LONGARM AND THE MINUTE MEN
By Tabor Evans
Synopsis:
U.S. Deputy Marshall Custis Long has been sent to Pawnee Junction, Nebraska, to transport a federal prisoner back to Denver for trial. But when he arrives, he discovers that a secret, local vigilance committee, known as the “Minute Men,” has lynched his prisoner, along with a mongoloid boy who has been accused of raping and killing a local Sunday school teacher. Longarm then decides to unmask the leaders of the vigilance committee and clear the mongoloid boy’s name of a crime that he’s pretty sure the boy couldn’t have committed. 213th novel in the “Longarm” series,
1996.
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ISBN: 0-515-11942-3
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A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
Printing history Jove edition / September 1996
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
It was going for midnight and the dark jailhouse windows were staring out at the empty courthouse square like the eye sockets of a moonlit skull.
One of the county lawmen inside lit yet another smoke before he muttered, “The night winds have died and it feels as if the whole damned town is holding its breath out yonder.”
The sheriff replied, “I’m afraid it is. I reckon we’d best sneak them prisoners out the back about now. We can all mount up and ride gentle when the church bell across the way tolls twelve to muffle our hoofbeats a mite.”
All three of his deputies made as if to follow their boss back to the patent cells, but he soberly said, “Just Clancy here. I want the rest of you to cover out front as Clancy and me move Bubblehead and that federal warrant out to the stable. I’ll send word when it’s time for the bunch of us to light out for the Rocking Seven.”
Suiting actions to his words, the lanky gray sheriff led the more well-fed Deputy Clancy into the back, where a single wall sconce cast feeble light and ominous shadows through the bars and across the two prisoners.
The sheriff unlocked the cell door of Dancing Dave Loman first, saying, “It’s time to drop your cocks and grab your socks, boys. We may have visitors most any time now. You and young Bubblehead will enjoy their visit more if you ain’t here.”
The tall, brawny train robber was already wearing his socks. As he sat on the edge of his bunk, hauling on his boots, he asked in a worried tone, “Necktie party? I just got here and I’ve never wronged a soul in this Sand Hill Country, for Chrissake!”
The sheriff said, “Hurry it up. They describe themselves as the Minute Men and I don’t know how many minutes we have to work with! They’re almost certain to come for that other guest of the county tonight! So let’s see some of that famous dancing, Dancing Dave!”
Then he was unlocking the cell next door to call more loudly, in a weary tone, “Wake up and rub the sleep out of your slanty eyes, you poor dumb bastard! Didn’t you hear us tell you we’d be riding out to the Rocking Seven tonight?”
The short, dumpy, and awkwardly moving Bubblehead Burnside rolled off his own bunk in an oddly graceful if tottering way, and grinned childishly up at the sheriff, replying, “Aw, I wasn’t sleeping. I been waiting and waiting to go for that pony ride. I like to ride ponies. Don’t you?”
The far taller train robber joined them, guarded casually by Deputy Clancy, and stared uncertainly at his fellow prisoner. He saw now why the kid’s attempts at neighborly conversation that evening had sounded so odd. Loman had already heard that they called the towheaded kid in the other cell Bubblehead. He’d had no idea the nickname could fit anyone so well. As Bubblehead Burnside joined them in the corridor, the train robber quietly asked Deputy Clancy, “What’s wrong with him? Has he lost all his marbles?”
Bubblehead heard and, even though he hadn’t been asked the question, answered it. “I ain’t lost my marbles, mister. I got me a whole mason jar full of marbles. Almost a whole jar, I bet. My big sister, Rose, is watching them for me at our house. They don’t allow no marble playing here in this house. I don’t know why. Do you?”
The sheriff said, “Be still, Bubblehead. Clancy, douse that wall light so’s I can crack the back door and see if the coast is clear.”
“We’re going for a pony ride,” Bubblehead confided to his fellow prisoner.
To which Dancing Dave Loman could only reply, “Jesus H. Christ, I was complimenting him when I took him for a half-wit!”
There was a moment of total darkness as Clancy doused the dim wall sconce. Bubblehead whimpered, “I don’t like it in here!”
Then the sheriff opened the back door to spill a slowly widening stripe of moonlight across the concrete floor as Bubblehead laughed like a little kid and asked, “Can we go out and play now? I like to go out and play at night when the moon is shining. It ain’t too dark when the moon is shining. I like the moon. It’s pretty.”
The sheriff told him to be still and follow after him. But Bubblehead babbled on as they moved across the stable yard in single file, and Dancing Dave turned to Deputy Clancy behind him. “You say night riders might be coming for your village idiot? What did he do to them, steal some of their marbles?”
Clancy quietly replied, “Raped a lady. Then he stabbed her dead.”
Dancing Dave protested, “This harmless-looking half-wit? It’s hard to picture him knowing why boys and girls are built different! Are you sure it was him? Who said it was him?”
Clancy softly answered, “Her. The gal made a dying declaration to the ones as came running when they heard her screaming from the church. He’d cut her bad afore he run off, but he hadn’t had the sense to make certain she was dead. She was the church lady as taught Sunday school over to First Calvinist. So she’d been letting him sit in with the little kids, never dreaming that he was lusting for her body all the time she thought she was leading him away from temptation!”
By this time the sheriff, in the lead, had made it to the stable door. As he opened it, a quartet of figures, wearing feed sacks over their heads and shoulders, stepped out into the moonlight with drawn guns.
Things got mighty quiet for a spell. Then the sheriff cleared his throat and said, “You don’t need to be so harsh, boys. Our prosecuting attorney is willing to bet a month’s pay that Bubblehead will hang for the murder of Miss Mildred Powell, and we’ve been holding this other cuss on a federal warrant!”
A very heavy masked man with a ten-gauge Greener aimed downright rude replied in an icy tone, “We don’t want to bet on that hanging, Sheriff. Miss Mildred had a lot of friends in these parts, and the way she lost her virginity was mighty damned harsh as well. So step aside and let us have ‘em, unless you’d care to join ‘em, over by the spot we’ve picked out to string ‘em up!”