“You’re a hard man to forget. Though I expect I can manage if I set my mind to it.”
The man laughed. And cheerfully accepted both the metal dipper of tepid water Longarm handed him and the twist of tobacco.
“I believe you were saying something about Harry Bolt?”
“Uh-huh. He’s in town. Likely over at that saloon he owns.”
“Which one would that be?”
The miner frowned in thoughtful concentration. “Y’know,” he said after a moment, “if it has a name I don’t b’lieve I’ve ever heard what it is. It’s the biggest down there anyhow. Guy name of Terry runs it for him. Clete Terry.”
Longarm rolled his eyes. Son of a bitch! Clete Terry was a hired hand. And for that asshole Harry Bolt at that. Shee-it! Double shee-it. With honey and walnuts on top.
“You don’t happen to know if there’s living quarters or anything of the like in the back of that saloon, do you?”
“You’re right, mister. I wouldn’t happen to know that. But there’s rooms for the girls to use. I wouldn’t know about the private parts of the place.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would. Look, thanks for the help.”
“Anytime.” The prisoner grinned. “I’m in residence fairly often.”
“Yeah, so I gathered.” Longarm touched the brim of his hat and turned to leave.
He was halfway out the door before something occurred to him, and he turned back inside the Cargyle jail.
“Say, friend.”
“umm?”
“Where’s the other prisoner that’s supposed to be here tonight?”
“That fella with the short hair and the rock-pile sunburn?”
“That’s the one.”
“Bolt turned him loose right after supper.”
“What!” That man was a federal prisoner, dammit. Longarm’s, to be exact. Harry Bolt had no damn right to spring him.
The coal miner certainly saw nothing exceptional about it. Nor would he have any reason to lie. “Bolt opened the cage on him just a little while after I got here. Which I want to tell you was before supper this time. I’m not making that mistake again, thank you. Damn Bolt won’t feed a hungry man if it isn’t on the stroke of his stinking clock.”
A protest that rose in Longarm’s throat was stillborn. After all, it would do no good to squawk and protest to this fella. Only to Harry Bolt. And of course to the ex-con. Damn them both.
He was on his way out the door again when once more a stray thought clutched at his coattails and called him back inside the jail.
“Say, friend.”
“Yeah?”
“This man Harry turned loose. Do you remember what kind of gear he had with him?”
“The clothes on his back, some loose change that I seen Bolt give him out of that drawer there, and a belly gun. Long, thin-looking thing, but I wouldn’t know what kind it was. I can’t say as I know much about guns and stuff like that.”
“Yeah, well, thanks, neighbor. Thanks a lot.”
“Stop by anytime. I’m always glad for the company.”
Longarm touched the brim of his hat again, and this time made it all the way outside and down the road toward town without remembering some reason to go back.
Chapter 28
If Clete Terry or Harry Bolt lived at Bolt’s saloon, Longarm couldn’t see or hear them inside. The place looked completely closed up and empty. Both men had to live someplace, of course. Even a sidewinder has to have a hole to crawl into. But no one Longarm talked to seemed to know where Terry or Bolt crawled in at night.
They didn’t know or wouldn’t tell, that is. After all, it was pretty plain to folks around Cargyle by now that this visitor and their local police chief were on a collision course. And siding with the local law was simple prudence the way Longarm saw it. It wasn’t anything he would go and hold against anyone.
Still, it put a crimp in his wire. There were things he damn sure wanted to ask Harry Bolt about. Starting with just why in hell that ex-convict was walking the streets tonight—or more likely rattling down the railroad tracks miles and miles away by now—when Longarm had put him in jail as a federal prisoner.
Bolt knew better than that. Any wet-behind-the-ears night constable would know better. And Harry Bolt, asshole though he undoubtedly was, had been around for a long time.
No, something was definitely happening here that didn’t set any too well in the gullet. Something that wasn’t at all the way it oughta be.
Still, until he could catch up with Harry Bolt and commence getting some answers, there wasn’t much he could do to unravel the puzzle. He stopped by one of the smaller, and filthier, of the town’s saloons for a nighttime knock, then headed back to the Fulton place. He was more alert than usual in case his pal with the shotgun wanted another dance, but this time there was no excitement to keep him awake. He bolted the door shut as quiet as he could and crawled into the blankets laid out on his pallet by the stove.
There wasn’t any red glow coming from the stove this time. No fire had been lighted there since yesterday as far as he knew. But there was sound. A thump. A bump. A muffled, heartfelt curse.
Which answered that for certain sure. It wasn’t Buddy getting up to head for the outhouse that he was hearing. It was Buddy’s mama moving around again.
My, but that little ol’ woman had a mouth on her when she wanted to turn loose of it. She must have been taking lessons from a mule skinner. Maybe from a whole passel of them.
Longarm lay there and grinned into the darkness. He heard another thump as she walked into the edge of the kitchen table, then the scraping of wood on wood as she bumped into a chair and sent it skidding across the floor.
Longarm did the decent thing. He felt around on the floor until he found the cheroots and sulfur-tipped matches he’d laid out there earlier, and struck one of the matches so Angela could see her way to wherever she was going. It was either that, he figured, or Buddy was gonna be wide awake from all the commotion she was causing.
She wasn’t going to the outhouse, he quickly concluded. She was barefoot and wearing nothing but her flimsy nightdress. The robe that he’d so carefully laid where she could reach it was nowhere to be seen.
“Thanks,” she whispered, giving the offending chair a rueful look and going wide around it. Having bumped it once, she’d been pointed straight at it a second time.
“Anytime.” He held the match while Angela glanced once in the direction of Buddy’s cot—the boy’s breathing was deep and regular; he was sleeping so hard he was damn near unconscious—then opened the top of her nightdress and let the cloth slither down her body to fall in a cotton puddle at her feet.
This was the first time Longarm had seen Angela naked. She wasn’t at all bad. A mite on the skinny side, but her tits were more than a mouthful and her mound was plump and proud. She had a flat belly and slender thighs. Her ribs stood out all plain to see like the bars of one of those … the word wouldn’t come to him just then—that musical instrument they played with little hammers and danced all around between acts at the hurdy-gurdy theater shows. He frowned. Then the furrows in his brow eased. Xylophone. That was what the sons of bitches were called. Anyway, that was kind of what Angela’s ribs looked like.
It occurred to him that she’d gone and taken off the wrapping that had been tied so tight around her to protect those broken ribs the barber said she had. He supposed she must have had her reasons. Like probably not being able to breathe. He’d been wrapped up like that a time or two himself and knew how just plain miserable that cure can be.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Isn’t that kind of a silly question at the moment?” she responded.
“Yeah, I s’pose it is.” The match burned down to his fingers, and he shook it out quick before his fingernail caught fire.