Craig Johnson - A Serpent's Tooth - A Walt Longmire Mystery

He didn’t move for a moment, then half turned as if to leave—evidently he wasn’t happy to see the greater portion of the off-duty Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department seated at the bar. He stood there in profile and then cleared his throat as if he was about to make a speech, but it was a short one: “Mr. Lynear would like to talk to you.”

Eleanor looked puzzled. “Who?”

He looked even more surprised at her response and took a step into the bar with a vexed look on his face, as if he shouldn’t have to be bothered with repeating, let alone explaining, himself. “Mr. Roy Lynear, owner/operator of the East Spring Ranch, would like to talk to you.”

I stood, tucked the photo of Sarah Tisdale into my shirt pocket, and took a step toward him. “And who are you?”

Perhaps hoping for a prompter, he looked back out the door again. “George.”

“Are you quail hunting at this time of night?” He glanced at me, but his eyes returned to Eleanor; evidently his one-track mind was always in danger of derailment. I pointed at the shotgun on his back. “It’s against the law to bring a gun into an establishment that serves liquor.”

The eyes switched to Vic and then back to me, and his voice and manner changed, telling me a great deal about him. “She’s wearing one in this Godless establishment and so are you.”

I took another step, bringing myself within arm’s reach of him. “She’s my deputy, and maybe I should introduce myself. I’m Sheriff Walt Longmire—and your full name is?”

“George Joseph Lynear.”

He stood there looking back and forth between us again with a kind of wildness in his eyes. I thought for a moment that he was going to do something stupid, but he didn’t; instead, he took a step back onto the boardwalk. “There, are ya happy now?”

I reached over and closed the door in his face.

Vic barked a laugh as I spoke to him through the glass pane. “Go tell your family you can come back in here when you learn some manners.” He stood there looking at me with a blistering hatred, then turned and walked off the boardwalk toward a large, decked-out one-ton dually parked perpendicular to mine.

I turned back to the proprietor. “Who’s Roy Lynear?”

She shook her head. “I guess he’s the one everybody’s been having trouble with the last few weeks. Some of his men . . .”

She was interrupted again by the sound of the door behind me, and this time I turned with my hand resting on my Colt, just in case. The sack-of-bones trapshooter wasn’t there, but in his place was another odd-looking individual who was a hell of a lot more impressive in both stature and dress. He was a tall, well-toned Hispanic man in black jeans and a dark suit jacket, his pork-chop sideburns sticking out almost as far as the brim of his black cattleman’s hat.

He quickly slipped it off to reveal full locks of curling, dark hair. “ Hola .”

I stood there looking down at him. “Hey.”

“I would like to apologize.” He gestured with the hat. “My compadre learned his social graces from cows.”

I nodded. “So, are you Roy Lynear?”

He laughed, obviously much amused by the thought. “Oh no, I simply work for Mr. Lynear.” He extended his hand toward me. “I’m Tomás Bidarte. I am the poet lariat of Nuevo Leon.”

“Lariat, not laureate?”

He smiled, and it was a dazzling display, revealing some creative dentistry with more than twenty-four karats. “My poetry is more for the cantina than the parlor.”

I took the hand. “What do you do when you’re not rhyming?”

We shook, and his grip was like cast iron. “Work for Mr. Lynear.”

I looked around the vaquero toward the truck with its running lights on, sitting in the half-light of the approaching night. “Well, it’s an odd time to come visiting, especially armed. Is Roy out there, because I’m dying to meet him.”

He continued smiling, studying me. “And I’m sure he’s going to want to meet you too, Sheriff.”

“Send him in.”

Bidarte turned his matinee-idol profile toward the door and then back to me. “That, señor, might be a little easier said than done.”

• • •

The man in the back of the brand-new King Ranch one-ton diesel was testing its rear suspension—he must’ve tipped the scales at an easy four hundred pounds. He was comfortably seated in what must’ve been a custom-built La-Z-Boy throne, complete with his sheepskin slippers prominently displayed on the foot extension. He wore an oversized, expensive-looking bathrobe draped over a snap-button shirt with a large turquoise bolo tie and a pair of TCU purple sweatpants. On his head was an honest-to-God sombrero.

“‘The harvest has passed and the summer has ended, and we are not saved.’”

Vic and Eleanor had joined me at the edge of the wooden walkway, an advantage that made us the same height as Roy Lynear.

“Jeremiah, chapter eight, verse two.”

He turned his head and looked at me. “You know the word of God, Sheriff?”

“I know entire sentences.”

He continued to study me, unsure if I was the real deal or if I’d only stumbled upon a line of scripture, then gestured toward one of his massive legs. “Inconvenient gout; I apologize for having you come out here into the night like this, but my joints are hurting so bad I’m afraid I wouldn’t make it up those steps.”

I watched as John Deere in a ball cap stayed on the other side of the truck bed with the shotgun in his hands.

The massive man in the chair settled his eyes on me. “I suppose I should introduce myself—I’m Roy Lynear.”

Vic was quick to respond. “We’ve heard a lot about you lately.”

He studied my deputy, and I was pretty sure he was both attracted and annoyed. “Have you, now?” He glanced at the sullen one behind him and to the caballero who had propped an ornately inlaid, pointy-toed boot on the rear bumper of the chariot near the Texas plate. “From these two?”

To my surprise, the Hispanic fellow spoke freely. “You are the company you keep.”

The giant man laughed until he wheezed. “Tomás Bidarte here is one of the great vaquero poets. He’s in all the anthologies, aren’t you, Tom?”

He tipped his hat. “There’s no accounting for taste.”

Lynear issued a command. “Give us one, Tom.”

Bidarte slipped an elongated knife from the back pocket of his jeans and pushed a button, the stiletto blade leaping out into the running lights a good eight inches. He cleaned his fingernails as he spoke.

“Have more than you show,

Talk less than you know.

Lend less than you owe,

Ride more than you go.”

The older man shook his head and kicked a slipper at the poet. “That wasn’t one of your best.”

“Well, Patrón, you get what you pay for.”

Lynear gestured quickly and nodded at the man behind him. “One of my dim-witted sons, George.” He hunched himself a little forward and looked past me. “Excuse me, Sheriff. Mrs. Tisdale?”

She took a step forward and crossed 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.”