Longarm and the Sins of Laughing Lyle (9781101612101) (4 page)

He slapped his thigh and bellowed a laugh.

Longarm waited until the undertaker's raucous laughter had dwindled to chuckling before saying, “I'm here on the trail of the killer and bank robber Laughing Lyle May. I saw where he'd been picked up and—”

“Yeah, he was hauled in early this morning by the Reverend Todd his own self. The reverend and his daughter, Bethany. I hailed a coupla fellas from the Nowhere Saloon, and they carried ole Laughing Lyle up to Doc Bell's office.”

“What about his saddlebags?”

“What saddlebags?”

“The saddlebags Laughing Lyle had on him.” Longarm regarded the man levelly and pitched his voice with steel. “Couldn't miss 'em, mister—the ones full of stolen bank loot. Sixteen thousand dollars' worth.”

Chapter 6

“Now, look here, Marshal—I hope you ain't accusin' me of stealin' stolen money!” intoned Humperdink shrilly, scrunching up his face indignantly. “Why I never stole so much as a penny's worth of hard candy in my whole life!”

Longarm plucked a cheroot from the pocket of his frock coat and bit off the end with frustration. “You mean to tell me he was hauled in here without the saddlebags?”

“Didn't see no saddlebags.”

“Where's his horse?”

“In the back paddock.”

“How 'bout the gear the horse had on it?”

“Right over there—by the Todds' wagon its own self.”

Longarm turned to stare into the musty dimness of the livery barn. A two-seater buggy with a leather canopy was parked against the barn's right wall, tongue drooping. Longarm walked over to it, placed a hand on the left rear wheel—a stout wheel for traveling rough country—and glanced into the buggy's rear seat. A dirty scrap of burlap, obviously cut from a large feed sack, was draped over the leather upholstery. The sack was liberally smeared with blood.

Longarm looked beneath the rear seat and the front seat, and saw no sign of the saddlebags.

Chewing on the unlit cheroot in frustration, he walked over to where a saddle was draped over a stall partition, near a ceiling post hung with moldy tack of every stripe. It was a worn Texas-style saddle with a large horn and tooled, cracked, and brush-scarred skirting. A red-and-white striped blanket hung over the stall partition beneath it.

Longarm placed a hand on the pommel and glanced back at Humperdink still standing off the end of the wagon with the snakebit dead man in it. “This is all that horse had on it?”

“That's right.”

Longarm rolled the cheroot around between his teeth. It stood to reason that the cowpuncher, Merle, hadn't outfitted his horse with saddlebags, since he'd just been riding to the roadhouse for a few drinks and possibly a poke. But Longarm very clearly remembered that Laughing Lyle had thrown himself out the second-story roadhouse window with a pair of bulging saddlebags hanging over his left shoulder, and he'd been hightailing it away from the roadhouse with those same saddlebags flopping across the horse, behind Merle's saddle.

Longarm had followed the man's trail closely, and if Laughing Lyle had left the trace to hide the saddlebags, the lawman would have seen it. That meant the folks who'd picked up Laughing Lyle had taken them.

Longarm wandered over to where Humperdink still stood looking owly near the back of the dead man's buckboard. “A man of the cloth picked up Laughing Lyle?”

“That's right. The Reverend Henry Todd and his daughter, Bethany.”

“You saw no saddlebags when they rode in this morning?”

“No, I sure didn't. I hope you're not going to suggest that the Todds took that money.” Humperdink gave a caustic chuckle, his bulbous paunch rising and falling like a large bladder flask behind his overalls.

“I reckon I don't know what to suggest.”

Movement in the street behind Humperdink caught Longarm's attention. A middle-aged gent in a cream hat, green plaid shirt, and brown leather vest was walking toward him, the mule ears of his boots dancing around his calves. Suspenders held his duck trousers up on his slender hips, and he wore a pistol in a holster over his potbelly that was about the same size as Humperdink's. A cheap five-pointed star, cut from an airtight tin, winked on his vest.

As the town lawman walked toward him, Longarm fired a lucifer on his cartridge belt and lit his nickel cheroot. He was blowing pensive smoke puffs into the still, bright October air out front of the livery barn as the town's lawdog walked up to him, nodded, and said, “Lawman?”

A thin wing of salt-and-pepper hair dangled over his left brow. An old, pale scar ran beneath his lower lip. His face was long and weathered, his eyes a rheumy brown.

“Custis Long, U.S. deputy marshal out of Denver.”

The local lawman extended his hand toward Longarm. “Roscoe Butter, town marshal. Welcome to Nowhere.” He smiled as though he was as delighted by the town's name as Humperdink was. When Longarm shook the man's hand but didn't say anything, the Nowhere town marshal jerked a thumb over his shoulder and added, “I had a feelin' a lawman might be shadowin' ole Laughin' Lyle.”

“What kind of shape's he in, Butter?”

“Not good. Doc Bell just got done diggin' two bullets out of him, one in his lung, another in a shoulder. Would they be yours?”

“They would. We met up at Finlay's roadhouse last night. I fed the other three members of his gang pills they couldn't digest so well, gave two more to Laughing Lyle.”

Butter whistled and shook his head. “So they're all dead, eh? Dix, McQuade . . . even Charlie Embers?”

“I don't doubt that St. Pete's got 'em all out in his woodshed even as we speak.” Longarm took a long drag on his cigar and stared toward a two-story adobe-brick building on the opposite side of the street whose shingle announced itself as belonging to
DR. WINSLOW H. BELL, M.D.
Blowing smoke, he nodded at the medico's office. “I take it Laughing Lyle's over there?”

“Yep, with Doc Bell and Beatrice. That's right.”

“He do any talkin'?”

“No, sir. Not a word. Muttered and grumbled as several boys from the Nowhere Saloon, including my deputy, Benji, hauled him out of the Todds' buggy earlier. But he didn't say much of anything except nonsense words. You shot him up purty good. The doc don't think he'll make it to suppertime.”

“I'd like to see for myself,” Longarm said, blowing another smoke puff and turning to Butter. “He was carrying stolen bank loot from Stoneville, Kansas, when he shot another deputy U.S. marshal—a good friend of mine—and got away from me. But Humperdink says he didn't see any saddlebags when the Todds hauled his sorry ass into town.”

Butter hiked a shoulder. “No, I didn't, either. You sure he made off with 'em?”

“Certain sure.”

“Must've planted 'em along the trail somewhere,” opined Humperdink, who'd gone back to planing the coffin for the snakebit dead man.

“Sure enough,” Butter said.

“I don't think so.” Longarm flicked ashes off his cigar, watched them fall like snow to the churned dust and straw at his boots. “I kept a pretty close eye on his tracks, and I didn't see where he left the trail. He stuck close to it and rode hard for how badly shot up he was.”

That reminded Longarm of something else that had been chewing on him.

“He seemed determined to get here.” He looked from the marshal studying him closely to the town spread out before him, only a few people on the broad main street between the rows of false-fronted buildings, a black-and-white collie hiking a back leg on a hitching post out front of the Nowhere Saloon. “Like he knew the place, maybe thought he could get shelter here in Nowhere.”

“Can't imagine why he'd think that,” Butter said with an exaggerated chuckle. “No one here would be sorry to hear the news of that gang's demise.”

“You knew them, then, I take it?”

“Oh, hell, they been through here many times over the past three years, since them hounds started runnin' together off their damn leashes.”

Humperdink straightened from his work, picking curls of pinewood from his plane. “They're all
from
here, you know.”

“No, I didn't know that,” Longarm said.

Butter plucked his hat from his head and fiddled with the brim curled up close to the low crown. “They might have been raised out here—all four of 'em growin' up out there amongst them rocks and rattlesnakes—but they sure as hell got no reason to feel at home here, not the way they shot up the town every chance they got, harassed the womenfolk. No one here would see any shine in them boys—devils all.”

“Not even ole Laughing Lyle's pappy,” said Humperdink with a sigh and a quick head shake as he returned to his work once more.

Butter ran a hand through his thin, matted hair, scratched at a dime-sized mole on his temple, and returned the hat to his head. “Yeah, ole Hy May lives up north, in the Organs a ways—if you call it livin'. Got him a little shotgun ranch with his daughter, Jenny, but she does most of the work around the place. Ole Hy—all he does is . . .” Butter lifted his chin and tipped his thumb to his mouth to indicate a drinking problem.

Longarm nodded slowly, absorbing the information. “Well, whether he was welcome here or not, he must have felt at home here, since he seemed so bound and determined to
get
here. But what I would most like to know is where that stolen bank money ended up.”

“Don't be lookin' at me,” Humperdink said. “If I had stolen bank loot, you think I'd be sweatin' for the pennies and piss water ole Slash's pards offered me to build a wooden overcoat for his no-good ass?”

Butter said forthrightly, “I can vouch for Mr. Humperdink's integrity and honesty, Marshal Long.”

“What about the integrity and honesty of Reverend Todd?”

Humperdink laughed derisively as he planed.

Butter shaped an incredulous scowl. “Good Lord, man! You'd suspect the preacher of taking stolen loot?”

“I'll suspect anyone in this town until that loot is found. It was taken from a good town, and twelve people died when Laughing Lyle and his cohorts locked 'em inside the bank and torched it. I owe it to the citizens of Stoneville, not to mention the family of the murdered folks, to get the money back to them.”

“All right, all right,” Butter said, holding his hands up. “I understand. I'll do anything in my power to help you recover those saddlebags, Marshal Long.”

“In that case, you can call me Longarm,” the federal lawman said with an affable nod, taking another drag off the cheroot before returning his attention to the doctor's office. “Now then, how 'bout if we look in on Laughing Lyle?”

“Come on,” Butter said, gesturing toward the doctor's place. “I'll introduce you.”

*   *   *

Winslow Bell, M.D., was enjoying a late lunch when Butter knocked on the man's door.

“Well, don't expect to get much out of him, Marshal,” the doctor told Longarm as he wiped his thick pewter mustache with a checked napkin, then turned back to his rolltop desk, on which sat a plate of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy. “You ripped him up pretty good. I got the bullets out . . .”

The portly medico, dressed in a white shirt, threadbare wool vest, and baggy wool trousers sagged into the Windsor chair behind the desk and glanced toward one of three closed, green-painted doors in his small, shabby office's back wall. “But I don't know what good it did besides wear my old ass out. Like I told Butter, I don't expect him to last till supper. Hell, he might even be dead now. I haven't checked on him since Beatrice brought my dinner down from our living quarters upstairs.”

“I'll take a look.” Longarm put his cigar out in an ashtray on the doctor's cluttered desk, blew out the last smoke puff, and walked over to the closed door that Bell had indicated.

He turned the knob and went into the room, which still smelled of carbolic acid and arnica and a few medicines Longarm couldn't name. It also smelled of blood, rancid sweat, and the little charcoal brazier glowing in a corner, up near the head of the bed on which Laughing Lyle lay beneath a tattered quilt.

Besides the bed and the brazier, a wooden washstand was the room's only other furnishing.

As Longarm walked over to the bed's left side, Butter walked around to the other side. Both men were holding their hats in their hands, though certainly not out of respect for the killer who lay unconscious before them.

Unconscious but sort of snarling, like a wildcat dreaming of bloody murder . . .

Laughing Lyle's thick, chapped lips moved as he snarled, and his heavy eyelids fluttered. His stringy blond hair hung down the sides of his otherwise bald head, framing his fair-skinned, weathered, unshaven face. His cheeks twitched, the muscles dancing beneath the tawny skin.

Longarm drew the quilt down to get a look at the man's wounds. He'd no sooner revealed the large, bloody bandage wrapped around Lyle's chest and another around his left shoulder, than Laughing Lyle's right hand shot up to wrap around Longarm's wrist.

The killer's eyes snapped wide as he hissed, “
I been waitin' fer you, you son of a bitch!
”

Chapter 7

“That's just the ether talkin',” said the doctor, chuckling as he stood in the doorway behind Longarm, just as the federal lawman clicked his Colt's hammer back, the barrel of which he'd snugged up taut to the underside of Laughing Lyle's chin.

“Gonna . . . gonna gut ya like a damn
pig!
” snarled the killer, just before his eyes rolled back in his head and his head fell back on his pillow. Laughing Lyle loosed a long sigh, thick lips fluttering over his teeth.

The doctor chuckled again. “He done that all through the surgery so's I had to have Beatrice strap him down on the operatin' table. Damn snake is what he is!”

“Whew!” said Marshal Butter, wagging his head. “He sure had me goin'.” He looked at Longarm. “Say, you're pretty fast with that six-shooter!”

Longarm drew his own deep breath, his heart slowing back down to a moderate pace, as he depressed the Colt's hammer and returned the pistol to its holster on his left hip. The sudden movement had kicked up the ache in his arm, reminding him that the wound probably needed a fresh dressing and that he could use a couple of pain-stifling belts from Alva's bottle.

“Think you can keep this killer alive, Doc?” Longarm said, turning toward Bell, who was running his napkin across his mouth as he finished chewing. “I'd like to find out what he did with those saddlebags and then I'd like to get him
and
the loot back to Denver.”

“I don't know,” Bell said. “Ole Laughing Lyle has plenty of venom in him, and sometimes that's enough to get a man through anything short of bein' slow-roasted by the Lipan Apache. But, like I said, you tore him up pretty bad, and while I'll try my darnedest, Marshal Long, I can't
guarantee
that he'll be alive come suppertime.”

“I reckon that has to be good enough.” Longarm ducked through the doorway as he walked back into the main office, Butter on his heels. He turned to the doctor. “If he comes around, let me know, will you? I'd like to chat with him, for obvious reasons.”

“I'll send Benji for you,” Bell said, glancing out the front window right of the door. “I'm gonna send him into the backyard to split some wood for me when he's finished sweeping the shit off my boardwalk.”

Longarm glanced out the window, where a big man in a shabby black suit coat and bowler hat was wielding a broom, the
snick-snick
sounds rising from the other side of the door. The federal lawman cast a curious glance at Butter. “Benji? Your deputy?”

“Works for me mostly at night,” Butter said with a nod. “During the day, Benji's an odd-jobber.”

“That kid can split a cord of wood in an hour,” Bell said, chuckling as he stared out the window.

With a grunt against the pain in his right arm, Longarm picked up his saddlebags and rifle from where he'd deposited them on a chair near the doctor's front door. “If you don't send for me tonight, Doc, I'll check back with you tomorrow morning.”

“Where will you be staying, Marshal Long?”

Longarm donned his hat and arched a brow at Butter.

“I suggest the Organ Range House,” Butter said. “Best flophouse in town.” The town marshal smiled. “And it's strategically situated right beside the Nowhere Saloon.”

“All right, then—that's where I'll be.” Longarm nodded at the doctor, then opened the door and stepped out onto the boardwalk, Butter behind him turning to the big, raw-boned young man with the broom.

“Benji, I'd like you to meet Deputy United States Marshal Custis Long. Longarm, meet my one and only deputy town marshal, Benji Vickers.”

“Benji.” Longarm extended his hand to the big man, who stood about two inches taller than Longarm. The kid was built like a buggy shed, with broad shoulders and hips and a large, fat belly that appeared hard. His face, even as large as it was, was oddly boyish, his eyes uncertain, bashful.

He wore a star on his wool work shirt under the coat, but there was no gun that Longarm could see, merely a wide brown belt securing his wash-worn trousers to his barrel-sized hips.

The deputy/odd-jobber stared a little dubiously at Longarm before he removed one of his big hands from the broom handle, wrapped it loosely around Longarm's, and gave the marshal's hand a barely detectible squeeze and a shake before releasing it and wrapping his own once more around the broom. A strangely fishy shake for a man so large and obviously powerful.

Shyly averting his gaze, Benji dipped his chin and said softly, “Howdy-do.”

“Not bad, Benji,” Longarm said. “How 'bout yourself?”

The big boy-man merely spat to one side and resumed sweeping the boardwalk. Flushing a little with embarrassment, Butter stepped into the street. When Longarm was beside him, he tipped his head toward the federal lawman and said softly, “Not a big talker, Benji, but one hell of a deputy.”

“I noticed he wasn't armed.”

“Doesn't need to be armed,” Butter said. “He can break up a saloon fight with his hands alone. Did you see the size of his arms?” Butter chuckled. “Can I interest you in an early supper, Longarm? The Organ Range has a right respectable kitchen for a town so far off the beaten path.”

“Don't mind if I do.” In the corner of his eye, Longarm noticed Benji watching him furtively while continuing to run the broom across the boardwalk. “But I'd like to get a room first and freshen up a bit.”

“Sounds good. I'd like to take care of some paperwork back at the office. Meet you in the dining room in a half hour?”

“A half hour oughta do it,” Longarm said, hiking his saddlebags a little higher on his shoulder.

“All right, then.”

Butter nodded, then started walking west along the street, toward the town marshal's office a block away, the mule ears of his boots jostling about his calves. As Longarm angled toward the Organ Range House on the street's opposite side and east about fifty yards, he glanced behind him once more. Benji was watching him with a brooding, furtive air; though, seeing that he'd been discovered, the big man-child turned his head away sharply and started sweeping with more vigor.

He had no idea why, aside from that fishy handshake and those furtive stares, but as he angled toward the Organ Range House, by far the grandest building on Nowhere's main street, Longarm made a mental note to keep an eye on the big man. The Organ Range stood a full three stories high and was painted a gaudy amber and green, with a white second-floor balcony rail and several loafer's benches and two comfortable-looking wicker chairs on the pillared verandah.

Large, stylish indigo letters announced the hotel's name on the false façade rising above the third story. The opulence of the place bespoke an optimism its founder must have at one time felt regarding Nowhere's future—an optimism that had likely dulled along with the House's chipping paint and moldering porch pillars. A tumbleweed sat undisturbed on the loafer's bench left of the broad double doors.

Longarm went in and rented a room from a birdlike little woman who kept giving him suspicious, sidelong looks that, coupled with those of Butter's big deputy, started to get on his nerves. When Longarm had paid for two nights in advance—he had a feeling he'd be in Nowhere for a while, waiting for Laughing Lyle to heal, if he didn't expire in the next few hours—she slid a key across her polished mahogany desk but kept her large, somber gray eyes on Longarm. He reached for the key, but she closed her long, withered old hand over it.

Longarm arched a brow at her.

“Lawman?” she said tonelessly.

“That's right,” Longarm said. “Federal.”

“You here for”—she jerked her chin, shaped like a pistol butt, to indicate the doctor's office—“him?”

“Laughing Lyle. Yes, ma'am.”

She lifted her hand from the key and stared down at it gravely. “If you're all by your lonesome, son, you'd best forget about ole Laughing Lyle and ride on out of here while you still can.”

Longarm stared at her skeptically. Her demeanor as much as her words caused a prickling of the short hairs at the back of his neck. He was about to ask the little woman to explain herself when a pale, plump young girl in a black serving dress and dusting cap poked her head out of a near doorway and said meekly, “Mordecai would like a word about the roast, Ma.”

The old woman glanced up at the tall lawman once more, then strode out from behind her horseshoe-shaped desk to follow the serving girl into the kitchen flanking it. Longarm stared after her for a time. He turned to look out the lobby's front windows into the dusty street that was gathering shadows now as the sun fell.

One horsebacker rode past the hotel at a leisurely pace, leaning out from his horse to spit a wad of chaw into the dirt. He ran the back of his hand across his mustache-mantled mouth as he swung his horse toward the Nowhere Saloon, sitting just east of the hotel.

That made Longarm think of a drink as well as made him conscious of the throbbing in his upper right arm. He palmed the key, grabbed his rifle and scabbard off the desk before him, and hiking the saddlebags on his left shoulder, started up the stairs to the second story. Room five was on the right side of the hall trimmed with a flowered runner, bracket lamps, and the same green paint that decorated the House's exterior, though the knots in the cheap pine paneling showed through.

Longarm went in, tossed his gear on the bed, sagged onto the edge of the cornshuck mattress, and tossed back a long pull from Alva's bourbon bottle. The only thing that could beat a slug of good Kentucky bourbon was his preferred Maryland rye, but it wasn't often he could find the stuff beyond Denver or a like-sized city. He took another drink, then shrugged out of his frock coat and his shirt, and went to work undressing his wound.

As he did, he thought about the words of warning that the birdlike proprietor of the Organ Range had offered him downstairs. He thought about Laughing Lyle and the missing saddlebags and Town Marshal Butter and then about the big deputy town marshal, Benji Vickers.

What strange, menacing looks the mountain-sized boy had given Longarm. . . .

Why?

The only conclusion the federal badge-toter could come to as he poured cheap whiskey over his expertly sewn wound, letting it run off into a washbowl atop the stand beside the bed, was that someone here in Nowhere knew more about those saddlebags than they were letting on. True, Benji could just be suspicious of strangers, but Longarm felt the kid's odd demeanor was due to the stolen loot.

Which meant that Humperdink, the liveryman/undertaker, or Butter was lying to him, or possibly both.

Or maybe they themselves had been lied to by the Reverend Todd and his daughter, Bethany, who had been the first ones to encounter Laughing Lyle and, ostensibly, the stolen bank loot from Stoneville. Obviously, they were the ones Longarm needed to speak to next.

First, he'd pad out his belly. Just thinking about a plate of food made his stomach grumble. He'd been so immersed in his problems that he'd forgotten how hungry he was. When he'd pulled on his shirt and coat and donned his hat, he glanced at the Winchester. The prickling under his collar told him he might need the long gun before too much time had passed, but he supposed he'd look foolish toting it into the dining room.

He left the gun in its scabbard leaning against the dresser, loosened his Colt in its holster, then stepped into the hall, locking the door and pocketing the small, tarnished silver key. When he'd taken three steps toward the stairs, a latch clicked behind him. He swung around quickly, wrapping his right hand around his Colt's polished walnut grips.

A door on the other side of the hall from his own closed. The latch clicked again. Silence.

The bracket lamps flickered and smoked, rasping ghostly in a vagrant draft scuttling along the hall from the room behind the recently closed door.

Longarm scowled at the door. Whoever was in there was a mite curious about whoever was out here. Natural curiosity or something else?

Longarm turned and continued walking toward the stairs, glancing over his shoulder once more, feeling as though he had a target drawn on his back.