Longarm and the Unwritten Law Read Online Free PDF Page A

trust any gal who couldn't tell what cowhands were saying to her."
    Longarm nodded absently, brightened, and said, "Hold on, Billy! Don't that prove me innocent? I don't speak Hungarian at all. So if she don't savvy our lingo, how in blue blazes was I supposed to act up with her whilst her old man was off to that union convention?"
    Vail grumbled, "I told you earlier that you didn't have to sell me on where you spent the merry month of May. It's her husband who's after you with two Schofields."
    Vail sipped some coffee himself before he added,"She must talk at least some English. Trinidad says an Irish neighbor woman backs up her story about some tall handsome stranger moving in with Attila's woman over a weekend and not leaving until just before all the menfolk got back from that May Day meeting. Old Magda didn't get to tell the other wives the whole story until the handsome stranger lit out. So up until then half the gals on the hillside had her down as just a brazen adulterer."
    Longarm nodded thoughtfully and pointed out, "If other ladies in Trinidad actually laid eyes on old Magda's houseguest, it don't matter to us whether she made up some details after her brass cooled down or not. Why don't I just head for Trinidad instead of Fort Sill and see if old Magda's neighbor ladies think I look like that other handsome stranger?"
    Vail growled, "Because you're going to Fort Sill instead. If I thought sweet reason would work on Attila Homagy, he'd be sitting here having apple pie with us right now whilst the three of us tried to figure out what really happened last May. I told you I told him I had you right down the hall on court duty at the very time he has you wrecking his happy home nearly two hundred miles away. He wouldn't have it. He's quit his job to track down the man who hung all them magnificent horns on him, and if you ain't the one, who in blue blazes is he supposed to shoot?"
    Billy's wife refilled their cups with a weary smiles as she said, "Men! I swear you all just get more mule-headed as you get older! I don't see how that crazy coal miner is supposed to support his young wife without a job, no matter how they work out their difficulties."
    Vail said, "I don't either. I figure that whether they bust up or stick together, he's still going to need another job soon as he's run his fool self broke tearing all over like this. Trinidad says he cleaned out his modest bank account the day he quit at the mine. Since we ain't talking four figures to begin with, he can't keep at it more than a month at the rate he's been steaming. Worrying about where on earth your next meal or another job might be coming from has a grand way of concentrating a man's mind. So the timing of your trip over to Fort Sill and back works out about right."
    Longarm washed down the last bite of pie and leaned back in his bentwood chair to ask how come they wanted him to run over to Fort Sill in the Indian Nation.
    Billy Vail leaned back in his own chair and got out one of his more expensive but far smellier smokes as he pontificated, "Indian Territory since the war. If you want self-rule, like the Civilized Tribes were granted back in Jackson's day, don't ever side with the Confederacy and then brag on not surrendering for six months after Lee!"
    Vail struck a match and lit his pungent cigar, ignoring the sad sigh of his wife as he continued. "Fort Reno and Fort Sill went up west of the original Indian Nation grants in any case. Indians had no self-rule in those parts to begin with. Those western outposts were built to police far wilder nations such as Comanche, Kiowa, and Kiowa-Apache."
    Longarm had known all that. It was more important he catch the eye of the lady of the house, lest he find himself with no defense against Bill Vail's cigar. Once he did so, patting the cheroots in a breast pocket, she nodded, but headed for another part of the house with a remark about opening more windows.
    Vail gazed fondly after her and remarked, "She knew I