The constable himself took Longarm’s billfold from another inside pocket, and Longarm was braced for most any reaction than the one old Hard Pan came up with when he cracked open the billfold to see a shiny federal badge and Longarm’s deputy marshal’s warrant.
Without blinking an eye, the Florence lawman snapped the leather shut and dryly remarked, “I’ll hang on to this for safekeeping, seeing you seem to have some serious money here. What did you say your name was, stranger?”
Caught by surprise, Longarm blurted out, “Crawford, Buck Crawford was what they called me the last place I worked, out Colorado way.”
It served Reporter Crawford of the Denver Post right, and it would be even easier to remember because Longarm had often wondered whether he and Doctor Crawford Long, who’d discovered painless surgery, might be kissing cousins. He wasn’t sure he wanted to kiss another grown man. But he sure wanted to shake the hand of the man who’d come up with such a grand notion as general anesthetics in time for the big war back East.
Once he and his fellow saloon brawler had been searched and marched back to the row of boiler-plate and circus barred patent cells, Hard Pan told his turnkey, “Put Waco down that way in the empty cage. I’ll put old Buck here down the other way, lest the two of ‘em kiss and make up, or kill one another, before the judge can decide their fates.”
Nobody argued. Hard Pan led Longarm past a more crowded cell, where a crap game was in progress, on past a lonesome-looking black man playing “My Pretty Quadroon” on a mouth organ, and into an empty cell at the far end. Then he soberly turned and asked, “All right, Deputy Long, what the hell are we trying to get away with here?”
Longarm cautiously asked how big a piece of the action Florence Township was prepared for.
Hard Pan Parsons flatly replied, “We’re both lawmen, sworn to uphold the law of the land. Are you saying your play with Waco McCord is none of my beeswax?”
Longarm shook his head respectfully and explained, “Being a mean drunk ain’t a federal offense, and as far as I know, that’s all I have on old Waco. I hit him because I’d have drawn even more attention to my fool self if I’d gunned him, and it looked as if he was working up the sand to gun me.”
The town law, more familiar with locals like Waco, made a wry face and said, “He’s just an asshole. But I thank you for not killing him, I reckon. It’s only a question of time before some other stranger kills him. I’ve warned Waco about threatening others whilst packing hardware. But like you said, he’s a mean drunk, and seeing it was just one of them things, I reckon you’d as soon be on your way. So let’s go out front before I give you back your belongings.”
But Longarm shook his head again and said, “I got a better notion, seeing you’re so willing to back my play.”
Hard Pan told him to name his game.
Longarm said, “I’d like you to toss me in with your more regular customers. Nights seem long when you’re locked up with a friendly sort of talking man, and I’m here to see if I can get a line on the sort of crook who recruits extra help from the sort of gents who wind up shooting craps in small-town jails, no offense.”
Hard Pan said none was taken, and asked what Longarm wanted him to tell the court clerk come morning.
Longarm said, “Nothing, unless they decide to put me on the chain gang. I’d as soon plead guilty to disturbing the peace, pay the fine, and head on into the Flint Hills as a friendless out-of-work cowhand in the market for most any sort of friends or any sort of work.”
Chapter 5
No well-run jail allowed money or other weapons to its overnight guests. But subject to sensible behavior, Hard Pan let them keep their tobacco, matches, and a pair of dice to win or lose match stems with. Longarm could tell right off that the eight or ten town and country boys in the cell knew one another of old. So he sat on the floor in a corner, lit a cheroot, and waited to see what anybody wanted to make of it.
What somebody wanted to make of it was close to an open threat. A husky cowhand with brows that met in the middle rose from the circle of crap shooters to amble over and say flat out, “I want one of them sissy seegars, pilgrim.”
Longarm replied not unkindly, “Can’t spare none. Don’t know how long they mean to hold me, and I don’t see any cigar store Indians in here with us.”
The crap game got awfully quiet as their obvious bully blinked in surprise and asked, “Are you hard of hearing or something? I never asked you for a smoke, you son of a bitch. I told you I wanted one!”
To which Longarm replied in the same calm tone, “I heard what you said. You heard what I said. Call me that again and one of us is sure going to wish you hadn’t.”
The slightly shorter but far beefier stranger sighed, doubled up a pair of ham-like fists, and said, “That tears it. On your feet and be prepared to swallow some teeth, little darling!”
But before Longarm could rise to the occasion, a skinny young squirt sporting a red shirt and a high-crowned hat big enough for a family of average-sized Indians chimed in urgently with, “Don’t do it, Lash! I heard the turnkeys talking about him when they brung him and old Waco in. They said he put old Waco’s lights out sudden with his bare fists, and as you can plainly see, not a mark on him to show for it!”
The bigger one called Lash got just a tad green around the gills as he and Longarm stared into one another’s eyes. The bully’s eyes were oyster blue and bloodshot. He lowered his gaze from the twin gun muzzles of Longarm’s steel-gray eyes, but being an old hand at his kid games, he tried to crawfish gracefully by asking Longarm why he hadn’t said he’d been run in for punching out Waco McCord.
He added, “Any man who’d punch out that disgrace to the Lone Star State has to be a pal of mine. They call me Lash Flanders, and I rode with General Sibley when he took Santa Fe in ‘62.”
Longarm was too polite to mention the licking Sibley’s Texas raiders took a few days later at Glorieta Pass. He said, “They call me Buck Crawford. I disremember who I rode with. I’ve been riding ever since, with hands from all over, and fighting old wars over again for less than a private trooper’s pay sounds dumb, no offense.”
Lash Flanders hunkered down beside him. “None taken. I read the Colorado crush of that hat. How come Waco and the rest of us met up with you in Kansas, Buck?”
The crap game came back to life as Longarm dryly remarked, “That’s where I am now. Got handed the shovel, and nobody’s hiring where I was known better. Heard some of the outfits over this way might need a few extra hands, seeing the price of beef has riz and your greener grass ain’t been as overgrazed during the dry years we’re just now getting past. Knock wood.”
The younger peacemaker in the flashy shirt and monstrous sombrero hunkered down by Longarm’s right and observed, “I’ve punched me out a boss or two in my day too. Leaving one outfit under a cloud can sure make it hard to hire on anywhere’s near.”
Lash snorted, “Shoot, you’ve yet to punch your way out of a wet paper bag, Silent.”
Then he confided to Longarm, “We call him Silent Knight because he never shuts up. When there ain’t anything sensible to say, old Silent has this habit of stating the obvious. Do you rope dally or tie-down, Buck? Reason I’m asking is that most of the Flint Hill outfits cotton to tie-down topers for the same reasons you wear your hat north-range style. Me and Silent have to admit we’re Texicans because it shows. But we’ve both larnt to rope less overtly rebellious.”
They both seemed to relax more when Longarm allowed he could rope north-or south-range style. Silent Knight opined, “It might be a hard row for a total stranger to hoe, Buck. The last of the spring calves have been branded and marked. Won’t be much for anyone to do but watch ‘em grow until the market roundup come September. What brands did they tell you to try for, Buck?”