by Tabor Evans
Of course, he told himself, Uncle John Chisum had tried to pretend he had no hand in the series of back shootings remembered as the Lincoln County War. But he hadn't fooled anybody and, greedy as the Santa Fe Ring had been, they hadn't asked New Mexico lawmen to deny a thing was going on down yonder. Lawmen could be bought. It happened all the time. But it cost serious money, and nobody did it without some serious reasons of their own in mind.
"Cherchez la motif!" Longarm tried for, wondering if he had that right from the little French he'd studied in bed with a Metis he sure remembered fondly. He knew that whether he'd pronounced that right or not, neither he nor any other poor but honest lawman was going to be able to come to grips with little more than a slippery bait-can of disturbing womanly whims. To catch anybody really up to no good, he had to decide what in blue thunder they were up to!
Cheyenne lay a hundred miles north of Denver by crow. It took a few extra miles of bends in the railroad right of way as the tracks wound around the higher swells of the rolling prairie in the rain shadow of the Front Range. A low-balling empty rattler naturally took way longer than a passenger varnish or even a highballing freight. But Longarm wasn't upset when they pulled off the main line near Fort Collins to let a more serious train thunder past. He knew that poky or not, he'd get to Cheyenne around noon. That would give him plenty of time for the courtesy call Billy Vail expected him to make at the Cheyenne federal building and still catch the shortline combination up to the North Platte Country. So he was just lounging there on the hay, smoking a cheroot as he leaned against his saddle, gazing out the open doorway at nothing much but rolling grass, when all of a sudden this dirty-faced kid wearing raggedy boy's jeans and long blond pigtails rolled over the sill to almost land on top of him, just as the train was starting up again.
As she hovered above Longarm on her hands and knees, the dirty-faced but sort of pretty kid gasped, "Oh, I thought this car would be empty!"
To which Longarm could only reply, "It ain't. Where might you be headed in such a hurry, sis?"
She gulped and stammered, "Keller's Crossing on the high plains of Wyoming Territory. Please don't hurt me, mister. I'll fuck you if I have to. But you don't have to hurt me to have your way with me, and I purely wish you wouldn't!"
CHAPTER 5
Her name was Daisy Gunn and she claimed to be seventeen. It was tougher to judge such matters when a gal was wearing mannish duds too big for her. By the time they'd established this much, Longarm had broken out a can of pork and beans and opened it with his pocketknife. From the way the barefoot waif wolfed down his trail grub, he surmised she hadn't been eating regular of late. He opened a can of tomato preserves for her to wash down the beans and cut the greasy aftertaste of the same before he took to questioning her serious.
So they were rolling along at a merry clip, with the one opening to the shady side, as he heard her sad but hardly unfamiliar story. There was something about the sound of a railroad whistle in the night to inspire young folk stuck with a heap of chores on a hardscrabble homestead to try their luck hopping freight trains to far places. She said, so far, she'd seen eleven states and been raped fourteen times by 'bos and bulls she'd found herself traveling with. She shyly confessed she'd been scared skinny by the sheer size of Longarm when she'd suddenly found herself in his company with the car already in motion. She said she'd saved her virtue one time by rolling off a moving train and decided never to do anything that painful again. For she was getting used to getting raped, while an ass-over-tea-kettle roll down a railroad bank could tear up a gal and her duds considerable.
Longarm lit a fresh cheroot without offering her one, seeing she seemed a mite young for such bad habits, and told her, "This rattler won't take neither of us any farther than the Cheyenne yards. You'll need to grab a ride aboard a feeder line out of Cheyenne and you'll likely have to ride the rods because they hardly ever send empties on to any such spur heads. You were going to tell me how come you're headed for Keller's Crossing via boxcar, weren't you?"
Daisy said, "Another girl in Pueblo told me women have the same rights as men up Wyoming way and that this girls' club is running the whole show in that township. Everywhere else I go, looking for work or just a place to flop, some mean old man takes advantage of me, and I'm getting mighty sick and tired of being slapped around and raped by mean old men."
Longarm allowed he'd heard they had gals voting and holding public office up Wyoming way. Then he casually asked if she recalled the name of that other gal who'd told her of such wonders.
It didn't work. Daisy shrugged and said, "I don't recall if she said we should call her Babs or Belle when they were holding us all in that jail. Her pimp came to bail her out around three in the morning. I wound up getting thirty days for vag, making mattress covers and getting passed back and forth by two older lizzy gals. I reckon I'd still be there if this dirty old man hadn't come by to pick out a prisoner of his choosing. He said he'd paid my fine and so I'd have to pay him off in trade, three ways for three dollars. If you ask me, he only bribed one of the turnkeys because my thirty days were almost up, and I don't think it was fair that I had to spend almost a week in a stuffy loft with that dirty old man before he'd let me go."
Longarm made a mental note that Wyoming might not be the only place some peace officers seemed to be abusing their authority. But since you could only eat an apple one bite at a time he told her, "I might have another business proposition for you, Miss Daisy, seeing we're both headed the same way."
She sat up, cross-legged, to smile down uncertainly at his relaxed form as she replied, "Well, all right. You ain't bad looking, and I've learned to sort of like it when a man ain't cruel or ugly."
He smiled dryly up at her to declare, "That wasn't the proposition I had in mind, no offense. For you to understand just what I want, I'm going to have to tell you more about myself and my reasons for going on up to the same country you're headed for."
He left out a lot, of course, as he explained he was a federal lawman investigating the very situation that seemed to have inspired her own enthusiasm for such a feminist utopia.
He said, "You have my word I ain't looking to get any innocent ladies in trouble, Miss Daisy. We've had what we call conflicting reports in my line of work. You'll doubtless be pleased to learn that some other federal lawmen have reported favorsome on a cattle country community where women hold much the same political powers as their menfolk."
She nodded and said, "That's what I heard in that holding pen. As soon as I get there I mean to search for work, and dast any dirty old man declare I have to fuck him first, I mean to have the law on him!"
Longarm said that sounded reasonable as he tried to decide how he wanted to word his own job offer. Heaps of ladies he admired had a cunt hair crosswise over this womens'-suffering bullshit, and a man had to watch his step lest he put a foot in his mouth whilst saying word one on the subject.
Longarm considered himself fair-minded, and he'd often told the sweet little things it was no skin off his nose if women got the same pay for the same work, got to vote, the same as any male drunk, or got on top in bed, if that was their pleasure. But the gals who took this suffering bullshit serious could be proddy about it as a Holy Roller asked to comment on Professor Darwin, and you had to keep assuring all concerned you weren't in league with the forces of evil, even whilst you were trying to agree with them.
He was about to make mention of her unshod and unkempt state when their casual view of rolling range to the east was largely blocked by the Black Swede, swinging down from the rolling car's roof like a big blonde ape.
The brake bull handled himself well aboard a moving train. After gracefully running nearly the length of the rattler along the catwalks up above, he kipped his considerable bulk in through the open doorway to land astride Longarm's stretched-out boots as he grinned down at the two of them like a shit-eating dog to growl, "Well, well, what have we here, a famous lawman too proud to jerk off and a sissy 'bo fixing to do it for
him or... Bless my stars, is that a gal you've been hogging to yourself up here, Long dong?"
Daisy seemed to shrink down beside him like one of the wildflowers she was named for, caught in the glare of a desert sun. But Longarm didn't even sound as testy as he felt when he calmly replied, "Watch your mouth. Miss Daisy, here, is with me, Bergman."
The Black Swede looming over them said, "So I see. We don't have to share the pretty little thing with the rest of the crew, as long as you're willing to share her with me."
Longarm grimaced and quietly said, "Hang some crepe on your nose in memory of the dead brain inside. We'll be rolling into Cheyenne soon enough, and I'm sure you have plenty of sweethearts along Crow Creek. I told you this young lady is with me. But if it's any comfort to you, she ain't with me that way, and there's nothing you'd be interested in to share."
The Black Swede was suddenly looming over them with a snub-nosed nickel-plated six-gun in hand as he said, "That tears it. I've had all of your smart mouth I can stand, and now you're fixing to get off my damned train and walk the rest of the way!"
Longarm shifted his weight some to stare thoughtfully through the spread legs of the bully at the passing scenery, observing, "We're doing better than twenty miles an hour right now, Bergman."
The Black Swede laughed with as much warmth as your average fox in a henhouse and declared, "I've seen men jump off a train doing forty and still the rascals lived. You aim to jump off like a man or have me toss you off like a sack of dead shit? I ain't bluffing. Go for that.44-40 you're half laying across, if you doubt my word I'm willing and able to gun any son of a bitch who crosses me!"
Longarm tried, "The rest of the crew saw me climb aboard this train, with the permit of your dispatcher, Bergman."
The Black Swede proved how well he deserved his ominous nickname when he just shrugged and said, "I ain't worried about them. I just told you nobody crosses me if they know what's good for them. Are you going to do as I say or do I have to waste a bullet on your thick skull?"
Then the Black Swede gave a sudden wild yelp, managed to fire one wild shot up into the car's roofing, and appeared to vanish into thin air with a mournful wail.
Daisy Gunn sat bolt upright, staring wide-eyed out the gaping doorway as she asked, "How did you do that, Custis? Are you some sort of magician?"
Longarm rolled up to his feet and moved over to the doorway to lean out and peer back down the right of way, where a mighty dusty but still conscious form was trying to get back up from the summer-killed grass without much luck.
Longarm rejoined the girl and sat back down beside her, saying, "Aw, he hurt his little leg. Might have been the fall. Might have been my kicking him in the kneecap like so. It wasn't magic, Miss Daisy. This other lady who taught me that particular trick called it Jewish Gypsy. It's a style of wrestling they invented over in Japan one time, and this Texas gal in the import-export business learned some from her Japanese hired help. I forget what they call the Jewish Gypsy trick I used just now. But like he pointed out, it would have been dumb to go for my six-gun or derringer with him standing over us point-blank. But I'd already noticed he was astride one of my boots stretched out in the hay, and I saw he was shifting his weight from one of his own legs to the other as the deck swayed under us. So I timed to when I should twist my right ankle to hook my toes behind his left heel, and next time he had his weight on that leg with the knee locked, I only had to kick the cap of said knee with my other boot to send him out the doorway backward."
She marveled, "You surely did. I wish I knew some of them Jewish Gypsy tricks. They'd surely come in handy, riding the rails."
Longarm remembered the cheroot he'd been gripping unsmoked between his teeth and enjoyed a luxurious drag before he told her, "We were talking about your future as a feminist up Wyoming way before we were so rudely interrupted. We'll be getting into the Cheyenne yards within the hour. Whether anyone else on board watched that brake bull learning to fly backward or not, I don't want anyone to see us getting off together. So we'd best drop off just outside the yards."
She pouted. "Aw, I ain't that disgusting to be seen with. Some say I ain't half bad to look at, bare ass, after a warm bath."
Longarm said,"I mean to sneak you into the Pilgrim Hotel and let you enjoy a nice long soak whilst I rustle you up more ladylike duds and run some other errands. I have to pay a courtesy call, over to the federal building, and then, if they'll let me, I'd like to browse a mite through the newspaper morgue at the Wyoming Eagle. After that we'll be on our way. Whilst you're riding with me I can likely get them to pay you four bits a day and found. How do you like it so far?"
She clapped her grimy hands and declared, "I like it a heap and you won't be sorry. I'll wash myself good, inside and out, and you can do it to me any way but Greek, if I'm half right about how a man your size has to be hung."
Longarm sighed and said, "I don't want to bugger you, and if I did I wouldn't. The deal I have in mind calls for you remaining as pure as the driven snow."
She flared, "What's wrong with me, you stuck-up thing? We've both agreed I could use a bath and these men's duds I stole off a clothesline may not do my girlish figure justice. But heaps of men have told me I look swell with no duds on at all. Would you like me to strip and show you?"
Longarm laughed and said, "Hold the thought for now. I can see how pretty you are, and I ain't no sissy when it comes to pretty gals. But I'm a lawman, on a mission, and I want to hire you to help me carry it out, see?"
She didn't. She said she'd be proud to help him out any way but Greek, any time he said the word.
He said, "Pay attention and you have my permit to help yourself out in that hot tub whilst I pay attention to them other chores I mentioned. I can't let you play that way with me, or vice versa, because with any luck I may wind up calling you as a disinterested federal witness, and you can't swear you ain't interested if the other side can accuse you of having enjoyed any slap and tickle with the arresting officer."
She asked who on earth he wanted her to bear witness against in any fool federal court.
He answered, simply, "If I knew that now, I wouldn't need your help. Somebody where we're headed may or may not be abusing his or her authority. If that ain't it, we'll still have to seek an injunction against sheer stupidity before some poor nester gal or schoolmarm is killed in a line of duty she was never meant for. We'll have heaps of time to talk about it later. Right now I can see by the truck farms we're passing that we're coming into Cheyenne. We ought to be slowing down for the trestle over Crow Creek and the yards beyond, ere long.
He rolled to his knees to slide his McClellan and possibles way closer to the open doorway as he told her, "I'll tell you when to follow me, tight, as I roll out just before we enter the yards. This car won't be moving more than eight or ten miles an hour by then, and you did say you'd had some experience in these matters, right?"
She allowed she could teach him a thing or two about hopping on or off fool freight cars. Then she asked to hear more about this offer of a job that paid so well but didn't require her to pleasure him.
Longarm smiled wolfishly and said, "Oh, I'll be pleased as punch with you if we can sneak you as far as Keller's Crossing without a Wyoming soul knowing you're really riding with me. You do know how to ride a horse good, don't you? I can't see any other way for the two of us to drift into Keller's Crossing in cahoots but not climbing down off the same train. The spur rails and the old Overland Trail both follow that stretch of the North Platte. But most everybody in your average trail town turns out whenever a train or coach rolls in."
Daisy said she'd noticed that and asked, once more, for more details about the particular chores he had in mind for her, if none of them seemed to involve them even smiling at each other in public.
He said they had to be thinking of getting off, now, as they rolled across the Crow Creek trestle. He wasn't sure just how he ought to tell a determined shemale sufferer how he might have to ask her to help him fuck some ot
her members of her sisterhood.
CHAPTER 6
A barefoot blonde wearing pants and pigtails seemed to attract odd looks as she tagged after Longarm and his saddle through the outskirts of Cheyenne. So when they stopped for some soda pop and directions at a neighborhood general store, Longarm bought Daisy a straw plowboy's hat and told her to shove her braids up inside the crown for now, in the hopes she might be taken for a raggedy farm youth instead of a gal dressed scandalous.
The Pilgrim Hotel near the U.P. Depot, like most good saloons or hotels, had discreet side entrances for social delicacies such as a man wanting to smuggle a gal in for a drink or whatever without the whole world having to know about it.
So Longarm had Daisy roost on a hitching rail by the hotel stable entrance while he and the McClellan went into the lobby to hire adjoining rooms up on the second floor. He signed himself in as who he was and told them he was expecting another government agent to arrive later in the day. He signed Daisy in as D. G. Crawford and never said word one about her gender. He pocketed both keys and said he'd store his own baggage topside before he went to see what was holding old D. G. The musty-haired old room clerk didn't seem to care one way or the other. Hotels only worried about baggage or just how many might be upstairs when they suspected they might be stiffed on the going room rates.
Leaving the McClellan in the room he'd hired for his own use, he went out through the stable exit to fetch the barefoot Daisy. He led her in and up the back stairs as he explained why she was signed in as somebody else. He said, "It's more important for me to remember your fake name because folk are less likely to ask you who I've been expecting aboard the afternoon train from Denver. I like to use the name, Crawford, because it's easy for me to recall. Crawford Long, the doc who invented painless surgery, was a hero to a heap of us during the war, and I've always hoped we might be kin. After that I know a reporter Crawford on the Denver Post who lies about me all the time, and I figure one good turn deserves another. I think Crawford is a Scotch name, like Gunn, anyways."