Longarm and the Unwritten Law

by Tabor Evans

  Longarm said, "I'd be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, sometimes known as Longarm in the papers. I don't suppose you've ever heard of me?"

  The clerk had been right about Kun's accent, but Longarm was able to follow as the Hungarian nodded gravely and replied, "Why don't we go up to my room? We seem to have much to talk about, and I have a bottle of kognak you might find amusing."

  Longarm allowed he was game. On the way up the stairs the tall Hungarian said, "I don't know who started the rumor I was really an American lawman pretending to be a Magyar labor contractor. I never told anyone I was you. Sometimes I have to agree with the Austrians that my people are a little strange."

  As he followed the polite-enough cuss along the hall Longarm said, "Hold on, old son. Are you mixed up in that Knights of Labor outfit, the same as old Attila Homagy?"

  Kun shook his head and said, "I'm afraid the KOL would have me on their black list. I recruit greenhorns to work in the mines, as non-union labor. I make no apologies for this. If the miners feel they have the right to organize and demand more pay, the mine owners have the right to recruit greenhorns and pay them less."

  He unlocked a door and struck a match. Longarm waited until he'd lit the wall sconce inside before he entered. The room was poshly furnished for these parts. The bed hadn't been slept in recently. Zoltan Kun said easily, "You find me coming in so late because most of this evening was spent with a friend. A gentleman does not say more than that, and I assure you she has no connection to the tiresome Attila Homagy and his insane wife."

  Kun waved Longarm to a seat on the bed. Longarm grabbed a bentwood chair instead, and turned it around to sit it astride as he asked, "You admit you do know Attila and Magda Homagy?"

  Kun hung his hat on a wall peg, not shy about his baldness, and turned to a brandy decanter and some cut-crystal glasses on his chest-high cabinet as he easily replied, "I know her better, if only in the Biblical sense. I know it's wrong to boast of one's conquests, but who conquered whom is debatable, and you are a federal lawman and this is an official investigation, is it not?"

  Longarm tipped his Stetson back and accepted the fancy glass of Austrian Kognak as he said, "I reckon. I was hoping you could tell me what I'm investigating. They say you like the gals, and it seems you don't worry yourself too much about what their menfolk might have to say about your, ah, hobby."

  The almost handsome Hungarian sat on the bed with his own drink as he nodded and replied, "You would have to be Magyar, I mean Hungarian, to understand. Most of these peasant coal miners were born into a much lower class than mine. Also, as you see, I am not a small man or a poor man."

  Longarm sipped some kognak--it was good stuff--and said, "In other words you have the Indian fellow sign on your immigrants. I noticed a similar situation over in New Orleans, when I was looking into that Black Hand shit amongst the newly arrived Sicilian folks. There was a white-suited wonder they called their Artichoke King because he got a rake-off on all the fancy vegetables peddled in the produce market by furriners. Plain old Americans, black or white, might not have taken him so serious, without a fight."

  Zoltan Kun nodded easily and said, "That's why I never try to push my luck with your kind, or your women. I don't enjoy a fight when the odds might not be in my favor."

  Longarm growled, "I said I followed your drift. Can we get back to Attila Homagy and his safer wife to fool with now?"

  The Hungarian looked pained and said, "Magda Homagy was one of those exceptions that proves a rule. Attila was even crazier to pay her way from the old country with no more than a tintype to tell him what he was getting. She got a man old enough to be her father and, according to her, not much of a man to begin with."

  He got up to pour another round of strong kognak as he continued in a thoughtful tone. "That may not be fair to the poor fool. I like women as much as you say, and the one I just took home had no complaints about our buggy ride. But a night in bed with Magda Homagy leaves any man squeezed dry, like a lemon. I've never met anyone as mad for a man's juices before or since. I had to break off with her before she ruined my health."

  Longarm grimaced, allowed he wasn't there to discuss anyone's health, and demanded, "Are you sure you didn't tell her you were a famous American lawman who could have her and her man deported if she didn't give you a French lesson?"

  Kun laughed incredulously and said, "She knew who I was. I never said I was anyone else, and nobody would have to threaten that wild little blonde with anything to get her to suck him off! Magda volunteers to take it all three ways, and yes, I had her all three ways, more than once, while her husband was away on union business. But I never told anyone I was you, and I can't tell you how anyone got us confused. I'm well known in the Magyar community over by the coal mines."

  Longarm refused a third drink with a silent shake of his head and said, "You ain't as well known here in town. American gossip only has you down as a skirt-chasing simp, no offense. So, assuming old Attila told someone he was going to clean my plow for screwing his young wife, and others had seen you with the flashy young sass..."

  "Why would even a fool like Homagy say I was you?" the Hungarian demanded.

  Longarm said, "He must have been confused. He was out of town and never saw his wife with either one of us. His story is that she told him I'd screwed her against her will whilst he'd been out organizing for the eight-hour day. My first notion was that she'd confessed to cover up for you, after he'd heard she fooled around on the side. But you say you busted up with her?"

  The Hungarian Romeo shrugged and said, "Not in too bitter a way. She said she understood when I confessed I simply couldn't get it up again without some celibate rest. She might have been trying to protect her husband, you know."

  "By send ing him out to fight with me?" Longarm asked without any false modesty.

  Kun shrugged and declared, "I have my own reputation, and I was much closer. Magda might not have expected her fatherly husband to quit his job at the Black Diamond and go all the way up to Denver after a man he'd never met. You would have to be Magyar, but it is not the same if a total stranger seduces your wife or daughter."

  Longarm smiled thinly and said, "Hill folk where I grew up see it about the same. But Homagy did traipse up to Denver, and right now he's stalking me through the Indian Territory, I hope. I don't want to fight over a gal I've never met. So I'd like to meet her and ask what got into her. I don't have to get her to name you, as long as I can get her to admit she never laid me, see?"

  Zoltan Kun nodded gravely, but said, "I can't lead you to her. She's not out there now. I rode out to ask my own questions when I heard crazy gossip about you and me. Her neighbors told me she'd left like a thief in the night with some other man. I say other man because some of the fools thought she'd left in a buggy like mine with me!"

  Longarm slitted his eyes to picture a curtained buggy winding down a cinder lane on a dark night, and said, "All right. Let's assume she ran off with yet another lemon she aimed to squeeze. Knowing she wasn't with you, Homagy would have no call to doubt her confession naming me. I hate to have to tell you this, old son, but it looks as if she wasn't out to protect either of us."

  "The scoundrel was a total stranger to everyone but Magda!" the Hungarian gasped in an injured tone.

  Longarm said, "I wasn't finished. The cuss she rode off with in that covered buggy must have been known on Bohunk Hill. She'd have had no call to say he was me if he was a total stranger, right?"

  Kun stared at Longarm with more respect and said, "You're good at what you do. I'm glad I don't have anything to hide from the law!" Longarm couldn't resist bringing up an under-aged miner's daughter. The Hungarian shrugged and said, "I understand such a charge would have to be made by the girl's legal guardian, no?"

  Longarm grimaced and declared, "That's the way they wrote the state laws. Fortunately for you, I have no jurisdiction unless you screw her on an Indian or military reservation. How does her father feel about them buggy rides, since you brought up
your own sterling character?"

  Kun shrugged and quietly said he'd had no complaints from any of the greenhorns around Trinidad.

  Longarm said, "That Artichoke King in New Orleans had everybody scared skinny too, until some of 'em had had enough and started to whisper to the law. If I was you I'd keep it in mind that little Eva Nagy could cost you some time in the Las Animas County Jail if her dad could get up the balls to press charges."

  Zoltan Kun shrugged smugly and said, "He won't. In the old country it was understood that my kind did his kind a great honor by breaking in their maidens for them."

  Longarm swore under his breath, and rose to leave before he gave in to temptation. He'd never laid eyes on any of the Bohunk gals this greasy lothario had trifled with. So he knew it might not be fair to pistol-whip the oily asshole without anyone asking. He handed back the sissy cut-crystal glass, saying they had nothing more to cover, and headed for his own lonely room feeling frustrated more ways than one.

  CHAPTER 21

  The next morning Longarm hired a different pony and the same saddle to ride out to the scene of his own supposed crimes.

  You got to the coal mining country west of Trinidad by following the one narrower trail along the Purgatoire River, named after the Purgatory English speakers didn't want to go to, by the same Spanish-speaking folks from New Mexico who'd spelled Trinity as Trinidad. The original wagon trace had been widened and cinder-paved, while a spur line of the Santa Fe ran along the north bank as far as the coal tipples forty miles up the valley. The railroads hauled way more coal than they used. Colorado's coking coal was just right for steel-making and commanded top prices, which was just as well when anyone considered how tough it was to get it out from under the Rocky Mountains. The Colorado coal seams were skimpy and bent out of shape, next to the coal beds east of the Mississippi. So the coal-mining communities of the West were smaller and more scattered than back East in Penn State or West-by-God-Virginia. Mining for anything in the crumpled up bedrock of the Rockies left countless try-holes and played-out mines all along the backbone of the continent, with coal, stone quarries, and such in the foothills and metals from gold to lead at higher elevations, where the bedrock was really from deeper down. The Indians said Real Bear had made the Shining Mountains by ripping the earth's belly all out of shape with his mighty claws. Something had surely turned a heap of bedrock inside out up this way.

  Longarm found his way to the immigrant settlement known as Bohunk Hill to real Americans of, say, High Dutch or Irish extraction. When he tried to ask some kids poking at a dead cat where the Homagy house might be, they stuck their tongues out at him and ran away.

  He had somewhat better luck with an older woman, dressed sort of like a Gypsy fortune-teller but shelling peas instead of reading tea leaves on her front steps.

  She allowed she spoke English, sort of, and knew where the Homagy house had been. Then she said, "Other peoples live there now. Attila Homagy quit at Black Diamond to go look for wife, Magda."

  The crone made an even uglier face and added, "Magda no good. Her man fool for worrying about she. People moving into house after they gone named Gero. They just get here. No speak English. Never knew Attila Homagy or crazy Magda."

  Longarm dismounted anyway, saying, "I'd best lead this pony up the narrow lanes on foot. I'll take your word there's no sense looking for folks in a house they've both moved away from. I understand Miss Magda ran off with some American cuss in a covered buggy?"

  The neighborhood gossip cracked open another pea pod as she shook her head and said, "Nobody knows who she ran away with. Some said it was important Magyar she'd been flirting with. But he is still around, flirting with little girl he should leave alone. Is not right to bus children no matter what their fathers say!"

  Longarm said, "I was just about to ask the way to the Nagy place, ma'am. If I can't talk to Zoltan Kun's older sweetheart, I might be able to get something out of his new gal."

  The old woman looked stricken, muttered to herself in Magyar, and said, "You never heard any of those names from me. You can't talk to either of the Nagy women in English. Neither one of them speaks one word of it. Bela Nagy would be over at the Black Diamond at this time of day. He is in charge of the coal-tram crew. You will have to wait until he gets off, after sunset, if you want to talk to him in English."

  Longarm thanked her for the information, led his livery mount in a tight circle, and remounted to ride out of the hillside cluster.

  He circled it, asking more directions from more sensible kids, and it only took him a few minutes to make it to the tipples, shacks, and adit of the Black Diamond Mine.

  He dismounted out front of their office shack. A burly gent in a clean blue work shirt came out as he was tethering the pony to an iron-pipe hitching rail. Longarm flashed his badge and identification as he said he was there for just a word with Bela Nagy if it was jake with them.

  The shift foreman replied in an American accent, "I'll send for him. You just come on inside and have a seat, Deputy Long."

  Longarm allowed he'd been down in coal mines before. But the shift foreman shook his gray head and said, "We've even had our own help get lost in there. We're producing bituminous that bursts into flame if you just ask polite. But some of the damned seams are less than a yard thick and the whole formation's crumpled like tinfoil. Take one wrong turn and you can wind up lost forever."

  He cupped a hand to his mouth and called out to a kid near the tracks leading into the gaping adit. When the kid headed their way, the foreman told him to go down Drift Nine and fetch old Bela Nagy.

  As the kid strode away along the tracks, Longarm followed the easygoing foreman inside. They both sat down and before Longarm could even start to offer, the mining man broke open a box of Tampa Coronas. So Longarm had to settle for lighting them both up.

  As he did so he asked about Attila Homagy in a desperately non-caring way. The foreman didn't sound any more excited as he calmly replied, "Good blaster. Couldn't manage his young wife. We were sorry to see him go. Told him there'd always be a job for him here if he ever got tired of tilting at windmills."

  The American mining man took a drag on his cigar and added, "Old Attila moved coal like a sculptor carving marble. You have to know how to set your charges if you aim to shatter the coal face without bringing down the shale ceiling. Homagy has that rare touch. I swear he could carve his initials with dynamite and dust off the furniture in your parlor without busting a window!"

  Longarm quietly asked if their blasting wonder had a rep as a gunfighter.

  The foreman looked blank and decided, "Never heard tell of old Attila fighting anyone with any weapon. We don't put up with horseplay around this operation. Digging coal is dangerous enough without the crews acting like assholes. Most trouble I ever heard of poor old Attila having was with his wife. I never met her myself. She was here from the old country just long enough to run off with some other man. But from what some of the younger bucks say, she was wilder than Leadville on payday. You had to ask for it in Bohunk, I heard, but after that you just gave your poor soul to Jesus because your body belonged to her!"

  Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring, and said the Hungarian he'd been drinking with had told him much the same story. He grinned wickedly and added, "Ain't it a pain how you always seem to get there just after all the fun has ended? I mean, I got to Dodge just as the cattle shipping was starting and it looked wild enough to me, until the old-timers told me I should have been there during the buffalohide boom."

  The mining man chuckled and said, "Reminds me of my first gold rush. The last of the gold and the best lay for a hundred miles had just vanished forever. Took me only four more gold rushes to decide my true calling was coal. You ain't after Bela Nagy's bitty daughter, Eva, are you?"

  Longarm laughed incredulously and replied, "Hell, no, I'm a lawman, not a baby-raper. But I see you've heard about that wild gal as well?"

  The mining man looked relieved and said, "You can't boss a whole herd
of gossiping greenhorns without hearing gossip. I have met Eva Nagy, at a company picnic this spring. You're so right in calling her a baby. If she was any kin to me I'd invite that Kun to a showdown. But I know better than to butt into Bohunk beeswax, and they do say that Hunky never busted any cherry there."

  Longarm casually observed, "I understand Zoltan Kun recruits and rides herd on disorganized labor for your outfit?"

  The company man nodded with no trace of shame and said, "All the coal companies in this valley. We don't put up with any of that Molly Maguire or Knights of Labor shit."

  Longarm blew more smoke and murmured, "Do tell? I heard old Attila Homagy was off at some union convention when his wife betrayed him with Lord knows whom. I have to confess I ain't half as sure as her husband seems to be right now."

  The foreman said, "We don't mind if someone wants to listen to union bullshit on their own time, off company property. Our management takes a progressive attitude towards labor organizers. They can yell and wave their red banners all they want, outside Las Animas County. If they come any closer, well, the county sheriff and his deputies know who pays their wages."

  Longarm agreed that sounded about as progressive as most county establishments dealt with such matters, and asked a few more questions about the way they ran this particular mine, seeing so many men he knew of were connected to it.

  The American straw boss didn't act as if he had anything to hide. He seemed proud of the way they were winning expensive coking coal with cheap labor.

  Longarm had figured they worked the mine around the clock with two twelve-hour shifts. But lots of mines followed the common practice of working their help only half of Saturday and letting them take the Sabbath off. The foreman said greenhorns just got in trouble if you didn't keep them busy. He waved his cigar at the view outside and said, "Anyone out yonder who can't put in a full day today is free to leave. He just won't have a job here come Monday morning."