He picked up his saddle with his left hand and took a step toward the tracks. Walthers stepped into his path, stuck his chest out at him, and snapped, “If you won’t come willingly we’ll just have to disarm and handcuff you. Lieutenant Parsons, arrest this civilian!”
The U.P. westbound combo was rolling to a stop behind Walthers. Longarm clamped down on his cheroot with bared teeth, balled up his right fist, and planted it in Walther’s superior smile, hard.
The short-colonel went down, his face a bloody ruin, as the nearest shave-tail gasped in awe and said, “You can’t do that!”
Longarm drew his six-gun with the same lethal fist. “I just did. Before anyone else gets hurt, I want you boys to add up the odds here and… Keep that gun hand polite, Trooper. I mean it!”
The enlisted man who’d just unstrapped the flap of his holster had noticed Longarm seemed to be a man who meant it, when he said he meant it. So he froze, looking sort of sick.
Longarm threw his saddle aboard the nearest rail car’s loading platform, but kept them all covered. He smiled thinly and said, “That’s better. I know it’s six of you to five rounds in this wheel. So I know at least one of you would surely nail me no matter how the other five made out. I’m only human. For all we know, I might not take all five down with me. So place your bets and let the game commence.”
Nobody moved or said a word, save for Walthers himself, who was rolling about on the platform with both hands to his face, demanding they arrest his attacker.
Longarm climbed the steps backward, gun muzzle trained on the sullen but smart soldiers. After a few tense, awkward seconds the locomotive up ahead sounded its whistle, the platform under him jerked into motion, and Longarm was on his way west.
As he holstered his gun and picked up his saddle, a conductor Longarm knew came out to join him, saying, “Evening, Longarm. You don’t have to show me your U.P. pass. I’ve seen it often enough. What was that all about back there? It sounded sort of serious.”
Longarm shrugged. “I reckon they weren’t as serious as me, after all.”
CHAPTER 9
Following the Overland or any other old wagon trail by rail was complicated. Rolling west the hard way, the pioneers had been more anxious about getting there alive than getting there in a hurry. The old trails had been laid out with water and easy pulling in mind, following streambeds and avoiding steep grades as often as possible.
The stage lines that followed the first covered wagons had tried to sell more speed to both passengers and the post office. So while the Overland Trail had to more or less follow the trend of the earlier Oregon and Mormon trails, it tended to cut across river bends and top more rises with its lighter coaches.
The railroad builders had wanted to sell even more speed and, having machinery and black powder to work with, they’d taken even more direct routes, bridging, grading, and tunneling to beeline where nothing pulled by draft animals could have gone. The U.P. had saved on miles of expensive steel tracks by using cheaper immigrant labor to bull through the Rockies well south of the easier, traditional passes. The older stage route had of course made the wider swing to the north. So, when his train got to Sidney, Longarm and his gear got off to catch the short line up to Northport, Nebraska, and catch another U.P. the thirty-odd miles northwest to Scott’s Bluff.
You couldn’t see the cliffs the town was named after this late at night. It was hard to see much of the town, now that the oil lamps along the main street were all that seemed awake enough to matter. He left his modest luggage checked in at the depot and headed for the local branch of the sheriff’s department. Despite its name and former fame, Scott’s Bluff had lost out when they’d got around to choosing the county seat. So the sheriff’s office there was run by a senior deputy, while the elected official he ran it for got to sleep in Gering on the far side of the North Platte.
The senior deputy had gone home for the night, too. But the crusty old gent left to mind the office and keep an eye on the drunks in the tank knew Longarm by reputation and got up out of his rocking chair to shake and say, “We was expecting some federal men. Did you know the army has just sworn out a warrant on you and wired us to arrest you on sight?”
“I didn’t. But it don’t surprise me. Are you figuring on arresting me, sir?” Longarm asked.
“Call me Jeff. Hell, no. You never beat up no short-colonels in Nebraska. You’d think a man smart enough to make short-colonel would know better than to ask Nebraska to arrest a man on a Colorado fistfight.”
Longarm chuckled. “Old Walthers ain’t smart enough to make assistant squad leader. But I come up here to talk about more important pests, if it’s all the same with you.”
Old Jeff nodded and said, “I’d be proud to show you the scene of the crime. It’s just down the way, across from a saloon that stays open late. We let the dead man’s kin carry his body home to wake, once the doc who fills in for the coroner here examined it some, of course. There was no mystery about the cause of death. He’d been shot direct in the center of his forehead, at close range. Lord knows how the undertaker means to get them powder burns off, if they mean to hold an open-casket service. The horse has been impounded as evidence. Meaning it’s in the corral out back. They didn’t require us to talk so fancy in the old days, and we still hung the right gents, most of the time.”
“I’ve noticed that. You say you have a horse for me to look at?” Longarm asked.
Old Jeff shrugged. “You can if you like. I doubt it will be able to tell you much. Horses don’t talk, you know.”
Longarm said they’d see about that and the old town law led him out back where, sure enough, a big part-thoroughbred bay was alone in the smaller pole corral next to the bigger one the town law used for its own remuda.
Old Jeff called to it and it came over to have its muzzle patted. “He’s a friendly critter, considering who rid him into town from Lord knows where,” Jeff remarked. “Our riders wasn’t able to read sign on the baked prairie. We got the saddle and bridle in the tack room. Both army. Like the horse. The boss says that don’t prove it’s the officer’s mount the kid stole. But the brute is packing an army remount service brand and I can’t come up with a better notion where he might have picked it up. Come on, I’ll show you where the murderous little bastard abandoned it.”
They cut through a vacant lot, back to the main street, and the scene of the crime was only a few doors down. The interior of the open-front smithy was dark until Jeff lit an oil lamp hanging above the anvil by the cold forge. Longarm saw that the more portable tools of the dead blacksmith’s trade had been put away for safe keeping, kids being kids, and some grownups being worse.
Old Jeff pointed with his chin. “The smith was a-hind the anvil and the killer was standing just this side of it, as we put it together. The kid must have shoved his.45 across the anvil direct in the smith’s poor face and pulled the trigger, once.”
Longarm grimaced. “Where did you find his army mount?” he asked.
The older lawman said, “Outside, running loose, after. But it left hoofmarks in here, first. It reads that young Slade led it in, got into some sort of fuss with the smith, and blowed his brains out.”
Longarm asked, “Has anyone thought to examine the feet of that witness?”