Longarm 243: Longarm and the Debt of Honor Read Free

saddle off the roof before the stage rolled on with them still there on the luggage rack.
    â€œThanks a helluva lot,” Longarm grumbled as the coach clattered off into the darkness, the driver trying to make up for lost time.
    Longarm scowled, realized that complaining would not do much to improve his situation no matter how often or how fervently he went back to that same dry well, and decided the only sensible thing here was to set about making things better.
    The first order of business was to trim and light a cheroot. The next was to open his carpetbag and find the bottle of finest-quality Maryland rye whiskey he’d packed. A dram of that made the current misery a mite more bearable, and he corked the bottle and returned it to the protective nest of clean drawers he’d wrapped around it for travel purposes.
    â€œNow,” he told himself aloud, “whyn’t I do something ’bout a place to sleep. Damn place is sure to look better to me after a good night’s rest.” He picked up his things and set off down the barren main street in search of a place—any would do—where he could spread his blankets.
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    No, he thought, Crow’s Point looked better at night than in the gray light of dawn.
    Longarm stood in front of the barn where he’d helped himself to a free night’s lodging—a sign beside the wide doors claimed it was a livery and wagon park, but he hadn’t been able to find a hostler or anyone else in charge last night—and surveyed what he could see of the burg.
    He wasn’t impressed.
    There were a few dozen sun-weathered storefronts along the street, and scattered pretty much willy-nilly around the business district, perhaps twice that many houses. The homes did not look any tidier or more prosperous than the businesses. Longarm judged there hadn’t been a paint salesman come through in a good many years, but the next man in would have a world of opportunity.
    It was colorless, Longarm decided after taking a few moments to figure out what was wrong. There was no color here. The buildings were all weathered, unpainted wood. The few scrawny trees and undernourished shrubs were dry and dust-covered. If there were any flower patches to be found, Longarm couldn’t see them from where he stood. Hell, even the couple of stray cats he saw slinking out of the barn—no doubt with their bellies full thanks to all the rodents he’d heard during the night—were drab and gray. He got the impression that an ordinary old yellow tomcat would have been cock of the walk in this town, and a calico likely would have made all the lady cats moan.
    The nearly flat fields lying outside the town proper ran mostly to farmland, with very little of the ground left in grass. Longarm had had the idea that Hirt County in central Kansas would have been on the edge of cow country, but he could see he’d been wrong about that. Apparently this was country more given to small farms and smaller livestock holdings of milk cows, maybe a few pigs and goats, and like that. For sure this was not the sort of rollicking cow town that Norm Wold used to specialize in taming.
    Shit, a dump like this was already so tame, it would take a kick in the ass just to make the residents wake up enough to yawn and roll over.
    Well, in that case, Longarm thought, it was time to commence kicking.
    He left his things stashed inside the barn together with a note saying he’d be along later to collect them and settle up for use of the straw pile, then headed into town.
    Breakfast first—his sense of smell assured him that somewhere up ahead there was bacon frying—then he’d have to find Norm and get filled in on the bullshit charges against his old friend and mentor.

Chapter 4
    â€œBy God there’s still one thing I can be sure of,” a deep voice boomed from somewhere toward the back of the county jail. “Now I know there’s at least one human person