Free Longarm on the Overland Trail by Tabor Evans Page A

where the wildest visitors were train-weary passengers changing trains, or cowhands off the surrounding spreads who only got drunk enough to be dangerous once a month, on payday. The town was a good ten miles or more west of the newly opened Ogallala cattle trail and so was seldom shot up by the rougher hands one tended to find on a long market drive.
    Longarm picked up his McClellan saddle, with everything he'd brought along lashed to it, and crossed the dusty street to the weathered frame hotel across from the depot. The sleepy blonde behind the desk in the tiny lobby perked up when she saw such a rare sight as a possible guest on such an otherwise dull occasion. When he asked her if it was at all possible to hire a room she told him he could have his pick. He said he'd like a corner room at the east end of the top floor and she said he could have one and that she could see he was an experienced traveler on the summer prairie.
    She sold him a key and came around from her side of the stand-up desk to carry his luggage, saying they'd had a bellhop, once, but that he'd run off to herd cows since the price of beef had risen. Longarm told her he hardly ever let ladies carry things for him but she went up the stairs ahead of him, anyway. He found the way she climbed the stairs with her tailbone moving almost as much as her feet an interesting novelty. It was too bad her face was no longer youthful, and that he wouldn't be staying long in any case.
    She led him to the corner room. As he deposited his saddle over the foot of the double brass bedstead, she busied herself opening both windows, saying, "It'll smell better in here once the cross-venting airs it out some. We keep the windows closed when the rooms are empty to cut down on the dusting. That smell you may have noticed ain't what you might think. We don't have bugs. The handy man just oiled the bedsprings and, for some fool reason, he used bug oil instead of the axle grease I told him to use."
    He said he could see they kept the place wholesome and asked her how many other hotels there might be in town. She looked hurt and said, "This is the best one and about the only one as takes in transients, anyways. You got to hire room and board by the week at the other places and none of 'em are any nicer than this."
    He said he was sure of that. "The reason I'm asking is that, as I told you downstairs, I'm law. You'd remember, I hope, hiring a bed to a sort of wild-eyed little gent prone to Texas hats and goat-skin chaps?"
    She nodded, but said, "We never. I know who you mean. The local law and the army police have already pestered me about that crazy cowboy as shot up the canteen out at the post. I told them, and so now I can tell you, that we ain't had a male guest of any description for a good three days, now. There was nobody here within twenty-four hours of the shoot-up but a secretary gal and a lady coming back from Denver with her sick little boy. She's had him in the lung spa there in hopes of a cure for his consumption."
    Longarm raised an eyebrow. "Just how big a boy might we be talking about?"
    She said, "Oh, six or eight, poor little thing. I doubt he'll ever see ten, for when we cleaned up after they caught their eastbound train there was blood on his pillowcase. Why do you ask? Do you know anyone like that?"
    "Not that young. It was a grasp at a straw in any case. The little rascal I'm after don't act sane enough to have anyone but another lunatic as a confederate."
    He dug out a dime to tip her, and though she said she was the owner and not a bellhop, she put it away anyhow and asked if he had any other possible desires. She looked disappointed when he told her, "Yep, I have to get out to Fort Halleck, now, and as I recall, it's a short ride but a long walk. So where would I find me a good livery stable here in town?"
    She said there was one just a dozen doors east but then she said, "You'll have a time hiring a mount right now. Most of the able-bodied men and half