Longarm could tell they catered to a tight regular crowd when the barkeep who served him asked, in a friendly voice but loud enough to be heard by one and all, which brand he rode for over in the Flint Hills.
Longarm was glad he hadn’t been taken for a farmer by a bunch who seemed concerned about such matters.
He kept his own voice hearty enough to let everyone hear as he replied he’d just been handed the shovel by the Diamond K in Colorado and heard they might be hiring over this way.
A more obvious cowhand just down the bar told Longarm in a friendly enough manner that he’d have a time getting hired now, seeing the spring beef had about been shipped and they were starting to lay off seasonal help in the Flint Hills. Nobody insulted a man who claimed to be cow by suggesting he apply at any of the more numerous farms around town. When a man who worked on horseback said he’d been handed a shovel, it meant he’d been fired. Cattle spreads got rid of extra top hands by asking them to dig post holes or shovel shit. The same laconic code that made it dangerous to speak rudely to another grown man made it impossible to raise a voice in protest at a politely worded but unreasonable order. When a man went to work for your wages, he knew he was expected to do just as he was told or quit, with no back-lip either way.
So Longarm and everyone else in the dinky saloon knew trouble was in the air when a big burly rider in a tall Texas hat bawled out from his corner table, “I know that Diamond K spread over by Denver. I asked ‘em for a job one time and they told me they wasn’t hiring.”
Longarm found that as easy to figure as the fact that the big cowhand had the whole table to himself. Hard liquor had done as much as the harsh climate of the High Plains to bake his ham-shaped face such an unhealthy shade of red. But even though the hard drinker had made his remark in a rude tone, Longarm tried to sound calm and friendly as he called back, “I just said they handed me a shovel, pard. Diamond K doesn’t keep too many steady hands on their payroll.”
The drunk grumbled, “I figured they had it in for me because I rid for the South over a dozen years ago. Colorado sided with the infernal Union, cuss it all to Hell!”
Longarm didn’t answer. For the Good Book sayeth a soft answer turneth away wrath, and anyone who’s ever argued with a drunk sayeth no answer at all is even safer.
But it didn’t work. The red-faced hulk in the Texas hat suddenly focused on Longarm’s telescoped Stetson and demanded, “Ain’t that a Colorado crush you’re sporting on that sissy hat, pilgrim?”
The barkeep tried, “Take it easy, Waco. Man just said he was a High Plains rider, and we get more wind than heat up this way.”
Another helpful hand, his own hat higher-crowned than Longarm’s, volunteered, “Lots of gents keep their hats snugged closer to their skulls north of the Arkansas, Waco, and like you say, the war was over more than a dozen years ago.”
But Waco lurched to his considerable height and sort of waded through the tobacco smoke toward Longarm, ominously observing as he approached the bar, “You look old enough to have rid in the war, Colorado boy. I was with Hood’s Texas Brigade. Who might you have ridden with?”
Longarm sighed and soothingly replied, “I disremember a lot about a misspent youth, and for the record, I never saw Colorado or anything else west of the Big Muddy before I came out this way once the guns fell silent and the jobs got scarce in the greener hills where I grew up. Can I buy you another, seeing you seem to have swallowed the last of your last one?”
Waco said, “I’m particular who I drink with, you nigger-loving damn Yankee!”
So Longarm hit him hard with a left hook, followed by a roundhouse right it was only safe to throw at a drunk already staggered by your first solid punch.
As Waco collapsed like a half-empty sack of potatoes on the sawdust-covered floor, Longarm drew his .44-40 and quietly said he sure hoped nobody else objected as he hunkered down to relieve the unconscious Texan of the .45 Peacemaker he’d been wearing low in a buscadero side-draw tied down.
Nobody seemed to, but as Longarm straightened back up and handed Waco’s sidearm to the barkeep, another hand wearing a Texas hat morosely remarked that Longarm had cold-cocked old Waco without warning. When he bitched, “A man has the right to know when he’s about to be knocked on his ass!” Longarm calmly replied, “He had plenty of warning from his very own lips, pard. When you come at a grown man with a gun on your hip and commence to cuss him out, what do you expect from him, a kiss on the cheek?”
The barkeep made the .45 vanish as he declared it was his opinion that the stranger had been right kindly to a mortal fool, adding, “Anyone could see Waco was building up to a more serious fight—with the two of them packing guns, for Pete’s sake! I was sure we were fixing to have us a shooting here tonight, when this sweet-natured Colorado rider stopped Mr. Death at the door with as solid a brace of punches as I’ve seen in recent memory!”
Most everyone there seemed to agree, on further reflection and after a round of drinks on the house. But somebody must have slipped out into the gathering darkness to call the law. Old Waco, meanwhile, sat up in the middle of the floor to ask who’d run over him with a beer dray.
Before anyone there could tell him, the bat-wing doors swung wide to admit a lean and hungry-looking individual wearing Abe Lincoln’s whiskers, a brace of Sam Colt’s equalizers, and a German silver star.
Taking in the scene with a look of ill-disguised disgust, the town law declared, “A body would think Waco McCord could get in and out of town more quietly on a workday night. But I reckon he just works to pay off disturbance fines. I’d be obliged if some of your boys would get him on his feet, hand me his hardware, and help me get him over to the jail.”
Longarm moved to do so. But the laconic town law said, “Not you, pilgrim. You’ll be spending the night in our jail with him, and I’d sure like to see that .44-40 double-action a mite closer.”
As two of the regulars disarmed Waco and hauled him erect on now-wobbly legs, Longarm protested, “I ain’t drunk and I never started it, Marshal!”
To which the older lawman replied with no emotion, “I ain’t a marshal. I ain’t a judge neither. I’m the town constable, and you can explain it to Judge Drysdale in the morning, drunk or sober. They call me Hard Pan Parsons for reasons you don’t want to go into, pilgrim. I have discovered in my travels through this vale of woe that whilst there’s no way to make a man do anything he don’t want to, there’s many a way to make him wish to Sweet Jesus that he’d wanted to. So about that fucking gun …”
Longarm handed his six-gun over. He still had his derringer hidden in an inside pocket of his denim jacket, and better yet, he had his own badge and identification in case things got unbearable.
Meanwhile, a night in a small-town jail and the usual modest fine that went with no argument seemed more bearable than announcing who’d just decked their town bully in front of God and everybody.
So Longarm walked meek as a lamb in front of Hard Pan Parsons and the other disturber of Florence’s peace—on an infernal workday night, for Pete’s sake. With any luck he might manage to be on his way in the morning with nobody in these parts the wiser.
But he had no such luck. Hard Pan Parsons was wiser than he let on too. Once they got to the solid-brick jailhouse, the older lawman and his younger deputies searched both prisoners with considerable skill, and Hard Pan muttered, “Shame on you,” when a gleeful deputy dangled Longarm’s double derringer on the end of its gold-washed watch chain.