Longarm and the Sins of Laughing Lyle (9781101612101) (7 page)

Chapter 12

“Half-sister, I should say,” the tawny-haired, brown-eyed girl added quickly, correcting herself.

“Well, now,” Longarm said, kicking the door of the girl's room closed. “Ain't this cozy?”

Jenny May gritted her teeth as she glared up at him from the floor. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“You bein' here for your brother.” Longarm poked his hat brim back off his forehead. “If you really are Laughing Lyle's sister. You sure as hell don't look like him.”

“We have different mothers.”

She started to rise, and Longarm moved forward to help her. She only glared up at him, light brown eyes flashing in the light of a candle atop the room's dresser, and Longarm stepped back with an ironic chuff as she climbed to her feet unassisted. As she did, his male eyes appraised her.

While she was dressed like any trail hand—and an especially poor one at that in patched denims, work shirt with a tattered collar, a cracked leather belt around her slender waist, and worn men's stockmen's boots probably in a boy's size—she wasn't lacking physically. Her face was earthily beautiful and framed in tawny, sun-bleached hair that hung in thick, curly waves to her shoulders. Her bust was firm and full though not overlarge, and her hips were nicely rounded, legs long and muscular—the legs of a girl accustomed to long hours in a saddle.

“Lyle's mother was a parlor girl, long dead from consumption,” she said, throwing her hair back from her collar and standing with one hand on a brass bedpost. “Mine died when I was a year old, of a milk fever.” She frowned at him peevishly. “What're you lookin' at?”

“You sure you're Laughing Lyle's sister and this ain't some kind of setup?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, you know what he looks like, and I take it you've seen yourself in a mirror a time or two . . .”

If she felt complimented by the comparison, she didn't show it. She only flared her tanned nostrils at him and fired another couple of arrows at him with her eyes. “I've already explained it to you, haven't I?” She crossed her arms on her breasts as though to block his view of them. “Now, would you mind heading back to your room? I'd like to get my pistol and turn in. I'm tired.”

“Ah, your pistol. You mean, the one you were going to beef me with?”

“I wasn't going to beef you if you weren't going to pester me.”

“What's with all the door clickin'? Why do you keep spyin' on me?”

Jenny's eyes flashed again, brighter. “I wasn't spying on you. I'd heard you were here to take Lyle back to Denver, and I was just curious.”

It was Longarm's turn to sneer. “Just about that? Or maybe about the saddlebags your brother was carryin' with him, too?”

“No! I heard about them, of course, but I . . .” She let her voice trail off as light footsteps sounded in the hall. Presently, someone knocked on the door.

Ma Marcus's raspy voice said, “Jenny? You all right in there, honey?”

“I'm all right, Ma. I'd appreciate, however, if you'd inform the lawman here that it's not polite to bust his way into girls' rooms.”

Longarm snorted and opened the door wide to see Ma Marcus standing there in a gaudy, high-collared, long-sleeve dress, a Persian cat pressed against her small bosom. Ma arched an eyebrow and looked past Longarm at Jenny.

“You two know each other?” Longarm asked, shifting his gaze from Ma Marcus to Laughing Lyle's sister.

“Of course we know each other,” Ma said. “I always put Jenny up here when she and her pa come to town for supplies. Old Hy May likes to dilly-dally for a few days, gamblin' an' cavortin' an' such, and I like Jenny to have a safe place to room while he does. A safe, clean place.”

“I came alone this time, waiting on some freight. I was here when Lyle showed up, though I ain't seen him yet. I'm stayin' on account of him, see what happens to him, so I can tell Pa.” Jenny walked past Longarm and wrapped an arm around the withered old lady, briefly stroking the cat half-asleep against Ma's spindly shoulder. “Ma looks after me when I come to Nowhere. She let's me stay here for free.”

“Oh, she helps in the kitchen—Jenny does!” Ma said. “Never seen a girl work so hard. I guess she had to learn quick, growin' up out there with ole Hy May.” Obviously, Ma didn't approve of the girl's and Laughing Lyle's father.

Jenny squeezed the woman's shoulder, smiling sweetly, and her smile was damn near angelic to Longarm's eyes. What a contrast between her and her brother!

Turning to Longarm but keeping one arm around Ma, Jenny said, “To answer your question, Marshal, I am most certainly not here for the stolen money. Of course I heard about it. Who around Nowhere hasn't? I'm here only for Lyle. Just happened to be here when the Todds hauled him in.

“I sent word to Pa that Lyle is here, wounded, and that I'll haul him home when and if he dies. Pa himself is . . . sick.” She made a face before continuing. “Bottle sick, I guess you could say . . . so I'm here alone. When Lyle dies, I'm going to haul him home to bury him. Personally, I wouldn't care if he was thrown over the nearest trash heap and left to the coyotes—there's no love lost between us—but I know Pa wants his only son planted back at the ranch.”

Longarm studied the girl standing there beside Ma holding the cat. Finally, he shook his head, slipped past them, and scooped up the girl's gun from the hall floor. He handed the old Remington to her, butt-first. “You dropped somethin'.”

“Thank you,” Jenny said tonelessly, taking the gun.

“You always go around armed?”

“Yup.”

Ma chuckled and smiled at Jenny.

Longarm found himself liking the girl. And he found himself believing her story, as well, though he was probably a fool for believing what anyone around here said. Regretfully, he said, “Hope I didn't hurt your hand.”

“I'm pretty tough,” the girl said. “It takes more than a little knock like that to hurt my hand.”

Longarm pinched his hat brim to the pair. “Night, ladies.”

“Marshal,” Ma said and nodded as Longarm walked over to his own door, digging the key out of his pocket.

As he unlocked the door, he glanced over his shoulder at Jenny. She was looking at him over her own shoulder, but now she turned her head away quickly and stepped into her room. She bid Ma Marcus good night, let her eyes stray once more, furtively, to Longarm, then closed the door until the latch clicked.

Longarm went into his own room and tossed back a couple of stiff belts from Alva's good bourbon bottle before undressing and throwing himself under the blankets. His head was reeling. It didn't let him fall asleep until a good hour had passed.

*   *   *

Despite an unsatisfying night of sleep, Longarm woke at dawn as he usually did. He had a whore's bath, redressed his wounded right arm with the fixings Alva had provided, then left his room, wedging a matchstick between door and frame. As he headed down the stairs, he dug a three-for-a-nickel cheroot from his coat pocket, bit off the end, and struck a match on his cartridge belt.

Through the smoke billowing out around him, he saw Ma Marcus sweeping the lobby floor, dressed in another gaudy, high-necked dress that fit her spindly body like a second skin. This one was purple.

“You ever sleep, Ma?” he asked when he had the cigar going to his satisfaction, stepping down off the stairs.

“A few hours here and there.” She stopped sweeping to regard him in her droll, matter-of-fact way. “I get occasional drummers coming in after midnight, and I ain't flush enough to turn 'em away. So I sit there with Sunshine”—she glanced at the Persian cat lying on a folded quilt atop the desk to Longarm's right—“and I crochet. Oh, well. What else am I gonna do? Too old to work the bawdy houses.”

Longarm chuckled as he strolled past the good-humored old woman, heading for the doors.

“Almost forgot,” she said. “Marshal Butter is in the dinin' room. Told me to send you in there.”

“Thanks, Ma.”

Longarm switched course and walked through the door flanking the lobby desk, into the dining room. Butter was the only customer, sitting where he and Longarm had supped the night before. The man looked weary, eyes red-rimmed, as he sagged back in a Windsor chair, a cup of coffee steaming in front of him, a brown-paper cigarette smoldering in his hand. His funnel-brimmed cream hat was on the table to his left.

“Mornin',” he said.

“Mornin' yourself,” Longarm returned, doffing his hat and tossing it onto the table before him.

“What's your plan for the day?”

“I was going to check on Laughing Lyle,” Longarm said. “And then I was going to backtrack him as far as the Finlay Roadhouse if need be, looking for those saddlebags.”

“Ah, hell,” Butter said, his voice gravelly from lack of sleep, looking up with his hound dog eyes. “Forget the damn saddlebags, Longarm. Ole Lyle hid 'em where no one's ever gonna find 'em, and he'll take the secret to his grave if he hasn't already.”

“Just the same, I'm gonna take that ride.”

Butter glanced at the serving girl standing off Longarm's right elbow, an expectant look in her eyes. She was the same girl from last night. There certainly must have been a paucity of sleep in Nowhere, Longarm vaguely reflected.

“Let's have some breakfast,” Butter suggested. “Then I'll ride along with you. Two sets of eyes are better than one.”

Longarm supposed the man was right, though he'd have prefered riding alone. He had a lot to think through. Then again, he might learn something from Butter during the long ride east and back again. What that might be, he had no idea.

Longarm ordered coffee and a breakfast platter, and when the girl hustled off to the kitchen, he sat down across from Butter. The girl brought his coffee a moment later, and only a few minutes after that, she brought both men large, oval plates heaped with ham and eggs, hash browns, and toast slathered in butter.

Butter had been oddly quiet, but now, as he ate, he looked across the table at Longarm and said with a faintly chagrined air, “I suppose you know where I headed off to last night. Oh, I don't reckon Benji would have told you. The kid respects my privacy. But if you'd talked to anyone else, they probably told you about my doin's up north of town . . . with Hetta.”

“I'd be a liar if I said I hadn't heard,” Longarm said over the rim of his coffee cup. “Don't worry about it, Roscoe. I sure as hell ain't. The way I see it, most men would have left the woman and the child high and dry. You didn't. I'd be proud of that fact, if I were you.”

They ate for a time, and then Butter chuckled wryly and shook his head. “Never did get married. Never cared to. Preferred my freedom. I spent my whole life out on the range punchin' cows. Then, when I finally moved into town at age fifty-three and got myself a relatively secure job, what do I do? I throw a loop around a whole passel of trouble.”

“Maybe you needed a family.” Longarm had infrequently wondered about that himself, in the depths of deep, dark nights when he was alone and in a nowhere place such as this. “Well, now you have two.”

“Ah, don't get me wrong. I'm right fond of my own kid and even the other two. It's just hard juggling Etta an' the kids and, well, Evelyn. And it ain't easy providin' for all of them.”

Longarm swabbed his plate with a wedge of toast, stuffed the toast in his mouth, and sat back in his chair, thoroughly sated. He swallowed, sipped his coffee, and set the empty cup down on the table. He looked at the sheriff, feeling closer to the man after hearing his troubles, though that didn't mean he necessarily trusted him.

Longarm said, “Roscoe, I've always said that a man that don't have some complications in his life don't really have a life. What do you say we go check on ole Laughing Lyle, see if he's still kickin'. Then we'll lift some trail dust, find them saddlebags, and relieve me of at least one of my complications. 'Cause I'll tell you one thing—right now, on this job, I got plenty to go around!”

Chapter 13

“How's the patient, Doc?” Longarm inquired of Doc Bell when, a few minutes after he and Butter had left the hotel, the doctor answered the knock on his office door.

Bell ran a napkin over his mustache-mantled mouth as he chewed. He had another napkin tucked under his double chins for a bib. “Well, he's still kickin',” Bell said, glancing over his shoulder at Laughing Lyle's closed door. “But just barely. I got a feelin' he won't make it till lunch.”

“That's what you said yesterday about supper.”

“Well, Marshal, it's hard to predict these things,” Bell said, sounding testy. “All I can tell you is what I told you yesterday—your bullets chewed up his insides pretty good. While I got the lead out of him, he's lost a lot of blood, and the internal damage is severe. If he ever leaves that room, I'll be very surprised.”

Longarm stepped forward. “Let me get a look at him.”

Bell didn't move but kept his large, sloppy bulk filling the half-open doorway, as though he was reluctant to let the lawman in. Longarm frowned at the man curiously.

Bell stepped back and drew the door wide. “All right, all right,” he said, again sounding testy. “But he needs his sleep. If you're ever to take him back to Denver, you're gonna have to give him time to heal.”

“If he's gonna die, anyway,” Longarm said, “I reckon he'll be getting plenty of sleep soon enough.”

He walked across the doctor's small office and pushed Laughing Lyle's door open, Butter and the doctor flanking him. He moved on into the room and stared down at the man, who looked about the same as he had before, breath raking loudly in and out of his lungs. Laughing Lyle's eyes were squeezed shut, and he had an anguished look on his face.

Longarm glanced at the small table beside the bed. There was a plate of fried eggs, bacon, and toast on it, as well as a half-drunk cup of coffee and a half-smoked cigarette. Longarm swung toward the door where Butter and Doc Bell stood, staring in at him.

“Whose breakfast?”

“Mine,” Doc Bell said, hiking a shoulder. “I was keeping watch on him. He'd started coughing earlier, and I thought he might have fluid in his lungs.” He shrugged again, slapped a hand to his thigh. “I did take the Hippocratic oath, Marshal Long . . .”

Longarm looked down at Laughing Lyle once more. The wounded killer squeezed his eyes closed tighter, opened his thick lips, and made a gurgling sound deep in his throat. A muscle in his cheek twitched.

Longarm walked back to the door as the two other men stepped away from it, the doctor backing toward his desk. “Keep him alive, Doc. Remember that oath.”

Doc Bell threw up his hands. “I'm doing everything I can, Marshal. Everything I can . . .”

“If he's havin' trouble breathing, it might help if you don't smoke in his room,” Longarm said. “I'll stop back later.”

“See you, Doc,” Butter said, donning his hat and following Longarm out of the office. As both men strode west, Butter said, “Well, he don't look good, but at least he's still kickin'. Any chance we could try him and hang him here?”

“Don't I wish, Roscoe,” Longarm said. “Don't I wish.”

*   *   *

Longarm and Butter retrieved their mounts from Humperdink's rear paddock and saddled the mounts themselves as Humperdink worked on another coffin—this one for the wolfer, Dave Ross, who was laid out on planks stretched across a pair of sawhorses just inside the double front doors. The dead man's long, gray hair blew around in the morning breeze as Longarm and Butter walked their mounts out the barn's double doors and into the street.

“If you're off to fetch me some more business, Marshal,” Humperdink said with a wink and a grin, “I sure do appreciate it! I could eat a T-bone every night of the week!” He laughed.

“Shut up, A.J.,” Butter admonished. “You just concentrate on gettin' ole Dave in the ground before he starts stinkin' up the place!”

Longarm gave a wry snort as he turned the smoky gray around, grinding his heels into the gelding's flanks. He and Butter galloped eastward along the broad main street still filled with charcoal shadows, as the sun was only just now peeking above the eastern horizon.

They rode hard for a time, then walked their horses, knowing they could have a long ride ahead of them and wanting to save the beasts. Around nine o'clock, Longarm shed his buckskin mackinaw, for the sun was well up and turning the day warm. They didn't pay much attention to the trail for the first hour's ride, because Bethany and her father, Reverend Todd, had come upon Laughing Lyle farther east. It was after leaving there that Longarm would begin scouring the trail again for any sign of the outlaw having left it to hide the saddlebags.

Probably, Laughing Lyle had known he was running out of steam shortly before he'd finally passed out from blood loss and exhaustion, and had hidden the saddlebags only a mile or so east of where he'd finally collapsed. At least, that's what Longarm hoped. Otherwise, he and Butter might have to backtrack all the way to Finlay's. The federal lawman certainly wouldn't mind seeing the lovely Alva again, but he had to keep his nose to the grindstone, so to speak.

The last thing he wanted to do was return empty-handed to Denver. Getting the saddlebags back to Stoneville was first and foremost on his mind. Bringing Laughing Lyle to justice was second. However, another night with Alva or the lovely Bethany was a close third.

A little after ten, he and Butter approached the place where Longarm had seen the marks in the trail where the Reverend Todd and Bethany had picked up Laughing Lyle. He and Butter spooked a couple of coyotes that had been hunting in the brush on the trail's north side. The brush wolves went loping off to the west and north, one glancing indignantly back over its shoulder. Longarm drew rein and stared down at the marks in the trail, which had faded considerably over the past day or so but were still visible.

“This is the place, eh?” Butter said.

“Yep.” Longarm started to boot his gray along the trail, but then he turned his attention back to something he'd spied on the ground near where Laughing Lyle had lain unconscious.

“What is it?” Butter said.

Longarm swung down from his saddle and, holding onto the gray's reins, knelt beside a large brown splotch near where the trail from the north entered the main one. Longarm removed his right-hand glove and touched two fingers to the splotch, rubbing the dirt around between them.

“Blood?” Butter asked.

Longarm nodded.

“Well, the doc said ole Lyle lost a barrelful.”

“Yeah, but this blood here is a good three feet from where Laughing Lyle fell in the trail.” Longarm pointed at the bloodstain marking where a body had lain. “See there? How could more of
his
blood get this far over
here?
I mean, the man couldn't have been
spewin'
the stuff or he'd be dead by now for certain-sure.”

“What the hell you think it's from, then?” Butter said from his saddle.

Remembering the two coyotes, Longarm looked into the brush and rocks inside the pie-shaped wedge of ground where the two trails came together. Glancing back along the trail, he spied two broad furrows to his right. They angled off the trail and into the brush.

Frowning curiously, silently admonishing himself for not having noticed the tracks the day before, he walked through the brush, following the two furrows. Crusty brown blood drops spotted the brush on either side of him, and on several rocks, as well. Ahead lay a low, natural embankment. The furrows rose up the embankment, as did Longarm.

He gazed down the other side and drew a breath.

He let it out in a surprised whistle as he studied the dead man before him, lying back down and parallel to the bank. He was a tall, slender, severe-looking man with a thin salt-and-pepper mustache and even thinner salt-and-pepper hair. He wore black wool trousers, a black coat over a black clergy vest, and a clerical collar. Thick blood had crusted around a large hole in his chest—an instantly killing shot through the heart.

Whoever had shot him from point-blank range and rolled him down the bank had seen fit to cross his powdery white hands on his flat belly, however. Good of 'em, Longarm thought. Damn nice.

“Holy shit!” exclaimed Roscoe Butter, who had followed Longarm and now stood beside him atop the bank. “That's Reverend Todd!”

“Had a feelin' it might be.” Longarm glanced at Todd and ran a hand across the back of his neck, wincing at the growing perplexity of his visit to Nowhere. “I thought you said the good reverend and his charming daughter had hauled Laughing Lyle to town?”

Butter turned his shocked, rheumy brown gaze to Longarm. “I thought they did! Or, at least, I
figured
they did. I never saw the reverend myself. Only the girl.”

Butter swabbed his forehead with a handkerchief, looking perplexed, then snapped his fingers together loudly. “Come to think of it, she mentioned somethin' about her father trampin' off home before I got there, as he'd caught a chill during their ride and thought he might be comin' down with somethin'!”

Longarm's ears began ringing in shame and confusion. He'd let the little bitch hoodwink him into believing she was nothing more than an innocent, frustrated girl hemmed in by her remote environs as well as her preacher father. But there was nothing innocent about Miss Todd. No, sir. Somehow, she'd aligned herself with Laughing Lyle his own self, and either she or Laughing Lyle had shot the reverend right here where he and his daughter had come upon the killer passed out on the trail.

How that had come to pass, Longarm had no idea. And he still had no idea where the saddlebags were, but something told him now, in light of Reverend Todd's murder, that the saddlebags were a whole lot closer to Nowhere than he'd at first thought. In fact, they could have been under the bed that he in his idiocy had allowed Bethany to lead him to and in which he had in fact fucked her!

“Roscoe,” Longarm said, ears burning as he turned and began tramping back toward the horses, “I do believe we'd best hightail it back to Nowhere.”

Butter jogged, breathing hard, to keep up. “What're you thinkin', Longarm? You think Laughing Lyle killed the reverend
in front of his own daughter?
”

“Either that or, seeing the saddlebags and knowin' her pa would have none of the stolen loot, she killed him herself.”

“Holy shit!”

“That's likely what the reverend said.” Longarm grabbed his gray's reins and toed a stirrup. “Appropriate last words, given the circumstances.”

As Butter swung into his own saddle, the older lawman said, “Don't you think we'd best haul the reverend back to town?”

“We'll send Benji for him with a buckboard. I want to get back to Nowhere pronto. Miss Todd has some very pertinent questions to answer!”

As Longarm rammed the heels of his cavalry stovepipes against the smoky gray's flanks, Butter gave a grunt behind him. The grunt had not yet died on the town marshal's lips when a rifle's shrieking report reached Longarm's ears. Smoke puffed south of the main trail, from atop a long, low hill spotted with clay-colored rocks, rabbit brush, and piñon pines.

Longarm glanced behind and to his left to see Butter grabbing his upper left arm and pulling back on his claybank's reins with the opposite hand. At the same time, the horse reared, screaming shrilly. As Butter yelled and tumbled out of the saddle over his horse's left hip, Longarm checked his own horse down while reaching for his Winchester.

Smoke puffed again on the top of the low ridge, and the bullet screeched passed Longarm's left ear as he slid the Winchester from its saddle sheath. Another slug seared a hot line across the outside of his right knee, tearing his pants. His horse reared just as Butter's had done and just as he'd grabbed his rifle, finding him unprepared.

He lost hold of the reins, tumbled backward, and rolled off the horse's hindquarters, the ground coming up hard to ram against the back of his head and shoulders as another bullet plowed into the trail about six inches to his right, blowing sand and gravel in his face.

“Holy
shit!
” he heard Butter intone as the town marshal's horse gave another shrill scream and fell in a heap beside him.