LONGARM AND THE HELLDORADO KID
By
Tabor Evans
Jove Books
New York
Copyright (C) 1995 by
Jove Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016. ISBN: 0-515-11591-6 Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016. JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Jove Publications, Inc. A Jove Book published by arrangement with the author Printing history Jove edition April 1995 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
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Chapter 1
Longarm removed the half-chewed cheroot from the corner of his mouth and batted a cloud of trail dust from his pants. He knew he looked rough, but he’d just returned from Arizona and had gotten a message to hurry into the Denver headquarters just as soon as he arrived back in town.
“Mr. Billy Vail wants to see you right away. Important business,” was the terse message that had been given to Longarm by his hotel manager.
Longarm knocked on Billy’s door, curious about what could be so important that it could not wait until a tired, dirty, and hungry lawman had a few hours to rest and eat after being gone for six weeks.
“Come in!” Billy called.
Longarm entered the office and trod wearily across the hardwood floor to take a seat in front of Billy’s desk. His boss looked harried and irritable, with piles of papers scattered about his desk in complete disorder.
“Buried up to your eyeballs in paperwork as usual?” Longarm teased.
“Damn right,” Billy growled, looking up for the first time to see Deputy Custis Long. “Man, you look like a horse that’s been spurred up and down Pike’s Peak.”
“I feel like one,” Longarm said, crossing his legs and thumbing back the brim of his black Stetson hat. “And I’m looking forward to a long-overdue vacation.”
“I’m sure you are,” Billy said, appearing genuinely concerned. “I’d say you’ve lost about twenty pounds since I saw you last. Hell, Custis, you even look older.”
Longarm stuffed his annoyance. “I am older and so are you, Billy. Now what is so damned important that it couldn’t wait a few days?”
Billy pushed back from his chair and stood up. He massaged his eyes with thumb and forefinger, then placed his hands in the small of his back and applied pressure with a groan.
“Damn,” he said, “I swear that sitting at a desk is three times worse on your back than sitting on a horse.”
“Then take a demotion and come join the rest of us poor devils back out in the field,” Longarm said without even the pretense of sympathy.
“You’re a hard man, Custis.”
“I’m a hungry and tired man.” Longarm was in no mood for small talk. “What is it this time, Billy?”
“I’ve got a problem that needs my best deputy.”
Longarm wasn’t about to be suckered by flattery, not in his current foul mood. “Too bad, Billy, because I’ve got a problem that needs about a week of rest.”
“Maybe I can give you a few days.”
“I need a week.”
Billy glanced at his desk calendar, considered it thoughtfully, and then said, “I just might be able to give you four days.”
Longarm jammed the cigar back into his mouth. “Tell me your big problem and don’t exaggerate, as usual.”
Billy massaged the small of his back for a moment as he circled the room. Physically, he was the exact opposite of Longarm. He was short, heavyset, and slightly balding. He looked soft and bookish, but Longarm knew that he was really quite strong, and had distinguished himself in the field as an honest and fearless deputy United States marshal before he had been promoted to a paper-pushing desk job.
Billy stopped at his office window and gazed out across Denver toward the distant snow-capped Rocky Mountains. “Man, oh, man,” he said, “every time I look up at those magnificent peaks, I think about the time that I chased Cut-Faced Jack Hoolehan and his gang.”
“Billy,” Longarm told him, “I’ve heard that story about ten times and I’m just too damned tired and hungry to sit here and listen to it again. Okay?”
Billy turned away from the window. He wore a hurt expression. “Ten times? I doubt that.”
“All right,” Longarm conceded, “seven or eight. What’s the tough job?”
Billy flopped back down in his desk chair. “Did you ever hear of a town called Helldorado?”
“Yeah.” Longarm’s brow knitted. “I believe that’s in Arizona, isn’t it?”
“Not even close. It’s in western Nevada. About fifteen miles east of Carson City.”
“Okay,” Longarm said. “I know the lay of that land. But the last time I was through there, I remember a town called Dayton, and then a few miles east of that you come to Fort Churchill.”
“Helldorado is south of them both.”
“Now that,” Longarm said, “has just gotta be hard, dry country.”
Billy nodded. “That’s about the only kind of place you’ll find any gold or silver strikes anymore. All the scenic or even hospitable country has been mined to death. You can’t find much ore up in the Rockies or the Sierras because they’ve already been prospected so heavily.”
“Tell me about Helldorado,” Longarm said.
“it used to be a booming town. At least on the surface that’s what it appeared to be.”
“What does that mean?”
“They did strike gold and silver there. A couple of hundred thousand dollars worth, I’m told. But as quickly as the boom started, it went bust.”
“Borrasca,” Longarm said.
“What?”
“It’s a Spanish word the Mexicans on the Comstock Lode use for mines that won’t pay or suddenly go bust. It kind of means ‘bad luck’ or ‘barren rock.’ Borrasca is the opposite of bonanza, ‘a rich strike.’”
“Thanks for the Spanish lesson,” Billy said cryptically. “Now, can I go on with the story of Helldorado?”
“I quiver with eagerness to hear it,” Longarm said with a touch of a smile.
“All right. Helldorado apparently went borrasca a few years ago. The town withered, and it was bought by a man by the name of Matthew Killion. Heard of him?”
“Yeah,” Longarm said, “he’s owned some big mines on the Comstock. At least, they looked big on paper. But I heard that Killion was far better at mining the pockets of stock market speculators than he ever was the mines themselves.”
“That’s true. I’ve been told that the man is totally unscrupulous. When Killion and his boys ran out of suckers, they started an extortion ring that put the pinch on the remaining merchants in Helldorado.”
“What about the town marshal?”
“He was said to be either in cahoots with Killion and his boys, or else just too afraid of them to do much about it. The upshot of the thing was that a vigilante committee was formed with the express purpose of lynching Killion and his gang of thieves. I guess that Killion has two sons and the older one is lightning fast with a six-gun.”