by Tabor Evans
Longarm smiled thinly, and allowed it was mighty progressive to give such undeserving Papists the Sabbath off at least.
The straw boss grinned and replied, "Hell, it's not so much that we give the greenhorns the Sabbath off. But us real Americans have to go to church, don't we?"
Before Longarm could answer, a short gnomish man, black with coal dust, came in with his hat in hand, having blown its candle out, of course. Longarm wasn't surprised to learn this was Bela Nagy. He'd figured the kid's dad had to be far smaller than Zoltan Kun.
When Longarm was introduced to him as an American lawman, the wiry little Hungarian protested, "I no press charges! I no make troubles for nobody! My Eva is bad girl, but I spend most of my life in mine and her mother is not strong enough to make her stay in house if she wants to go out!"
Longarm said nothing. Old Bela was doing just fine without any prompting.
A tear ran down through the black grime of the older man's cheek as he stammered, "What you want me to do? In this country everyone is free to tell parents to go bus themselves, no? I know Hodiak woman says I should go to the law about my Eva and her buggy rides. But what good will it do us to have child put in reform school? American law will do nothing to big man who thinks our Eva is just right size for him!"
Longarm quietly said, "That may not be true, Mr. Nagy. Fooling with little kids against their parents' wishes is against the law in this state. You could even be in trouble yourselves if you could be shown to be giving your permission to such goings on. Colorado courts can be easy on gents fixing to marry up with a young gal, with the permission of her family. But a father knowingly pimping for a daughter of any age could wind up making little paving stones out of bigger ones."
The gnomish Hungarian blanched under his coal dust and protested, "Who you calling pimp? Pimp is American for lazy no-good who lives off women, no?"
Longarm nodded and said, "You'd best work it out with a lawyer if you can't control your kid. I'm a federal lawman. I have no say on Zoltan Kun's skirt-chasing unless I can prove he's done something a tad more serious. We don't worry about jurisdiction when we stumble across something downright serious, albeit I might have to turn the case over to Las Animas County and the State of Colorado unless I can show someone hauled a body across the nearby state line."
Nagy just looked confounded. The American straw boss asked if they were talking about Magda Homagy.
Longarm nodded gravely but said, "Don't know. On the face of it I have no evidence she met with more than the good stiff dicking she likely hankered for. But I can't make all I've heard fit a sensible pattern."
He took a drag on the swell cigar and asked Nagy what he'd heard about Magda Homagy's warm nature.
As if glad to gossip about someone he wasn't related to, the coal-blackened gnome said his wife had told him she was a dedicated slut who was sure to get caught, whether her husband worked the night shift or not. Nagy verified that some of the gossips had said they'd seen her carrying on in town with the feared but handsome Zoltan Kun.
Longarm silenced the little miner with a wave of his cigar and said, "Hold it right there and let's backtrack over a mighty odd pattern. American ladies in town say they'd seen Magda and Zoltan together, sipping soda water and such around his hotel, just before she ran off with someone they also had down as me. I don't look at all like Zoltan Kun, praise the Lord, and he told me he'd broken off with her friendly before she could have confessed to her husband about anybody."
Bela Nagy said, "I didn't see it. After twelve hours in a mine a man needs his sleep. But both Hodiak woman and Ilona Kovaks say they saw Magda leaving forever around midnight, when her man was in mine."
Longarm glanced at the American straw boss as he mused, "A gent in charge of a blasting crew would be missed if he nipped out to murder a wayward wife, wouldn't he?"
The American mining man said he'd just been about to say that.
Longarm said, "I wish he didn't have an alibi. This whole puzzle would have a simple answer. I could say he was lying. It just makes no sense for a cheating wife to cover up for a lover who's called her a sex maniac and turned away from her."
The mining man suggested, "She might have been thinking of poor old Attila. Old Zoltan ain't just mean to women. He's got their men scared shitless of him. Ask Bela here."
Bela Nagy whimpered, "Hey, I no afraid to stick up for my Eva. I told you she wants to go out with him, and he says maybe, someday, he will make honest woman of our Eva. He say she's still too young for him."
Longarm grimaced and said, "At least he's being truthful about that. He says he's not the man Magda rode off with in that buggy at midnight. Even if he had been, where in thunder might she be now? I know for a fact she ain't staying with him at the Dexter Hotel. Could anyone here tell me whether his labor recruiting takes him a heap of other places?"
The straw boss nodded and said, "He takes the train east from time to time to round up stray greenhorns on the New York waterfront. But now that you mention it, he ain't done that since Magda Homagy ran off with somebody. Do you remember the exact date, Bela?"
Nagy thought, shook his head, and said, "More than two weeks but less than six. Who looks at calendar when women gossip?"
Longarm said, "Never mind. I can ask at the Santa Fe ticket window in town whether your well-known labor contractor paid one or mayhaps two train fares east in recent memory."
He took a thoughtful drag on his smoke and added, "I doubt he has. Kun struck me as a slick talker. His kind don't tell fibs that are easy as that to check. The picture looks a tad less confounding if we take his word, for now, and buy Magda Homagy leaving home with some other gent entirely."
The straw boss brightened and suggested, "That's who she might have been trying to protect, instead of Zoltan Kun!"
Longarm shrugged and said, "Sounds a little more sensible. When her man confronted her about gossip he'd heard, it wouldn't have done her much good to name another gent she'd been screwing. Her grasp on English, and Colorado, was skimpy as all get-out. But she could have been slick, and mean enough, to grab the name of a better-known American off the pages of some handy newsprint."
Longarm blew a smoke ring, peered through it at a dusty gob pile outside, and continued. "On the other hand, she might have been out to get a man she hated killed. Everyone agrees she had a spiteful nature, and Homagy did say she taunted him with the size of a younger man's dick."
The two other men in the shack exchanged glances. The straw boss agreed, "She must have hated old Attila. That's a cruel thing to say when you know it's true, and you say she just picked out a rival from a newspaper?"
Longarm nodded soberly and said, "I mean to chide her for that, if ever I catch up with the hard-hearted gal."
CHAPTER 22
Longarm didn't want to keep taking his hired mount in and out of the livery, So he tethered it outside his hotel as he went in to see if any telegrams had been delivered there to a Gus Crawford.
None had been. Things seemed to be simmering down over in the Indian Territory. But the room clerk confided, "You had you a caller whilst you was out, Deputy Long. He asked if we had us anyone named Custis Long registered here, and seeing we don't exactly, I felt it best to say no and just ask him how this pal of his could get in touch, should he ever show up."
Longarm handed the helpful clerk a cheroot as he told him he'd always admired a man who could think on his feet. He asked the clerk if he could name or describe the mysterious visitor, and muttered in mighty dirty Spanish when the clerk said it had been Attila Homagy in that same summer seersucker.
The clerk added, "Said he was staying with friends just outside of town. Said he'd drop by later, after the night train from Amarillo pulls in. Seemed anxious to catch up with you, Deputy Long."
Longarm muttered, "That makes two of us. I've had just about enough of this shit, and by now even a fool greenhorn ought to be able to see I have witnesses on my witnesses if he keeps pushing his luck with me!"
The clerk gulped and said, "I figured he didn't have your continued good health in mind. In this business you get to where you can tell when a couple is really married too. Don't ask me how."
Longarm lit his cheroot for him and observed, "I just now said I thought you were smart. I'll be waiting out front for him when the train from Amarillo rolls in around midnight."
The clerk allowed that might be easier on their potted paper palm trees. Longarm didn't want him going to the local law, so he said, "I doubt it'll come to more than just talk. The Bohunk had me down as somebody else for a spell. I'm sure he's seen the error of his ways after trailing me all around Robin Hood's Barn and doubtless talking to other folks about me."
He glanced at the wall clock and added, "I was wondering how come I felt so empty. It's after noon and I only had ham and eggs with one coffee for breakfast."
He headed for the front entrance, aiming to go round to the cheap restaurant he'd had his breakfast in. But Cora Brewster came through the door breathless, dressed in a riding habit with her dark hair pinned up under a straw boater. The moment the young widow laid eyes on him, she gasped, "Custis! That Attila Homagy is back in town hunting high and low for you! They just told me at the notions shop! He knows you're somewhere in town!"
Longarm smiled down at her and said, "No, he don't. He was just asking. He thinks I might be coming in at midnight aboard a train from Texas. He must have somehow learned I'd headed there from Fort Sill. I sure wish folks wouldn't gossip when you ask 'em not to."
She said, "Nobody can gossip about you out at my place. I just let my help off for the afternoon and all day tomorrow."
As they walked outside together, Longarm mused, "That's right. This is Saturday afternoon. So my boss wouldn't be in the office to read a progress report if I wired him one, the nosey old cuss."
He saw her paint pony and sidesaddle tethered next to his livery mount out front as she repeated her offer to hide him out.
He asked who was going to milk her dairy herd that afternoon and all day Sunday if she treated her hired help that nice. When she said she was only milking forty head and egging a flock of two hundred, he allowed he could help her that afternoon at any rate.
So they rode out of town together, with Cora trying to talk him out of coming back to have it out with Attila Homagy at midnight.
He repeated what he'd told the clerk, and added, "The poor simp is likely way more anxious to catch up with his wayward wife, for reasons it wouldn't be delicate to go into. Suffice it to say, I have it on good authority that she's the bee's knees in bed and he'd sent all the way to the old country for her before he could have known that for certain."
She demurely asked if such a loss might not drive a lonely older man to distraction, quietly adding she'd heard being alone, after at least a happy honeymoon, could leave anyone feeling upset.
Longarm replied, "I just said he might have good cause to miss the wayward sass. My point is that he's been chasing me for many a day, and he must have noticed by now that I just don't have her!"
As they rode on he brought her more completely up to date from the beginning in Denver, not wanting to confuse her with details about other women.
She still wanted to know if he'd messed with that young Indian gal, and he was glad he didn't have to fib. It was funny how easy it was to leap to conclusions when you weren't there watching. When you said newspaper reporter, schoolmarm, or army wife, it didn't sound half as suggestive as a Kiowa halfbreed in her teens packing her own gun.
By this time they'd turned into her farm, and they were too busy to worry about Attila Homagy for a spell as they stabled their mounts, went into the main house, and let her rustle him up the noon dinner he was overdue.
While he put away the steak and fried spuds, she said something about slipping into something more comfortable. But when next she appeared she was wearing a sun bonnet and one of those blue denim smocks artists and farm folks wore when they had messy chores to tend to. He'd forgotten those cows that had to be milked no later than, say, three or four.
She allowed they still had plenty of time as she sat down to have coffee and marble cake with him. He didn't have to say anything about his own tweed suit. She told him one of her hand's fresh-laundered bib overalls would likely fit him and that, seeing they were all alone that afternoon, it wouldn't hurt if he milked cows with no shirt on.
He said that made two folks he'd met that day who could think on their feet. She naturally wanted to know what he meant, and it seemed to upset her when he mentioned old Attila some more.
He assured her he didn't mean to reason with the cuss or shoot him before midnight, and asked to see those overalls.
She led him to her laundry shed out back, and got out the faded but soft clean overalls her tallest hired hand worked in. She left while he stripped naked and slipped the bib overalls on, a denim strap over each bare shoulder. He considered putting his gun rig back on. He decided it looked silly. He unhooked his double derringer from one end of his watch chain and stuck it in the right hip pocket of the overalls. Then, in no more than that and his stovepipe boots, he rejoined Cora in her kitchen.
For some reason her breath caught in her throat at the sight of his muscular bare shoulders. She gulped and said, "My, you do seem as manly as described, don't you? The cows haven't started to drift in for their milking yet. But we can gather some eggs if you like."
Nobody liked gathering eggs after the first couple of times. But it had to be done and it did beat forking manure. So he toted some of the baskets for her as they crossed the yard to enter her henhouse.
It was easy to forget the full meaning of the old army term "chicken-shit," or why so many farm youths ran off to become cowboys, when you hadn't tried breathing in a henhouse for a spell. Longarm was just as glad his strange hand made her leghorns spook when she suggested he just hold the baskets and let her feel for the fool eggs. For two hundred leghorns laid one hell of a lot of eggs, and shit a lot besides. They both washed up to their elbows with naptha soap at her yard pump after they'd stored the eggs in the damp cellar under their candling shack. Cora said the good ones would be carted into town by her hired help, come Monday.
Unlike beef cattle, dairy cows were only vicious to human beings when they needed to be freshened by a bull. Cows with full udders and no calves to suckle soon learned to seek out human hands at least twice a day for relief. So as early as three, Cora's cows began to come home to the barn and march into their stalls as if driven by invisible prods. The closest thing to that in the beef industry was the Judas cow that lead young and innocent steers up the slaughterhouse ramp. Cows were a lot like humans when it came to easy assumptions.
Longarm hadn't slaughtered or milked a cow recently, and so it brought back memories, pleasant and not so pleasant, as he helped the young widow woman out by milking close to a score of her cows. Cora milked a few more than he did, the experienced little thing. But she still said he milked pretty good for a lawman.
He only told her some of his reasons for coming West after the war as they poured the buckets into the galvanized coolers and got it on ice for the Sabbath. She said they sold mostly raw milk in town of a Monday, with folks wanting more butter later in the week. She asked him if it still bothered him to think about those neighbor boys killed in the war, and what it felt like to kill boys on the other side.
He wrestled the last of the milk into place in the chill darkness as he shrugged his bare shoulders and said, "It don't feel as bad, or as good, as some would have it. I reckon it would bother me to have a cold-blooded murder on my conscience. But so far, I've never had to gun anyone I could have avoided gunning. The sorry souls who get a thrill out of killing are tougher to fathom. I just don't see what the thrill might be."
She locked the milk away as she quietly said, "We had my husband's body on display in an open casket for two days and this is the first time I've ever told anyone. I didn't feel anything for that stranger in that box. I mean it looked like my darling, a
nd I missed my darling, but I knew my darling was gone and I just wanted to get rid of that... thing before it started to go bad. I think a lot of the others were putting on a big act there too. I don't think any normal person is thrilled or excited by death."
They headed back to the house as Longarm quietly observed he'd been on some battlefields he'd found more depressing than thrilling. He said, "The only thing you feel that some might find comforting is how tall you seem with all those others spread out flat. Mayhaps the mad-dog killers amongst us kill to feel taller. A cuss growing up with a low opinion of himself might feel he could make a higher place for himself by shooting everyone else down. They are wrong, of course, but sometimes it takes a man with a badge and his own gun to convince 'em."
She was suddenly all over him, sobbing, "No, Custis, don't go in to meet that crazy man at midnight! I couldn't stand to see you in a casket like a thing, with everyone saying you just looked as if you were asleep."
He had to hang on to her lest they wind up falling down her back steps together. He gently moved her so her denim-clad rump was braced on the edge of the kitchen table as he said, "I wasn't aiming to wind up dead at midnight, Miss Cora. There was this younger pest over by Fort Sill, saying he was fixing to shoot it out with me on sight. Only, somehow he never got around to it when I offered. I just told you Attila Homagy has to know it wasn't me or even Zoltan Kun his wife ran off with, and..."
She wasn't listening. She was clinging to him like a limpet from the waist up while she moved everything below her waist with a skill few happily married women or determined whores could have matched. She'd intimated she hadn't had any for a spell, and as she felt him rising to the occasion through the faded denim between their fevered groins, she husked, "Don't tease me like this, Custis. Do it! Do it here and now!"
So he rolled her back across the table, and since he saw when she raised both knees she wore nothing under that loose smock but her natural fuzz, he just shucked out of the shoulder straps to let his bib overalls fall around his booted ankles as he spread her thighs wide with his hands and stepped right up to join her. She gasped, "Oh, Kee-rist!" as he literally walked his aroused old organ-grinder through the moist part in her black pubic hair.
