Longarm 243: Longarm and the Debt of Honor by Tabor Evans Page A

was something to make a man puff out his chest and count himself among the downright lucky ones.
    â€œStep along, friend,” Baldwin urged. “There’s others waiting behind you.”
    â€œRight with you.” Longarm laid the newspaper aside. There was nothing in the news of particular interest, but its editorial page offered a small tribute to Norm Wold’s past services to the people of Hirt County and hoped the Crow’s Point marshal would be found innocent of the charges now pending against him. Longarm removed his coat to hang on the rack under his hat. Then he took his place in the comfort of the barber chair. “Shave and a trim, please. Someone said your name is Baldwin?”
    â€œThat’s right.” The barber draped a clean cloth over Longarm and tucked it tight around his neck, then said, “I know who you are, of course. Everybody in town does, I suppose.”
    â€œNotorious, am I?”
    Baldwin smiled and shook his head. “Nothing like that. We’re all wishing you well. Which reminds me, I hope you don’t think the whole town is against you. We all feel real bad about what that crazy boy Dinky tried to do.” He selected a razor from among an ivory-handled line of them laid neatly on a fresh towel, then began stropping it, his hand moving with the deft swiftness of long practice.
    â€œI felt bad about it my own self,” Longarm said. “Got any idea why he might’ve done that?”
    â€œNot me,” Baldwin said.
    â€œYou knew him, of course.”
    â€œSure. In a town like this everybody knows everybody. But I didn’t like him much. I expect I’m about the only man around who would say that, but I can’t see any reason to think the boy’s death is a big loss just because he’s gone now. I didn’t like him much when he was alive, and like him even less now that he went and tried to kill someone.”
    â€œI thought everybody here liked him.”
    â€œNot everybody,” Baldwin said.
    â€œAny particular reason?”
    The barber grunted, decided his razor was sharp enough, and began whipping a fresh lather onto the soap in its mug. “You never know what a half-wit is gonna do, Marshal. Can’t be trusted is what I’ve always felt. Besides, somebody soft in the head like that”—he shuddered—“ gives me the creeps. Not natural, being off in the mind like he was. Not healthy. You know?”
    â€œDinky wasn’t a friend of yours then?”
    â€œNo, sir, I wouldn’t claim that he was.”
    â€œHe didn’t do odd jobs for you or come to you for handouts like he did everybody else?”
    â€œNot me. He learned a long time ago it wouldn’t do him any good to come begging to me for anything. It don’t take me but a minute to sweep this place out come night. I never needed him nor anybody else to do that for me, and I wasn’t about to encourage him to hang around here. I wouldn’t have stood for that the way some did. No, that boy gave me the willies sure enough. I didn’t like having him around. He never came to me for anything. Hadn’t come around me for years. He was loony, see, but he was able to learn that much after a while. Whatever he asked for, I always told him to go away, that I wasn’t no charity and he wasn’t getting nothing here. Once he got it through his head that I wasn’t giving in like the others, he never come around any more.”
    â€œSo you didn’t know him all that well,” Longarm said.
    â€œNope. Didn’t want to neither. I got troubles enough without taking in crazy people.”
    â€œYou didn’t give him food or presents or anything?”
    â€œI thought I said that already,” Luke Baldwin declared in a testy tone of voice, sounding more than a little peeved at having to repeat his denial.
    â€œSorry,” Longarm said.
    Baldwin spread lather over Longarm’s face, the