Read Online A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson - Free Book Online Page A

her arms. “That’s me.”
    “We haven’t met formally, but I understand there was an altercation about the exact location of some fence?”
    She glanced at George, the one who had just been dismissed. “My men said that they were restringing barbed wire near Frenchy Basin when a group of yours came up and threatened them.”
    We all stood there listening to the crickets rubbing their legs together as Eleanor’s words hung in the crisp night. I was having one of those this-could-be-happening-a-hundred-years-ago moments when Lynear turned his shoulders and glanced at his son. “That won’t happen again.” He returned his gaze on all of us. “That, I can promise you.”
    I looked back at him, his eyes sunk into the fat of his face. “You travel well armed.”
    “Oh . . .” He reached up and shifted back the brim of his enormous hat. “As you can see, we’ve spent a lot of time down on the border; Hudspeth County to be exact. Do you know the area, Sheriff?”
    “Not particularly.”
    “‘Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.’” He shook his head. “It’s a war zone down on the border—Godforsaken country—and we’ve just gotten in the habit of being prepared.” He pointed at my sidearm. “As are you.”
    I put a hand up on one of the building’s support poles and thumbed the grain of the wood. “There’s a difference between preparing and provoking, Mr. Lynear.”
    He smiled. “Are we provoking you, Sheriff?”
    “It sounds like your men might’ve been provoking Mrs. Tisdale’s men, and I’d just as soon not have a range war in the southern part of my county.”
    His eyes remained immobile as he continued to smile, and it wasn’t an attractive expression on his wide face. “Your county.”
    “Till the next general election, the people of this county have elected me to uphold the laws they deem fit to enforce.”
    “What about the law of God, Sheriff?”
    “Not particularly my jurisdiction, Mr. Lynear.”
    He actually chuckled. “Oh, that’s all part of our jurisdiction, and beside that fact, I happen to own a portion of your county, Sheriff. Almost twelve thousand acres, and as far as I know this is still a free country.”
    I sighed, suddenly tired of the man and his jingo philosophies. “Abide by the laws of the county, state, and federal government, and we won’t have any trouble, Mr. Lynear, but if you start anything down here with your neighbors you’re going to see me again.”
    He raised a hand. “I’m a God-fearing man in search of peaceful solitude in which to raise my family—I want nothing of the world, and the world wants nothing of me.” He nodded as if giving a benediction. “There is a day of reckoning coming, though, a day when all men must take a side and the freedoms of some may impinge on the heresy and Godlessness of others.”
    I let George come around the truck before I spoke, specifically to him. “You need to register this vehicle in Wyoming.”
    He looked at his father, back to me, and then gave the slightest of nods before yanking open the driver’s-side door; Tomás Bidarte folded his knife and climbed in the bed with his benefactor.
    Just before George had time to preheat the coil and fire up the diesel, Vic waved and delivered one of my lines: “Happy motoring.”
    Roy Lynear looked thoughtfully at us from the bed of the truck as they backed up and pulled away in a cloud of smoke, sans a hardy Hi-yo, Silver. We watched as the big Ford skimmed out of the town proper and then took to the county road, its taillights looking like afterburners headed south.
    “That was one fucker from strange.”
    Eleanor Tisdale sighed. “Which one?”
    “Pick.”
    •   •   •
    It was close to midnight when we got back to Durant, and once again all the traffic lights were blinking. Across Main Street there was a newly hung large banner, orange with black trim, that advertised Friday’s big game between the Durant Dogies,