Free Longarm and the Diamondback Widow by Tabor Evans

well as the mustached gent’s left hand just as the man triggered the weapon.
    Ka-booommmm!
    Orange flames and gray smoke knifed at the ceiling. The double-ought buck punched a deep gouge out of the wainscoting, causing slivers and dust to rain. A floor above the saloon, a girl screamed shrilly, “Stop it! Oh, god, stop it!”
    Longarm stepped back and looked from the bearded man, who lay unconscious at the base of the bar, head resting on his arms, to the mustached man, who leaned back on his elbows on the floor, his face swollen and bleeding, one bloody upper tooth embedded in his thick lower lip.
    Longarm shrugged. “You heard the girl. I’m game if you are. You boys had enough?”
    He toed the bearded gent’s bulging belly. “Looks like he has.” He relieved the unconscious man of his weapons, tossing both pistols across the room, and then he did the same to the mustached man, asking him, “How ’bout you?”
    The man nodded and, wincing, touched the index finger of his right hand to the tooth embedded in his lower lip and sucked a sharp breath that sounded funny through his broken nose.
    Longarm picked up the mustached gent’s shotgun, which had skidded down along the base of the bar. He picked it up and set it on his shoulder as he faced the room.
    The men who’d been standing at the bar had all gathered toward the end of it, clumped together and staring toward Longarm. They looked hesitant, nervous, like they suddenly wanted to go home and visit with their wives.
    â€œThis is how it lays out,” Longarm said, narrowing one eye with threat. “Like Melvin there probably told you, my name is Custis P. Long, Deputy United States Marshal. Your sheriff, Des Rainey, sent a telegram to my superior, Chief Marshal Billy Vail, a few weeks back, asking for help with some undisclosed situation up here in Diamondback. I was sent to investigate, so that’s what I’m doin’.
    â€œNaturally, the first person I looked for was Sheriff Rainey himself, only that’s not who I found in his office. I found Melvin there, sound asleep with a cold cup of coffee in his hand. A badge way too big for him was pinned to his vest.”
    Little glowered at Longarm. A few of the others in the room chuckled softly, but most of them merely sat or stood glaring at Longarm.
    â€œI asked Melvin where I could find Sheriff Rainey and he gave me a look like a mule chewing cockleburs. Didn’t learn nothin’. And that makes me right owly, not to mention suspicious as holy hell. It makes me suspicious of every one of you gents. Every person in this entire town, in fact. And I’m gonna set my boots right here in Diamondback, probably right here in the Dragoon Saloon, as well as over at that purty pink hotel yonder, until such time as I can either speak to Sheriff Rainey in person or learn exactly where he is and what he’s doin’ and why he requested assistance.”
    Longarm saw the man he’d seen earlier standing outside of the stage depot now sitting in the shadows with two other men, at a table three-quarters down the long room. He wore his green eyeshade and sleeve garters, and he stared down glumly into his nearly empty beer schooner, which he held tightly around the base with both hands.
    If it were a chicken, the glass would have been dead of a broken neck by now.
    â€œYou there—what’s your name?” Longarm asked the man.
    The man kept staring down at his glass.
    â€œI say, you there in the eyeshade. I take it you’re the depot agent for the stage line. The telegrapher, as well—am I right?”
    The man just scowled down into his beer schooner as though he were both deaf and numb. His ruddy skin behind his gray beard, however, turned crimson.
    â€œWhich means that message of Rainey’s was likely sent by you or one of your associates,” Longarm persisted.
    Now the gray-bearded man with the eyeshade lifted his head