Longarm and the Deadwood Shoot-out (9781101619209) (7 page)

Longarm was slumped in the corner of the rear seat on a Concord stage that was much larger than was necessary, at least for this run. In front of him, on the rear-facing bench, were two whores whose perfume could not completely mask the fact that they needed to bathe. Beside him dozed a drummer who sold hardware. The middle bench was empty.

The coach rocked and swayed outrageously on the leather suspension straps that served as springs. The motion was very similar to that of a boat in choppy water, so much so that one of the whores had become seasick and puked out the window.

Longarm yawned and stretched. He gave some thought to the question of should he try to sleep. Or not bother trying.

“Whoa. Whoa, you sons o’ bitches,” the driver called from his box high above the four-up out front.

Must be some obstruction on the road, Longarm assumed, because they were not due into Belle Fourche
for—he pulled his Ingersoll out and checked the time—not for another three quarters of an hour or more.

The coach came to a stop, rocking back and forth on the suspension. The driver called out, “We have a box here but it’s empty. That’s why I don’t got no shotgun messenger, mister.”

Longarm’s interest quickened. They were being robbed? Well, it was what he had been hoping for. But it surprised him nonetheless.

“Toss it down,” another voice came from in front of the stage.

“Suit yourself,” the driver responded, “but I’m tellin’ you there ain’t nothing in it.”

There was a slight pause, then the dull thump of something heavy—the strongbox, no doubt—hitting the road.

“Now the passengers,” the distant voice demanded. “Get ’em out.”

“Fuck you. Get them out yourself,” the driver said.

“Mind your tongue, old man, or I’ll blow you off that high horse you’re riding.”

The driver shut up after that and a moment later a man wearing an oversized linen duster and a flour-sack mask over his head appeared beside the coach.

“Everybody out,” he ordered. “Hands high. Empty your pockets.”

Longarm pushed ahead of the hardware drummer to reach the door first. He motioned for the two whores to get down onto the floor.

“Hurry up. We ain’t got all day.”

“We,” the highwayman said. So he had at least one partner out there out of Longarm’s line of sight.

“Come on now.”

Longarm palmed his .45 and pushed the coach door open.

“You’re under arrest,” he said as he stepped out of the Concord.

The robber jerked—startled, no doubt, although Longarm could not see his facial expression beneath that hood—and brought the muzzle of his revolver around toward Longarm. Any self-respecting robber would have been aiming toward the coach to begin with, of course.

Then he made his second mistake. And by far his worse one. He cocked his piece—again it rightly should have been ready to fire to start with—and tried to shoot Custis Long in the face.

Before the man could trigger his Smith & Wesson Schofield, Longarm put a bullet in his chest and another in the belly. The first slug knocked him back a step. The second doubled him over with a cry of pain.

“You didn’t…you didn’t have to…”

By that time Longarm was on the ground in a crouch, looking around for the others.

He saw no one.

“You up there. Jehu,” he called up to the driver. “D’you see any more of ’em?”

The pale, obviously frightened stagecoach driver crawled up from the floor of his driving box and peered over the side.

“I asked you…”

“I heard you, mister. Jesus. That was scary. Fourteen years I been driving for Bastrop and this is the first time I ever been held up. I didn’t like it, not one bit.”

“Mister, do you see any more of them?” Longarm repeated.

The driver finally paid attention to the question. He shuddered, shaken badly, but said, “No, I only seen the one.”

Longarm frowned. This was
almost
the way they said the robbers worked. Almost. Not quite.

The way he understood it there should have been at least one more robber there to back up the first one. And the robbers were said to never speak. Never. They just gestured with the muzzles of their shotguns.

Which was another thing. This guy had a revolver but no shotgun.

Still, the duster was correct as was the flour-sack hood. And the son of a bitch had indeed tried to hold up the coach. A coach, come to think of it, with an empty strongbox.

That was another thing, Longarm was thinking as he carefully shucked the empty brass out of his Colt and reloaded with fresh cartridges from his coat pocket. Always before the robbers seemed to know in advance that the shipment included cash. Not this time.

“Are you sure you don’t see no others?” he called up to the driver.

“Mister, if I seen any more of ’em I wouldn’t be setting up here in plain sight. I’d still be down in my box.”

Longarm grunted. He shoved his Colt back into the leather, but warily. He was not yet satisfied that the robber had been alone.

“Come on down an’ help me,” he told the driver.

“What for?”

“’Cause we got to take care of this fellow.”

“You mean maybe he isn’t dead?”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure he’s dead. But we can’t leave him laying here. I want t’ pick him up an’ haul him into Belle Fourche.”

“You’re gonna get blood all inside my coach. The section boss will be pissed.”

“We can put him in the luggage boot. But we got to carry him in with us. Now come on down an’ help me.”

With obvious distaste for the chore, the jehu set his brake and came down off the box.

Longarm knelt beside the dead robber and pulled the hood off, exposing a seedy-looking middle-aged man who had not shaved in days and whose hollowed cheeks suggested he might not have eaten in some time, either.

“Know him?” he asked the driver when the man joined him.

The jehu shook his head. “Never saw him before. Nor any posters on him, neither.”

Longarm checked the man’s pockets but found nothing more interesting than a snot-stiff bandana and a rusty barlow knife. He retrieved the Schofield from where it had fallen and stuffed it behind the dead man’s belt. There was no holster for it. Apparently the man had not been in the habit of carrying a revolver or just chose to
carry it in his waistband. He had no spare ammunition for the pistol.

Every way he looked at it, Longarm thought, this seemed an amateur attempt at highway robbery. It just did not fit with all the things he had heard about this robber gang.

“You got ’im, Marshal. You put an end to our string of holdups,” the driver said.

By then the other passengers were out of the coach and coming timidly forward to gather over the dead robber and stare down at him. It was an impulse Longarm had never understood but one that was common.

“Come on you,” he said to the drummer. “The three of us can lift this guy easy enough. We’ll put him in the luggage boot an’ carry him to town with us.”

One of the whores, the one who had gotten seasick earlier in the trip, bent down and wet a forefinger in the poor son of a bitch’s blood.

“Why’d you do that?” Longarm asked her.

The chippy shrugged. “I dunno, I just…I dunno.”

Longarm and the other two men made easy work of picking the robber up and carrying him to the coach. They transferred all the baggage to the roof of the coach and the driver secured the leather luggage boot with the corpse inside.

“Everybody back aboard now,” the jehu called. “We’ll be late as it is so let’s not make this any worse than it’s gotta be.”

Longarm helped the two women into the coach, stood aside for the salesman to board and then climbed inside himself. Up on the driving box the jehu took up his lines and snapped his whip above the ears of his leaders. The Bastrop coach lurched into motion and they were once more rolling toward Belly Fourche.

Longarm sat slouched in his corner again but this time he was not dozing. This time he was pondering, and what he kept coming back to was that he indeed had stopped a robbery. But he more than likely had not stopped the robbers he had come here to find.

“Marshal, I’m god-awful sorry but I’m already behind schedule. You got to do what you got to do, but so do I. And what I got to do is get on with my route. You can catch the next coach through. That’s all there is to it.”

“When is that?” Longarm asked. They were stopped outside the barbershop in Belle Fourche, where they had just unloaded the body of the dead highwayman for the barber, who also served as the town’s undertaker, to undertake.

“It ain’t but three days, Marshal. That’s our next outfit down.”

Longarm grunted. Three days in Belle Fourche was not exactly what he had planned. But he did want to speak with the local marshal and, if possible, the county sheriff as well. One of them might know more about the robbers. The successful ones, that is, not the poor dead son of a bitch laid out on the undertaker’s slab now.

“Fine then. Hand me down my carpetbag.”

The driver crawled onto the roof of his coach.
He retrieved the bag in question and handed it down to Longarm. Then the man took up his driving lines and put the coach into motion again. He looked pleased to be leaving Custis Long behind.

The barber was standing on the boardwalk behind him. “Mind if I leave my bag with you till I figure out what I’m doin’ tonight?” Longarm asked.

“You can leave the bag, Marshal, but who’ll be paying for the laying out and the burying?”

“You’ll have t’ talk with your sheriff ’bout that, I’d think,” Longarm said. “I’d expect the county t’ pay, but that ain’t up to me.”

The barber, a beefy man with thinning hair, reached up to scratch his nose. Longarm noticed that his hands were bloody almost up to the elbows. Very likely, Longarm thought, the fellow had already dug the bullets out of the robber’s body. He probably would sell those to someone as souvenirs. Likely would have photographs taken, too. He might have to split those profits with the photographer but the bullets and anything else he could scavenge off—or out of—the body would be his alone. Longarm always found undertaking to be a damned strange business. Necessary, though.

Longarm set his bag inside the barbershop doorway and thanked the barber for the courtesy, then asked, “Where can I find your sheriff?”

“His office is over in the county courthouse. That’s it over there.” The man pointed toward a sprawling single-story structure two blocks over. “Marshal Bennett is across the street in the city hall. You can’t see it from here but there’s a sign. The sheriff is Ed Hochavar.”

“Bennett,” Longarm repeated, “an’ Hochavar. All right, thanks.”

“Ask them who’s gonna pay,” the barber said.

“I’ll do that, you bet,” Longarm responded, not meaning a word of it. “Oh, one more thing. Where’s the telegraph office here?”

“That would be in the post office. It’s right around the corner from the courthouse.”

“You been a big help. Thanks.” Longarm touched the brim of his Stetson, then turned and headed down the street in the direction of the local government buildings.

He undoubtedly would be asked to fill out some paperwork about the dead man. And if he was going to be stuck here for three days he might as well send a wire to Billy Vail informing the boss about the state of his investigation. Such as it was.

Ed Hochavar was a big man with a big belly. He was getting on in years, late fifties or early sixties, Longarm guessed. That was old for a lawman. The sheriff was obviously liked by the local citizens, though, or they would not keep voting him into office.

When Longarm introduced himself, Hochavar extended a welcoming hand and said, “You’re the deputy who killed Tom Bowen this morning, right?”

“Bowen,” Longarm said. “I didn’t know the man’s name.”

“Tom has…had, I should say…a hardscrabble farm north of town. Dumb son of a bitch left a widow and half a dozen kids out there. I’ve already sent a man to tell Jeanine about her husband.” He shook his head. “Tony Conseca over at the barber shop is going to be pretty pissed off. Jeanine won’t be able to pay for the burying.”

“What about the county?” Longarm asked.

Hochavar shrugged. “Wasn’t our kill nor capture so I don’t see as how the county should be on the hook for it.
I suppose we’ll just have to pass the hat around our saloons and maybe Sunday morning at church services. We’ll manage, of course. Folks always do, one way or another.”

“I can kick in a little, too,” Longarm offered.

“That’s good of you, Deputy.”

“T’ tell the truth though, Sheriff, Bowen isn’t why I wanted t’ talk to you.”

Hochavar’s eyebrows went up. “Oh?”

“What I’m here about, sheriff, is your successful highway robbers. We both know that Bowen didn’t pull those jobs. I’d like you t’ tell me whatever you know about them.”

“I know they were committed across the line into Montana Territory. Out of my jurisdiction, you know.”

“Of course. Right now I’m looking for information, that’s all.”

Hochavar harrumphed and reached into a pocket for a meerschaum pipe that had passed through the golden color to a dark, glossy brown. “No offense taken, young fellow. I just want to be clear about this.”

“I assume you’ve spoken with the drivers and maybe some passengers who were robbed.”

“Now that’s one thing,” the sheriff said. “They all say the same. The robbers were quiet. Not a peep out of them during the holdups. And the passengers weren’t bothered. All they wanted was the cash box. And every time those boxes were full of currency and coin. They don’t hit every shipment of cash but whenever they hit there was plenty of cash in those boxes to be had.”

“Have details of the robberies been made public?” Longarm asked.

Hochavar nodded. “Of course. We don’t have a newspaper of our own, but there are papers in Lead and
Deadwood and Miles City, too. We get all of them and they all had stories in them about the robberies.”

“Including the story by Jennifer Wiley? She’s the Englishwoman who…”

Hochavar waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, I know Jen, all right, but she’s no more an Englishwoman than I am. She came out here as kitchen help in Lord Banfield’s hunting party. Her real name is Jennifer Vaughn and she is from the Bowery in New York City. Yeah, I know Jen, all right.”