the other day look like, Lash?”
The professional tough hesitated, grinned, and modestly confessed, “Too big, old, and ugly to be any mystery woman in disguise. And I kicked him in the balls to teach him to keep his drawers buttoned up around married women. You surely don’t suspect old Greek George as the one that pretty half-wit calls Uncle Chester!”
Longarm swung himself up into the saddle as he replied, “I mean to ask him when I get to Florence. So where might he be found?”
Lash Flanders said, “At the doc’s or resting up at his boardinghouse, I reckon. I went easy on the son of a bitch, considering how sore some husbands were at him. I never broke no bones nor gouged out no eyeballs. And I still say he couldn’t be the one Maureen calls her Uncle Chester.”
Silent Knight said, “Rose Cassidy had better taste than to mess with old Greek George. Like Lash says, he’s old and ugly, and old Rose has turned down many a good-looking young cuss who dropped by to see if she needed anything from town.”
“Like me,” said Lash Flanders modestly, adding, “I like women old enough to know what they’re doing. But do I catch up with that young rascal, I mean to clean his plow. For he has to be a pussy-eater at the very least!”
Silent Knight laughed and said, “Show me the man who don’t eat pussy and I’ll show you how to steal his woman. But it do seem odd a drifter none of us knew could get so lucky with old Rose.”
Longarm didn’t comment on how oversexed a man might have to be to risk molesting a lover’s feebleminded children as well. He figured he’d just ask the jasper his secret after he caught up with him. The traveling peddler who liked to pester gals that way himself might or might not know a rival who’d had better luck with the missing horse-breeder, and possibly some other local gals as well. Longarm knew your average Don Juan was restless enough. A Don Juan who’d make a play for both mother and daughter under the same roof would surely make a play for other gals under other roofs.
Longarm took his leave from the regulators and rode up out of the draw to find the gloaming light left just right for riding at a mile-eating trot. It was rougher on one’s balls aboard a stock saddle, and now he was sorry he’d left his old army McClellan behind. For his half-ass try at working the Flint Hills in disguise wasn’t panning out worth shit, and he was riding uncomfortably for no good reason.
But it had to be done, seeing a comfortable walk would get him into town too late, and loping much of the way would be too rough on his borrowed mount.
He aimed to get there well before bedtime because it would be rude to wake up a witness recovering from a beating. He needed to talk to the womanizing Greek George because it took one such gent to know another and Uncle Chester was shaping up as a serious suspect.
That old Nesbit place, inhabited by no more than two women, neither having kith nor kin worth mention in these parts, made sense as the sort of temporary hideout Miss Medusa Le Mat liked to line up ahead of any bank job. Nobody knew for certain how those other hideouts had been chosen or lined up. So what if they sent some member of the gang ahead to scout it out and lull anyone there into trusting them until it came time to take over?
A handsome young stud buttering up a healthy young widow woman with no regular lover made a heap of sense. Longarm doubted Miss Medusa Le Mat had told him to mess up by fooling with the daughter of the house as well. If the poor simp was still alive, he was oversexed and not too bright. Another womanizer prowling the same range for pussy would have been likely to notice such a specimen more than your average rider might have while searching for strays or coyotes.
What was that Mr. Charles Dickens had put in those Pickwick Papers about the horny coachman who knew all the gals who put out for at least eighty miles?
That was the sort of wandering Don Juan he was looking for. A man who knew more than most about getting laid, or trying to get laid, in these parts. For even if Greek George didn’t know beans about Miss Medusa Le Mat or Uncle Chester, there was no telling when such information about other folks might come in handy.
Chapter 14
Longarm had lost some time back at that draw, and it seemed even later than he thought as he spied the string of twinkles that had to be Florence up ahead. Country folks tended to turn in early, and the few scattered spreads he’d been passing were little more than dark shapeless blobs against the lighter blackness of the rolling grassy swells.
But things brightened up as he rode into town. A beanery near the railroad stop, across from the illuminated Western Union sign, was open for late travelers, while more than one saloon along the lamp-lit main street spilled light and piano music out on the plank walks as if Kansas had never gone dry.
Longarm stabled his borrowed chestnut at the livery near the railroad stop, ambled over to the Western Union, and wired Billy Vail a progress report at night-letter rates. He only put down the bare bones he had on the mission he’d been sent out on. He knew he was inclined to get more interested in local affairs than his home office approved of.
As if to back Billy Vail’s nagging about local lawmen being there to worry about local affairs, Hard Pan Parsons, the chief constable of Florence, hailed Longarm as the younger federal lawman was coming out of the telegraph office.
As they shook hands in the dusty street, Hard Pan said, “They told me at the livery you was in town. What’s this about Rose Cassidy dropping out of sight and Undersheriff Brennan being stuck with her idiot child?”
Longarm countered by asking who might have told him that before he could ride less than a full score of country miles from the junction.
Hard Pan pointed with his chin at the doorway Longarm had just now come from as he easily replied, “Pat Brennan wired us hours ago. She said you were headed our way. I still wired her all the latest we may have on that possible bank robbery in these parts. But let’s not talk out here in the night air with our throats so dry, old son.”
Longarm didn’t argue. It was up to a Kansas lawman to say whether a Kansas saloon served needled beer or not. He ordered his own with a shot of Maryland rye as they took a corner table for some private rag-chewing.
He got out his notebook when Hard Pan declared, “We was already wondering why a known gunslick called Buster Crabtree never showed up at his coming-home party. Another local graduate of Jefferson Barracks has been glimpsed hither and yon in these parts, but seems to be trying to avoid kith and kin, as if he never got out.”
