Longarm and the Haunted Whorehouse by Tabor Evans

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

Chapter 11

At that corral on Main Avenue, they found the imperious Wilma had taken the five Indians with her to fetch and carry, leaving the others waiting amid or atop their own baggage and the tonnage gathered by Tosawi in the shade of a sage-thatched ramada alongside the pole corral, where three dozen Indian ponies with B.I.A. brands had been fenced apart from a dozen-odd livery nags. Longarm nodded with approval as he saw how many of the Indian stock seemed at least part Barb. The Ho Hada called Ute had gotten into the riding and raising of horseflesh shorty after their pioneering cousins, the Comanche, who’d stolen the first Spanish horses back in the 1600s. And, considering they were less famous horse Indians than say Lakota, thanks to their highland hunting grounds where no buffalo roamed, the Ute had been horse-riding sons of bitches in their shining times.

The late Agent Meeker had lost track of that, or hadn’t cared, when he’d tried to make them give up their pony herds in favor of high and dry farming where a Swiss could see the land was best for grazing stock.

Longarm hefted his own borrowed roping saddle and draped it handy over a corral pole as Agent Thalmann hailed him. He ambled over to the cuss, idly wondering what he had stuck crosswise up his ass this time, judging from the expression on his pickle puss.

Thalmann wasted no time asking, “Are you in some sort of trouble with the law, Crawford? I’ve a right to know before we head out into open desert with you, dammit!”

Longarm truthfully replied, when you studied on it, “I can give you my word I ain’t in trouble with the law. What makes you suspect I could be?”

Thalmann said, “My wife tells me that ranger, yonder, has been asking questions about you, for one thing. More recently, within this very hour, a local who said he worked for a newspaper came by to ask how long I’d known you. Said he’d seen you before in these parts but didn’t recall them calling you Buck Crawford.”

Longarm managed a poker face as he asked, “Did he say what name he might know me by, or the name of the paper he says he works for?”

“I didn’t think to ask either question,” Thalmann replied with a mortified expression, adding, “My wife tells me Ranger Moran suspects you’re not exactly what you seem, too!”

To which Longarm dryly replied, “Reckon they have to find something to talk about, between times. I’ll ask him if he aims to arrest me before we leave town.”

But as he started to turn away Agent Thalmann gasped, “No, don’t! He’ll know Wilma told us!”

“Wouldn’t want anyone to hear Miss Wilma confides in her husband!” Longarm muttered, turning away in mingled amusement and concern as he wondered whether it might be time to cut the ranger in on things.

By the time he’d made it back to his borrowed saddle to draw the Winchester ’73 from its boot

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