a respectful distance.
The man who’d met with the Widow Farnsworth’s maid asked the more respectable-looking man next to him, “Where do you reckon that nosy lawman could be headed now? That morning train will be leaving for Golden any minute now, and he ain’t got that prisoner out of jail yet!”
The man in position to give the orders said, “Follow him. Let’s hope for his sake it’s some last-minute errand. You’re right about that train. That’s not all we’ll be right about if he fails to catch it out of here. They warned us he was a sly fox who plays with his cards close to his vest!”
The more obvious gunslick grinned wolfishly and said, “I told you I thought he was fibbing to that widow gal in her very own parlor! Do I get to gun him if he fails to get aboard that train?”
To which his boss replied in a disgusted tone, “Why, no, I wanted you to get him hot with some Frenching whilst the rest of us drop our pants, bend over, and spread our cheeks! If he was never really sent up our way to carry that saddle tramp back to Denver, he was sent to pester somebody else, and we’re the only action for miles that any federal lawman could be interested in, Quicksilver!”
The one known as Quicksilver Quinn to those who rented his gun hand at the going rate purred, “I’ve never had the chance to gun anyone really famous before. I don’t want to see my real name there. But I’m fixing to save the newspaper clippings to show my grandchildren some fine day. How do you reckon they got on to us, though?”
The older man shrugged and said, “If they were really on to us they’d be up here in force, making some arrests. They can’t have all that much on anybody yet.”
He took a deep breath, sighed, and said, “I hear that train a’coming from the roundhouse now. That son of a bitch is still on his nosy way to somewheres else. You know what to do. I’d hold my fire till that Shay locomotive goes chugging and clanking past.”
To which Quicksilver Quinn could only modestly reply, “Don’t tell your granny how to suck eggs, or this child how to kill a man!”
Chapter 8
The small town wasn’t old enough for planted trees to grow as big as the handsome grove of green ash off to the east of the cinder-paved main street. So Longarm knew somebody sensible had chosen a handsome site to build on, a tad off center, to leave as many old shade trees as possible for the mighty sunny mountain summers. The green ash dropped its leaves in the fall just as some cooler sunshine would feel right for the kids in the yard during recess play.
The little rascals were enjoying their summer vacations as he strode up to the doorway of the barn-red main building. But as he’d hoped, there were grownups working there all summer.
A little gal in a print dress with a pencil stuck in the bun of her upswept mouse-brown hair looked scared of the federal badge he showed her, until he told her he hadn’t come to arrest anyone for not cleaning the blackboards right. She led him along a corridor as she told him their school library was only for the use of the pupils and their teachers, but that he could borrow all the books he wanted without any lending library card. He assured her he only wanted to paw through their latest copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica if they had a set on hand.
The mouse said, “Of course we have. I just told you it was a school library. What was it you wanted to look up?”
Knowing she was most likely trying to be helpful, there being about two dozen volumes in the set arranged alphabetically, he politely replied, “Railroads, or railways as the British call ‘em. Either way, they ought to be listed under R. But I reckon I ought to take a gander at Civil Engineering under C as long as I’m here. This sure is a handsome school you got here, ma’am. The tax rolls of your average town this size can’t afford anything this grand. It was put up by that original mining syndicate, right?”
The mousy little teacher, principal, or whatever sniffed and said, “It was. Now it’s maintained for the most part by Widow Farnsworth, who runs the railroad and isn’t half as stingy with her money as the new board of aldermen and that cowboy who thinks he’s a mayor. What you said about them taxing freeholders for education was, alas, all too true! Lord knows what we’d do, or who’d ever educate children, if it wasn’t for Widow Farnsworth!”
As she led him into a spacious reading room with a bigger chamber filled with book stacks off to one side, Longarm sniffed at the pine oil some tidy soul had been cleaning with and said, “I met up with Widow Farnsworth just last evening, ma’am. I could see right off she was a handsome woman. I didn’t know she was this handsome, even though I’m here this morning on her behalf.”
The schoolmarm naturally asked, as she led the way back to rustle up the two tomes he meant to start with, what Widow Farnsworth could have to do with the Encyclopedia Britannica. So he told her about that English railroading man’s untimely death.
As they found the volumes he needed he explained: “Stanwyk told Widow Farnsworth he might have a simple solution for some problems she can’t find any American railroaders to fix. I have the advantage of being an American with an open mind on railroading. I know the way we lay track seems a heap more sensible. I want to see if a hunch I had last night about the more complicated English way makes sense to the wise old birds they hire to write all this stuff.”
They put the two volumes on a shellacked oak reading table and, as he got out his notebook and a pencil stub, she protested, “Heavens, we can do better than that. Wait right here and I’ll fetch you some colored pencils and graph paper. You do mean to copy down some railroading diagrams, don’t you?”
He said he sure did. So she left him there alone as, outside, the morning train he’d meant to leave aboard with Bunny McNee went puffing and banging by.
He set his Stetson aside on the table and broke open the logical first choice. He found page after page of railroad lore. He flipped pages to determine how long he was apt to be stuck here, and then it hit him, smack between the eyes at first glance. So he said, “Hot dice on payday! That has to be it!” as he grinned down at a side-by-side comparison of American Stevens and British Wilkinson rails in cross section. The clear line cuts, showing how each brand was held securely down to the cross ties, were easy enough to memorize without making one’s own sketches.
But out in the hallway, the mousy Miss Dorman of the John Bull Grammar School had been headed back to the reading room with the drawing materials she’d promised when she was grabbed roughly from behind and let out a mousy squeak before Quicksilver Quinn had his gun muzzle in one ear and was growling into the other, “Hesh your face and do as I say! I don’t aim to rob you and you ain’t worth the time and trouble of a rape. I only need some guidance. That lawman you Was talking to out front was not where I thought he’d be as that train went by just now. So where’s he at and what’s he doing?”
