Longarm smiled thinly and said, 'Only way to know would be to find out. I got to find my own place to stay whilst I'm down this way looking for myself. The Dexter ain't a bad hotel, for Trinidad.'
Cora said, 'Don't be silly. We've plenty of room inside, and we can get you started earlier for the mining settlements in the morning!'
He said, 'Don't want to talk to wayward coal miner's daughters just yet. Want to talk to this jasper who's been fooling with all sorts of women in my name. My odds on catching up with him at his hotel in town are better. So that's where I'm headed now, if you'd be kind enough to let me have my hat back.'
She was, but as she led him inside to fetch his hat she heaved a great sigh and said, 'You're right about jumping to conclusions. You're not at all like the Longarm I've heard so much about.'
CHAPTER 20
Longarm had been on some moonlight buggy rides in his day. So he took his time returning his hired mount and stock saddle to the nearby livery and lugging his Yellowboy and saddlebags over to the Dexter Hotel. He hired a room and tipped generously to have his light baggage carried up the one flight. Then he came back down, wearing just his.44-40 under his frock coat, and offered the room clerk a smoke as he flashed his badge and got down to brass tacks.
The clerk said he was always proud to uphold law and order, and after some explanations he understood why a lawman might feel it best to register under a false name. But then he said they didn't have any other guests signed in as Custis Long, or as any sort of lawman.
Longarm got both their smokes going as he considered this. Then he suggested, 'Someone may have added two and two to get five. A jasper who sort of looked like me wouldn't have to say he was me to have at least one feeble mind spread the word around town he was me.'
The clerk took a thoughtful drag on the cheroot, shook his head, and said, 'I follow your drift. But the only guest we have about your age and build, with a mustache, just won't work. You'd need a feeble mind indeed to confound Mr. Zoltan Kun with an American in any line of work!' Longarm said flatly, 'Zoltan Kun sounds sort of furrin.' The clerk said, 'So does Zoltan Kun. Has an accent you can barely savvy when he's talking slow. He's one of them mining men from the Carpathian Mountains or wherever the Emperor Franz Josef gets his damn coal.'
Longarm said he wouldn't know about that, and said, 'He's a coal miner staying in a hotel this far from the mines?'
The clerk shook his head and explained. 'Mr. Kun don't dig in any mine for coal. I suspect he used to. But now he deals in the stuff. You'd have to ask him exactly how he makes out so well these days. Like I said, I can barely follow his English.'
Longarm said, 'I mean to do just that, as soon as he gets in. I see you have one of them tin-titty bells here to page your bellboy. What if you were to ding it three times suddenly the next time this Zoltan Kun comes in?'
The clerk allowed he could manage that. So Longarm went around the corner to a newsstand, picked up the Rocky Mountain News and a couple of magazines, and returned to the hotel to camp in a corner under a reading lamp and some potted paper palms.
A long time went by. He finished the paper and as much of the Scientific American as he could grasp. Like many self-educated men, Longarm pushed his ever-expanding store of information to the limits by reading stuff by more learned gents.
The third and last magazine was a Street & Smith Adventure pulp, with the stories set in tropical climes Longarm had never been to. He'd found their tales of the American West a mite silly in the past. But for all a man who'd never been there knew, there really might be a man-eating plant in Madagascar.
According to the woodcut illustrating the story, the ferocious vegetable looked like a giant artichoke, and had a half-dressed colored gal stuck in it up to her waist. The cannibal folks who lived there in Madagascar had to feed that man-eating plant from time to time, likely to keep it from pulling itself up by the roots and coming after 'em.
The desk bell chimed three times. So Longarm never found out how that gal being eaten alive by the artichoke made out. He tossed the magazine aside and rose to his own considerable height as a tall dark drink of water in an undertaking outfit and pearl Stetson was making for the stairwell.
Longarm called out, 'Mr. Kun?' and the stranger stopped to turn and face him. Longarm didn't feel at all flattered as he got a better view of the cuss who'd been mistaken for himself.
There was no resemblance at all. Zoltan Kun was handsome enough, in a hollow-cheeked oily way. His infernal mustache was not only much smaller, but waxed, for Pete's sake, the way the young Kaiser and his fancy Prussian officers gussied UP.
Longarm said, 'I'd be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, sometimes known as Longarm in the papers. I don't suppose you've ever heard of me?'
The clerk had been right about Kun's accent, but Longarm was able to follow as the Hungarian nodded gravely and replied, 'Why don't we go up to my room? We seem to have much to talk about, and I have a bottle of kognak you might find amusing.'
Longarm allowed he was game. On the way up the stairs the tall Hungarian said, 'I don't know who started the rumor I was really an American lawman pretending to be a Magyar labor contractor. I never told anyone I was you. Sometimes I have to agree with the Austrians that my people are a little strange.'
As he followed the polite-enough cuss along the hall Longarm said, 'Hold on, old son. Are you mixed up in that Knights of Labor outfit, the same as old Attila Homagy?'
Kun shook his head and said, 'I'm afraid the KOL would have me on their black list. I recruit greenhorns to work in the mines, as non-union labor. I make no apologies for this. If the miners feel they have the right to organize and demand more pay, the mine owners have the right to recruit greenhorns and pay them less.'
He unlocked a door and struck a match. Longarm waited until he'd lit the wall sconce inside before he entered. The room was poshly furnished for these parts. The bed hadn't been slept in recently. Zoltan Kun said easily, 'You find me coming in so late because most of this evening was spent with a friend. A gentleman does not say more than that, and I assure you she has no connection to the tiresome Attila Homagy and his insane wife.'
Kun waved Longarm to a seat on the bed. Longarm grabbed a bentwood chair instead, and turned it around to sit it astride as he asked, 'You admit you do know Attila and Magda Homagy?'
