Longarm 245: Longarm and the Vanishing Virgin (7 page)

A man who had been sitting behind them leaned over the seat and grabbed Longarm's shoulder. “Hold on there, fella!” he said. “What the hell do you think you're doing to that young lady?”

Trying to keep her from killing me, thought Longarm, but he didn't waste any breath putting it into words. He saw the look in Emily's eyes as she panted and struggled with him. She wanted to see him dead. He shook off the grip of the man behind him and gave Emily a hard shove, sending her sliding off the bench seat. She sat down hard in the aisle. Longarm loomed over her as he wrested the pistol from her fingers.

“Look out!” somebody yelled. “He's got a gun!”

Damn it, now one of these pilgrims was liable to panic and start shooting at him. He straightened, holding his hands up in plain sight, and bellowed, “Everybody shut up! I'm a U.S. marshal!”

Emily, who was lying in the aisle at his feet, kicked him in the groin as hard as she could.

It felt like a cannon going off between Longarm's legs. He bit back a curse and bent almost double, curling around the pain that suddenly filled him. His right hand caught hold of a seat back, and that was all that held him up. He was vaguely aware of hands clutching at him, probably belonging to the passengers who thought he was somehow to blame for all this. He wanted to shake them off, but at the moment, he just didn't have the strength.

Emily rolled over onto her hands and knees, then came up on her feet. She was facing away from him, and she broke into a run, pushing through the crowd that had gathered around them. People got out of her way, most likely because they thought she was running away from the man who had threatened her. Longarm lifted his head and stared blearily after her, seeing her disappear through the door at the rear of the coach.

The agony in his crotch was subsiding a little now, and he was able to straighten up and reach inside his coat for the leather folder that contained his badge and bona fides. He opened it and held it up so that the angry passengers could see the lamplight reflect off the badge. “I'm a lawman, damn it!” he grated as he started trying to shove his way through the press of people. “Let me by!”

The crowd finally began to part again, and he stumbled through the path that created toward the back of the coach. He became aware that the train was slowing down. Had they reached a scheduled stop already?

The door through which Emily had vanished opened again just before Longarm could reach it. The blue-suited conductor stepped through, calling, “Castle Rock! Castle Rock!” He was obviously unaware of the disturbance that had taken place in this car, but he stopped short, a look of surprise on his pudgy face, when he saw the passengers standing in the aisle and the big, grim-faced lawman coming toward him.

“Did you see her?” snapped Longarm.

“See who?” the conductor asked, wide-eyed.

“A young woman. She just ran out of here.”

“Sorry, mister. I didn't see anybody like that.”

With a jolt and a hiss of brakes, the train came to a halt. Longarm looked out at a long station platform beside the tracks. The train had been going slowly enough as it eased into the station that Emily could have jumped off without risking an injury. Longarm stepped out onto the small platform at the rear of the coach and gripped the railing that ran around it. The hour was late, and the town of Castle Rock was dark for the most part. Emily could have been anywhere. He would be wasting his time trying to find her.

“Say, I know you,” the conductor said. “You're the one they call Longarm.”

“Yeah,” admitted Longarm.

Some of the passengers had come to the door of the coach. One of them pointed a finger at Longarm and said to the conductor, “That man tried to molest a young woman!”

“That's a damned lie,” Longarm said. “She was trying to kill me.”

“After you took liberties with her.” The passenger, who wore the tweed suit and bowler hat of a drummer of some kind, sneered at Longarm. “We all saw it.”

Longarm swung sharply toward the man, trying not to wince as the movement made fresh pain cascade through his groin. “You didn't see anything of the sort, mister. Come on.”

He shouldered past the passengers and stalked down the aisle toward the bench where he and Emily had been sitting. The knife was still there, its point buried in the wood of the seat back.

Longarm pointed at the weapon and said, “That gal was pretending to be asleep; then she tried to put that pigsticker between my ribs.”

The knife still had a small, torn piece of fabric from Longarm's coat pinned to the wood. The conductor bent over, studied it, then straightened and nodded to Longarm. “Looks like she tried to stick you, all right. But what were you doin' to her at the time?”

“Nothing!” Longarm ground his teeth in exasperation. “I thought she was asleep. I damned near was too. It was just luck that made me shift a mite, so that she missed with the knife.”

The conductor rubbed his jaw. “Hard to believe a young woman would try to kill a man for no reason.”

“Maybe ...” Longarm's brain worked furiously. “Maybe she was dreaming, having a nightmare. She thought somebody was trying to hurt her, so she lashed out at the fella who happened to be closest to her at the time—me.”

It was a plausible explanation, Longarm supposed, but he didn't really believe it. He had seen the look in Emily's eyes. There was something more to this attempt on his life. Longarm was sure of it.

The conductor seemed to have bought the line of bull Longarm had handed him, however. “In that case, I reckon you're lucky you weren't hurt, Marshal. But why did the young lady run off, and where did she go?”

Longarm could only shake his head. “I don't know.”

“Well, I'll have a word with the town marshal while we're stopped here and tell him to be watching for her. We can't wait until she comes to her senses. That would throw us off schedule.”

“Wouldn't want that,” Longarm said sincerely.

And thank goodness for the almighty schedule of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, he added to himself. When the train pulled out again in a few minutes, the mysterious and murderous Emily Toplin wouldn't be on it, so that would be one less threat Longarm would have to worry about tonight.

He pulled the knife out of the seat back and gave it to the conductor, then sat down and pulled his coat around so that he could look at the hole torn in it. He sighed. The past couple of days had been hard on his coats, that was for damned sure. He didn't have an extra one with him, so he'd just have to wear this one with a rip in it.

Longarm took out a cheroot, lit it, sat back, and frowned. The other passengers had all returned to their seats, but some of them were still casting hostile, suspicious glances in his direction. The pain in his balls had faded to a dull ache, but he figured it would be with him for a few days. He sure as hell wouldn't be up to any tomcatting around ... not that he'd have time for such activities anyway.

Three attempts on his life in twenty-four hours. That was a lot, even for him. The two by the bearded man called Ross could be explained away by Ross's connection with Badger Bob McGurk. But what was he to make of Emily Toplin? Longarm didn't believe she had roused from the depths of a nightmare and, thinking it was real, struck out at the handiest target. No, she had known exactly what she was doing, he decided. She had wanted him dead, no two ways about it.

But why?

He sighed and chewed on the cheroot, knowing that he was facing another night of unanswered questions and long-delayed slumber.

The sun had been up for about an hour when the train came through the pass in the mountains that marked the border between Colorado and New Mexico Territory and slid down the long grade into the town of Raton. The settlement was, by and large, a cattle town, serving the vast ranches here in the northeast comer of the territory. Longarm had visited Raton many times before, and when he swung down from the train car, his long-legged strides carried him through the depot and down the street toward the local office of the Richter, Gramlich & Burke Stagecoach Company.

He stepped from the boardwalk into the frame building and saw a tall man with a rust-colored beard standing behind a counter. “You the ticket agent?” asked Longarm.

“I'm Burke,” replied the man, who wore a leather vest and a string tie. “What can I do for you?”

Longarm frowned slightly. “You run this station yourself?”

“When I have to. And for the past week, my regular man's been down with a fever. You need to buy a ticket, mister?” Burke's attitude was brisk and all business, as befitted a co-owner of the stage line.

“The first thing I need is some information.” Longarm took both his identification and the photograph of Nora Canady from inside his coat. He flipped open the leather folder so that Burke could see the badge, then laid the picture of Nora on the counter. “Ever seen her before?”

Burke looked at the photograph, lines of puzzlement appearing on his forehead. They cleared up almost immediately as he said, “Sure, I remember this woman, Marshal. She came through here sometime in the past couple of days, I'm certain of that.”

“She probably came in on the stage from Denver on Tuesday evening.”

Burke nodded. “Yes, that sounds right.”

“Did she get off the stage? Do you know where she went?”

Instead of answering right away, Burke scratched his beard and said, “Why are you looking for her? Did she do something wrong?”

“That's sort of hard to say right now,” Longarm answered truthfully. “What I really want to do is ask her some questions.”

“Well, she didn't get off the stage, I remember that now. Or rather, she did, but she got right back on after she came in here and bought a ticket to Tucumcari.”

Longarm suppressed a groan. He had really hoped that he would find Nora here in Raton, but it looked as if the chase was going to continue.

“So she was on the stage when it pulled out?”

Burke nodded. “Sure was. I saw her leave.”

“What's the quickest way from here to Tucumcari?”

“You could always take the stage,” Burke said with a shrug. “Of course, there won't be another one for three days, but...”

“Point me to the nearest livery stable,” Longarm said grimly.

 

He went back to the depot and picked up his rifle, carpetbag, and saddle before going in search of the stable. Burke had given him good directions, and Longarm found it with ease. The place was a big barn on a side street, with corrals behind it. Inside the office, Longarm found an old man with bushy white whiskers, sitting behind a desk with his booted feet propped on it. The old man was reading a yellow-backed novel by somebody named Stark, and he put the book down reluctantly when Longarm came in.

“Somethin' I can do you for?”

“I need a couple of good saddle horses,” said Longarm.

The old man shifted his feet off the desk and put them on the floor. He sighed again as he placed the dime novel facedown on the desk. “Goin' to swap from one to the other and do some fast travelin', huh?”

“That's the idea, old-timer. Can you help me or not?”

The old man pushed himself to his feet. “Don't get so impatient. Ever'body's turn for the boneyard'll be here soon enough.”

“You own this place?”

“Nope. Just the hostler. But I know the horseflesh we got, sonny, don't you worry 'bout that. Come on.”

The old man limped out of the office. He led Longarm down the wide aisle in the center of the barn, between the rows of stalls, and stopped in front of one of the enclosures. Inside the stall was a sturdy-looking buckskin mare.

“I know she don't ‘pear to be made for speed, but she's got a good pace to her when she gets to goin',” said the old man. “And she gets her strength back quick once you swap out and ride the other hoss for a while.”

“All right,” said Longarm, who was a pretty good judge of horseflesh himself. “What else have you got?”

“Back here.” The old man led the way to another stall, this one in the rear comer of the barn. As he stopped in front of the stall, the horse inside reared up and slammed its hooves angrily against the side wall. Longarm's eyes narrowed as he studied the animal, a rangy, mouse-colored gelding with a darker stripe down its back.

“Sort of touchy, ain't he?”

“Yeah, he's a devil, all right. You want to keep an eye on him all the time, or he'll reach over and bite a hunk out of you. But once you got a saddle on him, he settles down a mite, and he'll run all day if you ask him to.”

Longarm was a little dubious about the dun. It reminded him too much of other rambunctious mounts he'd had in the past. But he nodded again anyway, unwilling to waste any more time. “How much to rent both of them?”

“You aim to go far?”

Longarm didn't know the answer to that. He would go as far as the job took him. He said, “I'll see that they get back to you, don't worry about that.”

“If you don't, the fella who owns this place will have the law on you.”

“I
am
the law, old-timer,” Longarm told him. “U.S. deputy marshal out of Denver.”

“You don't say. Well, in that case, I'll give you the special guv‘mint rate, which is the exact same as ever'body else pays.” The old man named a price. Longarm thought it was a little steep, but he didn't have time for haggling either.

“Done,” he said. He hefted the McClellan saddle. “I've got my own saddle, but I'll need blankets and harness.”