Longarm #398 : Longarm and the Range War (9781101553701) (10 page)

“They probably know by now,” Tyler said. “A horseman galloped past me as I was working my way down here. He was headed up the valley, and my bet is that he was going to inform the friends of that dead man.”

“Then hell on the hoof could be headed our way right now,” Longarm said.

Hell on the hoof, he had said. It arrived about an hour and a half later. “Hello, Eli,” Longarm said as the visitor entered the sheriff's office.

John Tyler sat behind his desk and Longarm lounged in a chair that had been pulled up beside the desk, both men facing the door that was the only way in or out of the basement facility. They both had sawed-off shotguns lying across their laps, guns taken down from the rack on the back wall of Tyler's office. Both guns were loaded with the same heavy buckshot loads that had virtually cut a Basque in two earlier.

“You know what I came for,” Eli Cruikshank said in a soft Texas drawl.

Tyler nodded. Longarm said, “Sit down, Eli. Hear what we got t' say.”

Cruikshank turned a chair around and straddled it as if it were a horse and he was in a saddle.

Longarm smiled. “I'd appreciate it, friend, if you'd keep your hands out from behind the back o' that chair where we can see them. Just to make me feel better, if you know what I mean.”

“Sorry,” Cruikshank said, sounding like he was anything but sorry. “I never thought.”

“Right,” Longarm said, not meaning that either.

“The thing is,” Tyler said, “Julio Altameira is in custody and under arrest on a charge of murder. He will be arraigned before Judge Thompson when that worthy gentleman gets here. He will be tried. He will be found guilty . . . there is no doubt about that as I witnessed the murder myself . . . and he will receive whatever penalty the law imposes. My guess is that the man will be hanged, but that isn't up to me.” Tyler leaned forward and hardened his voice when he said, “It is not up to you or to the Basques either.”

“The way I heard it,” Cruikshank said, “that man just cut Estevan Corrales down, shot him in cold blood.”

“That's true enough,” Longarm said. “The two of 'em met on the street. There's no way to know what your man Corrales was thinking, but Altameira admits to being scared of him. Corrales was carryin' a rifle. Altameira had his shotgun. The two got to jawing at each other. Neither one of'em could understand a word the other was saying. Corrales kept getting closer an' talking louder, and Altameira kept getting scareder an' scareder, an' the next thing you know there was the shootin' . Altameira claims it was near to being an accident, that he didn't really intend to shoot Corrales.”

“An accident.” Cruikshank scoffed. “Shot him by accident. With both fucking barrels.”

Longarm shrugged. “I'm only tellin' you what the man said.”

“There's people out there that aren't going to like this,” Cruikshank said.

“There's people in here that don't like it,” Longarm said.

“Now it is up to the law to find justice for that dead man,” Sheriff Tyler said. “The law, Cruikshank.”

“Can I see this prisoner of yours?” Cruikshank asked.

“If you will surrender your weapons before you are taken in front of him, yes, you may,” Tyler said.

“Give up my guns?”

“Exactly,” Tyler said with a nod.

“And I'll be right beside you to protect you if the Mexican goes for your throat,” Longarm added.

“I don't surrender my guns to any man,” Cruikshank said in a gentle but firm tone.

“Then you do not interview the prisoner,” Tyler said just as firmly.

“So what should I tell my people?”

“Tell them the man that killed their friend is in jail. Tell them the man will be tried all legal and proper and most likely hanged for what he done,” Longarm said.

“Can they watch the hanging?” Cruikshank asked.

“If it happens,” Tyler said, “it will be a public hanging.”

“I don't know that that will satisfy them, it being uncertain and sometime in the far distant future,” Cruikshank said. “Their culture is different from ours. They figure it to be blood for blood and no waiting for it to be dragged out in a court system they don't really understand.”

“They are living in our culture now,” Tyler told him. “They will abide by our law.”

“Either that or they'll find themselves in a cell right alongside of Altameira,” Longarm said.

“Maybe they will accept that. Maybe they won't,” Cruikshank said. “I will tell them what you say but I make no promises, not if I don't know for certain sure that I can keep them.” He glanced toward the door leading back to the cells, but he made no move in that direction. “Thank you for the information,” he said.

Cruikshank stood, his right hand coming very close to his holstered revolver when he got up from the chair.

Neither Tyler nor Longarm rose with him. And neither let his hand stray far from the hammer of the double-barreled shotgun he was holding.

“Explain it to them,” Tyler said.

“I'll do that,” Cruikshank responded. He touched the brim of his hat, nodded, and quietly left the sheriff's office.

“Whew,” Longarm said when Cruikshank had gone. “Reckon I can breathe somewhat better now.”

“Me too,” Tyler said with a shudder. “I think from now on one of us needs to be sitting down here with a shotgun handy. I've never lost a prisoner to a lynching and I don't want to start now.”

Longarm nodded. “Yes, sir.” He lighted a cheroot and said, “I'll sleep here tonight. Meantime I'm gonna go finish that shave I didn't quite get this morning.”

Longarm did not like the noise he was hearing coming from Rosie's saloon, the one that catered to the Basque shepherds and to locals who were more interested in getting laid than in simply drinking and playing cards or billiards.

When Longarm stepped inside to take a look, shotgun still in hand, the entire place became suddenly silent. He walked to the bar, the crowd of patrons—there must have been a score of them—parting before him like the Red Sea parting at the exodus.

“Beer, Marshal?” the bartender asked.

Longarm nodded, laid a dime down, and faced away from the bar, leaning his back against it and holding the stubby sawed-off in the crook of his left arm. He slipped his right thumb behind his belt buckle, which put it just two or three inches from the butt of his Colt. “Gentlemen,” he said to no one in particular.

One of the Basques stepped forward and rattled off something in his own tongue. Longarm was just as happy that he did not understand a single word of what became a rather long diatribe, no doubt discussing Longarm's forebears, mental deficiencies, and sexual habits.

After a minute or two of that, Longarm turned, picked up his beer, and saluted the complaining Basque with his mug before taking a long, throat cleansing swallow.

He looked across a sea of dark hair and floppy hats but found no sign of Eli Cruikshank. That was probably just as well, he decided. If Eli had been there, he would more than likely have wanted to translate what the loudmouthed Basque was saying, and then Longarm would have felt honor bound to be pissed off by the whole thing.

He finished his beer and asked the bartender, “Can you understand what they're saying?”

The barman shook his head. “Not a word of it, Marshal.”

Longarm did not know if the man was lying to him or not. He had no choice but to let it go, however.

The Basque finally shut up. Longarm saluted him with his beer mug again and walked out of Rosie's.

It occurred to him as he left to wonder if there was a Rosie somewhere in Dwyer. Or perhaps the name referred to the owner's lost love somewhere.

Not that it mattered.

With a sigh, he returned to the barbershop, where he found that Bert was still occupied with the corpse of the recently departed.

This just was
not
Custis Long's day.

Longarm's whiskers were just long enough to reach the itching stage. He either had to get a shave soon or resign himself to another three or four days of damned near unbearable itching. Bert was off tending to a corpse, however, and Longarm did not want to go back to Tyler's house to fetch his own razor. It would not be seemly for him to be there alone with Nell while John was camped out inside the sheriff's office watching over Julio Altameira.

Nope. It just was not his day.

Still, life crawls forward whether we want it to or not, whether things are turning out the way we wish or not. Longarm belched, lighted a cheroot, and walked over to the café for an early lunch.

He ate, then had them fix up a basket of biscuits and ham to carry over to Tyler, who was parked in his office with a shotgun across his lap. Longarm was behind the courthouse, close to the stairs leading down into the basement, when a commotion caught his attention.

Someone was shouting—cussing, he guessed by the sound of it—at the front of the big stone building.

Longarm set Tyler's lunch down on the top step and walked around to the front to see what the trouble was.

He grimaced with displeasure when he saw a knot of six Mexican goatherds confronting two Basque shepherds. All of the men were armed. A pair of shaggy, black-and-white dogs accompanied the goatherds, while the Basques held a large brown cur on a rope leash.

The men were jawing at one another, and the Basques' dog was straining at his restraint, ready to do battle with the other dogs. Or, for all Longarm knew, the animal was ready to fight the Mexicans.

“Shit,” he mumbled aloud. “This could be the start o' that war.”

He trotted across the ragged and weedy courthouse lawn to the benches where the men were standing and snapping at one another.

Longarm was about to say something to them when one of the Mexicans spoke and his dogs lunged for the brown that belonged to the Basques.

Within seconds the brown dog had one black dog at its throat and another biting and snarling at its flank.

The Basque who had hold of the brown dog's leash shouted and jumped back, letting his dog go so it could defend itself.

For a moment the two groups of men were too intent on watching their dogs fight to pay attention to each other.

Each group began loudly exhorting their animals.

The dogs meanwhile were tangled in a barking, snapping, snarling whirl of dust and flying fur.

Despite being outnumbered two to one, the brown dog appeared to be getting the best of the fight. It shook a black-and-white dog off and laid open a hind leg of the other Mexican dog, then attacked the first black-and-white head-on, driving the dog into the dirt and taking a grip on that one's throat.

The Mexicans saw their dogs down and bleeding, possibly dying. One of them raised his rifle and shot the brown dog in the body.

Instantly the Basques had their rifles up and appeared to be ready to shoot too.

Longarm charged in between the two groups—a move that he later, when he had time to think about it, found to be remarkably stupid, considering that he was stepping between two armed and volatile camps—yelling and motioning with the barrels of the sawed-off for them to put their guns down and back off. Amazingly, they did.

“You,” he said, motioning to the Mexicans, “go. Vamoose.
Andale.
Whatever the fuck those words are. Anyhow, git!” He pointed toward Doris's saloon and made hand motions to shoo the men in that direction.

One of the black-and-white dogs was dead, its throat ripped out by the brown, but the other was only bleeding from a deep gash in its hind leg. That one likely would live, even be able to return to work if someone sewed the wound closed. The surviving dog was picked up by one of the Mexicans, who draped it over his shoulder while another man stanched the wound with a handful of dust and a wrap of his bandanna.

The brown dog was still alive but barely so. The Basques shot furious glares—but only looks at this point—at the retreating Mexicans. They knelt beside their dying dog, and one of them dropped into the dirt of the street and pulled the animal's head into his lap. The dog licked his hand twice and then died. Longarm could see tears on the man's cheeks.

The other Basque stood and took a fresh grip on his rifle.

“I wouldn't do that, old son,” Longarm warned.

The Basque glanced once at the stern expression on Longarm's face, shivered, and let his rifle drop, muzzle down. After a few minutes the two Basques picked up their dead dog and walked away.

Longarm looked up at the imposing McConnell County Courthouse and pondered what the hell he could do to keep warfare from breaking out around it.

He stood there for perhaps five minutes before he squared his shoulders and with a grunt set off at a rapid pace.

He went to Doris's saloon and marched inside. The Mexicans who were drinking and talking there turned quiet and sullen at his appearance among them.

“Who's the owner here?” he demanded of the man behind the bar.

“In the back,” the man said, inclining his head in that direction.

“Get him,” Longarm snapped.

“It's a her not a him,” the barman said.

“Fine. So get her. An' do it damn quick.”

“What makes you think I'll . . .” The bartender shut his mouth when he saw the deadly cold stare he received from the lawman. “Uh, yes, sir. Right away.”

Longarm did not have long to wait. Seconds after the bartender disappeared into the back, a woman emerged in his place behind the long bar. She was on the cloudy side of middle age, with her hair done into a tight bun and wearing a throat-high, long-sleeved charcoal-colored dress. Her face was marred by the sort of tracks left by a past bout with a pox of some sort. She did not look particularly welcoming.