“The thing is, Longarm, we … I … want you to find this Last Man Club member and, well, warn him. Protect him too if need be.”
“You want Steve Reese brought in?”
“If there is cause to arrest him, of course we would expect an arrest to be made.”
“But there ain’t no warrant outstanding,” Longarm said.
“I’m working on it,” Beckwith said, his voice husky with liquor.
“Yeah, I’m sure you are at that,” Longarm said, his expression bland, never mind his thoughts. Those were private, and he figured he was entitled to them.
“This last fella, you wanta tell me about him, Billy?”
“His name is Harry Bolt.”
Longarm grunted. Ellis Reese he’d never heard of. Harry Bolt on the other hand …
“The last I heard he was down around Trinidad,” Billy said. Do you know anything more recent than that?”
“Trinidad, Aguilar, somewhere down around there. That’s the last I heard too.”
“Find him, Longarm. Deliver the warning and … do what you can about this Reese thing, will you? There are only a few more men left on the list. It would be a shame for them to die if there is anything we can do to prevent those murders. Right?”
Longarm glanced at Sam Beckwith. He didn’t much care for the lawyer. But that sure as hell didn’t make it right that more innocent men should die.
“I’ll do whatever I can to stop this thing, Billy.”
“Good, Longarm. Thank you.”
Longarm retrieved his hat from the floor beside his chair and excused himself. He needed to see Billy’s clerk Henry about travel vouchers and maybe an advance against expenses. And there wasn’t any reason he’d want to stay and chat with Sam Beckwith, that was for sure.
“G’day, gentlemen,” Longarm said as he legged it out the door.
Chapter 4
The town was called Picketwire, named in a roundabout fashion for the river that was often miscalled the same. The river’s real name had started out in Spanish as River of Lost Souls. That later on became the French word for purgatory, purgatoire, and that, corrupted into saddlebag English, became Picketwire. Hence the town of Picketwire.
Longarm had reached it by way of a Denver and Rio Grande passenger coach south to Trinidad and a stagecoach east to Picketwire. As an officer of the United States government, his badge had let him travel free on the stagecoach since the express company had a government contract to carry official mail. The trip east from Trinidad had been free of charge but not free from complaint. The way the coach driver had carried on about the loss of a three-dollar fee, a body would’ve thought the price of the ticket was coming out of the driver’s own pocket instead of that of the Watson Express line.
“Here,” the driver now snapped curtly, an instant before he launched Longarm’s carpetbag into the air.
Longarm managed to snag his bag before it hit, but he wasn’t quick enough to also grab the saddle that followed. His McClellan, complete with scabbarded Winchester, hit the ground with a resounding thump heavy enough to raise a cloud of dark red dust.
“If you’ve gone an’ busted anything o’ mine …” Longarm started out. But the coach driver wasn’t paying him any mind. By then the sour-tempered son of a bitch was carefully, oh-so-carefully, handing a wooden crate down to a drummer who’d also been on the run out from Trinidad. Longarm knew, because the man had mentioned it often enough, that the drummer dealt in ready-made ironwork, things like cabinet hinges and mortise locks and other unbreakable shit of that nature. Yet the damned coachman handled the crate of iron bits like they were fine china, and threw Longarm’s valuables around like he hoped they would bust.
Longarm scowled at the man, but decided against trying to teach the jackass any manners. After all, he was supposed to stop problems, not make new ones.
He shouldered his saddle, picked up his bag, and gave some thought to what he should do next. It was late afternoon and there would be time enough later to find a room if it turned out he would be needing one in Picketwire, he decided. Whether he did or not would pretty much depend on what he learned about Harry Bolt and where he was working lately. Learning that was what Longarm had come to Picketwire to discover.
He carried his things inside the Watson Express Company office, and secured a promise from the clerk there that his gear would be safe behind the counter.
“I’ll see to it personally,” the young man in sleeve garters and a green celluloid eyeshade assured him.
“I’m obliged,” Longarm said. He grinned and added, “Just make sure your driver don’t get another crack at my stuff. He did his damdest to mash everything once, but that was when he had a moving target so the carpetbag had a sportin’ chance. I’d hate to see him get lucky the second time.”
The clerk laughed. “I’ll tell Tom to please keep his distance.”
“Like I said, neighbor, I’m obliged.”
“Anything for a customer, mister.”
Longarm concluded it might be wise to let that one go without clarifying the point. He wasn’t a customer exactly. Not a paying one anyhow. He settled for touching the brim of his Stetson in a silent salute and getting out of the stagecoach office before the driver, Tom, came inside.
Longarm stopped on the porch outside to light a cheroot and get his bearings—after all, it had been quite a while since he’d been down this way—then strode off toward the west end of the town, down along the sluggish and at times nearly nonexistent river that gave Picketwire its name.
