pouty lip as he quietly observed, 'We know he wears a gunbelt under his jacket. For to use a gun on anyone one must be able to get at it, no?'
Consuela warned, 'He looks like a ham-Jess viejo to me as well, Hernando. Just the same, if I were you, I'd choose someone safer for to go after. That one is muy peligrosa, muchacho mio.'
The young thug shot a more thoughtful glance across the waiting room, turned back to Consuela, and demanded, 'That old gringo? You can't be serious! Little Pancho here could take him in a fair fight if he did not have those guns and nobody else interfered! What do they call this big bad gringo we are supposed to be afraid of, eh?'
Consuela said, 'I do not know. I have never seen him around here before. But he has been here long enough for one who reads the ways of men on the street to suspect he is stalking someone with the guns he wears partly concealed. You have heard, of course, of El Brazo Largo?'
Hernando nodded thoughtfully and said, 'The one his own people call Longarm? I know him on sight. They say he's muy toro. What about him?'
Consuela said, 'That one just ran El Brazo Largo out of town! I saw it happen less than an hour ago. They were talking--in a tense way, I could see. Then suddenly, the smaller one said something and El Brazo Largo grabbed me by one arm and dragged me out to the loading platforms, begging me not to tell anyone who he really was!'
Hernando whistled as he gazed across the hazy waiting room with a lot more respect, marveling, 'Hey, they say El Brazo Largo faced down both Thompson Brothers in Texas! You say he asked you not to tell that older man who he was?'
She answered, 'Si. Then I told him there were a lot of people around this depot who knew who he was, and the next thing I knew he was running for the next train out!'
Hernando gasped, 'Madre de Dios, we owe you for warning us! The hombre malo who could run Longarm out of town is nobody Pancho and me wish for to dance with!'
That would have been the end of it if Hernando hadn't spotted a hard-faced Anglo that Consuela wouldn't have wanted to speak to a few minutes later. The rangy hardcase, dressed like a cowhand on his way to a funeral, was as mean as he looked. So naturally Hernando and Pancho admired him. But as they approached, the black-clad rider leaning against a sooty brick wall scowled at them and said, 'Beat it, you greaser faggots. I'm down here at the depot to meet somebody. I don't want no nickel cocksucker!'
Hernando persisted with, 'I can't fix you up with no cock-sucker. I don't know your sister. Pero, quien sabe? Maybe I got something much better for you. What if I could point out the hombre who just ran the famous Longarm out of town? The hombre malo who took such a pistolero would be famous as Wild Bill, no?'
Blacky Foyle, the terror of many a West Denver saloon, raised a thoughtful brow and replied, 'I ain't sure I'm ready to be famous as Wild Bill, albeit they do say he has a fine fence around his gravesite up Deadwood way. The man who'd go up agin a man Longarm was afraid of would have to take such affairs more serious than a sunny child like me. But why don't you point this dangerous jasper out to me, and mayhaps I won't call you a cocksucker no more, Hernando.'
CHAPTER 4
Trinidad, Colorado, had sprouted from where the original Santa Fe Trail had crossed the Purgatoire by way of a handy ford. Later, by the time they'd shortened the freight wagon route by way of the Cimarron Cutoff, they'd found soft coal seams in the foothills to the west and given Trinidad a better reason for being there. The steel rails laid west to replace the old wagon ruts were more interested in firebox coal and boiler water than the shorter but more barren cutoff. So now the seat of Las Animas County enjoyed its own trade with the outside world in coal, cows, and farm truck.
By the time their train was passing the outlying spreads of the prosperous transportation hub, Longarm and Cora Brewster had moved on back to the observation platform again and he'd learned more about the butter and egg business of Trinidad than he'd ever thought he'd need to know.
But there were worse ways to while away the hours aboard a train than jawing with a pretty lady, and the malicious gossip involving him and a Trinidad gal he'd never met made a heap of otherwise tedious facts about the transfer point seem far more interesting.
As the sun sank ever lower and the spreads off to either side got smaller and more closely spaced, Cora was rambling on about how much more even an immigrant coal miner's family spent on fresh eggs and dairy products next to, say, your average single cowhand. Longarm had been getting paid as a single cowhand when he'd decided he'd rather sign on as a junior deputy six or eight years back. So he politely repressed a yawn and said, 'I've got a pretty good picture of domestic doings up on Bohunk Hill, Miss Cora. What I really need a married woman's advice on is that mighty odd but apparently voluntary confession by Magda Homagy. Setting aside who in thunder she'd been sparking whilst her husband was out of town, why would she tell him all she'd done, in dirty detail, with any other man by any other name?'
Cora wrinkled her pert nose and replied, 'I wasn't there. But I imagine a woman would confess to added details if her husband beat them out of her, or if she really wanted to rub it in. I could answer more surely if I knew whether they were still together or not.'
Longarm stared soberly at the lamp-lit window in a cozy soddy they were passing as he mused aloud, 'I don't know. Attila Homagy never brought her up to Denver with him. Maybe she's waiting for him down the line with a candle lit in the window for him. Maybe she run off with that other cuss. The one she said was... somebody else.'
Cora agreed a cheating wife or more had been known to lie to save a lover. But after that she pointed out, 'That swaggering lothario I only saw in passing, but more than once, didn't strike me as the sort of man who'd treat a girl to a ride to the next town, let alone more than a few nights' food and lodging. If she was dumb enough to run off with him, she'd have been home with her tail between her legs by the time her husband returned from that union gathering.'
Longarm stared back up the receding tracks, noting you could no longer make out the point they came together on the horizon in this tricky twilight. He said, 'Maybe she did. I sure wish I had time to nose about on Bohunk Hill and find out exactly where she is and exactly what she has to say about this mysterious cuss her husband has down as a federal deputy. But the night train I'll be riding east won't give me a full half hour in Trinidad.'
She said, 'I could find out anything you could, seeing I live just on the edge of town and know most of the tradeswomen. Why don't you give me a list of questions to ask? Then I could post them to your Denver office and you'd find them waiting for you there when you got back from your mission to Fort Sill.'
Then she spoiled it all by adding, 'You never did get around to telling me why they're sending you to Fort Sill,
