Legend With a Six-gun (9781101601839) by Tabor Evans Page A

other critters got like this when an earthquake was fixing to happen. Could he be sensing some disaster he couldn’t see or smell?
    The waiter returned with their orders, a nervous smile, and a bottle. He said, “We’d like you to accept a complimentary bottle of our California wine, Marshal. May I draw the cork for you?”
    Longarm nodded and said, “Sure, you can draw it
and
quarter it.” Then he shook his head to clear it, wondering,
What in thunder is wrong with you, old son? You’re acting like a schoolboy sniggering at a dirty joke!
    He knew he wasn’t given to rawhiding colored folks or playing big bad Westerner to schoolmarmish little snoots. But he was fighting a terrific urge to draw the gun again and shoot up the overhead coal-oil lamps. The infernal lamps were too bright. They hurt his eyes. It seemed pretty silly when he thought about it. A high-plains rider who’d squinted against a searing sun for many a summer shouldn’t be blinded by a little coal-oil flame in a smoke-glass globe.
    The waiter poured a small amount of red wine into a long-stemmed glass and handed it to Longarm. The deputy remembered the form and took a sip before nodding. The nod was a lie, for the wine, if that was what it was, tasted like red ink mixed with vinegar. The waiter filled both their glasses, put the bottle on the table between them, and left with a relieved expression.
    Sylvia Baxter tasted her wine and said, “My, it is good, isn’t it? I mean, it would hardly pass for Bordeaux ’53, but it has an amusing bouquet.”
    Longarm stared at the bottle as if it had played a dirty trick on him. The fancy label said it had been made in Riverside by some colony, but it didn’t say what river the colony was beside. He remembered his manners and waited for her to start eating. But she kept dawdling with the godawful wine until he muttered, “Let’s dig in,” and started cutting his steak. She probably had him figured for a savage anyway and, what the hell, he’d never see her again. He intended to catch the stage in Sacramento in the morning, and take his own sweet time getting back to Manzanita. He only hoped Boss Buckley’s word would arrive there ahead of him. If the word didn’t help, he’d cross that bridge when it shot at him.
    The steak tasted as though it had been fried in iodine, and he was about to say so when the girl smiled and said, “My, this
is
good, isn’t it? I’ve been making do with shipboard fare since leaving Boston. Fresh meat is such a relief to my poor, tortured taste buds.”
    He didn’t want to call the lady a liar, so he said, “Oh, you came around the Horn?”
    She shook her head and explained, “No, I took the Vanderbilt line to Nicaragua, crossed to the Pacific by the Commodore’s road, and arrived yesterday on the Matson clipper.”
    â€œYou didn’t get to see much of Frisco, then?”
    â€œForgive me for correcting you, but they tell me it’s simply not called Frisco by gentlefolk.”
    He said, “Yeah,” and took another bite. It was no use. The food was as bad as the wine and he was feeling . . . seasick?
    That was impossible. They were steaming through a big flat swamp he could see outside in the moonlight. The night was dead calm and the water all around was as flat as a millpond. He could feel the vibration of the big stern-mounted paddle and hear the hiss of the engine if he listened carefully, but they were moving as smoothly as silk up the winding, shallow Sacramento.
    The girl was saying, “I am in a hurry to reach Manzanita, but I did a bit of sightseeing in San Francisco. I rode all the way to the top of Nob Hill on one of those new cable cars. I must say they’re up-to-date out here. I’m afraid I expected California to be much more primitive.”
    â€œSome of it still is. You say you’re headed for Manzanita, up in