Longarm 242: Red-light (24 page)

Longarm got to his feet. Only his iron nerves kept him from shaking a little, but he was able to hold the gun rock-steady as he walked over to Mallory. The outlaw was staring sightlessly up into the sun, but he was still alive. His lips were moving.

“M-my silver . . .” he rasped.

“Spend it in hell, you son of a bitch,” said Longarm. The words blended with the macabre rattle that came from Mallory's throat. One final shudder and he was dead.

Longarm swung away from the corpse and went hurriedly to Nola. She had fallen on her side, and when Longarm gently rolled her onto her back, he saw the blood on her shirt. She was pale and her features were drawn with pain, but she was conscious. “C-Custis ... ?” she said.

“Right here with you,” Longarm told her. He figured she had a minute, maybe less. When she lifted one hand a little, he caught it tightly in his.

“Can't blame... a gal for trying,” she whispered. “Lord, I wish I'd met you . . . a long time ago . . .”

“Me, too,” said Longarm.

“Mallory?”

“He's dead.”

“Good,” she breathed. She looked up at Longarm and somehow smiled. “The other girls... don't... don't... ah!”

She was gone. Gently, Longarm closed her eyes for her. Gone before she could extract from him the promise she had been trying to get.

But he knew what she wanted.

The question now was whether or not he could give it to her.

“He wants to see you,” said Henry, a hint of smug satisfaction in his voice as he glanced over his shoulder toward the door of the chief marshal's office.

Longarm nodded, an unlit cheroot clenched between his teeth. “Reckon I'd better go right in, then.”

“Yes, I'd say so. In fact, Marshal Vail was expecting you before now. I told him I'd send you in to see him as soon as you showed up.”

Longarm tried not to grin. Henry sounded pleased with himself. Over the years, he and Longarm had come to a sort of understanding so that they didn't despise each other, but Henry still liked the idea that Longarm was going to get his ass chewed on by Billy Vail.

Of course, Henry was wrong if he thought Longarm cared about what was going to happen. Right now, Longarm just didn't give a damn.

He opened the door without knocking, stalked into Vail's office, and settled himself in the red leather chair in front of the desk. Vail looked up from the papers spread out in front of him, raised his eyebrows, and said bitingly, “Well, make yourself comfortable.”

“Thanks, Billy,” said Longarm. “I intend to.”

Vail shoved the papers aside. “I'll get right to the point. How the
hell
did you manage to let those other three women escape?”

Longarm didn't answer for a moment. He filled the time instead by taking out a lucifer and scratching it to life on the sole of his left boot. He left his ankle cocked on his other knee as he lit the cheroot and blew a puff of smoke in the general direction of the banjo clock on the wall.

Then he pointed the cheroot at the papers and said mildly, “It's all in my report, Billy.”

Vail controlled his temper with a visible effort. “I want you to tell me.”

Longarm shrugged. “All right, but it's a waste of time. The ladies were so shaken up by being tossed out of that wagon when it crashed that I didn't think I could make them walk back to Two Mile Station. The wagon team had run off already, or I would've caught them and let the women ride to the settlement. So there was really nothing I could do except leave them there while I went to get a wagon so I could haul them and that stolen silver in.”

“But when you got back from Two Mile Station, they were gone!”

Longarm nodded and said solemnly, “I reckon I made an error in judgment, Billy. I sure didn't think they were up to walking away from there like that.”

“And you decided not to go after them because... ?”

“I didn't think I ought to just leave all that silver there. Figured I ought to get it safe under lock and key first.”

Vail brought a clenched fist down hard on the desk. “Only it wasn't all there when you got back, was it? Three of the ingots were gone!”

Longarm shook his head. “I sure was disappointed in those women. They promised me they'd stay right there until I came back for them.”

Vail sat back in his chair and blew out a gusty breath. “You're not fooling me for a second, Custis,” he said. “You can write a report that makes you look like a damned fool, but I know you aren't one. And I'm not one, either.”

“Never said you were, Billy. You're a mighty smart man. Smart enough to know that sometimes no matter what a fella does, he finds himself stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

“Well, this isn't the first time you've been there, is it?” grumped Vail. He gathered up the papers, straightened them roughly, pulled open a drawer and threw them inside. “All right, get out of here. I have to think. I'm going to come up with the worst damn job I possibly can, and then I'm going to dump it right in your lap. It's liable to take me a while, but I'll come up with something.”

“Whatever you say, Billy.” Longarm stood up and left the office.

Henry was waiting, a faint look of disappointment on his face. “I didn't hear any real shouting,” he said.

Longarm grinned and threw the pasty-faced clerk a bone. “Sometimes it's worse that way,” he said.

 

A cold wind was blowing down Colfax Avenue as Longarm paused on the steps of the federal building to pull his coat a little tighter around him and tug his hat down. He was looking forward to finding a warm saloon and a warmer woman.

That thought brought back memories that made him grimace slightly. He wasn't sure he would ever forget Nola Sutton. He would have rather remembered her the way she was when she was alive, but the way she had looked when he loaded her body in the back of the wagon he'd brought from Two Mile Station was etched into his brain. He had put Mallory's body in the back of the wagon, too, along with the silver—except for the one ingot apiece that Angie, Rafaela, and Mickey had taken with them when he'd let them go. Maybe that was enough for a new start for them and maybe it wasn't, but it was all he had been able to bring himself to do. He just hoped they had been able to flag down a train after they'd trudged the several miles north to the Central Pacific rails.

On the way back to Galena City with the bodies and the silver in the borrowed wagon, Longarm had run into a posse led by Charlie Dodson and that young shotgun guard Pryor. They had started after him when Pryor discovered that Mallory had killed George and escaped. Longarm was sorry to hear about the stagecoach driver. George had been a good man.

That had wrapped everything up, and in due course, Longarm had come back here to Denver, where he planned to spend at least a couple of weeks resting and recovering from the bullet wound in his side. It still ached a little, especially on cold days like this one. Longarm went down the steps of the federal building and turned to walk along Colfax Avenue.

He had gone less than a block when someone behind him said, “Custis?”

Longarm turned, saw the woman standing there in a bonnet and coat and long dress. Her face had been scrubbed clean of the saloon girl's war paint, and her blond hair was plaited into two heavy braids that hung down on her shoulders. She looked like she was fresh off the farm, instead of going back there, which was what Longarm devoutly hoped she was going to do.

“Angie,” he said quietly. “You shouldn't be here.”

“I just had to see you again,” she said as she stepped closer to him. “I'm going home.”

Longarm nodded. “I'm glad to hear it.”

He wished Amelia Loftus had turned around and gone home while she still had the chance. Some folks just weren't lucky enough to ever have that opportunity. From what Nola had said, home to her had been nothing but a living hell, and the same was probably true of Mickey. He had never heard Rafaela's story, he realized. Probably never would.

As for him, it had been too many years, too many miles, since a gawky, long-legged country boy had left West-by-God Virginia. For better or worse, this was his home now.

Angie laid a hand on his arm. “I'd like to give you a proper farewell, Custis.” Despite her appearance, at that moment she was a saloon girl again, lust shining in her eyes. “Some place with clean sheets and a soft mattress.”

Longarm shook his head and said, “You best get out of that habit, Angie. Go marry some young fella who's got a nice piece of land and raise a whole passel of youngsters. If I was you, I'd just forget about everything that's happened since you came west.”

Her hand tightened on his arm. “How can I just forget everything like that?”

Longarm wasn't sure what to tell her. He said, “That's a damned good question. I wish I knew.”

243
^rd
novel in the exciting LONGARM series from Jove