by Tabor Evans
A Slice of Bacon?
Longarm grabbed his .45 and tumbled off the cot to the floor, banging his knee when he did so. He scrambled up and charged forward. Threw the flimsy canvas partition aside and found himself facing a swarthy man holding a knife.
The fellow was skinny and unshaven. His knife was long and slightly curved. The polished blade gleamed in the thin light coming over the partitions from a string of lanterns in the corridor beyond.
Bethlehem Bacon lay cowering on her cot, the intruder standing over her with his blade poised above her torso.
“Do it, mister, an’ you die,” Longarm said, straightening to his full height and cocking the Colt in his hand . . .
DON’T MISS THESE
ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES
FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts
Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him . . . the Gunsmith.
LONGARM by Tabor Evans
The popular long-running series about Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.
SLOCUM by Jake Logan
Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.
BUSHWHACKERS by B. J. Lanagan
An action-packed series by the creators of Longarm! The rousing adventures of the most brutal gang of cutthroats ever assembled—Quantrill’s Raiders.
DIAMONDBACK by Guy Brewer
Dex Yancey is Diamondback, a Southern gentleman turned con man when his brother cheats him out of the family fortune. Ladies love him. Gamblers hate him. But nobody pulls one over on Dex . . .
WILDGUN by Jack Hanson
The blazing adventures of mountain man Will Barlow—from the creators of Longarm!
TEXAS TRACKER by Tom Calhoun
J.T. Law: the most relentless—and dangerous—manhunter in all Texas. Where sheriffs and posses fail, he’s the best man to bring in the most vicious outlaws—for a price.
BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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LONGARM AND THE MISSING HUSBAND
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2015 by Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-17798-7
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Jove mass-market edition / February 2015
Cover illustration by Milo Sinovcic.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
All-Action Western Series
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 1
Longarm awoke slowly, luxuriating under the covers with his eyes closed. Until he opened his eyes and saw that there was daylight outside the window. Unless he moved his butt, he would be late for work. Again.
He pushed the covers back and, yawning, sat up on the side of the bed for a moment. He rubbed his eyes—he’d had a very late night—and yawned again.
A hand passed over his cheeks confirmed what he already knew. He needed a shave. That would just have to wait, however. At this hour every barbershop in Denver would be as stuffed as a Christmas goose. Besides, the felons he was likely to apprehend would not much care whether the arresting deputy U.S. marshal needed a shave or not.
There seemed nothing for it except to get up and go to the office. He yawned again and shuddered as a chill ran down his spine. What he really needed was a cup of coffee. Or, he thought with a smile, a shot or two of Maryland distilled rye whiskey. Either of those could set a man up for the day.
In the meantime . . . He stood and stretched, smoothed his mustache, and ran a hand over unruly hair, then reached for his balbriggans and stepped into them. Picked up his shirt and trousers from the chair where he had draped them sometime before dawn and put those on. Pulled on his socks and slipped his feet into his stovepipe cavalry boots but refrained from stamping his feet into them. Stuffed his string tie into a pocket. Finally reached for his brown tweed coat and snuff brown flat-crowned Stetson.
“Where you goin’, sweetheart?” a small voice came from beneath the bedcovers.
“Work, darlin’. I got to go,” Longarm replied.
“But, Custis, aren’t you gonna fuck me again? Please? I do really like a morning fuck.”
“Can’t do it, Angela, much as I’d like to. I got t’ go to work.” He grinned. “Besides, you like t’ wore me out last night. Good as you are, darlin’, it might could be
days before my dick is rested enough t’ get a hard-on again.”
“Did you really like it, Custis? Was I good?” A swatch of jet-black hair and one very bright blue eyeball peeped out from beneath the covers. “Honest now.”
“You were wonderful,” he assured her. He buckled his gun belt around his waist, shifting it back and forth slightly until the position felt exactly right, then he leaned down, pulled the covers back a few inches, and kissed Angela. And kissed her again.
He was tempted to give in and stay for another pleasant hour or so. But he really did have to leave. Dammit.
Longarm reached beneath the covers and gave Angela’s left nipple a pinch. The girl squealed. And laughed. “You come back when you can give me a proper fucking, Custis,” she said.
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” he assured her and turned away.
By the time he reached the door, that and all the other promises he might have made to her were forgotten. There were other things on Deputy Marshal Custis Long’s mind now.
Chapter 2
Longarm skipped lightly up the stone steps leading into the Federal Building on Denver’s Colfax Avenue. He was a tall man, well over six feet in height, and was a study in brown: seal brown hair and handlebar mustache, brown checked shirt, brown corduroy trousers, light brown vest, and brown tweed coat.
The brown was relieved only by the gleaming back of his boots and his gun belt. And by the black gutta-percha grips of his double-action .45 Colt revolver visible at his belly in the cross-draw holster he wore there.
He paused to hold the door for a young woman who was emerging from the building. The lady was in tears, her shoulders jerking with her repeated sobs.
“Miss?”
She stopped and looked up at him. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to get in your way.”
“You ain’t in my way, miss, but I can’t help noticin’ that something seems t’ be troubling you. Maybe I can help?” Longarm said.
She shook her head. “No, I . . . I’m sure no one can help me.”
Longarm was on time for a change. But this young woman . . .
She was, he guessed, in her middle twenties or thereabouts. A small woman with brown hair and golden eyes, puffy now from crying but he suspected they were very pretty when she was calm. She wore a fitted shirtwaist that showed a trim figure. About five feet tall, he guessed. And her waist was impossibly tiny.
She was pretty. If she washed the tear tracks from her face and put on a dab of rouge, she would be a beauty.
She wore a small hat pinned to the back of her head. She either had her hair pulled back in a severe bun or had it cut exceptionally short.
All in all, she was a little bit of a thing. Longarm towered over her.
“I sure can’t help if you won’t let me try,” Longarm said gently. With a twinge of apprehension that this time he was going to be very late to the office, he said, “Whyn’t you an’ me go have a cup o’ coffee, an’ you can tell me what’s troubling you,” he offered. With a smile he added, “Most any burden gets lighter if there’s two folks t’ carry it.”
“You’re very kind,” she said. “but really, no one can help.”
“Maybe you haven’t asked the right folks t’ help carry whatever is burdening you, miss.”
“It is missus, sir, not miss. And that is the problem. My husband is missing and no one seems able to help me find him.”
Husband. Such a disappointing word, he thought. But still . . .
“Come on,” he said, offering his arm and guiding her back down the steps he had just come up. “I know where we can get that coffee.”
Chapter 3
The café was two blocks down and a block over. It was frequented by politicians and lawyers and other such low types. But it was the sort of place where you could buy a cup of coffee and sit at one of the tables for hours without ever being bothered or made to feel that you were not welcome.
Longarm frequently had breakfast there when he was in town and had the time, but he had never brought a woman there before. The owner, a German named Klaus, gave Longarm a questioning look when he came in with a lady on his arm.
They sat at a table in the far back corner of the place. Longarm held a chair for the woman and suggested, “There’s a loo in the back. I’d imagine they would have a basin an’ pitcher of water if you want t’ wash some o’ them tears away. Meantime I’ll get us the coffee. Or would you rather have tea?”
“Coffee will be fine,” she said, “and you’re right, I would like to dash a little water on my face. Excuse me. I won’t be long.”
Longarm got up and pulled the chair out for her to rise again. When she was gone, he went to the counter. “Two coffees, please, Klaus, an’ some o’ them sweet crullers, too, I think.”
When the lady returned, Longarm again seated her, then said, “I think maybe we should work on some introductions first thing. My name is Long. Custis Long. But my friends an’ some o’ my enemies, too, call me Longarm. I’m a deputy United States marshal.”
The lady’s eyes went wide and she sat up straighter. “A deputy. Then perhaps a very kind providence has brought me to you, Marshal Long. I am Bethlehem Bacon.”
It was a good name, he thought, for she certainly looked edible to him now that the tear tracks had been wiped away.
She seemed to be waiting for something although he was not sure what. He wasted a few moments by sipping from his coffee and reaching for a cruller. It was sticky with sugar and still warm from the oven. Or oil or however it was that they made the things. That was something that was up to Klaus’s wife, Berta, who presided over the kitchen in back.
“What?” Bethlehem said after a few moments. “No jokes about my name?”
“No, ma’am,” Longarm said, careful of his expression. He, of course, had thought about it but was not rude enough to comment at the lady’s expense. He took a bite of the cruller. It melted in his mouth.
“Please call me Beth,” she said.
He smiled and said, “Try one o’ these crullers. They’re splendid.”
She ignored the pastries but did take a drink of coffee after loading it with cream and sugar. Longarm waited for her to feel like talking.
“My husband,” she said. “I think he may have been killed by wild Indians. I went to the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office. That is where I was coming from when you saw me. They said . . .” She looked like she was going to cry again. “They said there is nothing they can do.”
“You didn’t talk t’ the marshal?” he asked.
“No. Why would I? It was on the Indian reservation where Hank disappeared. My husband was . . . he was surveying for a railroad extension through the Indian lands. Then he just . . . disappeared. One man I talked to suggested that he might have left me. Oh, he didn’t come right out and say that. But he intimated it strongly enough that I certainly understood what he meant.”
Beth Bacon toyed with her spoon. Turned her cup around and around. Longarm finished his cruller and reached for another. He had not taken time for breakfast this morning and the pastries were going down pretty nicely, never mind the lady’s troubles.
“You’re gonna have t’ tell me more,” Longarm said, drinking a little coffee to wash the crullers down. “Then maybe you an’ me can go back over to the Fed’ral Building an’ talk to my boss, see if he’ll let me go have a look-see. But I got t’ know everything you do about this. Then . . . no promises, but then we’ll just see what we can see.”
He gave Beth a reassuring smile and helped himself to the last cruller as she did not seem to be interested in it.
Chapter 4
“The man is a surveyor, boss,” Longarm said, standing in front of moonfaced and balding U.S. Marshal William Vail. Vail looked like a typical bureaucrat in his boiled shirt and sleeve garters, but in fact, he was as salty a
s any of his deputies. In his youth, which was not that long ago, he had been a Texas Ranger and a rough old boy. Now he sent other men out to do the things he himself had done in the past.
“He’s tryin’ to work out the route for a railroad extension. Others will come along after him t’ do the final surveys an’ lay out the tracks. But now Hank Bacon is missin’. No one seems t’ know where he is nor what happened to him. An’ the way I figure, it bein’ on reservation land makes it our affair.
“Miz Bacon has already gone to the BIA an’ they don’t want nothing t’ do with her nor with him. ’Bout all they want is for her t’ go away an’ pretend nothing’s wrong.”
Vail leaned back in his chair and peered across his desk at the pretty lady. Who might or might not be a widow at this point. He pondered the question for a long moment, then he leaned forward with a loud creak of the springs under his chair and said, “I agree. It is within our jurisdiction.”
“Does that mean I c’n go, Billy?” Longarm asked.
Vail nodded and with a grunt said, “You can go.”
Beth Bacon squealed with happiness. She dashed around Vail’s desk and planted a wet kiss on his red cheek.
Damn, Longarm thought, wishing he was the one to get that hug and kiss of happiness.
Still, it was probably for the best that she chose Billy instead. Longarm just would have embarrassed himself with a hard-on, he acknowledged. There was just something about Mrs. Bacon that made him want to get her drawers off.
But then there was something about most women that made him respond that way. Lucky for him, women often found him attractive, too, something he could not really understand as he was more craggy and rugged than he was handsome.
He never could have been a model for one of those catalog drawings that advertised shirts or cigarettes or whatnot. Hammers, maybe, or stock saddles. But definitely nothing that required a pretty boy. Custis Long was not that and never had been, not on his best day.
He reached forward and touched Beth on the elbow to bring her attention back to him. He shot his chin in the direction of the door, and she took the hint.
