“My saddle and bag. You remember. You took them down off the stage your own self a little while ago.”
“Mister, I handle two dozen pieces o’ luggage every day. I sure can’t call one from another. An’ don’t tell me what I should oughta remember. All right?”
“Fine. I apologize. Now if you’d just give me my gear.”
“You got a claim ticket?”
“Pardon me?”
“A claim ticket. Every passenger gets a claim ticket for his things. Where’s yours?”
“I don’t have a claim ticket.”
“If you rode my coach you did. It’s part of your passage ticket. Right there at the bottom.”
“But I wasn’t issued a regular ticket. As you know perfectly good and well. I traveled on a government pass.”
“Mister, if you ain’t got a claim ticket then you don’t get no baggage. That’s the rules.” Longarm’s patience was just real close to being used up. He could feel the heat in his cheeks and the tightness across his shoulders and down the back of his neck, all the signs that warned him to keep a tight rein on or else he was going to end up hurting this miserable excuse for a …
“Tom!” The voice was sharp. And feminine.
Longarm’s attention was drawn to the doorway leading into another room. A woman stood there. A young woman. And a damned pretty one. Longarm snatched his hat off, the frustrations of trying to speak with old Tom put completely aside already.
“Why ever are you acting so snappish with the gentleman, Tom?”
The jehu growled and glowered. “The son of a … I mean t’ say, Miss Lucy, the gentleman here beat you outa the fare down from Trinidad. Flashed some cheap tin instead. It strikes me wrong when somebody thinks he’s got the right t’ take something for nothing. That’s all.”
“But he hasn’t taken something for nothing, Tom. The government pays us quite well for our express service. If we didn’t want the job, and at that price, we didn’t have to bid on it. And we all—you included, Tom— knew to begin with that the mail contract includes passenger privileges for anyone traveling on official business.” She smiled. “Tell me, Tom. This gentleman would be—what?—the fourth passenger we’ve had to carry without charge since we won that contract?”
“Um, something like that. Too many, anyhow.”
“Get the gentleman’s luggage, please, Tom.”
“But Miss Lucy, without a claim tick-“
“Tom!” Her voice was no louder this time than it had been before, but now there was an edge in it sharp enough to slice post oak.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The jehu gave in and went grumbling out of sight while the young woman came the rest of the way into the station lobby. “I’m sorry, Mister …?”
Longarm remembered his manners and quickly gave her a little bow. “Long, miss. Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long.”
“A marshal. Really. That’s very exciting. I believe we’ve had a surveyor before and two postal inspectors, but never a marshal before now.”
“Only a deputy, miss. A marshal is somebody way up the ladder. Me, I’m just a hired hand trying to do a job.”
She smiled again. Longarm wasn’t sure, but he kinda thought the room got brighter when she smiled like that.
“What was it you said your name was, miss?”
“I don’t believe I did say,” she responded with a twinkle in her eyes—and damn pretty eyes they were, Longarm noted, big and bright and gold with green highlights in them—pretending that was all she intended to divulge. After a moment’s teasing she added, “If you must know, for your official reports of course, I’m Lucy Watson. I own the Watson Express Company.”
“You an’ who else, Miss Lucy?” the driver named Tom prompted from the far side of the room where he had reemerged carrying Longarm’s saddle and carpetbag.
“Myself and my brother Luke own the line jointly if you want all the details,” she amended, casting a steely glance in Tom’s direction.
The driver-turned-freight-handler dropped Longarm’s gear onto the floor—Longarm wasn’t in any position to catch the bag before it hit this time—and with a clearly audible grunt of disapproval disappeared into the back of the building again.
“Something’s sure chewing on that man’s …” Longarm had been about to say backside, but he thought better of it and lamely went on. “On that, uh, man there.”
Miss Lucy Watson smiled—Lordy, but she was awful pretty when she did that—and said, “Tom has been with our family quite literally as long as I can remember, Marshal. He worked for our daddy in the store back in Kansas, and in an oil-drilling venture up in Florence when we first came to Colorado. And in all the things Daddy got into afterward.”
“Your papa likes to try his hand at different things, does he?” Longarm said with a smile.
“Not so much because he liked it as because he had little choice in the matter. Daddy wasn’t a very good businessman. I loved him to pieces, but the truth is that he was a perfectly awful businessman. And a perfectly
