then out of the coach and onto the open platform between the swaying coaches.
“You got two choices!” Longarm yelled. “You can either stay right here until this train reaches Pueblo, or you can take a flying leap into the brush and walk to Pueblo!”
Tasker’s eyes widened. “Don’t pitch me over the side! Gawdammit, as fast as this train is goin’, I could break my neck in the fall!”
Longarm stepped away. Tasker was a mess. One of his eyes was swollen almost shut, and his nose ran with blood. “Tasker, when this train reaches Pueblo, you better not let me see you even for a minute! Do you understand!”
The mountain man’s eyes blazed with hatred. “You can’t get away with doin’ this to me! I bought a ticket just the same as you and that woman!”
“Yeah, well, I’ll have to talk to the railroad about their policy of letting animals have seats,” Longarm gritted out.
He pivoted and started to go back into the coach, but Tasker reached out, grabbed him by the ankle, and tripped him. Then, the big man was on him again, and they were rolling and wrestling around on the platform.
Tasker was bull-strong, and Longarm was not in his best fighting condition. As they each struggled for advantage, Longarm had the impression that he was going to lose, and so, with Tasker’s big hands inching toward his throat, he sledged two hard punches into Tasker’s already broken nose.
The mountain man hollered, and his grip loosened just enough for Longarm to squirm free and hit him in the side of the jaw, dislocating or maybe even breaking it. Longarm grabbed the man by the back of his leather shirt and his britches and heaved him off the train, hearing the man’s cry end abruptly as he struck the roadbed and then rolled end over end down into a ditch. The man crawled to his knees, then collapsed. Longarm had no energy left to waste on pity, and so he waved Tasker good-bye and good riddance.
Miranda hurried out and hugged him tightly. “I was afraid that you were going to be killed or thrown off the train.”
“So was I.”
“Custis, I sure didn’t think that you could whip someone that big.”
Longarm flexed his battered hands. “There’s a prizefighter who says that the bigger they are the harder they fall. That huge sonofabitch fell pretty hard.”
“Are you all right?”
“My ribs hurt and one side of my face is numb and probably swelling up like a melon. Other than that and a few scraped knuckles, I’m okay.”
“Well,” Miranda said, “at least now we’ll be able to sit together all the rest of the way down to Pueblo.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but if we tell people that we are newlyweds, they’re just naturally going to think that you’ve already been beating up on me.”
“Fat chance of that,” Miranda scoffed, helping him back into the coach. No one challenged him with their eyes or stared at Miranda the way they had earlier.
The rest of the trip down to Pueblo was blessedly uneventful. Longarm accepted a couple of drinks from sympathetic passengers, and the whiskey made him feel almost human. Still, he was more than a little unhappy with the way that this trip was starting. Miranda was supposed to make things easier, not harder. If she hadn’t been along, he wouldn’t have felt compelled to defend her honor and fight Tasker. It might have been an uneventful trip and he’d be feeling a whole lot better than he was feeling now.
Oh, well. Miranda was with him, and she wasn’t going to be sent back home or turned away now. The woman had her heart set on seeing those Mesa Verde ruins, and she would be awful nice to have around starting tonight in Pueblo. It would feel mighty good when she bound his tender ribs, soaked his battered knuckles and swelling eye. She could tend to his battle wounds, and that was far better than having to tend to himself.
Longarm liked Pueblo, and had passed through it whenever he had assignments to the south. The town had been founded by the famed mountain man and trader Jim Beckwourth in 1842, at the confluence of Fountain Creek and the Arkansas River. Located near plenty of good grass and water, the town grew quickly, and soon became a major trading settlement. On the dusty streets of Pueblo you could see Indians, Mexicans, cowboys, railroad workers, and miners. With the railroad’s arrival in 1872, ranching and farming had boomed, and valuable minerals had been found just to the west of town. Now, there were smelters and foundries employing hundreds of workmen.
“I didn’t realize that it was so big,” Miranda said after they disembarked from the train and started toward what Longarm knew was a respectable hotel.
“Pueblo is a fine place to live and raise a family,” Longarm said. “Miners are bringing in their families, and women always change the look and feel of a town. There are a few less saloons, a few more churches than there were just a year ago.”
“And you don’t approve of that?” Miranda asked, looking up at him.
“No, that’s fine with me,” Longarm said. “We used to have a lot of trouble here, but they hired a good marshal and he’s got two outstanding deputies.”
“How long will we be here?”
“Two nights,” Longarm told her. “Monday morning we’ll catch a stage west to Durango. That will take a few days’ hard travel over the southern Rockies.”
“I love travel and adventure,” Miranda said. “Especially with you.”
“I like traveling, but sometimes it gets boring. I expect that after seeing some of the roads we’re going to be carried over, you’ll have had your fill of stagecoach travel by the time we reach Durango. It’s a hard trip, but the country is pretty.”
“You won’t hear me complain,” she assured him.
“Wouldn’t do you any good. With any luck, we’ll have the coach to ourselves, but don’t count on it.”
