Longarm and the Unwritten Law Page 4

  Longarm smiled thinly and said, "That sure sounds like the West-by-God-Virginia rascal I keep reading about in the Denver Post. But how did his fellow Bohunks uncover his true identity if he started out as one of their own badmen?"

  She sipped more soda through her love-grass straw as if to allow herself time to choose her words before she confided, "It all came out in the Homagy scandal. Trinidad's not half as big as Denver, so a scandal as juicy as that one gets told and retold until everyone has every detail whether they wanted them or not."

  Longarm sighed and said, "I know this young widow woman back in Denver who'd agree with you on back-fence sass in any size town. I swear that if you drop a jar of olives on Lincoln Street, it'll grow to a wagon load of watermelons by the time the gossip gets all the way to Sherman, a block up the slope. So ain't it possible to mistake one tall cuss with a mustache with another?"

  Cora Brewster sipped more soda and demurely decided, "I've never confessed adultery to a husband after midnight. So I can only try to imagine the scene inside the Homagy cabin when she told him she'd been seduced by a blackmailer who'd threatened to have the two of them deported. I remember how surprised we were at the notions shop to hear it had been an American government official instead of the immigrant bully we'd thought we'd noticed pestering the immigrant girls of Bohunk Hill while their men were down in the mines or out of town to those anarchist meetings immigrants go in for."

  Longarm frowned thoughtfully out the grimy glass at the passing grassy swells. "Hold on," he said. "I'm missing something. Just who come down off the slopes of Bohunk Hill to tell the rest of the world Attila Homagy had caught his woman with the one and original Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, ma'am?"

  She shook her pretty head and replied, "Nobody. Had the poor man actually found an intruder under his roof, dressed as suspiciously as in his shirtsleeves with his vest unbuttoned, the code of any gentleman, foreign or domestic, would have called for the spilling of blood on the spot!"

  Longarm soberly said, "I know how that fool code's supposed to work, ma'am. I told you I was a lawman. Is it safe to say Homagy beat his wife and announced his even grimmer intentions about a famous American lover after she told him that was who he was after?"

  Cora Brewster demurely replied, "I told you I wasn't there. But I suppose she must have, since her husband never actually caught her with anyone!"

  Longarm took a deeper pull on his beer than he'd meant to as he mulled one gal's suspicions about another over and over in his own head. Then he said, "There's no better way it works. Homagy was out of town a spell on union business. When he came back he must have heard his woman and some other pretty Bohunk gals had been seen carrying on with a handsome stranger. It was you, not me, who allowed everyone but at least one jealous husband was pretty. A gal trying to cover up for a handsome Bohunk boyfriend might grab at an American name off a newspaper she'd just wrapped the garbage in. It might be as tough for a Bohunk to come up with an American name on short notice as it would be for a scared American to recall some Bohunks are called Attila!"

  He scowled down into his beer stein and added, "There was a front page or more covering some court proceedings last May too. So how do you like a false-hearted woman betraying her husband with another man, and then betraying a federal deputy she'd never laid eyes on to her husband's vengeance, by naming him as the one to be struck down on the field of honor?"

  Cora Brewster wrinkled her pert nose. "If what you say could be true, Magda Homagy carried casual adultery on to premeditated murder! The only question left would be just whom she had in mind. They say this Longarm is fast on the draw and quick on the trigger, while poor little Attila Homagy is at best a handy man with a star drill and dynamite!"

  Before Longarm could get into the unwritten law and the edge it gave even a mediocre fighting man, the Trinidad gal added, "I heard a lot of the Hungarian folks down our way have tried to persuade poor Mister Homagy to forget it. They seem to feel there's no shame to accepting things in their new land as they just have to be. They've told both the husband and wife it was more like a natural disaster than an affair of honor. They feel it's hopeless to resist the iron whim of any government official, and they've warned Attila Homagy the Americans will surely hang him if he kills such a famous American lawman, even though he'd be in the right with simple justice on his side!"

  Longarm didn't answer right off. There was more than one way to shovel any stall, and he didn't want to pile on any more lies he might want to take back in a hurry. He knew he'd doubtless be able to convince this bright young Trinidad gal he couldn't be the jasper she'd had pointed out as himself earlier. She'd just told him he looked nothing like the man she'd been told was Longarm. She knew lots of other Trinidad gals. Including more than one who'd be as willing to depose in writing that they'd seen yet another handsome stranger messing with those sassy Bohunk gals while their menfolk hadn't been looking.

  But Billy Vail had issued direct orders forbidding him to go anywhere near Trinidad. Meanwhile, it was going to take them at least another four hours to get there at this speed, Lord willing and no trestles were down. So Longarm let her rattle on about treacherous young wives stuck with musty old men as he sipped away the rest of his beer and asked her if she'd like some sandwiches to go with her next soda.

  She hesitated, then calmly replied, "It's been hours since last I ate back in Denver, and I fear we'll be pulling into Trinidad past my usual supper-time. But I think we'd better go Dutch treat, Deputy Crawford. It wouldn't be right for me to lead a strange man on, and it's not as if I can't afford some ham on rye. I forgot to tell you I was just up to Denver on business, and we made out right handy on some yellow cheese we've started to make at our dairy."

  Longarm felt no call to press it. The pretty gal's husband or a hand who worked for them figured to be waiting for her when they both had to get off at Trinidad. He wasn't looking forward to the overly hearty handshakes and cautious smiles such occasions seemed to call for. But when a man had to change trains he had to change trains, and at least it would be old Cora, not himself, who got to explain how innocent it had all been, for as many times as it took to sink in.

  He caught the eye of a colored club car attendant, and once they were fixed to order he made sure they'd be getting separate tabs.

  Cora Brewster had been serious about that ham and rye.

  She made Longarm feel a mite prissy by ordering a scuttle of beer to wash it down.

  He allowed he'd have his next beer by the scuttle instead of the far smaller schooner, seeing it saved trips back and forth from the bar, and ordered Swiss and salami on pumpernickel.

  He could tell she'd been raised almost as country as himself, and as a rule country folks got right down to business with their grub so they could get on with any chores that needed tending. But as Longarm and Cora found themselves with nothing better to do than talk as they chugged on south with the foothills of the Front Range to their right and the rolling swells of the High Plains going from tawny to golden in the late afternoon sunlight, they just nibbled, sipped, and speculated about that tearful Bohunk gal confessing she'd been untrue with a lawman called Longarm when her husband hadn't really caught her in the act with anyone.

  Meanwhile, back in Denver, the somewhat confused streetwalker called Consuela meant no harm to El Brazo Largo, known to be more friendly to her own people than many of his kind. It was loyalty to her own social class as well as La Raza that inspired Consuela's hiss of warning as she spied two Mexican street urchins stalking a little old gringo in a seersucker suit, over by the baggage windows of the crowded Union Depot.

  The bigger boy, who usually held the mark from behind as his wiry compadre grabbed for his watch chain and wallet, drifted over to the slightly older whore, a violet-scented cigarette rolled in black paper dangling from his pouty lip as he quietly observed, "We know he wears a gunbelt under his jacket. For to use a gun on anyone one must be able to get at it, no?"

  Consuela warned, "He l
ooks like a ham-Jess viejo to me as well, Hernando. Just the same, if I were you, I'd choose someone safer for to go after. That one is muy peligrosa, muchacho mio."

  The young thug shot a more thoughtful glance across the waiting room, turned back to Consuela, and demanded, "That old gringo? You can't be serious! Little Pancho here could take him in a fair fight if he did not have those guns and nobody else interfered! What do they call this big bad gringo we are supposed to be afraid of, eh?"

  Consuela said, "I do not know. I have never seen him around here before. But he has been here long enough for one who reads the ways of men on the street to suspect he is stalking someone with the guns he wears partly concealed. You have heard, of course, of El Brazo Largo?"

  Hernando nodded thoughtfully and said, "The one his own people call Longarm? I know him on sight. They say he's muy toro. What about him?"

  Consuela said, "That one just ran El Brazo Largo out of town! I saw it happen less than an hour ago. They were talking--in a tense way, I could see. Then suddenly, the smaller one said something and El Brazo Largo grabbed me by one arm and dragged me out to the loading platforms, begging me not to tell anyone who he really was!"

  Hernando whistled as he gazed across the hazy waiting room with a lot more respect, marveling, "Hey, they say El Brazo Largo faced down both Thompson Brothers in Texas! You say he asked you not to tell that older man who he was?"

  She answered, "Si. Then I told him there were a lot of people around this depot who knew who he was, and the next thing I knew he was running for the next train out!"

  Hernando gasped, "Madre de Dios, we owe you for warning us! The hombre malo who could run Longarm out of town is nobody Pancho and me wish for to dance with!"

  That would have been the end of it if Hernando hadn't spotted a hard-faced Anglo that Consuela wouldn't have wanted to speak to a few minutes later. The rangy hardcase, dressed like a cowhand on his way to a funeral, was as mean as he looked. So naturally Hernando and Pancho admired him. But as they approached, the black-clad rider leaning against a sooty brick wall scowled at them and said, "Beat it, you greaser faggots. I'm down here at the depot to meet somebody. I don't want no nickel cocksucker!"

  Hernando persisted with, "I can't fix you up with no cock-sucker. I don't know your sister. Pero, quien sabe? Maybe I got something much better for you. What if I could point out the hombre who just ran the famous Longarm out of town? The hombre malo who took such a pistolero would be famous as Wild Bill, no?"

  Blacky Foyle, the terror of many a West Denver saloon, raised a thoughtful brow and replied, "I ain't sure I'm ready to be famous as Wild Bill, albeit they do say he has a fine fence around his gravesite up Deadwood way. The man who'd go up agin a man Longarm was afraid of would have to take such affairs more serious than a sunny child like me. But why don't you point this dangerous jasper out to me, and mayhaps I won't call you a cocksucker no more, Hernando."

  CHAPTER 4

  Trinidad, Colorado, had sprouted from where the original Santa Fe Trail had crossed the Purgatoire by way of a handy ford. Later, by the time they'd shortened the freight wagon route by way of the Cimarron Cutoff, they'd found soft coal seams in the foothills to the west and given Trinidad a better reason for being there. The steel rails laid west to replace the old wagon ruts were more interested in firebox coal and boiler water than the shorter but more barren cutoff. So now the seat of Las Animas County enjoyed its own trade with the outside world in coal, cows, and farm truck.

  By the time their train was passing the outlying spreads of the prosperous transportation hub, Longarm and Cora Brewster had moved on back to the observation platform again and he'd learned more about the butter and egg business of Trinidad than he'd ever thought he'd need to know.

  But there were worse ways to while away the hours aboard a train than jawing with a pretty lady, and the malicious gossip involving him and a Trinidad gal he'd never met made a heap of otherwise tedious facts about the transfer point seem far more interesting.

  As the sun sank ever lower and the spreads off to either side got smaller and more closely spaced, Cora was rambling on about how much more even an immigrant coal miner's family spent on fresh eggs and dairy products next to, say, your average single cowhand. Longarm had been getting paid as a single cowhand when he'd decided he'd rather sign on as a junior deputy six or eight years back. So he politely repressed a yawn and said, "I've got a pretty good picture of domestic doings up on Bohunk Hill, Miss Cora. What I really need a married woman's advice on is that mighty odd but apparently voluntary confession by Magda Homagy. Setting aside who in thunder she'd been sparking whilst her husband was out of town, why would she tell him all she'd done, in dirty detail, with any other man by any other name?"

  Cora wrinkled her pert nose and replied, "I wasn't there. But I imagine a woman would confess to added details if her husband beat them out of her, or if she really wanted to rub it in. I could answer more surely if I knew whether they were still together or not."

  Longarm stared soberly at the lamp-lit window in a cozy soddy they were passing as he mused aloud, "I don't know. Attila Homagy never brought her up to Denver with him. Maybe she's waiting for him down the line with a candle lit in the window for him. Maybe she run off with that other cuss. The one she said was... somebody else."

  Cora agreed a cheating wife or more had been known to lie to save a lover. But after that she pointed out, "That swaggering lothario I only saw in passing, but more than once, didn't strike me as the sort of man who'd treat a girl to a ride to the next town, let alone more than a few nights' food and lodging. If she was dumb enough to run off with him, she'd have been home with her tail between her legs by the time her husband returned from that union gathering."

  Longarm stared back up the receding tracks, noting you could no longer make out the point they came together on the horizon in this tricky twilight. He said, "Maybe she did. I sure wish I had time to nose about on Bohunk Hill and find out exactly where she is and exactly what she has to say about this mysterious cuss her husband has down as a federal deputy. But the night train I'll be riding east won't give me a full half hour in Trinidad."

  She said, "I could find out anything you could, seeing I live just on the edge of town and know most of the tradeswomen. Why don't you give me a list of questions to ask? Then I could post them to your Denver office and you'd find them waiting for you there when you got back from your mission to Fort Sill."

  Then she spoiled it all by adding, "You never did get around to telling me why they're sending you to Fort Sill, Deputy Crawford."

  He muttered. "Just delivering some instructions."

  Knowing that any nosey lady trying to write to a Deputy Crawford in care of Fort Sill would eventually have her letter returned unopened, he said, "They're sending some others from my home office down to nose about the scene of whatever transpired. I'm more interested in the other man than a wayward wife who'll either be at home or somewhere else. There's no telling which way he went after he turned the head of old Attila's wife. But he must have left town, or that jealous Bohunk wouldn't be searching high and low for him in Denver."

  Cora must have spotted a familiar landmark in the passing softly lit scenery. For she bent forward to pick up the carpetbag she'd had resting on the decking near her high-button shoes as she asked how Longarm knew that other Longarm hadn't just been hiding out in some other part of Denver.

  It was a good question. Longarm replied, "I just said he could be most anywhere. Tall drinks of water who look like Americans of the Western persuasion ain't all that rare. But him being some sort of furriner might make it easier to pick him out of a crowd."

  She said they were almost there, and rose to her feet with her modest baggage as she added, "A lot of hardcase wanderers of our West seem to be foreign born. I mean, aside from the Canadian Masterson brothers, we have the Italian Renos, the Alteri boys, and the much nicer but probably more dangerous Charlie Siringo. Then there's Johnny Ringo, born a German Jew as Rhinego
ld, and isn't that fast-drawing Chris Madsen supposed to be a Swede?"

  By this time Longarm had risen to take her carpetbag from her as he replied with a bemused smile, "Deputy Madsen's from Denmark, ma'am. But you were right about his famous quick draw. Where did a boss milkmaid, no offense, learn so much about our current crop of Western gunslicks?"

  She said collecting newspaper accounts of wilder Western folks had been her husband's hobby, and that he'd often said someday a lot of folks would likely pay good money for the true facts behind all those wild tales. She said she'd helped her husband keep that scrapbook up to date, and that she still sometimes leafed through it, thinking back to when she'd pasted something in.

  Longarm said, "This jasper sparking the Bohunk gals of Trinidad spoke neither Eye-talian, Yiddish, nor Danish to the immigrant gals he was pestering. So that narrows it down a heap."

  Then something else she'd just said sank in and he demanded with a puzzled look, "Did you say your man used to keep up with such hombres, meaning he ain't around to do so anymore? It's no beeswax of mine, but that ain't a black dress you have on this evening, Miss Cora."

  The train was slowing to a stop as the sun was setting. So it was hard to read her eyes as she quietly replied, "I put my widow's weeds away two years ago. Jim was killed over a year before that. A Jersey bull Jim was trying to medicate tossed him and then trampled what was left of him."

  Longarm didn't answer. It might have sounded smug to observe that the milking breeds were thrice as dangerous as any beef critter. As the train braked to a steamy stop, they saw their observation platform was just even with the north end of the plank loading platform. Longarm gripped his own envelope with the same arm holding her carpetbag, and opened the side gate of the platform with his free hand. They both knew he wasn't supposed to do that. So maybe that was why she was grinning like an apple-swiping kid as he helped her off their train. He asked if she'd have anyone picking her up, and if she did, where.