Longarm and the Saddle Rock Spook (Longarm, No. 203) by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans [Evans, Tabor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780515117462
Amazon: 0515117463
Publisher: Jove
Published: 1995-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

It was pushing midnight and the dark streets were as quiet as any graveyard as Longarm strode at last toward his new hired room at that hotel. He’d tipped the room clerk and been promised he’d be the first to know if anyone came around to ask which room he was in now.

He was walking in low-heeled boots, well-broken-in, with no spurs. But a man still clunked a mite along a wooden walk, and that somehow made the darkness all around seem even more deserted.

Then someone called his name smack behind him, and he came down in the dusty street facing back the way he’d just been, gun drawn in midair as he’d spun.

Phil Gordon, the photographer Valya worked for, stepped out from the shadows of the overhang with a derisive snort to declare, “You must really have a guilty conscience. Do I look dumb enough to yell at a man with a gun before I shoot him in the back?”

Longarm saw Gordon’s hands were empty in the moonlight. So he put his own gun back in its cross-draw holster as he quietly observed such things happened, explaining, “Gun waddies out to make a name seem to have this here Code of the West. I never said anyone was out to back-shoot me, Phil. But someone tried to front-shoot me earlier in your very own darkroom.”

Gordon said, “Valya told me just now. Whoever gave you any right to risk her life and my property like that, you arrogant bastard?”

“Don’t ever call me a bastard again with both hands empty,” the lawman answered ominously. Then he sighed and said, “Leaving the virtue of my parents out of it, you’re right about the other two mistakes I made and I’m sorry. I was able to scout up your assistant easier because she’d told me where she lived. I asked her if she had to have your permission. She didn’t know you were likely to act this hard-ass about it. I wasn’t expecting anyone to trail us to your shut-down gallery. That ain’t offered as a valid excuse. It was a pure mistake and I just said I was sorry. But nobody on our side got hurt, and the busted photograph negative Valya was able to save for evidence was interesting as hell. Didn’t she tell you that?”

Gordon nodded grimly. “She did. Did she tell you she was spoken for?”

So there it was, out in the open, like spit on the tablecloth.

Longarm calmly replied, “I never asked. I wasn’t sparking your true love, old son. I was asking a professional photographer to develop a damned negative for me. She did. That’s all she did. That’s all I ever asked her to do. So why are we talking like schoolboys about a woman who’s worked in Paris and New York City, for Gawd’s sake?”

Gordon said, “I want your word you’ll stay away from her from now on. I mean that.”

To which Longarm could only reply with a thin smile, “I’m making you a counter-offer.

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