Legend With a Six-gun (9781101601839) (15 page)

Bitter Water nodded and said, “Church bells. They ring the bells in the church at Manzanita when there is trouble.”

“Right. They've spotted this smoke talk and someone's excited as all hell about it. If your band is anywhere near here, I'd take them over a few ridges pronto. They'll likely get everyone to cover and sit tight for our whooping attack, but in case anyone feels brave enough to ride up here before the army sends help . . .”

Bitter Water rose soberly to his feet and said, “We are going over the mountains where the Saltu have not yet cut the pinyons for mine props. It is well I found you. What if we had been caught unawares by your foolishness?”

“Hell, I spotted you watching me from that next ridge before I even lit the fire. In my time I've fought Apache, so I know, better than most, where you folks can be found. I see by the polish on that boulder yonder that you've been using this peak as a lookout for a mighty long time.”

Bitter Water laughed again and said, “Let us hope the others do not read sign as well as you do. I go with a glad heart. The money you offer will get us through another hungry winter.”

Longarm said, “I figured it might. Listen, Bitter Water. Sooner or later you know you'll have to pack it in. You're a smart cuss. Why don't you lead your folks in to the agency and let them eat regular meals? It's late in the game for the old ways in these hills.”

Bitter Water shrugged. “We shall last one more winter, thanks to you. Next spring the camus bulbs will be spread upon the table of the Great Spirit, the manzanita apples will ripen as always, and the acorns never fail us. I know what is in your heart, and you are a good person, but we were not put here to be the tolerated pets of your kind. We will live as we have always lived, or we will die, but we will die as real people. I have spoken.”

As the Indian trudged away without looking back, Longarm saddled up and headed for San Andreas.

He rode down to the main road through a canyon, then cut to the north. He rode slowly. At the moment he was simply giving his quarry enough rope to hang themselves. As he passed through a road cut, he was thinking of the little librarian. He had no other serious plans for that evening. A bunch of poppies were growing from the rocky bank of the road cut. Longarm reined in and, leaning in his saddle, reached over for a bunch. A distant rifle snapped, and a high-powered bullet whizzed past his left ear like an angry hornet!

He was leaning anyway, so he just kept going, snatching the Winchester from its boot as he dove headfirst off his spooked mount. The gelding ran off as Longarm hit the dirt on his side, rolled over on his gut in the dust behind a fallen boulder, and levered a .44-40 round into the chamber.

He spotted a drifting cloud of smoke amid the branches of an oak grove he'd just ridden past. The bushwhacker hadn't been laying for him there or he'd be dead right now. The jasper had followed him from Manzanita, seen him outlined nicely in the cut, and let fly.

Longarm had a clear field of fire into the oaks. He could see that there was little cover in the shade of the overhanging branches, except for the tree trunks themselves. The bushwhacker could be behind a trunk, but it hardly seemed likely. When a gent draws a bead on another man's back, and sees that he's missed, he either fires some more or runs away, and there had only been that one shot.

Longarm strained his ears for the sound of hoofbeats. His own gelding had run out the other side of the cut, but it was grazing now, in a patch of lush mountain meadow to the north. Longarm could hear it chomping wet sedge. It sounded like someone chewing celery. He could hear a distant redwing's doorbell cry, too. The cut he lay in was a natural ear horn. He should have been able to hear the bushwhacker's sounds, if the son of a bitch was making any. So he was either long gone or lying low.

Longarm felt like a fool, spread out on his belly like a lizard in the dust, with the bastard who'd shot at him already halfway home. On the other hand, he'd seen many a man catch a rifle ball between the eyebrows by raising his head too soon for a look-see. In his time, he'd put a few impatient jaspers in the ground himself. So he decided he'd just stay put for a spell. It wasn't as though he had anything more important to do that afternoon than just to keep on breathing.

Longarm sniffed uncertainly as a stray current of breeze carried an ominous odor to his nostrils.
Smoke?

That was a worrisome thought. The son of a bitch bushwhacker might have set fire to the brush to burn him out.

Longarm removed his trigger finger from the Winchester, leaving the gun braced and aimed at the oaks as his left hand grasped it by the forward grip. He wet his finger and held it up. Such breeze as there was came from the soggy meadow behind him. He was upwind of the oak grove, so the bushwhacker wasn't trying to smoke him out. He
couldn't
smoke him out. Even if he'd circled around and crossed the ridge this cut ran through, the meadow was watered by a meandering stream.
Jesus! You're getting old!
he warned himself, as he shot an anxious glance at the skyline to his left and right.

He was down between two rises. They'd told him in the army always to take to the high ground. If the bushwhacker was up on either ridge right now, he could be creeping in Apache-style. If he got to the top of either side of the cut, he could drop anything from piss to bullets on any fool lying spread out below.

Longarm shot one more pensive glance at the oak grove, decided it was the lesser danger, and started to get up.

Something stung him on the right hip. It felt like he had a pocketful of red ants or maybe a lit cigar in his britches!

Certain that he'd rolled on a scorpion in the dust, Longarm glanced down at his side as he started to climb the side of the cut. Blue tendrils of smoke were curling from the side pocket of his frock coat. He swore and started shucking out of the coat. Now he knew what he'd been smelling. It was the acid—the bottle of aqua regia he'd stolen from Baxter's kit. The goddamned bottle had broken when he had dived off the gelding!

Dropping the coat, Longarm kept going up, taking one emergency at a time. Some of the acid had soaked through to his longjohns. Baxter had said the stuff would dissolve pure gold, but a bullet tended to smart where it hit you, too.

There was no sense in sticking one's head over a rim where someone might be expecting company. So Longarm simply leaped over the top of the rise and crabbed to his left, training his Winchester down the length of the ridge. It was covered with cheat grass bleached tawny by the summer sun. The nice thing about cheat was that it only grew a few inches tall before going to seed and dying off. So there was no cover to worry about. The bushwhacker had fired a single shot and lit out, leaving the tall deputy with the ridge to himself and smoke pouring out of his right pants pocket.

Hoping nobody important was coming up or down the road from either direction, Longarm unbuckled his gunbelt and let it fall around his ankles. Holding the rifle in one hand, he started fumbling at his pants as he ran down the slope toward his grazing mount. The gelding shied and loped off a few yards, dragging its reins through the grass. But Longarm wasn't after the canteen hanging from the saddle. Not with a whole running brook right in front of him.

He had the trousers down around his thighs and had unbuttoned the longjohns by the time he ran the last few yards to the brook and plopped down bare-assed, with his hide starting to smell like he'd just been roped, thrown and branded!

As the cooling mountain stream washed over him from the waist down, Longarm sat there with the Winchester across his knees and began to laugh like a jackass. He was aware of the ludicrous picture he presented—a grown man sitting bare-assed in the middle of a meadow in his shirtsleeves, vest, and Stetson, holding a rifle like a fishing pole. But he kept an eye on the treeline all around, just the same. Explaining what he was doing would be bad enough, if some carriage filled with womenfolk came along. If the bushwhacker was still skulking in the neighborhood, he might laugh too. Then again, he might not. Longarm knew he was a tempting target at the moment.

Gingerly, he rose far enough to survey the damage. The acid had burned through his tweed pants and cotton longjohns. He hoped it had lost some of its strength in digesting less important stuff than human hide. The burn wasn't all that bad. It looked and felt as if he had brushed against a hot stove. He'd been, lucky. The bottle had broken and leaked out into his coat pocket as he lay facedown in the cut, with the coattails spread out to his sides. Most of the acid had simply run into the dirt. What hadn't had ruined his duds and nearly ruined him, but he could buy new clothes and his rump would be all right.

He decided that the running water must have washed the acid away by now, so he pulled on his pants and got to his feet. As he squished back to where he'd left the coat, he explored his pockets. His jackknife was well oiled, so it wouldn't rust. His wallet and paper money were in the coat, on the dry side. He shook out the loose change that had been closest to the acid and whistled. Baxter had been right about the stuff being mean. A couple of silver dimes were stuck together and a penny had been gold-plated. A ten-dollar gold eagle was etched badly and silvered on one side from the dimes. He was glad he hadn't been lying right on top of the stuff.

His coat was still smoldering, so he held it out to one side as he emptied the pockets and carried it over to the brook to rinse it out. By the time he'd gotten it to stop smoking, it was a total loss. A few moth holes were allowable in an old tweed coat, but this was ridiculous. It looked like it had been attacked by wolves.

Longarm picked up his gunbelt and strapped it back on. Holding the rifle and the wet coat, he waltzed across the meadow after the skittish gelding, who seemed to think they were playing matador and bull.

Just as Longarm began seriously to consider shooting the gelding once and for all, it stopped dancing away and began to study a clump of wild onion as Longarm, swearing at it, lashed the wet coat to the saddle skirt, slid the rifle into its boot, and mounted up.

Wet from the waist down and sounding like an Indian squaw pounding her laundry on a rock, Longarm rode on. The thin mountain air was warm and dry, so by the time he got to San Andreas, his only wet clothes were his socks. He knew his boots would curl up like cardboard if he took them off to dry, so he left them on. The leather would mold to his feet and stay supple.

He stopped first at a drugstore. He went in, told the laconic old man behind the counter he'd sat in some aqua regia, and asked what the druggist suggested he do about it.

The old man led him into a back room and ordered him to drop his britches again. As he studied Longarm's rump, he said, “Only a first-degree burn. Lucky for you there was running water handy. I've got some camphorated bear grease we might try.”

The deputy grimaced distastefully. “Ain't you got anything that doesn't stink so bad, Doc? I was aiming to buy some new pants, and—”

“We'll just butter your ass a mite with spermaceti, then,” the druggist said. “How does that suit you? Sperm whale oil smells sort of sweet.”

“Yeah. I'd best spring for some cologne water, too. Every time I inhale, I smell burnt wool. You know, that fool acid smells like metal, even when you wash it away?”

“Metallic ions,” said the druggist, as he started to paint Longarm's burn with a cotton swab dipped in the sweet-smelling oil. The old man muttered on about the way acids and alkalies worked, but Longarm was a bit weary of the subject by this time. He was annoyed at himself for ever having taken the stuff, and considered himself more of an expert on aqua regia than he'd ever intended to be.

Leaving the druggist, and smelling much better, Longarm rode the gelding to the livery and bedded it down. He took the ruined coat and walked back the way he'd just ridden, looking for a tailor shop he'd spotted before. He found the shop, and sure enough, the sign in the window said they sold ready-to-wear as well as tailor-made.

He went in to discuss his wardrobe. The tailor clucked over the acid burns and said he had a suit similar to the ruined one. Since Longarm never bought anything but ready-to-wear, this came as no great surprise.

The new coat was almost a perfect match for the tobacco-tweed vest. The pants were a little short, but Longarm said they'd do. A few holes in his longjohns weren't worth getting excited about in summer.

The tailor said, “You could use a new hat, too. I just got in a new line of Stetsons and you've been beating hell out of that one you have on.”

Longarm took off his hat and regarded it soberly. Aside from the old bullet hole in the telescoped crown and a little wear and tear, he noticed a dime-sized hole in the brim. He fingered the charred edge. A drop of the acid must have spattered on it, probably when the bottle in his pocket first broke. He was glad it had missed the side of his head, or more importantly, his eyes. The acid had worn itself out eating felt and the hole was dry.

Longarm said he was in a line of work that hardly called for new hats. He paid for the new clothing with a government expense voucher, then he went out, feeling like a sissy and smelling of cologne and moth balls.

He went to the Drover's Rest Hotel and engaged a room, saying he intended to stay in town until he received orders to leave for Denver.

He'd told Lovejoy—and everyone else in Manzanita who'd listen—that he was giving up on the case. The constable had that telephone and would undoubtedly check around the county as soon as the wire was fixed. When he did, he'd find nothing putting Longarm anywhere near the Lost Chinaman or the next ore shipment. Longarm wondered if the Indian trouble would be enough of a distraction. He considered starting a forest fire, but decided it might not be neighborly. A forest fire would certainly distract pure Ned out of just about the whole county, but it was August and the California hills were tinder-dry as they waited for the healing winter rains from the Pacific. A wildfire this time of the year could get out of control and hurt innocent people. He figured at least half the citizens of Manzanita had to be innocent.