Read Online Murder in Dogleg City by Ford Fargo - Free Book Online

shave himself, after all, but it just
didn’t seem cultured.
    Sam stepped inside the barber’s shop
and was gratified to see that no one else was waiting—the only
other customer was already in the chair.
    “ Hello, John,” Sam said.
“Hello, Reverend Stone,” he added, once he recognized the customer.
Obadiah Stone, preacher at Wolf Creek Community Church, was a bear
of a man with a thick gray-and-red beard. The thought occurred to
him that the reverend and Deputy O’Connor looked like kinsmen—but
even if they were, it would not deflect the Reverend Stone from
loathing the abomination of O’Connor’s papist beliefs.
    “ Howdy, Marshal,” Hix
said. “I’ll be right with you, soon as I finish with the reverend
here.”
    “ Hello, Marshal,” Stone
said. “My, that is a lovely walking stick you have
there!”
    Sam sat down and removed his hat.
“Thank you, Reverend. I know you for a man who appreciates a good
walking stick.”
    Stone chuckled. “Mine is leaned
against the corner yonder, as you can see.”
    Sam smiled. “Why, I did not recognize
it as such; I thought it a small tree.”
    “ I prefer to think of it
as a cudgel,” Stone said. “The Cudgel of the Lord, for smiting the
occasional arrogant sinner.”
    Stone’s words were not hyperbole. He
was well known for rapping people lightly on the skull with his
oaken cane when making a doctrinal point to them; and for rapping
not-so-lightly if they got lippy. For especially extreme cases, the
reverend carried a Walker Colt on his saddle and wore one of the
new Smith & Wesson Model 3’s on his hip.
    “ Lean on the Lord thy
God,” Reverend Stone said. “And when He needs a hand with His
smiting of the wicked, why, lean into that, too, I say.”
    “ Amen,” Sam
said.
    “ A- men ,” the barber agreed
emphatically.
    “ Say, Reverend,” Sam said,
“maybe you and I can bring the quarterstaff back into style. Right
out of Robin Hood. Of course, you could play Friar Tuck or Little
John.”
    The preacher chuckled
amiably.
    “ The Reverend here was
just telling me about his war-time service,” Hix said. “Sounds like
he was a real curly wolf back then.”
    “ Oh, you exaggerate,”
Stone demurred.
    “ You’d better get used to
it, Reverend Stone,” Sam said. “When it comes to the late conflict,
John here has more questions than a little kid. He rummages through
everybody’s memories that pass by, I suspect he may be writing a
military history in his spare time.”
    “ Oh, I’m just curious, is
all,” Hix said. “I was out in California, around Frisco, when the
war was goin’ on—I feel like I missed out on somethin’ important.
My grandpa used to set on the front porch and talk about the War of
1812, and this was way bigger’n that’un was. So I like to hear all
about it I can.”
    “ Were you out there
panning for gold?” the preacher asked.
    “ Oh no. I was just
barberin’ them that was.”
    Sam smiled. “I see—you were on the
Barber-y Coast!”
    “ Huh?” Hix said, but the
preacher guffawed.
    “ It’s a joke, son,” Stone
explained. “A play on words. You know, the Barbary Coast—the
infamous neighborhood in San Francisco?”
    “ Oh,” Hix said, and then
laughed nervously. “I’m kinda slow with them kind of
jokes.”
    “ No need to apologize,
John,” Sam said, “it was a silly pun.”
    Hix smiled. “Okay,” he said.
“anyway—did you know, Marshal, that the reverend was a Union
cavalry officer, just like you was?”
    “ Why, I was unaware of
this.”
    Stone smiled proudly. “Formerly
Lieutenant-Colonel Obadiah Stone, Eighth Kentucky Cavalry, at your
service, sirs.”
    Sam gave him a playful salute. “Former
Captain Gardner, Third Illinois Cavalry, reporting. Always a
pleasure to meet another Union man, especially an old horse
soldier.”
    “ I always thought it was
peculiar,” Hix said, “Kentucky not joining the Confederacy. Them
being a slave state and all.”
    “ I was no abolitionist, I
assure