by Evans, Tabor
Longarm continued on up the stairs. He slowed as he approached his room, seeing a shadow move under the door just up from it and on the other side of the hall. He was not surprised when the door’s latch clicked. Longarm reached across his belly and closed his hand over his Colt’s walnut grips and kept his cautious gaze on the door.
There was a slight squawk as the door opened about two inches. An eye appeared in the crack, glittering in the dull light of the flickering bracket lamps. The eye found him, widened. He heard a gasp, and then the door closed.
The latch clicked.
Longarm growled, grinding his teeth, and strode up to the door. He rapped twice on it with his fist, then stepped to the far side lest he should be met with a bullet through the door. “Open up, goddamnit! You wanna get a look at me so goddamn bad, then open up and take your look!”
He slid the Colt from its holster, held it straight up in front of him, and waited, listening.
A floorboard complained on the other side of the door. The latch clicked. The hinges squawked their familiar squawk as the door drew open a foot. Nothing happened for a moment. Then a gun appeared, slowly being thrust through the opening. An old-model Remington .44. When Longarm could see the hand holding it, he smashed his Colt down hard against the barrel.
The hand released it as the owner of the hand screamed. Longarm stepped in front of the door, shoving it farther open with one hand while thrusting his hand against the chest of the person he found before him. He was vaguely surprised to feel the twin mounds of what could only be breasts under a rough work shirt, and that the person flying back away from him and hitting the floor with an indignant groan was a well set-up, tawny-haired girl.
“Goddamn your eyes!” the girl cried, lifting her head and tossing the tangle of hair away from her tan, copper-eyed, heart-shaped face. “You leave me alone, you son of a bitch!”
Longarm figured she was about Bethany’s age.
He stood in the doorway, scowling at her, incredulous. “Who in hell are you, missy?” His brain was fatigued from all the questions he’d found himself having to ask. “And what in the hell were you tryin’ to do with that gun?”
“I was trying to defend myself,” she yelled, gritting her teeth, eyes blazing furiously. A scar across her lower lip did nothing to temper her earthy, dusky-skinned beauty. There was a frank, tomboy quality about her, and a faint, husky rasp in her voice.
“Don’t know if I buy it, but that’s one answer. Now, who in the hell are you?”
She stared at him, her well-filled dark-blue work shirt rising and falling heavily as she breathed. She swallowed, licked her lips. Her eyes flicked around uncertainly before returning to Longarm. “I’m Jenny May.”
When Longarm just stared at her, saying nothing, she added, “I’m Lyle May’s sister.”
Chapter 12
“Half-sister, I should say,” the tawny-haired, brown-eyed girl added quickly, correcting herself.
“Well, now,” Longarm said, kicking the door of the girl’s room closed. “Ain’t this cozy?”
Jenny May gritted her teeth as she glared up at him from the floor. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“You bein’ here for your brother.” Longarm poked his hat brim back off his forehead. “If you really are Laughing Lyle’s sister. You sure as hell don’t look like him.”
“We have different mothers.”
She started to rise, and Longarm moved forward to help her. She only glared up at him, light brown eyes flashing in the light of a candle atop the room’s dresser, and Longarm stepped back with an ironic chuff as she climbed to her feet unassisted. As she did, his male eyes appraised her.
While she was dressed like any trail hand—and an especially poor one at that in patched denims, work shirt with a tattered collar, a cracked leather belt around her slender waist, and worn men’s stockmen’s boots probably in a boy’s size—she wasn’t lacking physically. Her face was earthily beautiful and framed in tawny, sun-bleached hair that hung in thick, curly waves to her shoulders. Her bust was firm and full though not overlarge, and her hips were nicely rounded, legs long and muscular—the legs of a girl accustomed to long hours in a saddle.
“Lyle’s mother was a parlor girl, long dead from consumption,” she said, throwing her hair back from her collar and standing with one hand on a brass bedpost. “Mine died when I was a year old, of a milk fever.” She frowned at him peevishly. “What’re you lookin’ at?”
“You sure you’re Laughing Lyle’s sister and this ain’t some kind of setup?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, you know what he looks like, and I take it you’ve seen yourself in a mirror a time or two . . .”
If she felt complimented by the comparison, she didn’t show it. She only flared her tanned nostrils at him and fired another couple of arrows at him with her eyes. “I’ve already explained it to you, haven’t I?” She crossed her arms on her breasts as though to block his view of them. “Now, would you mind heading back to your room? I’d like to get my pistol and turn in. I’m tired.”
“Ah, your pistol. You mean, the one you were going to beef me with?”
“I wasn’t going to beef you if you weren’t going to pester me.”
“What’s with all the door clickin’? Why do you keep spyin’ on me?”
Jenny’s eyes flashed again, brighter. “I wasn’t spying on you. I’d heard you were here to take Lyle back to Denver, and I was just curious.”
It was Longarm’s turn to sneer. “Just about that? Or maybe about the saddlebags your brother was carryin’ with him, too?”
“No! I heard about them, of course, but I . . .” She let her voice trail off as light footsteps sounded in the hall. Presently, someone knocked on the door.
Ma Marcus’s raspy voice said, “Jenny? You all right in there, honey?”
“I’m all right, Ma. I’d appreciate, however, if you’d inform the lawman here that it’s not polite to bust his way into girls’ rooms.”
Longarm snorted and opened the door wide to see Ma Marcus standing there in a gaudy, high-collared, long-sleeve dress, a Persian cat pressed against her small bosom. Ma arched an eyebrow and looked past Longarm at Jenny.
“You two know each other?” Longarm asked, shifting his gaze from Ma Marcus to Laughing Lyle’s sister.
“Of course we know each other,” Ma said. “I always put Jenny up here when she and her pa come to town for supplies. Old Hy May likes to dilly-dally for a few days, gamblin’ an’ cavortin’ an’ such, and I like Jenny to have a safe place to room while he does. A safe, clean place.”
“I came alone this time, waiting on some freight. I was here when Lyle showed up, though I ain’t seen him yet. I’m stayin’ on account of him, see what happens to him, so I can tell Pa.” Jenny walked past Longarm and wrapped an arm around the withered old lady, briefly stroking the cat half-asleep against Ma’s spindly shoulder. “Ma looks after me when I come to Nowhere. She let’s me stay here for free.”
“Oh, she helps in the kitchen—Jenny does!” Ma said. “Never seen a girl work so hard. I guess she had to learn quick, growin’ up out there with ole Hy May.” Obviously, Ma didn’t approve of the girl’s and Laughing Lyle’s father.
Jenny squeezed the woman’s shoulder, smiling sweetly, and her smile was damn near angelic to Longarm’s eyes. What a contrast between her and her brother!
Turning to Longarm but keeping one arm around Ma, Jenny said, “To answer your question, Marshal, I am most certainly not here for the stolen money. Of course I heard about it. Who around Nowhere hasn’t? I’m here only for Lyle. Just happened to be here when the Todds hauled him in.
“I sent word to Pa that Lyle is here, wounded, and that I’ll haul him home when and if he dies. Pa himself is . . . sick.” She made a face before continuing. “Bottle sick, I
guess you could say . . . so I’m here alone. When Lyle dies, I’m going to haul him home to bury him. Personally, I wouldn’t care if he was thrown over the nearest trash heap and left to the coyotes—there’s no love lost between us—but I know Pa wants his only son planted back at the ranch.”
Longarm studied the girl standing there beside Ma holding the cat. Finally, he shook his head, slipped past them, and scooped up the girl’s gun from the hall floor. He handed the old Remington to her, butt-first. “You dropped somethin’.”
“Thank you,” Jenny said tonelessly, taking the gun.
“You always go around armed?”
“Yup.”
Ma chuckled and smiled at Jenny.
Longarm found himself liking the girl. And he found himself believing her story, as well, though he was probably a fool for believing what anyone around here said. Regretfully, he said, “Hope I didn’t hurt your hand.”
“I’m pretty tough,” the girl said. “It takes more than a little knock like that to hurt my hand.”
Longarm pinched his hat brim to the pair. “Night, ladies.”
“Marshal,” Ma said and nodded as Longarm walked over to his own door, digging the key out of his pocket.
As he unlocked the door, he glanced over his shoulder at Jenny. She was looking at him over her own shoulder, but now she turned her head away quickly and stepped into her room. She bid Ma Marcus good night, let her eyes stray once more, furtively, to Longarm, then closed the door until the latch clicked.
Longarm went into his own room and tossed back a couple of stiff belts from Alva’s good bourbon bottle before undressing and throwing himself under the blankets. His head was reeling. It didn’t let him fall asleep until a good hour had passed.
* * *
Despite an unsatisfying night of sleep, Longarm woke at dawn as he usually did. He had a whore’s bath, redressed his wounded right arm with the fixings Alva had provided, then left his room, wedging a matchstick between door and frame. As he headed down the stairs, he dug a three-for-a-nickel cheroot from his coat pocket, bit off the end, and struck a match on his cartridge belt.
Through the smoke billowing out around him, he saw Ma Marcus sweeping the lobby floor, dressed in another gaudy, high-necked dress that fit her spindly body like a second skin. This one was purple.
“You ever sleep, Ma?” he asked when he had the cigar going to his satisfaction, stepping down off the stairs.
“A few hours here and there.” She stopped sweeping to regard him in her droll, matter-of-fact way. “I get occasional drummers coming in after midnight, and I ain’t flush enough to turn ’em away. So I sit there with Sunshine”—she glanced at the Persian cat lying on a folded quilt atop the desk to Longarm’s right—“and I crochet. Oh, well. What else am I gonna do? Too old to work the bawdy houses.”
Longarm chuckled as he strolled past the good-humored old woman, heading for the doors.
“Almost forgot,” she said. “Marshal Butter is in the dinin’ room. Told me to send you in there.”
“Thanks, Ma.”
Longarm switched course and walked through the door flanking the lobby desk, into the dining room. Butter was the only customer, sitting where he and Longarm had supped the night before. The man looked weary, eyes red-rimmed, as he sagged back in a Windsor chair, a cup of coffee steaming in front of him, a brown-paper cigarette smoldering in his hand. His funnel-brimmed cream hat was on the table to his left.
“Mornin’,” he said.
“Mornin’ yourself,” Longarm returned, doffing his hat and tossing it onto the table before him.
“What’s your plan for the day?”
“I was going to check on Laughing Lyle,” Longarm said. “And then I was going to backtrack him as far as the Finlay Roadhouse if need be, looking for those saddlebags.”
“Ah, hell,” Butter said, his voice gravelly from lack of sleep, looking up with his hound dog eyes. “Forget the damn saddlebags, Longarm. Ole Lyle hid ’em where no one’s ever gonna find ’em, and he’ll take the secret to his grave if he hasn’t already.”
“Just the same, I’m gonna take that ride.”
Butter glanced at the serving girl standing off Longarm’s right elbow, an expectant look in her eyes. She was the same girl from last night. There certainly must have been a paucity of sleep in Nowhere, Longarm vaguely reflected.
“Let’s have some breakfast,” Butter suggested. “Then I’ll ride along with you. Two sets of eyes are better than one.”
Longarm supposed the man was right, though he’d have prefered riding alone. He had a lot to think through. Then again, he might learn something from Butter during the long ride east and back again. What that might be, he had no idea.
Longarm ordered coffee and a breakfast platter, and when the girl hustled off to the kitchen, he sat down across from Butter. The girl brought his coffee a moment later, and only a few minutes after that, she brought both men large, oval plates heaped with ham and eggs, hash browns, and toast slathered in butter.
Butter had been oddly quiet, but now, as he ate, he looked across the table at Longarm and said with a faintly chagrined air, “I suppose you know where I headed off to last night. Oh, I don’t reckon Benji would have told you. The kid respects my privacy. But if you’d talked to anyone else, they probably told you about my doin’s up north of town . . . with Hetta.”
“I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t heard,” Longarm said over the rim of his coffee cup. “Don’t worry about it, Roscoe. I sure as hell ain’t. The way I see it, most men would have left the woman and the child high and dry. You didn’t. I’d be proud of that fact, if I were you.”
They ate for a time, and then Butter chuckled wryly and shook his head. “Never did get married. Never cared to. Preferred my freedom. I spent my whole life out on the range punchin’ cows. Then, when I finally moved into town at age fifty-three and got myself a relatively secure job, what do I do? I throw a loop around a whole passel of trouble.”
“Maybe you needed a family.” Longarm had infrequently wondered about that himself, in the depths of deep, dark nights when he was alone and in a nowhere place such as this. “Well, now you have two.”
“Ah, don’t get me wrong. I’m right fond of my own kid and even the other two. It’s just hard juggling Etta an’ the kids and, well, Evelyn. And it ain’t easy providin’ for all of them.”
Longarm swabbed his plate with a wedge of toast, stuffed the toast in his mouth, and sat back in his chair, thoroughly sated. He swallowed, sipped his coffee, and set the empty cup down on the table. He looked at the sheriff, feeling closer to the man after hearing his troubles, though that didn’t mean he necessarily trusted him.
Longarm said, “Roscoe, I’ve always said that a man that don’t have some complications in his life don’t really have a life. What do you say we go check on ole Laughing Lyle, see if he’s still kickin’. Then we’ll lift some trail dust, find them saddlebags, and relieve me of at least one of my complications. ’Cause I’ll tell you one thing—right now, on this job, I got plenty to go around!”
Chapter 13
“How’s the patient, Doc?” Longarm inquired of Doc Bell when, a few minutes after he and Butter had left the hotel, the doctor answered the knock on his office door.
Bell ran a napkin over his mustache-mantled mouth as he chewed. He had another napkin tucked under his double chins for a bib. “Well, he’s still kickin’,” Bell said, glancing over his shoulder at Laughing Lyle’s closed door. “But just barely. I got a feelin’ he won’t make it till lunch.”
“That’s what you said yesterday about supper.”
“Well, Marshal, it’s hard to predict these things,” Bell said, sounding testy. “All I can tell you is what I told you yesterday—your bullets chewed up his insides pretty good. While I got the lead out of him, he’s lost a lot of blood, and
the internal damage is severe. If he ever leaves that room, I’ll be very surprised.”
Longarm stepped forward. “Let me get a look at him.”
Bell didn’t move but kept his large, sloppy bulk filling the half-open doorway, as though he was reluctant to let the lawman in. Longarm frowned at the man curiously.
Bell stepped back and drew the door wide. “All right, all right,” he said, again sounding testy. “But he needs his sleep. If you’re ever to take him back to Denver, you’re gonna have to give him time to heal.”
“If he’s gonna die, anyway,” Longarm said, “I reckon he’ll be getting plenty of sleep soon enough.”
He walked across the doctor’s small office and pushed Laughing Lyle’s door open, Butter and the doctor flanking him. He moved on into the room and stared down at the man, who looked about the same as he had before, breath raking loudly in and out of his lungs. Laughing Lyle’s eyes were squeezed shut, and he had an anguished look on his face.
Longarm glanced at the small table beside the bed. There was a plate of fried eggs, bacon, and toast on it, as well as a half-drunk cup of coffee and a half-smoked cigarette. Longarm swung toward the door where Butter and Doc Bell stood, staring in at him.
“Whose breakfast?”
“Mine,” Doc Bell said, hiking a shoulder. “I was keeping watch on him. He’d started coughing earlier, and I thought he might have fluid in his lungs.” He shrugged again, slapped a hand to his thigh. “I did take the Hippocratic oath, Marshal Long . . .”
Longarm looked down at Laughing Lyle once more. The wounded killer squeezed his eyes closed tighter, opened his thick lips, and made a gurgling sound deep in his throat. A muscle in his cheek twitched.
Longarm walked back to the door as the two other men stepped away from it, the doctor backing toward his desk. “Keep him alive, Doc. Remember that oath.”
Doc Bell threw up his hands. “I’m doing everything I can, Marshal. Everything I can . . .”
“If he’s havin’ trouble breathing, it might help if you don’t smoke in his room,” Longarm said. “I’ll stop back later.”