Longarm #398 : Longarm and the Range War (9781101553701) (16 page)

“We don't . . . that is, I wouldn't think . . .”

“Thanks for tellin' me all this shit, Dibble. Now if you will excuse me . . .” Longarm turned and headed for the back of the courthouse to see how the cleaning crew—if any—was coming along with getting the blood and brains removed.

The sheriff's office was empty. And clean. Someone had come in and cleared away all the blood and gore left by the murders. They'd even sprinkled something around—vinegar? possibly—to take away the stink of the congealed blood. If there was anything Longarm hated to smell it was blood.

Nothing had been done yet about the door. It would probably have to be replaced so a proper lock could be installed. For the time being then, he thought, it would be best to leave the firearms and any sensitive papers locked in the cell in back. Not that he knew what papers might be sensitive. Nor for that matter did he have any idea what papers, if any, John Tyler might have left here. And he had no inclination to spend the day inside here going over paperwork. He really felt like he could put a stop to the problems between the Basques and the Mexicans, but not if he was sitting in here behind a desk.

Cheroots. Shit, he was past running low. The lone soldier he pulled out of his pocket was his last cigar. With a sigh, he nipped the twist off the end and spat it out, then rolled the cheroot around in his mouth a few times to moisten it.

He found a kitchen match in his side pocket—he was running low on those too—and struck it, then allowed the sulfur to burn off before applying the flame to tobacco and lighted his smoke. “Damn, but that tastes fine,” he mumbled to himself.

Probably, he thought, he should walk over to Sam Johnson's mercantile and see what the man carried in the way of cigars.

It would be too much to hope for that the store would carry his particular brand of cheroot, but when it came to his smokes Longarm was not all that particular. Pretty much any decent—emphasis on “decent”—cigar would do, although he really did prefer a good-quality cheroot to the ordinary blunts and panatelas. But hell, he would even smoke a cheap and dirty molasses crook if he had to.

Sighing again, Longarm stood and stretched for a moment, felt of his waist to make sure his Colt was in the precise place where he liked it, then left the sheriff's office.

He did his best to prop the broken door closed behind him, although there was less likelihood that rats and other vermin would be attracted to the place now that there was no blood inside for them to feed on.

Johnson's store was only a short distance around to the other side of the courthouse, across the street and down a little way.

Longarm encountered half a dozen folks on their way about town. Most of them nodded pleasantly enough. A pair of women—he thought he recognized one of them as having comforted Nell Tyler in her time of pain—changed direction so they could confront him.

At first he assumed they were going to ream him out about something. That was common enough with “proper” ladies in his past experience. Instead they were all smiles.

“We can't thank you enough, Marshal,” one of them chirped.

“Ma'am?” He blinked, barely stopping himself from taking a step back in anticipation of their anger about one thing or another. He snatched his Stetson off and held it to his belly, more or less hiding the big revolver on his belt.

The nearer, and prettier, of the two smiled broadly. “For closing those horrid saloons. Why, you have almost succeeded in making Dwyer a dry community. I hope now you will speak with Mr. Johnson about the liquor he sells out of his back door.”

“I, uh, I didn't know Mr. Johnson does that.”

“Oh, yes. Mr. Johnson is a heathen.”

“Really, ma'am?”

“Indeed, yes. On Sunday mornings our town council has ordered there be no sales of hard spirits until noon. The saloons, bad as they are, have always cooperated with that law. Mr. Johnson, though, sells raw spirits despite the ordinance. Everyone knows that.”

Longarm smiled. “An' now I know it too. Thank you, ladies, for pointin' it out to me.”

Not that he had any intention of actually doing anything about it. But it was good to keep the town's womenfolk as happy as he could. And he had not actually made any promises. Just thanked them for the information.

He made a little bow in their direction—that one really wasn't such a bad-looking dame—and went on his way. He was smiling as he did so.

He stepped inside Johnson's store and looked around, but there was no one behind the counter. He did spot a box of reasonably good cheroots beneath the counter's glass top. He was tempted to help himself and leave the payment for what he took, but a dip into his pockets showed that he was completely out of small change. He had not a single coin in his kick. He did have some folding money, but he was damned if he was going to pay a dollar for a two-for-a-nickel cheroot.

Instead he went behind the counter and cracked open the door that led into the storeroom, expecting to find Johnson back there.

He heard someone talking. In Spanish. It definitely was not Sam Johnson's voice.

Scowling, Longarm pushed the door the rest of the way open, worried that one of the disgruntled Mexicans was robbing Johnson. Or worse.

What he found was worse. But not in the way he'd expected.

What he found was Samuel Johnson alive and well and busily making sales out of a pair of crates that contained brand-new Marlin lever-action rifles. A line of Mexican goatherds waited patiently for Johnson to exchange their gold for his rifles.

Even with that first glimpse, Longarm could see that each goatherd had a pair of gold double eagles in hand. And one fellow held a wad of crumpled paper money.

Two double eagles. Forty dollars. For a twenty-seven-dollar rifle.

In addition to the Marlins, Johnson was selling .45-60 cartridges out of cases of them stacked against the wall.

So this was the freight those boys had been in such a rush to deliver. He'd had his suspicions but now they were confirmed.

Samuel Johnson was arming the Mexicans for a high-powered shooting war.

And the man was making one hell of a profit doing it.

This, Longarm figured, was exactly what people meant when they said “war profiteer.”

Almost as bad as what Johnson was egging on here was that there was not a single damned thing that was illegal about it. If men's lives were put at risk in a shooting war between the Basques and the Mexicans, there was no part of it that could come back on Sam Johnson.

If Johnson could find a way to double his profits by putting others at risk, that was entirely legal. All he was doing, he would argue, was selling legal goods to legal buyers, never mind the obscene profits he was pulling in from those transactions.

The Mexicans looked startled as all hell when Longarm walked in on them. They looked like they felt guilty about what they were doing.

Longarm approached Johnson and his open crates of rifles.

A goatherd who was struggling under the weight of a full crate of .45-60 cartridges gave Longarm a nervous look, set his cartridges down on the floor, and scampered out of the storeroom by way of a back door into an alley.

This, then, was where all the Mexicans had disappeared to when they vacated the street near the courthouse.

Others nervously eyed the tall marshal, then they too turned tail and left, most of them without their brand-new Marlins.

“You have no right to be here,” Johnson said indignantly.

Longarm nodded. “You're right. I don't. But I'll tell you what I do have the right to do, Sam. I have the right to tell every swingin' dick in the town o' Dwyer an' the county of McConnell what you been doing here. Did you arm the Basques too, Sam? Or just the Meskins?”

“That is none of your damned business.”

“Oh, I dunno. I'll have to look into it. Maybe I can charge you with inciting to riot or some shit like that. Between me and my people down in Denver, I'm sure we can poke around and find some charge that will put you behind bars, Sam. Might not be a real long sentence. Ten years or so would be my guess.” He smiled. “You can handle that, can't you? Now, if you'll excuse me, I got t' go make a whole lot o' announcements around town. The barbershop, the café, the saloons when I get them open again.” He chuckled. “Just think what the good people o' Dwyer are gonna think about their neighbor Sam.”

Longarm turned to leave then stopped and turned back again. “And those murders, Sam. I'm gonna look real hard and see can I find some way to connect you with those, for I suspect now that you're the lad as killed John Tyler and Julio Altameira. Think about it. Tyler wouldn't have opened that door to anybody from either the Basque or the Mexican camps. But he'd have opened up to let his good neighbor in. Wouldn't he, Sam?”

“You can't prove shit, lawman,” Johnson snarled.

“Damn, Sam. Your happy-face mask is slipping. You're showing your real self now.” Longarm wagged a finger in the storekeeper's direction. “You'd best be careful about that if you wanta keep doing business in this town.”

Johnson looked like he was ready to explode.

Longarm headed for the door into the store.

He heard the metallic click-clack of a cartridge being jacked into the chamber of a rifle.

Longarm threw himself sideways.

Behind him there was the contained explosion from one of those .45-60 cartridges. The storeroom was filled with noise and billowing white gunsmoke. Splinters flew from the door frame, and Johnson's slug went singing out into the mercantile.

Longarm dropped to a knee trying to get beneath the smoke.

He saw Johnson's legs and triggered a .45 slug into the man's left knee.

Johnson screamed, and racked the lever on the Marlin he had snatched up and fired again. The storekeeper dropped to the floor, his left leg no longer able to hold him upright.

Longarm did not know what Johnson had been shooting at, but the bullet did not come near enough for him to hear its passage.

He did, however, know where his own next shot would be going.

He took time to aim, then fired square into Sam Johnson's chest.

The storekeeper became suddenly pale. He coughed once then sagged down face-first onto the floor.

Longarm considered putting a third round into the circle of pale, bald flesh that was so nicely outlined on the top of Johnson's head. After all, it presented a perfect target.

He decided against that as being unnecessary. If Johnson was not already dead, he damned soon would be.

Longarm stood, careful to keep a crate between his knees and Johnson's body, just in case the man was still alive and could see underneath the cloud of drifting gunsmoke that filled the room.

When the smoke dissipated and he could see again, Longarm approached Johnson's lifeless body. Only then did he reload his Colt and return it to the leather.

Longarm grunted. It seemed that Bert was doing a land office embalming business lately. Now he had one more body to bury.

Longarm walked out into the store and recoiled, his hand streaking to the grips of his Colt once more.

“Easy, Marshal,” Eli Cruikshank said. “I heard the shooting. Thought I might be able to help.”

“You can help, Eli, but not with your guns. You can go tell your Basques that the war is over with. There ain't gonna be no shooting war in McConnell County.”

Cruikshank grinned. “That's apt to put me out of a job, you know.”

“There's always gonna be work for a man o' your talents,” Longarm said.

“It would have been interesting, though, to find out if I could have taken you,” Cruikshank said.

“Care to try me now?”

Eli shook his head and smiled. “No, I think not. Perhaps someday, if we find ourselves on opposite sides of something. But not now. Not without being paid for it.”

“That makes me feel just ever so much better, Eli,” Longarm said with an answering smile. He had every confidence that he could have taken Cruikshank had it come to that.

And very likely Eli felt exactly the same.

Hopefully they would never find out who was right.

Longarm touched the brim of his hat, and Eli stepped respectfully aside when Custis went out to find Bert and tell him that he had another customer in the late Samuel Johnson's back room.

 

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the 399
^th
novel in the exciting LONGARM series from Jove