Then she asked, her blue eyes staring astounded, “How did you do that, Henry? The last time anyone told Alvin to leave me alone there was broken chinaware and busted-up furniture all over the place!”
Longarm said, “I told him a white lie about us. is it safe to say you don’t have any other gent here in town to stick up for you?”
She sighed. “The few who might have shown any interest all seem afraid of Alvin. He’s the town blacksmith and they say he can bend horseshoes with his bare hands. What you did was awfully sweet, Henry. But if I were you I’d ride. I can handle Alvin without resorting to gunplay. But you may wind up with a harder row to hoe!”
Longarm finished his coffee—she hadn’t brought any more—and left the right change on his own table without sitting down as he said, “I doubt we’ll have a duel over you, no offense. I mean to ride on. But I’ve had a long night in the saddle and daytime ain’t the best time to travel here and now. So I reckon I’ll hire a hotel bed upstairs and stay out of sight and study war no more till suppertime.”
She told him he was cutting it thin, then spotted the quarter tip he was leaving and allowed she hoped to serve him some more at suppertime.
He ambled through the archway into the hotel lobby next door. An old jasper who looked as hearty as one of their dusty paper fern plants or the dusty elk’s head over the key counter, stared hard at the Winchester Longarm had toted in by way of baggage and said he could have a corner room for six bits, payment in advance.
He brightened some when Longarm paid with a silver cartwheel and allowed he’d take the change in the form of not being disturbed one moment before he damned well decided to wake up and come back down for his supper.
The corner room offered cross ventilation and a view of the river, meaning it would be on the sunny side after high noon. But when Longarm shut the jalousies he saw there was far more breeze than light coming up through the slanted slats.
He bolted the hall door, stripped to the buff, and flopped naked atop the turned-down bedding to discover that, once he was able to take a load off his feet and clear his mind of listening for distant hoofbeats in the dark, he was more tuckered than he’d expected.
He was sound asleep in no time, unaware of the conversation those two advance scouts were having about him in the saloon across from his hotel.
The mean-looking Granddaddy Townsend was holding court at a corner table as the younger and faster- riding kinsmen of the late Jason Townsend remained standing, as if they were schoolboys reporting to their teacher to explain piss-poor grades. One insisted, “We’ve scouted high and we’ve scouted low, Granther. The only stranger to anyone we talked to here in Camino Viejo won’t work as the bastard who shot it out with our Jason.”
The grim, grizzled Granddaddy Townsend snapped, “Nobody shot it out with the dumb kid. Jason drew on a known gunfighter who was standing there with his damned carbine in his damned hand!”
The bitter old man looked away as he muttered, “Jason was a fool kid and I always knew he was going to die young and dumb, but blood calls to blood. You say there’s only one such stranger?”
One of the Townsend riders who’d been in the hotel dining room with Longarm said, “Tall, tanned cuss with a mustache, somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, just as they described that son of a bitch who gunned Jason. But after that he seemed to be known here.”
The old man snapped, “He had to be known some damned where, and we know he wasn’t from Loma Bianca, damn his eyes!”
The younger Townsend, who’d heard Trisha call Longarm Henry, said, “After that, he wore his hat crushed cavalry instead of Colorado. Had on a sissy pink shirt instead of the green one they told us about up in Loma Blanca. Everyone with any sense favors a six-gun and Winchester loading the same.44-40 brass in Apache Country. But he’s over to the Hotel de Paris if you want us to fetch him for you, Granther.”
The old man might have told them to. Then two more of his boys came in, blinking like owls as their eyes adjusted to the change from the dazzling sunlight out front. One called out, “We found some riding stock that don’t belong to nobody here in town, Granther. Stranger left ‘em at the town livery. Said he meant to bed down a spell and ride on in the cool of evening.”
The mean old man growled, “Never mind what he might be doing here. Which way was he coming from and what was he riding?”
The second of the two who’d found those bays at the nearby livery said, “Seems he rode in from the south on one bay gelding, leading a second. One’s a redder shade of chestnut than the other and they both have white blazes but different brands. Don’t know what you’d call either, seeing the Mex brands look more like kids’ scribbles than the letters and numbers real rancheros register.”
Granddaddy Townsend made a prune face and said, “Never mind all that. Any rider on the dodge can circle a town to come in from any direction. But that Julesburg Kid who murdered our Jason rode into Loma Blanca earlier astride a white barb and leading a palomino, in a green shirt, not no pink one. You say this jasper you other boys saw eating breakfast at the hotel knew somebody there?”
One of them nodded and said, “The waitress called him Henry. They acted sweet on one another, like he’d come courting.”
The old man rose from his seat, patting the worn grips of his Walker Conversion as he decided, “We’re wasting time. No killer on the owlhoot trail slows down to court waitress gals this close to the scene of his crime! Having no known business in these parts, that Julesburg Kid is doubtless on his way to that stagecoach line to Fort Wingate and points West, unless he’s streaking for Old Mexico in hopes of escaping us entire. So vamanos, muchachos. I want the head of that murderous drifter, and he sure as hell don’t seem to be here in Camino Viejo!”
As the bunch of them strode out of the saloon, boot heels thudding and spurs jingling, the barkeep who’d been listening silently turned to signal what looked like a regular customer sipping suds down the bar.
That wasn’t exactly what the man was there for. The barkeep asked if he’d been following all that war talk. The hired gun nodded casually and said, “I’m paid to notice trouble. Didn’t sound like trouble for anyone we know, though.”
The barkeep said, “Boss lady says she likes to hear everybody’s troubles hereabouts. You’d best go tell her what just blew into town.”
