Longarm shook his head and said, “You must be getting old too. It was the second platoon and the shavetail was Jergensson.”
The so-called Slim nodded eagerly and said, “Gotten fatter, like I said, too. I’d forgot old Jergensson. Whatever happened to the looie after I got wounded and sent home?”
Longarm had no idea, since he’d never served under any Second Lieutenant Jergensson of the Sixth Minnesota, but he managed to look sober as he said, “Stopped a Sioux arrow with his floating fibs up around Yellow Medicine. He wasn’t such a bad cuss, for an officer. Say, do you remember that infernal Major Palmer who held a full inspection in that snowstorm?” It worked. The sneak calling himself Slim decided to quit while he was ahead and got back to his feet. But before he left he had to try. “Your real name was Femdale, right?”
That Gypsy gal had explained how any wild stab was as likely to get the same response from the mark. So, seeing he was supposed to be the mark, Longarm laughed and said, “Not even close. You must have me mixed up with old Hank Ferguson. I was Hank Bradford before I had to change my name for business reasons.”
The trick questioner smiled easily and said, “Right. I’d forgotten old Jergensson too. Smart move to keep your first name and stay so close to the original, Hank. We’ll talk about old times later. I got to get back to work before I get in trouble.”
Longarm didn’t try to stop him. He grinned wolfishly with his smoke gripped in his teeth as he watched the wise-ass circle a table and go through an unmarked door between two red plush curtains.
Longarm rose and drifted over to the nearest faro layout. He didn’t place a bet. Faro was as easy to rig as baccarat. But as he watched the dealer’s hands the cards seemed to be coming out of the so-called shoe, often a false-bottomed box, about the way a Christian might be expected to deal. So Queen Kirby seemed to be content with straight house odds. The house had to be coming out ahead, though, with a crowd this size.
The man in black who called himself Wesley Jones joined Longarm at the faro layout to demand, “How come you didn’t stay put like I told you?”
Longarm softly but firmly replied, “I don’t work for you. So who are you to tell me shit?”
Jones smiled uneasily and said, “Never mind. Queen Kirby wants a word with you. Play your cards right and you might wind up working for her.”
Longarm allowed that he already had a job, but tagged along through that same unmarked door. The big, rawboned redhead seated behind a fancy rosewood writing table was smoking a Havana claro as she waved him to a ridiculous perch on a small plush chair with her bejeweled and manicured left hand, saying, “You’ll be pleased to know we sent those others looking for you on their way while you were slug-a-bed and helpless at the hotel, Henry. Why did you tell my boys you were on your way north when you just came from there in a hurry?”
Longarm smiled easily and said, “That’s a fool question, if you don’t mind my saying so, Miss Queen. Where would you tell strangers you were headed if you were riding the owlhoot trail from the north?”
The handsome but hard-looking gal of at least thirty-five summers smiled wearily and said, “Henry, Henry, you haven’t changed a bit since last we met and you were trying to fib your way under my way-younger skirts.”
Longarm stared hard as he could with a poker face. Staring with a bit more thought, he realized she did look faintly familiar. But he was good at remembering faces, and it was just as likely he was recalling familiar features from different rogues’-gallery tintypes and trying to make a mite more sense out of a mishmash. He tried picturing her with natural hair. That pinned-up henna mop had likely started out brown, to judge from the remains of her more naturally colored plucked eyebrows. Her teeth were a tad pearly for her more time-worn painted face. But if they were false, she’d spent as much on them as she had on her low-cut maroon velvet dress. She likely showed that much bodice so nobody could miss the pearl choker she wore around her neck, as if she was that redheaded Princess Alex of Wales instead of… whatever all this was supposed to signify.
She removed the cigar from her painted lips with a smile and said, “After all that sweet talk you don’t remember me at all, do you, Henry? I fear Father Time’s cruel tricks have been easier on you than me, Henry. But I’ll give you a hint. Think back to where you first went after mustering out of the Sixth Minnesota, my young so ldier blue.”
The hardest part about going along with old fortune-telling shit was resisting the natural impulse to show you weren’t really a dumb shit. But Longarm thought fast and declared in a puzzled tone, “I don’t recall you from San Antone at all, no offense. It wasn’t all that long ago and I’m particular about whose skirts I might or might not mess with. I don’t mean you’re too ugly even now, but I never mess with gals I’d forget so total afterwards.”
She laughed and said, “I’m flattered, I think. You never got that far with me in San Antone, but it was a nice try and I forgive you for never having written.”
She waved her cigar at the man in black by the door and continued. “Wes tells me you said you had a job up in Chama. Was that just a lie or was that where you were going when the Townsend boy recognized you and behaved so foolishly?”
Longarm had no way of knowing whether anyone there had ever laid eyes on the real Julesburg Kid. So, hoping he’d thrown them off his back trail with that bluff about San Antone after the war, he patted the action of the Winchester across his lap and replied, “Jason Townsend never recognized me. He said I was the Julesburg Kid. I was still trying to persuade him he had me mixed up with someone more famous when he slapped leather on me. As to what I was really doing in Loma Blanca, or where I was headed from there, it’s nobody’s beeswax but my own. I ain’t asked anyone in this town for a thing I ain’t been willing to pay for. I ain’t asked anyone anywhere to tell me what they might be up to. But seeing we seem to be former sweethearts from San Antone, I’ll show you my pee-pee if you’d care to show me your own.”
The man in black sucked in his breath, but Queen Kirby laughed and said, “You were playing your cards close to your vest the last time I tried to get some straight answers out of you, Henry. So all right, I’ll spread one or two cards face-up for you. To begin with, you’re on a fool’s errand if you expect to be hired as a gunhand as far north as the D&RG Western stop at Chama. I know what you’ve heard about a land rush up that way. But I’ve gotten it from the horse’s mouth, or from a BIA official who likes redheads no matter what color hair they have, that the Interior Department’s not going to throw all that Apache land up for grabs. There’s a lot of Indian policy being debated back in Washington. The War Department was against moving Apache for no pressing reason to begin with. More than one BIA man doubts the Jicarilla can make do at the Tularosa Agency. But seeing there’s been so much other pressure to clear dangerous Indians out of these parts, the Apache are being moved on what Washington calls an experimental basis, with their present reservation held in trust as federal land for at least the next seven years. So what do you think of that, Henry?”
Longarm said, “The Jicarilla may think it’s some improvement over losing their land entire. If the BIA allows ‘em to return after even one year at Tularosa, they’re going to think us white eyes are mighty odd. Their Navaho cousins are still bewildered by the time we made ‘em all plant peach trees around Fort Sumner and then let
