Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds (34 page)

As they approached the entrance to her own alley Viggy hesitated and murmured, "I might have felt better leading you and that rifle to my back door after dark, dear. It's not that I'm ashamed of anything exactly, but it's still awfully light out, and..."

"I know about small-town gossip," he said, not wanting to upset her by telling her a widow was talking about them clean across town. But he never argued when she shyly suggested he let her go on ahead and then come on down that alley alone after it got a mite darker.

He said he'd hold up a cottonwood with his back and smoke a couple of cheroots while she went on ahead to turn down the covers.

She glanced about, then stood on her toes to kiss him some more before she turned and scampered off in the gathering dusk like a kid out for mischief on Halloween.

Longarm chuckled as he turned his back to that cottonwood, cradled his Winchester over one arm, and reached for a smoke. But he'd barely lit it, and taken no more than a half dozen drags on it, when the soft gloaming light lit up with a hellish glare and the earth underfoot was shaken by a horrendous blast that just had to be dynamite, a heap of dynamite, going off too close to keep Longarm from wailing, "Aw, shit, don't let it be that, Lord!"

But it was. Shattered wood had been set ablaze down the alley, and he could see the empty smoke-hazed gap where Viggy's carriage house had stood long before he got that far. So he didn't join the crowd of confounded neighborfolk gathering like flies around a cow pat as he spun and tore the other way, with the Winchester '73 at port arms. He levered a round of.44-40 in its chamber as he heard that eastbound train's huffing and puffing off to the west. He beat it into the New Ulm depot with time to spare, though, and was only half surprised to find the so-called Deputy O'Brian alone on the open platform.

O'Brian didn't act surprised to see him. He said, "Howdy, pard. I figured the bastard who set off that bomb would head for here to catch that train too."

Longarm said, "Well, sure you did. How did you know someone just rigged a mess of dynamite to go off when a lady I was escorting home tried to open her damned door?"

O'Brian tried, "I heard the explosion, of course. Just like you, I figured Laughing Larry Lucas had blown some damned something up and that he'd naturally have his getaway planned in advance."

"You're under arrest for the murder of Miss Vigdis Magnusson, a gal who never done no harm, you son of a bitch!" Longarm swung the muzzle of his Winchester to cover the impostor, adding, "Go for that side-draw, please, if you think I'm fooling. Otherwise you'd best give me some answers pronto. Who sent for you and how come?"

Laughing Larry lived up to his nickname by laughing like a fool hyena and demanding, "What if I tell you to just guess?"

Longarm said, "I reckon you'll get gut-shot trying to escape. You don't seem to grasp this situation, you comical cuss. I am mad as hell and I'd rather kill you personally, gruesomely, than let you die quick and painless on the gallows or even talk your way back into another nut house. But I'll still take you in alive if you'd like to say who else I want to arrest for what you just done!"

Laughing Larry looked really loco as the headlight beam of that train pulling into the station etched his grinning features in harsh yellow light and shadows black as sin. But Longarm was still trying to reason with the half-crazed killer when Laughing Larry suddenly spun on one boot heel like an awkward ballet dancer and bolted for the far side of the tracks just as the locomotive's big barn-red cowcatcher was about to plow between them.

Longarm fired, of course, and hit the fugitive felon low in the right hip, to send his holstered six-gun flying as he spun again to land spread-eagled on his back, both boot heels hooked over the far rail as the big locomotive hissed to a stop to block Longarm's view.

So he was tearing around the front end of the train as he heard a voice from the engineer's cabin wailing, "Lord have mercy! I think I just ran over a passenger!"

He was right, Longarm saw, as he moved down the far side of the big steel drivers through clouds of hissing steam. For he found the killer he'd just shot stretched out on the ballast, spurting blood from both severed stumps while he laughed like hell.

Longarm lay his Winchester aside on the ballast and whipped off the dark bandanna he'd been wearing in place of a sissy tie as he told Laughing Larry to lie still. He was knotting the now-bloody calico as tight as he could around the killer's right shin when the amused or more likely hysterical cuss laughed some more and asked if Longarm wanted to race him down to the far end.

Longarm reached for the killer's own shoestring tie as he told him not unkindly, "I feel your foot-racing days are done. But we may be able to stop the bleeding, and weren't you fixing to tell me who else I have to thank for all this tomfoolery?"

Laughing Larry just giggled, lay back, and closed his eyes. Longarm still knotted the tie around his left shin, even though it wasn't bleeding that hard now.

Sheriff Tegner and two deputies came around the front end of the locomotive with lanterns. As they joined Longarm and Laughing Larry, the older lawman said, "Thanks for standing by as I recovered from them caraway seeds. Somebody just blew Vigdis Magnusson to bits all by herself, despite the old biddy across the alley, and how come I see Deputy O'Brian laying there so still? Is he dead?"

Longarm nodded soberly and said, "I reckon. He wasn't the real Sean O'Brian from our Saint Paul office. He was the one and original hired killer he'd come all this way to warn us about!"

Sheriff Tegner swung the beam of his lantern over the blank face of the figure at their feet, marveling, "That's Laughing Larry Lucas? How come? Why would he go to all that trouble warning you he was in town if, all the time, he meant to blow you up the way he did Miss Vigdis and all them other victims?"

Longarm said, "He wasn't out to tell me. He was out to tell you. Would you have tried to stop a friendly fellow lawman from reporting my murder federal after you'd already said yourself you suspected they were worried about me at the bank a fellow victim worked at?"

Sheriff Tegner allowed he might not have.

Longarm continued. "He'd have come to New Ulm aboard that earlier westbound today. He'd have had plenty of time to scout around and pick up some gossip about the man they'd hired him to kill before he ever paid that false courtesy call on you. When I got in like a big-ass bird with his saddle gun already out, Laughing Larry grabbed the chance to throw me off guard whilst casting suspicion on Banker Plover, see?"

Sheriff Tegner grumbled, "Not really. Them same gossips said that blonde you were sparking had been sparked by her boss in the past. So who's to say he might not have sent away for a tougher cuss because he was jealous but afraid to take you on man to man?"

Longarm shook his head and said, "The hired killer. I was wondering about cigar smoke and how such a sweet little thing wound up in position to outrank and supervise two full-grown bank tellers. But had Plover been that serious about his part-time play-pretty..."

"How do you know they were only playing part of the time?" asked the county deputy Longarm knew best.

Longarm was aware of others drifting in for a closer look now, so he kept his voice down as he replied. "I happen to know she had heaps of playtime of her own. This dead dynamite expert knew it as well. He slipped over to her known place of residence to set up his infernal device with me as the intended target. But there was a chance the other gent you just mentioned could have come calling and been as unpleasantly surprised. So how often does a hired killer either lay suspicion on a true client or blow him all to hell with dynamite?"

The sheriff said that made sense. But his senior deputy pointed out that Laughing Larry had been a homicidal lunatic.

Longarm shrugged and said, "Anything's possible, once you toss out all the remotely sensible reasons to kill folks. It's possible anyone here in Brown County could have sent for a hired killer just to see whether I died with my eyes shut or open. But if it's all the same with you, I'll start with more logical suspects."

Sheriff Tegner blinked and asked, "You mean you got some good as Banker Plover?"

To which Longarm could only reply, in a weary tone, "How would you like me to list 'em, alphabetical or numerical?"

CHAPTER 25

It was just after midnight when Longarm finally made it back up the river to that raft and told Mato Takoza not to flap those raggedy buzzard wings and moan at him like that.

The spunky little breed acted mighty happy to see him, once she knew who'd come calling at that hour. But she'd have likely acted as happy whether she'd meant it or not. So Longarm held a few things back until she was making him happy inside the shanty, bare-ass with her on top. Then he told her he had some other happy surprises for her, and rolled her on her back to open her wide and probe her deep as he told her he'd been scouting her old Bee Witch, as he'd promised her he would.

Long-donging anyone that pretty would have been easy in any case, but she'd been extracting honey all afternoon and smelled like she had, even after an afternoon swim in the chalky river water. She took all the organ-grinding inspired by all those Wasichu gals through a long chaste day as a personal compliment. So when she threw both her arms and legs around him to crush him tight against her tawny tits, he kissed the side of her neck and murmured, "I like you too. Now I have some questions to ask, and before you answer, I want to give you a couple of tokens of good faith."

She demurely asked what he wanted to know, and assured him she would never lie to him, never.

He murmured, "Don't see why not. We lie to you folks all the time."

As she stiffened under him he quickly said soothingly, "Always for your own good, just as your kind tells us things we'd like to hear instead of things that might upset us. Meantime, what's a little lying betwixt friends, and I hope you understand how awkward it would be for me to testify in any court of law against a sweetheart I just shot my wad in."

She started to cry with her legs up around his waist, and it sure felt interesting inside her. So he began to move in her just a mite as he said, "I'm fixing to tell you everything I know about your Santee plot and its likely outcome first."

She said she didn't know what he was talking about, gripping him tighter with her strong brown thighs. But he didn't move any faster as he insisted, "Sure you do. The Chambruns and those other breed homesteaders have only been leaving a little out. Nothing any of you have done is go-to-prison illegal. If it was, a land and railroad speculator I know would have been in jail a long time ago."

She pleaded, "Faster. Do it to me faster, Wasichu Wastey!"

He kept teasing them both with long, measured thrusts as he calmly said, "Someone in your Indian land-development syndicate figured out who the Bee Witch really was and what she was really up to. They sent you to beg her for a job, pretending to be a poor little orphan with no connections with those other Santee moving in up and down the banks she was surveying for her railroad."

She sobbed, "Hear me, I am an orphan! I have nobody. Nobody. Not even a man of my own kind to keep me company on this lonely raft!"

It was starting to feel too good again to talk. But as Longarm started pumping faster she demanded, "Have you ever met any other men out here with me, red or white?"

He kissed her, came, and moaned. "We'll get to that part in just a minute. First I'm telling you right out that the old railroad survey gal got back East all right with all her money and a bonus for a job well done. I got two wires in a row this evening from a railroad dick who'd know about such matters. Neither me nor Whispering Smith have any idea where she got rid of that pony."

Mato Takoza groaned she was coming too now. So Longarm pounded her over the pass to Paradise, and let her get some breath back before he said, "I got a later wire from a Wasichu who delights in scalping other Wasichus, so listen tight."

When he was certain she was, he told her, "A robber baron who pulls such tricks all the time must have thought I was about to invest in a railroad stock manipulation. That's what they call crooking widows, orphans, and wise-ass Indians, railroad stock manipulations."

She proved how dumb and innocent she really was by demanding more details. "Why would anyone survey a railroad right of way if they didn't mean to build a railroad?"

He kissed her some more and replied, "To sucker folks into buying railroad stock, of course. The one and original Jay Gould assures me the whole thing's pie in the sky. They have railroad trestles enough down to New Ulm and up by Franklin. Nobody needs a third line between. So they ain't really fixing to build one."

She wailed, "Oh, hinhey! Now you Wasichu have really done it to us! Even when we play by your own rules you screw us, screw us, screw us!"

Longarm said, "Later, after I get my second wind. Meanwhile, I've told you what's really going on so's you can come out on top for a change. Jay Gould assures me the clever flimflam has some time to go as they sell more watered railroad stock at ever higher prices, thanks to carefully placed secret tips about secret surveys and such. Meanwhile, even homestead claims clouding title to future townsites must be worth something to the greedy speculators who've just started to hear about that swell new railroad line."