Longarm and the Boys in the Back Room by Tabor Evans

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

At the same time, in different places, Uncle Roy Sanderson’s deputies had been searching high and low, lighting street lamps the laid-up Peg Leg Ferris couldn’t manage lest they miss a tall dark stranger in the dark. So Deputy McBride sounded mighty sure of himself as he joined his superiors in the back room of the Warbonnet to flatly declare, “He ain’t in Sioux Siding. I asked at both liveries and he never hired a mount to head north for the county seat, as some feared.”

Judge Boswell, seated with Uncle Roy, Cherokee Adare and Jubel Stark at the card table, with no cards on the table, opined, “I never held I was worried about Longarm riding to the county seat. I said it would be a logical move. The county clerk up yonder has all the deeds to all the properties in this unincorporated village on file.”

Cherokee asked, “What might be on file that anyone here needs to get all worry-warted over?”

The blacksmith turned to Jubel Stark to slyly ask, “You do hold legal title to that forge you hired out to me, don’t you, Mr. Stark?”

The lean and hungry looking older man in a rusty black suit worn over immaculate white linen quietly replied, “Foreclosed on the blacksmith who was there before you, prim and proper, with all the proceedings on file with the county clerk and not one word misspelled. Are you by any chance starting up with me, you unwashed redskin?”

Cherokee gulped and hastily replied, “Hell no, Mr. Stark. Everybody knows better than to start up with you! I was just trying to be funny.”

Jubel Stark stared thoughtfully at Cherokee, not a pretty sight, then decided, “I don’t hear myself laughing. Get away from me. You bother me. I don’t see why you were invited to this sit-down to begin with.”

Cherokee grinned sheepishly and tried, “Aw, you don’t really mean that, do you, Mr. Stark?”

Uncle Roy said, “He means it and you’d better do as he says, Cherokee. I hope I don’t have to say that again.”

So Cherokee got up and left. Cherokee was no fool. After he had, Uncle Roy said, “The breed meant no harm, Mister Stark. He just feels uneasy and talks too much around white men.”

Jubel Stark murmured, “I just said that. Deputy McBride, there, was trying to tell us where Longarm might be found.”

The younger and thicker-set McBride said, “No I wasn’t. I was telling you that tall drink of trouble must have caught that westbound varnish this afternoon, like Martinez said.”

Uncle Roy soberly suggested, “Unless he went back to Widow Epworth’s for some . . . home cooking. I’m minded of my first wife when I recall how we stood toe-to-toe with Longarm lying in my face, bold as brass, knowing I knew he knew I knew where he’d been while that Army cot was taking six bullets meant for his pesky ass!”

“He’s too tricky by half,” Judge Boswell opined, adding, “After you told me he’d bareface lied to me in

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