by Tabor Evans
Covina tipped his ham and eggs on to a china plate and served him as she told Daisy to pour the coffee while she tended to something in her bedroom.
As she left, Daisy stood close enough for Longarm to smell the fresh-scrubbed flesh under that chenille nightgown as she filled a mug for him, murmuring, "I think she likes you, too. Wouldn't it be fun if the three of us all got naked and had us a party?"
He laughed and told her to behave herself, having no call to tell her about the party he'd just had with a more-than-enough frisky Lakota.
The ham and eggs were swell. The strong coffee offered to see him through the next few hours of the night. But then what? He could ask for help from the local law or Billy Vail's sullen opposite number. But that would only make the outlaws crawfish back into their hideyholes and tip their leaders off that he was on his way past them, even if he made the damned way-freight without having to jaw half the night away.
So mayhaps it was just as well, he thought, that he wasn't hard up enough at the moment to be tempted by a night in bed with two women. For Daisy's sassy suggestion made as much sense as trying to sneak past any number of owlhoot riders without knowing who they were or where they'd be laying for him!
He was sponging up the last egg yolk with a chunk of rye bread when Covina Rivers came back in, fully dressed in a tight-waisted navy velveteen riding habit, a bitty boater perched atop her pinned-up steel-gray hair, to ask if he was finished yet.
Longarm rose from the table to allow he sure was and ask if she meant to ride somewheres at that hour.
Covina said, "I keep my shay in the carriage house of a livery a block up the avenue. I don't drive enough to keep my own carriage horse, but I know all their good ones by name. So let's be on our way. If the one they call Blue Ribbons hasn't been driven this afternoon, she ought to get us there in plenty of time!"
Longarm was in no position to argue. He picked up his Winchester, grabbed for his hat, and followed her down the stairs as, behind him, Daisy wailed she wanted to go, too.
As he legged it up Central Avenue with the surprising fast-paced widow woman, Longarm asked why she hadn't told him sooner.
She said, "You men are all alike. I'd have never gotten you to eat a warm meal and put away that much coffee if you'd had any hope of beating that way-freight to Crow Bend."
He had to allow she was right. Long before they'd gotten the long-limbed chestnut, Blue Ribbons, hitched up to her private two-wheel shay, he was telling her they weren't going to make it. He was sure of this as they trotted out the north-west city limits in the moonlight, along the service road that followed the single tracks and sandy Crow Creek toward the Laramie range to the west. For as spunky as she trotted, Blue Ribbons wasn't going to average more than nine miles an hour, and even a way-freight rumbled across the prairie at better than twelve between towns.
Covina explained the tracks followed the easy route of the creek as it meandered across rolling prairie. He didn't ask why when she reined Blue Ribbons off the service road and out across open range in the moonlight. She drove with skill many a man might have envied, and Longarm would have told her, had not they been bouncing so hard on the seat of her one-horse shay as they tore across the prairie in the tricky moonlight.
He didn't have to urge her to whip Blue Ribbons with the rein ends as they both heard a locomotive whistle in the distance, albeit not as far a distance as Longarm would have asked if he'd had anything to say about the matter!
CHAPTER 13
They made it with less than five minutes to spare. As the gallant Blue Ribbons panted head-down between the shafts, Longarm helped the hard-driving widow woman down from her shay and kissed her without thinking before he said, "I want you to promise me both you real pals will head back to Cheyenne at a walk! I got to run down the platform and talk to the freight agent now. I'll wire more detailes when I send for Daisy."
Covina flustered, "When and why? She's not a bad girl, but she's had no upbringing and seems terribly stupid, even for a sort of white Topsy off a farm."
Longarm said, "You work with what you have to work with, and I just said I'd wire more detailed instructions, once I know what I want her to do or say on arrival. I don't know what I'll find waiting for me, up the line, myself. So thanks a heap for the buggy ride, and I got to move it out, ma'am."
She asked, "Would you kiss me again? Just to say goodbye? I was caught off guard by that first one, Custis."
Kissing any gal never took as much time as telling her you didn't want to. So he took the nice little old lady in his arms and gave her a good one, sort of surprised but not upset when she kissed back French.
Old Ben Franklin had warned younger jaspers things like that might happen around nice little old ladies, Longarm reflected as he legged it along the platform to where some dim figures were gathered near the only lantern at their end.
When he showed his badge and introduced himself to the small-town freight agent, he was told the line would be proud to ride him up to the North Platte as long as he didn't get in the way. So when the way-freight hissed in to a short stop a few minutes later, Longarm set his Winchester aside and helped them unload a mail-order piano before he swung aboard the caboose with a wave back down the tracks to any lady who might still be there. You couldn't tell with the moonlight and inky shadows shifting so in the night breezes.
He'd been asked to stay out of the way. So he found a seat on the rear platform and lit up as they followed the tracks away to the north from Crow Creek, hugging a contour line of the now not so distant Laramies, a sort of orphan range running in line with but apart from the main thrust of the Rockies.
They passed a ranch house with the lamplight from the windows somehow making a passing stranger feel left out. Longarm had assured himself often enough that he wasn't really missing anything when he lay snugabed with a train whistle calling far off in the night. But it often seemed to promise new thrills and adventure in some far-off parts he'd never been while, contrariwise, whenever he was riding a train through the night, he got to wondering what he might be missing behind those cozy lamp-lit window curtains he was passing with no chance to ever ask.
He laughed and told the Winchester in his lap, "The man of that house back yonder is likely stiff in the joints from working all day, and even if he does feel like turning in early with the lady of the house, she'll likely tell him she has a headache."
He found himself wondering how long it would take good old Covina to get home, and what she and little Daisy would talk about when they got back to pulling taffy or went to bed in those flannel nightgowns.
He laughed at himself and told his Winchester, "I reckon I've about recovered from that Indian campaign if I'm starting to picture nice little old ladies in flannel nightgowns or, better yet, nothing at all, and wouldn't that be a party!"
He'd seen enough of young Daisy to picture her buck naked in bed with him and French-kissing Covina. The way-older widow had as narrow a waist but fuller breastworks and bottom than the mature but not that mature Portia Parkhurst, attorney-at-law.
He snorted in disbelief at his own wild imagination and allowed he might as well imagine an orgy with all three of them, seeing it would never be more than a fantasy.
So he did and it was giving him one hell of a hard-on when the way-freight stopped again at Horse Creek to unload a ton of barbed wire and some crates of preserving jars.
And so it went as the night dragged on, with Longarm really feeling the hours since last he'd slept solid by the time they got as far as Chugwater, winding like a damned old snake and stopping at tiny towns with names humble or grand.
The brakeman came out on the platform to smoke with him as they rolled out of Wheatland. Longarm asked how soon they'd get in to Fort Laramie. The brakeman told him he was on the wrong line.
Longarm said something dreadful about railroad lines in general.
The brakeman smothered, "You told us you wanted to go to Keller's Crossing, a day's ride up the North Platte from For
t Laramie. So it's just as time-consuming either way. We don't run a train this late along the spur that leaves Cheyenne to the northeast to hit the North Platte at Torrington and cut west to follow the river upstream. So you're saving hours this way, even though you have to catch a coach going downstream, from Wendover, if you want to wind up in Keller's Crossing. Think of the rails as the main lines of a spiderweb with stage lines the cross webs, at this stage of the game. Some day they'll likely have tracks and telegraph lines strung all over from town to town, but right now a man has to sort of zig and zag his way across this world."
Longarm sighed and said, "I've been zigging and zagging until I'm too tired to keep my damned eyes open. But I reckon the time I might have saved this way will make up for the last few dusty miles. And wouldn't most Wyoming hands expect me to grab that other feeder line out of Cheyenne to Keller's Crossing?"
The brakeman took an expansive drag on his own smoke and confided, "The gent who said there was more than one way to skin a cat must have rid the rails out our way, some. Folk new to the territory are always confounding old Fort Laramie with the newer township of Laramie, eighty miles to the southwest, albeit still on the same North Platte river because of the way it hairpins around the Laramie Range. Eastern greenhorns and even old cowhands are always getting off at the wrong Laramie stop. There's two Virginia Cities you can get to by rail, and you want to get off this train at Wendover, Wyoming, not the one on the Utah-Nevada line way off to the west."
Longarm asked if the stage line the brakemen had advised him to catch at Wendover was the same one running down the Bozeman Trail from the northern gold fields.
The brakeman said it surely was and cautiously added, "Might you not be the same federal deputy who bummed a ride north from Denver early this morning with One Thumb Thurber on the Burlington Line?"
Longarm nodded but marveled, "Lord have mercy, was it really less than twenty-four hours ago? Maybe I ain't making such slow time, after all."
The brakemen said, "I heard some Burlington hands talking about your dust-up with the Black Swede, Gus Bergman. One Thumb thought he had it coming when you threw him off that rattler. He'd told the Swede not to mess with you."
Longarm shrugged and said, "So did I. I suspect there's a screw loose inside his thick skull."
The brakeman chuckled and said, "So did the Cheyenne dispatcher for the Burlington Line. He fired the Black Swede when he limped into town, demanding the railroad swear out a theft-of-service charge on a federal officer invited to ride free."
Longarm said, "I suppose I ought to feel more pleased to hear the man lost his job. He surely wasn't meant to handle it. But I can't help wondering where a congenital bully with a temper he can't rein in ought to look for work to occupy his restless nature."
The brakeman said, "The Black Swede seems to think he has to kill you before he worries about anything else. That's the real reason I came out here. If you say I told you I'll deny it. But the boys say you're all right, and Gus Bergman ain't your average hot-tempered bully. He's killed more than one man, and they weren't all unarmed 'bos. Gus packs a double-action Harrington Richardson.38, concealed."
Longarm said, "I know. He showed it to me. But I thank you for your timely warning just the same. If you knew right off who I had to be, the Black Swede might have figured I'd be hopping a night train out of Cheyenne, and unlike some other rascals after me, old Gus may be far better at figuring railroad time tables. You say the natural place for me to drop off this platform would be Wendover on the North Platte?"
The brakeman allowed it was, if he meant to make connections with a stage coach to Keller's Crossing.
Longarm took a last drag, snuffed out the smoked-down cheroot, and decided, "I have to hire both a mount to get around and a saddle to replace one I wasn't able to get at, this evening. Once me and this Winchester are mounted up, it won't really cut much ice whether we ride into Keller's Crossing from any expected direction or not. What's the stop before we reach the river, and how far from the North Platte may that leave me?"
The brakeman said they'd stop at the trail town of Dwyer, seven or eight miles this side of the spurhead at Wendover. He thought and then volunteered, "You might wind up saving a few miles if you ride east from Dwyer on a hired mount, now that I study on it. For we'll roll on to hit the river at a thirty degree angle at Wendover, so-"
Longarm cut him off by fishing out two fresh smokes and offering one as he said, "I'll get off at Dwyer, and I'm much obliged, pard."
The brakeman declined the offer and got back to his feet, saying he had to go forward and get back to work. So Longarm knew he owed the older gent more than idle gossip about the Black Swede. His railroad pals had spread the word that he might be in deep shit.
He put the two smokes away, unlit. Smoking too much when you were tired or hungry only seemed to make you feel worse, and his ass was really dragging now.
He didn't feel any fresher when the way-freight stopped at the dinky foothill settlement of Dwyer late as hell. He forced himself to wake up and help the crew unload some crates and a windmill kit before he asked the freight dispatcher there if there was a hotel to be had anywhere in town.
Everybody but the friendly older man he asked laughed like hell. The freight agent said, "I reckon we could put you up for the night, Deputy Long. There ain't no hotel this side of Wendover, and the one there is notorious for its bedbugs."
So that was the way Longarm found a place to catch up on some overdue shut-eye, snug in a featherbed on clean sheets under a thick old comforter that really came in handy before morning at that altitude.
Only men with nothing important to do slept long after cock's crow. So, seeing the freight agent and his mothersome old woman had acted so insulted when he'd offered to pay for his bed and breakfast, he went out back and split a day's worth of stove wood before breakfast.
The lady of the house still felt free to fuss at him and make him wash behind his ears at the pump out back while she made flapjacks for him, her man, and their four well-behaved kids.
Longarm was sorry to say goodbye to such folk, who'd more than lived up to the lamplight through their window curtains. But he had to, still tasting the buckwheat, butter, and sorghum syrup he'd washed down with strong black coffee.
There wasn't any Western Union in a town that size. He might have been able to patch through to their lines by way of the railroad's own telegraph net. But the more he thought about it, the less he realized he had to report, and he was getting tired of having others read his infernal messages. They'd said in a copy of Scientific American he'd read that someday private homes might be hooked up to a web of Bell Telephone wires more tangled than those of Mr. Cornel's Western Union. But until that day when nobody would ever be able to intercept private messages, a man had to study on what he put out on the wire for many a sneak to filch, the way Deacon Knox and Lord only knew who else might have.
He strode over to the horse trader the freight agent had advised him to try, Dwyer being too small to support a town livery, and found the trader and two of his rougher-dressed hands out in the paddock, gentling a young cow-pony with a blindfold and feed sack.
The trader, called Bronco Bob for some reason, went on gently rubbing the proddy pony's spine with the man-scented feed sack while his boys steadied it and Longarm explained his predicament.
Bronco Bob looked dubious until he suddenly brightened and asked, "Might you be the same Custis Long as scouted for the Cav and the Wyoming Militia over in the South Pass Country during Buffalo Horn's reservation jump a summer or so back?"
When Longarm allowed he'd been there, but hadn't killed Buffalo Horn, personal, Bronco Bob laughed and said, "By Jimmies, you must be the only white man riding with us who don't count coup on that old renegade. I've killed him more than once when in my cups. You say you need a horse and saddle? You're going to need a saddle boot for that Winchester as well, and I've got just the ticket, if you ain't too proud to fork an old Cavalry McClellen."
Longarm soberly allowed he wasn't out to rope no cows. So Bronco Bob told one of his hands to quit fooling with that damned halter and go saddle up old Socks, who turned out to be a buckskin standing a good fifteen hands on her four pale hooves. She looked as frisky as her owner bragged.
When Longarm asked how much all this was going to cost him, the horse trader bristled and demanded, Do I look like a damned livery stable swamper? We rid against Buffalo Horn together, and you say you need the borrow of a horse and saddle. There is a livery over yonder at Keller's Crossing, next to the stage terminal. Leave Socks and my old army saddle there when you're done with 'em. I get over yonder regular, and I never charged Uncle Sam any bounty on Buffalo Horn, now that I study on it."
They shook on it and Longarm had to fight the urge to say something mushy about a little trail town called Dwyer, which would never be famous as Deadwood or Dodge because the folk who lived there were so much more neighborly.
CHAPTER 14
The rolling sea of grass trended down some from Dwyer and the Laramie Range behind it. So the buckskin made good time under him as Longarm rode her east-northeast toward the flats of the wide but shallow North Platte.
Travelers' tales allowed the North Platte was a mile wide and an inch deep. This was stretching it some, at low water in high summer during a drought year. But it was true you could wade, ford, or drive stock across most any stretch that wasn't quick-sandy a good deal of the time. A good deal wasn't often enough for folk who crossed the North Platte regular. So Keller's Crossing had been surveyed, staked, and claimed where the river purled wider and shallower over a natural submerged causeway of bedrock.
Longarm knew he was getting warm long before he could make out a whitewashed church spire and barn-red grain elevator because he and old Socks took to passing clumps of grazing cows, mostly Texas Calico with a few black Cherokee Longhorns, and then he had to dismount to unstaple a drift fence because they'd been bee-lining across pathless open range, and the fence had been strung to keep uninvited stock west of it.