Legend With a Six-gun (9781101601839) (21 page)

“I've figured out how you tricked me with that false assay, God damn your eyes. You want me, come and take me!”

Longarm noticed that a member of the crew was staring out at him through a doorway leading to the quarters under the poop deck. He motioned the man back, even though MacLeod couldn't see him from up on top.

He knew MacLeod had no line of sight on his position either, so he broke cover and ran to the doorway, shoving the crewman inside.

He found that they were in a low-beamed corridor, running toward the stern. He whispered to the crewman, “Show me where the helm is, quick!”

The sailor led him back, muttering, “No way you can get at him without getting your head blown off, friend. There's a couple of hatches leading topside, but he's got everything for'd the wheelhouse under his gun!”

They moved back to a wardroom and Longarm saw the skylight overhead. He moved along the shadows of the port bulkhead as he kept his muzzle trained on the glass. There was nothing staring back at him but gray sky and, way up, a gliding seagull.

The wardroom ended, aft, in two more doorways on either side of what looked like a big wooden chimney. He pointed at it with his chin and asked, “Is that where the chains from your wheel run down to the rudder?”

The crewman nodded, but said, “You can't get inside. Wouldn't do no good if you could. The wheelhouse sits smack-dab on top.”

Longarm thumbed the spent shells from his .44 and reached into his coat pocket for spare ammunition. The crewman whispered, “You're bleeding.”

Longarm muttered, “I know I'm bleeding. Keep your voice down and get back out of my way.”

He reloaded his revolver as, overhead, MacLeod called out, “God damn you, Longarm! Come out and fight like a man!”

Longarm raised the muzzle of his .44 above the level of his own head, aiming at the ceiling.

He waited until MacLeod called out again and he heard an overhead board creak. Then Longarm fired four times in rapid succession.

The sound was deafening in the low-ceilinged wardroom, but he could hear MacLeod yelp like a coyote being run over by a train, so he fired once more, directly up at the sound.

Up on deck, propelled by flying splinters and a .44 slug directly up his rectum, Kevin MacLeod took off for the sky!

He didn't get there. His froglike leap shot him out over the skylight, screaming in agony. Then he belly flopped down on the panes of glass and just kept coming as Longarm and the startled sailor moved back out of the way.

MacLeod landed face down on the wardroom floor in a windfall of shattered glass. He rolled on his side in agony and drew his knees to his chest, his gun hand pinned to the blood-spattered flooring as he glared with hate-filled eyes at the tall figure looming above him in the blue haze of gunsmoke filling the room.

Longarm muttered, “Aw, shit,” and stepped forward to kick the gun out of MacLeod's hand. It banged against the far bulkhead, out of reach, so Longarm knelt beside the gutshot killer and said, “I'll bet that smarts. I'll send for a doc, old son.”

MacLeod coughed blood, licked his lips, and said, “You've killed me, you son of a bitch! I might have known you'd pull another of your dumb tricks!”

Longarm said, “For a man with a bullet up his ass you sure have a poor opinion of everyone else. I'd say you were right about one thing, though. You're dying, sure as hell.”

He started, reloading his .44 as he added, “Before you go, would you mind confessing a few things in front of me and this witness?”

“You can go to hell.”

“Thanks just the same, but I had Denver in mind. With you and Lottie both dead, a few loose ends hardly matter, seeing as how neither of you has to stand trial.”

Other crewmen were coming out of the woodwork to admire Longarm's handiwork. A man with the four stripes of a captain on his sleeve asked, “What's this all about, Marshal?”

Longarm said, “I ain't a marshal, just a deputy. And my tale is too long to be told before I have to catch the ferry back to Oakland and hop the C.P. back to Denver. Let's just say this poor cuss here was too smart for his own good.”

He looked down at the dying man as he said, “You and Lottie should have ridden out your pat hand, MacLeod. You know I never could have proven my notions in any court of law, don't you?”

“The bitch tried to kill me. So I paid her back good.
That
was your doing too, wasn't it?”

“Yep. It's called ‘divide and conquer.'”

He looked up at the captain and asked, “Do you mind sending one of your men for a doctor and the local P.D.?”

The captain said, “I already did, as soon as it was safe to move. They'll be here any minute.”

Longarm nodded and told MacLeod, “There you go, old son. Just rest easy and we'll see how bad you're hurt.”

MacLeod didn't answer. He couldn't. Longarm felt the side of his neck as a crewman said, “Jesus, I think he's dead!”

Longarm said, “You're right. He did say something about me killing him. First time the bastard's told me the truth since I met up with him.”

*   *   *

The San Francisco police asked a lot of tedious questions, considering how simple it all was. But in the end they said it was all right for a federal marshal to shoot wanted killers on the waterfront, so Longarm went down Market Street and caught the ferry across the bay to Oakland.

He thought he'd probably missed the train to Cheyenne, and he'd already seen what there was of Oakland. So he hurried to the depot, hoping he was wrong.

As he stepped through the glass doors, he thanked his lucky stars for blessing him with good eyesight.

Felicidad Vallejo was standing by the ticket counter, as if she were expecting to meet someone.

A few feet farther on, standing with her arms crossed and tapping her pretty little foot on the cement, he noticed Pru Sawyer.

Neither woman knew the other, and Longarm surmised that it might be a good idea to keep it that way. So he crawfished backward out the door before either girl could spot him. He didn't consider himself a coward, but there is such a thing as pure common sense, and he'd rather have faced an armed band of Apache than get into a hair-pulling contest between two jealous females!”

He circled the big brick depot and found a board fence separating the yards from the carriage road. He put his hands up and hauled himself over the top.

He landed inside on the gritty cinders and started legging it across the yards. The dusty maroon sides of the eastbound express were just starting to pull away from the platform, so Longarm started running.

A yard bull saw him and yelled out, “Hey, you ain't supposed to be in here, cowboy!”

But Longarm paid the bull no heed as he chased the train. He ran down the tracks after it, slowly gaining on the rear platform as the train moved out through the yards. A girl in a big hat and a pinch-waisted dress was staring at him from the platform as he slowly caught up with her and the express.

Longarm reached forward, grabbed the brass railing, and was almost dragged before he could get an instep on the rear coupler and haul himself aboard, saying, “Howdy, ma'am.”

The girl said, “Well, hello! Do you always board trains that way?”

He climbed over the rail, grinning sheepishly, and answered, “Only when they try to leave without me, ma'am. My name is Custis Long and I work for Uncle Sam.”

She laughed a pretty skylark laugh and said, “I'm Melony Evans and I don't. Are you going all the way? To Cheyenne, I mean.”

He said, “Cheyenne and then some. I've got to get back to Denver before payday.”

“How interesting. I'm on my way to Denver myself. We live on Sherman Avenue.”

“We, ma'am? You don't seem to be wearing a ring”

“I'm not married. I live with my aunt and uncle in Denver.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, I'd best go in and see if the conductor has a compartment he'll rent me. I purely hate trying to sleep sitting up in a day coach, and I figure at least two nights aboard this fool train.”

As he eased past her, Melony said, “Perhaps we'll meet later, in the club car. You can let me know if they have a sleeping compartment for you.”

He started to ask if she had one, but considered it a mite early to be so forward, so he just grinned and said, “I'll do that, ma'am. I'm sure I'll find someplace, or other to spend the next couple of nights.”

NOVEL 8

Longarm and the Nesters

Chapter 1

Longarm didn't wait to see where the shot had come from. He knew the sound of a rifle from its whiplash crack, and his reflexes sent him rolling out of his saddle before whoever had triggered it could pump a second cartridge into the chamber. The yellow dust raised by the slug that had plowed into the ground between his horse's hooves was still settling when Longarm landed on his feet and crouched in back of the animal. He stood at the roan's hindquarters, where its hind legs and haunches would give him the greatest protection, and bent forward to keep his head from becoming a target while he waited for a second shot to follow the first.

Enough seconds ticked by to give Longarm time to think about trying to grab for his own rifle, but the .44-40 Winchester was resting snugly in its boot on the wrong side of the horse. There was no way he could reach it without exposing his head, arm, and shoulder.

Seconds dragged into minutes, but the shot he was waiting for still didn't come. Longarm credited the bushwhacker with enough intelligence not to waste ammunition on an invisible target. He wondered how long it would take the shooter to think of the obvious next step. He got ready to drop to the ground in case the bushwhacker brought down his horse and stripped him of his protective cover.

Instead of another shot, though, a man's voice, not too far distant, shouted, “A varning it vas I give you,
nesakonnley
! I see you turn off from the train track and ride this vay! Now, I tell you to go back! You put your hands on my fence, then it don't be the ground I shoot at next time! I kill you dead!”

Frowning, Longarm tried to riddle out the strange accent that colored the man's speech. Billy Vail had explained that there would be a lot of foreigners involved in the assignment that had brought Longarm to southern Kansas, but the chief marshal had been somewhat vague as to the country of their origin. The accent was one Longarm hadn't encountered before, even though he'd run into representatives of most of the European nationalities that were part of the population of the West of the 1880s. It seemed to him sometimes that the whole damned world was moving into the wide-open, unsettled prairies and mountains on the sunset side of the Mississippi. There wasn't much time for him to think about that at the moment, though. From the sound of the bushwhacker's voice, the unknown man was edging up on him a little bit at a time.

He called to the still-unseen rifleman, “You got me mixed up with somebody else, mister! My name ain't Connolly. I'm Custis Long, a deputy U.S. marshal, and I ain't a damned bit interested in your fence, except maybe to look at it!”

“You say to me you don't ride for Clem Hawkins?”

“I never heard that name either, any more'n I know this fellow Connolly.”

“Is not somebody,
nesakonnley
,” the stranger called back. “Is how you call a bad name. Bastard.” There was a brief silence, then the unknown assailant went on, “Maybe I make mistake, mister. I don't shoot no more yet, but you prove to me you are vhat you say.”

“I ain't taking your word you won't drop me if I show myself!” Longarm protested. “Anybody'd who'd drygulch a stranger ain't much in my book for telling the truth!”

“I do not make lies. I vill not shoot!” the man insisted.

“Tell you what,” Longarm called. “You stand out in the open, where I can see you plain, and put your rifle on the ground. I'll hold up my badge and you can take a look at it. Does that sound fair enough?”

“
Da
. So I vill do.”

Peering under the belly of his horse, Longarm got his first look at the stranger. The man stood with his empty hands outstretched, though the green thigh-high wheat sprouting up around him kept Longarm from seeing whether he'd really laid his gun on the ground, or whether he'd leaned it against his leg where he could grab it quickly. That wasn't important to Custis Long. He knew he could get off two slugs from his own .44 Colt Model T before the bushwhacker could pick up a rifle and shoulder it. Just the same, he studied the other man for a long moment before offering himself as a target again.

Except for his headgear, the stranger might have been any farmer or cowhand. He wore a denim jacket over a butternut shirt, and his jaws were heavily bearded, although his upper lip was shaved clean. His nose came down straight from thick, black brows and flared into a bulbous tip. His eyes were dark, his cheekbones high. It was what the other wore on his head that Longarm found strange. Instead of the usual wide-brimmed, high-crowned felt hat that almost every outdoorsman in the West wore winter and summer, the stranger was wearing a floppy, round cloth cap with a short, shiny bill.

Satisfied that there was no chance he'd be beaten to the first shot if further gunplay ensued, Longarm stepped from the shelter of the roan's rump and walked slowly toward the fence that ran between the two men. The other started equally slowly to meet him. Longarm casually pulled aside the flap of his long Prince Albert coat. The stranger spread his outstretched hands wider apart when he saw the Colt that Longarm wore butt-forward, high on his left hip, but Longarm was careful to keep his hands well away from the gun. He moved deliberately, taking his wallet from his inside breast pocket, and let the coat drape forward over the pistol as soon as he had the wallet out.

Flipping open the wallet, he held it up so the man could see the deputy U.S. marshal's badge pinned inside its fold. He said, “Now then. Unless you've got some reason why you'd be bashful about meeting up with the law, that ought to satisfy you.”

“You said it is Long, your name?” the stranger frowned.

“That's right. Just like it says in the engraving on the badge.”

“How am I knowing this? If it is not yours, the badge—”

Exasperated, Longarm interrupted, “You're the damnedest, most suspicious fellow I've met up with for a while. You act like you're an owlhoot on the prod—which you could be, for all I know. Well, if you are, I'll find out about it, and if you ain't, then you'll just have to take my word that me and the badge belong together.”

Unexpectedly the man smiled, showing two rows of gleaming white teeth. “Now I believe you. If it vas you are not who you say, you vould this minute be trying to proof to me still more.
Dobro
. Me, I am Nicolai Belivev.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance.” Longarm looked past Belivev for a house of some kind, but saw none. “You live around here close?”

“There.” Belivev pointed to what looked like a hump in the ground on the far side of the wheatfield.

“A soddy?”

Nodding, Belivev replied, “Is vhat they are call, here. Next year,
pri Bog shini,
I build a real house on top of the ground, then ve don't live no more like rabbit in hole.”

“You been here long?”

“Five years.” The man's voice was proud. “This year, I come to be citizen of U.S.A.”

“Mind telling me where you come from, Mr. Belivev? You throw out a lot of words I never heard before.”

“From Russia ve come,” Belivev answered. Then, bitterly and with hatred in his tone, he continued, “Mother Russia! A mother like nobody needs!”

“You said ‘we,'” Longarm frowned. “You mean there're a lot of settlers around here from Russia?”

“
Da
. Ve are many.” Belivev turned and waved his arm. Beyond the hump of the soddie, Longarm saw the mounds of other sod houses, as well as a few dwellings built from wood.

“How'd it happen that all of you picked out Kansas?”

“It vas from your railroad line, you see? They send men over to tell us they sell land for a few kopecks that ve pay each year, until the land, it belong to us.”

“From what you said a minute ago, I got the idea you weren't too sorry to leave Russia,” Longarm observed.

“
Da
. Is true. Is not Mother Russia any more, like vhen our grandfathers go there from Germany long ago.” Belivev hesitated before adding, “Is not here like vhat the men from your railroad tell us it is being, maybe. Mr. Long, you are—” he hesitated, searching for a word— “law-bringer for the U.S. government, is true?”

“I'm an officer who upholds the federal laws, if that's what you're asking me.”

“
Da
. Is vhat. You tell me, then— Is lawful a man puts up a fence to guard his vheat vhile it grows, and other men cut it down so they can run it over with the feet from their cattle and horses?”

“That ain't exactly covered by federal law,” Longarm said. He fished a cheroot out of his vest pocket, flicked a matchhead with his thumbnail, and puffed the cigar into life. Then he went on, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. “Fence-cutting's mostly covered by state laws, Mr. Belivev. Of course, here in Kansas they've got a law that makes trespassing on another man's land illegal, but you've sure got a right to put up a fence to keep people from damaging your crops.”

“Then vhy the men who raise cattle cut our fences down? And vhy the sheriff don't make them stop vhen ve ask him to?”

“There might be a lot of reasons.” Longarm saw no reason to tell Belivev that one of those reasons was probably responsible for his having been sent to Kansas in the first place.

“Tell me them,” Belivev asked. Then, before Longarm could reply, he shook his head. “No. A better thing it vould be if you tell them to Mordka Danilov. He can more clear than me explain to the others vhy. Marshal Long, you vill go vith me to see Mordka,
da
?”

“Well—” Longarm looked at the sun, beating down from the unclouded sky as it started its final slide to the west. The heat made a liar of the calendar, which said it was now autumn. He asked Belivev, “Just who is this Mordka fellow?”

“Mordka Danilov is the elder of the
Bratiya
,” the Russian said. He explained, “In your language,
Bratiya
, it means Brethren. This is religion I speak about, our religion that causes us such trouble in Russia that ve move now to your country.”

“Uh-huh. Sort of your pastor, you might say?”

“Mordka guides us, he advises us. He does not preach at us.”

“Oh. I see,” Longarm said, though he wondered at the distinction. He thought for a moment, then nodded. “All right. If you think it'll help, I'll talk to him. Where's his house?”

“If you vill come vith me, I take you there,” Belivev offered. “Is not far avay.”

Longarm indicated the fence with its stretched wire strands studded by barbs. “How am I going to get my horse on the other side?”

Belivev pointed to the hump that marked the sod house in which he lived. “The path to Mordka's house goes that vay. If you ride around my fence, and I go across through the vheat, then ve get to my house at same time. From it, there is just little vay to Mordka's.”

Longarm nodded. Nicolai Belivev turned away, stooped to pick up the rifle he'd laid on the ground, and started trudging through the wheatfield without looking back. Longarm watched the Russian for a moment, then mounted and nudged the roan with his toe. Turning the animal, he rode parallel to the fence until it ended in a corner, then reined along it on a rough path toward the soddy. Before he got to the hump, Belivev came out without the rifle, and was waiting when he rode up. Longarm reined in.

“Which way now?” he asked.

Belivev said, “Ahead. Is not far. I valk by your horse and show you the vay.”

With Longarm on horseback and Belivev on foot, conversation between them was impossible as the Russian led the way along the fenceline to a rambling crazy quilt of a house, a quarter of a mile distant. When his guide stopped and pointed to the house, Longarm dismounted.

“Come,” Belivev said. “You can please explain to Mordka about the fences. Is better he tells us in our own language vhat he hears from you. Some of the
Bratiya
don't know so much
yashlkne Ameriska
as like I do.”

A tall, raw-boned woman, her head bound up in a scarf, opened the door to Belivev's knock. She kept her pale blue eyes fixed on Longarm while she and Belivev exchanged a few words in their own tongue. Longarm heard the name “Mordka” repeated several times, but that was all he understood. After their parley ended, the woman stood aside and motioned for them to enter. Belivev almost pushed Longarm into the house.

After the bright sunlight, the interior seemed dim, almost to the point of utter darkness. Like so many homesteaders' dwellings, the house had few windows, and all of them were small because of the scarcity and high cost of glass. When Longarm's eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, what he saw was an almost exact duplicate of the homes he'd seen elsewhere in places where settlements were just springing up.

There was a table and three or four straight-backed chairs. A woodburning range stood in one corner of the room. On the walls, shelves held bags, cans, and wooden boxes. Cooking utensils were hung on nails behind the stove. A low bench held a bucket and a washbasin; a towel drooped from a nail over it. At the table, a man sat with a book open in front of him. For a moment the man did not raise his head, and Longarm followed the example of Belivev and the woman, who stood quietly, waiting.

When the man closed his book and looked up, Longarm found himself the object of the scrutiny of a pair of the most piercing blue eyes he'd ever seen. They seemed to shine under bristling, snowy brows that matched the long, square-cut beard rippling down over the seated man's chest. Though the beard was full, Longarm noticed that, like Belivev's, this man's upper lip was clean-shaven, revealing full, red lips outlined by deep creases that slanted down from a hawklike nose.

“Nicolai,” the man said. His voice was deep and resonant.

“
Kum
Mordka,” Belivev replied. “
Ero gostya imya Long
.”

“Mr. Long.” Mordka Danilov nodded without rising or offering to shake hands. “
Pazhalasta
. I make you welcome to my house.” He said to the woman, “Marya.
Sedalische. Sbteen
.”