Lopez, when he found his way across Colfax Avenue suddenly blocked by a one-horse shay pulling out of the morning traffic to stop with one wheel rim threatening his balls if he stepped off the granite curb. He took a step back, and would have said something mighty impolite if he hadn't noticed, just in time, who'd been driving that fool shay.
The young widow of a rich old mining magnate could have shown up in a coach and four with a posse of flunkies. But Longarm had noticed she seemed a tad shy about being seen with him by broad day on the public streets of Denver. A week ago she'd allowed she'd as soon never see him anywhere at all, and this morning he saw she'd draped a heavier veil than usual from the brim of her black velvet hat. So he just ticked his own hat brim to her and waited to see if she meant to pull a gun on him or just drive on.
She did neither. She sighed and said, 'Come closer, you silly. I don't want to shout at you in the middle of town at this hour!'
Longarm moved closer and rested one booted foot between the rungs of the curbside wheel as he mildly inquired what she wanted to say to him discreetly.
The widow woman with the light brown hair smiled timidly through her veil, 'I'm not going to say I'm sorry. It's your very own fault you have such a dreadful reputation, and I still think I was right about you and that Chinese waitress that time. But, well, I guess I bought some malicious gossip about you and that librarian they said you'd walked home after closing hours.'
Longarm shrugged and said, 'I did walk the lady home, Her quarters weren't all that far from the library, but it was getting dark and she allowed she was new in Denver. Did your back-fence biddies tell you I walked her home more than once?'
The widow woman nodded soberly and replied, 'That's not all they told me you and that henna-rinsed hussy had been up to. And you heard me tell you never to darken my door again.'
Longarm shrugged and asked, not unkindly, whether anyone had seen him lurking about her brownstone mansion up on Capitol Hill.
She replied with a strangled sob, 'No, and it's starting to hurt around bedtime! So all right, I was wrong about where you spent last Thursday night. My biddies, as you so rightly called them just now, told me you'd been seen taking that librarian home after work, and not coming out of her place again until at least as long as a certain gathering down that same block lasted.'
Longarm nodded and answered easily, 'We noticed all them old hens sipping tea on that front veranda in the cool shades of the gloaming. We've established I walked that librarian home from her new job more than once. Are you asking whether she likes to get on top like some folks I know?'
The young widow he knew well indeed seemed flustered. 'Custis! Don't talk that way in broad daylight! I know you didn't spend the night with her, as I was told. I read all about it in the Rocky Mountain News!'
Longarm laughed incredulously and replied, 'The time I left a library gal alone and chaste as ever was in the newspapers? Well, I never. I've told them reporters to quit making up tall tales about me lest they get me killed the way they did poor Jim Hickok. Where did it say I'd made a play for that new gal in town?'
The gal he'd been going to town with longer laughed despite it all and declared, 'You big oaf! I meant that front-page story about you investigating the mysterious deaths by fire in your own neighborhood. I mean, if you were helping them put out the fire at four A.M., you could hardly have been where those ever-so-helpful friends of mine told me you were, could you?'
To which Longarm could only modestly reply, 'I was asleep in my very own bedding when the fire engines woke me up and I done what I had to. Where did your own pals tell you I was spending my lonesome night?'
She sighed. 'They were just jealous of another poor widow woman's good fortune, I suppose. Am I forgiven, Custis?'
He chuckled fondly and said, 'Sure. You forgave me for that gal who slings hash at the Golden Dragon, didn't you?'
She started to say something meaner, sighed again, and told him she'd be expecting him that evening for a late supper, after things got sort of quiet up along Sherman Street. Then she snapped her buggy whip coyly, and drove on before he could tell her he wasn't certain he'd be free for the evening.
He figured he would be, unless he got lucky. But it seemed sort of reckless to commit oneself to a late supper before knowing who one might or might not meet at noon for dinner.
He went on to serve the federal warrant his superiors at the Federal Building had wanted him to. There was only a little cussing and no real physical danger involved in hauling a rich mining man into federal court on a claim filed under false pretense. But a man had to think ahead if he didn't aim to be saddled with even less interesting chores, and so, seeing the morning was well worn down by the time he'd caught up with that mining man in his private club, Longarm ambled over to a drinking establishment open to the public. It was handy to his office and famous for the swell free lunches they served with moderately priced drinks.
Like many more respectable saloons in towns even smaller than Denver, the Denver Parthenon had side entrances and private rooms toward the back for more discriminating gents and all womankind. So Longarm wasn't too surprised to be told by a swamper, as he was stuffing his face with beer and pickled pig's knuckles at the main bar, that some lady wanted to see him in one of their Private chambers. That was what they called the cubbyholes stuffed with small tables and firmly padded benches.
Hanging on to his beer schooner, but swallowing all the free lunch in his mouth, Longarm followed the swamper back towards the crappers, tipped a whole dime once he'd been shown the right door, and went on in to find himself staring down in Some confusion at the severely uniformed Miss Morgana Floyd, head matron of the orphan asylum out Arvada way. As if to prove that Mother Nature tended to share her favors fairly, the somewhat younger petite brunette, who'd also told Longarm not to darken her door, was built way smaller across the hips than the Capitol Hill widow woman, and Longarm recalled her breastworks as a tad perkier, if smaller. Though if push came to shove, that widow woman had a prettier face to admire, especially while she was doing all the work on top. But little Morgana was a kissable head-turner in her own right.
Longarm didn't try to kiss her as he straddled a bentwood chair across the table from her. He saw she'd already ordered herself a glass of cider with a straw. He still asked if she'd eaten yet, but the petite brunette shook her head. 'I have to get back to the dry-goods store and my buckboard. I only took advantage of this run into town to see if I could catch you here alone for a change.'
Longarm sipped some beer suds without answering.
Everyone who knew where he worked had a pretty good notion where he lunched a good part of the time.
