"Evans, Tabor - Longarm 223 - Longarm and the Double-Barrel Blowout" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Tabor)

Longarm chuckled and began to open the package. The outer brown paper
peeled away to reveal a neatly folded newspaper.

"Yep," Longarm drawled. "It's from Arizona. Wickenburg Weekly Press.
Exactly a month old to the day."

"Someone sent you a newspaper all the way from Arizona?"

Longarm spread the paper across his lap. He was surprised to find that
there was nothing inside of it, but one of the articles was circled by a
wavery pencil mark. Ruben forgot about the shoes and came around behind
Longarm to stare at the paper.

"I been in Wickenburg. Hotter'n Flagstaff but not as bad as Tucson.
There's a few Apache and Mojave people there, but none of 'em belong to
my family."

"Well, I sure don't know anyone from Wickenburg."

"Maybe you should read that paper," Ruben suggested. "Maybe someone you
know died there ... or got rich!"

"Maybe," Longarm said. "I suppose that Wickenburg is a mining town."

"Rough as they come."

Longarm refolded the paper and smoked in silence. Ruben's hands and
shine rag always made his tired feet feel better and that alone was
enough of a reason to pay the man even when his boots weren't scuffed or
muddy.

"I lived in Arizona for twenty-six years," Ruben said. "My family worked
in a silver mine near Tucson, then raised some sheep and we caught wild
horses to sell to the same damn army that put us on reservations."

"Some of you deserved it," Longarm said. "Although I'm sure that didn't
include your family."

"Yeah, it did," Ruben admitted. "My family was bad. Real bad. Most of my
uncles and my father were all either shot or hanged. I'd have been too,
if I hadn't cleared out fast."

"But I thought you once told me you and a couple of brothers went all
the way to Washington, D.C."

"We did. Went there to talk to the Great White Father. We were gonna
tell him that the Apache deserved fair and honest treatment. We had been
given a treaty, but it was broken by the white soldiers."