starting to boom again. He was overdue for a raise and prices were getting outrageous. A full-course meal could run a man as much as seventy-five cents these days and some of the fancier saloons were charging as much as a nickel a shot for redeye!
He dropped the change in his pants pocket and picked up his wallet. He had two twenty-dollar silver certificates to last him till payday unless he ran into someone awfully pretty. His silver federal badge was Pinned inside the wallet. Longarm rubbed it once on his woolen vest and folded the wallet. Then he slipped on his brown frock coat and tucked the wallet away in an inside pocket. He wasn’t given to flashing his badge or his gun unless he was serious.
He dropped a handful of extra cartridges into the right side pocket of his coat. The matching left pocket took a bundle of waterproof kitchen matches and a pair of handcuffs. The key to the cuffs and his room went in his left pants pocket along with a jackknife.
The last item was the Ingersoll watch on a long, gold watch chain. The other end of the chain was soldered to the brass butt of a double-barrelled .44 derringer. The watch rode in the left breast pocket of the vest. The derringer occupied the matching pocket on the right, with the chain draped across the front of the vest between them.
Longarm tucked a clean linen handkerchief into the breast pocket of his frock coat and took his snuff- brown Stetson from its nail on the wall. He positioned it carefully on his head, dead center and tilted slightly forward, cavalry style. The hat’s crown was telescoped in the Colorado rider’s fashion, but the way he wore it was a legacy from his youth when he’d run away to ride in the war. Longarm “disremembered” whether he’d ridden for the blue or the gray, for the great civil war lay less than a generation in the past and memories of it were still bitter, even this far west. It didn’t pay a man to talk too much about things past, out Colorado way.
Ready to face the morning, Longarm let himself out silently, slipping a short length of wooden matchstick between the door and the jam as he locked up. His landlady was supposed to watch his digs, but the almost invisible sliver would warn him if anyone was waiting for him inside whenever he returned.
Longarm moved through the dark rooming house on silent, booted feet, aware that others might still be sleeping. Outside, he filled his lungs with the clean, but oddly-scented air of Denver, ignoring the slight drizzle that he knew would blow over by noon.
His furnished digs lay in the unfashionable quarter on the wrong side of Cherry Creek, so Longarm crunched along the damp cinder path to the Colfax Avenue Bridge. He noticed as he crossed it that Cherry Creek still ran low and peaceable within its adobe banks. He hadn’t thought the unusual summer rain was worth his yellow oilcloth slicker—it figured to last just long enough to lay the dust and maybe do something about that funny smell. Longarm prided himself on his senses and liked to know what he was smelling. He could sniff a Blue Norther fixing to sweep down on the Prairie long before the clouds shifted. He could tell an Indian from a white man in the dark and once he’d smelled lightning in the high country just before it hit the ridge he just vacated. But he’d never figured out whY, in winter, spring, summer, or fall, the town of Denver always smelled like someone was burning autumn leaves over on the next street. He’d seldom seen anyone burning leaves in Denver. Aside from a few planted cotton woods in the more fashionable neighborhoods there were hardly enough trees in the whole damn town to matter. Yet there it was, even now, in the soft summer air. That mysterious smell was sort of spooky when a man studied on it.
On the eastern side of Cherry creek the cinder pathways gave way to the new red sandstone sidewalk they were putting down along all the main streets these days. Colfax Avenue had gas illumination, too. The town was getting downright civilized, considering it had been another placer camp in the rush, less than twenty Years before. Longarm came to an open barber shop on a corner and went in for a shave and maybe some stink- prettY.
His superiors had taken to commenting on a deputy who reported to work smelling like Maryland rye, and the bay rum George Masters, the barber, splashed over a paying customer didn’t cost extra.
He saw that the barber already had a customer in the chair and sat down to wait his turn. A stack of magazines was piled next to him and, deciding against Frank Lesley’s Illustrated Weekly, he picked up a copy of Ned Buntline’s Wild West magazine. Longarm didn’t know what the people who put it out had in mind, but he considered it a humorous publication.
He saw that there was another yarn in this month’s issue about poor old Jim Hickock. Old Jim had died in Deadwood damned near five years ago, but they still had him tearassing around after folks with a sixgun in each hand. For some reason they kept calling Old Jim “Wild Bill.”
There was a comical article about crazy Jane Canary, too. The writers called her “Calamity Jane” and had her down as Jim Hickock’s lady love. Longarm chuckled aloud and wet his thumb to turn the page. The last time he’d seen Hickock alive he’d been a happily married man, and the last gal on earth Jim or any other sane man would mess with was Jane Canary. If anyone really called her “Calamity,” it was probably because they knew she’d been tossed out of Madame Moustache’s parlor house in Dodge for dosing at least a dozen paying customers with the clap!
Longarm saw that the barber was about finished with the first customer and he put the magazine aside. As the other man rose from the chair, George whipped the barber’s cloth aside and Longarm saw that the customer’s right hand was on the butt of the Walker-Colt riding his right hip.
Longarm crabbed to one side. His own gun appeared in front of him as if by magic, trained on the stranger’s bellybutton. Longarm said, “Freeze!” in a soft, no-nonsense tone.
George was already well to one side with a swiftness gained from cutting hair this close to the Larimer Street deadline. The man, half out of the barber’s chair, snatched his hand from the butt of his holstered revolver as if it had suddenly stung him and his face was chalky as he gasped, “Mister, I don’t even know you!”
“I ain’t sure as I’ve seen you before, either, old son. You got a reason for coming up out of that chair grabbing iron, or were you just born foolish?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was shifting Captain Walker, here, to ride more comfortable- like!”
“Well, that old hog leg’s a heavy gun and what YOU say’s almost reasonable, but hardly common sense. if you aim to wander through life with that oversized sixgun dragging alongside, you’d best learn not to make sudden moves toward it around grown men!”
The other, perhaps ten years younger than the deputy, licked his lips and said, “Mister, I have purely lernt it! I swear I never saw a gunslick draw so fast before! I don’t know who you are, but you must surely have one dangerous job!”
“My name is Custis Long and I’m a Deputy U.S. MarshaL which can leave a man thoughtful. Where’ve I seen you before, friend?”
