liquor can ruin a good man.'
'Do you smoke?' Longarm patted his coat pocket. 'I've got a couple more cigars.'
'Nope.'
Longarm shook his head. 'Pettibone, if you don't drink and you don't smoke, then you might as well be a Mormon.'
'Listen to you,' Pettibone said with amusement. 'Why, you were gasping like a locomotive out there on the trail! It's that tobacco that robs your wind and ruins your lungs.'
'A man has got to have a few pleasures in life.'
Pettibone studied Longarm in the firelight. 'I'll bet you have pleasures aplenty with the ladies, isn't that so?'
'I like 'em fine,' Longarm replied. 'But someday I might settle down and have a family. Like you.'
'I don't think so.'
Longarm curbed his annoyance. He didn't understand how this man could make such an important assessment, given that they were almost strangers.
'I was a sheriff once,' Pettibone said after several minutes of strained silence.
'For a fact?'
'Yes. It was on the Comstock Lode. I was, for a few short and exciting months, the sheriff at Gold Hill.'
'Sure, I've been through there dozens of times. Why'd you quit?'
'I killed an innocent man,' Pettibone said quietly. 'His only crime was that he was drunk.'
'Did he go for his gun?'
'A knife. I thought he was passed out and when I reached down to drag him into a chair, he probably thought I was about to steal what little money he had left in his pockets. So he yanked out his knife and stabbed me in the side.'
'Then he wasn't innocent if he used a knife against you, Pettibone.'
'Oh, yes he was! You see, he didn't know what he was doing. And instead of kicking his boots to wake him up first so that sort of thing didn't happen, I just grabbed him. To make matters worse, when he stabbed me, I instinctively slammed the heel of my hand up into his nose.'
Pettibone shook his head, his expression bleak. 'It was pure reaction. There were dozens of witnesses and they all said that I was just trying to push him away, not drive nasal bones into the drunken man's brain.'
Longarm smoked in silence. He could see how troubled Pettibone was over this unfortunate death, and felt sure that everyone had already said all the consoling words but none of them had counted. In Bruce Pettibone's mind, he was guilty of murder. Not a vicious or premeditated murder, but a murder caused by ignorance.
Pettibone looked up suddenly. 'You've killed a lot of men, haven't you?'
It wasn't a question and Longarm didn't reply.
'Doesn't it bother you?'
'Sometimes.' Longarm blew a smoke ring at the fire. He could hear the wind through the pines outside and he was very grateful that they weren't camped in the freezing snow.
'Will it bother you tomorrow if we have to kill those train robbers?'
'Not a whit,' Longarm growled. 'You saw the results of what they did to the train at this end. Well, it was about as bad at Laramie Summit. They killed women and old men. They didn't even know who they killed, and they didn't care that some of them lived for a while in the freezing cold and died in pain.'
Longarm looked hard at Bruce Pettibone. 'Listen to me,' he said, his voice taking on an edge. 'If you haven't the stomach for the fight, then you should return to the depot in the morning. I don't need a good family man who hesitates and gets himself killed for nothing.'
'Maybe we can get the drop on the whole bunch and take them without firing a single shot.'
'Not very damned likely,' Longarm said. 'The odds are that we will have a gunfight. The odds are that unless we drop two or three in the first volley, we won't live to see spring. So you need to decide if you are ready to fight or not.'
After a long few minutes, Pettibone said, 'I'll fight if they don't surrender.'
'You just have that shotgun cocked and ready. In your mind, figure to unload both barrels. Otherwise, you're a dead man. Mark my words, Pettibone. The outlaws we are going to brace are tough, and they sure won't be willing to surrender so they can march to a gallows.'
Pettibone nodded. 'I guess that's probably the best way to look at it.'
'It's the only way to look at it,' Longarm told him.
Longarm fed the fire until it was hot, and then lay back on his blankets and drifted off to sleep wondering if he or Pettibone would survive the next day.
'Wake up,' Pettibone said, jostling Longarm.
Longarm sat up out of a dead sleep and looked around. For a moment he forgot where he was, but then he spotted Pettibone. He could see that the railroad detective had rustled up and cooked some breakfast. Biscuits, salt pork, and mercy, even coffee.
'I ought to bring you along on these manhunts more often,' Longarm said when he was served a heaping breakfast plate.
