Longarm #396 : Longarm and the Castle of the Damned (9781101545249) (4 page)

There was no sign of the city police, so Longarm hustled down the staircase to the lobby and stepped out onto the porch, the derringer forgotten in his hand.

Moses Arthur lay there, sprawled in a pool of his own blood, a tray and two heavy chinaware coffee cups lying on the porch boards nearby. A man who was kneeling by his head looked up at the gun in Longarm's hand and said, “I know who you are, Marshal, but you aren't needed here now. This man is dead.”

Longarm scowled. He shoved the little .41-caliber derringer back into his vest pocket and asked, “Did anyone here see what happened?”

One of the spectators stepped forward. “I did, sir.”

Longarm grunted. “Tell me about it, please,” he said.

“It was one man. He was following the drunk. They come across the street from down toward the café. He kinda hurried to get close, too close to miss his shot. Then he just pulled iron and put three into the old man's back. Deliberate, he was. Then he turned and walked away. Didn't even run. He walked down to the next block, got on a brown horse, and rode away just as pretty as you please.”

“What did the man look like?” Longarm asked.

The fellow shrugged. “Just . . . you know . . . a man. Wore a gray hat. Side whiskers. I noticed that about him. Black coat and striped britches like about half the drovers that come through here. Wore his pistol down on the side of his leg, not like you carry yours. He looked, I dunno, maybe thirty years old. Maybe less.”

“Have you see him in town before? Like maybe at the trial?”

The fellow shook his head. “No, sir. I sat through a good two days of that trial and I didn't see him in there.”

“I did.” Someone else spoke up.

“At the trial?” Longarm asked.

“No, sir. I seen him drinking at Jack Hanby's pub a couple nights this week. Might could be Jack knows him.”

“Thanks. I'll ask,” Longarm said. “Anybody else? Can anyone else add anything to what these gents said?”

But no one could. The Cheyenne police arrived and shooed the onlookers on their way.

Longarm went back upstairs to get his coat and, more importantly, his Colt, as soon as he finished cleaning and loading it. Then he went to city hall to give his statement to the police.

But what the
hell
had Moses Arthur wanted to tell him?

“No, sir, I don't reckon I remember any such of a person,” the barman at Hanby's Saloon said in response to Longarm's questions. “But then we get a lot of strangers passing through, this being the territorial capital and everything. Folks come in, stay a day or maybe a week while they get their business done, and then they're gone. We never see them again and don't pay any particular mind to the fact that they were here.”

“I understand,” Longarm told the man, “but it's important that I find this one.”

The bartender shrugged. “I'd sure as hell help you if I could, Marshal. If someone says they saw the fellow drinking in here, then I'd say they likely did, but that don't mean that I remember him, for I don't.”

“What about an old man named Moses Arthur?” Longarm asked.

“Oh, hell, everybody in Cheyenne knows old Mose.”

“This fellow I'm asking about might've had words with Mr. Arthur sometime in the past few days,” Longarm persisted.

“Now, I tell you true,” the bartender said. “If somebody got into a fuss with Mose, I'd remember that for damn sure. Mose comes in here pretty much every night, panhandling the customers and such. We all tolerate the old fellow. He has a good heart, Mose does. No, I promise you I'd remember it plain if somebody gave Mose a hard time. The old man isn't good for much, but we all kinda like him, if you know what I mean.”

Longarm grunted. “Did like him, you mean.”

“Pardon?”

“Moses is dead. This fellow I'm asking about gunned him down this afternoon, three shots in his back from pointblank range.”

The bartender whistled. “In the back? The son of a bitch! And you say Mose is dead now?”

“I'm afraid so,” Longarm told him.

The barman turned and shouted, “Boys, them of you that hasn't heard, old Mose Arthur was killed today. I want you all to know that I'm setting a mug on the bar here. I expect everybody to ante up something to help pay for the old fellow's burying.”

There were a fair number of patrons in the saloon at that evening hour. Nearly all of them crowded close so they could drop some money into the beer mug that the bartender set out for the purpose.

“Does anybody know if Moses had family in the area?” Longarm called out while the gents were in a charitable humor.

A skinny man who looked to be almost as old as Moses Arthur stepped forward. “I heard Mose talk about a daughter,” the fellow said.

“From around here?” Longarm asked.

The man shook his head. “No, not here. Over . . . I think he said something about her living in Medicine Bow or . . .” He shook his head again. “Someplace like that. I disremember exactly where he said.”

“Does anybody know any reason why anyone would have it in for Mr. Arthur?” Longarm called out loud and clear.

No one did. But a well-dressed gentleman hung back when the crowd dispersed from around the burial mug. He approached Longarm and in a low voice said, “I don't know why all you people are getting so concerned about an old fart like Arthur. He wasn't a rung above being the town drunk, you know.”

Longarm gave the man a long, cold stare. “What I
know
,” he said, emphasizing the word, “is that Moses Arthur was attempting to convey information to a representative of the United States government. That old man was a witness who wanted to give testimony about something, an' that makes his death into the federal crime of tampering with a witness, an' if I have anything to say about it, that son of a bitch will be brought to justice for that an' for his other crimes as well.”

The bar patron recoiled as if Longarm had slapped him. “I . . . I . . . Yes, sir,” he stammered.

Longarm laid a nickel down for a beer he hadn't taken time to drink then turned on his heel and stalked out of Hanby's. There were a good many other saloons along the row in Cheyenne, and he wanted to hit them all to see if he could learn anything more about the old man who'd been shot in the back before he could have that promised word with Longarm.

Longarm woke to a pounding headache and a vile taste in his mouth. He climbed out of bed feeling like he was a hundred years old and forced his eyes open. His eyelids felt like some son of a bitch must have crept in during the night and glued his eyes shut.

The floor was cold and gritty underfoot. He shivered, went over to the window, and closed it.

He fumbled inside his carpetbag until he found the bottle of rye whiskey he always carried with him. The hotel provided a drinking glass for its patrons. Longarm unfolded a paper of Mother Benedict's Headache Powder and dumped the contents into the glass, added an inch or so of the rye, and stirred it with his finger. He felt a little better after downing the slightly chalky mixture, although whether the improvement was due to the medicinal powder or to the whiskey he was not certain.

He poured a splash of water into the basin and rinsed his face with it, then dried with the rag the hotel provided by way of a towel. At least the cloth was clean; he had to give credit for that. He had stayed in places where sheets and towels were changed once a week or so.

On the other hand he had stayed in places where there simply were not any decent places. This was a hell of a lot better than that.

More or less revived, Longarm concluded that he did not feel like shaving himself this morning. The light was too poor and his hand . . . it would be better to go get a barbershop shave lest he slice his cheek wide open.

He ran a wet hand over his hair to slick it back—might as well get a haircut if he was going to be in the barber's chair anyway—and finished dressing.

A look at his watch suggested that he already missed the breakfast seating downstairs, so he would have to take care of that somewhere along the commercial strip too.

Longarm stepped out into the hall and pulled his door closed. There was no point in locking it, as it used a common skeleton key and could be picked by any kid with a hat pin.

He paused to look himself over in the hall mirror, then straightened his string tie and tipped his hat to a rakish angle. The combination of medicine and whiskey was beginning to make him feel much better.

The weather outside made him feel better yet. Practically chipper, in fact. The sky overhead was a deep, unblemished blue and the air was briskly refreshing, not chilled exactly but close to that. He breathed deep . . . and coughed until he thought his guts would come out. Deep breathing was not necessarily a good idea after a night of whiskey and cigars.

He tried again, not taking the air in quite so deeply this time, and grunted with mild dissatisfaction. The Cheyenne air smelled of coal smoke and clinkers because of the railroad, and of horse manure because of, well, the horse manure that lay drying in the streets.

But hell, a man cannot have everything. He was alive this morning, and that should be enough for the start of a new day. That thought reminded him that Moses Arthur was not among the living on this pleasant morning.

The old man died because of . . . what?

Longarm unconsciously hunched his shoulders and grimaced even as he made his way through the door of a restaurant a block and a half from the hotel.

By habit he chose a seat that placed his back to a wall. The menu was scrawled on a chalkboard hanging above the counter. When the waiter came, Longarm ignored the menu choices and ordered beefsteak and potatoes, both fried in tallow, and a slab of apple pie.

“Anything to drink?” the waiter asked.

“Coffee,” Longarm told him, “hot as Hades and black as a whore's heart.”

“Yes, sir, coming right up.” The waiter turned away without bothering to write anything down. When he had gone, a seedy-looking fellow approached Longarm's table and sat down without invitation.

Longarm eyed the man with a hard stare. “I don't recall askin' you to set with me.”

The man looked nervously over his shoulder then said, “I . . . I . . . I heard you talking. Last night. In Rupert's place.”

Longarm had visited so damn many saloons the night before—and partaken of their whiskey—that he could not remember one called Rupert's. “All right. So?”

“So I . . . Maybe I know something about Mose.”

Longarm's interest suddenly picked up. He leaned forward in his chair. “Go on.”

“I . . . Listen, Marshal, I'm hungry. Could you stand me to a cup of coffee and something to eat?”

Longarm motioned for the waiter. “Give this man whatever he . . . Hell, just bring him the same as you're fixin' for me.”

“Yes, sir.” The waiter bobbed his head and withdrew.

Longarm lowered his voice and said, “All right, friend. Now, tell me what you know.”

Longarm followed the directions the old fellow had given him. A shack, he said. On the outskirts of town, out along the railroad tracks.

“You can't miss it,” he had said, and in this case the man had been absolutely right about that. But not for the reasons he thought.

Moses Arthur's rickety shack was clearly visible because of the beacon of smoke that pointed the way to it. By the time Longarm got there, it was completely engulfed in flame.

A handful of men, all of whom looked like railroad workers, were carrying buckets of water from a nearby pump, but they had long since given up making any attempt to save Moses's place. Instead they were wetting down the walls and roofs of two nearby shacks where someone else was squatting.

The Cheyenne Municipal Fire Department showed up shortly after Longarm did, a dozen men hauling a water wagon with a rocker pump mounted on it. They deployed without too much confusion and were soon directing a stream of water onto what was left of Moses's place.

“Anybody know what happened here?” Longarm asked a soot-stained fellow wearing coveralls and a floppy railroader's cap.

“Far as I know, John over there was the first to see the fire. Hey, John. C'mere. This man wants to know what happened.”

John looked to be barely out of his teens. He was dressed very much like the first fellow and was equally covered in soot and ash. “Yes?”

Longarm introduced himself and asked his question again.

John shrugged and said, “When I seen it, the front door was busted in an' smoke was coming out the back an' leaking out of the roof too.”

“Could it have been a stove fire, do you think?” Longarm asked.

“Mose, he didn't have no stove in there. What little he cooked, just a potato now an' then or an ear of corn, he cooked in a fire pit around back. He found an old grate somewhere an' he cooked on that, never mind the time o' year or the weather. Mostly he didn't eat anything anyhow. He had a bad stomach. I guess that's why he was so scrawnylike. Well, that and the liquor. I think rotgut is mostly what he lived on.”

“Did he smoke?” Longarm asked.

“He chewed a little, but he didn't smoke that I know of. Not that I know him all that well, mind you. It's just that I live over there,” he pointed to a somewhat nicer shack closer to the town limits of Cheyenne, “so he passed by my place pretty regular. Sometimes we'd pass the time of day. You know how that is.”

“Yes, I do,” Longarm said. “You say the door to his place was busted when you first saw the fire?”