein from Fort Apache just next door."

When he saw he was getting no argument from Longarm about that, he continued with a bemused frown. "Moving the Mescalero out of Tularosa Canyon leaves an established BIA agency with n.o.body to agent for. So I reckon that's why they're fixing to move the far smaller Jicarilla nation south from that marginal mountain reserve and teach them real farming in-"

"Bulls.h.i.t!" Longarm said, scowling like h.e.l.l. "It's a pure and simple land grab! The Jicarilla gave us a h.e.l.l of a fight, surrendered under honorable terms, and were ceded barely more than a hundred square miles of mountain scenery n.o.body else had any use for at the time. But well-watered and half-timbered high country is still a far cry from the desert scrub the Mescalero keep running away from because there's no way even Na-dene could get by on hunting and food-gathering alone. That's what the folks we call Treacherous Apache call themselves, Na-dene."

Vail snorted, "Don't tell your granny how to suck eggs, or offer an ex-Texas Ranger lectures on Mister Lo, The Poor Indian. You won't get no argument from this child if you want to pine the U.S. Army has enough on its plate with Victorio and his bunch this summer. But you're wrong if you think I'd fib about Indians to any deputy who's been riding for me six or eight years. I don't know who told you the Mesa de los Viejos is within thirty miles of the Jicarilla agency at Dulce by crow, but-"

"Now who's teaching whose granny to suck eggs?" Longarm said with a thin smile. "It ain't as if New Mexico Territory is stuck to the back of the moon. How many times have we been asked to help the new territorial government clean up after the Santa Fe Ring left over from poor old Grant and his political bandits?"

Vail sighed. "'Political bandit' is a redundancy. I told you I read a heap. They call it a redundancy when you use two words to low-rate the same thing. Calling a politician a bandit is as needless as calling a woman of the town a wh.o.r.e, or an Apache an ornery Quill Indian. Man will cure the clap and fly to the moon before he ever gets the banditry out of politics. But speaking of bandits, I was trying to tell you about such s.h.i.t down around La Mesa de los Viejos when you got all excited about your pet Apache."

"La Mesa de los Viejos ain't no thirty miles from that Jicarilla reserve!" Longarm stated. "I keep telling you I know that country. The hunting grounds those Indians signed for in good faith straddle the Continental Divide down yonder. So Stinking Lake, a whole lot closer than Dulce Springs, lies inside the reservation line just a lope west from where you keep saying you want me scouting somebody else."

He bit a boiled egg in half, washed that part down, and insisted, "There ain't n.o.body else but Indians, dead or alive, up the canyons of that big slab of bedrock. They call it La Mesa de los Viejos because Viejos means 'Old Ones' in Spanish and the early Mexican rancheros were the first to notice all the cliff dwellings full of old dead Indians. Then they backed off to let the Old Ones be. Mexicans ain't as superst.i.tious about dead bodies as Na-dene. n.o.body could be. But anyone with a lick of sense could see they had no business settling canyonlands too mean for cliff-dwelling Indians to dwell in. Some Pueblo I know laugh at our professors who say the ancient cliff dwellers were from ancient Egypt or mayhaps Atlantis before they went extinct. The Zuni, Hopi, and such say their own ancestors started out in canyon strongholds before they just got numerous enough to move out on more sensible cornlands and hold bigger pueblos against all corners."

Vail nodded down at the deputy's badge that still lay on the bar between them. "I asked you not to lecture me about Mister Lo. If I gave a tinker's dam about abandoned cliff dwellings, I still wouldn't fathom how all this Indian bulls.h.i.t has a thing to do with the situation Governor Wallace of New Mexico Territory asked us to look into for him.

He asked for you by name, by the way. Seems you handed in the most impartial report on that Lincoln County war they were having a spell back."

Longarm tried some more pickled pigs' feet as old Ginger, the barmaid, shot them both a dirty look in pa.s.sing. He told Vail, "You'd better order at least a schooner of draft, lest that sa.s.sy redhead reports us for taking unfair advantage of this free lunch."

Vail growled, "There's no such thing as a free lunch, and you've had your tantrum for the day, d.a.m.n it. Those Mexicans you just mentioned have been growing their own corn and grazing stock along the Rio Chama, betwixt the Jicarilla you're so worried about and that mesa New Mexico is even more worried about. The established settlers in those parts report heaps of sinister strangers camped up many an old dry canyon, loaded for bear and reluctant as h.e.l.l to tell anyone what they're doing there. Couple of locals have wound up drygulched, by a person or persons unknown. The closest thing they have to a full-time sheriff in such thinly populated country has declined the honor of riding anywhere near that mysterious mesa in search of answers. How do you like it so far? Like I said, they asked for you by name."

That redhead was hovering too close for Longarm to grab another egg without asking her to refill his empty schooner. So he nodded at her and held up two fingers as he told Billy Vail, "I can hazard a mighty educated guess without having to go all the way down to New Mexico. A land rush always attracts hired guns. There's one heap of timber and Lord knows what mineral rights to be fought over once the Jicarilla are moved south willing or otherwise."

"There ain't going to be any Indian fighting," said Vail in a dead-certain tone. As the barmaid slid two fresh beers across the mahogany at them Vail explained. "I told you I read. Things cross my desk you never see in the Rocky Mountain News. So I can a.s.sure you that me and Interior Secretary Schurz agree with you and General Sherman that the army can win all the medals it needs chasing Victorio and his glorified horse thieves to the south. The government's hoping your Jicarilla pals will move down to the Tularosa Agency without any serious fuss. The BIA is sending extra allotments and some Apache-talking agents to negotiate."

Longarm reached for another egg to go with his fresh beer as he said, "n.o.body talks any lingo called Apache. Not their Pueblo pals who first called 'em Apachu, meaning 'Enemies' in another lingo, nor the mixed bag of Na-dene speakers. They don't see why we divide 'em and dub 'em Navaho, Mescalero, Chiricahua, and such, by the way. They call themselves names such as Na-dene, N'de, Dene, Tinde, Inde, and Lord knows what-all."

Billy Vail said something mighty dirty.

Longarm blandly continued. "The BIA might or might not be able to move the ones we call Jicarilla off that prime mountain real estate without a fight. Those not-so-mysterious strangers will doubtless get out of those dry canyons to the east and into the greener pastures of that big old reserve as soon as it seems halfway safe to plunder it. So why not wait and simply ask 'em who they are and where they came from, once they start filing homestead or mining claims? You got to tell the government things like that as soon as you file either."

The older man reached for his own beer as he wistfully replied, "I used to come up with easy answers before Sam Houston and me got nowhere trying to keep the Rangers on the winning side and I married up with a member of the unfair s.e.x. If you and the ostrich bird would take your fool heads out of that Apache reserve and listen up, both that Indian land and the surrounding territory of New Mexico are the beeswax of the federal government, which don't want to wait for drygulching gunslicks to volunteer full confessions. Like I said, they asked for you by name.

So can I wire Santa Fe you're on your way or not?"

Longarm told him to hold the thought as he headed back along the bar.

Billy Vail had noticed the head barkeep sending that sa.s.sy little redhead into the back rooms with that tray, of course. Ginger was the sort of gal even a married man kept an eye on. But she was nowhere to be seen at the moment, and if Longarm meant to take a leak he didn't have to be so downright rude!

Then Vail saw Ginger coming back out with her empty tray, and sure enough, that tall, tanned drink of water was saying something that made her blush and cork him on one sleeve with her free little fist.

Then Ginger moved back behind the bar and Longarm ambled back to rejoin Vail, asking, "Are you sure you and General Sherman ain't out to tangle me up in Indian trouble just to wrangle a sneaky report on the poor Jicarilla out of me?"

Vail sniffed primly and declared, "I work for the Justice Department, not the War Department, and as far as me and Santa Fe can say, the only Indians up those spooky old canyons have been dead for quite a spell."

Longarm picked up his beer schooner to drain it as Vail asked again, "How about it? Are you riding for us or not?"

Longarm sighed, put down the empty schooner, and picked up his old silver badge to polish it some against the front of his tobacco-colored tweed vest. "Reckon I am. Lord knows I sure can use the money this weekend."

Vail smiled. "Bueno. I'll have Henry get right to work on your travel orders."

But Longarm quietly suggested, "Don't hurry old Henry just on my account, Boss. If I thought I'd be fixing to leave before Monday or Tuesday, I doubt I'd be needing that much money."

Chapter 2.

It sure beat all how a gal could get off work on a Sat.u.r.day as pretty as a picture and wind up so puffy-eyed and shrew-tongued on a cold gray Monday morning. But Longarm took her downstairs for a decent breakfast in the Tremont House dining room, and tried to be a sport as she counted the ways he'd used and abused her, all the while stuffing her face with pork sausage and waffles. A few cups of coffee later the little redhead had forgiven him and wanted to know if they'd be coming back to this same hotel when she got off work that evening. So he lost back all the ground he'd gained, and had to listen to some mighty unladylike remarks when he confessed that though it burned like fire, he had a train to catch.