**skip**LONGARM AND THE BIG FIFTY By Tabor Evans Jove Books New York Copyright (C) 1996 by Jove Publications, Inc.
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ISBN: 0-515-11895-8
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DON’T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him … the Gunsmith.
LONGARM by Tabor Evans The popular long-running series about U.S. Deputy Marshal Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.
SLOCUM by Jake Logan Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.
Chapter 1
The long, hot summer day had ended, and so Yuma was getting out of bed as Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long was finishing his supper in a stand-up cafetin across the plaza from the jailhouse. The fish pie was tempting, but he had chores to do and a train to catch. So Longarm, as he was better known to friend and foe alike, washed down the last of his hot tamales with tepid black coffee and settled up with the pretty Mexican counter gal, leaving her a dime tip to show he hadn’t ignored her batty eyelashes because he’d thought she was too fat. Then he paused by the newsstand out front to light a three-for-a-nickel cheroot and grimace down at the evening headlines.
As if folks along the lower Gila didn’t have enough to worry them, the fool Arizona Advocate was blaring, “APACHE OUT ON WARPATH!”
You couldn’t buy the Tombstone Epitaph around the central plaza. So there was no sweet voice of reason from old John Clum, the former BIA agent who’d given up educating Indians to publish his own newspaper for cowboys and such to read. The last edition of the Epitaph read by Longarm had explained how unlikely it would be for Victorio and his reservation-jumpers to raid west of, say, Apache Pass in high summer. It was scandalous to scare folks like that just to sell a few more copies of your otherwise dull newspaper.
President Hayes and his first lady, Miss Lemonade Lucy, had made it clear they expected all federal employees, including lawmen, to dress and behave like ribbon clerks or bank tellers. But since neither of them came out to Arizona Territory in August all that often, Longarm had packed his tweed frock coat and vest away with his infernal tie, and pinned his federal badge to the front of his hickory shirt lest anyone take him for a saddle tramp packing a .44-40 cross-draw.
It was still hotter than the hinges of Hell as he trudged across the dusty plaza. But somewhere in the night a guitar was commencing a lively hat dance and a young gal was standing on a trestle table to light a string of paper lanterns. Longarm didn’t ask or even wonder if they were fixing to have a fiesta or just a market night. Once the sun went down in Arizona, everyone felt overdue for some damned sort of a celebration.
Longarm had already done the paperwork at the jailhouse when he’d arrived that morning aboard the westbound Southern Pacific, so they had Harmony Drake out front and ready to go. Or out front in cuffs and leg irons, whether he wanted to go or not.
One of the Arizona lawmen who’d been holding the killer on a federal warrant for Longarm to pick up confided cheerfully that the prisoner seemed mighty sad for a sport who killed other folks with such a carefree attitude. “Old Harmony turned down both his dinner and a finer supper than he deserved,” the lawman said. “Says he’s feeling poorly. Reckon they told him how you crap your pants when they hang you and he’s hoping to hold down the stink.”
Longarm had never cottoned to gallows humor aimed at victims in no position to enjoy it. So he simply nodded at the seated prisoner, perhaps a tad younger and too over-dressed for the occasion, and said, “We’ll be leaving now, Mister Drake. I got us a coach seat aboard the night train to Deming. I’m sorry you have to wear those leg irons. But they’re what you get for escaping the last time anyone tried to transport you cross-country. We’ll be seated by a window and you may need that denim jacket as this desert air cools off after dark. But right now you’re sweating like a pig, and I reckon we’d best get you down to shirtsleeves before we leave.”
Earlier, Longarm had given the Arizona jailors the cuffs and leg irons the prisoner was wearing. So he fumbled the little key from the fob pocket of his tweed pants to unlock the cuffs as Harmony Drake’s rusty-sounding voice creaked, “I ain’t sweating because I feel hot. I feel like I’m coming down with something. Something serious as hell.”
Longarm helped the uncuffed prisoner out of his sweat-soaked though thin denim jacket as he calmly replied, “We have to lay over betwixt trains at Deming, just across the New Mexico line. If the cool night ride ain’t cheered you up, I’ll have a sawbones look you over before we head on up to Colorado.” Drake said he doubted he’d last that long. The local lawman who’d made rude remarks about his date with the hangman suggested he die on his way there and save everyone a heap of trouble.
Longarm snapped the cuffs back in place and draped the limp denim jacket over the shining steel links as he helped the condemned killer to stand up, quietly saying, “The train depot ain’t but a furlong or so to walk. Do you reckon you can make it without help?” Harmony Drake said, “Not hardly,” and sat back down, adding it felt as if someone had drained all the juice out of his legs and that he had a bellyache as well.
Another local jailer snorted, “He’s gold-bricking you, Longarm. He ain’t sick. He just don’t want you to carry him back to that Colorado court’s jurisdiction.”
