Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds

by Tabor Evans

  Longarm hadn't been raised rude enough to read the mail of a gent who wasn't in trouble with the law. So he sat down and lit up, casting a thoughtful eye at the banjo clock on one oak-paneled wall. He could see Billy Vail was due back any minute, if only to close up for the day. He wondered what in thunder might old Reverend Dyer have to say in that confounded upside-down handwritten letter?

  Longarm had heard the saintly old missionary had come out to the Rockies after the war from the Great Lakes country, where he'd been first a mining man and then a preacher to the already Christian Chippewa, as most white folks called the Ojibwa. So the kindly old preacher's tips on Indian matters tended to be more accurate than some the government liked better. Dyer had fought hard to save the west-slope hunting grounds of the Ute, and both the B.I.A. and U.S. Army could have saved themselves some scalps if they'd paid more attention to Dyer's warnings about misunderstandings before the Meeker Massacre and the Milk River Ambush.

  Dyer's earlier Indian followers, the Ojibwa back around Lake Superior, had been sworn enemies of the Santee and their kin. French folks had shortened and adopted the Ojibwa words for a son-of-bitching enemy. So later English-speaking settlers had felt no call to change the spelling from "Sioux." The Santee branch of the far-flung folks who preferred to call themselves Nakota, Dakota, or Lakota as one moved east to west, could be swell pals or vicious enemies, as the spirits moved them. Old Dyer, as well as Tyger, Flanders, and their mysterious pal called Chief, would have all been back yonder in Santee Country around the same time, whether preaching to Indians or swapping Confederate Gray for Union Blue to get out of a prisoner-of-war camp and strike a blow for the white race in general.

  Longarm still managed not to read Billy Vail's mail before the older, shorter, and far stockier marshal grumped in on his restless stubby legs, smoking a shorter, stockier, and more pungent cigar, grabbed his own seat on the official side of the desk with his back to the window, and growled, "I heard. You made us look good and so I can't say I'm downright cross with you. But I swear I'm sometimes sure that if I asked you for a light you'd set the building afire! I sent you to guard that material witness for the prosecutor, not solve his case for him, and who told you to run off with the files on that more serious payroll robbery? I needed 'em to read more'n you needed 'em to wipe your ass with, damn it!"

  Longarm smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, Boss. I didn't know you were working that case, and I was reading too. I'll buy that toasted cadaver hauled out of the Dugan rooming house as the real Brick Flanders, if you'll let me run over to Durango with a federal writ allowing me to open the so-called grave of the late Calvert Tyger."

  Vail shook his bullet head. "I got a better place for you to head. But next week will do. My old woman told me all about that Sunday-Go in Eastern Park. For she's on the same entertainment committee as a certain young widow woman you've asked me not to mention by name."

  "I don't mind missing that shindig as long as it's in the line of duty," Longarm said.

  Vail chuckled. "What's in the line of duty, the Sunday-Go or a mighty long train ride back to southwest Minnesota?"

  Longarm blinked. "That's far enough to get me out of a hair-pulling contest, I reckon. But whatever for? I told you when I got back from that last wild-goose chase to Rice County that neither Frank nor Jesse had been anywhere near Northfield since that big bank robbery and shootout back in the autumn of '76, and this more recent as well as more profitable robbery is hot! I mean that literally. For I somehow doubt all that paper money burned away in not one but two roominghouse fires."

  He looked about in vain for an ashtray on his side of the desk, flicked ashes from his cheroot on the rug, and observed, "They say it's good for carpet mites. I'll believe the real leader of that gang died from smoking in bed after I see who's buried in his grave. It don't add up, Billy. Five or more outlaws light out with a government payroll, most of it in high-denomination treasury notes with their serial numbers on file. Then the only two gang members we know by name go up in smoke, bang, bang, and we know for a fact that last fire was deliberate!"

  Vail sighed. "I wish you children wouldn't interrupt your elders. I don't want you wasting time over Durango way because it ain't as important who got buried, or even how he died, not only yonder but many a day ago. You track where the trail's still warm, old son, and one of those very treasury notes you mentioned turned up more recently at the Granger's Savings and Loans in New Ulm, not Northfield, Minnesota."

  Vail leaned back in his seat and picked up Reverend Dyer's letter to wave at Longarm as he continued. "I don't think Frank or Jesse cashed it either. Even if New Ulm wasn't closer to the Dakota line, the son of a bitch who paid for his seed corn and a mess of hardware with a hundred-dollar treasury note has his local name and address on file with that merchant who broke such a whopping wonder of paper money for him. You can't bite a hundred-dollar note to test it, you know. So it's a wise notion to write down who came in with it, and he did."

  Longarm nodded soberly. "I had to break a twenty-dollar silver certificate in a Chinese restaurant one time. It sure got noisy, and it was just as well I was packing my badge and identification."

  Vail said, "It was a bank teller who spotted the serial number and told his superior, who naturally made some noise at the merchant who'd deposited it, until said merchant got out his books and could produce the homesteader and homestead claim number of the jasper I want you to move in on in your own discreet way. Both the townsmen who spotted the note and the sheriff's department of Brown County have been slicker than usual, contacting us instead of blundering in, thanks to that cautiously worded flyer we'd listed all of them serial numbers on. The homesteader who spent that stolen treasury note filed his claim under the name of Israel or Izzie Bedford. Claims to be a New Englander who rode with General Pope against Little Crow's Santee."

  Longarm grimaced. "I caught him in a lie already. Long Trader Sibley, as the Indians called him, had already whipped the Santee good with his Minnesota Volunteers by the time Pope arrived with his limited-service regulars and paroled prisoners to mop up."

  Vail shrugged. "Be that as it may, this letter from a preacher who was there at the time confirms there was indeed a New England shave-tail called Israel Bedford mopping up Indians in the dubious company of Galvanized Yankee noncoms called Calvert Tyger and Brick Flanders. Dyer can't say who the one called Chief might have been, if he was with them at the time or not. He says he still remembers Tyger because of the unusual name, and Brick Flanders came to mind as soon as he read my questions about red beards and glass eyes."

  Longarm asked, "How come he remembers Lieutenant Bedford after all this time?"

  Vail glanced down at the letter, but didn't quote directly from it as he explained. "It appears Dyer was doing some missionary work at Fort Ridgely, trying to save the souls of captured Santee. Some of the officers gave him a hard time, saying he was wasting salvation on already damned souls the army was fixing to hang. But whenever Lieutenant Bedford was the officer of the day, he let Dyer into the stockade to help the condemned Santee pray for forgiveness."

  Longarm smiled thinly. "Must have worked for some of 'em. I understand they had close to four hundred Santee on charges of murder, rape, and worse. Abe Lincoln spoiled a heap of fun when he pardoned all but thirty-eight of 'em. Indians I know say at least thirty-seven of 'em were mean as hell by Indian standards."

  He flicked more ash, ignoring Vail's warning frown as he went on. "This Israel Bedford sounds like a charitable cuss, and would a paid-up Union officer want all that much truck with Confederate renegades who stole Union officers' mounts to head out west along the owlhoot trail?"

  Vail suggested, "That's one of the notions you might want to ask him about. I ain't ordering you to huff and puff his soddy down and haul him all the way back in irons. I only want you to ask him, in your usual sneaky way, where he got that purloined treasury note. It's possible he sold something in good faith to an old army pal or a new neighbor, who'd be the next o
ne you'd want to question, discreet but on your toes, lest you wind up in a mysterious fire as well. Henry's got your travel orders out front, if you're in such a hurry to miss that Sunday-Go. So what are you waiting for, a fatherly pat on the head or a boot in the ass?"

  Longarm felt no call to argue with anyone as stubborn as Billy Vail. So knowing old Henry could play that typewriter faster than most could write by hand, he went out front and asked, "Would you do me a favor, Henry? The boss don't seem to cotton to my carrying office files all the way to Minnesota. So I was wondering if you'd like to type up a thumbnail sketch of that payroll robbery and a list of names we might be interested in whilst I run home to pack, send my regrets about that Sunday-Go to a couple of pals, and pick me up a fresh railroad timetable at the Union Depot?"

  Henry handed him a bulky envelope and smugly replied, "I wish you wouldn't tell me how to do my job. You'll find everything you need in here, along with your travel orders, and I naturally looked up the times and places you'll have to transfer between here and New Ulm if you're leaving on the eastbound night flyer, as I'd say you ought to."

  Longarm didn't argue with Henry either. He allowed he'd be back when he finished the field job, strode out of the office and over to his hired digs, then hauled his possibles to the Union Depot and bought a round-trip ticket to Durango on his own.

  CHAPTER 5

  Longarm wasn't being disrespectful of Billy Vail's ability to read sign. He knew nobody tracked better on paper than his pudgy paper-pushing boss. But sometimes sign read different in the cold gray light of reality, and old Billy had just said there wasn't a great hurry to head for New Ulm. For a suspect working to prove a homestead claim would be there if he wasn't worried about the law, and long gone if he was.

  Meanwhile Durango, Colorado, was far closer than New Ulm, Minnesota, even though it got sort of hard to tell along the last leg of the tricky route across the very spine of the Rockies.

  In the end, it only felt like a million miles of hairpin turns above sheer drops to ribbons of white water in the canyons way down below. It was still short of midnight when Longarm stiffly climbed off the train in Durango with his heavily laden saddle. He checked the McClellan with its bedroll riding across stuffed saddlebags in the depot baggage room, hanging on to his Winchester '73 saddle gun lest it prove too tempting, and went straight to the Durango office of the railroad dicks. Pending more official incorporation as a township in the southwest corner of the fairly new state, the settlement was being policed by the railroad that had opened it to settlement once the Ute had been run off to less desirable water, timber, and range. The railroad didn't brag about it, but Longarm knew the silver smelters near the rail yards refined ore from up the valley a fair haul by freight wagon. So there wasn't much mystery about a gang that went in for payroll robberies drifting through Durango. They hadn't been out to buy any land-grant property off the D&RGW. Unless and until they laid the last of those narrow-gauge tracks up to Silverton, Durango would remain the transfer point where the three dollars a day of many a hardrock miner would be sent on by stage, in the handy form of treasury notes, over many a bumpy mile of lonesome mountain scenery.

  But there hadn't been any recent stage robberies out this way. The purported leader of the gang, Calvert Tyger, was supposed to have died in an accidental fire, which would be easier to buy if yet another gang member, under the same name, hadn't been done to a turn much the same way in Denver, and if a bill from that earlier payroll robbery hadn't surfaced later more than thrice that far from whatever in blue blazes they'd been up to in Durango.

  The railroad dicks, like telegraphers and such, stayed open around the clock because that was the way you ran a railroad. Longarm had met the older gent on duty that night as watch commander. He knew the old-timer had been a full-fledged U.S. marshal down Texas way at a time when good men and true had been forced to make their minds up on the double. Unlike a Ranger captain named Billy Vail, old Ross Gilchrist of West Texas had surrendered his U.S. marshal's badge to accept a commission with Hood's Texas Brigade, C.S.A. A railroad had been more forgiving later than the winning side.

  Gilchrist seemed sincerely glad to see Longarm again. Things did get tedious late at night on a weeknight in Durango. But while he broke out a pint of what he swore to be real Scotch liquor, and offered Longarm a Havana Claro from the humidor on his roll-top desk, the old-timer allowed he'd been there when that roominghouse had burned down less than two furlongs to the west, but couldn't seem to tell Longarm anything that Henry hadn't already typed up on onionskin for him.

  Gilchrist said there'd been no autopsy ordered for a drunk who'd died screaming like a banshee behind a wall of flames the volunteer firemen hadn't managed to break through in time. When Longarm mentioned there was no record of the late Calvert Tyger having a drinking problem, assuming he was really all that late, Gilchrist shrugged and said, "I've read his yellow sheets, old son. There's no record of him signing the pledge neither. But leaving aside whether he burnt to death drunk or sober, he sure as shit burnt to death. You could hear him bitching about it for quite a ways and longer than I'd care to die that particular way."

  Longarm asked Gilchrist if he'd seen the body afterwards.

  Gilchrist grimaced. "What was left of it. Had he baked a mite longer we could have saved the expense of planting him over in Potter's Field."

  Then, as if he'd foreseen the next obvious question, the war vet and experienced lawman volunteered, "He wound up on his side with his arms and legs drawn up the way most of us do when we're dying miserable. Used to see old boys like that in the hills of Tennessee. You could tell when a soldier boy had been killed instant or sobbing for his momma by the way he lay. Like I said, they should have let Tyger burn a mite longer and let the wind have his clean ashes. This way, his remains wound up the worst of a couple of ways. Halfway cremated and then left to molder in the wormy clay of Potter's Field. Ain't that a bitch?"

  Longarm grimaced and sipped some more Scotch liquor. It was almost as good as Maryland Rye, save for a smoky aftertaste that he didn't really need right now, picturing what likely lay in the pauper's grave of a stranger charred beyond recognition. "I was wondering how I meant to get an exhumation order without a heap of tedious explanations. I'll take your word a cuss checked into that roominghouse as Calvert Tyger and died in that fire as a result of that fire. But as long as we're on the subject of my need to report this side trip to Durango, I'd as soon not bother. I get to file enough in triplicate as it is."

  Gilchrist leaned forward to light the cigar for Longarm as he chuckled and allowed he knew the feeling. "I ain't about to write up this social visit for the Denver & Rio Grande Western, if that's what you were hinting at, old son."

  Longarm put down the empty shot glass and helped himself to a mouthful of less smoky-tasting smoke before he confessed he'd had such a shortcut in mind. Then he blew a thoughtful smoke ring and added, "I mean to ask around town, seeing I'm here, but might your company files hold anything on the other riders said to have been with Calvert Tyger when he somehow got the call to check into a mighty seedy roominghouse alone?"

  Gilchrist shook his head. "I'd have said so if we'd noticed. Nobody working for the railroad knew any of 'em were here in Durango till that fire broke out a couple of weeks back. Since we do such police work as need be, we naturally took some interest as soon as we saw what we took for a handful of part-time laborers and full-time drunks had gone up in smoke. We'd planted 'em all in Potter's Field, like I said, before anyone put the name of one victim together with that of a wanted outlaw."

  Longarm blew another thoughtful smoke ring. "My short and sweet notes on the case do mention other unfortunates who died in both mysterious fires, now that you mention it. So how come we know so much about that one particular screamer, seeing he was a stranger in town?"

  Gilchrist poured another shot in the glass at Longarm's elbow as he answered easily. "Because he was a stranger, of course. Most of the drifters who'd checked into that roo
minghouse naturally got out in time. At sunrise they and some townsmen who'd hired various old boys for a few hours' work now and again were able to identify all but the one cadaver. Nobody came forward for him. But the night clerk at the rooming house had saved their books, and like I said, once someone noticed Tyger was wanted so often in so many places ..."

  "Get back to the part about him screaming so much before they found him in that fetal position," Longarm urged. "Didn't anyone else object to being burnt alive in there?"

  Gilchrist shook his head. "The ones sober enough to yell got out sudden when the room clerk sounded the alarm. The same old clerk recalled Tyger as having paid two bits extra for a separate room, or cubicle, with a door you could bolt on the inside. All the others who failed to wake up in time were trapped further toward the back wall. The volunteers figured the bewildered cuss in that locked cubicle woke up in a strange place, blinded by smoke, and died trying to escape by way of the wardrobe against the back wall instead of the one real door at the other end. They found him in the ruins near what would have been the back of his bitty private cell had the plank walls still been standing. The poor bastard could've kicked his way out any way but through the stout oak wardrobe he was trying to escape through."

  Longarm grimaced as he pictured it, and worse yet, sort of felt the bewilderment the trapped man must have felt when, flinging open what he thought to be the door of his cubicle, he'd stepped into that tall oak wardrobe against the wrong wall!

  He started to ask another dumb question. He didn't, because it was obvious the volunteer firemen or railroad dicks would have made mention of any large sum of paper money they'd found miraculously preserved among the ashes of a burned-down and water-drenched frame structure. He swallowed the last of the liquor instead and got back to his feet, saying, "We both know why no pals of a wanted man came forward to identify his body, if that was his body. We're more certain that was the real Brick Flanders butchered and baked over in Denver more recently."