Longarm in Paradise by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

They didn’t say much that night as they trudged the long, difficult miles on to Topoki. More than once Longarm and Lilly heard the rattle of a snake in the weeds, causing them to detour around in the darkness, often falling into the mud. They finally arrived at Topoki around two o’clock in the morning. The village was dark and Longarm observed nothing but a saloon, a livery and five or six huts. He reckoned that Topoki was about as humble a place as you’d ever want to avoid.

“I can’t believe that anyone would choose to live here,” Lilly said as she gazed downriver at the sorry collection of buildings. “But this is where Monty told me his sister-in-law came with Tyler.”

“How long ago?” Custis asked, undressing and wading into the river to cool down because the temperature was still in the mid-nineties.

“A couple of years.”

“Did you ever meet her?”

“No.”

Longarm collapsed in the river, sloshing water over his head. He was tired, depressed and very much doubted if he would find Tyler still living in this miserable Mohave hellhole.

“What was Henrietta’s sister’s name?” he asked when Lilly sank down in the water beside him.

“Daisy.”

“Last name?”

“I have no idea.”

“Great,” Longarm said peevishly. “We’ve come all the way out here to find a kid we’ve never seen living with a woman we’ve never seen and whose last name we don’t even know. How are we even supposed to ... Oh, never mind.”

The river gurgled softly and night birds called from the swampy inlets along the shore. Longarm leaned back and gazed up at the stars. At least the night sky was familiar. Otherwise, he might just as well have been on another planet for all the similarity there was between Topoki and Denver.

“So how do you like the adventure of traveling we’re having so far?” he asked.

“Oh shut up,” she said wearily. “I wasn’t thinking of this kind of thing when I pictured us traveling. You know that.”

“Yeah,” he said, feeling a little guilty for being so sarcastic. “I know. But at least we can be pretty well assured that things can’t get much worse.”

“Can we?”

“I think so.”

Lilly splashed water over her head. She looked terrible and her voice was filled with weariness when she asked, “What are we going to do if Daisy has disappeared?”

“It’s not Daisy I’m after. I just want to find Tyler and make sure that he knows about his father and that he’s doing all right.”

“And what if he isn’t?”

Longarm had given that some thought. “I’m not much good with kids,” he admitted. “But Tyler will be about thirteen. Seems to me that the least I can do is take him back with me to Denver and see that he gets a good foster home and an education. Maybe I can even help him in other ways.”

“Like teach him how to handle a gun and shoot bad men?”

Longarm laughed out loud. “You’re feeling damned near as ornery as I am this morning. Maybe we ought to scoot back on shore and try to catch a few winks before the sun comes up.

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