It was past dawn now and they still hadn’t reached Howard Burdick’s relay station.
Every man, Wind River employee and passenger alike, was pretty well plastered over with thick, caked mud. And if he could judge by the way he felt himself, Longarm thought, everyone was pretty near to the end of the line when it came to strength and stamina too.
Ever since hitting the flats the mud had gotten worse and worse until it was just plain impossible.
Cold, wet, clinging, slippery mud.
The mules were covered with it. The coach wheels were constantly mired in it. And the only way to move on was for everyone—everyone except the women, that is—to get out and push the heavy Concord coach out of the latest mud hole and onto whatever passed for solid ground.
There were places where they had to push—throw their shoulders against the coach body, grab hold of a wheel spoke and lift, take a grip on whatever was within reach and pull—a hundred yards and more at a time.
At this point it felt like they weren’t so much riding in the stagecoach as they were having to pick it up and carry the damn thing to Burdick’s.
Burdick’s relay stop, Longarm thought. Funny how on the way north he had stopped there and had a better than merely decent bowl of stew and gone on again without ever once thinking to inquire about the name of the place or the owner or anything else about it.
Now, after a full night of shared labor, he knew the name and at least a partial personal history of every other bastard aboard, and was almost desperately interested in getting to Howard Burdick’s no-longer-taken-for-granted relay point.
By now Longarm ached in every joint and every limb. He was winded and weary. His eyes burned and his legs ached from dragging around half a hundredweight—well, it felt like that much anyway, and who the hell was gonna produce a set of scales and dispute him if he wanted to make the claim—of cold mud that caked his lower legs to the knees.
That came from wading through the slimy shit every time the coach bogged down. And from slipping and falling every couple of minutes. There wasn’t any way to avoid going down. Every man among them now looked worse than Tyler Overton had after that first experience long miles and hours back.
“Let the bitches help push. Their shit stinks just the same as ours does,” Leonard Groble complained.
“Jesse, what d’you say?”
“Hold it,” Longarm put in. “You’re just tired and feeling out of sorts, Leonard. We all are. But we aren’t gonna fall so low as to make a lady get out and push a mudbogged stagecoach. Now we just aren’t gonna do such a thing as that.”
“They ain’t no damn ladies, Long. That’s the point,” Delmer Jelk said, siding with Groble.
“All right then. Women. Same thing in my book. A man don’t do that to a woman. Right is right, boys, even out here.”
“I say we take a vote on it,” Leonard said.
There was little doubt which way a vote would go. Longarm suspected Jesse and George would vote with him to let the women keep their seats inside the coach—they would pretty much have to or face trouble from their employer when they finally did reach Bitter Creek—but all the other men would likely vote to make the women labor.
Except for Overton? Longarm wondered. And honestly was not sure how the fat lawyer would cast a ballot. Either way …
“Boys, you can vote all you damn want. But I’m telling you this. I won’t stand by and see anybody abuse a lady.” He quickly held his hand up to stop the snorts of protest. “Woman, all right? If not ladies exactly, then women. We c’n all agree on that.”
“Lady, woman, what the hell does it matter. Their legs ain’t broke. They can help push.”
“I reckon they could,” Longarm agreed, “but they ain’t going to. They’re gonna stay right where they are. The man that tries to make ‘em do otherwise, or who tries to put them out into this mud, is gonna get the crap knocked out of him.” He grinned. “And let me tell you, fellas, having to do that would piss me off something awful, ‘cause I’m already so tired I can’t hardly fart without it putting me on my knees.”
“You’d punch a white man to keep some whore from having to help out?” Jelk asked.
“I said it, Delmer. I’d damn sure do it. But hell, you go ahead an’ do what you like. You know what your teeth are worth to you. Spend ‘em if you feel the need strong enough.”
“I don’t think I want to fight about it.” He too managed a grin. “Right now I’m not sure I could lift a fist to hit back at you if you stood still and gave me five minutes to wind up for it.”
“Look, I tell you what. I got”—he reached into his coat pocket and counted—“I got three cigars left here. Let’s divvy them up and have us a break before we go at ‘er again.”
“if it makes you fellas feel any better,” George put in, “you can all look yander. You see that smoke? That’s coming from Howard’s chimney. That smoke is cooking our breakfast, boys. And I for one want to get over there and wrap myself around it.”
There was a general lessening of misery among the men at the thought of hot coffee, piles of buckwheat flapjacks, and thick stabs of bacon.
Even more important, though, there would be an opportunity for everyone to scrape themselves free of mud, wash up, and just plain sit in comfort for a spell.
Lordy, but it had been one long, miserable son of a bitch of a night.
And close enough to see in these conditions probably meant they were still several hours away from reaching the relay station.
Longarm broke his cheroots in two and handed the pieces out among the men, saving a stub for himself. He sure as hell hoped Howard Burdick had some decent replacements on hand at that relay station, because the trip
