LONGARM AND THE UNWRITTEN LAW
By Tabor Evans
CHAPTER 1
Along about midnight a naked man ran screaming down the hotel corridor amidst a blaze of gunfire. He'd been shot on the stairs leading down from the floor above, and hit twice more along the way. Yet he somehow made it as far as the stairs leading down to the floor below before two hundred grains of hot spinning lead caved in the back of his skull and somersaulted his flailing bare flesh all the way down to the next landing.
So there he lay, oozing blood and grinning up blankly, while the somewhat older man who'd gunned him stood over him in a dusty black suit and a haze of gun smoke, clicking the hammers of two six-guns on spent brass until a firm but not unkindly voice called down. 'You've emptied both your guns into him, which may be just as well for the both of us. So why don't you drop the both of them and tell me what this was all about. I ain't just being nosy. I'm Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long of the Denver District Court, and they pay me to pester folks like this.'
The middle-aged killer without a live round to his name turned and smiled sheepishly up at the taller barefoot figure wearing only tobacco-tweed pants and a cross-draw gun rig. The.44-40 that normally rode its owner's left hip was staring down through the clearing gunsmoke as alertly as the steel gray eyes of the bare-chested lawman aiming it. So the older man dropped his own hardware to the rug, licked his lips, and said, 'I know who you are. You'd be the one they call Longarm, and they say you can be fair as well as firm. I'd be L.J. Maxwell. I own and operate the Tumbling M, a day's ride down the South Platte.'
He kicked the naked body at his feet just hard enough to rate a warning look from Longarm. 'This piece of shit used to be my segundo, Sunny Jim Stanhope. He took my pay and he et my bread, and then he shagged my Edna Mae whilst I was away from our spread at the stock show!'
Longarm grimaced and said, 'I take it your Edna Mae is the lady I just heard wailing like a banshee when I tore past that open doorway next to my own?'
Maxwell nodded, stared morosely down at the younger man he'd just killed, and replied, 'It is. She said she was leaving me for this two-faced hound because he had a bigger dick. But I ask you, man to man, does this dead bastard's dick look unusually large to you?'
Longarm could only reply, 'Not at the moment. I don't know why no spiteful woman has ever told her man that her lover's old organ-grinder was smaller than his.'
Before Maxwell could answer, Sergeant Nolan of the Denver P.D. was at the bottom of the stairs with a brace of copper badges. Nolan and Longarm were on good terms. So the burly local lawman got out his notebook and asked, 'Would this case be federal, state, or municipal, pard?'
To which Longarm was pleased to reply, 'It's your misfortune and none of my own. Mister Maxwell here claims the bare-ass cadaver's one Sunny Jim Stanhope, and there's no argument about who just shot him deader than a turd in a milk bucket. Mister Maxwell alleges Stanhope was committing adultery with his lawfully married-up Edna Mae. So what'll you bet he's fixing to evoke the unwritten law?'
Sergeant Nolan stared up the stairs in dismay and declared, 'It hardly seems fair that it's municipal. We just got here. You saw him first, Longarm!'
Longarm put his own gun away as he shrugged his broad bare shoulders and replied, 'I never saw him do it. His woman's right upstairs, if you'd like to take her statement. Gunning your wife's lover smack in the middle of Denver has to violate some municipal ordinance. But it don't strike me as a federal offense. So like I said, it's your case to keep and cherish and I'm catching me a chill in this cold hallway.'
He turned away to remount the stairs, ignoring all the noise that seemed to be coming from the Denver P.D. and other patrons of the Viceroy Hotel. Being just a few streets over from the stockyards, the place didn't cater to a very quiet crowd, and gunshots in the night were as good as fire bells when it came to getting folks up and half dressed. A Denver lawman passed him near the open doorway where all the shooting had started. So Longarm felt no call to go in and talk to the big fat naked gal thrashing about on the bed as she pleaded for mercy. Longarm left it to the Denver P.D. to assure her she hadn't been murdered and get a statement out of her, once she'd calmed down just a hundred percent. He gently rapped a certain way on the door of his own hired room, and another naked lady let him in. She was one hell of an improvement over Edna Mae Maxwell.
Lina Marie Logan, just in from Omaha and anxious to see all the wonders of the Mile High City, was hardly a waif, and way too pretty to be shy about the lamplight as the two of them got back in bed together. Longarm had to hang up his six-gun and slide out of his pants first. So that gave him plenty of time to explain all that noise outside to the buxom blonde who'd been on top when the gunfire had commenced.
She said she didn't care and that she'd been about to start again without him, damn it. So this time he got on top, hooked one of his elbows under each of her soft knee joints, and spread her smooth pale thighs wide enough to make her beg for mercy as he hit bottom every other stroke. So a good time was had by all, and then, alas, it came time to climb back down out of the stars and share a smoke while they fought to regain some firmer grasp on their gasping. As he calmed her some with a three-for-a-nickel cheroot, she became more aware of the thumpings, bumpings, and occasional outbursts of conversation all around. She snuggled closer and made as if to cover the two of them with some bedding. He said soothingly, 'The door's bolted good and I told you Nolan was a pal of mine. Every copper badge in this precinct wants to see his own name on the final report. But they won't want us to join their crowd. The Denver P.D. would never forgive them for sharing this manslaughter complaint with another outfit.'
She still pulled a single sheet waist high as she sighed and asked what he thought might become of that poor neglected wife, now that her lover had been shot and her husband was in for some time at hard, if not a hanging.
Longarm shrugged his bare shoulders, cuddled her closer, and told her, 'Judging by the many times I've heard this sad story in the past, she'll go back to him and he, like a fool, will buy her teary-eyed promises to turn over a new leaf. From what I just saw of what she has to offer, not too many other men are apt to give her much choice. A jolly easygoing fat gal is one thing. A jolly easygoing fat gal with a man who comes after you with a brace of Army Schofields is another thing entire!'
Lina Marie chuckled, her unbound blond hair spread across one of his shoulders and half his bare chest, and proceeded to toy with the damp hairs on Longarm's belly as she mused aloud, 'At least she might not feel so neglected. But I seem to be missing something. Didn't you just say you'd handed her jealous husband over to the local police, darling?'
