Longarm and the Wyoming Woman (11 page)

“Wade Stoneman,” Longarm said, answering his own question. “Being the mayor of this town, he'd simply have recommended Casey for the job and that would have been more than enough to get him hired.”

Longarm checked the time on his railroad pocket watch, the one whose chain was attached to a hideout derringer. It was almost ten o'clock, and it would take him about an hour to get back to the Lazy H Ranch, where Addie was waiting.

“I'll have another beer at a different saloon,” he said aloud. “I need to find out what I can before I call it a night.”

The Red Garter Saloon was smaller, but friendlier than the Big Buck Saloon, where Longarm had just seen town Marshal Casey slash a man's throat. There was a piano player plinking out a tune on the east wall, and Longarm judged most of the customers to be town folks.

“What'll you have, stranger?” the bartender asked.

“A whiskey.”

“You got it.”

Longarm saw that there were no card games going on and that most of the men here were just drinking and talking among themselves. Some of them gave him a thorough appraisal when they didn't think he was noticing, and most of them seemed like solid citizens and businessmen. The only one he recognized was young Rollie Reed, the saddle maker.

Reed nodded to Longarm and started to come over and join him, but Longarm shook his head slightly. Taking the sign, Reed veered off and began talking to someone else as if he hadn't even seen Longarm.

“How is the cattle business around here?” Longarm asked, sidling over to a bowlegged man in his late sixties wearing spurs and a soiled vest. The man was too old and bent to be a working cowboy, and Longarm pegged him for a small-time cattle rancher.

“You askin' me?”

“That's right. My name is Long.”

The cattleman was a lot shorter, but stocky and weathered by years in the saddle and the sun. “My name is Jed Dodson,” the man said, extending a hand so rough and calloused it felt like rawhide. “And you are well named being as tall as you are. Why, you're as long as a grizzly's guts.”

“My whole family was tall.”

“Mine was short, like me. Why, my pa was so short he couldn't see over the top of a swaybacked burro, and my mother, bless her departed soul, she wasn't ankle-high to a June bug.”

“Well,” Longarm said, chuckling, “tall or short . . . it doesn't matter that much. It's what's on the inside of a man that counts.”

“Amen to that! My folks were short but, Lord, were they hard workers. Both of 'em always kept as busy as one-armed monkeys at a flea farm.”

Longarm burst out laughing. “Mister, you've got a colorful way of putting things.”

“Well, anyone in Buffalo Falls will tell you that I talk way too much and think way too little. But I'm no braggart, and I'll readily admit that most of my life I've known times harder than a banker's heart.”

“I'm in town looking for a ranch to buy,” Longarm said, deciding that this man could shoot the breeze for hours and tell him nothing useful. “Or maybe just a business.”

Dodson studied Longarm for a moment and then said, “Mister, either you're a cow man or you ain't. You can't just be on the fence about ranchin', Mr. Long. Remember that the fella that straddles the fence doesn't get nothin' but sore balls. Have you owned a ranch before?”

Longarm knew better than to lie because, if he did, Dodson would start talking cattle, prices, and grass and it would soon become apparent to the man that Longarmdidn't know much at all about cattle ranching. So instead of lying, Longarm said, “Well, no. I just always thought it would be good way to live.”

“Shee-it!” Dodson snorted, chuckling to himself. “Going into the cattle business is like droppin' your pants and tellin' the world to have their way with your asshole.”

Longarm took a sip of his whiskey, deciding that he had probably picked the wrong man to talk to. When he looked over at Rollie Reed, the saddle maker was watching and trying not to burst into laughter.

“So,” Longarm said, “ranching is that bad, huh?”

“Yep. I've been ranchin' for forty years and I'm still poorer than a toothless coyote. Why, during the worst of last winter, my cattle got so thin I had to wrap them in cowhide to keep 'em from fallin' apart. I could have made more money driving a stagecoach or workin' for the railroad. Any damn thing would have been more profitable.”

“If you feel that way about ranching, then why don't you sell out and try something new?”

“'Cause I'm a cattleman and I am too dumb and too stubborn to quit.” He smiled and finished his whiskey. “And besides that, I am way too mean and contrary to work for another yappy old sonofabitch like myself.”

Dodson began to clear his throat.

“Are you all right?” Longarm asked with concern.

“Just real thirsty, I guess.”

Longarm knew he'd been had. “In that case, old-timer, I'd better buy you a fresh drink.”

“That'd be mighty neighborly of you. But I'll have to warn you that I won't buy you one back. People around here will tell you that I'm so stingy, I'd skin a flea for its hide and tallow.”

“Don't worry about it, Jed. Just drink up and tell me about Buffalo Falls.”

Jed Dodson seemed more than happy to do that. “What you want to know?”

“I heard that it's a nice town.”

“Used to be,” Dodson said, his smile dying. “Before a certain someone arrived.”

“That right?”

Dodson studied Longarm a moment, then lowered his voice and said, “Why don't you bring a bottle over to that far table where we can talk in private.”

Longarm decided that this might be time well spent after all. “Sure thing.”

He paid for a bottle and made sure that he got the cork, because he'd take most of it back to the Lazy H tonight.

“You say you heard this is a fine town, huh?” Dodson asked at the table.

“That's what I'd heard,” Longarm told the man.

“Well, if I was you, I'd keep lookin' for another town,” Dodson told him in a low voice as he helped himself to Longarm's bottle. “'Cause you see, this town is cursed right now by a man named Wade Stoneman.
Mayor
Wade Stoneman. Him and his hired guns are going to own everything hereabouts lock, stock, and barrel. They're halfway to doin' it right now and any ranch you could buy wouldn't be worth spit, or Stoneman would already either own it or want to own it and both are the same thing.”

“Does he want your ranch, Jed?”

“Damn right he does! And right now I'm feeling about as helpless as a cow in quicksand. But I'm stubborn like I told you and I'm hanging on and hopin' that someone will kill Stoneman and his men will just go away.”

“What about the marshal of Buffalo Falls?” Longarm asked, fishing for information. “Can't he help you?”

“Marshal Casey and Mayor Wade Stoneman get along like two shoats in a pigpen! Why, they're thicker'n feathers in a pillow!”

“I see.”

“No,” Dodson said, “I doubt that you do. But you will if you're dumb enough not to take my advice and light out of this town first thing in the morning.”

Longarm watched Dodson toss down another shot and then he refilled the glass for the rancher. “Listen, Jed. Are you sober?”

“Sober enough.”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Hell, yes!”

Longarm lowered his voice so that they could not possibly be overheard. “Well, I'm a United States marshal and I was sent here from Denver to put a noose around Wade Stoneman's neck, and it looks like Marshal Casey is also going to dance on a rope.”

Dodson's jaw sagged. “You're a federal marshal?”

“Shhh! Not so loud. People are going to find out about me soon enough, but I'm here tonight to try to learn as much as I can about Stoneman and Casey.”

“What do you want to know? The mayor is so crooked he has to screw on his socks.”

“Mr. Hudson, who owns the Lazy H Ranch, is dead. Addie and I found him shot behind his house.”

Jed Dodson had been about to say something, but now he clamped his mouth shut and just stared into nothing-ness with tears filling his eyes. Finally, he choked out, “Hank and I was friends for a lot of years. He was one of the best men I ever knew and there was many a time we helped one another out. We was close enough that we wouldn't even have minded usin' the same toothpick.”

“I'm sorry to have to tell you this.”

“Me, too,” Dodson said with a sad shake of his head and a sleeve across his leaking eyes. Then his jaw clenched and he slammed a fist down on the table hard enough to make the bottle dance. “You just tell me who you think punched Hank's ticket and I'll fill the bastard with so many bullet holes he wouldn't even float in brine!”

“I don't know who killed him,” Longarm said, not wanting this hot-blooded old cattleman to go off the deep end and get himself killed.

“Did Casey take all the slack out of Hank's rope!”

“I don't know. Maybe, but maybe not.”

Dodson started to climb unsteadily to his feet. “I'll bet it was that sonofabitchin' Marshal Casey! I'll find him and kill him right now!”

“Jed, settle down! Less than thirty minutes ago, Casey nearly cut off a man's head with his bowie knife in the Big Buck Saloon!”

“Well, then, that's all the more reason to make him deader than a beaver hat!”

Everyone in the saloon had stopped talking and was staring. Longarm grabbed Dodson as the rancher struggled to unholster his gun and reel away. When Dodson batted his hand aside, Longarm could see that there was only one thing that he could do and that was to snatch the bottle of whiskey off their table and bust it across the back of Jed Dodson's thick skull.

The bartender hurried over and said, “Damn, mister, you really hit old Jed a lick! You might have killed him.”

“Nope,” Longarm assured him. “I just saved Jed's life. Help me drag him outside.”

“Are you his friend?”

“I guess I am now whether I wanted to be or not.”

“Jed is well liked in Buffalo Falls, but he keeps to himself. He had a wife once, but she died a long time ago.”

“Any kids at his ranch?”

“No, he lives alone. He drove his boy crazy and so he went away and never came back.”

“He's a talker all right,” Longarm said. “Now help me get him outside to his horse.”

They got Dodson on the boardwalk, and Longarm said, “Do you see Jed's horse tied up close around here?”

“Yeah, that good-looking gray belongs to Jed.”

“Will you help me hoist him up into the saddle?”

“I guess.” The bartender shook his head. “Jed won't stay up there because he's too drunk. Sober, he could ride a tornado. But he's in no shape to ride tonight. You really busted him hard.”

Longarm knew this was true. “I know that, but at least he'll be alive tomorrow morning. And if he falls, I'll tie him down across his saddle.”

“Listen,” the bartender said, “I don't know who you are or why you're doing this, but I'm afraid that we all heard what old Jed yelled about Marshal Casey and Mr. Stoneman. When Jed sobers up, you better tell him to keep away from here for a while. A long damned while.”

“I'll keep him out of town for the next few days even if I have to hogtie him. Where does Jed live?”

“About three miles out. Just south of the Lazy H. You know—”

“I can find it,” Longarm interrupted as they heaved Jed up into the saddle, then held him there a minute. It wasn't a second before Jed started to lean and then fall. Grabbing the cattleman, Longarm said, “You were right about him pitching over. I'll tie him down across his saddle with his own rope.”

“Best you do that,” the bartender agreed. “People around here like old Jed. Be a shame if he fell and broke his neck. Be a shame, too, if he gets killed for shootin' off his mouth about Mayor Stoneman or Marshal Casey.”

“I'll keep that from happening,” Longarm promised.

“Who are you?” the bartender asked.

“Doesn't matter.”

“It will to Mayor Stoneman and Marshal Casey. They'll hear about you helpin' Jed out of town and they'll be wanting to know who you are and why you did it.”

Longarm was lashing the old cattleman across his saddle. The back of Jed's skull was bleeding and Longarm felt bad about having to really hurt him. But he knew that he had just saved the cattleman's life.

On the way out of town, Longarm decided that the scalp wound he'd inflicted upon Jed Dodson probably needed suturing and that Addie was just the gal to do it. So he took the old rancher to the Lazy H, arriving there just before midnight. By that time, Jed Dodson was coming around and he was as mad as a teased rattlesnake.

“Damn you, Long! Get me down from this horse!” he yelled over and over. “Get me down and I'm gonna rip your ears off and feed 'em to my chickens!”

Longarm pulled up in front of the Hudson ranch house, which was lit up. Addie came rushing out onto the porch. “Custis, what have you done to poor old Jed!”

Longarm dismounted. “I had to waste a half bottle of whiskey that I busted over his granite skull.”

“But . . . but why?”

“I'll tell you later,” Longarm said. “Right now, let's get him down and inside. He's gonna need some stitching up and settling down.”

Jed Dodson's legs had fallen asleep while he was draped over the back of his gray horse and all the blood had gone to his brain, so that when he was pulled off the horse, instead of attacking Longarm, he fell over and passed out cold.