those hundred-dollar notes before gunning him, as if it had been the poor paymaster's fault. Tyger had never been accused of deep thinking. Longarm was hardly the first lawman who'd wondered why a nondescript outlaw who was said to be fairly well educated insisted on being so famous.
Frank and Jesse, the Youngers, and that stubborn young rascal they called Billy the Kid down Lincoln County way tended to get named a lot because they perforce hung out in the same parts, where lots of admiring folks knew them and tended to gossip about them even as they were helping them hide out.
But nobody riding with Tyger, Flanders, and that more mysterious Chief had ever gone home after the war. They seemed to roam all over the Far West with no particular base the law had any line on. So why would even a mad-dog killer take such pains to let the law know just who they were after? Anyone you were robbing at gunpoint was just as likely to turn over the money whether you said your name was Smith or Jones, and the law would take far longer as they tried to figure out who'd done it.
'Oh, Dear Lord!' wailed the fatter of the two gals behind him as they rounded a turn at a speed even Longarm considered a tad sudden for a sheer drop of a good two hundred yards.
'Road company picking up extra actors!' Longarm suddenly said aloud as he rose from his seat and put the onionskins away so as to spare his ears what was coming next.
What was coming next involved a shaky trestle over a headwaters branch of an ominous river valley. Screaming gals had a way of distracting a man even when he was interested in them, and he was on to something he hadn't considered before as he strode on out to the forward platform where a man could smoke and think in peace.
As he cupped his big hands around a match to get a cheroot going in the cross winds of the platform, he thought back to that time on the road with the Divine Sarah's road company. He'd seen right off how they saved a heap of fancy salaries for French actors by just keeping the key players on the payroll as they traveled from town to town. Once they got to where they meant to put on another show, they could easily hire local talent, or even unemployed cowhands, to put on a costume and just stand around carrying a spear or waving a fan while the few professionals did all the real acting. Those Mormon gals in Ogden had made fairly convincing Egyptian slaves for Miss Cleopatra, or would have had not they insisted on wearing their special Mormon underwear along with their otherwise revealing stage costumes.
But getting part-time help to act convincing hadn't been Longarm's chore, and everyone agreed the Tyger bunch had been acting far more vicious than smart. So say no more than those three original deserters wandered from place to place, picking up extra help as needed amongst the drifting riffraff you found most everywhere. A down-on-his-luck drifter without the balls to pull robberies on his own would need some encouragement to join up for even one job. But a gang leader with a rep would have less trouble picking up a part-time gang. That accounted for the bragging, and it wasn't too tough to buy a tinhorn sissy boy trying to cash in on some real or fancied resemblance to a tougher gunfighter in the hopes of staying out of gunfights. But in that case, why in blue blazes had the late Brick Flanders been using the name of Calvert Tyger in that other rooming house?
Another passenger came out between cars. He was dressed cow, and both shorter and younger-looking than Longarm. As they nodded and Longarm made room for the other man to pass, he wondered idly where the young cowhand thought he was going. He was fairly sure why another male passenger would want to head forward as those two young gals commented on the scenery shrilly, but the next car forward was the baggage car, with the mail and then freight cars beyond. Maybe the jasper was after something in his own saddlebags. He hadn't been anyone the law was after.
Or had he?
Longarm turned just in time. It was still a good thing he had a good grip on a boarding grab-iron as the total stranger hit him stiff-armed, with all his weight, to send Longarm over the side, or try to. Then the bigger deputy grabbed a fistful of shirt with his free hand and raised a long leg to knee the wild-eyed cuss clean off his feet.
His attacker swung wildly, even as he howled in agony. But Longarm caught most of the blow with a suddenly shrugged shoulder, as he hauled the lighter man in and butted him in the face with his forehead. Then Longarm's hat was gone, and so was the total stranger, who'd tried to shove him off the train as it rumbled across that high trestle those gals were doubtless screaming about in the car behind.
The stranger screamed too, all the way down to the narrow ribbon of white water, which blossomed pink for a moment before his shattered body and all that bloody foam were whipped downstream by the ferocious current.
The train hissed to a stop on the far side of the trestle, and Longarm had just recovered his hat from a far corner of the platform when the conductor came out to yell, 'Some female passenger says she saw a man falling off back yonder, and another asshole pulled the emergency cord. I don't suppose you'd know who we're talking about, cowboy?'
Longarm shrugged and replied, 'Can't say anyone I'd ever seen before fell off any train.' He was in a hurry, and it was likely to take days or weeks before that body hung up on some damned something way downstream. And because what he'd just said was the simple truth as soon as you studied every word.
CHAPTER 8
The next nine hundred miles or more were tedious as hell. For while a flirty gal got on at Trinidad, and an even prettier flirt came aboard at K.C. to sit across the aisle as innocent as a mink in season, Longarm was as considerate a lover as other gals allowed he was, and it wouldn't have been considerate to risk either gal's innocent ass getting peppered with lead just because they both looked so tempting. That jasper who'd swan dove off the trestle had seemed mighty determined, and since Longarm was sure he'd never done a thing to a total stranger, it was even-money he'd been sent by somebody else with a personal hard-on for a lawman who simply didn't know who he, she, or it might be!
He had no way of knowing whether his unknown enemy or enemies knew how poorly their errand boy had done. So there was a good chance he had nothing to worry about but his virtue as he kept avoiding those arch glances shot his way by two very pretty gals. He could tell they were aware of one another by now, and there was nothing like a rival flirt to turn a gal prick-teasing for practice into an all-out and go-for-broke nymphomaniac. Gals that worked up over a gent had been known to go for a three-in-a-bed orgy, with each trying to out-screw the other, rather than let a pretty rival win the whole game. So a man of some experience in such matters was inclined to tingle in his crotch a mite as he tried in vain not to picture a saucy little redhead and a statuesque brunette fighting over him without all those high-buttoned bodices and flouncy skirts confining their movements or his view. Lord, that bigger one's ass swung like it was a saloon door on payday every time she went forward to the water cooler at the end of their car.
But Longarm concentrated on the far less interesting gloom outside as the small redhead almost cartwheeled up to that cooler as if to make certain he hadn't missed the way she filled out that bodice of summer-weight calico. So by bedtime both gals were sore as hell, and there was no sensible way he could assure two pretty strangers he was out to save their lives by not hauling them both into a sleeping compartment and making mad Gypsy love till somebody made another try for him.
