Longarm and the Lone Star Legend Page 7

  Higgins, however, glancing back at them, did not appear sorry to see them. "You son of a bitch," he said to Longarm.

  "Easy, boss," one of the men on the veranda warned.

  "Shut up, Ray," Higgins glowered back over his shoulder. He looked back at Longarm. "I called you a son of a bitch."

  "Now that ain't much better than 'boy,'" Longarm drawled. "Try again, else I'll have to fetch me a shovel."

  Higgins flushed red. He whipped off his Stetson to wipe at the sweat dewing his brow. He was bald. His hatband had pressed a red ridge across his ivory pate. "You get your horse," he snarled, "and ride off this spread."

  "Whether I stay or go is up to Jessica," Longarm explained. "That's Miss Jessie to you," he added.

  Higgins unbuttoned his suit jacket.

  "Easy, old son," Longarm cautioned. "I can see you're carrying your gun in a shoulder rig. You ought to realize there's damn little chance you can outdraw me."

  Higgins, his hand hovering in midair, seemed to think that what Longarm had said was good advice.

  "This has gone far enough, Higgins," Jessica fumed. "Now get back to work."

  "Your daddy made me foreman, and it's my job to take care of you," Higgins argued.

  "Your job is to take care of this spread, period," Jessica said.

  "Now don't go getting all riled. Miss Jessie." Higgins winked slyly. "You know I only got your best interest at heart."

  More men have their eyes on this filly than Texas has cows, Longarm thought to himself. Plain as day, Higgins saw himself as Jessica's beau, regardless of how Jessica saw it.

  "Just get back to work," Jessie said disgustedly.

  "First I'll take his gun," Higgins replied, pointing at Longarm. "I'm doing it for you, Miss Jessie. With your daddy being shot dead and all, we can't have no strangers being around you armed."

  "Higgins, I'm warning you…" Jessica began, but Higgins waved her aside as he strode down the steps of the veranda.

  "Hush now, girl. Your daddy would want me to do this." He advanced upon Longarm, his hand outstretched. "Give me your gun, boy. Else you'll have to outshoot me and the four behind me."

  Longarm prepared himself for trouble, but just then Ki glided between the deputy and the burly foreman.

  "Miss Jessica has given you an order, Higgins," the unarmed man said in his soft voice.

  "Get out of my way!"

  Ki was now less than a yard away from the foreman. He seemed dwarfed by Higgins's hulking form. "You are not being polite to our guest, Higgins."

  "Now that Mr. Starbuck is dead, maybe there's no room for you on this spread," Higgins snarled. "What do you think, boys?" he called over his shoulder.

  "Get rid of him, boss," one of the men called.

  "Bust his hole," another chortled.

  "That tears it." Higgins grinned. "Run along, Chinaman…"

  Before he could say another word, Ki struck with a roundhouse kick. His torso bent sideways as his leg came around straight and true, his foot catching Higgins beneath the chin.

  The foreman rose about six inches in the air, and then fell, to land hard on his butt. By then, Ki was back in a relaxed, standing position. The whole kick and return had taken less time than a rattlesnake takes to strike.

  "I am of Japanese ancestry, not Chinese, Higgins," Ki said, staring down at the foreman. "But you needn't grovel in the dirt. Merely apologize."

  Higgins lumbered to his feet. He was swearing and spitting in rage. He tugged out from beneath his jacket a blued-steel Peacemaker. But before he could even thumb back the hammer on the single-action weapon, Ki moved in fast. He swatted Higgins's gun with the edge of his right hand. The Peacemaker went flying off in the direction of the Texas Panhandle as Higgins yelped in surprise and clasped his wrist.

  "Shoot the yellow chink!" Higgins shouted in frustration to his men.

  Longarm quickly moved toward the veranda, drawing his Colt as he did so. "Let's all stay out of this, boys. What do you say?"

  The four men stared at Longarm's Colt. They noticed that its barrel had been cut down to five inches, and that it lacked a front sight. They looked at the cross-draw rig, and then back at the gun trained rock-steady upon them. "He's a gunslick, we can't do nothing!" one of them said. Gradually they lifted their hands toward the pitched roof of the veranda.

  "Then I'll kill you myself, chink. With my bare hands," Higgins huffed, now truly resembling a grizzly. He moved warily around Ki, who stood motionless, not even bothering to turn as Higgins attacked from behind.

  As the foreman looped both brawny arms around Ki's neck, the smaller man thrust his elbow into the other's solar plexus. Higgins gasped in pain, his arms going limp, now encompassing nothing but thin air. Ki slammed his elbow into Higgins's ribs, and the foreman staggered like a poleaxed steer. Ki swept Higgins's boots out from under the heavy man, using only his own bare foot, but that foot was like a broom sweeping away liner. Higgins landed on his knees, and then toppled all the way to the ground. He rolled over on his back, his breath coming in agonized rasps as he clutched at his chest and side.

  Light as a feather, Ki knelt beside him. With one hand he tilted Higgins's chin to expose the foreman's throat. "If I struck here," he said, his finger gently tracing Higgins's Adam's apple, "you would choke to death on your own crushed throat."

  "Please…" Higgins gasped, his eyes rolling white. Ki's rigid grip had arced his neck back at an impossible angle. Higgins resembled — in more ways than one — a chicken with its neck stretched across the chopping block.

  "Or here," Ki continued, ignoring Higgins's plea. He touched the foreman's nose. "If I struck here, shards of bone would drive themselves into your pig's brain. Your life would bleed out of your ears into the dust…"

  "Ki," Jessica called. "Don't. Let him go."

  After a moment, Ki smiled and nodded. "Higgins, am I Chinese?"

  "No…"

  What am I, Higgins?"

  "Japanese…" the foreman gurgled, and then moaned.

  "Half Japanese," Ki remarked. "But close enough, Higgins, close enough." He rose to his feet without apparent effort, as if he were a puppet wafted into the air by strings attached to his head and shoulders. The mistress of this ranch gives you back your life, Higgins. I give it back to you. Take it now, and flee with it." Ki paused a moment, waiting, as Higgins stared up at him, paralyzed, a bird bewitched by a serpent.

  You are fired," Ki said.

  Wincing in pain, Higgins tottered up onto his feet, and stumbled off toward the bunk house.

  Ki turned to the four men held at bay by Longarm. "You are all fired as well," he announced. "Get off Circle-Star land." Silently, the four began to do as they were told. Ki watched them shuffle off in the direction Higgins had taken.

  Longarm holstered his Colt as he stared at Ki. "That was something…"

  Ki smiled. He flipped back the blue-black shock of hair that had fallen across his forehead, and stood with his powerful hands resting on his narrow hips. "He called me Chinese. That was an insult."

  "Absolutely," Longarm said.

  "The Chinese and the Japanese do not mix."

  "Don't mix," Longarm agreed adamantly.

  "Oil and water," Ki added.

  Longarm gazed at the man's slender form. "You didn't hardly work up a sweat with that big bruiser, did you?"

  "Hardly," Ki agreed.

  "If there had been maybe a half-dozen more of him against you," Longarm said thoughtfully, "it wouldn't have made all that much difference, would it?"

  Ki shrugged. "Not much difference at all."

  "How?" asked Longarm. "I mean, you never even made a fist."

  "It is called te." Ki interrupted. "In your language the word roughly translates as 'hand.' Long ago, in a faraway land known as Okinawa…"

  That's a chain of islands off the Japanese mainland." Longarm remarked.

  "Longarm!" Ki laughed. "That is twice today you have delighted me! The Okinawans were conquered by my own people, the Japanese, an
d as their overlords, my ancestors forbade the Okinawans the honor of owning weapons. The Okinawans are a proud people. To have the ability to defend themselves they developed the art of te — empty-hand fighting, in which one's body becomes the ultimate weapon."

  "Is that what you meant before, up on the rise, when I asked if you were unarmed, and you said you had weapons?"

  "To a degree," Ki smiled. "But I am armed in ways other than te…" Turning his gaze toward the stables, he added, "We will speak of that another time, my friend. I wish to make sure that Higgins and his followers indeed leave as ordered."

  Longarm watched Ki stride away. "Quite a strange bird, that one…"

  That's an interesting way to put it," Jessica smiled.

  "He seems mighty devoted to you."

  "It's a long story," Jessica walked to Longarm's side. "Thank you for helping. I mean keeping those others out of it."

  Longarm shrugged. "I wanted to keep it a fair fight. 'Course, that was before I knew that Ki could beat up the whole damn bunkhouse if he had a mind to. Sorry about causing you the trouble in the first place. It looks as if my arriving here has cost you your foreman and a bunch of hands. And at roundup time, as well…"

  "Things were coming to a head anyway, Longarm," Jessie said. "Higgins was one of our top hands. A few weeks before my father was killed, he made Higgins foreman. I guess you know that on a spread of this size, the foreman's job is pretty much taken up with desk work, with balancing the books. Higgins was good at it. He took to wearing suits, like my father. Like a businessman. He got rid of his gunbelt and took to that shoulder-holster rig, thinking it was more dignified. Now don't get me wrong," Jessie added, her pretty green eyes serious. "There's nothing wrong with a man wanting to improve his station in life. That's what this country and Texas are all about. It's just that once my father was gone, Higgins started to think I came along with his job. That somehow the fact that he was foreman made him the man I'm supposed to marry. Why it all came to a head with your arrival is beyond me."

  "I could see that he considered you a stray heifer ripe for his brand," Longarm mused.

  "Painful analogy." Jessica rubbed at the seat of her jeans and pretended to wince. "But apt, nonetheless."

  "Forgive an old cattleman, ma'am," Longarm smiled, his eyes dancing merrily.

  "You're forgiven," Jessica answered. "But I must say, Deputy, you can't know very much about women if you think the way into their hearts is with a branding iron." She took his arm and led him up the steps, across the veranda, and into the house.

  "A man has no business trying to brand a woman as his own," Longarm agreed thoughtfully. "Though a red-hot poker does have its place," he chuckled.

  "It does indeed," Jessica laughed with abandon, and Longarm thought that unless he was careful, he'd have to add his own name to Jessica Starbuck's list of admiring beaus.

  Chapter 7

  That night, Longarm, asleep, tossed and turned in his bed. It wasn't his fault the Springfield had jammed. There was just too much mud. Too much blood.

  At Shiloh!

  The Springfield had jammed! Custis Long's panic grew by the moment. He was defenseless against the enemy marching upon him.

  Against the boy marching upon him! The bullet hole Custis Long had just put into the boy's chest seemed to have no effect. How could that be? The boy was only fourteen or so; A .51 was way too much bullet for such a skinny stripling… but the bullet hole just glistened there on the boy's chest like some ghastly boutonniere of flesh. The boy wore it proudly. He'd take it home to show his mama, his papa, his girl. The boy was leering and laughing as he fixed his bayonet and broke into a dog-trot charge directly at his murderer…

  His murderer, Custis Long, brought his useless Springfield up like a club. As he prepared to repel the attack, he felt the rifle crumble into dust, spilling across his now-empty hands.

  The boy laughed. The boy's chest wound laughed. It said, "He's a gunslick, but he can't do nothing!"

  Custis Long's panic was greater than the whole muddy field, greater than the entire limbo that was Shiloh. Amid dying men's cries, the sky became a huge chest wound, ragged and burning, blood-crimson wet, urine-yellow, urine-stinking…

  Custis Long stood frozen in place, waiting for the keen edge of the boy's bayonet. All around, the Springfields and Spencer rifles chewed their bites out of men. All around, a new sort of gunfire emerged. The sound was like a string of firecrackers going off in quick succession. The sound signaled a change in the odds. The sound changed the battlefield from limbo, where, after all, there was some hope of redemption, into hell — where there was no hope at all…

  Longarm woke up and came to his senses a split second before he began to fire his Colt into the dark corners of the room. He was slick with sweat, disoriented; despite the room's open windows he felt suffocated. A moonbeam, a softly glowing shaft of light, angled into the room. Longarm's eyes focused on it in desperation.

  The Starbuck spread, he realized. In a bedroom in the Starbuck house. It had been a dream, but what a dream!

  With shaking fingers Longarm struck a match, one of the bundle lying on the bedside table, and held the flame to the wick of the kerosene lamp. The flickering light banished the last of the nightmare from the room, but not from Longarm's mind. The damp bedsheets were wound around his legs like swamp grass. He kicked his way free and got out of bed, to pad across the room to where his saddlebags were draped across a chair back. He extracted his bottle of Maryland rye and took a healthy swallow. And then another swallow.

  And then a third swallow. For the boy.

  Longarm's nightmare had stacked the deck against him. Hell, the war was fifteen years ago. He'd just been a boy himself at Shiloh, where he'd killed for the first time. That time he'd killed the boy — he was no gunslick back then…

  It had been just one boy — himself — against another. That damned fool kid had shouted some brave nonsense as he'd charged into the sights of that other youngster's Springfield. Longarm still remembered the impact of the rifle's butt against his shoulder as the Springfield spat blue smoke and gray lead the boy's way.

  "Kid must of thought he was going to live forever," Longarm muttered out loud to break the oppressive silence in the room. "Well, he found out how short 'forever' could be."

  Longarm stretched out on the bed to let the fragments of the dream drift back to him. Nightmares had a way of shuffling — as well as stacking — a deck. Nightmares shuffled time, for example. In his dream, that firecracker sound filled the air at Shiloh, but Longarm knew he hadn't actually heard the unique, chattering noise of a Gatling gun until just after the War, when the carpetbaggers flooded into the South, and the Union Army was ramming through the once-Confederate states, hunting down the scattered bands of defiant, bitter rebels who refused to pledge their allegiance to the Stars and Stripes. And so they were branded outlaws, and hunted down — one way or another…

  The big, carriage-mounted Gatlings were often used by the Union Army to intimidate those stubborn rebels who would not surrender, and execute the ones considered too damned ornery to tame. It seemed to Longarm that just such a weapon had been used to murder Alex Starbuck.

  But how?

  But Alex Starbuck was riddled with .25-caliber bullets, and shot at from a high rocky crest, a crest from which the ambushers had managed to escape — with their weapon — within minutes. No Gatling had that sort of mobility, and no Gatling was chambered for .25's. And yet it had happened, somehow. Happened to Alex Starbuck the way it had happened to so many poor, bullet-riddled bastards just after the War…

  Longarm sighed to himself. It was bad to have the War and its aftermath on one's mind. Well, by morning's light he'd go to talk to Willie, the old hand now turned cook, who was with Alex Starbuck the day he was murdered. It sounded like a string of firecrackers going off on the Fourth of July, Willie had told Jessica. Chances were, old Willie knew something about Gatling guns. Chances were, old Willie had what he'd witnessed just after th
e War on his mind, as well…

  It was just too hot in the bedroom. Longarm needed air. He slipped on his trousers, scooped up his bottle, and left the room on the second floor of the house.

  Though this part of the house was three stories high, there were only two floors. The second-floor bedrooms opened out to a corridor, one side of which was a railed balcony that overlooked a huge combination dining and living room. The dark-stained roof rafters soared above this room, which had polished wood floors, and a magnificent slate fireplace. Comfortable furniture was arranged about the room, and off to one side, in a generous space of its own, there stood a massive mahogany dining room set. At this table Longarm, along with Jessie and Ki, had earlier eaten a delicious dinner, prepared and served by an elderly, diminutive Oriental woman — a Japanese, Longarm was quite sure.

  The big room was dark now, except for the moonlight filtering in through a brace of curtained bay windows. The idea of wandering alone through someone's house did not appeal to Longarm. He was about to return to his own room when his sharp eyes caught a flicker of movement by the fireplace. He strained to see in the dim light, and called out softly, "Is there someone there?"

  "Longarm?" Jessie called back. "What are you doing awake?"

  "Same as you, I guess, Longarm laughed.

  "Quiet," she scolded. "You'll wake the others."

  Longarm walked to the end of the corridor and felt his way down the steps, his bare feet silent against the sturdy wood planks. As he reached the ground floor, he squinted against the bright flash of a match as Jessica lit a candle on the mantelpiece. The tiny flame dimly illuminated the portrait mounted above the fireplace. It was of a lovely, red-haired woman dressed in a green gown. The dress's hue exactly matched the woman's emerald eyes.