“Old Man Travis?”
“That’s what they call Darby Travis. Darby is about three days older than dirt. A harmless enough old codger. He has a cabin on the outskirts of town where he lives by himself. Every once in a while he disappears. Stays gone for a few weeks, sometimes for several months at a time, then some morning there he’ll be again.”
“Uh, huh. I take it he’s been away lately?” Longarm said.
“That’s right. And the boys, of course, knew he couldn’t come back until the tracks are open again so they would be safe if they wanted to break into his place.”
“Bust it up?” Longarm asked. “Dump all his flour and sugar and stuff on the floor? Fun stuff like that?”
Jacky shook his head. “We didn’t want to hurt nothing, sir. Honest. We just wanted to … like … look around a little.”
“Go on.”
“Yeah, so anyway, we busted the hasp on the door lock. Bert found this prybar in the shed, see, and we used that to pop the lock open. And we went in and it was all cold and quiet and kinda dark in there, and we started telling ghost stories and making spooky sounds. You know?”
“Sure, kid. Go on.”
“Yeah, well, it was all kinda funny. And then Bert found a lantern an’ some matches an’ he lit the lantern, and Bennie got the giggles and he sat down on the side of Old Man Travis’s bed, and then Bert screamed and Bennie thought he was just being funny. But he turned and looked and right there, Marshal, right there in front of his face an’ staring right at him, right there in the old man’s bed was this … this dead person. You know?”
But this time Longarm did not know. “A dead person? You’re sure about that?”
Bennie, Longarm took it, was the boy with the puke all over him. No wonder.
“We’re sure, sir. Honest we are.”
“The dead person was Mr. Travis?” Longarm asked.
“No, sir. This dead person is a girl, sir.”
“We don’t know who,” the one called Bert said.
“We never seen her before.”
“I seen her once. At least I think it was her.”
“That’s enough,” boys, Parminter said. “You did the right thing coming here and telling me about it.”
“You won’t … I mean … you won’t tell our folks about us being in Old Man Travis’s place, will you, sir?” Jacky asked in a voice that had much too much feigned innocence in it.
“I won’t make you any promises about that,” Parminter told them. Longarm liked that about the young mayor. A man who would lie to a kid would lie to a grown-up just as readily. If perhaps with a little more care as to how he went about it.
The mayor turned to Longarm. “I don’t know anything about this sort of thing, Marshal, and with Clay gone … I was hoping you would come with me. In case there has to be an investigation or whatever. I mean, it could be a case of death by natural causes. But we don’t know that yet. Do we?”
Parminter looked considerably relieved when Longarm assured him that he would go along with the mayor and take a look at this alleged dead body that the boys claimed to have found.
Chapter 7
The only creature on earth that would even consider going all the way out to a stupid empty damn cabin in weather this terrible, Longarm decided, was an energetic ten-year-old boy.
Darby Travis’s place was more than a quarter mile past the edge of town, upstream along a tiny willow-lined till not deep enough to keep a frog damp. Most of the year the path running along the west side of the creek— locally and unofficially known as Travis’s Trickle—likely offered a pleasant little stroll. At the moment, however, it threatened life and limb. Literally. If it hadn’t been for the line of snow-plastered crackwillows, they would surely have lost their way. As it was, Longarm hoped the mayor damn sure knew where they were going because one moment of confusion could have downright serious consequences.
When the path took them into the lee of a grove of runty, twisted little cottonwoods, however, Parminter grabbed Longarm by the elbow and guided him into a massive snowdrift. At least the big white heap looked like nothing more than an unusually large drift. What it turned out to be was Old Man Travis’s cabin, its twisted, mud- chinked logs hidden behind a wall of wind-piled snow.
The door, broken lock dangling, stood open, and the interior looked as cold and empty as a tomb.
Which under the circumstances was not at all unreasonable, Longarm thought.
“See anything?” he asked.
Parminter shook his head. “I thought those kids said they lighted a lantern in here.”
“There.” Longarm pointed. The lantern, its globe broken, lay on the floor close to the open door. It was plain damn lucky that the thing hadn’t set the cabin afire when it was dropped.
Parminter, still in the lead, picked the lantern up and shook it. Satisfied that there was still oil in it, he stepped deeper inside the shack to be out of the swirling wind coming through the doorway and struck a match. As soon as the lantern was lighted, Longarm pulled the door closed behind him. There was no change in temperature, of course, but shutting away the sound of the wind made it seem somehow warmer and more comfortable.
“Well, the boys weren’t lying,” Longarm said while the mayor was still busy adjusting the lantern wick.
“Pardon me?”
Longarm pointed. Travis’s cot was a crude affair, made of split aspen logs pegged into a corner so as to provide
