Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds (38 page)

He let them all chuckle and summed up with, "Like I told the gal who told me so much, I'd just fallen in the dung heap and come up with sweet violets. But if the truth be known, I never caught but one of the three leaders with barnyard luck, and the bad one of the bunch is still at large, twice as smart and not looking half as unusual. That gal who admits to knowing him personal tried to describe him, and it sure adds up bland. I doubt any lawman would look twice at a middle-aged cuss of medium build in a not-too-plain-or-fancy business suit unless he acted unusual. So here's what I want you officers of the court to do for me. I want you to drop the charges against Fulton Egger, alias Frank Keller, for lack of evidence. Anyone who reads the Post or News ought to be able to see how that material witness running off on us leaves us with no case and-"

"The hell you say!" one of the prosecution team declared. "We have the whole posse he surrendered to, along with the train crew they threw down on, and Jesus H. Christ, what sort of a federal prosecutor would throw in the towel over one hostile witness lighting out?"

Longarm said, "A federal prosecutor with bigger fish to fry and an eye for an unethical but simple deal, of course. We can hold Borden and Wagner, the two gunslicks I arrested at the Tremont House, for what--twenty-four hours after we turn loose the material witness they were menacing?"

Judge Dickerson said, "Seventy-two, on suspicion of anything. But you'd better make your other proposal a good one, Deputy Long. Why on earth would this court even consider turning loose a known member of a dangerous outlaw gang?"

Longarm nodded and replied, "Why indeed, Your Honor? What might you think if a bunch of sneaky lawmen turned a member of your gang and his gal loose, whilst still holding other pals they had less to charge with?"

Judge Dickerson smiled wickedly and said, "I like it. Let's try it."

CHAPTER 29

So later that afternoon, as Longarm and young Fulton Egger were coming out of the Federal House of Detention, a shady lawyer they'd both talked to in the past met them on the granite steps, looking a tad upset, to demand of Longarm, "Where are you taking my client now, Deputy Long? I warn you, he's never agreed to waive extradition on that old Kansas state charge!"

Longarm smiled thinly and said, "You ain't been keeping up, Lawyer Culhane. I ain't taking this innocent child to Kansas or anywhere else as a prisoner."

Egger stared back at his confounded lawyer, just as confounded, to say, "Don't look at me. I don't know neither. They just now told me they were dropping all charges and I was free to go."

"With one proviso," Longarm explained knowingly. He pointed west along the busy street as he said, "Just because we don't want him on train robbing doesn't mean we want him spitting on the sidewalks of our fair city. So I'm escorting him down to Union Depot, from whence he'll be catching a Burlington Flyer clean out of my court's jurisdiction. His little woman will be waiting for him when he gets there, and I hope this has been a good lesson to the two of them."

Lawyer Culhane stared thoughtfully at his client. "What did you and Margaret have to do in return, Fulton?"

Egger answered truthfully enough, "Nothing. They never asked for anything."

Longarm purred, "What might anyone want to ask a couple of pure innocent kids, Lawyer Culhane? Haven't you ever done anything from the goodness of your heart? Has dealing with the sort of clients you seem to deal with blinded you to the rights of an honest citizen? It says early on in the Bill of Rights that the accused shall be granted a fair and speedy trial. You've pestered me personally with enough writs of habeas corpus to know why we can't hold this pest."

The short and respectable-looking member of the courthouse gang shook his derbied head. "No, I haven't. You have a way of making arrests stick, Longarm. We both know I've never pried a client loose from you for lack of evidence unless you had damned little evidence, or unless you were throwing a little fish back in exchange for..."

"I never! I swear!" Egger shouted with an expression of dawning fear on his simple face.

Longarm said, "Believe the boy. He's telling you the pure truth. He can write to you and settle on what he might owe you, after I get him aboard that flyer and on his way--out of our hair. We'd love to stay and chat some more, but the kid's train will be leaving around sundown, and he'd be better off eating in the depot beanery than aboard that night train. You care to come along and ask more questions? Neither one of us has anything to hide."

Lawyer Culhane said he had some other late errands. They both knew he didn't have to say any more. So Longarm never asked what they were.

As Longarm and Egger headed off down the street without his cheap lawyer, the unsettled outlaw suddenly confided, "Listen, we'd better not go to that depot just now. I follow your drift about my not being welcome here in Denver. I've been run out of town before. So why don't you just let me find my own way over to... You say old Margaret will be waiting for me in Omaha?"

Longarm said, "Mebbe. I told her that would be where you'd be getting off the train I'm putting you on. I'm putting you on that train and no other because I told Judge Dickerson I would when he signed your release papers. I don't think he wants you finding your own way to the city limits, no offense."

As they kept on walking, with Egger spooking at storekeepers sweeping the walk or passing riders dressed cow, the stockyards a few blocks away accounting for such riders innocently enough, Longarm told himself not to start tensing up before that tinhorn lawyer had had time to report to other clients. Then he considered how quickly one could whip around a corner to consult with another client at, say, a shoe-shine stand, and tensed up quickly.

Egger tried to hold his own cards close to his vest. But as the red brick walls of Union Depot loomed just ahead the outlaw pleaded, "I don't want to wait for no train in there. You as much as told Culhane where this child would be during tricky glooming light, and I guess Margaret told you Culhane acts as lawyer for all of us here in Denver, right?"

As a matter of fact, she had. But it would have been dumb, as well as needlessly cruel, to tell a man who'd just lost his woman that she'd even told the law how big his dong got. The big blonde, who could easily satisfy a modestly endowed man but said she'd learned to like a hung one better, could meet old Egger farther along if she wanted to, assuming he lived through what was about to transpire.

When Egger suddenly asked why Longarm was grinning that way, the lawman said, "Just thinking how often I've caught a crook I'd have never known about had he only had the sense to leave me alone."

As they crossed the street through the horse-drawn traffic, Egger started to make a break for it. But Longarm caught him by one elbow and spun him around, saying, "Careful, old son. You don't want to get run over by a coach an' four. I don't want to handcuff you neither, but I can and I will if you try that again!"

Once on the sandstone walk in front of the depot, Egger sputtered, "You bastard! You're using me for bait! You never meant to turn me loose at all. But you figured Tyger would hear you had, suspect we'd made a deal to do him dirty, and come for me, right?"

Longarm said, "Yep." He hauled the frightened man into an archway and hauled out a folded length of linen bond paper, handing it to Egger as he continued. "I told your Miss Margaret I don't play dirtier than I need to. If you want the whole truth, I think you're a useless punk. But she assured me you've never killed nobody or even stolen apples without somebody leading the way. So I can afford to let you run loose, until somebody kills you or you get a little sense. Meanwhile, there's no accounting for taste, and one of the conditions Miss Margaret made was that both of you went free in exchange for Tyger. I never said I wouldn't wire Brown County they could pick up her older sister, so remember that in days to come when and if she says I double-crossed her. For when I make me a deal with the likes of you all, I dot every I and cross every T. After which you are on your own."

Egger hadn't heard that last part. Even as he put his walking papers away he was weakly gasping, "Margaret made a deal to turn Cal in? Oh, Dear Lord, where can we hide?"

Longarm led him inside the crowded depot by one arm, leaving his own gun hand free, as he said gently, "Your gal never told me where he was. She didn't know. Neither of you will have to hide from him if he gets caught. So I want you to keep a sharp eye on the folks all around and let me know if you spot Calvert Tyger, hear?"

Egger moaned they were both going to be shot down like dogs. So Longarm led him into the depot dining hall, and bought them some chili con carne with mince pie and coffee. When Egger said he felt too sick to his stomach to eat, even seated in a corner, Longarm ate both of their orders and drank all the coffee.

Then he consulted his pocket watch, saw it agreed with the wall clock, and said, "Pay attention lest you wind up feeling even worse, Egger. I can only watch so many ways at once, so there's an outside chance you'd get away from me if you made a break for it in the near future. After that it would be a toss-up whether I caught up with you and kicked the shit out of you, or Tyger got to you first and you wound up wishing you were only getting the shit kicked out of you."

The pale-faced crook whimpered, "Cal's got it all wrong. Nobody I was pals with robbed that payroll office behind his back and got him so famous out this way!"

Longarm said, "Tell him that as you lay dying. I hadn't finished your instructions. We'll be going out to the open platform now. It's early. There shouldn't be too many innocent targets in the way. I can watch you or I can watch for more important rascals. So like I said, you could likely make a dash for freedom if you weren't already free and had anywheres safer to dash. Can I bank on you acting sensible?"

Egger said he just wanted to be safely far away with his sweet little Margaret in his arms after all those lonesome nights in a cell.

Longarm didn't comment on how a gal that big-boned and buxom could be described as small, or where she really was just then. He rose to leave some coins on the table and muttered, "Let's move out."

They did, and sure enough, the open platform out back was sunny and unoccupied, with no train expected for a good forty-five minutes and the late afternoon sun glaring uncomfortably hot through the dust and coal smoke of the rail yards to the west. Longarm led Egger to an open stretch near the north end of the platform, and told him he doubted too many passengers would come crowding up this way to get on the Burlington Flyer's cowcatcher once it arrived.

Egger glanced nervously about and protested, "We're easy targets out here, and that dazzle off the boards and bricks will make it even tougher to spot Cal in time!"

Longarm stared soberly at the switchman's booth forming a cul-de-sac to the north as it almost met the sun-washed bricks of the depot's rear wall. "The light will be just as tricky for him. How come you're expecting Calvert Tyger in the singular flesh, Egger? He sent a whole swarm of lesser lights after me and we're still working on some of their true names and addresses."

Egger sighed and said, "You just answered your own fool question. You don't send a boy to do a man's job, and he wants us both bad if he suspects I rode with Brick Flanders against his orders and just now made a deal with the law!"

He glanced down the other way and added, "Aside from that, he must be finding good help tougher to find these days. We were all running low on pocket jingle when Brick took it in his red head to stop that train on his own."

Longarm started to ask how the gang could be throwing around all those hundred-dollar notes if they were so broke. But the punk had told him more than once that Calvert Tyger and his faction hadn't taken part in the Fort Collins job. That had doubtless made Chief sound mighty sincere when he'd told Helga Runeberg he'd been framed for a job he'd never done.

Egger sucked in his breath, and Longarm turned the same way to see a familiar figure, missing his chaps but wearing a six-gun, slowly coming up the platform from the cover of those baggage carts to the south. Egger said, "It's Gus Hansson. He's supposed to be riding for my sister-in-law back in Brown County! What could he be doing way out here in Colorado?"

Longarm said, "Move back and off to one side and I'll ask him."

So the unarmed Egger crawfished back and off to one side indeed as Longarm just stood there, smiling sort of wistfully.

As the Minnesota kid came within pistol range Longarm called out, "That's far enough and don't try it, Gus. Can't you see you're being used as a cat's paw by a sly old mouser who doesn't give a fig for your future?"

Gus Hansson stopped, only to drop into a gunfighter's crouch as he bitched, "We just got word from New Ulm, you son of a bitch! The sheriff just arrested Miss Helga and half of my pals on the Rocking R!"

Longarm nodded amiably and replied, "I know. I wired them earlier and allowed it was about time we commenced wrapping up. Somebody has to pay for hiring Laughing Larry Lucas to blow pretty ladies up, and I'm sure the big boss has told you it wasn't his dumb notion."

Gus Hansson snarled, "Fill your fist by the time I count to three. For that's when I mean to draw, you smirking know-it-all!"

Longarm thoughtfully threw his frock coat open to expose the grips of his cross-draw.44-40, but called out in a calm reasonable tone, "You don't want to try it, Gus. This ain't one of them Wild West yarns in Ned Buntline's magazines. Life is real, life is earnest, and I've got an edge on your skills and experience."