Free Longarm and the Diamondback Widow by Tabor Evans Page A

and swept the room with his gaze as he said, “Rainey never sent no telegraph from my key.” His voice echoed around the room. He glanced at Longarm darkly and then lowered his gaze once again to his schooner.
    Longarm let the man’s words hang in the air. They were a lie, and he wanted to let them hang there for a time, silently incriminating everyone in the room.
    Longarm’s bearded attacker stirred, rolling his head from side to side and moaning into the floor. The mustached man started climbing to his feet. Longarm planted his boot on the man’s ass and drove him to the floor.
    â€œSon of a bitch!” the mustached gent said as he piled up at the base of the bar.
    He glared up at Longarm. He was now holding his tooth between the thumb and index finger of his right hand as though it were something precious that he wanted to keep.
    Longarm knew from all the hard stares being cast his way that no information would be forthcoming. So with a fateful sigh he turned to the bar, finished his drink in four long swallows, set the schooner back down on the bar, and ran a forearm across his mouth and mustache.
    As much trail dust as beer rubbed off on his thick, brown arm. He was coated in the stuff.
    A bath was due . . .
    Picking up his saddlebags and his rifle, he said, “I’ll be over at the hotel yonder if anyone wants to talk to me. I’ll be there till I hear anything, and since you don’t have a bona fide lawman, I’ll be acting as the lawman until Des Rainey returns to claim his chair. Mr. Little, that badge is no longer yours. If I see you wearing it again, I’ll slap the holy living shit of you.”
    Melvin Little’s eyes crossed slightly in rage.
    â€œI’ll be here till I find out what happened to Rainey. You fellas can rest assured of that.”
    The bearded man had climbed to all fours and was wagging his head and groaning loudly as he tried to rise. Longarm kicked the big man over on his back.
    â€œAs for you—you best count your lucky stars I don’t haul you over to Rainey’s jail and turn the key on your ugly ass. Assaulting a deputy U.S. marshal is a federal offense. That goes with you over there, too.”
    Longarm winked at the mustached man sitting with one knee up, his back against the bar, still holding his tooth in his hand. The front of his shirt was red with blood from his broken nose. “I see you boys armed in this town again, you’ll both be getting more visits from the tooth fairy.”
    The bearded man spit blood at him though it merely spewed down his own chest.
    Longarm swung around, pushed through the batwings, and left, knowing that he’d drawn one mighty large target on his back just now.

Chapter 8
    â€œI’d like a room and I’d like a bath,” Longarm told the big-boned, red-haired, middle-aged woman sitting behind the long, varnished oak desk in the lobby of the Diamondback Hotel.
    â€œWhat—you all through makin’ trouble?” the woman croaked.
    She had thin lips and close-set eyes in a fleshy face that might have at one time been mildly pretty, though never beautiful. She wore a puce-colored silk dress with puffy sleeves and a scalloped cream collar. The dress fit her much too tightly, accentuating too many large bumps and rolls.
    Behind her, a wooden cuckoo clock ticked on the wall above several roles of shelves and pigeonholes.
    â€œWord sure travels fast,” Longarm said, signing his name in the register book she’d turned toward him. “But there wouldn’t be any trouble if the good citizens of Diamondback would just tell me what I want to know.”
    â€œMaybe the good citizens of Diamondback see the value in minding their own business.”
    â€œIs that how you see it?”
    The woman only stared at him, her eyes shifting around slightly. She was a wry old bird, not all that worked up about the situation. Living out here in this rough