Longarm and the Deadwood Shoot-out (9781101619209) (13 page)

While he was waiting for the whiskey to be reloaded he downed the rest of his beer.

“Something to help my nerves,” he said. “It always worries me when I pass that spot.”

“That spot,” Longarm repeated. “D’you mean you were held up at the same spot both times?”

“Yes, sir. Within a couple hundred feet of the same place anyway,” Sensabaugh said.

“I wonder,” Longarm mused, “if the Fremont coaches were robbed at the same place each time they were hit.” He turned to Noogie and asked, “How many times were they robbed?”

“Fremont? Four times. I don’t know if all four took place at the same spot or if they were robbed where the Bastrop runs were, but I know how we can find out. Clo here was the Bastrop driver. John Halley was driving for Fremont two of those times that I can recall. Who else was on top for Fremont when they were robbed, Clo?”

The man motioned for his beer mug to be refilled. Apparently he had all the whiskey his nerves needed so he would switch to just the beer now. While Jimmy was drawing another beer, and Sensabaugh was digging in his pocket for another coin, Sensabaugh said, “One time that would be Stanley Applegate. The other time, um, let me think. That was the first holdup. The driver would have been John Dyal. But he’s gone now. Said it got too
cold up here. He headed back down Arizona way. Or so he said. It might could have been the sight of those twin shotgun barrels. I have nightmares about them, too, so I wouldn’t blame the man if that was why he drew his time and moved on.”

“Are either Halley or Applegate in town now?” Longarm asked.

“I’m pretty sure Halley is,” Noogie said.

“Let’s go find out. If he is, I’d like to hire a buggy and all of us drive out along the road to the places where you fellows were held up. It’s too late to do that today, but we could start out first thing tomorrow morning.”

“What good would that do, Marshal?” Sensabaugh asked.

“I’m not sure it would do any good, Clo, but it’s worth a try just on the off chance that we could learn something. Besides,” he said with a wink, “if the robbers are in town here an’ see what we’re doing, it might make them nervous. An’ nervous criminals are apt t’ fuck up. Can we do that, Noogie?”

“I’m game. You know that.”

“Clo?”

“I’m with you, Marshal. There isn’t a man anywhere that wants these sons of bitches caught any worse than I do.”

Longarm nodded. “Seven o’clock tomorrow morning then? At the livery. We’ll hire a rig and go see what we can see.”

“Done,” Noogie said.

“It’s good with me. Tomorrow is my layover day anyhow.” Sensabaugh laughed. “There’s nothing I’d rather do on my off day than crawl into an outfit and take a drive.”

Longarm laid a coin on the bar and said to Jimmy, “Give my friend here another shot and a beer. Noogie,
you said something about us having a night on the town so I tell you what, I’ll go back to the hotel an’ wash up a bit. Then I think it’s my turn to buy us a supper. I’ll meet you at your office and we can go make an evening of it. An’ Clovis, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, sir. I’m happy to cooperate any way that I can. I think Halley will be, too.”

“If he doesn’t want to help,” Noogie said, “Fremont will make him want to. They want these robberies to stop.”

“I’ll stop by the Fremont office an’ tell them what we want,” Longarm said. He nodded to Sensabaugh and Noogie and left No. 10 and its bloody memories of Hickok.

Longarm took Noogie to a good-quality café for their supper. The place was neither as fancy nor as expensive as the restaurant where they had eaten the night before, but the food was good and the price was right. When they finished their meal Longarm retrieved his Stetson from the rack beside the front door and said, “All right. Where’s this casino you were talking about earlier?”

“It’s close enough we can walk to it,” DiNunzio said.

“Lead the way then. I’ll be right beside you,” Longarm told the town marshal.

Anne Carter and Terry Bullea’s saloon, the Golden Pick, was not as large as Longarm had expected, but it was handsomely furnished in scarlet and gold, almost like a whorehouse.

The tables were busy offering roulette, faro, a wheel of fortune, and seven tables of either draw or stud poker. Each of the poker tables, Longarm noticed, had a house dealer who did nothing but shuffle the cards and deal them out.

Noogie saw Longarm looking at the poker tables. He nudged his friend with an elbow and said, “The way those operate, the players each ante up a quarter. That money belongs to the house, but it’s the house’s only interest in the game. Annie don’t take a cut from the winnings like most places do. And I can tell you, these games are stone-cold honest. There’s no bottom dealing or anything like that. The house has no interest in who wins or how much. They take that ante and nothing else.”

“Different,” Longarm mused, reaching for a cheroot. Almost before he could get the twist bitten off and the cigar properly seated between his teeth there was a girl there offering a lighted match.

He puffed his cheroot alight and nodded his thanks to the girl, who was wearing a short skirt and a tight top, both red trimmed in gold.

The girls—there were at least eight of them working the floor—were all dressed in that uniform. They were attractive but nothing like the beauties at Terry Bullea’s whorehouse.

“That one over there,” Noogie said, pointing, “her name is Edith. She gives great head but she’s a so-so fuck. If you want a wild ride, take Lily. She’s the one standing near the piano there. She doesn’t have the face but there’s nothing wrong with her body. And Lordy, can she ever use it. She’ll practically twist a man’s dick off, she works those hips so fast. Lily is really something, I tell you. You’ll be giving yourself a treat if you try her.”

“I thought we came here to gamble,” Longarm said.

Noogie grinned at him and winked. “Yeah, we can do some of that, too, if you like.”

“Good, ’cause I’m heading for that table over there,” Longarm told him.

“Listen, if you’re not going to take Lily…”

Longarm clapped him on the shoulder and said, “No, not tonight. You go ahead. Have fun.”

Noogie practically raised a dust he took off so fast headed toward Lily. Longarm, for his part, ambled over to a poker table where there was room for a fifth player across the table from a redheaded female dealer.

Longarm liked the arrangement at the Golden Pick. The house got its piece of the play but had no incentive to cheat since the dealer was not a participant and none of the players belonged to the house.

Longarm reached into his britches for some pocket change and contributed his ante.

The dealer nodded a welcome, shuffled, and offered Longarm the deck to cut before she began to very expertly distribute the pasteboards to each of the players in turn.

The same girl who had lighted his cheroot appeared at his side again. “Would you like a glass of rye, Marshal?”

“I would, thank you.” It occurred to him that it was just a damned good thing he was not trying to hide his identity. It seemed like everyone in Deadwood already knew who he was, even knew what he liked to drink.

His drink arrived almost immediately. The rye was the same superior product that he had been served at Theresa’s place. Longarm sat back, took a second taste, and picked up his cards.

Now this, Longarm thought, was a pleasant way to pass an evening.

The following morning Noogie DiNunzio came into the café where Longarm was finishing his breakfast. He slid onto the stool beside Longarm’s and waved to the cook, miming taking a drink of coffee, then turned to Longarm and said, “How’d you do last night?”

“Tolerable,” Longarm told him. “I only lost two dollars and a half, but the liquor was good and the company pleasant enough. Where’d you disappear to for the whole evening?”

Noogie grinned at him. “You know damn good and well where I went.”

“Lily?”

“Uh-huh.” He shook his head, smiling. “I tell you, that girl is a wild one for sure.”

“I guess we both of us had our fun then,” Longarm said.

“I got a borrowed phaeton out front,” Noogie said. “Clo and John Halley will meet you in front of the Fremont office. I told them seven o’clock sharp.” He checked
his watch. “It’s not quite six thirty now so you have plenty of time to finish your breakfast.”

“Me? As in singular? As in just the one o’ us?” Longarm asked. “What are you gonna be doing? I thought you said you wanted t’ go along.”

“I do want to, but it turns out that I can’t. Last night Annie told me they’ll be taking a box of cash money over to the bank to deposit. She has her own guards, of course, but I always go with them. It’s part of my job, Longarm. I hope you understand.”

“I understand a man’s duty, Noogie. These robberies took place outside your jurisdiction anyway, and a man has t’ tend to business. I’ll pick up Clovis an’ Halley and we’ll go see if we can learn anything. There’s no real need for you t’ be there.”

“Thanks, hoss.” Noogie stood, leaving his coffee untasted, touched the brim of his hat in salute and left.

Longarm went back to his pork chop and eggs.

“Right up there,” Clo Sensabaugh said, pointing to a sandy wash about thirty yards ahead of the phaeton.

“Say, that’s the same place I was robbed,” John Halley put in. “I remember I just drove down into that wash. Next thing I knew they stepped out from that brush on the right.”

“Same thing when I was robbed,” Sensabaugh said. “I never saw ’em coming. Then they was right in front of my team, pointing those bloody awful double barrels right at my face.”

“Exactly,” Halley said.

Longarm brought the pair of handsome sorrels to a halt and set the brake.

“I tossed the strongbox down on that side there, and the one in front of me stepped aside and waved me on.
Later the strongbox was found. It had been broke open and the contents taken.”

“Where was it found?” Longarm asked. “Was it there in the road where you dropped it?”

Halley shook his head. “Not mine.”

“Mine, neither,” Sensabaugh said. “It was dragged into the brush and left there.”

“Were there horse tracks that you could tell had anything to do with the robbers?” Longarm asked.

Both men shook their heads. “Two things,” John Halley said. “Firstly is the loose sand in the wash there. It doesn’t take prints that you can tell anything from, just depressions in the sand if there is anything at all. The other is that this is the only road through Lead and into Deadwood. There’s horse and mule and ox outfits coming through here all the time leaving all manner of prints wherever there’s ground that will take them. You wouldn’t be able to get a thing in the way of hoofprints here.”

“That’s true,” Sensabaugh put in. “I know. I looked around myself the next time I was through. Couldn’t see a damn thing.”

Longarm grunted and pulled the phaeton off the road. He stepped down and walked the ground. He did not know what he was looking for exactly. He just knew that he wanted to look, wanted to try to get some idea of what these robbers were like and how they operated.

They had chosen a good spot for the robberies. The coaches would have been slowed by the deep sand in the wash. There was thick brush on one side of the road. On the other side, a hundred yards or so distant, there was a sheer bluff. Just on the other side of the wash the road curved around a stand of very old cottonwoods that blocked the line of sight from that direction. A coach coming in from the west would not be able to see what was ahead.

Longarm turned to the stagecoach drivers and asked, “Do you know if any outbound coaches have been robbed or any gold shipments?”

Both men shook their heads. “There would be no sense in robbing an outbound,” Sensabaugh said.

“They ship ore,” Halley explained, “not processed gold. That ore hasn’t been refined yet so it would take a heap of the stuff to be worth anything at all. Most of it around here assays…what, Clo…thirty dollars to the ton or thereabouts?”

“Something like that, I think,” Sensabaugh added. “For sure it wouldn’t be worth robbing.”

“And passengers leaving the district might or might not have anything in their pockets.”

“But those payrolls, now that is something else.”

Longarm grunted. He pondered for a moment. Then he nodded and returned to the phaeton.

He never heard the gunshot until after the bullet sizzled past practically beneath his nose.

Longarm threw himself backward off the driving seat of the phaeton and into the passenger box. By the time he bounced off the front seat and onto the floor he had his Colt in hand.

Not that he expected the short gun to be of much use. The lapse of time between when he heard the bullet’s passage and when he finally heard the report of the rifle—it almost had to be a rifle, he realized—was proof enough that the shooter was some distance away.

Worse, he could not tell which direction the shot came from. The sound of the gunshot could have reached him from the top of the bluff to his left. Or just as easily the rifle could have been fired from the more open country to his right and the sound bounced off the bluff. Either way it sounded like it was fired from his left, and there was no way he could know for certain.

Yet.

He peered over the side of the phaeton just as the rifleman fired again. This time he saw the faint puff of white
smoke that even so-called smokeless powder gives off. It came from the top of the bluff. The shooter was not at the very closest point to the road, instead was firing from close to two hundred yards away.

This time instead of hearing the bullet pass close to him he heard the moist, meaty thump of a bullet striking flesh and one of the sorrels screamed as it went down in the traces.

The son of a bitch was nailing the phaeton in place.

Long enough to make a leisurely getaway? Probably, Longarm guessed.

Perhaps the son of a bitch thought he had killed Longarm. Perhaps he thought Longarm’s dive for concealment was reaction to a mortal wound.

Furious, Longarm cocked his double-action .45, took very careful aim at the spot where he saw the puff of smoke making allowance for the distance and squeezed off five shots, reloaded, and fired another six.