house I’m in now or buy another. I’m a pretty damn good gunsmith, and I know I can pick up ten or fifteen dollars a month repairing firearms. I’ll be just fine and dandy.”
“Why don’t you find some rich old gal to marry,” Longarm teased.
“I’m looking for a rich young girl to marry,” Todd said with a broad smile.
“Aren’t we all,” Longarm said with amusement, “aren’t we all.”
“Who is that beautiful woman?”
“Irma?”
“No, the young one that has an English accent.”
“She’s Lady Caroline.”
“What are they doin’ out here?”
“Traveling across the West on a train. They’re going to stay awhile in Reno, then go on over the Sierras to Sacramento and on to San Francisco.”
“Is she as rich as she is pretty?”
Longarm laughed. “Hell, I don’t know, Mike. Why don’t you ask her?”
“I would if I was you,” Todd said. “Damn right I would. I’d be after her like a bird dog after a wounded duck.”
“Yeah,” Longarm said, “I’m sure that you would be.”
He started to say more, but the shriek of the distant steam whistle changed his mind. “So long, Mike. I’ve got to run.”
“Stop by when you come back through,” the old lawman said. “We’ll have a few snorts and talk about guns and outlaws.”
“I’ll do that,” Longarm promised.
He was already moving down the boardwalk at a run when Todd called, “And don’t forget what I asked you!”
“I won’t!”
Longarm barely made it onto the train. In fact, it was rolling when he swung on board.
“You’re cutting it awfully close, Marshal Long,” the conductor said with a frown of disapproval. “But then I heard about you gunning down those two mean bastards who tried to rape that pretty girl you’re traveling with.”
“Yeah,” Longarm said. “They were bad ones.”
“What do you think gets into that kind?”
“I don’t know,” Longarm said, “and I don’t much care. If they break the law, I just arrest or shoot them.”
“It’s easier and cheaper to shoot that kind,” the conductor said.
“I agree.”
Longarm went back to his compartment and changed his shirt, which had gotten dirty when he’d had to roll in the street dodging bullets. He was furious about the hole in his new Stetson, but he figured that someone could fix that up without a great deal of trouble. Maybe he could find a gal to sew a little piece of black felt inside so you would hardly notice. He sure wasn’t going to throw away a thirty-three-dollar hat because of one little bullet hole.
“Marshal Long?”
Longarm opened the door to see Lady Caroline standing in the aisle. “Well, hello. Can I help you?”
“I’d like to speak to you in private for a moment, if you don’t mind.”
“No, of course not.”
Caroline stepped into his compartment and closed the door behind her. She filled the room with the scent of roses, and Longarm suddenly felt the temperature rising again, just like before he’d wrecked the furnace. He had never been alone with this woman before, and now they were packed into a space small enough that it brought them into physical intimacy.
Mopping his suddenly perspiring brow, Longarm said, “What would you like to talk about?”
Lady Caroline’s blue eyes were flecked with gold dust, and Longarm thought he had never seen eyes so large or beautiful.
“I wanted to apologize for how stupid I acted after the shooting.”
“Stupid?”
“Yes,” she said with a firm nod. “I was shocked almost senseless by the savage violence that took place between you and those two awful men. I reacted bad-“
“Have you ever seen men die suddenly before?”
“No, and I hope never to again.”
“I feel the same way,” he said. “There’s nothing good about killing. Every time I’ve had to shoot and kill, I’ve felt hollow inside.”
“Never victorious or … or joyful?”
