Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds (6 page)

Longarm asked Gilchrist if he'd seen the body afterwards.

Gilchrist grimaced. "What was left of it. Had he baked a mite longer we could have saved the expense of planting him over in Potter's Field."

Then, as if he'd foreseen the next obvious question, the war vet and experienced lawman volunteered, "He wound up on his side with his arms and legs drawn up the way most of us do when we're dying miserable. Used to see old boys like that in the hills of Tennessee. You could tell when a soldier boy had been killed instant or sobbing for his momma by the way he lay. Like I said, they should have let Tyger burn a mite longer and let the wind have his clean ashes. This way, his remains wound up the worst of a couple of ways. Halfway cremated and then left to molder in the wormy clay of Potter's Field. Ain't that a bitch?"

Longarm grimaced and sipped some more Scotch liquor. It was almost as good as Maryland Rye, save for a smoky aftertaste that he didn't really need right now, picturing what likely lay in the pauper's grave of a stranger charred beyond recognition. "I was wondering how I meant to get an exhumation order without a heap of tedious explanations. I'll take your word a cuss checked into that roominghouse as Calvert Tyger and died in that fire as a result of that fire. But as long as we're on the subject of my need to report this side trip to Durango, I'd as soon not bother. I get to file enough in triplicate as it is."

Gilchrist leaned forward to light the cigar for Longarm as he chuckled and allowed he knew the feeling. "I ain't about to write up this social visit for the Denver & Rio Grande Western, if that's what you were hinting at, old son."

Longarm put down the empty shot glass and helped himself to a mouthful of less smoky-tasting smoke before he confessed he'd had such a shortcut in mind. Then he blew a thoughtful smoke ring and added, "I mean to ask around town, seeing I'm here, but might your company files hold anything on the other riders said to have been with Calvert Tyger when he somehow got the call to check into a mighty seedy roominghouse alone?"

Gilchrist shook his head. "I'd have said so if we'd noticed. Nobody working for the railroad knew any of 'em were here in Durango till that fire broke out a couple of weeks back. Since we do such police work as need be, we naturally took some interest as soon as we saw what we took for a handful of part-time laborers and full-time drunks had gone up in smoke. We'd planted 'em all in Potter's Field, like I said, before anyone put the name of one victim together with that of a wanted outlaw."

Longarm blew another thoughtful smoke ring. "My short and sweet notes on the case do mention other unfortunates who died in both mysterious fires, now that you mention it. So how come we know so much about that one particular screamer, seeing he was a stranger in town?"

Gilchrist poured another shot in the glass at Longarm's elbow as he answered easily. "Because he was a stranger, of course. Most of the drifters who'd checked into that roominghouse naturally got out in time. At sunrise they and some townsmen who'd hired various old boys for a few hours' work now and again were able to identify all but the one cadaver. Nobody came forward for him. But the night clerk at the rooming house had saved their books, and like I said, once someone noticed Tyger was wanted so often in so many places ..."

"Get back to the part about him screaming so much before they found him in that fetal position," Longarm urged. "Didn't anyone else object to being burnt alive in there?"

Gilchrist shook his head. "The ones sober enough to yell got out sudden when the room clerk sounded the alarm. The same old clerk recalled Tyger as having paid two bits extra for a separate room, or cubicle, with a door you could bolt on the inside. All the others who failed to wake up in time were trapped further toward the back wall. The volunteers figured the bewildered cuss in that locked cubicle woke up in a strange place, blinded by smoke, and died trying to escape by way of the wardrobe against the back wall instead of the one real door at the other end. They found him in the ruins near what would have been the back of his bitty private cell had the plank walls still been standing. The poor bastard could've kicked his way out any way but through the stout oak wardrobe he was trying to escape through."

Longarm grimaced as he pictured it, and worse yet, sort of felt the bewilderment the trapped man must have felt when, flinging open what he thought to be the door of his cubicle, he'd stepped into that tall oak wardrobe against the wrong wall!

He started to ask another dumb question. He didn't, because it was obvious the volunteer firemen or railroad dicks would have made mention of any large sum of paper money they'd found miraculously preserved among the ashes of a burned-down and water-drenched frame structure. He swallowed the last of the liquor instead and got back to his feet, saying, "We both know why no pals of a wanted man came forward to identify his body, if that was his body. We're more certain that was the real Brick Flanders butchered and baked over in Denver more recently."

Gilchrist rose to walk him out front. "Glass eyes and gold teeth do say more about a well-done cadaver. How do you like a second in command using the name of his dead boss to confound us all further?"

Longarm didn't like it that much. But he never said so, lest he waste more time with a cuss, however agreeable, who didn't know one thing more about that fire in Denver or the note cashed in Minnesota than anyone else on the side of the law.

He allowed he'd see if the boys in the back rooms up the way knew anything about other strangers, the one called Chief in particular, who'd passed through Durango about the same time as the late Calvert Tyger. Then he asked when he could catch a train out. But Gilchrist said there wouldn't be another train in or out this side of sunrise, explaining, "The engineers are sort of unsure about the tracks ahead. So we have no call to cross the Divide by the dark of the moon."

To which Longarm could only answer, "Shit, I'll just have to study on finding me a room for the night then. Is it safe to say most new folks in town will have already booked their own rooms for the rest of the night by this late?"

Gilchrist agreed that seemed just about the size of it. So they parted friendly and Longarm ambled over to the one main street in no great hurry. For there was more than one primitive but brand-new hotel in the brand-new mushroom town, and if they couldn't fix him up at one he could always ask at another, or in a pinch, sleep sitting up in a lobby chair for the usual dime tip.

There was little going on in any of the four saloons and the one pool hall he dropped into long enough for a short beer and such few words as he could get out of anybody. It was the wrong night of the week and too far from payday for a town that tiny to show that much action along a public thoroughfare. It was tough for a new cuss in any town to find the high-stakes gambling and serious sinning the money folks indulged in behind closed doors and drawn curtains. So nobody he could get into a conversation with could recall much about that rooming house fire, even if they'd been in Durango a whole fortnight.

Longarm had a light supper of elk venison steak smothered in chili con carne under two fried eggs, washed that and the service-berry pie down with buttermilk instead of the usual black coffee--lest he find it tough to fall asleep sitting up--and headed for the nearest hotel with no baggage but his Winchester cradled in the crook of his right elbow with his thumb through the trigger guard.

It was easy to shift the saddle gun so its muzzle and fifteen-round magazine preceded him along the shadowy planking of the partly covered sidewalk as he walked with some interest in the direction of a gal complaining low and a male cussing loud in a drunken tone.

As Longarm drifted closer, unseen by anyone involved in the late night dispute, he saw the gal was in more trouble than he'd first expected. For the cowhand holding on to one arm of the gal in a dark velveteen riding habit was loudly calling her an infernally stuck-up whore. The two riders with him were just ogling her like hungry coyotes closing in on a newly yeaned calf with its momma off somewhere else.

Longarm told himself gang rapes were more unusual than lots of asshole remarks to an unescorted gal along Saloon Row, even in the town of Durango. Then he told himself that even if they were serious, the gal was likely partly to blame and Durango, dammit, had a half-ass company police force that was supposed to watch out for such rowdy behavior. Then he told himself that he was the only peace officer in sight and that the gal seemed really worried as she tried to get free, protesting, "Unhand me, sir! I'm not the sort of girl you seem to take me for, and I'll tell my husband if you get fresh with me!"

One of the ones just standing by, as if for his turn, laughed dirty and jeered, "You ain't wearing no ring for the same reasons you ain't got no man of your own, Amarillo Annie. You must really take us for tenderfeet if you hope to fool us with such a high and mighty act, you two-bit cunt!"

Longarm had heard enough. He stepped out of the shadows, saddle gun aimed politely at the planking between them, as he called out in a conversational tone, "Evening, Miss Annie. They told me you'd lit out just before I arrived to escort you... wherever it was you aimed to go."

The gal didn't answer. She was no fool. But the one who had her by one arm sneered, "She aims to go with us and you'd be well advised to stay out of this, pilgrim."

Longarm smiled pleasantly enough, considering how tricky the light was, but let an edge of steel creep into his voice when he softly but firmly replied, "I can see by the way all three of you wear your guns that you could be headed into a situation much like the one in that sad old song about the eastbound herd bull and the westbound train. I don't want to brag, but I am not a cowhand in town with a skinful, and even if I was, I got more rounds in the tube of this one Winchester than you could possibly have in the wheels of the two guns you seem to be packing betwixt the three of you. So don't tell this child whether he ought to stay in or out of anything, and Miss Annie just told you to let go her arm, amigo mio!"

The other one, who seemed more sure of the gal's social status, tried not to sound worried as he cautioned, "You don't want to get in a fight with three grown men over Amarillo Annie, pard. Don't you know what she is?"

To which Longarm could only reply in a dead-level way, "I do. She's the lady you all just heard me offer to escort on to wherever she may want to go. I'd sure hate to hear anyone call any lady I'm escorting anything less than a lady. For that would make me a sort of fool, in your eyes leastways, and that would mean I'd have to make you look even more foolish, wouldn't it?"

The one still holding the gal's arm, although not as firmly, tried a nervous horse laugh and blustered, "Hell, I see one of him and three of us, too spread out for him to get more than one of us as we both draw, Slim."

What the skinny one with the other six-gun might have answered remained a mystery. The gal they'd been tormenting wrenched her arm free and declared, "Now stop it this instant! Don't you silly kids know you're trying to scare the one and original Longarm, and him with the drop on you?"

The one who'd been about to grab for her arm some more crawfished back as if he'd just noticed a diamondback he'd been fixing to tread on barefoot. The skinny one with the other six-gun worn too high for a side-draw gulped and protested, "Nobody here never said nothing about scaring nobody, Miss Annie. Can't you take a little joke?"

The gal didn't answer. So he tried the same question on Longarm, who shrugged and quietly asked, "How about you, Miss Annie? Do we take all this as kid stuff and let 'em live, or would you like the three of them stuffed and mounted?"

By the time she'd grudgingly decided to let it go this one time, she and Longarm seemed to be alone on the walk. But he offered her a free elbow and suggested softly, "We'd best duck into this slot and let me carry you on from the far side of the block, ma'am. It's been my sad experience that some sore losers are inclined to wait up ahead in the shadows after you think you've backed 'em down."

The gal in dark velveteen slipped a gloved hand through the crook of his left elbow, and there was just room for the two of them to go side by side through some mighty dark shadows, dog-legging along that alleyway in line with the street out front, and then slip through yet another slot to the street beyond as he told her to hush every time she started to say something to him.

Once they'd crossed to the far side of the residential street he'd led her to, Longarm told her, softly, "We can talk now, long as we talk soft and walk no louder. I'd be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, as you seem to have guessed, and you still have the advantage on me, ma'am."

She sighed. "I might have known you didn't remember me, Custis. You really were just being your gallant self, to a gal in trouble who was really what they said she was for all you knew."

She hugged his arm to her nicely padded bodice and added, "They said you were like that, when you and me and the world were younger over in Dodge."

There were no street lamps, and the moon was only a thin fingernail paring of light in the starry sky above. So Longarm had to stare at her upturned face a while, noting she was sort of pretty or at least not downright deformed, as he replied uncertainly, "Are we speaking of you and me in Dodge before or after I started packing a badge six or eight years ago, Miss Annie?"

"Annie Newton, back in '72," she replied wistfully, and went on. "You were still punching cows and I was a skinny chambermaid at the Drover's Rest that afternoon you saved my virtue from yet another trail herder who'd come back to the hotel early to catch me alone upstairs, he thought."