Longarm 245: Longarm and the Vanishing Virgin (9 page)

He was going to have a long talk with that young lady when he finally caught up with her.

 

Nobody tried to kill him the rest of the night, which meant it was pretty successful, Longarm thought the next morning. He had ridden until well after midnight before making a cold camp, then was up before the sun and on the trail again after a quick breakfast. He wished he had a bottle of rye so that he could have added a dollop to his coffee, but the Arbuckle's served as a pretty good eye-opener by itself.

Late in the day, he crossed the Canadian River, which meant that he wasn't too far from Tucumcari. The town was bigger than Ashcroft, he knew, but still not what anybody would consider a city. He had his doubts that Nora would still be there, but he supposed it couldn't hurt to hope.

Longarm rode into town a little after dusk. Several people were still on the street, so he looked them over closely. None of them were Nora Canady, nor did he catch sight of a tall man in a broad-brimmed hat and long duster. When he spotted a sign on a small frame building that read SHERIFF'S OFFICE, he veered the buckskin toward it.

When he had the two horses tied up at the hitch rack, he stepped up onto the boardwalk and crossed to the door of the sheriff's office. Without knocking, he went inside and found a medium-sized man with dark hair standing beside a potbellied stove and pouring coffee from a battered old pot into a chipped china cup. The man finished his task, set the pot back on the stove, and laid aside the piece of leather he had used to grip the handle, then turned to Longarm with a nod. “Evening,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“You the law hereabouts?” asked Longarm.

“That's right. I'm Sheriff Holmes.”

“Name's Custis Long, U.S. deputy marshal out of Denver.”

Holding his coffee cup in his left hand, Holmes stepped forward and extended his right. “Glad to meet you, Marshal,” he said as he shook hands with Longarm. “I take it your business has brought you here to Tucumcari?”

“That's right.” Longarm decided Holmes looked like an honest man, so he went on. “I'm looking for a young woman who disappeared from Denver. Have you seen her?” He took the photograph from his pocket and showed it to Holmes.

The local lawman studied it, a frown creasing his forehead as he did so. “Something about her seems familiar,” he said, “but I can't quite place her....”

“Did you happen to see the stage from Raton come in a couple of days ago?”

Holmes snapped his fingers. “That's it! She was on the stage.”

“You're sure?”

“I'm certain,” Holmes said with a nod. “I make it my business to watch the stage come in every time I can, so I can keep track of any strangers getting off. Tucumcari can be a pretty rough place sometimes, so I try to stay one step ahead of trouble when I can.” Holmes sipped from the cup of coffee.

Longarm noted the width of the sheriff's shoulders and the easy grace with which he moved, and decided that the man's mild appearance was deceiving. He imagined Holmes could be every bit as rough as anybody else in Tucumcari when he had to.

“You wouldn't happen to know where this young lady went when she got off the stage, would you?” he asked.

Holmes shook his head. “I didn't say she got off the stage. Well, actually, she did, but only to go into the station for a few minutes. Then she got back on the coach, and she was in it when it rolled out of here a few minutes later.”

Longarm's jaw tightened, and he couldn't stop himself from saying a clipped, “Damn.”

Holmes studied him shrewdly. “I reckon you must've been hoping you'd catch up to her here.”

“That would have been the easiest,” admitted Longarm. “Looks like I've still got some riding to do.”

“You say this young woman disappeared from Denver. She must've done it on her own, because she sure didn't look like anybody was forcing her to do anything.”

Longarm shrugged. “Right now, I'm not over sure of anything where this case is concerned.”

“Is she a criminal?”

“Not that I know of,” Longarm answered honestly. “I just want to catch up to her and ask her some questions.”

“I've got one for you, Marshal. How about a cup of coffee ? You look like you could use it.”

Longarm grinned tiredly. “I reckon I could at that. Much obliged.”

When Holmes had poured the coffee for him, Longarm sat down on an old divan with busted springs and sipped the strong, black brew. Holmes settled down behind the desk. He was obviously curious about Longarm's assignment, but he was reluctant to pry into another star packer's business.

“Where does the stage road go from here?” Longarm asked.

“Down along the border between New Mexico and Texas, past the Guadalupes, then into the Davis Mountains and on to the Big Bend.”

“In other words, a whole heap of nothing.”

Holmes chuckled. “Yep, that's about right. But it connects with the Butterfield line there in West Texas, so folks can get just about anywhere from there.”

In other words, Nora was still ahead of Longarm, and there was no way of knowing which direction she would go next.

“Well, I'm obliged for the coffee and the information,” said Longarm after he had drained the last of the scalding liquid from the cup. “I'll grab a bite to eat and then push on.”

Holmes frowned. “No offense, Marshal, but you already look like you've been rode hard and put up wet. And you were limping a little when you came in here. You might ought to put up at the hotel and get a good night's sleep.”

Longarm shook his head. “Afraid I don't have time for that, no matter how good it sounds. I've got to catch up to that stagecoach.”

“Because that's the job.”

“Because that's the job,” agreed Longarm.

Holmes nodded, clearly understanding what Longarm meant. “All right then. Good luck to you.” He stood up and shook hands again.

Longarm paused before leaving the office and asked, “Say, you haven't seen a stranger in town today, have you? Tall, slender gent with a big hat and a long coat?”

“Can't say as I have.”

“What about a gal about this tall?” Longarm held out a hand to approximate Emily Toplin's height. “Young, brown hair, pretty in the sort of way you'd want a gal to be if you were taking her to meet your mama.” And damned cold-blooded to boot, he thought, but kept that to himself.

Again Holmes shook his head. “Doesn't sound like anybody I know right off hand. There aren't that many pretty young girls in this town. You know how it is out here on the frontier.”

Longarm nodded. Once you got out of the big cities, young, attractive women were always in short supply. That was why the soiled doves in small towns were usually long in the tooth—when they had any teeth left at all.

He hadn't really expected Emily Toplin to come after him, Longarm mused as he left the sheriff's office. But he supposed it was possible. As for the bushwhacker who had tried for him in Ashcroft, that gent could be just about anywhere. And knowing that made Longarm a mite tense as he took his horses to a livery stable for food and water and a rub-down, then walked along Tucumcari's main street in search of a hash house where he could grab a surrounding before riding out again.

No gunfire came out of the shadows. Longarm had a steak fried up by a Chinaman in a narrow little cafe and topped off with a mound of fried potatoes. He reclaimed the horses from the stable, flipped a coin to the bandy-legged hostler who had cared for them, then rode out of Tucumcari, once again following the stage road by the light of the stars and the newly risen moon.

He wasn't sure how much of a lead the stagecoach still had on him, or how far Nora Canady intended to ride it, or why people had been trying to kill him. He wasn't sure of much of anything except that he was tired and his balls still hurt some. But as he rode south that night, and the next day, and the night and day after that, he knew that he was getting farther and farther away from anywhere that a young woman such as Nora would normally want to be. Whatever had caused her to leave Denver must have been pretty urgent, especially since it had kept her running for such a long way.

Longarm didn't sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time, and then only when he was so tired he found himself dozing off in the saddle. He imagined the vast prairie over which he rode as a map on brown parchment, and he could see his progress marked on it as a dotted line, stretching ever southward toward Texas. Surely, the way he was pushing himself, sooner or later he would catch up to that stagecoach.

He stopped at every way station and asked about Nora, just to make certain she hadn't gotten off at one of them. The hostlers who ran the stations remembered her, all right—men stuck out in the middle of nowhere tended to remember the infrequent pretty girl they encountered—but all of them told Longarm that Nora had moved on with the stage, not doing any more than getting out of the coach for a few minutes to stretch her legs.

A range of mountains began to loom to the west. Longarm recognized them as the Sacramentos. When those peaks petered out, they were soon replaced by the Guadalupes, which were dominated by Guadalupe Peak itself and a particularly rugged-looking mountain known as El Capitan that was almost as tall. When Longarm saw them off to his right, he knew he had crossed the border. He was in Texas now.

But the plains around him didn't change any. They were still flat, virtually treeless except for a few scrubby mesquites, and covered with short but hardy grass that grew from the sandy soil. This was poor country for ranching, but on the other hand, that was about all it was good for. It just took a lot of range to support very many cows.

The sun was overhead, blazing down mercilessly at midday, when Longarm stopped at a way station and asked his usual questions about Nora and the coach that was carrying her.

“Yes, sir, she was here,” the boy who was running the place told him. He was no more than seventeen, sunburned and carrot-topped. “A mighty pretty lady. She ate breakfast here, though I wished I'd had somethin' better to offer her than beans.”

Longarm was standing beside the horses while they drank from the station's trough. “She ate breakfast, you say. Was that yesterday morning?”

“Naw, this mornin'.”

Longarm was stretching, trying to ease sore back muscles. He stiffened again in surprise at what the young hostler had said. “Are you sure of that?” Just the day before, he had still been more than twenty-four hours behind the coach.

“Yep. The coach was way behind schedule. Busted an axle up north of here, the jehu said, and he like to never got it fixed good enough to drive. Had to limp on in here, and the passengers spent the night whilst the driver and me got that axle replaced. The one we put on there had a crack in it too, but it wasn't busted clear through. Wrapped some tin around it, so it ought to hold up all right, as long as the driver don't take it too fast.” The talkative youngster shook his head. “Sure goin' to play hell with the schedule, though.”

Longarm nodded. He had finally had some good luck. Impatiently, he waited for the water in the trough to settle after the horses got through drinking, then filled his canteens. “Much obliged for the water ... and the information.”

“You bet. Come back any time, mister.”

Not unless he had to, thought Longarm. This was mighty unappealing country.

But for the first time in several days, he felt some excitement because he was closing in on his quarry, and that seemed to communicate itself to the dun. The horse stepped along lively, and so did the buckskin as Longarm led it. With any luck, he might come up on the stagecoach tomorrow, or possibly even today.

The thought that he might have some answers before the sun went down made him lean forward a little in anticipation.

The heat got worse—but what else could you expect from West Texas in the summertime? Longarm mopped sweat from his face, gave the horses a short rest whenever he could, and pushed on through the afternoon. He stopped at another way station and found that the stage, traveling slowly as the redheaded youngster had said that it would have to, was only about an hour ahead of him now. His horses were getting tired, but Longarm urged them on and they responded.

The terrain took on a little more of a rolling nature. From the top of one of the little hills, Longarm spotted dust rising ahead of him. A thrill shot through him. More than likely, that dust was being kicked up by the hooves of the team and the wheels of the coach. He flapped the reins and clucked to the dun to prod it into a faster gait, and although the horse turned its head enough to give him a walleyed look, it broke into a run.

Longarm kept an eye on the dust rising into the brassy blue sky ahead of him. The distance between him and it was steadily closing, when suddenly the dust cloud disappeared. The coach must have stopped moving. If that was the case, the hot Texas wind would quickly dissipate the dust. Maybe the stagecoach had reached another way station and halted for a change of teams.

But that wasn't the case, Longarm saw as he topped the crest of another small rise and looked out across a mesquite-dotted flat in front of him. He reined in and narrowed his eyes in a squint, wishing that he had a pair of field glasses. Even without such an aid, he could see that the stagecoach had stopped in the middle of nowhere. There was no way station, no settlement, no signs of civilization at all. Only the coach, sitting there in the road.

And the men on horseback sitting around it, pointing guns at the driver, who had his hands in the air over his head.

Longarm said, “Oh,
hell!”