Longarm smiled. “I hope not, Herman. I certainly hope not. But it won’t be the first time. I’m going to close this door behind me, but you stand ready to come through when you hear it getting rowdy. And don’t be bashful about raising your voice. I hate to scrap around on the floor like some schoolkid, but I don’t know any other way.”
“Why don’t you jus’ take this here musket and run em off?”
Longarm looked at him. “If they are who I think they are, that will just put them on their guard. No. I want this to seem like it has nothing to do with what I think they are up to.” He reached up to make sure the pocket where he carried his badge was buttoned. He didn’t want that falling out in the middle of the fight.
Finally he went over and took hold of the knob and turned it. He dreaded how his face and fists were going to feel in a very short time. Even when you won you always got hurt some in a fistfight.
He stepped into the common room. The three men were standing at the plank bar drinking whiskey. They looked up as he slammed the door behind him. The one nearest to him was the smaller man. He had thin features and was wearing a flat-brimmed, flat-crowned tan hat. He looked clean-shaven, but then he didn’t look old enough where shaving had become a problem. It was the next man that took Longarm’s eye. He was at least thirty, with heavy shoulders and big arms. He had a round, hard-looking face with deep-set, small eyes set back under his eyebrows. The third man Longarm couldn’t see very well because he was blocked by the bigger man in the middle. But Longarm did, quickly, see that all three were wearing cutaway holsters with tiedowns over the butts of their revolvers.
It was only a few paces to the bar. He took them in quick strides. The men were watching him, glasses in their hands. He said in a hard voice, “You boys have made a mistake. Ain’t no whiskey for sale here. That whiskey is my private stock.”
It was the big man who turned slightly to face him. He said in a casual voice, “Likely you are wrong there, feller. We bought these here drinks from the stationkeeper. Not five minutes ago. So if it be yore private goods, he don’t know it.”
Longarm had edged up until he was only about two feet from the smaller man. But it was not him that he intended to take out of the fight first. The first punch was going to be the important one, and he intended that for the big man with the big shoulders.
Longarm took a small step to his left to bring the man into range. He said, talking over the head of the smaller man, “That old man don’t run this place, I do. An’ I’m tellin’ you that ain’t whiskey for sale. We don’t take no saddle trash in here and won’t be no grub neither. Now drink down what you got and get out the door.”
The big man pushed himself away from the bar. He said over his shoulder to the pudgy man Longarm couldn’t quite see, “Frank, looks like we got us some homegrown meanness right here. He gonna run us off. Done called us saddle trash. What you think of that?”
Longarm edged further to his left to bring the man who had been called Frank into view. But he didn’t want to see Frank; he wanted to see Frank’s side arm and where it was. It was still in the holster and the tiedown was still over the butt, but Frank’s hand was dangerously close to a position to change all that in the bat of an eye. Longarm said, “He better think it’s a good idea, ‘cause I am fixin’ to start throwing you snakes out of here in just about five seconds.”
The big man had his weight on both his feet. His little pig eyes were watching Longarm with delight. He looked like a man who was about to have some fun. He said, “You hear that, Frank? He called us snakes and said he was gonna throw us all in the sand in about five seconds. All of us. That right, feller?”
Longarm said, “Don’t be calling me any of your family names, feller. Now turn around and walk toward that door.”
The big man laughed slightly and turned his head toward the man behind him. As he did Longarm raised his right hand as if to scratch his ear. But he only got his hand just above shoulder height. There it suddenly turned into a fist and he drove off his right foot, stepping forward with his left, putting his whole shoulder behind the punch. The blow hit the big man flush in the face just as he was turning to face Longarm again. Longarm saw his fist hit the man on the upper lip and the lower part of his nose. He saw blood fly, and felt something crunch beneath his knuckles. It was either teeth or the bone in the man’s nose.
The big man went over backwards, falling into the pudgy man behind him. But Longarm didn’t wait to see the results. The stride of the punch had taken him even with the small man and he pivoted on the balls of his feet, pulling his right boot back, and then hit the smaller man with a sweeping left on the side of the head. The man’s hat flew off and his face banged down on the planks of the bar. As he bounced up Longarm had already drawn his right hand back, and he caught the man under the chin as he was trying to rise. It was more of an uppercut than anything, and it lifted the man off the floor and leaned him partly over the bar before he slid down to the floor.
But even while he was hitting the smaller man Longarm was already moving down the bar to where the pudgy man was trying to scramble up. Longarm saw that he was trying to jerk loose the tiedown on his revolver. With a swift move Longarm kicked out with his right foot, catching the man on the hand with the heel of his boot. The pudgy man yelled and fell back. But by now, his face smeared with blood, the first man was trying to struggle to his feet. Longarm quickly shifted his weight and kicked the first man under the chin with the toe of his left boot. The man made a groan and rolled over on his back, knocking over one of the wooden stools. Longarm took a quick glance behind him, saw that the smaller man was still on the floor and too groggy to be a danger, and whirled and went over the outstretched form of the big man with the bloody nose, diving more than stepping, and hit the pudgy man as hard as he could in the stomach with his right fist. The man instantly doubled up and sat down. It took a half second to get his feet under him, but when he could, Longarm swung from the floor and hit the man under the chin and knocked him over on his back. At that instant he became aware of an outcry behind him. He turned.
“Hold it! Hold it! Quit that fightin’! I won’t have no fightin’ in here! You are scarin’the wimmen!”
Higgins looked wild, his hair touseled and his shirt out, holding the big shotgun almost at the ready. He was yelling at the top of his voice. “Cut out this quarrelin’! Ain’t no fightin’ in here! By damn i’ll let this cannon off the bunch of you don’t settle down! And i mean right now!”
Longarm watched him with mild amusement. The smaller man was not even conscious yet. The pudgy gunman was sitting up, holding his stomach and looking sick. The man with the heavy shoulders had Propped himself up on one arm and was feeling his nose with the hand of the other. There was no fight to be stopped.
Longarm said heavily, “Herman, I’m damn glad you come out here. They was stealin’ whiskey and fixin’ to whip me in the bargain. Keep that shotgun on ‘em. They is a dangerous lot.” He didn’t know if he sounded dumb enough to be someone working at a relay station, but he was enjoying the lying.
Higgins stepped closer, aiming the shotgun down at the men on the floor and sweeping it back and forth. He said in an outraged voice, “By golly, so that’s how you’ll have it! Why, damn it to hell, I ought to let this here blunderbuss off an’ blow the lot of you to Hell!” He looked up at Longarm. “Stealin’ whiskey, was they?”
Longarm nodded. “Yessir, they was. An’ threatenin’ me with their pistols. I was scairt for my very life.”
From the floor the man with the big shoulders straightened up. He spat out a mouthful of blood and said thoughtfully, “I think that sonofabitch broke my nose.”