by Tabor Evans
By this time they'd made it into a kitchen reeking of apple pie and Arbuckle Brand coffee. As Vail waved Longarm to a seat at their big pine table, his motherly old woman told Longarm she'd heard about the mean bully after him. From the way she said it Longarm surmised her husband had convinced her he hadn't really messed with that Magda Homagy down Trinidad way.
Vail sat across from him and said, "Henry got off the usual wires to the law down yonder. Fortunately Denver P.D. had already wired a heap of questions about Attila Homagy and the Trinidad law had their earlier answers handy. So they got back to us within the hour."
As his wife served their pie and coffee Vail continued. "First the bad news. Attila Homagy seems to be who he says he is. He's the straw boss of a drilling and blasting crew at the Black Diamond Mine. They mine bituminous coal, not real diamonds of any color. He's never been locked up more than ninety days as a result of his disposition, but they report they weren't too surprised to hear he was after someone with a gun. Homagy was brought to Penn State as a tyke by his Bohunk coal-mining kin, which is how come he talks English plain. But they seem to have reared him by a proddy Bohunk code of honor that seems to call for an eye for an eye and then some. So he's been known to wreck a saloon for serving him watered whiskey, and it appears nobody from the Austro-Hungarian Empire will ever find a Bohunk too timid to totally kill any man who even insults his woman!"
Longarm washed down some pie, and was fixing to insist he'd never laid eyes on Magda Homagy when Vail continued. "Trinidad says Attila the Hungarian's wife is tougher to talk sense to than he is. She just got here and barely knows enough English to shop in a Bohunk neighborhood. Attila sent home for her. Reckon he thought he could trust any gal who couldn't tell what cowhands were saying to her."
Longarm nodded absently, brightened, and said, "Hold on, Billy! Don't that prove me innocent? I don't speak Hungarian at all. So if she don't savvy our lingo, how in blue blazes was I supposed to act up with her whilst her old man was off to that union convention?"
Vail grumbled, "I told you earlier that you didn't have to sell me on where you spent the merry month of May. It's her husband who's after you with two Schofields."
Vail sipped some coffee himself before he added,"She must talk at least some English. Trinidad says an Irish neighbor woman backs up her story about some tall handsome stranger moving in with Attila's woman over a weekend and not leaving until just before all the menfolk got back from that May Day meeting. Old Magda didn't get to tell the other wives the whole story until the handsome stranger lit out. So up until then half the gals on the hillside had her down as just a brazen adulterer."
Longarm nodded thoughtfully and pointed out, "If other ladies in Trinidad actually laid eyes on old Magda's houseguest, it don't matter to us whether she made up some details after her brass cooled down or not. Why don't I just head for Trinidad instead of Fort Sill and see if old Magda's neighbor ladies think I look like that other handsome stranger?"
Vail growled, "Because you're going to Fort Sill instead. If I thought sweet reason would work on Attila Homagy, he'd be sitting here having apple pie with us right now whilst the three of us tried to figure out what really happened last May. I told you I told him I had you right down the hall on court duty at the very time he has you wrecking his happy home nearly two hundred miles away. He wouldn't have it. He's quit his job to track down the man who hung all them magnificent horns on him, and if you ain't the one, who in blue blazes is he supposed to shoot?"
Billy's wife refilled their cups with a weary smiles as she said, "Men! I swear you all just get more mule-headed as you get older! I don't see how that crazy coal miner is supposed to support his young wife without a job, no matter how they work out their difficulties."
Vail said, "I don't either. I figure that whether they bust up or stick together, he's still going to need another job soon as he's run his fool self broke tearing all over like this. Trinidad says he cleaned out his modest bank account the day he quit at the mine. Since we ain't talking four figures to begin with, he can't keep at it more than a month at the rate he's been steaming. Worrying about where on earth your next meal or another job might be coming from has a grand way of concentrating a man's mind. So the timing of your trip over to Fort Sill and back works out about right."
Longarm washed down the last bite of pie and leaned back in his bentwood chair to ask how come they wanted him to run over to Fort Sill in the Indian Nation.
Billy Vail leaned back in his own chair and got out one of his more expensive but far smellier smokes as he pontificated, "Indian Territory since the war. If you want self-rule, like the Civilized Tribes were granted back in Jackson's day, don't ever side with the Confederacy and then brag on not surrendering for six months after Lee!"
Vail struck a match and lit his pungent cigar, ignoring the sad sigh of his wife as he continued. "Fort Reno and Fort Sill went up west of the original Indian Nation grants in any case. Indians had no self-rule in those parts to begin with. Those western outposts were built to police far wilder nations such as Comanche, Kiowa, and Kiowa-Apache."
Longarm had known all that. It was more important he catch the eye of the lady of the house, lest he find himself with no defense against Bill Vail's cigar. Once he did so, patting the cheroots in a breast pocket, she nodded, but headed for another part of the house with a remark about opening more windows.
Vail gazed fondly after her and remarked, "She knew I smoked this brand the day we married up. Women and children are a lot like the Indians when it comes to counting on dreams of the future. But that gets us back to your mission to Fort Sill. The recently shot-up and calmed-down Comanche and their Kiowa allies have been moved off their old reservation in the Texas Panhandle and resettled around Fort Sill."
"On what?" Longarm dryly asked as he got out a cheaper but much less vile smoke. "I know Fort Reno, to the north, better. But I've passed through Fort Sill often enough to opine such timber and game as there might have once been has been cut down and shot off a heap."
Vail let fly a thunderhead of swirling blue smoke and replied in a philosophical tone, "Don't never ask the Bureau of Indian Affairs for nicer hunting grounds if you mean to lift white hair and then brag about it. The trouble only got serious after that Kiowa chief came in for a government handout and gloated to Agent Tatum that he'd wiped out a wagon train."
Longarm hung some of his own tobacco smoke between them as he thought back, nodded, and said, "I never figured out why poor old Satanta did that. Indians I know tell me that raid was led by his rival, Mamanti."
Vail shrugged and declared, "Don't matter. The war that resulted was the end of both of them, and we ain't got time for ancient history. Now that everyone's agreed on Quanah Parker as the heap big chief of the Comanche and spokesman for his orphaned Kiowa children, things have commenced to get more progressive. The Comanche have actually taken to drilling in corn crops and raising pony herds instead of raiding for 'em. The Kiowa and that half-ass bunch of stray Apache they've adopted are still trying to live their old free ways. That's what you call it when you sponge off employed neighbors and the self-supporting taxpayer, the old free ways."
Longarm asked dubiously if any of the new developments around Fort Sill had anything to do with him and his trouble with Attila Homagy.
Vail said, "It wouldn't have, if that fool Bohunk had kept a tighter rein on his wayward bride. But a few days back I got me this request from the B.I.A. Seems Chief Quanah Parker asked for you by name and-"
"Hold on!" Longarm cut in. "I barely know Quanah Parker to howdy, and I've never messed with even one of his eight wives!"
Vail got to his feet with a weary smile. "You got it ass backwards. Right now you're likely safer surrounded by Quill Indian husbands than the other kind. They asked to borrow you for a spell to help 'em smooth the rough spots of their new Indian Police out of Fort Sill. The army ain't so interested in training Indians for anything but scouting since Indian Affairs got transferred from the War
to Interior Department. I was about to write back that our Justice Department has enough on its plate when that Attila jasper showed up with the avowed intent of blowing your balls off."
Vail picked up a bulky manila envelope from the sideboard and turned back to Longarm. "You'll find more about it in here, along with your travel orders and such. I had Henry type up copies of the shit from Fort Sill. Meanwhile, I sent Smiley and Dutch over to your hired quarters on the far side of the creek to fetch your Winchester, McClellan, and saddlebags packed for the field--if you know what's good for you. You'll find your stuff in the baggage room at Union Depot. Your claim check and train tickets are in this envelope."
As he handed it to Longarm he continued. "I've already told you I'm sending someone else to scout the cheating wives of Trinidad. I want you totally out of our hair at Fort Sill whilst we find out just what happened and do something about it. So what are you waiting for, a kiss good-bye?"
Longarm muttered he wasn't that sort of cuss, and so they settled for shaking hands and parting more or less friendly. Longarm was still a mite riled as he ambled back to Colfax to catch a horse-drawn streetcar. The notion of running off to join the Comanche Nation to avoid a fight with a mighty silly pest just didn't sit right, even though his common sense told him nobody important to him was fixing to call him a coward or even laugh at him. The pure fact that Attila Homagy was probably green as hell with a gun and surely misinformed about his wife's love life made him impossible to reason with and stupid for any real gunfighter to tangle with.
The streetcar carried him the mile and a quarter to Union Depot a tad sooner and not as sweaty as if he'd legged it all the way at that pace. As he entered the cavernous depths of the sooty red brick edifice, it took a short spell for his eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight out front. So he froze in mid stride and came close to going for his gun when an all-too-familiar voice near the tobacco stand let fly with, "You didn't think I'd be slick enough to head anyone off here, did you, Deputy Smiley?"
Those last two words saved Attila Homagy from a pistol-whipping at the very least as Longarm stared thoughtfully down at the older man and paused to hear him out.
Homagy nodded at the envelope in Longarm's left hand. "Some last-minute instructions from Marshal Vail, eh? I guess all of you had me down as just another dumb greenhorn. But I'll have everyone know that whether I was born in the Carpathians or not, I graduated from the eighth grade in Penn State!"
Longarm cautiously said, "Anyone can see you're as smart as your average cuss, Mister Homagy."
The mining man with the wayward wife said, "Damned right. I found out where Longarm lived, and got there just in time to learn that you and another deputy had just left with his traveling gear, Deputy Smiley. I knew he'd be leaving town from here or that Overland Stage from in front of the Tremont House. So I came here first, telling them over at yonder baggage window that I was a pal of Deputy Long's, and what do you think I just found out?"
Longarm managed not to grin as he soberly replied, "It's a sin to tell a lie, and they shouldn't have given out such privileged information. But I've worked that dodge and they usually do."
Homagy looked so smug it would have been cruel to tell him he was full of it. So Longarm didn't as the older man crowed, "They told me he means to catch that train to Kansas City in an hour or so. So guess who'll be here to see him off. the home-wrecking son of a bitch!"
Longarm sighed and said, "Bragging right out that you mean to gun another man could be taken as criminal intent, Mister Homagy."
The avowed assassin replied with a sly grin, "Who said exactly what I'm going to do when I catch up with the man who made my poor little Magda bus him against her will? Go ahead and arrest me, if you think you can hold a man with simple justice on his side. Your Denver Police arrested me earlier, and had to let me go."
Longarm was about to ask if bus was the Bohunk for what he surmised it had to be. But then they were joined by a Spanish-speaking streetwalker called Consuela, who sidled up to Longarm and said right out, "Buentardes, El Brazo Largo. jA 'onde va?"
So it was safe to assume Attila Homagy spoke no Spanish. For the soiled dove's words would have translated as, "Afternoon, Longarm. Where you headed?"
Before she could say anything worse in English, Longarm had her by one elbow and they were rushing for the platform doors as if they had a train to catch.
The young whore laughed and gasped, "Madre de Dios, you must really need some! But that's what we're here for and I'll try anything that doesn't hurt too much!"
He got her out of Homagy's sight as he tersely told her in his own version of Spanish that he was working under an assumed name and didn't want that suspect in the seersucker suit back yonder to know just who he might really be.
Consuela laughed incredulously and replied, "Pero El Brazo Largo, everyone inside the depot knows who you are!"
She'd made a good point, and damn it, that southbound Billy Vail had advised against was already pulling out a platform over!
So Longarm was running, a lot, as the southbound D&RG cleared the end of its boarding area, picking up speed. He skimmed his envelope through the space ahead of him, and dove headfirst for a grab at the brass rail of the last car's observation deck. A strong small hand grabbed the wrist of his as it was slipping, and he was grateful as hell as he hooked a booted ankle over the same rail. Then the brunette in blue who'd risen from her wicker seat just in time helped him roll aboard, even as she chided, "Didn't anyone ever tell you that's a very dangerous way to board a train?"
To which Longarm could only reply, "Not half as dangerous as my staying where I was might have been, ma'am."
She allowed her handle was Cora Brewster as he bought her some sasparilla soda inside the club car. It seemed the least a gent could do, and she didn't seem to mind when he ordered a schooner of needled beer for himself. They took a corner table near the rear windows, and after that things sort of went to hell in a hack.
She was getting off at Trinidad, for openers, which inspired him to introduce himself as Deputy Gus Crawford. When she remarked they had another such Crawford writing for the Denver Post, he said he'd noticed that and made a mental note she was sharp as well as pretty. Then she said that she and her husband had started the first dairy herd down Trinidad way.
Billy Vail had warned him not to even pass through Trinidad, and he figured he could use some practice at behaving himself around a pretty lady with a firm grip and those trim hips a gal got from a heap of horseback riding. So he never even asked if she minded him smoking. He'd been meaning to cut down in any case, and that helped him, some. It was easier to keep his thoughts about her clean as he sat there dying for a smoke.
The conductor finally came back to their end of the train. Cora naturally had her ticket handy. Longarm started to ex plain how he'd boarded at the last minute without having had the time to pay at the depot. But the conductor said, "Don't give it a thought, Longarm. It won't break this line to carry you free as far as Trinidad, and as a matter of fact, it feels much safer having you aboard as we pass Castle Rock."
The intelligent brunette waited until the conductor had punched her ticket and headed back the other way before she asked him with a puzzled frown why that conductor had just called him Longarm.
Before Longarm could reluctantly confess the truth, she added in a knowing tone, "You don't look anything like that notorious Longarm, Mister Crawford."
It was Longarm's turn to sound puzzled as he replied, "Do tell? I didn't know you'd met the notorious cuss they keep writing fibs about in the Post and Rocky Mountain News."
She said, "I was never introduced to him when he passed through our town last May--leaving quite a wake, I might add. I only had him pointed out to me a time or two as he passed by, each time with still another immigrant girl. You'd never know it from those stories about him in the newspapers, but Colorado's answer to Wild Bill would seem to be some sort of foreigner."
He asked who'd ever told her a thing lik
e that.
She replied without hesitation, "Nobody had to tell me. I heard him speaking Hungarian to a pretty little greenhorn from Bohunk Hill as I was standing in the open doorway of a notions shop across from the Papist church in Trinidad. Hungarians are Papists, like most of the Irish mining folk. They call Hungarian something else, it sounds like Mad Gear. But once you've heard folks talking it you know it has to be Hungarian. It sounds nothing like the Spanish, High Dutch, or Welsh you hear in coal-mining country."
He said he'd take her word for some cuss talking Bohunk in the merry month of May to the pretty immigrant gals of Trinidad. Then, choosing his words carefully, he said, "That conductor just now seemed to fancy I was this Longarm jasper. So ain't it likely there could be some resemblance betwixt me and this cuss we're talking about?"
Cora Brewster turned on her club car stool to peer across their small round table more intently as Longarm fought to keep a poker face. The intelligent and apparently sharp-eyed brunette took her time and sounded convinced as she flatly stated, "No resemblance at all. You're both tall and sort of rangy. At the risk of turning your head, you're both good-looking and you both wear guns and mustaches of heavy caliber. After that you look nothing like one another. I don't see how that conductor could have taken you for that nasty Longarm.
The real Longarm replied, "He must need new specs. Did this tall drink of water down Trinidad way say right out he was Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, or might it have been someone else's decision, Miss Cora?"
She started to say something without thinking, caught herself, and gained even more respect from Longarm when she decided, "As a matter of fact, the first townswoman who pointed him out to me gave an outlandish Hungarian-sounding name I don't recall. She was a shop girl from somewhere in the Austro-Hungarian Empire as well. But you'd have to ask her if you wanted to know exactly where. She said he was a notorious womanizer and a big bully who took advantage of his fellow greenhorns, knowing his way around the American West better."