Longarm and the Missing Bride by Tabor Evans

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

Chapter 23

It was a town. It wasn’t much of a town, but he supposed it should qualify as one. It had a main street with five businesses on it—a general mercantile, a smithy, a barber, a hardware, and a saloon—with a dozen or more small houses scattered nearby.

The most important feature from Longarm’s point of view was that it was on a telegraph line. Poles and wire extended from the back of the mercantile into the distance toward the east.

There was no livery, but behind the general store there was a wagon park. Longarm left his horses there and walked stiff-legged, his eyes grainy and burning from fatigue, into the store.

He had been in the saddle for . . . he honestly could not work it out. Could not get his mind around it.

He remembered being on the lookout above South Park. That was where he picked up the horses left by the dead coach robber. Then down to Colorado City. East to Kansas. North to where he found Teddy-something. Then the stagecoach station. Then . . . what had it been? Another three days? He thought so.

Time and scenery blurred. He ate when he was hungry. When he ran out of food, he made do with water taken from the occasional stream that he crossed. He followed the National Road. Light turned to dark turned to light again. All he knew was that he had to find those men. He had to find Tina.

It was past noon when he reached this tiny prairie town that might or as easily might not survive. Communities like this popped up, briefly flourished until the newcomers learned the heartbreak of farming on the plains, and then as quickly died. They seemed almost as fragile as the mining camps that boomed and fizzled.

In the mountain gold camps or down here in the vast flatlands, it was easier to move on—to new opportunities, to newer and grander dreams—than it was to hang in when things got tough.

“Hello, friend. What can I do for you?” The storekeeper was a portly, smiling man in sleeve garters.

Longarm introduced himself and explained his problem. “Have you seen these men? Five of ’em and a little girl.”

Lordy, he hoped Tina was still with them. They could well have murdered the child and abandoned her body or buried her somewhere. They could also have turned off to either side without him knowing.

The storekeeper shook his head. “I’ve had a man I didn’t know come in and buy some foodstuffs. That would have been yesterday about this time of day. But he was alone and I saw no child with him.”

Longarm sighed. “I think . . . I think what I need t’ do is send wires out to whatever towns are around here. See if I can get a line on them that way. Otherwise, I could go larrupin’ off in the wrong direction an’ never catch up with them. You got a message pad an’ pencil? I’ll write something out an’ ask you to distribute it for, oh, about fifty miles in any direction.

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