worms, until Longarm got within hearing range so Billy could shout, 'Where in thunder have you been? I sent Smiley and Dutch over to your quarters to gather up your Winchester and McClellan for you. I hope you've got the usual change of socks and some iron rations in your saddlebags.'
As Longarm joined his shorter superior on the summer-dry stubble, he replied with an uncertain frown, 'Always keep my gear handy for a sudden leap into the great unknown. But where might I be leaping in such a hurry? Did we get another tip on Frank, Jesse, or The Kid?'
Vail glanced uneasily up and down the tree-lined street atop the rise and told Longarm, 'We'll talk about it inside. I had Henry type up some travel orders before I left the office just now. But I reckon I'd best fill you in a mite, and your next train out don't leave this side of four-thirty.'
Longarm had left the Denver Union Depot often enough to consult his mental timetable and decide, 'That would be the UP eastbound you'd want me to catch. Who are we after in Kansas, Boss?'
As Vail led him around to the kitchen entrance Longarm was told, 'You're getting off at Kansas City to cut backwards to Fort Sill, betwixt the Washita and Red River of the South.'
Longarm blinked and said, 'I know where Fort Sill is. But getting there by way of K.C. makes no sense. What's wrong with my catching the D&RG down to Amarillo and changing to most any eastbound for a way shorter ride?'
Vail snapped, 'Trinidad. Henry was the one who pointed out there's no sensible way to get to Amarillo without passing through Trinidad, and if there's one place other than Denver I don't want you for the next few days, Trinidad, Colorado, has to be it!'
By this time they'd made it into a kitchen reeking of apple pie and Arbuckle Brand coffee. As Vail waved Longarm to a seat at their big pine table, his motherly old woman told Longarm she'd heard about the mean bully after him. From the way she said it Longarm surmised her husband had convinced her he hadn't really messed with that Magda Homagy down Trinidad way.
Vail sat across from him and said, 'Henry got off the usual wires to the law down yonder. Fortunately Denver P.D. had already wired a heap of questions about Attila Homagy and the Trinidad law had their earlier answers handy. So they got back to us within the hour.'
As his wife served their pie and coffee Vail continued. 'First the bad news. Attila Homagy seems to be who he says he is. He's the straw boss of a drilling and blasting crew at the Black Diamond Mine. They mine bituminous coal, not real diamonds of any color. He's never been locked up more than ninety days as a result of his disposition, but they report they weren't too surprised to hear he was after someone with a gun. Homagy was brought to Penn State as a tyke by his Bohunk coal-mining kin, which is how come he talks English plain. But they seem to have reared him by a proddy Bohunk code of honor that seems to call for an eye for an eye and then some. So he's been known to wreck a saloon for serving him watered whiskey, and it appears nobody from the Austro-Hungarian Empire will ever find a Bohunk too timid to totally kill any man who even insults his woman!'
Longarm washed down some pie, and was fixing to insist he'd never laid eyes on Magda Homagy when Vail continued. 'Trinidad says Attila the Hungarian's wife is tougher to talk sense to than he is. She just got here and barely knows enough English to shop in a Bohunk neighborhood. Attila sent home for her. Reckon he thought he could trust any gal who couldn't tell what cowhands were saying to her.'
Longarm nodded absently, brightened, and said, 'Hold on, Billy! Don't that prove me innocent? I don't speak Hungarian at all. So if she don't savvy our lingo, how in blue blazes was I supposed to act up with her whilst her old man was off to that union convention?'
Vail grumbled, 'I told you earlier that you didn't have to sell me on where you spent the merry month of May. It's her husband who's after you with two Schofields.'
Vail sipped some coffee himself before he added,'She must talk at least some English. Trinidad says an Irish neighbor woman backs up her story about some tall handsome stranger moving in with Attila's woman over a weekend and not leaving until just before all the menfolk got back from that May Day meeting. Old Magda didn't get to tell the other wives the whole story until the handsome stranger lit out. So up until then half the gals on the hillside had her down as just a brazen adulterer.'
Longarm nodded thoughtfully and pointed out, 'If other ladies in Trinidad actually laid eyes on old Magda's houseguest, it don't matter to us whether she made up some details after her brass cooled down or not. Why don't I just head for Trinidad instead of Fort Sill and see if old Magda's neighbor ladies think I look like that other handsome stranger?'
Vail growled, 'Because you're going to Fort Sill instead. If I thought sweet reason would work on Attila Homagy, he'd be sitting here having apple pie with us right now whilst the three of us tried to figure out what really happened last May. I told you I told him I had you right down the hall on court duty at the very time he has you wrecking his happy home nearly two hundred miles away. He wouldn't have it. He's quit his job to track down the man who hung all them magnificent horns on him, and if you ain't the one, who in blue blazes is he supposed to shoot?'
Billy's wife refilled their cups with a weary smiles as she said, 'Men! I swear you all just get more mule-headed as you get older! I don't see how that crazy coal miner is supposed to support his young wife without a job, no matter how they work out their difficulties.'
Vail said, 'I don't either. I figure that whether they bust up or stick together, he's still going to need another job soon as he's run his fool self broke tearing all over like this. Trinidad says he cleaned out his modest bank account the day he quit at the mine. Since we ain't talking four figures to begin with, he can't keep at it more than a month at the rate he's been steaming. Worrying about where on earth your next meal or another job might be coming from has a grand way of concentrating a man's mind. So the timing of your trip over to Fort Sill and back works out about right.'
Longarm washed down the last bite of pie and leaned back in his bentwood chair to ask how come they wanted him to run over to Fort Sill in the Indian Nation.
Billy Vail leaned back in his own chair and got out one of his more expensive but far smellier smokes as he pontificated, 'Indian Territory since the war. If you want self-rule, like the Civilized Tribes were granted back in Jackson's day, don't ever side with the Confederacy and then brag on not surrendering for six months after Lee!'
Vail struck a match and lit his pungent cigar, ignoring the sad sigh of his wife as he continued. 'Fort Reno and Fort Sill went up west of the original Indian Nation grants in any case. Indians had no self-rule in those parts to begin with. Those western outposts were built to police far wilder nations such as Comanche, Kiowa, and Kiowa- Apache.'
Longarm had known all that. It was more important he catch the eye of the lady of the house, lest he find
