Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds Read online

  The fire marshal pointed wearily at the still-glowing embers of the Dugan house. "You can kiss any paper money anyone had in there good-bye then."

  Longarm frowned. "I hadn't finished. I vote we turn a mighty upset as well as innocent gal loose. What do you gents need, a diagram on the blackboard? A wanted outlaw, last seen packing a tidy fortune in handy treasury notes, is killed by a person or any number of persons unknown, who then help themselves to his money and set fire to his rooming house to confound us, as they have, on the way off to parts unknown."

  Nolan stared soberly at what remained of the front doorjamb, a few yards away, as he made the sign of the cross and marveled out loud, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what sort of a nasty devil would burn other innocent souls alive just to make sure this one body here might pass as another victim?"

  To which Longarm could only reply, "I'd say you described such a killer or killers about right, Sarge."

  CHAPTER 2

  Any lawman worth his salt knew something about tracking down outlaws through dusty file cabinets and desk clutter. But Longarm felt he read sign better in the field, and nobody ordered him to delve deeper into the mysterious fire, once the local law had declared it a serious violation of the Denver Municipal Code and the county coroner had confirmed that the glass-eyed cuss had a.36-caliber bullet in his well-baked brain. For everyone agreed with Longarm's notion that some false-hearted pal had killed an outlaw on the dodge for his money and lit out after that clumsy but downright vicious attempt to cover up.

  The same logic Longarm had used to clear Rosalinda Lopez seemed to indicate the killer or killers of an outlaw wanted dead or alive had to be a wanted outlaw or wanted outlaws as well. Grim autopsies of the other bodies hauled from the burnt-out rooming house established the old widow woman, along with a neighborhood loafer she either slept with now and again or hired on and off, had died in the fire with four roomers Rosalinda could name, whether they'd been using their real names or not. One of them, old Brick Flanders, had told everyone to call him Calvert Tyger, which had been not only a mite dramatic, but the name of another owlhoot rider entirely last heard of during his funeral oration down Durango way. The other three roomers with any call to have been upstairs in the wee small hours when the fire was set had all died with Widow Dugan and her lover cum hired hand. Meaning the one hired gal who'd survived had never seen the killer or killers. A good two dozen witnesses, some of them Anglo and none known to be murderous arsonists, verified where the Mexican gal had been both before and after anyone could have set fire to the place she worked and lived in. Longarm had felt it only right to put the homeless gal up until she found herself another place to stay and, as it turned out, another job, which she did in twelve hours or so. Young gals who seemed willing to work that hard for little more than their room and board were sort of tough to come by since the Great Depression of the '70s had commenced to fade from recent memory.

  So Longarm was working on another chore entirely a few mornings later, and hardly remembering Rosalinda Lopez, when he found his way across Colfax Avenue suddenly blocked by a one-horse shay pulling out of the morning traffic to stop with one wheel rim threatening his balls if he stepped off the granite curb. He took a step back, and would have said something mighty impolite if he hadn't noticed, just in time, who'd been driving that fool shay.

  The young widow of a rich old mining magnate could have shown up in a coach and four with a posse of flunkies. But Longarm had noticed she seemed a tad shy about being seen with him by broad day on the public streets of Denver. A week ago she'd allowed she'd as soon never see him anywhere at all, and this morning he saw she'd draped a heavier veil than usual from the brim of her black velvet hat. So he just ticked his own hat brim to her and waited to see if she meant to pull a gun on him or just drive on.

  She did neither. She sighed and said, "Come closer, you silly. I don't want to shout at you in the middle of town at this hour!"

  Longarm moved closer and rested one booted foot between the rungs of the curbside wheel as he mildly inquired what she wanted to say to him discreetly.

  The widow woman with the light brown hair smiled timidly through her veil, "I'm not going to say I'm sorry. It's your very own fault you have such a dreadful reputation, and I still think I was right about you and that Chinese waitress that time. But, well, I guess I bought some malicious gossip about you and that librarian they said you'd walked home after closing hours."

  Longarm shrugged and said, "I did walk the lady home, Her quarters weren't all that far from the library, but it was getting dark and she allowed she was new in Denver. Did your back-fence biddies tell you I walked her home more than once?"

  The widow woman nodded soberly and replied, "That's not all they told me you and that henna-rinsed hussy had been up to. And you heard me tell you never to darken my door again."

  Longarm shrugged and asked, not unkindly, whether anyone had seen him lurking about her brownstone mansion up on Capitol Hill.

  She replied with a strangled sob, "No, and it's starting to hurt around bedtime! So all right, I was wrong about where you spent last Thursday night. My biddies, as you so rightly called them just now, told me you'd been seen taking that librarian home after work, and not coming out of her place again until at least as long as a certain gathering down that same block lasted."

  Longarm nodded and answered easily, "We noticed all them old hens sipping tea on that front veranda in the cool shades of the gloaming. We've established I walked that librarian home from her new job more than once. Are you asking whether she likes to get on top like some folks I know?"

  The young widow he knew well indeed seemed flustered. "Custis! Don't talk that way in broad daylight! I know you didn't spend the night with her, as I was told. I read all about it in the Rocky Mountain News!"

  Longarm laughed incredulously and replied, "The time I left a library gal alone and chaste as ever was in the newspapers? Well, I never. I've told them reporters to quit making up tall tales about me lest they get me killed the way they did poor Jim Hickok. Where did it say I'd made a play for that new gal in town?"

  The gal he'd been going to town with longer laughed despite it all and declared, "You big oaf! I meant that front-page story about you investigating the mysterious deaths by fire in your own neighborhood. I mean, if you were helping them put out the fire at four A.M., you could hardly have been where those ever-so-helpful friends of mine told me you were, could you?"

  To which Longarm could only modestly reply, "I was asleep in my very own bedding when the fire engines woke me up and I done what I had to. Where did your own pals tell you I was spending my lonesome night?"

  She sighed. "They were just jealous of another poor widow woman's good fortune, I suppose. Am I forgiven, Custis?"

  He chuckled fondly and said, "Sure. You forgave me for that gal who slings hash at the Golden Dragon, didn't you?"

  She started to say something meaner, sighed again, and told him she'd be expecting him that evening for a late supper, after things got sort of quiet up along Sherman Street. Then she snapped her buggy whip coyly, and drove on before he could tell her he wasn't certain he'd be free for the evening.

  He figured he would be, unless he got lucky. But it seemed sort of reckless to commit oneself to a late supper before knowing who one might or might not meet at noon for dinner.

  He went on to serve the federal warrant his superiors at the Federal Building had wanted him to. There was only a little cussing and no real physical danger involved in hauling a rich mining man into federal court on a claim filed under false pretense. But a man had to think ahead if he didn't aim to be saddled with even less interesting chores, and so, seeing the morning was well worn down by the time he'd caught up with that mining man in his private club, Longarm ambled over to a drinking establishment open to the public. It was handy to his office and famous for the swell free lunches they served with moderately priced drinks.

  Like many more respectable saloons in towns even smal
ler than Denver, the Denver Parthenon had side entrances and private rooms toward the back for more discriminating gents and all womankind. So Longarm wasn't too surprised to be told by a swamper, as he was stuffing his face with beer and pickled pig's knuckles at the main bar, that some lady wanted to see him in one of their Private chambers. That was what they called the cubbyholes stuffed with small tables and firmly padded benches.

  Hanging on to his beer schooner, but swallowing all the free lunch in his mouth, Longarm followed the swamper back towards the crappers, tipped a whole dime once he'd been shown the right door, and went on in to find himself staring down in Some confusion at the severely uniformed Miss Morgana Floyd, head matron of the orphan asylum out Arvada way. As if to prove that Mother Nature tended to share her favors fairly, the somewhat younger petite brunette, who'd also told Longarm not to darken her door, was built way smaller across the hips than the Capitol Hill widow woman, and Longarm recalled her breastworks as a tad perkier, if smaller. Though if push came to shove, that widow woman had a prettier face to admire, especially while she was doing all the work on top. But little Morgana was a kissable head-turner in her own right.

  Longarm didn't try to kiss her as he straddled a bentwood chair across the table from her. He saw she'd already ordered herself a glass of cider with a straw. He still asked if she'd eaten yet, but the petite brunette shook her head. "I have to get back to the dry-goods store and my buckboard. I only took advantage of this run into town to see if I could catch you here alone for a change."

  Longarm sipped some beer suds without answering.

  Everyone who knew where he worked had a pretty good notion where he lunched a good part of the time. Morgana sighed and said, "I'm sorry. That was catty of me. But darn it, Custis, a friend I trusted did say you were still seeing that widow lady up on Capitol Hill!"

  Longarm resisted the impulse to reach for a smoke as he replied, "if your spies were jawing about a certain widow woman who never done 'em no harm, I ain't been up to her place for quite some time, as a matter of fact."

  This was true, as far as it went, and women seemed able to tell when a man was really fibbing. So Morgana nodded and said, "I should have known those other girls were jealous of me. What gave their vicious plot away was the way they overdid the tall tales they told about you. I mean, what would even someone like you be doing with a librarian west of Curtis Street and a wealthy Capitol Hill widow at the same time?"

  Longarm couldn't resist answering, "I dunno. Sounds like fun!"

  The frisky brunette with her own notions of fun laughed easily and said, "I'll bet you would, if you had the chance. But then I read in the Post how you'd been involved in that rooming house with some Mexican lovely, as your friend Reporter Crawford described her. So I naturally had to wonder how you could have been sparking all those other girls if you were over there in your own neighborhood at four in the morning. You should have seen them trying to squirm out of that when I confronted them with the morning papers!"

  Longarm shrugged and said, "I only met Rosalinda Lopez over by that fire. They had no call to say I found her all that lovely as I was questioning her while she was handcuffed to a blamed fire engine!"

  Morgana smiled, and reached across the table for his free hand. "I read how you'd cleared her as a suspect in that nasty arson-murder case, darling. Then, as I just said, certain so-called friends went too far. One of them told me you'd checked into the Wazee Hotel with that pretty senorita. I confess I believed her at first, recalling the time you took me there, to save us a long wet ride on that rainy evening, you said."

  Longarm was starting to grow weary of the game and so, as gently as he could manage, he said, "Look here, Miss Morgana, whether I was in the Wazee Hotel with you or any gal willing to go there with me is no beeswax of a lady who told me better than ten days ago not to darken her door again. But for the sake of another lady I have no call to leave open to gossip, I checked Rosalinda Lopez into a hotel I could get a good rate from because the poor little gal had been burnt out and had no place else to go. If your pals had been watching closer, they could have told you I never even went up to her new quarters with her. You're commencing to steam me with some squat about a kid I've never even swapped spit with!"

  Morgana, who'd exchanged more than that with Longarm, squeezed his big paw harder and assured him she'd already figured that much out for herself. "I know you'll think it was awful of me, Custis. But when I found out where that Rosalinda Lopez was working, I made it my business to make friends with her by sort of bumping into her a few times at the market down the street. Once we got to talking, it was easy enough to-"

  "You're right, I don't like it," Longarm said. "Did you get her to tell you how I'd had her name tattooed on my chest, along with two lovebirds and a floral wreath around the whole shebang?"

  Morgana stared soberly across the table. "She seems to think you're some sort of saint she calls a brass lark or something as outlandish, dear. She told me how you talked them out of arresting her and staked her to a fresh start, with no strings attached, and she confided she might have let you have a little, if you'd behaved like anything but a perfect gentleman to a frightened but not too inexperienced young girl."

  Longarm smiled thinly and sighed. "Why do we always find out at least ten minutes after the steamboat leaves us standing on the dock like the fools we are? What are you suggesting I do now, go hang around that same market till she comes by for some fresher provisions?"

  Morgana said firmly, "Don't you dare. You're taking me to that Sunday-Go-to-Meeting-on-the-Green over in Eastern Park this weekend."

  Then she squeezed harder as she coyly purred, "We'll get fresh later, after you've melted my resolve with plenty of spiked punch and potato salad, the way you did that last time. I'll slip into the same summer-weight frock, and we'll spread our own blanket in that same grove of weeping willows a little apart from the picnic grounds, and then, as the sun goes down, who knows what I might let you do to me in the cool shades of evening?"

  He couldn't think of anything they hadn't wound up trying already. But a good place to take one pretty gal was as good a place to take another pretty gal, and he knew that if they'd told this gal from way out to the west of town about another Sunday-Go in Eastern Park, a gal who lived in East Denver was twice as likely to have heard about it, and made plans of her own involving willow trees in the cool shades of evening.

  So all Longarm could say to this other gal was that he'd sure be proud to take her out yonder if he possibly could. For he had almost three full days to figure out why it would be impossible.

  CHAPTER 3

  After he got back to the office after lunch, Longarm asked Henry, the pasty-faced clerk who played the typewriter and kept the files, whether they had any field work pending, say, over in the Indian Nation or at least a day's ride from the Denver city limits. But Henry said their boss, Marshal Vail, had said nothing about field work on his way to a meeting with Judge Dickerson down the hall.

  Henry added that meanwhile Longarm was due to relieve old Deputy Weaver, riding herd on a government witness at a nearby hotel. So Longarm dug a folder on the late Brick Flanders out of the file to give himself some reading on the job and maybe, with any luck, a weekend that would otherwise be awkward down in the southwest corner of the state.

  The train robber's doxie who'd agreed to turn state's evidence had been installed in a first-class suite of a second-rate hotel facing Tremont, near the Overland Terminal. Tom Weaver didn't seem too sorry to have Longarm take his place, despite the witness for the prosecution being a junoesque natural blonde who said she'd answer to Honey whenever they got tired of calling her Miss Elvira. She behaved well enough as they were introduced. But as soon as Weaver left, the buxom bawd unpinned her honey-colored hair and commenced to unbutton her calico bodice with a remark about the weather that sounded sort of dirty. She spoke a bit plainer about his stuffy-looking pants as she threw her bare self down on the sofa in the suite's parlor. "I'm glad now
your fellow deputy was a sissy. For you're so much younger as well as tall and handsome. So tell me something, handsome, are you tall in every way?"

  Longarm hung up his hat and coat, since she was right about the afternoon heat in downtown Denver, but helped himself to a chair on the far side of the room, closer to the door, and reached for one of his three-for-a-nickel cheroots as he chuckled fondly and told her, "It ain't going to work, Miss Elvira. I know what them other ladies told you about compromising the arresting officer. I do wish outlaws would quit trying to practice law on the fly, but you see, in this case neither Weaver nor me had anything to do with arresting you and your former lover. So even if you tempted us into greenhorn horny behavior on duty, you or your lawyer couldn't use it in court for all that much. It's established you eloped with the Keller gang from a house of ill repute, and you'll never get the jury to buy one of your mere guards forcing a confession out of you at dick-point."

  The big naked blonde sat up, her firm ivory tits at an even more tempting angle as she brazenly laughed. "Couldn't you just point your dick at a lonely gal as a favor, damn it? I don't need to be advised of my constitutional rights again. I need me a good stiff dicking. For I haven't been screwed since your posse tracked us down near Trapper's Rock a good two weeks ago, and I'd have never been working in that Grand Junction whorehouse to begin with if I hadn't been born with a romantic streak."

  Longarm resisted the impulse to ask if she meant that streak of pink almost parting the blond fuzz and staring boldly across the room at him from behind her carelessly bared thighs. He lit the cheroot instead, shook out the waterproof Mexican match and suggested they'd both feel cooler if she'd like to stretch out on the bedstead in the next room in her birthday suit. When she coyly asked if he'd like to come along and stretch out with her, Longarm smiled wistfully and confessed, "I got a romantic streak of my own that's never going to forgive me for this afternoon, Miss Elvira. But as tempting as your pretty face and handsome form might be, I still have to look at my own face in the mirror whenever I shave, and I like it better when I still see a professional lawman staring back at me."