way, seeing his manners still seem to reckless.”
Longarm blinked, then had to laugh as he figured out who the kid had to be. He said, “There was a young cowboy wearing chinked chaps in that bunch with old Cyrus Grayson. After that you’ve got things a tad mixed up, old son.”
The barkeep backed away and the place got mighty quiet when the kid almost sobbed, “I ain’t your son. My mama was married up when I was born. I’m Jason Townsend, and I got my own rep as a man nobody had best mess with, hear?”
Longarm nodded soberly and said, “In that case I’d rather buy you a beer than mess with you, Jason.”
The kid said, “I don’t drink with back-shooting sons of bitches.”
The barkeep half moaned, “Jesus H. Christ!” One of the Mexican domino players murmured, “Vamanos, amigos. Tengo que mear como el demonic!”
So all the customers decided they had to piss like the devil, whether they spoke Spanish or not. The barkeep just lit out the back way without saying anything.
Longarm said quietly, “I can overlook that part about my probable parentage, seeing we seem to have the place to ourselves, if you’d be kind enough to tell me just who this Julesburg Kid ever shot in the back. I ain’t him. But since I seem to remind you of some hired gun with a nasty rep…”
Then he read the sidestep away from the bar for what it meant and snapped, “Don’t try it, Jason. I know Merwin Hulbert still makes those cheap shiny thumb-busters, but it was never a good fighting gun to begin with and I don’t want to prove that to you, boy!”
Young Townsend snarled, “I’ll show you who’s a boy! I’d heard you’d lost your nerve. Heard that was how come you back-shot that brand inspector with no rep of his own. You ain’t got the grit to slap leather face-to-face with another gunfighter, eh?”
Longarm muttered, “Aw, shit, you’re supposed to be a gunfighter as well as a total asshole?”
It was the wrong thing to say to a punk on the prod. Townsend had been working himself up all the time he’d been trailing his intended victim. So he moved fast, faster than most, as his gun hand swooped down on those side-draw ivory grips.
Then he was reeling along the bar with his cheap fancy gun still in its holster and two hundred grains of hot lead cooling off inside his ruptured but still-convulsing heart. As Longarm followed his last movements with a smoking but now-silent Winchester, the boy bawled out, “Don’t whup me no more and I’ll be good, Mama!”
Then he landed facedown in the sawdust with one spur still ringing like a coin spinning down as Longarm muttered, “I told you not to try, you poor dumb kid!”
As the smoke cleared, the barkeep came back in with a somewhat older gent wearing a silvery mustache and matching pewter badge. So Longarm started to identify himself as he finished reloading.
Before he could do so, the town marshal firmly stated, “I don’t want to hear your sad story. Kevin here just told me the punk-ass was the one who started it, and no jury would ever hang a man who’d been called a son of a bitch to his face in public.”
Longarm put his gun away and just paid attention to his elders as the town law continued. “I’d hold you for the coroner’s hearing anyways, if I liked noise. But rightly or wrongly, you just now gunned the black-sheep son of a mighty big and mighty close cattle clan I’d as soon not mess with in an election year. So why don’t you do us both a favor and ride on, Julesburg?”
Longarm managed not to grin as he quietly replied, “I see great minds do run in the same channels. I’d only stopped here to wet my whistle on my way t-“
“Don’t tell us where you’re headed and we won’t have to tell the Townsends,” the town law said. “Nobody with a lick of sense is about to lie to the Townsends about anything involving the spilled blood of even a worthless Townsend. And I don’t want to have to tidy up after any local voters neither. So how come you’re just standing there like a big-ass bird, stranger?”
Longarm allowed he was just leaving and left, crabbing to one side as he stepped out the swinging doors into the darkness. But nobody gathered outside seemed more than curious as he bulled his way through and crossed over to the livery.
One of the Mexican hostlers said he’d figured El Brazo Largo would want one of his caballos saddled in a hurry, and so he’d taken the liberty of cinching that stock saddle to the fresher-looking mare.
Longarm nodded soberly, but said, “Seeing you’ve guessed who I might be, I shouldn’t have to tell you why I’d rather ride on aboard less distinctive horseflesh. What sort of a swap might you be willing to make for danged near pure Spanish barbs?”
The hostler grinned like a kid smelling fresh-baked pie while coming home from school, and said, “Take your pick from our remuda out in the corral. In God’s truth we don’t have stock to match either of those two you rode in with. Pero we may be able to send you on your way with reliable if less distinguished riding stock, eh?”
They could. Longarm rode out of town before midnight aboard one bay and leading another. In the meantime he’d changed shirts. Everyone who’d been there would recall a stranger in a green satin shirt as the intended victim of the late Jason Townsend. The one thing anyone could say for dusky-rose poplin was that it didn’t look at all like green satin.
Longarm wouldn’t have entered either fresh mount in a serious horse race, but he found them both steady and willing. So along about two in the morning he tried crossing back over the river to the less traveled side.
He suspected he’d picked the wrong ford when the river came up to his knees and filled his boots. But as long as he was at it, he took off his telescoped Stetson and bent down with it to fill the crown with more water.
Once the felt had taken the time to soften some, he punched the crown all the way plain, and then creased it along the top and dimpled both sides cavalry-style.
