A Dangerous Man (2 page)

Bill Longley stood at his room window of the Bon-Ton Hotel and stared out sullenly at the sluggish river of mud the good folks of Comanche Crossing, New Mexico Territory, were pleased to call Main Street. Snow flurries cartwheeled in the wind and a wooden sign hanging outside a general store banged back and forth with the sound of a muffled drum.

By times, he was a past-thinking man, especially when it came to reminiscing about women he'd enjoyed and kills he particularly relished.

A grandfather clock in the hallway chimed midnight. The mud outside reminded him of another road in another time and place....

 

 

The Camino Real, the old Spanish royal highway between San Antonio and Nacogdoches, ran within a mile of the Longley farm. On a cold, early December day in 1867 sixteen-year-old Bill was warned by his father to stay close because mounted Yankees had been seen patrolling the road.

Campbell Longley, who'd been a close friend of General Sam Houston and had helped bury the American dead at Goliad, had passed on two traits to young Bill. One was a virtue—his skill with firearms. The other, a vice—a pathological hatred of Yankees and blacks.

As snow flurried and the Camino Real turned to mud, Bill took his father's Navy revolver. Never one to avoid the chance of a confrontation with Yankee soldiers, he sneaked out of the house and headed for the highway.

“There are Yankees on the road! Stay away!” a woman wrapped in a blanket yelled at him from the shelter of a wild oak, frantically waving her hands.

“Where are they?” Bill hollered.

The woman pointed back down the highway. “That way. Stay clear. They'll kill you and eat you.”

He walked up a gentle rise that led to the road. Snow clung to the brush and salted the trunks of the bare trees. As he stepped closer, he saw that the woman was old. Her gray eyes had faded to the color of smoke and the hair that showed under her bonnet was white. She was thin and looked hungry.

She carried a wicker basket, as did all the old men and women who scavenged along the Camino Real. She'd already found an old horseshoe and what looked to be a dented can of meat.

“Go back, son,” the woman said. “That Yankee up there will arrest you and then you'll get skun an' your hide stretched on a frame.”

“Who, grandma? Who'll arrest me?”

“Black man on a hoss, wearing a blue coat. He's got stripes on his sleeves and a rifle.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

The woman shivered, from cold or memory he couldn't tell.

“He told me to get the hell off the road. Said there's too much thievery going on along the highway.”

Bill's dark, sudden anger flared. “A black man spoke to you like that?”

“Son, since the war ended, a black man can speak to a white woman any way he damn pleases. Or didn't you know that?”

“Not in San Jacinto County, he can't. Where the hell is he?”

“That way. Down the road apiece.”

Bill nodded and laid his hand on the woman's skinny shoulder. “You go home now. I'll take care of the black. He'll never sass a white woman again.” He opened his coat and revealed the Navy in his waistband. “I got me some uppity negro medicine right here.”

He watched until the old lady vanished from sight behind a hill, then followed her directions, avoiding the worst of the mud puddles as he walked, head bowed against the chill wind and slashing sleet.

He saw the soldier sitting his horse under the thin cover of an oak. A Spencer carbine lay across the pommel of his McClellan saddle as he intently peeled a green apple with a folding knife.

The corporal spotted Bill and took account of his ragged coat, pale, underfed face, summing him up as local white trash. Taking a bite of the apple, the soldier made a face and tossed it away. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and kneed his horse into motion, approaching Bill at a leisurely walk. The Spencer was upright, the butt resting on his thigh.

When he was a few feet away, the corporal drew rein and again studied the lanky teenager, not liking what he saw. “You, Reb. Git off the damned highway. We've had enough of thieves and footpads preying on decent folks.”

“And if I don't?” Bill said, his anger simmering.

The soldier leveled his rifle. “Then I'll damn well blow you off the road.”

Bill whimpered a little. “Please, mister, don't. I didn't mean no harm.”

“You look like dirty, thieving Reb spawn to me,” the soldier said. “Now get off the highway and run home to your mama and ask her to dry your tears.”

The solder then made a mistake. He turned his back on Bill.

It was a gesture of contempt that cost Corporal Thetas Washington, age twenty-six, his life.

Bill drew from the waistband, aimed at a spot between the shoulder blades and pulled the trigger. The .36 caliber ball shattered the black man's spine as he cried out in pain and rage at the time and manner of his death.

The sixteen-year-old didn't fire a second time. Powder and ball cost money his father didn't have. He waited until the soldier toppled from his horse then stepped beside him.

A clean kill!

The man was as dead as he was ever going to be.

Working quickly for fear of being discovered, Bill searched the man's pockets. He took twenty-three Yankee dollars, a nickel watch and chain, and a whiskey flask. Made from pewter, the Bonnie Blue Flag was engraved on its side. Under that was another engraving.
Lieut. Joseph Herbert, 17th Georgia Infantry.

Longley uncorked the flask, fastidiously wiped it off, then took a swig. He gathered the reins of the dead man's horse, picked up the Spencer, and walked back to the farm.

He had his first kill, a black carpetbagger at that, and he was so elated that even the icy wind and spinning sleet could not chill him.

 

 

Bill Longley was pulled from his pleasant reverie by a shadow of movement on the street. A careful man, he turned down the oil lamp and stepped to the window again, one of his beautiful .44 Dance revolvers in his fist.

The night was so torn and dark it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the gloom. When they did, he saw a tall man on a sorrel horse stop outside the town sheriff's darkened office.

After a few moments, the rider swung out of the saddle and stepped to what Longley at first thought was a packhorse. Only when the tall man dumped the horse's burden into the street did he see that it was a body.

While the tall man worked the kinks out of his back and looked around him, Longley quickly moved away from the window. Suddenly he felt an odd sense of unease . . . as though a goose had just flown over his grave.

Tam Sullivan stepped onto the boardwalk and studied the sign that hung on the door. Suspended by a cord over a tarnished brass hook, it said simply S
LEEPING
G
O
A
WAY.
He smiled. At least it was a change from the small town lawman's usual G
ONE
F
ISHIN'.

Spurs chiming like silver bells above the wail of the wind, he walked into the street again, grabbed the late Crow Wallace by the back of his coat and dragged him, boot heels bumping, up the boardwalk to the door. Sullivan, a big man and strong, removed the sheriff's sign and hung Wallace's skinny body from the brass hook.

Dangling as he was, the dead man looked like a trussed chicken, his glazed eyes staring into a street he could no longer see.

Sullivan hung the sheriff's sign around Wallace's neck then stepped to the edge of the boardwalk. He peered through the tumbling snow. Across the street stood a false-fronted building with a sign outside. B
ON
-T
ON
H
OTEL.

The big bounty hunter nodded, fished inside his canvas coat for tally book and pencil, and wrote
Tam Sullivan—Bon-Ton.
He reckoned the town lawman would figure that out, folded the sheet. and stuck it in Wallace's open mouth. “Don't choke on that, Crow.”

Sullivan crossed the street to the hotel.

When asked for a room at the late hour, the sleepy desk clerk replied, “Yes, I have a room, and no, you are wrong. It
is
an uncivilized hour to wake a man.”

“Livery?” Sullivan had a notion the clerk didn't like him much.

“Down the street that way.” The clerk pointed to his left. “Last building in town.”

“Is the livery man awake? Seems that Comanche Crossing is an early to bed town.”

“We roll up the boardwalks at eleven, when the saloon closes. And no, Clem Weaver ain't asleep. Damned old fool never sleeps and he keeps a Sharps .50 close, so don't get your head blowed off.”

“Who's the town law?” Sullivan asked .

“Questioning man, ain't you, mister?”

“Learn stuff that way.”

The clerk dredged up a sigh, as though recalling the lawman's name was a chore. “Feller by the name of Harm.”

“Frank Harm?”

“You heard of him?”

“Maybe so. There used to be a bounty hunter by that name, operated out of Denver. Got wounded up Montana way by Henry Plummer in the spring of '62 and gave up the profession.”

“Yeah, well, Sheriff Harm walks with a limp, so it could be the same man. How come you're so interested in our lawman? You on the scout, mister?”

“Nope. But Frank Harm is the feller who's going to pay the bounty on Crow Wallace, the outlaw I brought in tonight.”

The clerk looked past Sullivan at the door. “Where is he?”

“He's hanging around somewhere.”

“I hope he ain't dangerous. I mean, an outlaw on the loose like that.”

Sullivan shook his head. “Crow isn't dangerous. He's changed his ways quite a bit recently.”

 

 

“Seen you coming in, leading that American hoss,” Clem Weaver took hold of the bridle on Sullivan's horse. “Know who the buckskin over there belongs to?”

Sullivan's eyes followed the jerk of the liveryman's thumb to a stall. “Can't say as I do.”

“Wild Bill Longley, as ever was,” Weaver said. “Wanted oats fer his hoss.”

“I heard he'd been hung a few years back.”

“Half hung. Somebody cut him down in time.”

“How do you know he's Longley?”

“I recognized him. But he didn't remember me, an' that's a good thing. Coffee?”

“I don't mind if I do,” Sullivan said.

The hour was late, but it seemed that Clem Weaver was a talking man. “I remember Bill Longley as a strutting bully. He made a reputation as a draw fighter by picking on men who were unarmed, scared, drunk, or unskilled. Sometimes all four.

“I first saw him up in the Montana Territory at Fort Brown where he had a job with the army as a civilian teamster and pack master. That would be . . . let me see . . . the winter of '71. A bad winter that, snow and bitter cold. Hell, kinda like this one.”

Prepared to be sociable, Sullivan said, “You were in the army back then?”

Weaver shook his head. “Nah. I was a surveyor for the Northern Pacific Railroad. They planned to lay rails across the Yellowstone country, but of course the Sioux had something to say about that. I damn near lost my hair a couple times.”

Weaver said Longley and an army quartermaster by the name of Nathan Gregory were selling off army stock, but they lowballed the number of animals they sold and pocketed the profits.

“Making money hand over fist, was ol' Bill back in them days. Smoking big fat cigars and drinking nothing but the best whiskey. But the good times ended when he and Gregory had a falling out. It seems that Longley sold a team of Missouri mules for five hundred dollars but told his partner he only got three.”

The liveryman blew on his coffee to cool it some. “It seems that Gregory, being a crook his ownself, knew there was chicanery afoot and he called Bill out for a cheat and a damned liar. Ain't hard to figure what happened next.”

“Longley shot him,” Sullivan said. “That's my opinion.”

“You opine right, young feller. Ol' Bill cut him near in half with a scattergun, grinnin' like a possum the whole time. On account of how Gregory was good with a gun, Bill shot him in the back. Gregory lingered for a whole day in agony, cussin' Longley for a yellow-bellied coward and lowdown.”

“Scattergun can sure put a hurt on a man, even if a coward pulls the trigger,” Sullivan added.

“Well, Nathan Gregory made a big mistake,” Weaver said. “He tried to put the crawl on a man who was a whole sight meaner than himself.”

“Well, ain't that always the way of it?” Sullivan drained his coffee cup and rose to his feet. “I'd appreciate if you could sell the gray I brought in. And see what you can get for the saddle and traps.”

Weaver was a foxy little man with red hair and mustache and quick hazel eyes that never rested on any one thing for too long. “I'll give you a hundred for the hoss and twenty for the stock saddle. Cash in hand.”

Sullivan disagreed. “The gray is worth that much by itself.”

“Maybe, but folks don't like grays much. Say they smell bad.”

“Maybe it's the folks that smell bad.”

Sullivan saw Weaver's face close down and said, “All right, a hundred and twenty for the gray and twenty for the saddle.”

“Done and done. You hold right there, young feller.” The little man made a show of picking up his Sharps before he stepped into a small office built against the stable wall.

Sullivan smiled. It seemed Weaver was not a trusting man.

He heard a tin box open, some muttering, and then the liveryman rejoined him.

“One hundred and forty dollars,” he said, handing Sullivan the money. “You know why I'm eatin' beans today instead of steak? Because go anywhere west of the Mississippi and you won't find a hoss dealer more on the square than honest Clem Weaver. Yup, it's what's making me a poor man, my honest dealings with folks.”

“Mind if I count it?” Sullivan asked.

“Count away, young feller. It's all there to the last cent.”

The sum was correct and Sullivan shoved the bills into a coat pocket. He offered his hand to seal the deal.

Weaver shook his hand. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“How come you quit the surveyor profession? On account of the Sioux?”

Weaver waggled a forefinger in front of his eyes. “Nah, the peepers ain't so sharp anymore.”

“Sharp enough to see this sucker coming.” Sullivan left the livery and strolled toward the hotel.

He was quite pleased with the deal he'd made for Wallace's horse and saddle. He'd turned a quick profit and that was what the bounty hunting business was all about.

Like all outlaws, Crow Wallace was a big spender. Sullivan had managed to recover only the gold watch and six thousand dollars of the stage holdup loot. His percentage and the reward for the watch totaled eleven hundred dollars in addition to the two and a half thousand reward owed by Butterfield.

All in all, he considered it not bad for an evening's work.

As he neared the hotel, Sullivan thought he caught a flicker of movement at one of the upstairs windows. It was there for just a moment and then was gone.

He wrote it off as a sleepless gent stretching his legs or using the chamber pot, and thought no more about it.

Sullivan entered the hotel and went straight to his room on the ground floor, just off the lobby. It contained a brass bed, a couple of chairs, a dresser with a blue earthenware basin and jug, and a small writing table with an inkwell and steel pen.

On the wall above the bed hung a portrait, draped in black crepe, of General Robert E. Lee. The great man stared grimly into the room as though he thoroughly disapproved of its present occupant.

“Now don't fall on top of me, General,” Sullivan said as his head hit the pillow.

If the general made any reply, Sullivan didn't hear it.

He was already asleep.