Reflecting on how the mummified elk remains he’d just swallowed would stick with him and blot up beer all evening, Longarm shoved his chair back from the table and called the lonesome-looking waitress to his side. She looked lonesome because at that hour there was nobody else to be seen under the log-beamed ceiling of the cavernous hotel dining room. When she nervously asked him what was wrong, he suspected other guests with weaker jaws had commented on a noble stag who’d been allowed to die of old age before they carved his carcass up.
He gently said, “There’s nothing wrong, ma’am. I generally eat till I’ve had enough and then I stop. I had some tuna pie earlier today, and I can still taste the sorghum sugar. So I reckon I’d as soon pass on them desserts you got on your menu. But you can fetch me another cup of black coffee if you like.”
She did, saying, “You must be that lawman from Denver.” As she refilled his mug, she added, “They said someone was coming to get that snotty kid who tried to leave town without paying all his just debts. How come they call you Longarm? I’ll allow you’re tall, but your arms don’t look unnatural to me, no offense.”
He chuckled and explained. “My last name’s Long. I mean I’d be Custis Long, not that my handle is protracted. Some reporter seems to have put that together with the way I’m sometimes sent to act as the long arm of the law and decided I was Longarm. But you can call me Custis, ma’am.”
She dimpled and replied, “In that case you can call me Matilda Waller, out of York State by way of some misspent years in Kansas, and I get off work here at midnight.”
Longarm sipped some coffee before he said, “I know the feeling. I would rather work most any shift but noon to midnight no matter what my job was. You say that outlaw Bunny McNee was snotty to you?”
She wrinkled her nose and replied, “He never got fresh with me, or left a tip for anybody during his stay here. Peony, the chambermaid, told us he was one of those sissy boys who didn’t like girls.”
Longarm took another sip and asked, “Do tell? How did Miss Peony come to this conclusion ? Did Bunny McNee tell her he didn’t like her?”
The waitress laughed and said, “Not many men pester poor Peony that way. I’ve told her to cut down on sweets, but she says she needs the energy. She says she was working upstairs when she got to Mr. McNee’s Don’t Disturb sign and heard all this moaning and groaning coming from inside, as if he wasn’t alone in bed after all.”
Longarm swallowed a little distaste with some coffee as well. Such petty gossip would have been none of his beeswax if Bunny McNee had been simply a fellow guest at a hotel with a nosy staff. But they’d sent him all this way in search of gossip along the owlhoot trail. So he suggested, “Young squirts have been known to moan and groan alone in bed, being broke in a strange town with nobody to talk to save for a friendly hand.”
The waitress grinned like a mean little kid and warned him such habits would grow hair on one’s palms. Then she confided, “He wasn’t playing with himself. Peony was watching, from another room, when another young rider she’d never seen before slipped out, grinning to himself like a dirty dog. Peony allowed he was more manly-looking and should have been able to get a real girl. But that’s the way some men seem to behave, the silly things.”
Longarm had about finished his second coffee. He asked if anyone had seen that other stranger since.
Matilda shook her head and replied, “That sissy deadbeat was all alone when they caught him just outside of town. They never expected to. For he’d already hopped the narrow-gauge to Golden by the time the manager discovered he’d skipped out on his bill. But the train got stopped by fallen rocks across the track and had to back up all the way home. So Constable Payne’s boys were waiting for him at the station. How come they sent a federal deputy all this way after a sissy who tried to cheat this hotel?”
Longarm murmured there was a mite more to it than that. Then he left a dime near his empty plate, knowing three meals a day would be covered by his American plan hotel bill, and mosied out to see what Red Robin might have to say for herself.
Red Robin was what they called a mighty pretty piano player with one hell of a figure and no musical talent worth mentioning. Longarm had met her down Texas way a spell back, when she’d fortunately been on the run after gunning a son of a bitch who’d deserved it to begin with and hadn’t really died in the end.
As Longarm parted the batwing doors of the saloon she was playing in that evening, he had to wince as he suddenly realized Red Robin was groping across the keys for the tune of “Lorena” when he’d been assuming she was trying to play “Aura Lee.” He liked the surprises she sprang pounding bedsprings better. But he found himself a place at the bar and quietly ordered a scuttle of draft to sip while she finished a set. It sounded dreadful when Red Robin was really startled at the piano.
As he sipped, he viewed her lovely rear view with an anticipation of more intimate views to follow. Red Robin liked it dog-style, and the best part was that she never made a pal feel guilty in the warm gray light of dawn. For like himself, Red Robin led a tumbleweed life that called for grabbing such prudent pleasures as fate offered and never holding others to promises too awkward to keep.
From her scarlet velveteen dress and matching upswept hair, one gathered Red Robin admired red. Longarm suspected she might be a natural brunette, but he wouldn’t have bet big money on this because she shaved under her arms and between her creamy thighs. She said a gal who lived on the road had to watch out for bugs. That might have been why she wore no unmentionables under that tight-bodiced scarlet dress. Her skirts Were long enough to keep such secrets, and pals who knew her as well as Longarm never told.
He had a pretty good erection for the pretty little thing by the time Red Robin stopped in what seemed like midstream and got up to see if anyone clapped. Some of the boys did, as soon as they figured out what she was doing. Everyone of the male persuasion liked Red Robin to look at, and when she was just smiling so pretty, nobody had to listen.
Longarm had expected Red Robin to look surprised as their eyes met through the tobacco haze. But he didn’t know what to make of her odd expression as she gulped and waved at a corner table for the two of them.
They each made their separate ways there, with more customers asking her to marry them, and sat down across from one another. He knew a lady of around thirty had no call to drink beer between meals, and no professional entertainer with a lick of sense drank the hard stuff. But he still felt obliged to ask her if she wanted him to order something for her.
Red Robin shook her head, licked her painted lips, and murmured, “I heard you were in town. They said you’d only be here overnight.”
Longarm left his own beer untasted as he nodded. “They told you true. But the night is young and I got a swell room over to the Elk Rack Hotel, honey.”
