Longarm and the wayward.., p.1
Longarm and the Wayward Widow, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Teaser chapter
NIGHT MOVES
The sound came again. It was the faint rasp of the window being raised.
A dark shape pushed past the curtains. He could see the intruder silhouetted against the faint light from outside. Longarm was about to grasp his revolver when something rattled and the intruder let out a yelp and pitched forward toward the bed.
Longarm whipped his hand up and grabbed the intruder’s throat, finding it by blind luck in the dark. As his fingers closed around a slender neck, they both fell off the bed, landing on the rug beside it with a thump. He got his other hand on the throat and hoped the son of a bitch didn’t have a knife.
It took him about ten seconds to realize ...
Longarm let go of the woman’s neck and jerked himself up off of her, exclaiming, “What the hell!”
He heard a couple of deep, rasping breaths, then she said a little hoarsely, “Is that how you always greet female visitors, Marshal Long?”
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Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him ... the Gunsmith.
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WILDGUN by Jack Hanson
Will Barlow’s continuing search for his daughter, kidnapped by the Blackfeet Indians who slaughtered the rest of his family.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either 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 WAYWARD WIDOW
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY Jove edition / January 2001
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2001 by Penguin Putnam Inc.,
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eISBN : 978-1-101-17906-2
A JOVE BOOK® Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
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Chapter 1
This was a house of God, Longarm thought as a bullet chewed splinters from the thick wooden beam of the door-frame about six inches from his head. Fellas hadn’t ought to be shooting at it.
But it was going to take more than fear of the Lord to stop the killers who were after him. Longarm brought the Winchester to his shoulder, triggered off three shots as fast as he could work the rifle’s lever and pull its trigger, then ducked back into the shadows inside the old mission. He grabbed the massive wooden door and started to swing it shut as he shouted at the women, “Get back! Hunker down behind those pews!”
More slugs thudded into the door, but they weren’t able to penetrate it. That door was so thick it would probably stand up to anything except maybe a cannonball, thought Longarm. He grunted as he shoved it shut with his shoulder, then dropped the bar across it that would hold it closed. Anybody who tried to come in that way would have his work cut out for him.
The mission had been built a couple of hundred years earlier, Longarm guessed, when the Spanish padres first came to this part of what was then New Spain. Not all the Indians who lived here at the time had taken kindly to being converted, sometimes against their will, so the missions had been constructed to serve as fortresses also. The conquistadors who had come with the padres had seen to it that rifle slits were cut in the walls so that they could use their matchlock muskets. Longarm was grateful for that as he ran over to one of the narrow slits and peered cautiously through it.
The rifle slit widened out on the interior of the wall so that a defender inside the mission had a better field of view—and field of fire—than folks outside. Longarm couldn’t see any of the gunmen who had chased him and the women in here, but he knew they were there. He wondered if there was a back door to the mission. If there was, he and the women might be up the proverbial creek without a paddle, because he couldn’t be in two places at once.
But if there wasn’t, he could hold off an army from in here—at least until his ammunition ran out. The Colt in the cross-draw rig on his left hip was a .44 and used the same cartridges as the Winchester, and Longarm knew the loops on his shell belt were full. That gave him twenty rounds right there. He felt inside the pocket of his denim jacket and brought out a small box. It contained forty more cartridges, and he was damned glad he had thought to get it out of his saddlebag earlier, when he hadn’t been sure exactly what he would find when he rode into this nameless little Mexican village.
So, he could hold out for a while but not forever. Not to mention the problem of food and water, which would become more important the longer they were trapped in here. Things could have been worse, but they could have been a whole hell of a lot better, too.
A rifle bullet spanged through the slit and whipped past Longarm’s head. He jerked back instinctively. That had been a lucky shot, he knew, but luck could kill a man just as dead as good aim.
“Thanks, Billy,” he muttered. “You sure know how to get a fella in one bad scrape after another ...”
“You ever done any matchmaking, Custis?” Chief Marshal Billy Vail had asked a couple of weeks earlier in his office in the Denver federal building.
Longarm leaned back in the red leather chair, cocked his right ankle on his left knee, and dug a cheroot out of his vest pocket. “Can’t say as I have,” he replied. “Leastways, not for other people. I reckon I’ve made some matches of my own.”
Vail grunted. His most reliable deputy’s reputation with the ladies was well-known. Longarm had had more women than a dog has fleas, and as a sober, upstanding federal official and a happily married man to boot, Vail was torn between disapproving of Longarm’s amorous activities and feeling intensely jealous of the rangy son of a bitch.
Longarm had known Vail for so long that he didn’t have any trouble knowing what his boss was thinking as Vail frowned across the desk at him. Vail cleared his throat and picked up a folded newspaper in front of him. “Read this,” he said as he tossed it over to Longarm.
“What part?” Longarm asked as he unfolded the paper. He stuck the cheroot in his mouth unlit.
“The story that starts out Montoya Lawsuit Filed in Federal District Court.”
Longarm scanned the dense column of type. Some of the details may have escaped him, but he got the gist of the story: Some rancher down in New Mexico named Alejandro Montoya was filing suit against another rancher named McCabe over a boundary line dispute. Such things weren’t that uncommon; the only odd angle was that the suit had been filed in federal court instead of territorial court. And that was explained, Longarm noted a moment later, by the fact that this fella Montoya’s holdings came from an old Spanish land grant. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had put such things under Uncle Sam’s jurisdiction.
“I don’t get it, Billy,” Longarm said as he lowered the newspaper. “What’s this got to do with us?”
“Did you notice the date on that paper?” As a matter of fact, Longarm hadn’t. He checked it and saw that the newspaper was nearly seven months old. It had come from a town in New Mexico called Palmerton.
“I reckon I still don’t see why this is any of our business.”
“A couple of weeks after that lawsuit was filed, before it could come to trial, Tom McCabe was killed. Murdered, in fact. Bushwhacked while he was riding on his ranch.”
Longarm shrugged. “Hard to defend yourself in court when you’re dead.” He tossed the newspaper back on Vail’s desk and felt in his pocket for a lucifer. Finding one, he snapped it to life on his thumbnail and set fire to the cheroot before dropping the sulfur match in the bucket of sand next to the desk.
“Yep, that’s why the judge postponed the case, out of respect for McCabe’s widow.”
“Montoya’s still pressing the suit, even though McCabe’s dead?”
Vail nodded. “He hasn’t given up. He claims some of McCabe’s range belongs to him, and he wants it back.”
Longarm’s eyes narrowed, and he asked, “Anybody happen to know where Montoya was about the time McCabe got himself bushwhacked?”
“He was in Palmerton, the county seat, with plenty of witnesses around.”
Longarm puffed on the cheroot. “That’s mighty handy for Señor Montoya, ain’t it?”
“That’s what some people think. The Widow McCabe and her lawyer haven’t been shy about hinting that Montoya might have had something to do with McCabe’s death. That’s one reason things are heating up down there. Another is that the case is finally coming to trial next week.”
“And you’re afraid that it’s liable to bust out into a shooting war before then?”
“That’s what the sheriff in Palmerton thinks might happen,” Vail said. “He’s the one who wired me to see if I could give him any help.”
“So you’re sending me to keep the lid on things and let the case run its course in court?”
Vail nodded again. “That’s right.”
Longarm took a deep drag on the cheroot and then blew the smoke out in a perfect ring that floated toward the banjo clock on the wall. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand, Billy.”
“What’s that?”
“What in blazes does any of this have to do with matchmaking?”
“I haven’t gotten to that yet,” Vail said rather testily. “It seems that Montoya offered to drop the lawsuit if Mrs. McCabe would agree to one condition.”
Longarm waited, but Vail didn’t say anything else. Frustrated, Longarm finally said, “Well?”
Vail leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together on his belly. “Montoya wants Mrs. McCabe to marry him,” he said.
Longarm frowned. “You said her husband’s only been dead for six months?”
“A little over six months. That’s a respectable enough mourning period, I suppose.”
“Maybe Montoya figures he won’t win his case in court, so he’s trying to get his hands on the McCabe range by marrying the widow.”
“Could be,” Vail allowed. “You can look into that, too, as well as keeping both sides from trying to shoot each other and trying to find out who ambushed Tom McCabe.”
“Is that all?” Longarm asked dryly.
“Ought to keep you busy for a few days.”
Longarm uncrossed his legs and came to his feet. “I’ll get started.”
“You can take the train to Santa Fe and rent a horse there to ride on over to Palmerton. Henry’s got your travel vouchers.” As Longarm turned toward the door, Vail added, “Custis.”
Longarm looked back, eyebrows raised.
“Try not to shoot a bunch of folks this time,” Vail said wearily.
“Now you’re the one putting conditions on things, Billy.” Longarm grinned around the cheroot. “I reckon I ought to be grateful, though. Leastways you didn’t ask me to marry you.”
Chapter 2
Longarm rode into Palmerton from the east the next day, having spent one night on the trail from Santa Fe. He wore denim jeans and jacket, a butternut shirt, and his usual black stovepipe boots and flat-crowned, snuff-brown Stetson. His big gold turnip watch, which he usually carried in his vest pocket, was in his trousers instead, along with the little .44 derringer that was welded to the other end of the watch chain. Without the vest, he didn’t really need a fob for the watch, but he felt uncomfortable leaving the derringer behind. It had saved his hide too many times.
The horse he had rented in Santa Fe was a big steeldust gelding, a better mount than he’d had any right to expect to find in a livery stable. He had picked it out without hesitation when the hostler showed him what was available in the corral. Longarm had his own saddle, a McClellan, and a saddle sheath in which he carried his Winchester. He’d been able to strike a good deal with the hostler, so maybe Billy Vail wouldn’t complain too much about his expenses on this job.
Palmerton was located in a broad valley between two minor ranges of mountains at the tail end of the Rockies. The slopes of the mountains were covered with pine and spruce, while the valley itself was richly grassed and had a couple of decent streams winding through it. It was fine ranching country, Longarm judged as he looked it over from the mountain pass by which he entered the valley. To the best of his recollection, he had never been here before, but he thought it was the kind of place he wouldn’t mind coming back to one of these days when he retired.
Then he smiled grimly at the very thought of retirement. Gents in his line of work hardly ever got put out to pasture. They packed a badge until some badman got the best of them, and then they wound up with six feet of dirt and a stone marker.
Well, no point in dwelling on that, he told himself. If he took care of business, that sort of fate was a long time in the future. He rode down a fairly straight, well-marked trail that led to Palmerton.
The county seat was a good-sized settlement that also served as the supply point for the ranches in the valley. The broad main street was lined with businesses for several blocks. The cross streets were mostly residential, Longarm saw as he rode along slowly. The eastern end of town was obviously the respectable end. There were a couple of churches, a school house, a pair of banks facing each other across the street, a milliner’s, an apothecary shop, a doctor’s office, a land office, a nice-looking hotel, a restaurant, several emporiums, and a barbershop.
Smack dab in the middle of town was the courthouse, a two-story stone building. It sat not on a square as was customary, but on the south side of the street facing an empty lot on the other side. Beyond the courthouse was the less genteel part of Palmerton: a couple of livery stables, a blacksmith shop, a hotel that didn’t look anywhere near as nice as the other one, and half a dozen or more saloons, ranging in size from a dingy little hole-in-the-wall to an ornate, block-long structure called the Imperial. The Imperial’s batwinged entrance was on the comer, and Longarm saw several gun-hung men lounging around it. Obviously, Palmerton didn’t have an ordinance against carrying weapons inside the town limits.
Longarm reined up in front of the courthouse and swung down from the saddle. As he tied the steeldust’s reins to the hitch rack, he spotted a smaller side entrance with a sign over it that read SHERIFF’S OFFICE. He walked around to it, climbed up a couple of steps, and went inside. He found himself in a short hallway. To the left was a thick, heavy, padlocked door that probably led to a cell block. Longarm went through the open door on his right into a small office where almost every available bit of wall space was taken up by mounted sets of antlers.
The man behind the desk sat up straighter and grunted. “Help you?” he asked in a raspy voice. Longarm had the impression he had awakened the man.
“Sheriff Walcott?” he asked, figuring from the star on the man’s vest that it was a pretty good guess.
“That’s right.” The sheriff pushed himself to his feet. He was a stocky man with a soup-strainer mustache and slicked-down gray hair. The black suit he wore was dusty. “Sheriff Orville Walcott. What can I do for you?”
“I’m U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long. Chief Marshal Vail sent me down here to see if I can give you a hand with the trouble you’ve got brewing.”
Sheriff Walcott frowned. “No offense, mister, but you look a mite like a gunslick. You got any identification?”
Longarm reached inside his jacket and brought out the leather folder that contained his badge and identification papers. He handed over the folder, and after studying the bona fides for a moment, Walcott handed them back.
