“Look, Harry, I didn’t come here to lock horns with you.” There was no point in trying to explain what really happened last night, Longarm knew. Harry wouldn’t believe him anyway. Hell, he wouldn’t want to believe him. Better to just let that go. “I came here to save your worthless ass. Not my idea, mind, so don’t get all upset thinking you might have to thank me. I’m here on official business.”
“So lay it out and get the hell outa here before I run you in for disturbing the peace.”
Longarm gave Bolt a smartass grin, the most deliberately smartass expression he could manage since it seemed to be smartass that Bolt was expecting here, and said, “On a warrant sworn out by your pal Terry? Go ahead, Bolt. Feel free.”
“What, you ain’t gonna bluster about what you’ll do to me if I take you in?”
“It never makes sense to get into a kicking contest with a mule, Bolt. I learned that real young. No, you go ahead an’ do whatever you think is best. Then I’ll do the same.”
Bolt shifted a mite on his chair, then leaned forward with a frown. Whatever he might have been thinking, he thought better of it now. “Just get your business tended to, Long. And get the hell outa my town.”
Longarm took out a cheroot that he nipped and trimmed and fired up with slow deliberation. And without offering one to Harry. Then, when he was quite good and ready, he explained about Steven Reese and the murders of the Last Man Club members.
“I suppose you remember the kid, Bolt. Of course he woulda been just a little knocker then.”
Harry Bolt spat toward his cuspidor again—he wasn’t much for accuracy in that regard, though he would have to receive high marks for volume and enthusiasm—and gave a wave of dismissal as if none of this particularly concerned him.
“I don’t recollect any kid. But shit, you know me. I don’t even pay attention to my own kids. If I got any, ha-ha. The little bastards aren’t any account. Not the boys, ha-ha. As for the girls, well, there ain’t nothing wrong with young snatch, right, ha-ha? Big enough to bleed is big enough to butcher. Ain’t that right?”
Longarm chose to ignore that crude comment. After all, what else could be expected of someone like Bolt? “You do recall the daddy, don’t you? This Ellis Reese? They tell me him an’ his boy lived at the same post as you before the army brought charges against Reese. And the Last Man Club, Harry. You do remember that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure. But that’s been a long time back. You know? All bullshit, that’s what it is. This Reese kid, if he really is going around trying to make his daddy rich or something, he won’t mess with me. I’d drill a hole square between his goddamn eyes if he was to come around here.”
“You seem sure of yourself, Harry.”
“That’s because I am, Long. I ain’t scared and you know it. Got no reason to be. If this Reese bastard’s kid comes around you, Long, or any-damn-body else, I’ll put their pimply asses in the cold, hard ground. And you know I can do it.”
Longarm frowned. But didn’t bother to challenge the imbecile. There would be no point in it. He did, however, feel duty bound to say, “Don’t forget, Harry. The kid will remember you from back when you were already grown. You’ll have gotten older, but won’t have changed all that much since he was a boy. He on the other hand will’ve done his growing up since then. There’s a good chance that he’ll remember you but you won’t have no way to spot him. He could be just another young face in the crowd. But you, you’ll stand out to him. He’ll know you as soon as he sees you.”
Harry Bolt clouded up and looked like he was going to bust clean apart from the blood that rushed into his already drink-flushed and ruddy face. “Get outa here. I won’t warn you again.”
Longarm stood and retrieved his Stetson from the peg where he’d hung it. “I’m asking you official now, Harry, which you know I got to do. Do you as chief of the Cargyle, Colorado, police request assistance from the United States marshal’s office in protecting you, or anyone else, from the murder suspect known as Steven Reese?”
“The only thing I want from you, Long, is to see your ass headed outa my town. Right the hell now.”
“Yeah, sure. Nice to see you again too, Harry.” Longarm set the Stetson comfortably in place, dropped the butt of his cigar onto Bolt’s jail floor, and carefully ground it out beneath the heel of his boot.
Harry Bolt glowered but didn’t say anything.
Without another word Longarm turned and got the hell out of there before he did something that Billy Vail would be ashamed of him for.
Chapter 18
That, Longarm figured, just about covered the subject. After all, it wasn’t his responsibility to find or arrest or stop or otherwise deal with Steven Reese. Billy and his pompous lawyer friend had sent Longarm down here to warn Harry Bolt. Well, he’d done that. And the plain truth of the matter was that he wasn’t very much inclined to offer to do any more. Bolt was well and truly warned and that was the end of it. Longarm could collect his things from Angela Fulton’s place—sweet, sweet little woman, Angela; he would have enjoyed an excuse to stay there another night or two—and head back to Denver.
He figured he would get Buddy to drive him out to the main line again. Once there, he could signal for a passenger pickup on the next northbound. Considering how early it still was, the sun barely high enough to reach into the canyon here, although still low enough to sneak in underneath the brim of his hat and sting his eyes, he should be able to make it all the way home in one day. With any kind of luck at all he should be sleeping in his own bed tonight.
He sauntered along the tracks of the railroad spur, crossed the creek on a flimsy foot bridge—the wagon road and even the rails were laid over a bed of solid stone that had a few inches of sluggish water covering it—and ambled on past the invisible “gate” that separated the coal company’s land from the squatters’ community.
Longarm’s belly growled a mite, reminding him that he hadn’t gotten around to eating yet this morning. He wondered if he should ask Angela to cook something for him or if he would be better off to go on past in search of a cafe. After last night it would be awkward to try and pay Angela for a meal now. And anything she would be able to provide without him going out and doing some shopping for her would likely be on the order of oatmeal or fried mush, something cheap and filling. If he went on by and found a cafe, he could wrap himself around something more substantial than that. And the simple truth was that his hankerings this morning ran more toward pork chops and eggs than to rolled oats and cold biscuits.
He walked on past the Fulton shack without so much as slowing down, and had no trouble at all finding a cafe capable of satisfying his desires.
Afterward he fired up a cheroot and walked next door to stop in at the local barber’s. He hadn’t shaved yet this morning, and was thinking ahead to later in the day when there just might be some interesting fillies aboard the train into Denver. A fella never knows what he might run into when he travels. He fingered his chin and asked, “You got time for one more?”
“If you got the dime, mister, I got the time. Come right in and set over there. There’s only two gentlemen ahead of YOU.”
Longarm took the offered seat and browsed through a Pueblo paper that he hadn’t read before. There were several Denver papers available too, but every one of them was old enough that he’d already read them before he ever left on this trip south.
The barber was as good as his word, and in less than twenty minutes Longarm’s face was layered in hot towels while the barber went to work stropping his razor and whipping up a renewed froth in his soap mug.
There is, Longarm reflected, damn little that can put a man so much at ease as a good, old-fashioned barbershop shave. It’s one of the few opportunities a man has in this life to let himself be pampered and fussed over and yet not be mistaken for some sort of priss-ass dandy. He closed his eyes and let the homey sounds of the shop surround him.