Nick got the message. His lip curled with contempt as he tried to focus on Stella. “You dirty whore! You-“
Longarm’s gun swept upward and slammed against the side of Nick’s head, splitting his temple and dropping the younger man to his knees.
“Damn you, Marshal!” Abe roared. “You’re going to pay for this outrage!”
“Why don’t you just sit down.”
Abe unbuttoned his expensive suit coat and sat. He looked down at Nick without sympathy and then back up at Longarm. “That Vacarro woman murdered my son Noah sometime last night. The murder weapon was found buried in his back and everyone knows it belonged to Stella! I want her arrested for the murder of my son!”
“All right,” Longarm said, glancing over at Stella. “You’re under arrest, Miss Vacarro.”
She just shrugged, the shotgun still pointed at Abe and Nick.
“Well?” Abe bellowed. “Arrest and throw her in jail!”
“No,” Longarm said. “She might come in handy in case you try to incite those fools outside to start up another lynch party tonight.”
“Don’t you understand? My son has been murdered!”
“And I promise to do everything I can to find out who really put that knife in your son’s back. I do know that it wasn’t Stella. Like yourself, she loved Noah—and he loved her in return.”
“Noah didn’t know what he was doing!” Abe stormed. “That Vacarro woman put a spell—or an evil hex on my boy. She lied, connived, and tricked him into proposing marriage. She used all her wiles to make him temporarily insane. She only wanted our family money and respectability. And then … then, so he wouldn’t regain his sanity and call the marriage off, she murdered him!”
“And what proof do you have to support that accusation?” Longarm demanded. “Because you see, even rich and important politicians operate under the same laws as the rest of us commoners. And the United States Constitution guarantees that everyone should be considered innocent until proven guilty by a court of law. As a successful politician, you more than anyone else ought to know that.”
Huffington shook himself like a big, wet dog, and then got a firm grip on his composure. He knelt beside Nick and said, “Stand up, boy! You’re going to live and I’ll make damn sure that this man loses his badge.”
“Mr. Huffington,” Longarm said, “despite what you think of Stella’s morals and motives, doesn’t it seem a little odd to you that she would murder the man that you are saying would have guaranteed her your family money and respectability? Why wouldn’t she have waited until after the marriage? As it is now, she has no legal claim to your family estate. None whatsoever.”
“I didn’t need their money!” Stella angrily interrupted. “I never wanted a cent of it and neither did Noah. I have money of my own! Plenty of it! And I damn sure wouldn’t have been so stupid as to have killed Noah and then left my own knife as evidence.”
“She makes sense,” Longarm said to the grief-stricken man. “If anyone had a motive for killing Noah, it was you, Nick.”
Nick tried to stand. Failing that, he said, “I’ll get you for this, Marshal! You’re going to pay!”
“Shut up, Nick,” said Abe.
“I’ll kill him!”
“Nick, shut up.”
Nick grabbed the edge of the desk and pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. A big bump was already forming on the side of his head, and Longarm could only imagine how badly the man felt. A pistol-whipping on top of a bottle of whiskey could test the physical constitution of any man.
“You’re in a bad fix,” Abe warned Longarm, “but maybe there is some way that I can solve this dilemma.”
“How?” Longarm asked.
“Well,” Abe began, “those people outside know and respect me and my family. If you hand Stella Vacarro over to my care, I’ll see that she is safely escorted down to Sacramento and kept under protective custody until she can stand tri al.”
“No,” Longarm said flatly. “Someone would ambush her. As you can see by the blood that has stained my bandanna and her dress, someone has already nearly succeeded.”
“I’m the only one with enough authority to save her,” Abe Huffington said. “And while I’m at it, I might as well also take those last two train robbers down to Sacramento and have them locked up for safekeeping.”
“Again,” Longarm said, “the answer is no.”
“Use your head, Marshal! You can’t possibly hold off the entire town! I can use my influence to preserve the peace and save lives!”
“And to further your own political ambitions,” Longarm told the man. “That’s clear enough to see.”
“Dammit!” Abe raged. “I just want to prevent more killing. I’ve lost my son and I also want justice.”
“Miss Vacarro did not kill your son,” Longarm told the man. “Maybe you can look a little closer to home and learn who really killed Noah.”
“It wasn’t me!” Nick screamed. “That sonofabitch is trying to turn us against each other, Pa! You know that I loved my brother!”
“He did,” Abe said, eyes full of pain. “I know my boys better than anyone. Nick here is wild and he’s had a few brushes with the law, but-“
“A few!” Stella laughed coldly. “Nick is the most rotten apple on your family tree! You must be wishing it was him that had been killed instead of Noah.”
“Shut up, you whore!” Abe raged.
Longarm drove the heel of his left hand into Abe’s round face, propelling the man backward so that he slammed up against the door.
“This conversation has just ended, Mr. Huffington. If you really want to see justice served, then help us get a judge and a few lawmen up here to control that mob outside. And it wouldn’t hurt for someone to go around and close down the saloons. I’d do that myself but I’m occupied.”
Abe brushed his fingers across his nose to see if there was any blood. There was not.
“Marshal Long,” he said, straightening his suit coat over his corpulent body, “Nick and I came in here unarmed—as you ordered. We tried to talk some sense into you, but it proved impossible. Now, we’re going to just have to let this thing take its natural, inevitable course.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s no threat,” Abe replied, eyes burning with hatred when he looked back at Stella. “It’s a promise.”
“Get out.”
Abe had to help the still-dazed and probably half-drunk Nick leave the office.
“What’s going to happen now?” Stella asked.
“They’re going to attack as soon as it’s dark,” Longarm predicted. “There’s little doubt in my mind about that.”
“Arm us!” Jack cried. “For crissakes, Marshal, maybe together we can all stop ‘em!”
“We’ll stop them,” Longarm promised, “but not with your brand of help.”
Stella came over to stand beside Longarm. “I shouldn’t have come here,” she said. “I should have made a run for it.”
“But you wouldn’t have had any chance,” Longarm said. “No chance at all.”
“It will be dark in another two hours,” Stella said, glancing at a window.
“In two hours,” Longarm told her, “a lot of good things could happen.”
“Such as?” Stella asked.
Longarm frowned, trying but unable to come up with some encouragement.
“Yeah,” William said, “I have the same damned question, Marshal.”
“Me too,” Jack raged. “Marshal, if they get their hands on us again, we’re dead men!”
“You’re dead men either way,” Longarm said quietly. “And there’s nothing I can or even want to do to keep you from the gallows.”
Chapter 10
The sun was going down and the mob was heating up when Longarm heard a loud pounding on his office door. “Who is it!”
“It’s me! Marshal Walker! Open up!”