Longarm and the Great Divide Read online

  “And your line runs north from here?” Longarm asked.

  “That’s right. North through Torrington, Hat Creek, Newcastle, on to Lead and Deadwood.”

  “So you run pretty close to the territorial boundaries,” Longarm said.

  “Exactly.”

  “And Valmer is east of your line.”

  “I believe so,” the stagecoach supervisor said. “At least that’s the impression I have from our drivers. Like I say, I’ve never been there myself and I don’t believe any of our drivers have been, either.”

  “Where does the wagon from Valmer meet your coaches?” Longarm asked.

  “There’s a layover spot between Lusk and the Hat Creek station,” the supervisor said. “The Valmer wagon is always there waiting on Thursdays. The driver knows to keep the Valmer pouch in his office—”

  “You mean in the driving box?” Longarm interrupted.

  “That’s right. He knows to keep it up top with him, not locked in the luggage boot. He keeps it up there by his feet. Comes the switch, he tosses the Valmer pouch down to whoever is driving the wagon and collects their outgoing pouch, and away he drives. I understand it only takes a few seconds to make the exchange.”

  “What about passengers?” Longarm asked. “What if there’s a passenger bound for Valmer?”

  The local man snorted. “You know, now that I think of it, I don’t believe we’ve ever had a passenger ticketed to Valmer. I suppose we could carry them. As far as the transfer point anyway. I don’t know how they’d manage from there. On the Valmer wagon, I would imagine, but our ticket wouldn’t entitle them to a transfer. We don’t have any reciprocal agreement with whoever runs that wagon from Valmer, so . . . I really don’t know what to tell you about that, Deputy. A human person wanting to make that transfer, well, he’d be on his own, taking a chance that the Valmer wagon would agree to carry him. And he’d be up shit creek without a paddle if they wouldn’t let him board.”

  “You run coaches up that way daily?” Longarm asked.

  The gentleman nodded. “Of course we do.”

  “Today’s coach has already gone?”

  “Hours ago.” The gent smiled. “But there will be another pulling out at six o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “Six?”

  “Sharp.”

  “I’ll be there,” Longarm said.

  “Tomorrow isn’t Thursday so there won’t be any wagon from Valmer.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll figure it out.” Longarm touched the brim of his Stetson in salute and left the stage line office.

  Chapter 5

  Longarm collected his bag from the UP depot and took a room in a cheap hotel close to the tracks. He would only need the bed for a few hours so he saw no need to hire anything fancier.

  He quickly washed away the soot gathered from sitting behind a coal-fired engine all day, then dressed and went downstairs.

  “Where can I get a decent meal?” he asked the desk clerk.

  “Mister, there’s cafés all up and down Front Street. There’s a good one right on the corner over there,” the fellow said, pointing.

  “And a quiet saloon?”

  The clerk laughed. “Quiet? Sir, I’m not sure there’s any such of a thing anywhere in Cheyenne, so take your pick and take your chances. One is about the same as another.”

  Longarm thanked the man and headed across the street and into the next block to the café the man pointed out. It proved to be more than adequate for his needs, serving beefsteak covered with gravy and a heap of fried potatoes to go with it.

  He ate a leisurely meal, paid thirty-five cents for the privilege, and walked half a block to a likely looking saloon.

  The saloon was popular enough. It had a piano man, three bartenders, and half a dozen fairly decent-looking whores working the place. There were also four tables with card games in progress. Longarm could not tell just from looking if there were house dealers in the games or if they were open to the players.

  “My kinda place,” he muttered under his breath as he approached the bar.

  His entry was noticed immediately. The nearest bartender slid down his way. “What will you have, mister?”

  “Do you have rye whiskey?”

  “Of course we do,” the man said in a tone of voice that suggested it would be uncivilized to not carry rye.

  “I’ll have a glass,” Longarm said.

  “This is a bit house, mister. If you’re expecting to want more than one you should go ahead and get the second drink now. It would save you a little. Fifteen cents for one drink or two bits for the two.”

  Longarm smiled. “I’ll have the two, thank you.”

  The barman dexterously picked up two shot glasses in one hand and a bottle in the other. He quickly filled the pair of glasses and set them down in front of Longarm. A quarter Longarm placed onto the bar disappeared just as quickly into the man’s apron pocket.

  He turned, leaning against the bar while he surveyed the card games, thinking an evening of low stakes poker would be relaxing.

  He savored his first drink. The rye was smooth and pleasant on the tongue and warmed his belly nicely once it hit bottom. Longarm took a minute with the drink, enjoying it slowly.

  The second table in, he decided. The men who were already playing seemed a congenial bunch. No one was in the game for the money, rather for the pleasure of the play, or so it looked.

  Longarm finished his first glass and turned back to the bar for the second.

  The glass was there, but the whiskey was gone.

  Some son of a bitch had stolen Custis Long’s whiskey!

  “Cocksucking son of a bitch,” Longarm roared loud enough to stop the piano player in mid-piece, loud enough to rattle the rafters.

  He took half a step back and grabbed the two men who were standing to his right and to his left. Grabbed them by the scruff of the neck, one in each powerful hand, and demanded, “All right, you bastards, which one o’ you drank my whiskey?”

  His answer came in the form of flying fists.

  Chapter 6

  The fellow on Longarm’s left, a railroad man judging by his clothing, threw a hard underhand punch into Longarm’s belly. Longarm saw it coming and tensed his muscles. The belligerent might as well have hit a wooden plank. He grimaced and looked down at his hand to see if it was injured.

  Meanwhile Longarm squared off and planted a hard right onto the jaw of the big bastard to his right. That one was rocked backward, his lip split and blood beginning to flow.

  Longarm encouraged that seepage by following his right with a left hand that pulped the big fellow’s nose, splattering blood in all directions.

  By that time the saloon full of drinkers had degenerated into a wild melee of fists, curses and not a few kicks.

  The bartenders moved quickly to drop a heavy canvas drape over the backbar mirror. They put it in place barely in time as the glassware was beginning to fly, not a few of the missiles thumping onto the canvas.

  The two bartenders at the ends of the bar then moved with equal speed to grab up bungstarters and stand guard at the two entrances to the cockpit behind the bar, there to ward off any attempts to slip in and steal a bottle or two.

  Longarm ducked under a punch aimed toward his face and countered with right-left-right into the fellow’s gut. A fist came at him out of nowhere. It crunched into his jaw and knocked him off balance for a moment.

  The first man he had hit was floored by someone clubbing him with a whiskey bottle while the gent with the broken nose decked a lanky cowboy. In the center of the room a gentleman, apparently an Englishman in top hat and tails, held his own using his cane like a sword.

  The battle raged for perhaps three minutes until the effects of adrenaline overcame those of alcohol and people began thinking more about limiting the damage to themselves than they did abo
ut their zeal to punch the hell out of someone else.

  Things quickly came under control then.

  Longarm leaned down and helped the big fellow with the broken nose to his feet.

  “Thank you, sir,” the big man said, his grin exposing a mouth that held fewer teeth than God intended.

  “It’s the least I could do,” Longarm said. “I hope you don’t mind me mentionin’ it, but you are still bleeding.”

  “Yeah, once this nose starts it don’t stop real easy.”

  Longarm motioned to the nearest bartender. “I need a bit of paper. Something about the size of a postage stamp will do.”

  The barman looked at him like he thought Longarm had gone off his rocker, but he found a receipt book and tore the corner off of a sheet.

  Longarm rolled the paper into as tight a cylinder as he could manage and handed it to the big man. “Stick this between your teeth and your upper lip. It’ll stop the nosebleed.”

  “How the hell?”

  Longarm shrugged. “Damn if I know, but it’s a trick a doc taught me once. It works a charm, too.”

  “If you say so.” The fellow stuffed the paper into his mouth.

  “Tuck it up there good an’ tight,” Longarm encouraged.

  Moments later the big man crowed. “Damn! I ain’t bleeding now.”

  “Like I said. Works a charm, that trick.”

  “Say now, I sure owe you for this.” He gave Longarm a sheepish look and added, “Fact is, I drank your whiskey, that started this whole thing. Thought it was mine.”

  “Think nothing of it, neighbor. Can I buy you another?” Longarm asked.

  “Aw, I think it’s my turn to buy you one,” the big man said. He stuck his hand out to shake, saying, “The name is Mike Sample.”

  “Custis Long,” Longarm said, taking Sample’s hand and giving it a firm shake. “Belly up to the bar, Mike. We’ll see if we can drink in peace for a little while. Then maybe you’d fancy a turn with the cards.”

  “That I would, Custis Long,” Sample said.

  By the end of that evening—and a bottle and a half of rye whiskey—Longarm and Sample were best friends forever.

  But in the morning Longarm’s head ached along with his jaw.

  Chapter 7

  Longarm was feeling considerably better by the time the coach pulled into Lusk for a quick change of horses. The sun was slanting low and the wind was picking up. The passengers in the coach were in for a long, cold night.

  “I’ll be leaving you here,” Longarm told the driver. “Any suggestions about where a man could find a decent room?” The prospects did not look great, not from looking around the town.

  The driver pointed to a building in the next block. “You’ll want to stay at the Drover’s Rest there.”

  “It’s good?” Longarm asked.

  The driver grinned and said, “It’s the only.”

  Longarm laughed. “In that case . . .” He picked up his bag and began hiking up the street toward the Drover’s Rest.

  * * *

  After a sound sleep—disturbed not more than a dozen times by the hatmaker’s supplies salesman he was required to share the bed with—Longarm had a hot breakfast and a cigar and pronounced himself fit for the day.

  “I need t’ hire a horse,” he told the gent at the café. “Where might I find one?”

  “Only place in town that rents stock would be the livery,” the café owner said. “You can find it behind the stage stop yonder.” The man pointed, then used that finger to scratch his balls. Longarm was pleased that he had finished his meal before seeing that.

  Longarm grabbed his bag and headed back toward the stagecoach station where his bedmate from the previous night was engaged in buying a ticket for points south.

  Just as claimed, there was a tall, solidly built barn behind the stage depot. The place looked to be more soundly built and considerably quieter than the Drover’s Rest had been, but it was a little too late to discover that now, otherwise he might have elected to curl up in a pile of hay rather than share bed time with a stranger. Particularly with a stranger who seemed to possess a bladder the size of a peanut.

  The livery’s corral held a collection of heavy-bodied cobs, likely the property of the stagecoach line and kept in rotation for pulling the coach. Several of those were handsome animals, but none of them was of interest to Longarm.

  “I’m needing a good saddle horse,” Longarm told the hostler when the man showed up, an empty feed bucket in one hand and a curry comb in the other.

  “Rent or buy?” the skinny old man asked.

  “Rent,” Longarm said.

  “I got one I could let out. For a price, of course. Up to you if you think he’s ‘good.’ I don’t make no claims about that.”

  “Drag him out here then,” Longarm said. “I’ll take him.”

  “You ain’t seen him yet.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I got t’ have a saddle horse for a few days so I’ll take him regardless.”

  The hostler turned his head and spat. “Wait here, mister. I’ll be right back with your horse.”

  “Saddle, too, o’ course,” Longarm said.

  “I got two. They’re yonder,” the hostler said, pointing. “Take your pick.”

  While the liveryman was out in the corrals fetching in the saddle horse, Longarm looked over the saddles. And concluded that if the horse was as bad as the worn-out saddles, he was in for a long day.

  The horse, as it turned out, was not nearly as good as the saddles.

  It was going to be a long day.

  Chapter 8

  The day got longer and even less pleasant as he was approaching the wide spot where he assumed the stagecoaches pulled aside to meet the Thursday wagon from Valmere.

  There were already two men there, saddles loosed, giving their horses a break while both man and animal had a drink, the horses drinking water from Hat Creek and the men quenching their thirst from a whiskey shared bottle.

  “Howdy.” Longarm nodded and dismounted, glad to get off both the miserable saddle and the even worse horse. He led the stupid son of a bitch of a gelding to the thread of cool water and let the horse have its head so it could drink if it wanted to. Not that that was likely; the horse had not wanted to do much of anything Longarm suggested so far, so why should it start now?

  He stretched, arching his back, then removed his coat and tied it on top of his carpetbag strapped behind the cantle of the livery saddle.

  The two men got up from where they had been lounging on a patch of tall grass. There was something about the way they were looking at him . . .

  “Well, shit,” Longarm mumbled as he slipped beneath the rented horse’s neck so the animal was between him and the travelers.

  “Mister,” the taller of the two called as they came near.

  That one wore a derby hat and a sack coat. He had about a week’s growth of dark beard and had run-down boots.

  His companion was very slightly shorter and very slightly the better dressed of the two, wearing a tailored coat, bright bandanna, and wide-brimmed boss-of-the-plains hat crimped in a Montana peak.

  Both men wore pistols hanging at their bellies.

  Longarm peered at them over the back of his seal brown horse. “Ayuh?”

  “We was wondering if you could help us out,” the shorter one said.

  “Prob’ly not,” Longarm told them. “I don’t know this country worth a damn. Just trying t’ get to a place called Valmer or maybe it’s Valmere. Anyway, I need t’ get there, but I ain’t from around here and wouldn’t know enough t’ give directions.”

  “No, it ain’t directions we’re looking for.” The tall one glanced at the short one and both of them grinned a little.

  The short one looked at Longarm and said, “What we had in mind was for you to help us with whatev
er money you got on you.”

  “All of whatever money you got,” the tall one said.

  Longarm sighed. “I don’t think so.”

  “Mind now, we did ask polite,” the short one said.

  Both of them reached to take out their pistols.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Longarm told them. “A pretty bad mistake, so give this up before you get hurt.”

  “Mister, let me remind you, we are two guns to your one, so you give it up before we hurt you.”

  “Mister, may I inform you that your guns are in your leather while my .45 is right here in my hand.”

  “Mister, I think you’re lying.”

  Longarm rested his left arm on his saddle while he leaned against the horse as it drank, head down, ears flapping back and forth while it swallowed.

  He waited, hoping the two would give up their bad idea to rob a passing stranger and go back to their whiskey bottle. Hoping, but not really expecting.

  He was right not to hope for a peaceful resolution to this little problem. The two idiots dragged iron.

  Longarm gave the men time to reconsider while they took aim at his head, which was all that was exposed over the back of the brown horse.

  Then the shooting started, and the two gents had run out of time.

  Chapter 9

  Longarm dropped behind the brown horse, ducked low, and reemerged beneath the animal’s neck.

  His .45 bellowed, and the brown’s head came up as the horse reared onto its hind legs.

  Longarm fired again, taking the man on the right first, the smaller of the two. The son of a bitch would not go down so Longarm shot him a third time. He was positive his bullets flew true, but the little man simply refused to drop.

  There was no time to fool with him any further for the taller one was shooting now. Longarm could hear the bumblebee drone of the slugs passing close by his head. He threw a hasty shot at the taller one and shot the short man a fourth time, that slug finally dropping him.

  Longarm stood up, took careful aim and squeezed off a sixth . . . nothing.