by Tabor Evans
She said, "It seems so long ago, and as if our time together lasted longer. Isn't it funny how well you seem to get to know a stranger on a train, Deputy Crawford?"
He said it sure was, and added, "This jasper everyone keeps calling Deputy Custis Long, Miss Cora, you've seen the skirt-chasing cuss in the flesh your ownself? I mean, you'd know him if he rode in to join us for supper this evening?"
She indicated the way to her back steps as she sniffed and told him, "That'll be the day! You're so right about him chasing skirts! I swear I think he'd have his wicked way with a snake if he could get some other rogue to hold its head for him! He'd get my broom across his wicked face if ever he darkened my door at supper-time or any other time!" Longarm naturally opened the back door for her. As she marched through, chin at an indignant angle, she continued. "That snip of a dishwater blonde he's involved with now can't be a day over fifteen, and even a rogue with Longarm's rep ought to know better than to mess with bitty virgin girls!"
As he followed her into her neatly kept kitchen, he smelled fresh-baked bread and something sweeter. He said, "Leaving the virtue of the maiden to her own conscience, fifteen does seem a tad young. She ain't reached the age of consent under Colorado law. He'd have to get her legal guardian's permission to even come courting."
Cora took his hat and sat him at a scrubbed pine table near the window as she asked, "What's poor Bela Nagy supposed to do, challenge a notorious gunfighter with a badge to a duel? That wicked child's poor father is a coal miner who barely speaks English and wouldn't want trouble in any American court in the unlikely event he won!"
Longarm murmured, "I've noticed ignorant folks can be easy to cow with even a mail-order badge. I just got done exposing some fake lawmen over in the Indian Territory. According to a wire I got just the other day, the real Indian Police have rounded up a bunch of 'em and have 'em singing their little hearts out about home addresses in the Cherokee Nation. It's easy to round up fake lawmen once you notice they're fake."
She placed a bowl of stew she'd had warming on her stove in front of him, along with a pound of butter and some of that fresh bread he'd been smelling, as she sighed and said, "I hope you'll forgive me this once for offering so little. I'll make it up to you with a proper dinner tomorrow, if you aim to be in town that long. Why did you just suggest Longarm is a fake lawman, Deputy Crawford? For all the dreadful things they say about his way with the ladies, nobody I know has ever suggested he's not a real federal lawman like you."
The real Longarm said, "I'm going to have to catch up with him to be dead certain. But I'm fixing to be surprised as well as chagrined if the bully pestering Bohunk miners' wives and daughters turns out to be the real thing, Miss Cora."
The young widow sat down with her own serving across from him and insisted, "I'm sure Longarm is a real lawman. It was only a few weeks ago we were reading in the Rocky Mountain News about the way he'd been in yet another gunfight and won!"
Longarm said, "I read that edition too. Those newspaper reporters go on a heap. I just read a copy of the New England Sentinel on the train this afternoon. So I know for a fact that a reporter gal who couldn't have interviewed the one and original Quanah Parker in Fort Smith, Arkansas, just published a long interview with some fool Indian. You got to take Miss Weaver's word about him being a big chief."
Cora asked, "Are you suggesting Longarm was never really interviewed by that reporter from the Rocky Mountain News? Why aren't you eating your stew? Is it too salty?"
He said, "That reporter interviewed the survivor of that gunfight, ma'am. I was raised with better manners than to slurp my stew without a proper invitation."
She started to ask a dumb question, fluttered her lashes, and dug into her own serving as she confessed, "I'd forgotten what the etiquette books say about the hostess taking the first taste. I guess you think I'm mighty countrified."
He dug into his own grub, saying, "Nobody was ever raised more country than me. I had to read that in a book myself. There ain't no shame in just not knowing. But once you learn there's a right way and a dumb way to act around ladies of quality, it would just be rude not to bone up on 'em."
She blushed becomingly and murmured, "Go on, I'm nowhere near a lady of quality. I'm just a farm girl who's made out all right in butter and eggs."
"By hard work," he insisted. "I got an eye for whitewash and clean sweeping, Miss Cora. Takes a tidy eye and honest sweat to keep a spread this size this neat, even with help, and a lady who'd give her help an evening off before sundown is a lady of quality in my book."
She insisted, "You're making me blush. I swear you're as big a flirt as that dreadful Longarm, albeit I don't feel as frightened as I would if it was him across this very table from me!"
The man of whom she was speaking said, "I'm sure going to have to meet up with this womanizing wonder. You say he can be found in the company of some fifteen-year-old kid from Bohunk Hill?"
Cora said, "Eva Nagy, and we're not certain she's that old. I doubt you'd find Longarm anywhere near her parents' humble home after dark, though. They say he drives off into the hills in a curtained buggy, with all the greenhorn girls he can get to go with him."
She got up to fetch the fresh-perked coffee from her stove as she added, "Accuse me of having a dirty mind, if you like, but I am a widow woman who's not entirely ignorant of human anatomy and that child he's been molesting can't be... fully developed yet."
Longarm could only glance out the window at the lengthening shadows as he murmured, "Well, they say some gents like their olives green because it makes 'em feel... more manly."
She poured mugs of coffee for both of them as she exclaimed without thinking, "They say Longarm's hung like a horse, and she's such a tiny thing!"
Then she realized what she'd said, blushed beet red, and sat down to cover her face with her apron, sobbing, "Oh, Lord, I must really be going mad from living alone, the way I read in that book about the lady who lived in a tower in olden times!"
Longarm said, "That yam about the Lady of Astolat was only a fairy tale, Miss Cora. Even if it was true, she never went loco en la cabeza from living alone up in her tower. She was hankering for Sir Launcelot in particular. Only he never knew it because she couldn't just call out an invitation to come up and stay a spell whenever he rode by in his tin suit. They did things the hard way in those days. Sir Launcelot never knew the Lady of Astolat hankered for him whilst he, in turn, was hankering for King Arthur's wife."
Cora laughed despite herself and said, "That sounds a lot like Colorado these days. That adultery at King Arthur's court led to a really nasty brawl in the end, didn't it?"
Longarm nodded soberly and said, "It often does. The unwritten law calls for blood and slaughter all out of proportion to the fun anyone could have had. Poor old Arthur threw away his kingdom and his life, Attila Homagy is wandering the world like that Frankenstein monster seeking revenge, and a certain colonel I know has just transferred junior officers to miserable postings because of a few minutes' slap and tickle."
He sipped some coffee and wearily added, "Lord knows what he'll ever do if he finds out about his own lady's views on hospitality. But my point is that there's likely nothing wrong with you, Miss Cora. It's little Eva Nagy, not yourself, up in the hills in that covered buggy as the sun goes down, right?"
She looked away and murmured, "Praise the Lord for small favors. I'd die before I let a brute like Longarm touch me, but I don't know how I'd feel about a buggy ride with somebody nicer."
He said it was too bad he hadn't driven out from town in a hired buggy. She called him a big silly, and got up to serve the peach cobbler dessert from her oven.
He waited until they were on her front veranda, admiring the sunset from her porch swing, before he got out his note book to ask directions to the cabin of that coal miner with the wayward daughter.
Cora said, "Heavens, I don't know my way around Bohunk Hill! I only know it as a cluster of shacks atop a low hill, man-made or natural, near the mine adits to the
west. I've ridden past it, along the Purgatoire Trail. I've never been up in that cinder-paved maze of crooked lanes. I'm only repeating gossip I heard in town."
He put the notebook away, saying, "Reckon I'll just ride on over and ask directions then. If ladies in Trinidad are gossiping about the Nagy gal, folks who live closer ought to know where her folks can be found."
Cora protested, "You'd never make it before total darkness now. There are no street lamps on Bohunk Hill, and they say Longarm can be dangerous in broad daylight. If he should hear that even another lawman is looking for him on a morals charge..."
"I got to find the jasper and ask him where Magda Homagy can be found. What's going on betwixt him and that younger sass is betwixt them and her father. Attila Homagy is only after him because of his own flirty little thing. For all we know for sure, the cuss he's so sure she ran off with could be innocent as me. I know I never messed with Magda Homagy and I'm finding this whole affair mighty tedious."
Cora smiled at him uncertainly in the tricky light and asked what he was talking about. She said, "Surely nobody has ever accused you of adultery with that coal miner's wife, Deputy Crawford?"
He smiled sheepishly and said, "Yes they have. Before I go on, are you sure you've seen that cuss they call Longarm down here in these parts?"
She nodded soberly and said, "Plain as day. More than once. He even smiled at me outside the milliner's one day."
Longarm said, "It's agreed he has an eye for pretty ladies. But you Trinidad ladies have his handle wrong. I had a good reason for telling you I was Gus Crawford when we first met. I knew Attila Homagy was gunning for Deputy Custis Long because I'd just ducked out of a fight with him in the Union Depot. I've yet to lay eyes on this Longarm he's after, but I'd be the only deputy out of our Colorado office that's ever been called Longarm!"
The pretty young widow stared goggled-eyed at him in the fading light. "You claim to be Longarm, Deputy Crawford?"
He said, "Deputy Custis Long at your service, ma'am. There ain't no Deputy Crawford riding out of our Denver District Court. I told you I just made that up. I didn't want Homagy to find out which way I'd lit out. We were hoping to find his woman and calm him down whilst I took care of easier problems around Fort Sill. But as of now she's still missing, her man is still looking to track me down and gun me for running off with her, and so I'd best tidy up around here before I head back to Denver. What are you crying about, Miss Cora?"
She sobbed into the apron she was holding to her face again as he placed a gentle hand on a heaving calico-clad shoulder to repeat the question.
She blurted out, "I feel like such a fool! It was mean of you to trick me into those observations about your anatomy if you were the real Longarm all this time!"
He chuckled and observed, "I just got done teaching some Indian Police how unsupported hearsay and possibly inaccurate mental pictures can lead one astray. The crooks we were dealing with had barely sense to steal with. But we gave them an edge by leaping to conclusions. I hope you've learned your lesson about me at least. No matter how I might be hung, I've never messed with either that miner's daughter or Attila Homagy's wife."
She laughed like hell and called him a dirty dog. But as she felt him shift his weight to rise, she asked where he thought he was going at this hour.
He settled his weight back in the swing, to be polite, as he told her, "Looking for the man I owe all this trouble to. I got a pony to ride me anywheres he could take a gal in a buggy. Someone over yonder ought to be able to tell me which way that would be. There's this rise called Cherry Hill, just outside Denver, where heaps of swains park their buggies a spell by moonlight. You can tell, come morning, because of all the... sign along the wagon trace."
She said, "Don't ride up into the hills after him. Whoever he really is, he has all the other men afraid of him, and coal miners are hardly sissies."
Longarm said, "Got to find him before Attila Homagy does then. Homagy ain't afraid of him. That gives a man a natural bully might under-rate an edge. It gets even stickier for law and order in these parts if the womanizing bully wins. He'll doubtless know he'll be charged with murder, and once he runs, we may never know what really happened."
Cora said, "Well, I, for one, can't really work up much sympathy for anyone now that I know even the injured husband has been acting like a drooling idiot!"
Longarm observed the law protected drooling idiots as well as the more refined, but once again she said, "Don't go. if you have to have it out with that imposter pretending to be you, he's staying at the Dexter Hotel near the Trinidad Depot when he's not out chasing young girls!"
Longarm frowned and muttered, "You mean this home wrecker has a home address and Attila Homagy was looking for him up in Denver?"
She shrugged and said, "I don't know how long he's been there, or the name he's registered under. I only heard he took yet another and somewhat older Trinidad woman there in broad daylight, the devil!"
Longarm nodded soberly and said, "I know the Dexter Hotel near the depot, and I wasn't looking forward to pestering clannish immigrant coal miners after dark. A man with a hotel room who takes an under-aged gal for a buggy ride must have more respect for the town law than her immigrant kith and kin. There's a heap of hills for a buggy ride out yonder too. So when do you reckon my alter ego would have had enough... buggy riding?"
Cora demurely suggested, "It would depend on how good a ride he was having, wouldn't it?"
Longarm smiled thinly and said, "Only way to know would be to find out. I got to find my own place to stay whilst I'm down this way looking for myself. The Dexter ain't a bad hotel, for Trinidad."
Cora said, "Don't be silly. We've plenty of room inside, and we can get you started earlier for the mining settlements in the morning!"
He said, "Don't want to talk to wayward coal miner's daughters just yet. Want to talk to this jasper who's been fooling with all sorts of women in my name. My odds on catching up with him at his hotel in town are better. So that's where I'm headed now, if you'd be kind enough to let me have my hat back."
She was, but as she led him inside to fetch his hat she heaved a great sigh and said, "You're right about jumping to conclusions. You're not at all like the Longarm I've heard so much about."
CHAPTER 20
Longarm had been on some moonlight buggy rides in his day. So he took his time returning his hired mount and stock saddle to the nearby livery and lugging his Yellowboy and saddlebags over to the Dexter Hotel. He hired a room and tipped generously to have his light baggage carried up the one flight. Then he came back down, wearing just his.44-40 under his frock coat, and offered the room clerk a smoke as he flashed his badge and got down to brass tacks.
The clerk said he was always proud to uphold law and order, and after some explanations he understood why a lawman might feel it best to register under a false name. But then he said they didn't have any other guests signed in as Custis Long, or as any sort of lawman.
Longarm got both their smokes going as he considered this. Then he suggested, "Someone may have added two and two to get five. A jasper who sort of looked like me wouldn't have to say he was me to have at least one feeble mind spread the word around town he was me."
The clerk took a thoughtful drag on the cheroot, shook his head, and said, "I follow your drift. But the only guest we have about your age and build, with a mustache, just won't work. You'd need a feeble mind indeed to confound Mr. Zoltan Kun with an American in any line of work!" Longarm said flatly, "Zoltan Kun sounds sort of furrin." The clerk said, "So does Zoltan Kun. Has an accent you can barely savvy when he's talking slow. He's one of them mining men from the Carpathian Mountains or wherever the Emperor Franz Josef gets his damn coal."
Longarm said he wouldn't know about that, and said, "He's a coal miner staying in a hotel this far from the mines?"
The clerk shook his head and explained. "Mr. Kun don't dig in any mine for coal. I suspect he used to. But now he deals in the stuff. You'd have to ask him e
xactly how he makes out so well these days. Like I said, I can barely follow his English."
Longarm said, "I mean to do just that, as soon as he gets in. I see you have one of them tin-titty bells here to page your bellboy. What if you were to ding it three times suddenly the next time this Zoltan Kun comes in?"
The clerk allowed he could manage that. So Longarm went around the corner to a newsstand, picked up the Rocky Mountain News and a couple of magazines, and returned to the hotel to camp in a corner under a reading lamp and some potted paper palms.
A long time went by. He finished the paper and as much of the Scientific American as he could grasp. Like many self-educated men, Longarm pushed his ever-expanding store of information to the limits by reading stuff by more learned gents.
The third and last magazine was a Street & Smith Adventure pulp, with the stories set in tropical climes Longarm had never been to. He'd found their tales of the American West a mite silly in the past. But for all a man who'd never been there knew, there really might be a man-eating plant in Madagascar.
According to the woodcut illustrating the story, the ferocious vegetable looked like a giant artichoke, and had a half-dressed colored gal stuck in it up to her waist. The cannibal folks who lived there in Madagascar had to feed that man-eating plant from time to time, likely to keep it from pulling itself up by the roots and coming after 'em.
The desk bell chimed three times. So Longarm never found out how that gal being eaten alive by the artichoke made out. He tossed the magazine aside and rose to his own considerable height as a tall dark drink of water in an undertaking outfit and pearl Stetson was making for the stairwell.
Longarm called out, "Mr. Kun?" and the stranger stopped to turn and face him. Longarm didn't feel at all flattered as he got a better view of the cuss who'd been mistaken for himself.
There was no resemblance at all. Zoltan Kun was handsome enough, in a hollow-cheeked oily way. His infernal mustache was not only much smaller, but waxed, for Pete's sake, the way the young Kaiser and his fancy Prussian officers gussied UP.
