Read Online Longarm and the Dime Novelist by Tabor Evans - Free Book Online

that . . . drunk or sober . . . they were amazingly fast with their guns and damn good shots.”
    â€œSo did you go straight away to find them?”
    â€œI did. But I pinned my badge under my coat’s lapel so that they wouldn’t know I was a lawman. I went into the saloon and saw the brothers sitting at a back table drinking tequila. Each of them had a floozy on their lap.”
    â€œI imagine you were worried about the women being accidentally shot.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œSo how did you handle it?”
    â€œI asked the bartender to send the Oteros a couple of drinks on me. When he did it, I waved at the brothers like I was some old friend they’d met before. Then I walked over to them and struck up a conversation. They both spoke good English and I asked them if there were any other women in town as pretty as the ones they had sitting on their laps.”
    â€œWere there?”
    â€œI don’t know. One of the women was sober enough to realize that I might be a lawman. She said that in a laughing way but the Otero brothers didn’t think it funny. I could see that they were edgy and explosive and I tried to think what I would do if they just drew their pistols and opened fire. I wanted to get those women out of the way of any harm.
    â€œSo what did you do?”
    â€œI told the brothers I knew of a way to make some quick and easy money and wondered if they were interested. When they said yes, I told them that I needed to speak to them in private. One of the girls left, but the other was drunk and didn’t want to go. I tried to grab her, and she latched onto my coat and damned if she didn’t expose my badge under the lapel.”
    â€œThen all hell broke loose, I suppose.”
    â€œThat’s right. One of the brothers went for his gun, and knowing I couldn’t beat him, I kicked out with my boot and knocked the man over backward in his chair, then drew my gun and killed the one still sitting at the table. Both women screamed, and one stepped in front of me so I couldn’t get a clear shot to kill the one who was on the floor. He slithered out the back door, and by the time I was able to get there he was gone.”
    â€œCouldn’t you have reached him in the back alley or wherever he went?”
    â€œNo, it was dark and I was worried that he was hiding and would kill me the minute I stepped outside. So I made sure that the one was dead and then I left the saloon and went back to the livery. Windy was waiting, and when I told him what had happened he said that all hell was going to break loose when the one that got away connected with his family living just across the border in Mexico.”
    â€œSo,” Delia said, “in a way, things suddenly became much worse.”
    â€œYes, they did,” Longarm agreed. “I had sort of stirred up a hornet’s nest, and when the people of Monument found out what happened they nearly went into a panic.”
    â€œIf they let just two banditos take over Monument maybe they didn’t deserve to have a town.”
    â€œWell, you have to understand that Monument, New Mexico, wasn’t much of a town at all. There were just a half dozen businesses and most of them depended on Mexicans who came peaceably across the nearby border to buy goods. So there were a lot of complications, but everyone knew that the Otero family was going to come to collect a body and that when they did they would be out for blood.”
    Delia was writing fast. “Sounds to me that even someone like you was in pretty far over your head.”
    â€œI was. I had to ride ten miles to find a telegraph office and I sent telegrams off to both Denver and Santa Fe explaining what I’d done and what I thought was going to happen. I don’t often have to ask for help, but I did that time.”
    â€œDid help reach you?”
    â€œNo. And I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t come in