by Evans, Tabor
But Bodie kept his gun up. “Marshal, I’m not going to hang for shooting that man in the head up in Virginia City. He killed Homer and he was going to shoot me next. So if that’s—”
“I know that you killed Charlie Singleton in self-defense,” Longarm answered. “Holster that pistol, kid. This fight is over.”
Longarm threw an arm across the Bodie’s shoulders. “I don’t know which one of us shot those two, but I’m glad we got it settled in our favor.”
“Who are they?” Bodie asked.
Before Longarm could answer, a rifle’s shot boomed from a distance and the kid was knocked halfway around to collapse beside the Carson River. Longarm whirled and saw a man standing about a hundred yards downriver beside a buggy. The rifleman took careful aim and fired again, and this time Longarm felt the impact of a bullet slice deeply across his upper arm. He scooped Bodie up and charged deeper into the cottonwoods as more bullets tracked his desperate escape into hiding. Longarm’s sorrel had already taken off, leaving him without a rifle.
Two more shots and Longarm had Bodie safely hidden behind cover. “How bad are you?”
“I dunno,” the kid whispered. “I’m body shot and maybe I’ll die.”
Longarm tore off the kid’s shirt and saw that the rifle’s slug had entered just under a rib and exited through the kid’s back. It was a bad wound and one that would bleed the boy out unless Longarm could get the hole plugged up in a real hurry.
He tore Bodie’s shirt into patches and used them to bandage both the entry and exit holes. He then used his belt to bind the patches tightly to the kid’s skinny body. “Bodie, I’ve got to get you into Carson City, to a doctor.”
Bodie was still conscious. “First, you have to shoot that rifleman, Marshal. You try to take me out of here, he’s gonna pick us both off.”
“You’re right.”
“Kill him,” Bodie hissed. “Kill him before he kills us!”
“I’m going after him, but I won’t be long. Right now I’m going to reload both of our guns. If I don’t make it back, Darnell will come to finish you off because he can’t have any witnesses.”
“Are you sure it’s Darnell?”
“Yeah,” Longarm said. “I only caught a glimpse of him, but it fit the description.”
“Darnell murdered my ma and now he’s almost killed me too.”
“We’ll get through this,” Longarm vowed. “Just try to stay conscious in case he gets past me and comes to finish you off. You’re the one standing between him and a lot of money.”
“Money don’t mean anything right now,” Bodie said, teeth gritted in pain. “But I’ll kill Darnell if he comes for me.”
Longarm handed Bodie his reloaded pistol. “Stay down and don’t move or make a sound unless you hear Darnell.”
“Good luck, Marshal.”
“Thanks, I’ll need it.”
Longarm left the kid and crawled deeper into the grove of cottonwoods. He peered around the trunk of a tree and saw the buggy clearly, as well as the two dead men.
But where was Darnell and his damned rifle!
Longarm had learned from hard experience that sometimes great patience was required even when patience was most difficult to summon. Darnell had a repeating rifle, so it was to his advantage to wait and make a long-range killing shot. Longarm had a bloody arm to prove that the gambler and mine owner was a fairly accurate shot.
“Wait for him to come for you,” Longarm told himself. “Stay down and wait for him to get into the range of your pistol.”
So Longarm waited, although he knew that Bodie was still losing a little of his precious blood with every passing minute. Finally, Longarm heard a sound and almost shot his horse, which had wandered back to the river and was drinking. Longarm watched the horse’s ears, and when the sorrel raised its head suddenly and turned to stare, Longarm followed the animal’s line of vision and caught a glimpse of Darnell slipping in closer.
“Wait until he comes to you,” Longarm whispered softly to himself.
Agonizingly slow minutes passed. A pair of crows were squawking in the higher limbs of a nearby tree. Longarm glanced up at them and they seemed to be irritated by something down below.
Darnell.
Longarm took the actions of his sorrel horse and the pair of cawing crows to be good and important signs. Animals had sharper senses than he, and they were giving him a warning and directions toward his enemy.
“Closer. You got to come closer.”
Ten minutes and the crows kept up their angry squawking until they flew away, and that’s when Longarm knew that Darnell was right under their tree and possibly their nest.
Longarm stretched out on the ground, extended his gun in front of him, and laid it across a fallen limb. The gun was steady, and the air was hot and fetid with all the decaying wood and riverbank debris. Mosquitoes buzzed overhead and began to bite, and big flies, smelling fresh blood leaking from Longarm’s upper arm, began to torment him even more.
But Longarm didn’t move a muscle until Darnell finally stuck his head out to take a look. When the man didn’t see a target, his upper body slowly emerged from cover, and that’s when Longarm squeezed off a shot that punched Darnell squarely in the chest and sent him backpedaling and then crashing down into the deep, dead carpet of rotting leaves.
Longarm jumped up and ran forward firing, but it was wasted lead because Darnell had been shot through the heart.
* * *
The old buckskin hitched to the Meeker buggy wasn’t able to run, but Longarm beat the animal into a trot while Bodie lay on the seat beside him hanging onto life by a thread.
“Where’s the nearest doctor!” Longarm yelled as they entered Carson City.
“Just up the street!”
Longarm saw the doctor’s sign, and the buckskin barely had time to come to a complete stop before Longarm jumped down, grabbed Bodie up into his arms, and rushed him inside.
“He’s shot through the body, Doc! And he’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Bring him into my examining room!”
The next hour was one of the slowest that Longarm could ever remember. He paced back and forth in the waiting room like a caged animal, until the doctor emerged to say, “I think he’s going to pull through this.”
“Are you sure?” Longarm anxiously asked.
“Yes. The bullet passed through his body cleanly and didn’t damage any organs. He’s in shock from the loss of blood, but he’s young and strong. Now I’d better take a look at that arm of yours,” the doctor added. “You’re not so young anymore.”
“No,” Longarm agreed, “but at least I’m still alive.”
Epilogue
Almost five weeks later, Longarm and Bodie stepped down onto Denver’s crowded railroad platform and met Billy Vail, along with Bodie’s grandmother and aunt. While the two women hugged, fussed over, and even cried with happiness over the Kid from Bodie, Longarm and Billy stepped aside to have a private word.
“Custis, you look far more rested than you did when you left here with Bodie.”
“I had a month to loaf around in Virginia City and Carson City waiting for a federal judge at the territorial capital to settle all the legal and financial issues relating to the Burlingtons’ last will and testament. It was locked up in a bank vault, but Darnell Burlington had paid to have a very good forgery made giving him his estranged father’s full inheritance. If John Stock hadn’t arrived here with Bodie and that bloodstained letter we found, I’m pretty sure that Darnell Burlington would have gotten away with a double murder and inherited his father’s fortune.”
“I see.” Billy glanced over at Bodie and his doting relatives. “So I take it that the kid inherits everything?”
“Yes. We sold the mine for a song just to be rid of it. Maybe one day it wil
l become productive again, but that’s doubtful.”
“So,” Billy said, trying to understand, “if the mine was worthless and the family mansion located in Virginia City was nothing but a pile of ashes, what was left for him to inherit?”
“About forty-five thousand dollars and a real nice city lot in Reno that he’s going to hang on to until its value goes up even more than now.”
Billy Vail’s eyes widened. “So Bodie is rich!”
“Yes, he is,” Longarm agreed. “And all the way back from Reno on the train I talked to him about how to save and invest his money rather than squander it on foolish pleasures.”
Billy burst into laughter. “Custis, you’re the last person who could give anyone financial advice or warn him of expensive pleasures!”
Longarm grinned. “Well, that might be true, but I’m pretty sure that between his grandma Ida and aunt Rose, they’ll keep a tight rein on Bodie.”
“Is he going to live with those two doting women?”
“As long as he can stand it. Bodie is a smart kid, and he knows he needs to learn to read and write much better than he can now. He’s also too old to go back to school and learn without the embarrassment of being surrounded by kids half his age. So I told him that his grandmother and aunt would almost certainly be willing to tutor him.”
Billy glanced over at the fawning women. “I’ll tell you this much: Bodie might be rich, but if I was him I’d rather strike out on my own than put up with those two overly protective women.”
“My guess is that he just might do that.”
“Where are you going?” Billy asked.
“I’m going to buy some flowers and visit Gloria’s grave.”
“But what about Bodie?”
“One thing I know for certain,” Longarm called over his shoulder, “is Bodie can handle anything that comes his way all on his own.”
And with that, Longarm grabbed up his bag and walked back into the city that he most loved.
Watch for
LONGARM IN THE DARK
the 414th novel in the exciting LONGARM series from Jove
Coming in May!