Longarm and the Mountain Manhunt by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans [Evans, Tabor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101589496
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Carl Adams and Harrison Daniels were both sitting at the same round table in the back but now the other chairs were conspicuously empty. The men seemed to brighten a little when they saw Longarm enter.

Adams waved to his bartender and held one finger up. The man drew one beer and brought it to the table. Longarm’s beer arrived there before he did.

“So tell me what happened,” he said to them.

“It was the son of a bitch Kreiters, of course,” Adams said.

“They camped in the hills above the town until the road was fixed and most everyone cleared out,” Daniels put in.

“Then they came down and, well, just hoorahed the town.”

“Exactly like they’d said they would.”

“Except by then you weren’t here to help us out.”

“I had to go on,” Longarm said. “You knew that to begin with.”

“Oh, we aren’t blaming you. I know there are a few folks in town that are, but we understand. You work for the federal government, not for us.”

“And a damned shame that is, too,” Daniels said.

“But we really do understand,” Adams said.

“What happens with the town council now that so many of your members have left?” Longarm asked.

“For all practical purposes there is no town council.”

Daniels added, “Shit, for all practical purposes there is no town anymore.”

“You built once. You can do it again,” Longarm told them. He was not altogether sure he believed that, but it was what they needed to hear right now. He leaned back and concentrated on his beer for a few moments.

His problem was twofold. One, the Kreiters should not be allowed to get away with what they had done. And two, he could not think of a single federal law they had broken that would justify his trying to find and to arrest them.

It occurred to him…

“Y’know,” he said, “you two seem t’ comprise the whole town council right now. If I remember a’right, you could request federal assistance with your local law enforcement needs. Then I’d have jurisdiction t’ go after them sons o’ bitches.”

“Go after them?” Daniels sounded like he had not given any thought to such a thing.

“You still want George in jail, don’t you? An’ all the rest o’ them, too, I would think.” He smiled. “Surely it’s ag’inst the law here to burn the town down. Arson would be that charge. Ask the circuit judge the next time he shows up.”

“We could do that?” Daniels asked.

Longarm nodded.

“What do we have to do?” Adams asked, he apparently being somewhat more practical than his friend Daniels.

“Get wires off…you do still have the telegraph, don’t you?”

Both men nodded.

“Get wires off t’ both the U.S. attorney and the U.S. marshal down in Denver. An’ mention that I’m on scene and able t’ help. That will make everything nice an’ legal.” He grinned. “At least I hope it will.”

“Do you think you can actually arrest them?”

“Damn right, I can,” Longarm asserted. “But I’ll need a little help from you fellas.” He lifted his mug and had another swallow of the crisply bitter pilsner.

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