Longarm and the Diamondback Widow by Tabor Evans Page A

chuff as he stared down at Little, obviously a small-time gunslinger whom the councilmen had pinned a badge to. They probably hadn’t been able to find anybody else. The question was, why had they needed to?
    â€œAll right. I’ll leave . . . for now. But I’ll be back, Mr. Little. You can count on that.”
    Longarm backed toward the door. He wouldn’t put it past the nervous, angry Little to shoot him between his shoulder blades. Little turned his wicked, deceitful gaze on him once more. “Rainey called you in?”
    Longarm stopped at the door. “That’s right. You know why?”
    Little turned his head toward the desk. His eyes were as scared as they were nervous and angry. He didn’t say anything, so Longarm walked out across the narrow porch and down the steps to the street.
    Frustrated, he looked around. He thought he saw a shadow move quickly away from a window in the bank. He looked up at the Diamondback Hotel and thought he saw a shadow move in the same window in which he’d seen the pretty woman looking out at him before.
    He rolled it through his mind.
    The sheriff calls on his chief marshal friend for help, but when help arrives, said help finds a nervous, belligerent little man who fancies himself a gunfighter in the sheriff’s position. In the sheriff’s own chair, in fact. And none of the little man’s stories about where Longarm could find the sheriff made any sense. Nor did they sound believable.
    In fact, they sounded fishy as hell.
    Now the strange looks that Longarm had been greeted with when pulling into town seemed all the more suspicious and ominous, as well.
    He looked up and down the street, pondering his next course of action. He’d just decided to start beating the bushes for the three-man town council when he heard the jailhouse door open behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to see Little staring out the partly open door.
    He was wearing a funnel-brimmed black hat with a snakeskin band. He hadn’t been wearing the hat a minute ago. Apparently, he was on his way out. Heading where?
    The man’s left nostril flared, and he slammed the door.
    Longarm reconsidered his notion of seeking out the town council. It might be best to let Little start spreading the word of what Longarm was in town for. Nervous rats always made more noise than contented ones. Of course, that noise might come in the form of gunfire, but that was a risk Longarm was willing to take, since it was more or less his job to take it.
    He’d kill some time locating a livery barn and stabling his horse. He’d bet that by the time his tack hit the saddle tree and the bay had started munching oats, word of Longarm’s discussion, if you could call it that, with Melvin Little would be ripping through the town like flames fed by a hot western wind.
    He slipped his reins from the hitchrack, swung onto the bay’s back, and reined the horse west along the street, which suddenly seemed even quieter than when Longarm had first ridden into town. He continued riding until, about halfway between the jailhouse and the west end of town, he spied a livery barn sitting on a northern cross street.
    As he approached, he saw that a large painted sign stretching over the barn’s second story, above the hayloft doors, announced CASCADE LIVERY AND FEED, BROWN BROS., PROP. A slender young man in dusty, hay-flecked trousers and a white shirt was sitting on a chair outside the barn’s open doors, whittling what appeared to be a horse out of a chunk of pine, and not too handily.
    Appearing around seventeen or eighteen, the long-limbed, gangly lad had long red hair and a pimply, pale complexion. He watched Longarm approach and then set the stick and his barlow knife aside and rose from his old kitchen chair, brushing shavings from his pants.
    â€œHelp you, mister?” he said, squinting and wincing against the harsh midday light.
    â€œYou sure can, son,”