Longarm and the Lone Star Legend Page 10

  Listening to Jessica's soft, regular breathing, pressing his length against her, Longarm remembered what this woman in his arms had said about destiny, about karma. He wondered what was going through wise Myobu's mind tonight. How much did the frail geisha's soul know about what had gone on between this woman and him?

  When Longarm finally slept, his dreams stayed far from the Shiloh battlefield, where death came too soon, to boys too young. Instead he dreamed of the Japans, and geishas, and women everywhere — women meant for love.

  Chapter 8

  Longarm awoke a few moments before dawn. He slipped from Jessica's embrace and padded silently to his own room, where he groomed and dressed himself for the day.

  As he left the house and walked toward the stable, his Winchester in hand, he spied Ki sitting crosslegged on the ground, facing the rising sun. His back was ramrod straight and his hands were placed in his lap. He had his eyes half closed and was breathing in a deep, regular manner, almost the way a sleeper breathes.

  Longarm knew instinctively not to disturb the man. It was some kind of praying that Ki was doing, or not praying exactly, but the sort of thing that goes on in church when the pastor calls for a moment's silence.

  In the stable he found his gelding already saddled up and ready to go. The only other person awake was Ki, so Longarm wanted to thank him on the way out. but when he led his horse out of the stable, Ki was nowhere in sight.

  It was full morning by the time Longarm reached the range area where Willie and the other hands were supposed to be. The hands had long since ridden out for the day, and Willie was stacking up the other men's bedrolls before he started the day's cooking chores.

  The little fellow looked to be in his late sixties. He had a gray, close-cropped beard covering his chin and cheeks, maybe to make up in part for the lack of hair on his head. He was dressed in baggy jeans and a ragged flannel shirt. His boots were low-heeled, as befit a man who did more wagon-sitting and walking than riding. He wore no gunbelt, but an old Colt Peacemaker hung from its trigger guard on a nail pounded into the chuck box.

  As Longarm rode up, Willie pulled a cloth cap out of the back pocket of his denims and perched it on his bald head.

  "It's my cooking hat, and gives me something to wipe my hands on," he told Longarm by way of greeting. "Now who might you be?" Before Longarm could answer, the old cook turned his attention to stoking up a cookfire.

  "Can you keep a secret, Uncle?" Longarm asked Willie's back. He dismounted and let the gelding's reins trail.

  The cook straightened up, grimacing, and then spat into the fire. "Sonny, I forgot more secrets than you'll ever have the pleasure to tell. Now if you can get me a little drunk while you're telling me, I can surely forget what I heard." He looked hopefully at Longarm, his pale blue eyes twinkling.

  "Damn, I don't have a bottle with me, Uncle," Longarm apologized.

  "Shoot, then we'll have to drink mine." the cook said disgustedly. "And my name's Willie. You keep calling me 'Uncle,' folks gonna think I'm old, boy…" He rummaged around in the chuck box and came out with a bottle of bourbon. "I keep this about for cooking purposes, you understand." Willie winked at Longarm as he pulled the cork with his teeth. "Can't cook for shit unless I'm half sloshed." He gulped a big swallow, and handed the bottle to Longarm. "Now who the hell are you, boy? This here's Starbuck land. What are you doing here?"

  Longarm took a tentative swallow of the bourbon, and liked what he tasted. "Willie, I was going to spin you a tall tale concerning the who and why of me, but I need your help, and if I'm asking for a man to help me. least I can do is tell him the God's honest."

  "Well said, sonny." He kicked the last bedroll under the awning jutting out from the side of the chuckwagon, and looked back at the fire, which was sputtering and crackling now as the seasoned wood caught flame. A sudden, short breeze sent the smoke his way. and as he turned, coughing and swearing, rubbing at his eyes, he spied Longarm about to take another pull off the bourbon. 'Here, sonny!" he cried, lunging for the bottle. "Don't drink too much, else you'll fry your brain!" He beamed a moony look at his quart, took a long drink, and then smacked his lips. "Now who the hell are you, boy?"

  "I'm a deputy U.S. marshal, and my name's Custis Long. Folks generally call me Longarm. I'm here to look into Alex Starbuck's death. I'd appreciate it if that could stay between us, Willie."

  The old-timer nodded sagely. "You be the fellow they call Longarm?"

  "Yep," Longarm smiled.

  "The lawman?"'

  "That'd be me."

  "The federal lawman?"

  "The very one." Longarm knew what was coming.

  "Never heard a' ya!" Willie cackled. He slapped his thigh and hopped about, cackling like a chicken that just laid a turkey egg. "Ah, my, still as sharp as the day is long." he complimented himself as he wiped the tears from his eyes. "Reckon you want to talk to me about that fateful day. Yessir, many have, many have. You could say that I've become sort of a famous person in these parts as the man who knew Alex Starbuck best. I taught him what he knew about cattle, you see. He'd often said to me, 'Will' — he called me Will, you see — 'Will, I owe everything I have to you…'"

  "Care for a smoke?" Longarm asked. He'd hoped to wait the windstorm out patiently, but Willie showed no signs of blowing until next day's dawn.

  Willie plucked the proffered cheroot out of Longarm's fingers. "Smoke it later," he explained, tucking it behind his ear. "No good, a fellow smoking while he cooks," he announced. "Ashes might get in the grub." He headed for the rear of the wagon, where the chuck box was firmly bolted into place against the tailgate. The box was about four feet tall and a yard wide, with its outer wall hinged at the base so that it could be swung down to form a sturdy work table supported by a leg. The leg was itself hinged so that it could be folded flat when the box was closed. "You want to ask me stuff, go right ahead, Longarm. But I gotta keep cooking while you talk. Some new hands came in last night from Sarah. We're signing on hands faster than I can make biscuits." He reached into the chuck box, rummaging around in the various partitions and shelves built into it, to come out with a small keg of sourdough, a sack of flour, and salt and baking soda.

  "Can't get over Mr. Starbuck naming a cow town after his wife," Longarm said as he watched the cook work. "Cow town's a rough place to carry a woman's pretty name."

  "You didn't know Alex, so you can say that, Longbow."

  "Longarm."

  "Right," Willie replied. He filled a large, pockmarked tin pan half full of flour, poured some of the sourdough batter into that and threw in some soda and salt. "Sonny, fetch me that skillet over yonder," he asked Longarm.

  Longarm wandered over to where a black cast-iron skillet's handle was poking out from the rack of pots and pans beneath the wagon bed. He carried it over to Willie, who instructed Longarm to dribble some of the bacon grease it contained from the morning's meal into the batter.

  "Like I said, you didn't know Alex, so you can say that." Willie began to knead the dough against the floured surface of his cook table. "Starbuck admired cowpokes. You see, he felt he had more in common with independent men than with rich ones. A honest hand makes his own way and answers to no one but his foreman, and if he and the foreman don't get along, he collects his pay and moves on. That's a hell of a lot better life than wearing a pinstriped suit and having a slack belly, breathing stale air, and getting a hump in your back from bending over your figuring…"

  "I get it," Longarm cut him off.

  "Anyway, we got fine schools in Sarah. And a church — not that I've ever been inside it," Willie cackled. "Fetch a Dutch oven and pour some of that bacon grease in it, will you? We got the railroad, and flowers and trees — that's Sarah too. There's a doctor and a dentist. In Sarah, kids will grow up healthy and knowing how to read. That's what Alex left for his wife."

  Longarm watched the cook pinch off eggs of the dough and place them in the greased Dutch oven. "I guess he loved his wife very much."

  "Y
ou might say that, Longbow."

  "Longarm."'

  "Right again, sonny, right again." He put a lid on the filled Dutch oven, and had Longarm set it in the summer sun, so that the biscuits would have time to rise before being baked on the fire. "Alex built an entire town to carry on Miss Sarah's memory. Beats a bunch of flowers at a stone grave marker. Flowers die, but a town goes on forever." He paused a moment to smile at Longarm, and then squinted up at the sun. "Guess I'd better start on the meat. Them peckerheads will be riding in for dinner soon enough. I tell you, boy, cooking three meals a day, it's surely just and fair that a cook gets paid better than the top hands."

  "No argument there, Willie." Some of the worst meals he'd ever eaten had been chuck wagon prepared, Longarm remembered. But when well made, no fare on earth was tastier. "Where did Alex bury his wife?" he asked out of idle curiosity.

  Willie shrugged. "No one knows. Alex took her back from that there Europe, and buried her himself, with a little help," he chuckled as he began slicing steaks from a haunch of beef hauled from the wagon's cool, dark interior. "Don't matter where Miss Sarah lies, the town's her monument." Willie set several skillets on the fire and began to fry the flour-dredged beef filets in hot fat. He put the biscuit-filled Dutch oven on the fire, and piled coals on its lid to create an even, baking heat. "Ain't you going to ask about where Alex himself is buried?" he asked as he prodded and poked the sizzling meat with a long, two-pronged fork.

  "Reckon he's with his wife in some quiet, wooded grove." Longarm smiled. "I don't want to know where the graves are, Willie. I want to know about what you heard and saw that day Mr. Starbuck was shot and killed."

  Willie was silent as he transferred all the cooked steaks to one skillet and moved it off the fire. He set a lid on the pan, to keep the meat warm and free of dust. When he finally looked at Longarm, there was suspicion and self-doubt in his pale blue eyes. "Don't rightly think I've the time to jaw with you anymore, sonny. I've got to make the gravy and un-crock the stewed fruit and…"

  "You said the shooting sounded like a string of firecrackers going off," Longarm cut him off.

  "And the other boys laughed at me. Said I was getting senile." He spat out the word like it was a piece of foul food. "They said I made it up to get free drinks. That I made up everything about me and Alex being trail partner."

  "I believe you, Willie," Longarm said quietly, sincerely.

  Willie squinted at him, trying to see if he was being joshed. When he spoke it was with an emotional, trembling voice. "All them others had me senile so many times, maybe I got to believing them. I don't want to talk about the day Alex was cut down. I'm afraid Miss Jessie will lose patience with me. Decide she's got no place for an old hand."

  "You've got a home here till you die, Willie," Longarm assured the old man. "Miss Jessie herself told me so. She said you've got a pension here. She couldn't imagine running the place without you."

  "Fine girl. What a fine girl," Willie muttered, turning back to his work table, so that Longarm could not see the film of tears glossing his eyes. "What a tussler she is!" he exclaimed in that hoarse tone of voice some men use when their feelings of love grow too strong. "Just like Alex. What a tussler!"

  To get the conversation back on the right track. Longarm said, "You know, when I heard the firecracker remark of yours, it reminded me of a sort of shooting noise I'd once heard."

  "Yeah?" Willie mused, his eyes growing shrewd. He carried a small sack of flour and a box of salt over to the fire. "Now where might that have been?" He poured the meat juices from all the skillets into one pan and threw in a handful of flour and a pinch of salt. This he stirred until it became a thick gravy.

  "I heard it well over fifteen years ago, Willie. Now it don't matter if we were side by side during that time, or if we were facing each other. I've learned that it's best for a soul to disremember whether he rode for the blue or the gray." As he spoke he took a handful of the .25-caliber shell casings from his pocket and stood them on end, like a line of soldiers, along the edge of the work table.

  Willie ambled over, attracted by what Longarm was doing. He picked up two of the casings and compared them. "Same damn gun fired them both, sonny. These two long scratches prove that much."

  "I know," Longarm said. "How many shots did you hear?"

  "Bout thirty." After a moment's pause, Willie asked, "How many did you find with that long scratch?"

  "About thirty."

  "Damn!" Willie gleefully slapped his thigh. He was almost hopping up and down in excitement. Longarm had to remind him that the gravy was going to burn if left untended much longer.

  After a moment's stirring of the thick sauce, the old man put down his spoon and turned to face Longarm. "Sure as I live and breathe, I'll never forget the first time I heard that noise. I was a wild fella back then, hanging around with a bunch of toughs who figured that despite the surrender, the War wasn't nearly over yet, not for us. We raided Union outposts, waylaid carpetbaggers…" Willie scowled, but good-naturedly. "Never you mind where, and when, federal lawman. I guess we thought we were small potatoes. We swaggered and bragged about how we were making the bluecoats pay, but I don't think we ever really thought the Union boys would bother to get after us."

  "The way they looked at it, they had to make examples," Longarm said.

  "Well, they surely did make us into them examples, boy," Willie murmured sadly. "We was closing in on a supply wagon, but it was a setup, an ambush. All of a sudden the canvas tent on the wagon dropped, and this big old cannonlike thing began chewing us up. It just kept on firing. It was like we had stepped into a yellowjackets' nest. You know? The mean ones build their nests in low bramble. or beneath hollow logs… I just threw myself off of my horse and kissed that there grass like it was a ten-dollar whore. The boys with me were jumping and twitching just like beestung dogs, 'cept that it wasn't bugs tearing into them, it was lead. They were dancing in the air. dead already, but so much lead was being pumped into them that it was keeping them on their feet. The rounds that didn't hit flesh chewed up the ground. Clods of earth and tufts of greenery went flying. And all the while I was hugging the ground and shitting in my pants, I was listening to that string-of-firecrackers noise. It grew in my ears until it sounded loud as thunder. I knew I would never, never forget it."

  "I never forgot what it sounded like either, Willie." Longarm's nod was doleful. "I never forgot what it could do to a line of good men."

  The cook retrieved his bottle of bourbon. He took a swig and handed the bottle to Longarm. "You and yours, me and mine. Lot of good boys never made it past those awful years. A drink to them."

  "To them," Longarm agreed. After the whiskey had begun its slow burn in the pit of his belly, Longarm asked, "Was it a Gatling gun you heard back during that raid? And on the day Starbuck was cut down?"

  Willie sighed. "It was, sonny, but if we're agreed on that, it causes more problems than it solves. These here casings you gathered are .25 caliber. They've got more in common with a range hand's coyote gun. Hell, the Gatlings I saw after the War fired .42s. They looked like artillery. Weighed as much, too. They were big, heavy contraptions mounted on field carriages, and pulled along by teams of horses.

  "Long-gun, I tell you true," the old cook admonished. "I was by Alex's side — at the very scene of the ambush — within seconds of the time they opened up on him. You climbed the rise to gather up these shells, so you know how steep it is. No way in the world ten men could carry a Gatling down such a slope, let alone up it in the first place. No way horses could haul it, either, not within the space of an hour, let alone moments."

  "And even if we could figure out the way they got the gun up there," Longarm sighed, "we'd still have the fact that these here shells are .25s."

  The cook said thoughtfully, "Be a real nightmare if they'd had a Galling, say, small enough for one man to carry. That one man would be the equal of ten. Speaking of one man against ten, I've got a fine story for you. You're a lawman, you ought to a
ppreciate a story about a good fight. You see, Alex and I were down by the Mexican border, and we ran into a gang of these here desperadoes. This goes back a few years, now…"

  "Willie, save it for next time," Longarm said. "I'll bring a bottle of rye along with me, to keep our throats wet." He swept the row of shell casings into the palm of his hand, and slipped them into his coat pocket.

  "Just as well," Willie said. "I got to lay out this here dinner for the boys."

  "Remember, Willie," Longarm warned him as he mounted up, "this little talk we had, and my job in these parts, goes no further."

  "I ain't gonna tell them peckerheads nothing," Willie cackled. "Why should I? I'm senile, for chrissakes." He turned back to his pots and pans, calling, "See you around. Longboat!"

  "See you around," Longarm laughed, and rode off. After a mile, and just before he rode over the crest of a rise, he slowed his gelding and twisted in the saddle to look back at the camp. The hands were just riding in. Soon they'd be eating and laughing, and teasing Willie about the quality of his grub. After dinner the hands would return to their work, and then the few men left behind to day-herd could ride in for their midday meal. Willie would keep their food hot. He knew his job.

  Longarm rode on, back toward the Starbuck spread. Jessie would be around, and he looked forward to seeing her. It was always hard to say goodbye to a fine woman, but bidding Jessie farewell when the time came was going to be the hardest yet. Longarm wondered if he even wanted to say goodbye. He only had a few days to get to the bottom of this case before the army came stomping in. Old Billy Vail was probably going crazy with worry back in Denver. Sending his boss a progress report over the telegraph wire was the way it usually worked, but this time around, Longarm didn't want to chance the Denver clerk intercepting it. He could send the wire directly to Vail's home, of course, but for now Longarm decided that he didn't have anything worth the cost of the wire to report anyway. According to Jessie and Willie, Alex Starbuck was murdered by Europeans with a weapon that didn't exist. Vail would not be pleased to hear that. He was a mite old-fashioned concerning murders, Billy Vail was; he liked his criminals to be one-hundred-percent American boys, just right for American courts of law. Billy was pretty much a meat-and-potatoes man when it came to murder weapons, as well. He'd take a sixgun or, in a pinch, a Winchester over a Gatling gun anytime.