Longarm and the Dead Man's Tale by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

He said, “Go easy on that burgundy, it’s stronger than beer and the night is young.”

She said, “Pooh. I’m not feeling drunk. I’m feeling liberated. My mamma told me, just before I left home to seek my fortune as a woman who knew shorthand, she’d named me Freedom in the hopes I’d never be stuck in the flypaper before I’d flown some. My dad didn’t like the notion much, but as she was helping me pack, my mamma grabbed hold of me all of a sudden and made me promise I wouldn’t marry up with the first man who asked. I’m not sure why she said that. I know she married up at sixteen but she seemed to get along all right with my dad.”

He looked away and said, “Grass is always greener and the institution has its advantages, if you want to live in an institution. We were talking about the English-speaking caste system. You told me there’s a lot of that going round up here in Leadville?”

She sipped more wine and said, “English- and Dutch-speaking. Silver Dollar Tabor’s faction and the Dutch faction led by his rival mining baron, August Rische.”

Longarm replied, “Do tell? I thought August Rische and Hod Tabor were former business partners and good pals. Didn’t they both go from nothing much to having it all just a few summers back when storekeeper Tabor grubstaked a Dutch prospector to a few dollars’ worth of grub and a gallon of white lightning?”

She owlishly replied, “Rische and his partner, George Hook, struck it so rich they could never forgive Hod Tabor. They owed him a one-third interest in their Little Pittsburgh and he’d known them when it was agreed August Rische was too poor to feed his yellow dog.”

She sipped more wine, ignoring his warning look, and continued, “Hook eventually sold out and went home to Germany. August Rische got a quarter million for his share in the Little Pittsburgh and stayed on here to get richer grubstaking other prospectors, mostly fellow Dutchmen. How come we have so many Dutchmen, Irish-men, and Chinamen in this land of ours of late, Custis?”

He said, “The Irish and Chinese can’t find work where they grew up. A heap of Dutchmen have left home to avoid the higher taxes and wilder notions of that Prussian kaiser and Mr. Bismarck. We were talking about a feud betwixt our resident mining magnates?”

She said, “They say August Rische is fit to be tied, having found the first silver our Silver Dollar Tabor crows so loud about. Starting out with no more than his shares in the Little Pittsburgh, Hod Tabor—or, in point of fact, his thrifty wife, Miss Augusta—went on to own or hold shares in ever richer mines, along with his opera house, saloons, sawmills, and such, including that bank with real brick walls. They say he sleeps in a two-hundred-dollar nightshirt with a mistress he bought from her husband for a thousand. Being a Scotsman, Hod Tabor likes to march down State

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