Longarm - Longarm and the Apache Plunder Part 14

Longarm had to admit he didn't. He had a trained eye for faces, and he suspected he knew this routine, having spent some time with a Gypsy fortune-teller who'd really liked it dog-style.

As Longarm stared thoughtfully, the total stranger said, "Come on, who was your best pal in the old outfit?"

Longarm was sure where they were headed now. So he stared hard at his questioner and demanded, "You were in Sibley's Sixth Minnesota? No offense, but my best pals were Swede Bergen and Chad Spooner, and you don't look like either." He took a sip from his gla.s.s and added, "Chad got killed later in the Sioux Wars, and you couldn't even be related to old Swede!"

The too-clever-by-half confidence man laughed and said Longarm had been right the first time, going into a song and dance about the not only late, but also nonexistent Chad Spooner having introduced them during a payday c.r.a.p game. They both laughed and agreed they'd been young and green to shoot c.r.a.ps on an army blanket. It was easy for Longarm to laugh. He'd never been near the Sixth Minnesota during his real war service. He'd learned the little he knew about the outfit the time Billy Vail had sent him to Santee country to look into other Indian trouble. The silly b.a.s.t.a.r.d pumping him by pretending to be an old army pal was taking awesome chances, counting on all soldiers having similar memories about c.r.a.p games, army grub, and mean sergeant majors. But Longarm went along with the game, smart enough to let a wise-a.s.s play him for a fool. The slicker smugly confided, "I've found it wise to change my own name, since I've taken up more sporting ways. I was the kid they called Slim in the third platoon, remember?"

It was easy enough to agree. There'd always been some kid called Slim in one platoon or another.

The slicker said, "You and Chad were in the first platoon under old Carlson, right?"

Longarm shook his head and said, "You must be getting old too. It was the second platoon and the shavetail was Jergensson."

The so-called Slim nodded eagerly and said, "Gotten fatter, like I said, too. I'd forgot old Jergensson. Whatever happened to the looie after I got wounded and sent home?"

Longarm had no idea, since he'd never served under any Second Lieutenant Jergensson of the Sixth Minnesota, but he managed to look sober as he said, "Stopped a Sioux arrow with his floating fibs up around Yellow Medicine. He wasn't such a bad cuss, for an officer. Say, do you remember that infernal Major Palmer who held a full inspection in that snowstorm?" It worked. The sneak calling himself Slim decided to quit while he was ahead and got back to his feet. But before he left he had to try. "Your real name was Femdale, right?"

That Gypsy gal had explained how any wild stab was as likely to get the same response from the mark. So, seeing he was supposed to be the mark, Longarm laughed and said, "Not even close. You must have me mixed up with old Hank Ferguson. I was Hank Bradford before I had to change my name for business reasons."

The trick questioner smiled easily and said, "Right. I'd forgotten old Jergensson too. Smart move to keep your first name and stay so close to the original, Hank. We'll talk about old times later. I got to get back to work before I get in trouble."

Longarm didn't try to stop him. He grinned wolfishly with his smoke gripped in his teeth as he watched the wise-a.s.s circle a table and go through an unmarked door between two red plush curtains.

Longarm rose and drifted over to the nearest faro layout. He didn't place a bet. Faro was as easy to rig as baccarat. But as he watched the dealer's hands the cards seemed to be coming out of the so-called shoe, often a false-bottomed box, about the way a Christian might be expected to deal. So Queen Kirby seemed to be content with straight house odds. The house had to be coming out ahead, though, with a crowd this size.

The man in black who called himself Wesley Jones joined Longarm at the faro layout to demand, "How come you didn't stay put like I told you?"

Longarm softly but firmly replied, "I don't work for you. So who are you to tell me s.h.i.+t?"

Jones smiled uneasily and said, "Never mind. Queen Kirby wants a word with you. Play your cards right and you might wind up working for her."

Longarm allowed that he already had a job, but tagged along through that same unmarked door. The big, rawboned redhead seated behind a fancy rosewood writing table was smoking a Havana claro as she waved him to a ridiculous perch on a small plush chair with her bejeweled and manicured left hand, saying, "You'll be pleased to know we sent those others looking for you on their way while you were slug-a-bed and helpless at the hotel, Henry. Why did you tell my boys you were on your way north when you just came from there in a hurry?"

Longarm smiled easily and said, "That's a fool question, if you don't mind my saying so, Miss Queen. Where would you tell strangers you were headed if you were riding the owlhoot trail from the north?"

The handsome but hard-looking gal of at least thirty-five summers smiled wearily and said, "Henry, Henry, you haven't changed a bit since last we met and you were trying to fib your way under my way-younger skirts."

Longarm stared hard as he could with a poker face. Staring with a bit more thought, he realized she did look faintly familiar. But he was good at remembering faces, and it was just as likely he was recalling familiar features from different rogues'-gallery tintypes and trying to make a mite more sense out of a mishmash. He tried picturing her with natural hair. That pinned-up henna mop had likely started out brown, to judge from the remains of her more naturally colored plucked eyebrows.

Her teeth were a tad pearly for her more time-worn painted face. But if they were false, she'd spent as much on them as she had on her low-cut maroon velvet dress. She likely showed that much bodice so n.o.body could miss the pearl choker she wore around her neck, as if she was that redheaded Princess Alex of Wales instead of ... whatever all this was supposed to signify.

She removed the cigar from her painted lips with a smile and said, "After all that sweet talk you don't remember me at all, do you, Henry?

I fear Father Time's cruel tricks have been easier on you than me, Henry. But I'll give you a hint. Think back to where you first went after mustering out of the Sixth Minnesota, my young so ldier blue."

The hardest part about going along with old fortune-telling s.h.i.+t was resisting the natural impulse to show you weren't really a dumb s.h.i.+t.

But Longarm thought fast and declared in a puzzled tone, "I don't recall you from San Antone at all, no offense. It wasn't all that long ago and I'm particular about whose skirts I might or might not mess with. I don't mean you're too ugly even now, but I never mess with gals I'd forget so total afterwards."

She laughed and said, "I'm flattered, I think. You never got that far with me in San Antone, but it was a nice try and I forgive you for never having written."

She waved her cigar at the man in black by the door and continued. "Wes tells me you said you had a job up in Chama. Was that just a lie or was that where you were going when the Townsend boy recognized you and behaved so foolishly?"

Longarm had no way of knowing whether anyone there had ever laid eyes on the real Julesburg Kid. So, hoping he'd thrown them off his back trail with that bluff about San Antone after the war, he patted the action of the Winchester across his lap and replied, "Jason Townsend never recognized me. He said I was the Julesburg Kid. I was still trying to persuade him he had me mixed up with someone more famous when he slapped leather on me. As to what I was really doing in Loma Blanca, or where I was headed from there, it's n.o.body's beeswax but my own. I ain't asked anyone in this town for a thing I ain't been willing to pay for. I ain't asked anyone anywhere to tell me what they might be up to. But seeing we seem to be former sweethearts from San Antone, I'll show you my pee-pee if you'd care to show me your own."

The man in black sucked in his breath, but Queen Kirby laughed and said, "You were playing your cards close to your vest the last time I tried to get some straight answers out of you, Henry. So all right, I'll spread one or two cards face-up for you. To begin with, you're on a fool's errand if you expect to be hired as a gunhand as far north as the D&RG Western stop at Chama. I know what you've heard about a land rush up that way. But I've gotten it from the horse's mouth, or from a BIA official who likes redheads no matter what color hair they have, that the Interior Department's not going to throw all that Apache land up for grabs. There's a lot of Indian policy being debated back in Was.h.i.+ngton.

The War Department was against moving Apache for no pressing reason to begin with. More than one BIA man doubts the Jicarilla can make do at the Tularosa Agency. But seeing there's been so much other pressure to clear dangerous Indians out of these parts, the Apache are being moved on what Was.h.i.+ngton calls an experimental basis, with their present reservation held in trust as federal land for at least the next seven years. So what do you think of that, Henry?"

Longarm said, "The Jicarilla may think it's some improvement over losing their land entire. If the BIA allows 'em to return after even one year at Tularosa, they're going to think us white eyes are mighty odd. Their Navaho cousins are still bewildered by the time we made 'em all plant peach trees around Fort Sumner and then let 'em all go home to the Four Corners again. I fail to see why I should worry about it, though. Like I said, I go where I please and work for whoever pays me the most."

She said, "We may be able to pay more than any would-be land-grabber, with no Indian land up for grabs just yet. This is where all the real action's about to start, near the south end of that Apache reservation, where the BIA and Indian Police have less to say about things."

"You fixing to grab the south end of the Jicarilla reserve, Miss Queen?"

he asked with a deliberately puzzled smile.

The big redhead said, "I'm not in the business of grabbing land. I'm in the business of owning land, cattle, and other good things. You should have taken me more seriously that time in San Antone. I may not have aged as gracefully, but I've wound up rich enough to buy and sell all sorts of good things, including men quick enough with a gun to protect me and my property."

"Protect you from whom, Miss Queen?" Longarm asked in a desperately casual tone.

She smiled in a way that might have suggested coyness in a far more innocent face and said, "We'll talk about it some more, after I've talked about you some more with some riders I sent up to Loma Blanca. I expect them back by breakfasttime. If you're what you say you are, I can make it well worth your while to stay here as one of my own Regulators. So if you're really you, you'll do well to stick around."

Longarm nodded and said he'd study on it. As he s.h.i.+fted his weight to rise, she added, "They tell me that skinny blonde waitress at your hotel has been droolin over you, you rascal. I hope you haven't told her all those sweet lies you told me and Lord knows how many of the other girls in San Antone that time. But I take it you'll either be with her in her quarters or up in that hotel room with her should anyone need to get in touch with you tonight?"

Longarm rose to his feet, stiffly saying, "I don't cotton to folks getting in touch with me late at night, ma'am. I'll be where I'll be, and how would you like it if I was to blab all over town that it was with you instead of a sweet kid who never done you dirty?"

Queen Kirby laughed and said, "I can see why she's drooling over you, Henry. You haven't lost your touch or your looks since the war!"

He told her she was pretty too, and allowed that he had to get on back to his hotel. As he left he heard Jones saying, "Told you he'd stood up to your blacksmith for that dishwater blonde. Wouldn't it be fun to be a fly on her bedroom wall tonight?"

Longarm strode through the crowd and out the back door without incident or dawdling. He'd closed one eye along the way so he was able to see outside in the dusk with that one. He ducked into the slot between the card-house and whatever they'd built right next to it. He'd already seen there was no window against the back wall of Queen Kirby's office.

It was always better to have a skylight when you kept a card-house safe in one corner. But if there weren't any windows, there was no way anyone could see what he was doing as he dropped to the dirt and rolled under the frame card house. There was the usual eighteen-inch crawl s.p.a.ce between the dry soil and overhead floor stringers. He dragged his Winchester after him as he inched on one elbow until, sure enough, he could hear them talking in the office right above him.

Jones was saying something about Apache painting white stripes across their faces from ear to ear. Queen Kirby said, "Never mind about Apache war parties right now, Wes. I asked you what you made of that tall drink of water we were conning earlier. You say he's off the premises now?"

Wes said, "Spider says he just saw him go out the back. You'd better hope we were conning him, and not vice versa. Should he be that lawman we were warned about, he's likely heard all the cons of old army pals and long-lost sweethearts."

Queen Kirby laughed lightly and said, "I told you how I mean to make sure. I frankly think he's what he seems, a well-armed and dangerous drifter, looking for action and hearing about that bunch of land-grabbers gathering up by the railroad. Who else would gun a p.i.s.sant with no warrants out on him, then hang about as if he had more serious business in this territory?"

Wes suggested, "A man with serious business in this territory. As your head barkeep put it together from listening to those Townsend riders in your saloon, that Jason Townsend just started up with our Henry, Longarm, or whoever the blue blazes he really is. Any man, on either side of the law, would have swung his Winchester muzzle up the same way.

Fool kid must have thought there was no round in the saddle gun's chamber. But it was still a fool chance to take."

Queen Kirby said, "Spare me the gory details. The point is that a federal deputy should have identified himself to the town law and our mysterious Henry Bradford didn't."

Longarm could picture the man in black shrugging as Wes replied. "I agree another lawman should have. That's not saying he would have if he was in a hurry. Everyone agrees the man who gunned that punk was just pa.s.sing through. He may have figured he had better places to go in a hurry."

The man they were talking about heard Queen Kirby say, "I just don't know. I'll allow this Henry Bradford, Crawford, or whatever, is a tall tanned galoot with a heavy mustache, wearing his double-action .44-40 cross-draw. I'll allow we were warned the famous Longarm rode out of the Dulce Agency looking much the same, if you'll agree much the same ain't quite the same."

Wes said, "Your pals with the BIA said Longarm had on jeans and was using a stock saddle in place of his well-known McClellan. You wouldn't need surgeon's hands to punch the crown of a dark brown hat into a different shape, would you?"

Queen Kirby said, "We were wired that Longarm left the Dulce Agency with a pale blue work s.h.i.+rt, a black-and-white paint pony, and a buckskin.

My old flame Henry rode in wearing a not-too-new Mex s.h.i.+rt of dusky rose. After that, he's boarding two bay ponies, not a paint with a buckskin, in my very own livery. How do you like it so far?"