Free Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds by Tabor Evans Page A

not to say a queer whore who beat, robbed, and roasted a customer had any call to hang around either. You'd better give me the name and some description of that wayward youth, pard."
    The newspaper man did, as Longarm got out his notebook to take down the probably fake name of Jake Brown and the banal description: a slender youth, dressed cow and having nothing to set him apart from your average run-of-the-mill white cowhand or saddle tramp pretending to be a cowhand as he scouted for easier money in a land of opportunity.
    Longarm put the notes away as he shrugged and opined, "It's sure starting to look like I've been chasing down a false lead. I wish we didn't have to do that so often. But the only way you can tell is by trying. So I thank you for your help in eliminating the late Calvert Tyger of Durango as any likely lead to the whereabouts of the outlaws I had in mind."
    As he started to turn away, the newspaper man said, "Hold on, old son! Don't you care whether it was that boy-lover or the boy he was out to love who left the other to die in that fire and is still running wild?"
    Longarm shook his head. "Not hardly. I'm packing a federal badge, and heated lovers' quarrels in local rooming houses ain't federal, praise the Lord. I got enough on my plate with those more serious outlaws who rode off with a federal payroll. As I put what you just told me together, it seems like a tinhorn who didn't even know how to dress sensible adopted the name of a more ferocious gunslick in the hopes of not having any gunfights at all. He got himself in a whole other mess entire. If he was the one who got out alive, like I said, it's a local matter. If it was that kid called Brown, it's still a local matter. I ain't packing no federal wants on a squirt called Jake Brown. I'll allow he describes like heaps of cow-town drifters, but there was nothing about queers in any of the yellow sheets we have on the real gang led by the one and original Calvert Tyger. So it's been nice talking to you, but if I don't get it on down the road my boss told me to take, I'm likely to get my own ass fried to a crisp!"
    So they shook on it and parted friendly. Longarm would have felt even dumber as he boarded the train that morning if Amarillo Annie hadn't fried him up those swell scrambled eggs without crisping them at all.

CHAPTER 7
    There was no way to run a railroad through the Rockies that didn't involve a certain amount of exciting scenery. So the two young gals seated behind Longarm were squeaking like mice by the time the eastbound D&RG combination was two hours out of Durango.
    Longarm was tempted to turn and tell them the few hairpin turns and nine-degree grades on this line were kid stuff next to that new narrow-gauge they were running north to Silverton out of Durango. But he never did. The gals were kid stuff as well, neither was all that pretty, and it was a caution how expensive it could get to soda-and-sandwich three passengers on this infernal line.
    He decided to read instead. His saddlebags and most of his possibles were riding up forward in the baggage car, but he had a recent issue of the Police Gazette and the onionskins of that payroll robbery to peruse as the train commenced to scare the wits out of those two young squaws with the mountains to the east getting a mite more dramatic. He failed to see why they insisted on staring out the downhill windows if they found the view so frightening. It was tempting to point out there was nothing to look at but walls of dynamited rock if they'd only move across the aisle and stare that damned way. But starting up with squeaky young gals was a lot like dipping into a cracker barrel. Once you got started, it was a chore to stop. So he just let them squeak as he read in the Police Gazette how some London society gal had been dropped by the old Prince of Wales and his set for getting too familiar with his nibs. That was what they called putting ice cream down the back of an old drunk's stuffed