Longarm #396 : Longarm and the Castle of the Damned (9781101545249)

Table of Contents

 

 

Longarm drew his Colt, deliberately and with no hurry about it. Both gents in the linen dusters saw and reacted.

The one to the left of the doorway pointed something under his duster—a sawed-off shotgun as it turned out—but had no time to fire before Longarm's bullet smashed into his breastbone, taking first the breath away from him and then his life as he was launched backward against the stone building blocks.

The man on the right, much closer to Longarm, tried to swivel around before the lawman could fire a second shot.

He was late and he damn well knew it . . . He turned ghost pale and bolted for the wide open spaces.

Longarm thought about putting a bullet in the bastard's back but there seemed no point to that. He aimed a foot or so over the man's head and trigged a .45 slug. He would not have thought it possible, but the fellow managed to run even faster after that sizzler pinked the crown of his hat, sending the hat and the man flying.

City police and sheriff's deputies came boiling out of the courthouse in response to the sudden gunfire, but Longarm's two shots ended the conflict.

“What the hell . . . ?”

Longarm shrugged and reloaded his revolver. “I think somebody didn't want me to testify this mornin' . . .”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

LONGARM AND THE CASTLE OF THE DAMNED

 

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY

Jove edition / November 2011

Copyright © 2011 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

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ISBN : 978-1-101-54524-9

 

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There is nothing else as boring as a damned murder trial, Deputy United States Marshal Custis Long silently grumbled as he sat on the hard courtroom bench waiting to be called as a witness. Long, called Longarm by friends and enemies alike, stifled a yawn behind his fist and concentrated on what had been the focus of his attention for much of the past three days.

While the opposing lawyers worried about dotting every “i” and crossing every “t,” Longarm sat there watching a most intriguing young woman who for two of those days had been seated on the defense's side of the stuffy room, situated squarely in front of Longarm. He could not have missed seeing her had he tried.

He guessed her to be in her early to mid twenties, with light brown hair, a slender build, and a face that belonged on an angel. Her dress—she had worn the same one both days—had gone out of style decades earlier, yet the girl had a presence, the way she carried herself or simply because of her natural beauty, that made the rather shabby, dark green garment seem the height of fashion.

It might have been just his imagination, but Longarm would almost have sworn that today she was looking back at him while he watched her.

Not that he considered himself all that worthy of admiration. He was three inches over six feet in height, lean, with wide shoulders and a horseman's narrow waist. His hair and mustache were a dark seal brown, and his face was craggy and leather-tanned from years of exposure to the elements.

He was far from being handsome, yet there was something about him that made women tend to melt when he approached them. He did not really understand this—there was nothing in a mirror that he could find all that interesting—but he certainly did not complain about it.

Today, as on most days, he wore a light brown tweed coat, a flat-crowned brown Stetson, brown corduroy trousers, black gunbelt rigged for a cross-draw, and black, calfhigh cavalry boots.

Having ridden out of Chief U.S. Marshal William Vail's Denver office, Longarm currently was in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, waiting to testify in the murder trial of one James Henry Willoughby, despite murder being a state or territorial crime and not a federal offense.

Six months earlier Longarm had sought Willoughby on a federal warrant for interference with the delivery of the mail. A young constable with the Evanston police force offered to guide Longarm to the shack where Willoughby was said to be holed up.

The man was there, all right. As soon as he saw Constable Harvey Franks, Willoughby opened fire, killing Franks with a blast from a shotgun.

Longarm fired back, and if the son of a bitch had done the decent thing and died there and then, the deputy marshal would have been spared the discomfort of sitting through this interminable trial now. Instead Willoughby was wounded, gave himself up, and had been behind bars ever since.

Hopefully he would hang shortly after the trial concluded, but first the lawyers had to earn their fees. It was already clear that the defense was setting something up, but Longarm did not see what the hell it would be. After all, he'd stood right there and watched when Willoughby gunned the constable down in cold blood.

That would be a hard nut for the defense to crack when it finally came time for Longarm to testify. He was being held back for the last of the prosecution's case. The lead prosecutor had told him as much. He understood the trial strategy, but he would have liked it better if he could just have said his piece and then been on his way to more interesting things.

Like that pretty woman over there.

He had in his imagination undressed her so many times over the past two days that all he had to do now was glimpse the back of her neck and he could get a hard-on.

She was prim and proper and very likely still a virgin, but that did not stop him from thinking about what she would look like without all that cloth enveloping her figure. She very likely . . .

A rap of Judge Thornton's gavel brought Longarm's attention back from the realm of reverie and into dull reality.

He straightened his shoulders and tried to look awake.

“We will be in recess until ten o'clock tomorrow morning,” Thornton declared with another loud bang of the gavel.

The lawyers at both tables began clearing away their papers and volumes of law books, while no fewer than four local constables and two sheriff's deputies took charge of the prisoner, hustling the man quickly out of the courtroom before any of his rather large crowd of sympathizers could speak to him.

Longarm stood, stretched, and yawned hugely. He intended to have a glass—or two—of good rye whiskey and then perhaps a steak at Houlihan's Chop House. Why not? He was on an expense account during the trial, the Evanston Police Department providing for his needs until his testimony had been presented. Let the city pay for a good meal then.