But he was drawing as he fell. Before his left shoulder hit the boardwalk, his revolver was in his hand, the hammer back, the barrel aimed at the spot he’d seen the muzzle-flash. He fired, the hammer of the gun slamming back in his palm. Over the echo of his own shot he heard a muffled “Hmmmmph!” as the man grunted. From the sound, Longarm knew that his bullet had found solid flesh and, more than likely, bone.
He lay a second, letting his eyes come back into focus from the blinding flash of his shot. As he stared into the alley his eyes gradually adjusted to the dark. At first he couldn’t see anything. But then, looking closer, he saw what appeared to be a heap of old clothes lying on the ground in the mouth of the alley. For half a moment Longarm lay still, his revolver covering the heap, watching for any sign of movement. None came and he slowly got to his feet and advanced on the fallen man. He lay on his side, his revolver nearby in the dust. With his boot toe Longarm turned him over. He could see, from the dark stain on the fellow’s shirt, where his bullet had struck home, midway up the chest and just to the left of the breastbone. The impact would have knocked the man down and probably killed him before he could hit the ground.
Longarm reached down, picked up the man’s pistol, and stuck it in his belt. He looked at the man’s face. It wasn’t anyone he’d ever seen before; just one more robber in a town full of robbers.
He sighed and said softly, “Damn, damn, damn!” For a moment he was tempted to just walk away and leave the body. But he couldn’t do that. Someone else, some innocent party, might be charged in the shooting. No, as much as he hated it, there wasn’t but one course of action open to him. He’d have to go to the local law. The least of that was that it would take time and put him to bed later. The worst was that it would call attention to himself and his presence in South Texas. But there was no help for it; it had to be done. He sighed again and started toward the downtown section, where he reckoned the sheriff or police office would be. So much for a relaxing walk and a quiet drink and a few hands of poker. Why hadn’t the stupid sonofabitch waited for an easier mark? Why did he have to pick on a U.S. deputy marshal? Well, Longarm decided, it was just bad luck for both of them.
Chapter 3
Longarm waited until they’d finished breakfast and were on their first smoke and second cup of coffee before he related what had happened the night before. When he was through, Austin Davis raised his eyebrows slightly and whistled. “Well, I’d have to say you done the town up a little better than what I was expecting.”
“Hold the comments to yourself,” Longarm said. “What do you reckon? Am I exposed? I know how tight this country is around here. What do you think? You figure we can proceed as planned?”
Davis thought a moment, then said, “Hell, Longarm, I don’t rightly know. I got to say there is a well-worn path between San Antonio and Laredo. They might be a hundred and eighty miles apart, but I swear you can see a man in Laredo one day and then run into him the next right here in San Antonio. They’ve been hooked together for two hundred years, back when this was part of Mexico. But I hate to abandon the plan we got, because I don’t know of another one. How many you reckon saw you or heard about you?”
Longarm shook his head, remembering. “Like I told you, I went over to the jailhouse. Sheriff wasn’t there, but a couple of deputies were on duty. I told them what had happened, hoping I could get out of the business without declaring myself. But I was a stranger to them and they weren’t about to take me at my word. They insisted on sending for the sheriff, and away we went with all boilers blasting. Sheriff come down, and then me and about half a dozen deputies went around to look at the body. Collected quite a little crowd.”
“But they still didn’t know at that point who you were?”
“Naw,” Longarm said. “I just give my name as Long and hadn’t said anything else. The feller I killed was known to them as a small-time crook around town. But what caused the trouble was they insisted he’d never tried armed robbery before, and kind of took the attitude I might have just shot him for the hell of it. Wasn’t nothing but my word that he’d been holding a gun on me. Naturally I’d turned it in when I got to the jailhouse, but they took the position that that didn’t mean he’d ever been holding the gun and threatening me with it. In fact, they come about as close to calling me a liar as you can get.”
Davis smiled slightly. “I reckon they couldn’t understand how you could kill a man who already has the drop on you and your weapon is in your holster. I can see how they’d wonder about that.”
“Naturally that point got made. The way they were going on I could see it wouldn’t be long before they decided I’d been robbing the dead man and had killed him to keep matters clean.” Longarm shook his head. “Just was bad luck.”
Davis blew a smoke ring into the air. “I reckon the dead man might have been thinking along the same lines if he could have been thinking.”
“Well, I finally had to own up,” Longarm said. “I got the sheriff aside, hoping to limit the publicity, and kind of told him on the quiet and showed him my badge.” He made a disgusted sound. “For all the good that done. We was back in the office by then and it didn’t take ten seconds for word to get around that I was a federal marshal.”
“Did they know you? Recognize the name?”
Longarm looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “Sometimes I don’t think matters shake out fair. I’ve been a very good marshal. That ought to have been enough.”
“I take it they knew you.”
“It’s that damn nickname of mine. I wish I’d never heard the word Longarm. I’d like to find the man that first pinned that on me and do him a great harm.”
“How many you reckon heard about you?”
Longarm grimaced. “No telling,” he said. “I reckon they was a dozen collected together there in the sheriff’s office.”
“All law?”
“Oh, hell no! Bunch of them wasn’t nothing but loungers and busybodies and I don’t know what all. So if a dozen heard it, how many you reckon knows this morning that a U.S. deputy marshal is in this part of the country?”
Davis laughed ruefully. “Enough so if they was voters you could get elected mayor. This is a talking town. This whole part of the country is talking towns.” He shook his head and put his cigarillo out in his saucer.
Longarm looked across the crowded hotel dining room. “Damn!” he swore.
“The famous Marshal Longarm,” Davis said waggishly. “I reckon I’d heard about you for ten years before I finally clapped eyes on you in Mason. I figured you to be nine feet tall.”
