Longarm #399 : Longarm and the Grand Canyon Murders (9781101554401) (17 page)

Old Red almost jumped right out of his skin when Gertie fired off her porch at the fleeing Longarm. The roan gelding reared back, busting his reins, and went galloping away, showing amazing speed. Longarm felt several shotgun pellets swarm around him, but Gertie was big and slow and he was lean and fast, and he had enough wits about him not to run in a straight line for the nearby river.

Boom!

A second blast resounded up and down the towering canyon walls as Longarm shoved a rowboat into the water and then dove into it as the current began to slowly spin the wooden craft downriver.

Frantic and knowing the crazy woman was coming, Longarm grabbed oars and saw big, fat Gertie lumber to the water’s edge and pry an empty shell out of the shotgun and insert a fresh round. Longarm ducked low in the boat as it seemed to take forever to gain momentum.

Boom!

He was almost out of the shotgun’s range now, but several pieces of lead cut through the boat’s side, sending splinters flying. Gertie was screaming, but her voice was growing fainter as the boat finally began to accelerate with the swift, roiling current. The fat woman was
running as fast as she could along the beach while trying to reload. Longarm grabbed the oars and pulled with all his might as he willed the current to take him completely out of her deadly shotgun’s range.

If the situation had not been so desperate, Longarm would have howled with laughter watching the fat, ugly Gertie trying to reload and run at the same time. But the hard truth was that Gertie was closing in and would have probably blown both Longarm and his boat to smithereens except that she tripped over a tree root and crashed face-first onto the muddy beach.

“Ha!” Longarm shouted. “Gawdamn you, Gertie! I’ll come back and see you hanged with a stout chain, you fat, ugly pig!”

Gertie looked up, her mud-plastered face actually an improvement. She spat mud and jumped up, grabbing the shotgun and trying to get it un-fouled of the mud. But by then Longarm was pulling on the oars and heading for white-water rapids.

“Oh shit,” he cried as the shot-riddled rowboat began to take on water and bounce like a cork on a storm-tossed ocean. “Oh, shit!”

The rowboat
was
sinking. The rapids were roaring in his ears and white water was boiling all around him. Longarm was a strong swimmer, but this situation demanded something beyond any mere human’s physical capacity.

The rowboat struck a boulder jutting out of the water and its hull splintered. Water squirted along the crack into the boat, and Longarm desperately pulled for the opposite shore as the boat began to spin in lazy, dying circles.

He tore off his coat and boots, knowing they would only drag him down. Longarm went back to the oars, but
now it was like trying to move an elephant stuck in quicksand.

He saw another boulder directly up ahead and pulled on the oars with all his might, trying to avoid another collision. The roar of the mighty Colorado filled his ears, and he could barely see for the spray in his face.

Ride this sinking son of a bitch as long as it’s afloat, and when it goes under, grab wood and swim for your life, Custis!

That was all he could think of to do now, but given the power that got ahold of him it seemed most likely that he was going to wind up like all the others…just more fish food.

The boat struck the boulder and tried to lift up over the top of it, but that’s when the hull broke completely in half. For one terrifying moment, Longarm was airborne. He looked down at the raging river and hoped that he would not fall to be impaled on some sharply pointed rock or piece of hung-up driftwood.

He tumbled back into the water. Its current was so powerful it pulled him deeper, so that his body kept striking submerged rocks.

Longarm fought wildly to reach the surface, although he was not entirely sure which direction that might be. The water was so muddy that he was a blind man clawing at unseen things, smashing into unseen objects and trying to retain his consciousness even as his lungs were screeching for oxygen.

At last! At last his head burst into air and he swung his long arms around until he felt a large piece of the rowboat’s hull. Longarm’s fingers clamped onto the wood and he hung on tightly as the river bore him over the rapids. His legs were being hammered unmercifully
against barely submerged rocks. He couldn’t see, sometimes went under for a moment, but then managed to get his head above water again and grab the wooden wreckage.

At last he was through the rapids, and although the river was still hammering his body, the roar lessened somewhat and he could see himself being carried around a sharp bend. The cliffs had already closed in on him, and directly overhead was a bright blue wedge of sky.

Longarm drew a forearm across his face and looked for a beach or cove where he might be able to survive. He saw several places where small side canyons came down to the Colorado from both the north and south rims, but the current was still so fast he wasn’t able to reach them.

And then…then he saw the big side canyon and a beach with willows and cottonwood trees about a half mile ahead on the south shore. Longarm also heard the already much too familiar sound of roaring water up ahead and knew that he was in for another stretch of rapids, possibly even worse than the ones he’d barely survived.

This is your chance! This is your only chance! Leave this wreckage and swim for your life!

That was what his brain was telling him, and although it was a hard choice to let go of his pitiful flotation, Longarm did so and started swimming with all of his will and might. He kept his head down and swam like any man would swim when his survival depended on it.

And finally, his cupped and churning hands struck the gravel of the shoreline and he dragged his body up on the sand and mud, feeling the warmth of the sun. The Colorado and its submerged rocks had torn most of his clothing away. No coat, shirt, or vest remained on his scratched and bleeding torso. His boots were missing
and so was one leg of his trousers. His gunbelt was still strapped around his waist, but he’d had to leave his Colt on the floor of the store and saloon.

He had a pocketknife…a good, sharp one. And when he pushed himself up on his hands and knees and crawled farther up onto the shore, he realized that his legs had not been broken, nor were any of his joints dislocated.

Amazing!

And then Longarm saw something even more amazing. A campfire ring of stones. And charred animal bones and even…even the rinds of squash!

He shook his soaked head and staggered to his bare feet. Once there had been people here…and not so long ago, because the ashes in the ring of stones had not been washed away by summer rains, and the rinds were not so shriveled by the hot sun as to become brown rings.

Longarm cupped his hands to his mouth and in a voice he barely recognized shouted, “Hello! Hello! Anyone still here!”

His cry echoed hollowly against the soaring stone walls and fled down the river, dissolving into nothingness like smoke.

He was alone…maybe.

Longarm found a rock and sat down to rest and assess his situation. The mouth of the canyon fed a small stream of pure, clean water to the big muddy river. He had something clean to drink. And maybe he could climb out of the canyon onto the south rim and find help. But what could he eat?

“I’ll figure it out as I go,” he said to himself as his head tipped back and he stared up the brush-choked canyon, his eyes measuring the height of its sandstone walls. “I’ll make it!”

Longarm stood and cast a final glance back at the Colorado River. He hoped never to see it again, and then he turned and started walking. There was a game trail and maybe a human trail leading south and up the canyon.

“I can make it,” he told himself. “I’ll get out of here alive or die trying.”

A hundred yards up the trail and right beside the stream he saw a body, and that brought Longarm running. He ran even harder when the body moved just slightly.

When he reached the body, he knelt and without really thinking about it, he said, “You have to be Mrs. Mavis Quinn.”

The woman was very thin and weak. Her lips were cracked and her face was burned by wind and sun, but she was conscious, and when she gripped his hand, she whispered, “I knew someone would come to find me. Who are you?”

“United States Marshal Custis Long, at your service.”

Her hand gripped his wrist tightly. “Do you have any food?”

“No,” he had to admit. “But I’ll find some for us.”

“I ate every bit of the Indians’ squash…a long time ago it seems. The squash wasn’t ripe and I got sick. I stoned a pink rattlesnake and tried to eat its raw flesh. Do you see it?”

Now Longarm noticed the dead snake, and it really was pink. “Doesn’t look too appetizing, but it probably tasted better than my last meal.”

It was a joke that fell flat.

“I’m starving, Marshal. My husband was murdered and…”

He placed a hand gently over her lips. “I know all about that. Just rest easy and I’ll find something to eat.”

“Please find something better than that awful rattlesnake.”

“I’ll do my best, Mrs. Quinn. I promise that I’ll do my best.”

She blinked. “What…what happened to you! Your clothes are almost all gone and you’re covered with blood and bruises.”

“I’ll tell you later,” he said.

“I’d like that,” she said, closing her eyes.

Longarm took her pulse and it was weak. Her wrist was so thin that he could wrap his thumb and forefinger around it and they touched. But the miracle was that Mavis Quinn had escaped the terrible Rowe family with her life, jumped in a rowboat, and landed on this same beach that he’d spotted as being his best, perhaps his only, chance of survival. And then she’d kept herself alive with this creek water, green Indian squash, and God only knew what else until now.

Longarm leaned close and whispered, “You’re a real trooper, Mavis, and we’re going to get through this alive…you and me.”

“I’m sure we will,” she whispered. “Now, please find me something decent to eat.”

Longarm smiled and stood to his full height. He had a knife and his wits and his strength…or at least most of it…left. And now he was going to find food for them to eat and figure a way out of this deadly side canyon in the middle of Nowhere, Arizona.

When the young Mormon who manned the big raft at Lees Ferry heard the distant shots, he was sitting on a rock thinking about how he might like to become a United States marshal someday and go to Denver. Oh sure, the elders of his church would discourage such a thing and even forbid it, but Jacob Young still liked to think how exciting the job would be in comparison to operating this big raft at the crossing. Heck, it would even be far more fun than becoming a farmer, for that matter.

The shots startled him. They weren’t just pistol or rifle shots; a few of them were definitely from a shotgun.

And then he remembered that that awful, ugly fat woman named Gertie kept a shotgun hidden behind the plank that she called a bar top.

Jacob Young stood up and began to pace up and down the beach. He knew all about the judge and his wife going missing and about those three river guides that had gotten their throats slit. And he was pretty sure that the fat woman and her two brothers were behind the killing,
which is why he had been warned to stay away from that place unless there was an emergency and he was accompanied by armed members of his church.

But something told Jacob Young that there was no time to hike up the canyon and see if he could get help. And then, when the old roan horse that the lawman had been riding came trotting down the riverside to stop beside Jacob, he was dead certain that there was a real crisis up at the saloon, store, and boat rental. And he was pretty sure that the marshal would never willingly allow his horse and saddle to run away unless he was in terrible trouble.

Jacob squared his shoulders, grabbed his hunting rifle, and swung up in the saddle.

“Giddyup!” he said, reining the big-headed roan back down the riverside.

It didn’t take him more than fifteen minutes to come into sight of the saloon and store. And a moment after that he saw Wade and Orvis lying dead on the porch with the fat woman named Gertie standing howling with grief and clenching that shotgun.

Jacob tugged on his reins, and the roan went from a trot to a walk. The horse was sweating and so was Jacob as he warily eyed the scene.

When Gertie saw Jacob approaching, she cursed something, and then, by gawd, she raised her shotgun, screamed something terrible at Jacob Young, and pulled the trigger.

What happened next was almost too terrible to behold. The shotgun’s barrel must have been packed with mud because it blew up in Gertie’s face! Just exploded, and there was Gertie with half her face gone, falling dead as a post!

Jacob Young damned near pissed in his pants. He was shaking as he dismounted and walked over to the quivery mass that was Gertie. She moaned, jerked around for a few seconds, and then was gone.

“Oh dear God in heaven,” Jacob whispered, shaking his head back and forth. “What am I goin’ to do now!”

He went inside the store, and it stunk so bad he backed out. But at least the marshal’s body wasn’t lying in there. Had these awful people managed to kill the federal marshal then dump his body in the river?

Didn’t seem too likely that Gertie alone could have dragged a man as big and heavy as the United States marshal down to the river and sunk his body with stones. And there hadn’t been much time between now and the first firing of the shotgun.

Nope.

Jacob Young scratched his head and tried but failed to look at the bodies. What an ungodly mess! What had happened!

Then he started looking at tracks, and he followed a pair right on down to the river. The front of the tracks were cupped, and Jacob was pretty sure that meant that the man who’d left them had been running for his life.

“He got into the river,” Jacob muttered. “He must have made it to the river!”

Jacob stood and gazed at the boiling current, and then he saw that a boat had been pulled off the beach. Its bow had left a mark anyone could see.