Longarm and the Last Man by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans [Evans, Tabor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Longarm (Fictitious Character), Westerns, Fiction
ISBN: 9780515113563
Google: MkcxlvWHgVQC
Publisher: Jove Books
Published: 1994-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

“You cocksucker!”

“It’s nice to see you too, Harry.” Longarm hung his Stetson on a peg and helped himself to a seat on one of the two chairs that crowded the Cargyle police chief’s tiny office. He was able to manage both without taking his eyes off Bolt. Just in case. Not that he expected anything untoward to happen before breakfast. But with a man like Harry …

HarrY Bolt—former deputy United States marshal, former undersheriff for Animas County, Colorado, former night marshal at Trinidad, former … there were lots of jobs Longarm knew Bolt had held—was a beefy man with the red-veined complexion of a heavy drinker and the bulging belly of a dedicated eater. A good many men had thought Harry Bolt’s appearance was that of a man who’d gone slow and soft. Those men had been wrong. And more often than not they’d paid for their error with spilled blood, broken bones, or worse.

Bolt had thinning gray hair, a gold tooth in the middle of his jaw, and a pipsqueak Smith and Wesson rimfire .32 revolver that he wore on his belly to the right of his belt buckle. The gun looked too small and inoffensive to be threatening. Much of the nickel plating on it had worn off to be replaced with rust, and the front sight was missing. Practically no one took the gun seriously. Except Longarm. He had seen what Harry Bolt and that idiotic, two-bit popgun of his could accomplish. Not fast, mind. No one can be fast with a rimfire Smith & Wesson. But Harry Bolt was hell for accurate, and in a real-life gunfight deliberate accuracy beats a fast noise every time.

Longarm didn’t underestimate Harry Bolt. Didn’t like the son of a bitch either. Which, of course, was neither here nor there so far as this assignment was concerned.

Before Longarm could tell Bolt what that assignment was, the Cargyle police chief spat in the general direction of a filthy cuspidor and growled, “You wouldn’t’ve been messing around at Cletus Terry’s hog ranch last night, would you?”

“I don’t recall ever meeting anybody by that name.” Longarm glanced idly around the tiny building that served as jail and police station alike here. There was no sign of the prisoner who’d been in the one cell the previous evening. At the moment Longarm and Bolt were alone.

“Clete runs one of the joints down by the gate,” Bolt said. “Big fella, Clete is. Said some smartass son of a bitch sucker-punched him last night and then backed it up with a gun. When he said smartass son of a bitch, Long, it shoulda been description enough for me to know it was you.”

Longarm snorted. “This Terry fella. He think he’s a big man with a knife? Hell on hot wheels when it comes to scaring little-bitty women?”

“See? I knew it was you. Soon as I seen you walk through that door I knew it was you.”

“The man’s an idiot, Bolt. Almost as stupid as you are. He’s an idiot an’ a liar too.

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