Polly looked unconcerned as she replied, 'We all have to grow up sometime. What if the famous Longarm has just gotten tired of silly showdowns?'
The brakeman flatly stated, 'Then he's as good as dead. Once a man has established a rep as a gunfighter, he can't afford to lose his nerve.'
Polly said, 'The customer Pronto just had words with didn't seem all that terrified. He just walked away from a silly fight with a silly kid, if you want to know what it looked like to me.'
The brakeman shook his head and explained, 'Nobody's likely to ask what it looked like to you, Miss Polly. Your point's well taken that a serious gunfighter may take pity on an occasional squirt. But should word get about that a man of Longarm's rep backed down within the same twenty-tour hours from not one but two untested nobodies... well, do I have to go on?'
He did, because Polly said she didn't understand what on earth he was talking about. So the brakeman said, 'They all seem to lose that edge it takes after they've been through enough gunfights. That's all greener gunfighters, who still feel immortal, have to hear. The most famous but far from the only example would be Wild Bill Hickok up in Deadwood. He'd taken to drinking more and practicing with his pistols less, and Cockeyed Jack McCall wasn't the only one who'd noticed. So if McCall hadn't gunned Wild Bill in the Number Ten Saloon, it would have been some other gun waddy in some other saloon.' He paused. 'I reckon I'll have ham and eggs,' he said casually.
CHAPTER 6
Longarm had been studying his railroad timetables, and so he'd seen that if he rode on down the line to Cruces, he'd be better than forty miles further from Fort Sill and there wouldn't be a northbound for the next two days.
On the other hand, a body getting off at Spanish Flats in the chill before dawn might hire a livery mount and make it on up to Fort Sill by the time that weekly combination serving the Indian Territory ever left Cruces.
So as the moon still hung high, Longarm got off at Spanish Flats, due south of Fort Sill, thankful to be packing so little baggage for a change. Since he hadn't been planning on getting off there before he'd consulted his timetable after midnight, Longarm felt no call to worry about the few other passengers getting off at the same stop in the tricky light. He could still taste his midnight snack back in Amarillo, and he knew he'd sleep lighter if he quit while he was ahead. He knew they'd expect him to pay in advance at that hotel across the way whether he arrived with his usual McClellan and saddlebags or just this fool envelope. So he did, and in no time at all he was sound asleep in his small but tidy hired room.
It felt as if he'd slept less than an hour, but the sun was up outside as somebody commenced to pound on his locked door with a heap of authority and what sounded like a pistol barrel.
Longarm rolled out of bed in his underdrawers and grabbed for the.44-40 slung from a handy bedpost as he rose and called out, 'I hear you, damn it. Who is it and what do you want?'
The pounding was replaced by: 'Clovis Mason of the Texas Rangers, and we've had a complaint about you, stranger. Where did you get off signing the register downstairs as a federal deputy, by the way?'
Longarm held his own weapon politely pointed at the floor as he cracked the door, nodded at the badge on the other gent's freshly laundered white shirt, and opened wider, saying, 'I signed in under my right name because that's who I am and I have nothing to hide. I am Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, and I'm bound for the Indian Agency up at Fort Sill on government beeswax. I've barely talked to a soul here in Spanish Flats, and you say someone's made a complaint about that?'
The Ranger, somewhat shorter and stouter than Longarm, stepped in to regard the half-naked hotel guest dubiously and replied, 'A lady says you've been following her all the way from Amarillo after you conspired with another gent to try and move in on her. I hope you have some identification before we go on with this bullshit?'
Longarm hung on to his own pistol as he moved over to fish his wallet from the duds he'd draped over a chair. The Ranger hadn't drawn his own .45-30--rangers were like that--but he'd been eyeing Longarm through narrowed lids until he spied the federal badge and identification. As his poker face got more human he said, 'I'll be switched with snakes if I don't buy you're being the one and original Longarm! But why in thunder did that newspaper gal just come over to our company to charge you with mashing and menacing her all through the night?'
Longarm put his wallet and gun away and got out a couple of his cheroots and some waterproof Mexican matches as he calmly replied, 'I didn't know I was. I recall her accusing me of some diabolical plot when I told a cowboy to leave her alone back in Amarillo a few hours ago. I did see her boarding the same eastbound later. If she got off here in Spanish Flats, I can see why a pretty gal who thinks she's even prettier might think I followed her all this way to gaze upon her beauty some more. But you'd think she'd give a man half a chance to get fresh with her before she pressed charges. You say she claims to be a newspaperwoman?'
Mason said, 'Our captain made her prove it. Her own identification shows she's a Miss Godiva Weaver, writing for the New England Sentinel. I can't say I've ever heard of it.'
Longarm handed the Ranger a smoke and struck a light for the both of them as he wearily replied, 'I have. It's one of them expose weeklies that accuses our tee-totaler first lady, Lemonade Lucy Hayes, of being a secret drinker. It's no wonder a female reporting for the rag suspects me of lusting after her fair white body.'
He got his own cheroot going and asked, 'Did she say what she was doing out our way, aside from being stalked by drooling maniacs?'
The Ranger took a drag on his own cheroot and replied with a thin smile, 'Says she was headed home with one scoop when she got a tip on another up to the Kiowa Comanche Reserve. That's what you call a latrine rumor, a scoop. When we told her we'd heard of no Indian trouble up yonder, she handed us the usual shit about big bad palefaces screwing the buffalo and shooting the women of poor old Mister Lo, the Poor Indian.'
Longarm put on his shirt as he made a wry face and said, 'I told you I'd read her rag. Lord knows there are rascals on both sides a just Lord would fry in Hell forever, but that New England Sentinel only knows about bad palefaces. That's doubtless why they said those three women the Ute rode off with from the White River Agency a spell back were either treated with the utmost respect or, failing that, deserved to be raped by one and all.'
Mason said, 'You don't have to instruct this child. I've fought Mister Lo. But fair is fair and we haven't had any trouble with the rascals since old Quanah Parker saw the light, remembered he was half white, and brung his bands in to eat more regular off the taxpaying Taibo. That's what they call us, Taibo.'
Longarm sat on the bed to haul on his pants as he resisted the temptation to explain the distinctions between the Comanche words for white folks. He didn't savvy more than a few dozen words of the Uto-Aztec dialect the Comanche spoke himself. So he neither knew nor cared exactly why they called you Saltu if they were willing to parley with you and Taibo if they were out to lift your hair. He'd never figured out exactly why a Paddy got so upset
