Deputy Crawford.'
He muttered. 'Just delivering some instructions.'
Knowing that any nosey lady trying to write to a Deputy Crawford in care of Fort Sill would eventually have her letter returned unopened, he said, 'They're sending some others from my home office down to nose about the scene of whatever transpired. I'm more interested in the other man than a wayward wife who'll either be at home or somewhere else. There's no telling which way he went after he turned the head of old Attila's wife. But he must have left town, or that jealous Bohunk wouldn't be searching high and low for him in Denver.'
Cora must have spotted a familiar landmark in the passing softly lit scenery. For she bent forward to pick up the carpetbag she'd had resting on the decking near her high-button shoes as she asked how Longarm knew that other Longarm hadn't just been hiding out in some other part of Denver.
It was a good question. Longarm replied, 'I just said he could be most anywhere. Tall drinks of water who look like Americans of the Western persuasion ain't all that rare. But him being some sort of furriner might make it easier to pick him out of a crowd.'
She said they were almost there, and rose to her feet with her modest baggage as she added, 'A lot of hardcase wanderers of our West seem to be foreign born. I mean, aside from the Canadian Masterson brothers, we have the Italian Renos, the Alteri boys, and the much nicer but probably more dangerous Charlie Siringo. Then there's Johnny Ringo, born a German Jew as Rhinegold, and isn't that fast-drawing Chris Madsen supposed to be a Swede?'
By this time Longarm had risen to take her carpetbag from her as he replied with a bemused smile, 'Deputy Madsen's from Denmark, ma'am. But you were right about his famous quick draw. Where did a boss milkmaid, no offense, learn so much about our current crop of Western gunslicks?'
She said collecting newspaper accounts of wilder Western folks had been her husband's hobby, and that he'd often said someday a lot of folks would likely pay good money for the true facts behind all those wild tales. She said she'd helped her husband keep that scrapbook up to date, and that she still sometimes leafed through it, thinking back to when she'd pasted something in.
Longarm said, 'This jasper sparking the Bohunk gals of Trinidad spoke neither Eye-talian, Yiddish, nor Danish to the immigrant gals he was pestering. So that narrows it down a heap.'
Then something else she'd just said sank in and he demanded with a puzzled look, 'Did you say your man used to keep up with such hombres, meaning he ain't around to do so anymore? It's no beeswax of mine, but that ain't a black dress you have on this evening, Miss Cora.'
The train was slowing to a stop as the sun was setting. So it was hard to read her eyes as she quietly replied, 'I put my widow's weeds away two years ago. Jim was killed over a year before that. A Jersey bull Jim was trying to medicate tossed him and then trampled what was left of him.'
Longarm didn't answer. It might have sounded smug to observe that the milking breeds were thrice as dangerous as any beef critter. As the train braked to a steamy stop, they saw their observation platform was just even with the north end of the plank loading platform. Longarm gripped his own envelope with the same arm holding her carpetbag, and opened the side gate of the platform with his free hand. They both knew he wasn't supposed to do that. So maybe that was why she was grinning like an apple-swiping kid as he helped her off their train. He asked if she'd have anyone picking her up, and if she did, where.
She said she'd left her trotter and shay at the livery across the way, and quietly added, 'I could drive you over to Bohunk Hill and introduce you to some of the more respectable miners' wives, if you have the time.'
He asked how far from the center of town they were talking about. When she said about halfway to the coal seams up the river a few miles, he sighed and said he didn't.
When he added the eastbound he meant to transfer to would be pulling out within half an hour, she softly replied, 'There will always be another train on that same track, and I'd be proud to put you up for the night out at our place later.'
He was so tempted it hurt. But he somehow managed to decline her tempting offer, and so they shook hands and parted friendly on the walk out front. As he turned back inside Longarm grumbled, 'Next time Billy Vail accuses me of placing pleasure before duty, I'll have a wistful answer for him indeed. But of course, nobody would ever believe I just spoiled such a lovely evening for all concerned without anyone holding a gun to my head!'
CHAPTER 5
Old Billy Vail had known what he was picking when he'd picked Fort Sill as an out-of-the-way place to send a rider. It was after midnight when Longarm had to get off the one train and board another running closer to due east along the Saint Lou line. He had enough time between trains to send a wire to his home office at night rates. So he did, knowing Billy Vail was still going to have a fit, but that as soon as he calmed down to take a breath, he'd see the deputy who'd disregarded his orders to avoid Trinidad had made it on to Amarillo without incident and would have made it to Fort Sill, his own way, by the time Western Union got around to delivering a night letter.
Only the fancier varnish express trains passing through the Texas Panhandle sported those new Pullman dining cars, and no such on-board facilities would be open after midnight in any case. But Mister Fred Harvey, Lord love him, had opened one of his round-the-clock depot restaurants at Amarillo. So after Longarm had sent his night letter, he saw he had just enough time for a hasty but warm and rib-sticking late-night snack.
He sat at the counter, along with the few others grabbing a bite at that hour. The fellow traveler to his left was a trim-waisted gal in a tan whipcord travel duster and big veiled summer boater. It was tougher to judge a woman's age under a travel-dusted veil. But she had a handsome profile for a gal of any age. The Harvey gal who came to take orders down at their end was more certainly around eighteen.
She was pleasantly plain, with her chestnut hair pulled up in a neat bun and the white linen apron over her coffee-brown uniform as starched as if she'd been on the day shift.
Longarm naturally waited till the lady to his left ordered herself a Spanish omelet with a mug of hot chocolate. Longarm asked for chili con carne with black coffee. You didn't have to say you wanted your black coffee strong at a Harvey. He knew they made their chili right too. The Harvey gal was back in no time with everything piping hot.
Too hot, Longarm feared, if he was supposed to catch that other train at the top of the hour. He mushed more oyster crackers into his chili than he'd really wanted. He resisted the temptation to pour coffee into the saucer and blow on it, knowing how country the gal seated next to him might consider that.
As he was stirring like hell and she was pouring extra cream from the counter into her hot chocolate, a somewhat more country boy under a dove-gray Texas hat took the last seat at their end of the counter, to the left
