Longarm and the Pecos Promenade by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Compared to most of the rough wayside inns Longarm usually picked as a place to stay while out on one of Billy Vail’s assignments, the second-floor accommodations at the Orient Hotel of Pecos, Texas, bordered on the downright luxurious. Impressive, deep, colorful carpets decorated the floor. A fine, well-ticked mattress on the bed awaited any tired traveler. Unblemished mirrors hung on recently papered walls. There was a dresser, wardrobe, two chairs, and most important of all, a set of double windows that overlooked the town’s bustling main thoroughfare.

Directly across the street below his convenient perch, and in full view when he loafed near the windows and fired up a cheroot, stood the impressive edifice of McCabe’s Pecos Emporium. The deep, spacious, shaded veranda was littered with price-tagged, hand-tooled saddles, galvanized washtubs, hickory ax handles, several racks of ready-made clothing, and other such desirable merchandise. All was displayed in a manner guaranteed to get the tight-fisted traveler or local shopper inside.

Two doors down, and on the same side of the street, was a likely-looking gambling and watering hole named the Palace Saloon. Several doors farther on from the drinking establishment’s bright red batwings, Longarm could see the sign for Marshal Manny Frazier’s office and city jail.

As far as Longarm was concerned, he’d stepped into about as much in the way of luxury and convenience as any man could want. Best of all, the whole shebang was within easy walking distance of Clegg’s Mercantile and, of course, the astonishingly beautiful person of Miss Constance Parker.

As he puffed at a recently fired nickel cheroot, Longarm’s concentrated attention was drawn to the busy entrance of McCabe’s mercantile outfit. He pulled the window curtain and gauzy sheer back with one finger and watched as the black-garbed owner of the place and the blubbery henchman who looked like he’d eaten his own brother stepped from the store’s doorway and into the orange-hued, afternoon sunlight.

McCabe used a talonlike finger and emphatically punched the beefy ruffian’s shoulder. Hard. The fat man, whose pants looked like they could have been split up the side and made into a tent for an entire family of traveling gypsies, nodded as though his worthless life depended on it.

The heated conversation lasted but a few seconds. Then the fat man huffed, puffed, and waddled his way to a nearby hitch rail and laboriously climbed aboard a monstrous chestnut hay burner that could easily have been related, in some twisted, grotesque way, to a circus elephant. He urged the poor overburdened beast east on Main Street, but the horse, to Longarm’s grinning delight, appeared content to take its time getting wherever the intended object of the ride happened to be—no matter how hard the fat man kicked at the poor beast’s bulky sides. Given the events that had transpired earlier that very afternoon, Longarm thought the whole scene just a bit curious, and wondered what the despicable McCabe and his tub-of-guts bullyboy might be up to.

Longarm locked his room, then headed for the hotel lobby.

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