Longarm and the Wayward Widow by Tabor Evans

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

Chapter 14

Nobody took any potshots at Longarm on his way off the Lariat spread, so he supposed Montoya’s men were heeding the orders not to start any trouble. In fact, the ride back to Palmerton was downright peaceful.

To Longarm’s surprise, so were the next couple of days. He spent them talking to people in town and on the smaller ranches in the vicinity, trying to find out if anyone had a strong enough grudge against Tom McCabe to have ambushed him. As far as Longarm could determine, while McCabe had not been well-liked in the valley, most folks had respected him and had not been bitter enough toward him to stoop to murder. Of course, some of the people he talked to could have been lying to him, Longarm knew, but he had confidence in his ability to know the truth when he heard it, at least most of the time.

So what it came down to, he decided, was the same triangle he had been aware of from the beginning—the rivalry between McCabe and Montoya, plus the added angle of Sam Kingston’s designs on the Box MCC. Somewhere in there was the answer to Tom McCabe’s murder.

On Monday evening, Longarm was sitting on the porch of the Valley Hotel with Sheriff Walcott when a buggy came rolling along the street. The driver brought the vehicle to a stop in front of the hotel and called out, “Hello, Orville, you old horse thief!”

With a grin, Walcott stood up and stepped over to the edge of the porch. “Careful with that horse thief talk, Judge,” he said. “We got us another lawman here, and he might take you serious-like.”

Longarm came to his feet as the newcomer climbed down from the buggy and tied his team to the hitch rack. He stepped up onto the porch and shook hands vigorously with the sheriff, who then turned to Longarm and said, “Marshal, this is Judge Michael Davis. Judge, meet Deputy Marshal Custis Long.”

“Long, eh?” Judge Davis said as he shook hands with the rangy lawman. “I’ve heard of you. Surprised we’ve never crossed paths before.”

“Just never had that good fortune, I reckon,” said Longarm.

The judge was a tall, slender, middle-aged man wearing spectacles over keenly intelligent eyes. His black suit and flat-crowned black hat were dusty from the trail. He took off the hat, revealing thinning gray hair, and knocked some of the dust off it. “Everything quiet here in town, Orville?” he asked.

“For the time bein’,” replied Walcott. “Ain’t no guarantee it’ll stay that way, though.”

“There are no guarantees in life,” said Davis, “except that it’s a struggle we all must wage.”

“That’s the damned truth.”

Davis turned to Longarm. “I got a wire from Chief Marshal Vail informing me that he’d assigned you to this case, Marshal Long. How does the situation look? Are we still on the verge of a range war?”

“It could come to that,” Longarm admitted. “A lot depends on how the court case goes.”

“But I’ll have to decide in favor

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