constable, and you can explain it to Judge Drysdale in the morning, drunk or sober. They call me Hard Pan Parsons for reasons you don’t want to go into, pilgrim. I have discovered in my travels through this vale of woe that whilst there’s no way to make a man do anything he don’t want to, there’s many a way to make him wish to Sweet Jesus that he’d wanted to. So about that fucking gun …”
Longarm handed his six-gun over. He still had his derringer hidden in an inside pocket of his denim jacket, and better yet, he had his own badge and identification in case things got unbearable.
Meanwhile, a night in a small-town jail and the usual modest fine that went with no argument seemed more bearable than announcing who’d just decked their town bully in front of God and everybody.
So Longarm walked meek as a lamb in front of Hard Pan Parsons and the other disturber of Florence’s peace— on an infernal workday night, for Pete’s sake. With any luck he might manage to be on his way in the morning with nobody in these parts the wiser.
But he had no such luck. Hard Pan Parsons was wiser than he let on too. Once they got to the solid-brick jailhouse, the older lawman and his younger deputies searched both prisoners with considerable skill, and Hard Pan muttered, “Shame on you,” when a gleeful deputy dangled Longarm’s double derringer on the end of its gold- washed watch chain.
The constable himself took Longarm’s billfold from another inside pocket, and Longarm was braced for most any reaction than the one old Hard Pan came up with when he cracked open the billfold to see a shiny federal badge and Longarm’s deputy marshal’s warrant.
Without blinking an eye, the Florence lawman snapped the leather shut and dryly remarked, “I’ll hang on to this for safekeeping, seeing you seem to have some serious money here. What did you say your name was, stranger?”
Caught by surprise, Longarm blurted out, “Crawford, Buck Crawford was what they called me the last place I worked, out Colorado way.”
It served Reporter Crawford of the Denver Post right, and it would be even easier to remember because Longarm had often wondered whether he and Doctor Crawford Long, who’d discovered painless surgery, might be kissing cousins. He wasn’t sure he wanted to kiss another grown man. But he sure wanted to shake the hand of the man who’d come up with such a grand notion as general anesthetics in time for the big war back East.
Once he and his fellow saloon brawler had been searched and marched back to the row of boiler-plate and circus barred patent cells, Hard Pan told his turnkey, “Put Waco down that way in the empty cage. I’ll put old Buck here down the other way, lest the two of ‘em kiss and make up, or kill one another, before the judge can decide their fates.”
Nobody argued. Hard Pan led Longarm past a more crowded cell, where a crap game was in progress, on past a lonesome-looking black man playing “My Pretty Quadroon” on a mouth organ, and into an empty cell at the far end. Then he soberly turned and asked, “All right, Deputy Long, what the hell are we trying to get away with here?”
Longarm cautiously asked how big a piece of the action Florence Township was prepared for.
Hard Pan Parsons flatly replied, “We’re both lawmen, sworn to uphold the law of the land. Are you saying your play with Waco McCord is none of my beeswax?”
Longarm shook his head respectfully and explained, “Being a mean drunk ain’t a federal offense, and as far as I know, that’s all I have on old Waco. I hit him because I’d have drawn even more attention to my fool self if I’d gunned him, and it looked as if he was working up the sand to gun me.”
The town law, more familiar with locals like Waco, made a wry face and said, “He’s just an asshole. But I thank you for not killing him, I reckon. It’s only a question of time before some other stranger kills him. I’ve warned Waco about threatening others whilst packing hardware. But like you said, he’s a mean drunk, and seeing it was just one of them things, I reckon you’d as soon be on your way. So let’s go out front before I give you back your belongings.”
But Longarm shook his head again and said, “I got a better notion, seeing you’re so willing to back my play.”
Hard Pan told him to name his game.
Longarm said, “I’d like you to toss me in with your more regular customers. Nights seem long when you’re locked up with a friendly sort of talking man, and I’m here to see if I can get a line on the sort of crook who recruits extra help from the sort of gents who wind up shooting craps in small-town jails, no offense.”
Hard Pan said none was taken, and asked what Longarm wanted him to tell the court clerk come morning.
Longarm said, “Nothing, unless they decide to put me on the chain gang. I’d as soon plead guilty to disturbing the peace, pay the fine, and head on into the Flint Hills as a friendless out-of-work cowhand in the market for most any sort of friends or any sort of work.”
Chapter 5
No well-run jail allowed money or other weapons to its overnight guests. But subject to sensible behavior, Hard Pan let them keep their tobacco, matches, and a pair of dice to win or lose match stems with. Longarm could tell right off that the eight or ten town and country boys in the cell knew one another of old. So he sat on the floor in a corner, lit a cheroot, and waited to see what anybody wanted to make of it.
What somebody wanted to make of it was close to an open threat. A husky cowhand with brows that met in the middle rose from the circle of crap shooters to amble over and say flat out, “I want one of them sissy seegars, pilgrim.”
Longarm replied not unkindly, “Can’t spare none. Don’t know how long they mean to hold me, and I don’t see any cigar store Indians in here with us.”
The crap game got awfully quiet as their obvious bully blinked in surprise and asked, “Are you hard of hearing or something? I never asked you for a smoke, you son of a bitch. I told you I wanted one!”
To which Longarm replied in the same calm tone, “I heard what you said. You heard what I said. Call me that again and one of us is sure going to wish you hadn’t.”
The slightly shorter but far beefier stranger sighed, doubled up a pair of ham-like fists, and said, “That tears it. On your feet and be prepared to swallow some teeth, little darling!”
