Longarm 242: Red-light (4 page)

“And just what would that be?”

“I'm a deputy U.S. marshal out of Denver. Name's Custis Long. If you'll let me reach in my pocket, I'll show you my badge and bona fides.”

Thompson frowned in a mixture of surprise and disbelief. “A lawman, you say?”

“That's right.”

Thompson poked the barrel of the massive revolver at Longarm and said, “Let's see that badge. Take it out slow and easy like.”

Longarm reached inside his brown tweed coat and brought out the leather folder that had his badge pinned inside it. The folder contained his identification papers as well. He held it out to Thompson, and when the older man reached for it, Longarm resisted the temptation to slap the gun aside and take it away from him. Thompson glanced back and forth between Longarm and the badge and grunted, “Looks real, all right.”

“It is real,” Longarm told him. “You can wire my boss, Chief Marshal Billy Vail, if you want any more confirmation of who I really am.”

Thompson tossed the folder back to Longarm. “Don't reckon that'll be necessary.” He lowered the pistol and put it back in the desk drawer. “Why didn't you tell me right off who you are, instead of askin' a bunch of questions?”

“Sometimes I get better answers when people don't know I work for Uncle Sam.” Longarm put away his identification and went on. “What time is that shipment of silver leaving Tonopah tomorrow?”

“Seven in the mornin'.”

“Can I get there today?”

“Yeah, but I thought you was goin' to Virginny City,” said Thompson.

“So did I,” said Longarm.

He just hoped Amelia would be understanding about the change in plans.

“I am going to Virginia City, and that's final,” said Amelia.

“But I've got to go to Tonopah—”

“With you or without you, Custis, I am going to Virginia City.”

Longarm bit back a curse. If the Good Lord had ever put more stubborn creatures than women on the earth, Longarm had never run across them. He made one last attempt to reason with Amelia, saying, “You could stay here in Carson City for a day or two—”

She shook her head and put out her hand. “Give me my ticket. I know you bought them. I'll pay you for it and be on my way.”

He had been talking himself blue in the face for half an hour, ever since he had returned to the hotel from Bat Thompson's office and found Amelia awake and dressed and ready to leave. She had even gone downstairs for breakfast while he was talking to the stage line owner.

“I told you, something's come up. But I'll be back in just a couple of days.”

“You can come on to Virginia City then and find me if you're concerned about my welfare. I'm certain the place isn't so large that a man of your talents couldn't locate me.”

She didn't know anything about his talents, other than the ones that had pleasured her so much. She didn't even know he was a lawman. He wondered if it would do any good to order her to stay here in Carson City, otherwise he would arrest her.

But on what charge? Longarm figured he could trump something up and get the local badge-toters to go along with it, but would that be the right thing to do? Amelia would hate him if he did that.

He sighed, halfway wishing he had never lit that cheroot on the train and given her an excuse to get to know him. Things would be a lot simpler now if she was just a good-looking stranger who had come and gone without ever speaking to him.

But that wasn't the way things were, and he couldn't change the past. All he could do was take the ticket out of his pocket and slap it into her outstretched hand. The ticket in his other coat pocket was his, and it was for the stagecoach that would be leaving Carson City in less than half an hour bound for Tonopah.

“There,” said Longarm. “Good luck to you.”

Amelia tried a tentative smile. “You sound like you're not sure you mean that, Custis.”

“Oh, I mean it, all right. I wouldn't wish you ill fortune, Amelia. But you're just about the orneriest female I've run across in a while.”

Her smile widened. “I'll take that as a compliment. Determination is a good quality in a woman.” She came up on her toes and brushed her lips across his. “Goodbye, Custis,” she murmured. “Come to see me in Virginia City.”

Longarm pulled her into his arms and kissed her hard, leaving her breathless. “I'll be there,” he said. “That's a promise.”

 

Longarm stowed his saddle and his warbag in the stagecoach's boot and carried his Winchester as he stepped up to the coach's door. The driver, a stocky, middle-aged man, frowned at him from the box and asked, “You plan on keepin' that rifle with you, mister?”

Bat Thompson came out of the office in time to hear the jehu's question. “It's all right, George,” he said. “Mr. Long can keep his Winchester in the coach with him.”

George looked from Thompson to Longarm and back again, then nodded curtly. “Sure. If that's what you want, Bat, it's fine with me.”

Longarm had asked Thompson to keep quiet about the fact that he was a deputy marshal. George probably figured that Longarm was a special guard Thompson had hired. That was certainly possible, considering all the trouble the stage line had experienced recently.

The coach rocked slightly on its broad leather thoroughbraces as Longarm stepped up into it. There were three other passengers: two men in derby hats and suits whose clothing, red noses, and sample cases proclaimed them to be salesmen of some sort, and a man in rough work clothes, probably a miner, who sat with his battered old hat tipped down over his eyes. He was already snoring loudly. The smell of rotgut whiskey came from him.

The two drummers were sitting next to each other, so Longarm settled himself beside the sleeping man. The drummers looked at Longarm's rifle as he set it on the floor at his feet, but they didn't say anything. Longarm fished a cheroot out of his vest pocket as he glanced over at the man beside him. Chances were, the man was exactly what he appeared to be—a miner who had come to Carson City and gone on a bender. But Longarm knew that acting like a drunk could sometimes be a good disguise. He had used that ploy a time or two himself.

Still, he wasn't expecting any problems on the way from Carson City to Tonopah. If there was going to be trouble, it would likely occur on the return trip, when the stagecoach was carrying a shipment of silver.

A few minutes later, a young man in a long duster, carrying a shotgun and a canvas pouch, came out of the office. Longarm watched him as he handed the pouch up to the driver, then climbed onto the box. Thompson had told him that the shotgun guard on this trip would be a young fella named Pryor. Despite Pryor's youth, Thompson insisted he was cool-headed and knew how to handle a greener.

George whipped up the team and the coach lurched into motion. Bat Thompson was standing in front of the office, and he lifted a hand in farewell as the coach rolled past. Thompson's face was set in grim lines. He was a man who had seen so much trouble that he was surprised when nothing went wrong, thought Longarm.

The route the stage was following ran southeast out of Carson City, skirting the Wassuk Range and the Excelsior Mountains and hugging the foothills of those peaks. That meant when Longarm looked out the coach's right-hand window, he saw piney slopes and towering, snow-crested mountains, and when he looked the other way, to the left, all that met the eye was the flat brown barrenness of the Great Basin. He sighed, remembering a hellish assignment that had taken him along the Humboldt River through the Great Basin. Of course, given his profession, he could summon up a lot of memories, both good and bad, about most places west of the Mississippi and few places east of the Father of Waters.

The stage had gone several miles when one of the drummers cleared his throat and asked Longarm, “Are you traveling on business, friend?”

“You could say that,” Longarm replied as a bump in the road jolted the passengers and made the sleeping man sway over against his shoulder. He shoved the man back into the other corner, and the gent never stopped snoring.

“My name is Avery,” the drummer went on. “I sell the finest line of medicinal spirits available anywhere in Nevada.”

Longarm nodded but crossed his arms and lied, “I'm afraid I don't indulge, friend, nor have much truck with those who do.” He was in no mood to listen to a sales pitch. He was thinking about Amelia and hoping that everything would go all right for her in Virginia City.

With a frown that was almost a pout, Avery leaned back and didn't say anything else. The other drummer grinned broadly at the way Longarm had shut him up.

Around the middle of the day, the stagecoach reached Rawhide and stopped briefly to change teams, but no more passengers boarded. Longarm and his companions ate a quick meal of beans and cornbread and black coffee at the stage station, and then the coach rolled on.

“What time do we get to Tonopah?” asked Longarm.

The miner, who had woken up long enough to drink two cups of coffee but had passed on the food, was already drowsing again. The other drummer said, “We should be there by four.”

Longarm took his watch out and flipped it open. The watch was attached to a gold chain that looped across Longarm's chest, and welded to the other end of the chain to serve as a fob was a .44-caliber derringer that had saved Longarm's bacon many times as a hideout gun. He checked the time, snapped the watch closed, put it away. As he leaned back and tipped his hat down over his eyes, he said, “That'll give me the chance for a nice long nap.” He hoped Avery and the other drummer would take the hint and leave him alone.

They did, and Longarm dozed off. It was chilly in the coach and the ride was rough, but that didn't keep him from sleeping. Like most men who lived lives of danger, he had perfected the art of getting his rest whenever and wherever he could.

The stage arrived in Tonopah on schedule. Longarm stepped off the coach first, followed by the two drummers and finally the miner. He stumbled away, muttering to himself, and the drummers headed for the town's only hotel, carrying their sample cases. Longarm never had found out what the second drummer sold, and that was fine with him. He stepped into the station's office, which was little more than a lean-to shed built on the side of the barn where the teams were kept. A bald man with bushy side whiskers sat behind a small table made out of scarred planks. He looked up as Longarm came in.

“Are you the stationmaster?” asked Longarm.

The man nodded. “Name's Willard. Can I help you?”

Longarm took a piece of paper from inside his coat. Bat Thompson had scribbled a message on it, folded it, and sealed it with wax. “Your boss told me to give this to you when I got here,” said Longarm.

Willard took the message, broke the seal, opened it and read it. When he looked up at Longarm again, there was new respect in his eyes. “Deputy marshal, huh? Reckon I know why you're here. We've got a shipment of silver goin' out tomorrow.”

Longarm nodded and said, “Who knows about that besides you and Thompson and the mine superintendents?”

“Nobody,” Willard said firmly. “We've kept it quiet as can be. Angus Jenkins—he's the superintendent of the Nevada Belle mine—is bringing the ore into town tonight. The mines have pooled their ore for shipment, and we'll split it up among several mailbags.”

“You have that much mail going out from here?” asked Longarm. “Won't it look suspicious to have more than one bag?”

“There are mines scattered all over these hills and mountains, Marshal. Lots of men working up there. Most of 'em have familie's they write to.”

Longarm shrugged and said, “All right, I'll take your word for it. What about the superintendents themselves? You reckon they can be trusted?”

“The fellas who own those mines wouldn't have hired them otherwise,” said Willard.

Longarm knew that. He was just trying to think of every possible angle. Someone had to have tipped off this Ben Mallory and his gang about the first shipments of silver hidden in mailbags, but since then the outlaws could have been striking at random, hoping to find more in the pouches than letters.

“What about this fella Mallory?” he asked. “Do you know him?”

“I know him when I see him,” replied Willard. “He was always a no-good troublemaker, busted up the saloons here more than once, never could hold a job more than a few weeks.”

“I'm told it's probably his gang that's been holding up the stages. You think that's right?”

“I'd say it's damned near certain. Mallory swore he'd make life miserable for everybody in this corner of Nevada, and he's gone a long way toward doing just that. Besides, all that killing ...” Willard shook his bald head. “That's just like Mallory. You could look in his eyes and see that he had a taste for killing.” The stationmaster flattened his palms on the table and took a deep breath. “I tell you, Marshal, I've seen some bad men in my time, but Ben Mallory was one of the worst. Looking at him was like looking at a diamondback rattler.”

“How many people have been killed?” asked Longarm.

“Almost a dozen. Five of 'em were guards on the ore wagons, and the other half have been during the stage holdups. Mallory don't care. He's shot a driver, two guards, and four passengers.”

“I imagine that hasn't been very good for the line's business,” Longarm said dryly.

Willard nodded. “Folks are gettin' too spooked to ride the coaches unless they have to. And I can't say as I blame 'em, either.”