Longarm 242: Red-light (18 page)

“You've broke my leg, you son of a bitch!” he howled.

It looked to Longarm like the bullet had just plowed a furrow in the meaty part of the man's thigh and knocked him out of his saddle. “You'll live, old son,” Longarm told him. “Get up and walk down yonder to that coach.”

“I can't walk! I'm shot!”

“In that case, I'll just put a bullet through your head so's I won't have to bother with you,” Longarm said coldly.

The man cursed some more, but he got hold of a sapling and used it to support himself as he pulled himself to his feet. Wincing and complaining every step of the way, he hobbled down the slope to the bottom of the draw with Longarm following him. The man who had been creased on the head was still out cold, Longarm saw as he went by.

George and Pryor had both climbed down from the box and appeared to be unhurt except for a bullet burn on Pryor's forearm. “They never knew what hit them, Marshal,” he said to Longarm with a grin. “That dynamite was a brilliant idea.”

Longarm inclined his head toward the other side of the road. “What about the rest of the bunch?”

“We checked 'em out for the ladies,” said George. “Got one that's still alive. Looks like a bullet busted his left elbow. He ain't got no fight left in him.”

“The rest of them are deceased,” added Pryor. “I wasn't aware that the ladies were in possession of an arsenal. It was quite astounding when all that firepower began to demonstrate itself.”

“Yeah,” said Longarm dryly. “Surprising as all hell.” He jerked a thumb at his prisoner, then pointed to the unconscious man on the ground. “Keep an eye on these two. They're the only ones still alive on this side.”

George and Pryor nodded.

Longarm walked around the back of the coach. Nola, Angie, Rafaela, and Mickey were gathered on the other side, talking excitedly among themselves. They fell silent when Longarm approached. He frowned at them and said, “I thought I told you ladies to stay down when the shooting started.”

“If we'd done that, you might not have captured all the gang,” said Nola. “I think we were very helpful.”

Longarm couldn't really argue with that. He glanced at the bodies scattered around on this side of the draw. One of the outlaws was such a gory mess that Longarm knew the dynamite must have exploded right next to him. Three other men were sprawled loosely in various attitudes of death, and a fifth and final man had been tied to a tree by either George or Pryor. He was whimpering in pain from the wounded arm he held closely against his body.

Given the damage done by the dynamite and the element of surprise, it was possible George and Pryor could have accounted for all the bandits on this side of the draw. But the barrage from inside the coach had certainly evened the odds. More than that, really, reflected Longarm. Mallory's men hadn't known what hit them.

“Which one's Mallory?” he asked.

“I haven't seen him,” said Nola. “He must be around on the other side.”

Longarm jerked his head. “Come take a look.”

Nola walked around the coach beside him, and the other three women followed. Without hesitation, Nola pointed at the man who had been creased on the head. “That's him,” she said, and Longarm could hear the hate in her voice. “That's Ben Mallory.”

So, Longarm was finally getting a look at the man he had come here to capture. He was glad that Mallory had survived the battle. He strode over to stand above the outlaw and peered down at him. Mallory was a slender man in his thirties with dark, curly hair, not overly intelligent looking, but there was a vicious cunning in his features that matched everything Longarm knew about him. Mallory was stirring now, trying to regain consciousness, and Longarm reached down to prod him in the chest with the barrel of the Winchester.

“Wake up, Mallory,” Longarm said. “It's all over. You're under arrest.”

Mallory's eyes flickered open. He moved his head, then winced at the pain that must have shot through his skull. “Who ... who are you?” he asked hoarsely.

“Deputy United States Marshal Custis Long,” Longarm told him. “You're my prisoner, and I'm going to take particular pleasure in seeing you swing for murder and robbery, Mallory.”

Mallory groaned and closed his eyes. They snapped open again when Nola stepped up beside Longarm and said, “Hello, Ben.”

“Nola!” Mallory croaked. “I ... I thought I saw you in that coach, but ... I figured I was seein' things—”

“No matter how much Marshal Long enjoys seeing you hang, I'll enjoy it more, Ben,” said Nola. She spat in Mallory's face, making him jerk his head to the side and groan again as he clutched his skull.

Longarm put a hand on Nola's arm and gently drew her back. “That's enough,” he told her. “I reckon Mallory's figured out by now that you were working with me all along, even as muddled as he must be right now. Why don't you ladies climb back in the stage, and we'll start thinking about what we're going to do next.”

Nola gave Mallory one more venomous glance, then allowed Longarm to steer her back to the stagecoach. George and Pryor closed in on Mallory, jerked him to his feet, and tied his hands securely behind his back.

The outlaws had started their attack by shooting one of the lead horses through the head, and when it had dropped, that had forced the rest of the team and the coach to come to a halt. Once all the surviving outlaws were tied up, George and Pryor began the task of cutting the dead horse loose from its harness and backing the coach away from it. The other leader was unhitched as well and tied on behind the coach, so that the team wouldn't be unbalanced. With only four horses to pull it, the stagecoach would have to travel at a slower pace.

“We're closer to Galena City than we are to Virginia City,” Longarm said. “We'll turn around and go back there, so that I can lock these owlhoots up for the time being.”

“But there's no jail in Galena City,” Nola pointed out. “There's not even a constable.”

“Surely somebody's got a smokehouse, or a good solid storeroom,” said Longarm. “That's all I'll need for now, that and somebody to stand guard.”

Nola nodded. “You won't have any trouble finding volunteers for that job. Everyone in town has lived in fear of Mallory for so long, they'll all be glad to see him locked up. In fact, they'd probably be happy to take care of the trial and the execution, as well.”

Longarm shook his head firmly. “There won't be any lynchings. Mallory's going to have a proper trial in Carson City.”

“All right, but I imagine there'll be a good-sized delegation from Galena City to witness the hanging.”

“That's fine,” Longarm said. “Just as long as everything's done legal like.”

With the skill of long experience, George turned the coach around to head back to Galena City. “Bat's not going to like messin' up our schedule, and neither's Claude,” he warned.

“I reckon they'll both forgive us, considering we're bringing Mallory in,” Longarm said. “Let's get those boys up top. The undertaker'll have to bring his wagon back out here for the dead ones ... if the wolves have left him any customers by then.”

Mallory and the other two wounded outlaws climbed awkwardly to the top of the stage. Once they were there, Pryor bound them even more tightly. “I'll keep an eye on them,” he promised Longarm. He hefted the greener and added, “If they try to escape, they'll regret it.”

Longarm didn't think any of the outlaws would try anything, not considering the shape they were in. Mallory was the least injured of the three, and he was still light-headed from the bullet slapping him alongside the skull.

Longarm didn't have to sit on the floor of the coach this time. He settled down on the rear seat, between Mickey and Rafaela. Nola and Angie sat facing them. Nola asked, “Are you all right, Custis? That wound of yours didn't start bleeding again, did it?”

He slipped a hand inside his shirt and checked the bandages. “Feels fine,” he reported. “Still aches a little, but that's to be expected. I reckon in another week or so I'll be as good as I ever was.”

Angie giggled. “And I'll bet that's mighty good. Isn't it, Nola?”

Nola just smiled coolly and said, “Some things aren't any of your business, Angie.” The smile took most of the sting out of the words.

Longarm settled back against the seat, took a deep breath and blew it out in a sigh of relief. Despite the tragedies along the way—the deaths of Amelia Loftus and Mrs. Keegan—and the near-tragedies such as the bushwhackings that had resulted in Longarm and J. Emerson Dupree each catching a bullet, this job had just about come to a successful conclusion.

All he had to do now was recover the stolen silver Mallory had hidden up at that Indian burial ground ...

Longarm ducked as a bullet chipped the rock right above his head. “Shit!” he said.

Some jobs just never turned out to be simple, no matter how much a fella hoped they would.

He was crouched among the boulders that littered the edge of a small plateau dotted with pine trees and clumps of brush. Looming above the plateau in the crystal-clear morning air was the snow-capped mountain called Virginia Peak. In the distance Longarm could see the still blue waters of Pyramid Lake extending far to the north. The plateau commanded quite a view, not as beautiful as the area around the lake called Tahoe, south of here along the California-Nevada border, but still mighty pretty. That might have had something to do with why the Paiutes had decided to lay their dead to rest here.

This was still sacred ground to the Paiutes, even though they didn't use it anymore, and they probably wouldn't have taken kindly to a bunch of white outlaws using it as a hideout. But the Paiutes had all been moved off to the reservation, and they didn't ride the warpath anymore. Chances were, none of them even knew that Mallory and his men had built a log cabin smack-dab in the middle of their sacred plateau.

“I sure wish those men Mallory left behind hadn't spotted us until we got closer,” George called over to Longarm. “That cabin looks mighty solid. Who knows how long they can hold us off from in there?”

George was crouched behind another boulder about twenty feet away, and beyond him were Pryor, J. Emerson Dupree, Charlie Dodson, and half a dozen other men from Galena City and the surrounding mines. As Nola had predicted, Longarm had plenty of volunteers for anything he wanted once word got around that he had brought in Ben Mallory. George and Pryor had asked to come along because they worked for the California & Nevada Stage Line; Dupree was here because he wanted the story of the remaining outlaws' capture; and Dodson and the other men just wanted to be in on the finish. They had all ridden up here this morning because the stagecoach had gotten back into Galena City too late on the previous afternoon to start then.

Unfortunately, the men Mallory had left behind to guard the loot from earlier robberies had to be suspicious because their leader and the rest of the gang hadn't returned when they were supposed to. Mallory wouldn't be coming back. He was locked up in Galena City, along with the other two surviving outlaws.

Longarm and his unofficial posse had tried to cover the open ground surrounding the cabin without being seen, but the men inside had spotted them and opened fire, driving them back to cover in the rocks at the edge of the plateau. Since then it had been a standoff. The outlaws couldn't get out of the cabin, but Longarm and his companions were pinned down here in these boulders.

There had to be some way to shake those owlhoots out of their hole, thought Longarm. He just hadn't been able to come up with it yet.

At least he didn't have to worry about Nola and the other women during this fight, he reminded himself. They were safely back in Galena City.

He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a cheroot. As he clamped it between his teeth, it reminded him of something, and without pausing to light the cigar, he stuck his hand in the pocket of the sheepskin jacket. Sure enough, the two sticks of dynamite he had put in there the day before, following the gunfight with Mallory's gang, were still there.

Longarm grinned around the cheroot as he called to the other men, “Who's got the strongest arm?”

“That might be me,” said George with a frown. “Wrestlin' with those stagecoach teams builds up a fella's muscles.”

Longarm flipped one of the sticks of dynamite across the gap between his cover and the boulder where George was crouched. “Think you could heave that all the way to the cabin?” he asked.

George caught the dynamite, but he looked plenty nervous as he did so. “Good Lord, Marshal!” he exclaimed. “You can't just go tossing this stuff around like that. It goes off if you look at it wrong!”

“I reckon it's safe enough if you're careful,” said Longarm. “Just be sure you're ready to throw it before you light the fuse.”

Pryor volunteered, “I'll do it if you don't want to, George.”

“No, that's all right,” grumbled George. He patted the pockets of his coat. “Lemme find a match.”

A few moments later, Longarm caught a whiff of sulphur in the mountain air as George lit a match and held it to the fuse. As soon as the fuse caught, George dropped the match and quickly drew back his arm. He rose up slightly to throw the dynamite toward the outlaws' cabin.

A rifle cracked from inside the cabin, and the bullet drilled into George's shoulder, knocking him backward. The dynamite slipped from his hand and bounced a couple of feet down the slope. George landed where he could see the fuse hissing and sputtering, and he let out a yell of sheer terror.