But they got up to the mesa without incident. Longarm allowed, and Poison Welles agreed, that any Jicarilla lookouts peeking down at them from the rimrocks should have sent up some smoke by this time. It made Longarm less sure of himself to have a dime-novel enthusiast agreeing with him on Indian-scouting tactics!
They dismounted near the mouth of that one promising canyon and Longarm went first afoot, leading the roan with his cocked Winchester pointing ahead. They’d almost made it as far as those nearly gone ruins when Darts Malloy pointed at the rocks across the way and said, “Say, don’t that look like some sort of cavern betwixt them big boulders?”
Longarm had to stare hard before he made out what surely seemed an opening in the sandstone. He muttered, “That’s what I get for a snap judgment. You’ve got good eyes, Darts. I’d best have a peek. Would you hold these reins for me, Jennings?”
He handed the reins to the nearest willing hand and moved in on the dark opening, saddle gun at port. He hadn’t told anyone to stay or follow. He was mildly annoyed when he heard Darts telling the others to stay put while he and his old army pal saw what was inside that hole in the wall. But it did make as much sense to have somebody covering their backs, and the cleft was barely wide enough for the two of them single file.
It seemed to be more a natural crack, widened by erosion, than a tunnel or adit carved with any purpose in mind. Then he spied the scattered chalky bones in the gloom ahead and declared, “No Jicarilla born of mortal mama would ever hide shit in here! See those skulls? Looks like a family tomb from years gone by. I make it a daddy Anasazi, a mama Anasazi, and look at all those baby Anasazi!” Then he heard someone yelling, “Longarm! Down!” and so he was already dropping to the gritty bone-strewn floor as all hell busted loose in the confined space. He could only hug the dirt and hold his own fire as bullets and rock fragments sponged off the rock walls above him and the air got stuffy with black powder smoke. Then somebody flopped limply half on top of him, and as Longarm rolled him off and over he could just make out the surprised dead face of his old army pal Darts Malloy. The shooting had stopped. Longarm eased his own weapon in position across the handy corpse and sat tight until a familiar voice called out, “You still with us, Longarm?”
The bewildered federal man replied, “Who wants to know?”
The rider he’d known up until then as Poison Welles called back, “Rod Duncan, New Mexico Territorials. Your old army pal was about to shoot you in the back just now. Lord knows how he meant to explain it. Maybe he figured he wouldn’t have to. My boys threw down on his boys as soon as I opened up on the sneaky bastard!” Longarm asked a trick question about the Governor’s Palace down in Santa Fe. When Poison, or Duncan, confessed he’d never heard tell of a stenographer called Rosalinda, Longarm got to his feet and waded out through the gunsmoke to regard a mighty grim tableau around the sunlit entrance.
One of the two thoroughly shot-up cadavers was still crapping blood and worse in slow but steady spurts. The other poor bastard just lay there.
The other lawman, who’d ordered the surprise ending to Malloy’s wicked plan, nodded at Longarm and asked, “How do you figure all of this, pard?”
Longarm smiled thinly and said, “They had orders to kill me. What I really find mysterious is how a paid-up Apache fighter ever came up with Durango being there back in ‘76!”
Duncan shrugged and said, “Wes Jones was asking if anyone there had ever met the one and original Longarm. I’d read that story about you being in Durango some damned time and figured it would help if I volunteered. To tell the truth, I don’t know Colorado as well as I know New Mexico.”
Longarm asked, “How come you joined up ahead of me, Rod?”
The New Mexico lawman indicated his four modestly smiling associates as he explained, “We all did. Governor Wallace ordered us to when he heard something odd was going on up this way. I’ve been hoping you might know. I’ll be damned if I can make any sense of it.”
Longarm said, “Neither could I, until just now. Let’s leave these old boys here for now and go make us some arrests. I’ll explain along the way.”
Duncan asked, “What about them Indians?”
Longarm said, “Ain’t no Indians. Soon as you figure that out the rest just follows as the night the day!”
It was mid-afternoon when Longarm and his five fellow lawmen reined in near that saloon in Camino Viejo. They stopped there first because Longarm recognized the pretty Morgan mare Wesley Jones had ridden out on, tethered with a half dozen more to the saloon’s hitch rail.
The man in black, now dusty as well, seemed to be holding court at the table farthest back. The seven or eight others with him were all on their feet and, recognizing Longarm and the man they knew as Poison Welles, made way for them.
Jones rose to his feet, smiling uncertainly as he said, “Not a sign of Apache off to the south this time. I see you boys got back early too. How’d you make out?”
Longarm soberly replied, “Darts Malloy is dead. So are Jennings and Alderthorpe.”
Jones gasped, “My God, what happened? You brush with them Apache?”
Longarm said, “Nope. Let’s talk about them Apache. Jicarilla on the prod and off their usual range who don’t have any lookouts posted to smoke-signal our own movements as we tear-ass all over after ‘em.”
Jones said, “Well, we’ve been figuring them for kids, acting on their own with no serious chiefs in charge.”
Longarm smiled thinly and said, “That’s likely why they rode past a grown man and his mount standing in the open by the light of the silvery moon. That’s likely why they’d been camped, or paused to put on their costumes, in a haunted canyon. I have it on good Jicarilla authority that the mere sight of what they call a chindi will kill you on the spot after dark. Yet there they were, eating fish cold from the can without any camp fire, smack dab on top of an Anasazi ghost town. It makes one wonder, don’t it?”
Jones tried. “Hell, if the fool Apache were acting usual we’d have caught up with ‘em by this time, right?”
