Longarm on the Fever Coast Read Online Free PDF Page B

gents to state your own names and tell me why you've been acting so suspicious."
    As he'd hoped, they'd been braced for the usual bullshit involving narrow-eyed stares and veiled remarks leading up to what they had in mind. So they both froze as each waited for the other to say the first words or make the first move.
    In the meantime both kept their hands politely clear of their four guns. So Longarm demanded, "Cat's got your tongues?"
    The mean-eyed one in the bigger hat stared back even meaner as he came unstuck and croaked, "We know who you are, Longarm. Neither one of us is wanted by any federal court in the land."
    Longarm said, "I already figured as much. Had either of you fit any wanted fliers I've read recently, I'd have come in with my side arm drawn. I don't shit around like those lawmen in Ned Buntline's wild and woolly magazines. I'm asking you once more to state your names and business. It's all the same to me whether you'd care to do as I say or fill your fists."
    Somebody else tore out a side door as the more sensible-looking one in the paler hat gulped and protested, "Hold on, Longarm. You can't just throw down on law-abiding citizens for no good reason!"
    Longarm insisted, "You're giving me good reason. The law gives me the right to ask anyone this side of President Hayes to state his name and business, and the right to arrest and hold him on suspicion for seventy-two hours maximum should he give me probable cause. As for whether you want to come quiet or shoot it out right here and now, I'm assuming anyone who tells a federal lawman to just go fuck himself isn't planning on coming quiet."
    The one in the Carlsbad hat said quickly, "I'd be Hamp Godwynn and this would be Saul Reynolds, better known as Squint Reynolds for reasons you can see for your own self. We are poor but honest cowhands in search of honest employment."
    "Aboard a coastal steamer, acting suspicious and packing two guns apiece in border bully rigs?"
    The one called Squint replied, in a surprisingly boyish tenor, "It was border bullies we got armed against. We were just down this way to see if we could get hired on at that monstrous ranch some steamboat skipper started at the mouth of the Rio Grande. We found they mostly hired Mex buckaroos, the cheap bastards."
    Longarm smiled thinly. "I reckon you mean vaqueros, and I know the big spread you just mentioned. Since I've no good reason to call any grown man here a liar, I'll only say you could've saved us all some needless sweat on a hot night by simply answering me sensibly in the first place. Now that we all know who's talking to whom, let's talk about all them dirty looks you boys were aiming my way earlier this evening at supper up forward."
    Hamp Godwynn said, "Squint wasn't aiming dirty looks at you in particular, Longarm. He looks that mean-eyed at everybody, and I don't mind telling you we've had this conversation with other gents who took Squint's natural expression wrong."
    Longarm considered, shrugged, and said, "We've all been out with a gal whose naturally flirty eyes drew unexpected as well as unwelcome attentions from others. But like I told one version of that flirty gal on one occasion, there's no need to back up a naturally troublesome expression with a chip on one's cold shoulder."
    Squint Reynolds snapped, "We told you who we was and said we was sorry about scaring you. What more do you want, an egg in your beer?"
    Longarm answered, firmly but not unkindly, "For your information, I ain't scared of you and your kin combined. But since you've given me information I can check out later, we'll just say no more about it for now. I'd offer to buy a round if I liked either one of you and it wasn't so blamed stuffy in here. But since I don't and it ain't, I'll just say buenoches and don't go glaring like that no more if we should meet at breakfast, hear?"
    Then he left. He didn't have to crawfish backwards. There was a big glass window offering him a good view of everyone in the