A colored maid was dusting in the hallway as he let himself in the unlocked front door. She looked unsettled to see him there at that hour. But he knew she knew who he was and his connection with a paid-up roomer on the top floor. So he just nodded at her and went on up to Lina Marie's garret quarters under the mansard roof.
The hall door was naturally locked. Or so it seemed. He didn't know exactly why Lina Marie had locked it until he unlocked it and stepped inside, expecting to find himself alone up yonder.
He wasn't. The buxom blonde and a total stranger who could have used more fresh air and sunshine were going at it hot and heavy on the brass bedstead against the far wall, naked as a couple jaybirds in a love nest. The jasper on top froze in mid-stroke to stare goggle-eyed as Lina Marie grinned sickly at Longarm and gasped, "Honey! I wasn't expecting you this early!"
Longarm resisted the impulse to dryly observe that seemed mighty obvious. Some kindly old philosopher had once declared, doubtless in French, that nothing a man could say as he made a last exit would be more sophisticated than simply closing the door softly after himself as he left. Gals counted coup on each cussing or slamming from a man.
But Longarm was cussing to himself as he stomped down the stairs and out of the rooming house with that colored maid staring at him.
Striding up the shady side of the street he found himself muttering aloud, "That pasty-faced and pimple-assed son of a bitch must be the boss at work she told us about. Nobody else would be screwing her so freely on company time, and damn it, that was my pussy he was screwing so brassy, in the very quarters I helped her find!"
He paused under a cottonwood to light a cheroot as he told himself to calm down, muttering, "Don't get your bowels in an uproar over old Lina Marie, you idjet! You were looking for a graceful way out of the tedious fix, remember?"
He strode on, puffing smoke like a locomotive hauling its heavy load up a nine-degree grade as he growled, "Whether I wanted old Lina Marie or not is not the point. That pale soft slug couldn't lick old Henry from the office, and there he was on top of the gal I saw first, as if he thought I had nothing to say about it!"
Longarm suddenly laughed in a more boyish tone as his common sense told him, "Asshole! He wasn't thinking about you at all. He was just a poor mortal with a hard-on, and you know you laid Lina Marie the first night you treated her to spaghetti and meatballs with spiked wine!"
But as he strode east toward the somewhat cooler and clearer high ground of Capitol Hill, he found himself grumbling, "Hold on. I asked early on if she was spoken for. She says she told that priss at work she was shacked up with me!"
He decided that was the part that galled him the most. The soft pale shopkeeper should have known you don't help yourself to another man's tobacco or liquor without his permission either, unless you're sure he's too big a sissy to do anything about it. So where had an infernal dry-goods pusher come up with the notion a bigger man in any better shape wouldn't do anything about it?
Longarm suddenly laughed in a world-weary tone as his common sense told him, "From Lina Marie, of course. She'd have likely told him we were through before he carried her home from work early to console her. Forget the poor hard-up cuss. He never spent ten seconds thinking about you or any other man as he lusted after that brassy blonde!"
So Longarm strode on in restored good humor as he considered how everything was working out. But the unexpected ending of his half-ass love affair had given him added insight into what might be eating Attila the Hungarian. For Longarm could see that if he'd had a mite less regard for the written law, or a mite more regard for old Lina Marie, somebody could have been in a whole lot of trouble back there!
By the time he walked to Broadway and Colfax at the foot of the long gentle rise to the flat top of Capitol Hill, a street clock told him he'd at least burned up some time with all that nonsense. So he cut north along Broadway to where a man could part some swinging doors and see what sort of free lunch they were offering over this way.
There was no such thing as a free lunch, of course, but he still saw they'd set out some devilish eggs and pickled pig's feet, both a mite salty. So he ordered a scuttle of their draft to wash some of their free lunch down.
The nibbles weren't quite as good, but the beer was cheaper than it cost at the Parthenon Saloon near the Federal Building. Longarm had remembered that when he'd paused down the way to consider how to put off beating rugs for Mrs. Vail. He knew better than to show up really late, or walking funny, so he was nursing his beer with salty grub when a blue-uniformed Denver copper badge passed by the swinging doors of the entrance, broke stride, and came inside with a weary shake of his peaked cap, wistfully declaring, "I know I can't order another lawman, Deputy Long. But I purely wish you'd take it off my particular beat!"
Longarm smiled uncertainly and asked, "Take what off your beat, Roundsman Callahan? I was under the impression I was just in here killing time with some suds and these salty nibbles."
Callahan sighed and said, "Judge not, lest ye be judged, and I've been in a strange town with a hard-on as well. But that Bohunk gal in Trinidad was married up with a mighty wild-eyed cuss! He's been asking all over town for you. We run him in this morning as a cataclysm fixing to occur. But the desk said threats against his wife's lover don't count unless he's within pistol range."
Longarm swore softly and declared, "I wouldn't know the fool's wife from Mother Eve if I did wake up in bed with her! Lord knows how Homagy ever got the notion I'd been anywhere near her!"
Callahan shrugged and replied, "That's easy. She told him it was you, according to him, and I don't think I want you trying to deny it on my beat to a crazy Bohunk packing two Schofield.45s! He's already been told how many professional gunslicks you've beaten to the draw. But he just don't seem to be a man you can talk sense to."
Callahan glanced out the doorway, as if expecting trouble at any time, as he added, "I don't want to tidy up after either one of you. We both know what a pain in the ass it is to write up all them reports in triplicate and then have the district attorney cuss you for sticking him with a can of worms. There's no way in hell we'd ever convict him, whilst charging a lawman with murder makes us all look bad!"
Longarm sighed and said, "I wish I could at least try for a plea of self-defense, should push really come to shove."
To which Callahan replied in a surprisingly cheerful tone, "You can't. But I'd sure hate to get stuck with the chore of arresting a man with your rep. So I sure wish you'd fight him somewheres else!"
CHAPTER 3
Longarm dawdled up Colfax Avenue to the statehouse, went inside and sat up in the visitors' gallery, and listened to some grouchy old birds argue about the gold-to-silver ratio until he decided he might as well go on over to the Vail house and split cordwood out back.
But even though he got there before mid-afternoon, he didn't wind up doing any of Billy Vail's chores. For the marshal was there in the flesh, dancing about on his dusty brown lawn like a Cheyenne with a vision, or a kid with worms, until Longarm got within hearing range so Billy could shout, "Where in thunder have you been? I sent Smiley and Dutch over to your quarters to gather up your Winchester and McClellan for you. I hope you've got the usual change of socks and some iron rations in your saddlebags."
As Longarm joined his shorter superior on the summer-dry stubble, he replied with an uncertain frown, "Always keep my gear handy for a sudden leap into the great unknown. But where might I be leaping in such a hurry? Did we get another tip on Frank, Jesse, or The Kid?"
Vail glanced uneasily up and down the tree-lined street atop the rise and told Longarm, "We'll talk about it inside. I had Henry type up some travel orders before I left the office just now. But I reckon I'd best fill you in a mite, and your next train out don't leave this side of four-thirty."
Longarm had left the Denver Union Depot often enough to consult his mental timetable and decide, "That would be the UP eastbound you'd want me to catch. Who are we after in Kansas, Boss?"
As Vail led him around to the kitchen entrance Longarm was told, "You're getting off at Kansas City to cut backwards to Fort Sill, betwixt the Washita and Red River of the South."
Longarm blinked and said, "I know where Fort Sill is. But getting there by way of K.C. makes no sense. What's wrong with my catching the D&RG down to Amarillo and changing to most any eastbound for a way shorter ride?"
Vail snapped, "Trinidad. Henry was the one who pointed out there's no sensible way to get to Amarillo without passing through Trinidad, and if there's one place other than Denver I don't want you for the next few days, Trinidad, Colorado, has to be it!"
By this time they'd made it into a kitchen reeking of apple pie and Arbuckle Brand coffee. As Vail waved Longarm to a seat at their big pine table, his motherly old woman told Longarm she'd heard about the mean bully after him. From the way she said it Longarm surmised her husband had convinced her he hadn't really messed with that Magda Homagy down Trinidad way.
Vail sat across from him and said, "Henry got off the usual wires to the law down yonder. Fortunately Denver P.D. had already wired a heap of questions about Attila Homagy and the Trinidad law had their earlier answers handy. So they got back to us within the hour."
As his wife served their pie and coffee Vail continued. "First the bad news. Attila Homagy seems to be who he says he is. He's the straw boss of a drilling and blasting crew at the Black Diamond Mine. They mine bituminous coal, not real diamonds of any color. He's never been locked up more than ninety days as a result of his disposition, but they report they weren't too surprised to hear he was after someone with a gun. Homagy was brought to Penn State as a tyke by his Bohunk coal-mining kin, which is how come he talks English plain. But they seem to have reared him by a proddy Bohunk code of honor that seems to call for an eye for an eye and then some. So he's been known to wreck a saloon for serving him watered whiskey, and it appears nobody from the Austro-Hungarian Empire will ever find a Bohunk too timid to totally kill any man who even insults his woman!"
Longarm washed down some pie, and was fixing to insist he'd never laid eyes on Magda Homagy when Vail continued. "Trinidad says Attila the Hungarian's wife is tougher to talk sense to than he is. She just got here and barely knows enough English to shop in a Bohunk neighborhood. Attila sent home for her. Reckon he thought he could 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.