After all, for the past couple days he’d been sitting there with a warm beer in front of him but hadn’t allowed himself a drop to drink. The way he saw it he was damn well entitled now if he wanted a shot to warm his belly and maybe a beer to chase that with.
He said his goodbyes—neither Angela nor Buddy seemed to notice that he was leaving, they were so wrapped up in their own excited plans—and wandered out into the sunlight of the early afternoon.
Chapter 33
Longarm sat in his usual spot—hell, he’d been in that same chair so much lately that anything else would’ve felt unnatural—with an empty shot glass and a half-full beer in front of him.
The rotgut whiskey still tasted like wildcat piss, but the beer was going down mighty nice. He lighted up one of his own good cheroots and leaned back to enjoy himself.
Even the sight of Harry Bolt and Clete Terry down at the far end of the bar wasn’t enough to make him unhappy. Not now. This business in Cargyle was over and done with as far as he was concerned. He’d done everything here that he had to, and he could leave with a clear conscience. And with Angela Fulton, who was a sweet little woman even if she wasn’t much of a looker. Once she healed up and got to feeling herself again he just might … no, he damn sure would go and look up her and Buddy in Central City. He liked the kid and he liked the mother and he could enjoy seeing more of the both of them. Why, sometime maybe they could all take one of those excursion trains that they ran down to … Almost without conscious thought he set the beer down onto the table and sat upright.
The young man who’d just walked in didn’t fit with this crowd somehow. It wasn’t his age. Lots of mining men start out young. In fact probably most of them. But there was something about him … he was too clean, too nicely dressed, looked too much the schoolboy to fit in here with these coal miners.
The young man paused in the doorway and looked slowly around.
That was part of it, Longarm realized. There was a wafiness about this fellow that didn’t quite fit the rest of his appearance. He was dressed in a nicely tailored and fairly new suit with a spanking-clean celluloid collar and a carefully tied necktie. He wore a narrow-brimmed hat in the stockman’s style, but there was something about him that prevented any possibility that he might be mistaken for a stockman. His shoes were freshly blacked, and there wasn’t a hint of sag in his stockings. All in all he was turned out as neat and tidy as a choirboy early on a Sunday morning.
Yet there was that indefinable something about him, something in the cautious way he inspected the room before he committed himself to it, that commanded Longarm’s attention.
Longarm looked across the room to where Bolt and Terry were in deep conversation about something. The two of them had their heads together, and were paying no mind to what all was going on around them.
On an impulse Longarm stood and, taking his beer with him, ambled across the room to reach the bar at just about the same time as this young newcomer did. And at the same stretch of bar as well. He stopped beside the young man and nodded to him. “Howdy.”
“Hello.”
“Buy you a beer, Steve?”
“Yes, thank you.” The fellow gave Longarm a quizzical look. “Have we met, perchance?”
“Not that I recall, no.”
“Then how …?”
“A shot in the dark.” Longarm grinned. “You should excuse the expression.”
“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”
“No, of course you wouldn’t.”
“You have the advantage of me, sir.”
“Oh, yeah. So I do.” Longarm introduced himself.
“A federal officer. My, oh, my.”
“An’ you, of course, would be Steve Reese. How’s your papa, Steve?”
“He’s holding his own, Marshal. Thank you for asking.”
“I hope that treatment in—Scotland, was it?—I hope it helps.”
“You’re trying to tell me that you know all about my hopes, aren’t YOU.”
“I’m trying to tell you, Steve, that you ain’t gonna make it. There must be paper out on you in half a dozen different places.”
“Really? Am I accused of something then?”
“You know that better’n I do.”
“Federal crimes, Marshal?”
“Reckon you know that too.”
Reese smiled. “Yes, so I do. I have, shall we say, done my homework, Marshal. And if crimes were committed—which I do not admit, you understand—but if crimes were committed they do not fall under federal jurisdiction.”
“You’re a cool one, Steve.”
“No, Marshal. Merely committed to the pursuit of justice. Notice that I did not say anything about law. Law and justice are unrelated. And the course I seek, sir, is that of the just.”
“That so, is it?”
Reese nodded. “Indeed. If you want to know, Marshal, my father is an innocent man. I was there, don’t
