the right to withdraw from the Union if we damn well wanted.”
“Which I think was overruled by the highest court possible a few years back. The court of shot an’ shell. In case you ain’t heard, Tex, the South lost.”
“Yes, but the provision is still there, still in force.”
“Still there maybe but not in force.”
“Yes, well, there is room for doubt, isn’t there?”
“Not the way I understand it.”
“But then you aren’t a member of the Texas First party, are you.”
“C’mon. You mean that? These dumb assholes actually think they can take Texas out of the Union and create their own country again? Has anyone reminded them that it didn’t work the last two times they tried it?”
“Two? Oh. You mean when we seceded from Mexico and then again …”
“Yeah. Two. And it didn’t work worth a damn neither time.”
“That’s the way you see it, but don’t forget that it’s Texans we’re talking about here. And we can be stubborn sons of bitches when we take a notion to.”
“So they’re really thinking about trying it again, huh.”
“By legal writ, not by force of arms, I think,” Amos said.
“But if a few folks had t’ die to make it all possible …”
Amos shrugged. “I couldn’t say that for sure, of course. But when you think about it …”
Longarm sat in silence for a moment, then said, “Y’know, Amos, one o’ these days I’m gonna be sent out on a case that’s simple an’ straightforward and don’t involve a damn thing other than a little robbery, murder, stuff like that. You know. Easy stuff.”
“I keep hoping for the same sort of thing,” Amos said, handing the whiskey bottle to Longarm after taking a quick one for himself. “It never happens. But I do keep hoping.”
Chapter 25
Longarm’s morning was something less than fruitful. There were three murder victims now whose families he should have interviewed in search of a common link or bond among them that might account for their having been killed. That, at least, was the theory. Except, as he already knew, Peter Nare had no surviving family, his wife and only child having died together in childbirth some years previous.
As for Norman Colton, whose murder brought him here, it turned out that the Addington postmaster, although a native of the community himself, had married a girl from Tennessee, and according to Colton’s neighbors, the distraught widow had left for an extended visit with her family soon after the funeral. Exactly when, or even if, she intended to return to Texas was unclear, though one busybody biddy of a neighbor was at least helpful enough to volunteer Longarm the Tennessee address where he could interview Mrs. Colton if he so desired. He’d told her he would get back to her on that if need be.
And as for the first man killed, Wil Meyers, he turned out to have a family, a wife, and a regular rat pack of runny-nosed children. But someone had obviously warned the woman not to speak with any tall strangers, and as soon as Longarm identified himself, damned if she didn’t gather her gaggle of children together and point Longarm out to them, loudly and rather nastily informing them that they were under no circumstances to speak with him, listen to him, or accept bribes from him.
“Even candy, mama?” one smart-aleck little peckerwood asked.
“If he offers you candy, Jeremy, you can take it. Then kick him in the shin and run like crazy.”
The rotten little pukes had gotten quite a laugh out of that one. Dammit.
Longarm’s mood was at something less than his best when he turned and headed back toward the center of town. He hadn’t minded the hike out to the Meyers farm on the north edge of Addington, but he wasn’t so crazy about the long and dusty walk back.
He was, he thought, about halfway there when he heard a shy, female voice call out to him. “Yoo hoo. Mister deputy man.”
The voice came from the shaded porch of an old but once rather fine house. Once-white paint was dull and peeling now, but the lines of the place were good—upright and severe but in nice proportion. The porch roof protected the ground floor from the heat of the day, and a trio of hugely magnificent oaks spread their protection to the upper floor. A vine-bearing trellis lent privacy to most of the porch, and it was from behind the leafy screen of a flowering vine—Longarm had no idea in hell what variety the white flowers were but they were pretty and smelled kinda nice—that the voice called out to him.
“Yes’m?”
“Do you have a minute?”
“Yes, of course.” He didn’t know who it was. But the sound being that of a voice, not a shot, why not respond to the offer?
He was a mite surprised when he mounted the porch stairs and could see behind the vines to discover that the lady was the thin young woman who’d waited on him in the ice cream parlor the day before. It took him a second or two to bring her name back to mind.
“Miss Clarice,” he said as he removed his Stetson and swept it low, bowing slightly as he did so.
“You are very mannerly,” she said. And then rather impishly added, “For a Northerner.”
“Is that what I am?”
“Isn’t it?”
