reminded him of some damned body.
Then their diamond-stacked Shay locomotive puffed into view with its brass bell clanging, and Longarm forgot the other man in that three-piece suit as he helped Flora and that old lady aboard. As the bunch of them were settling in aboard the one passenger car of the freight and passenger combination, Longarm heard the mysterious stranger asking the conductor what time they’d get him up to the John Bull mine.
The conductor promised they’d make it before four that afternoon. Conductors were about as honest as a cowhand dancing with a gal who was worried about her reputation. But Longarm was reassured by that lean stranger’s voice, Save for the way shorter Ben Thompson, out of Yorkshire by way of Texas, there were few masters of trigonometry west of the Mississippi with British accents. So it seemed far more likely the well-dressed cuss was on some chore for the owners of the John Bull diggings. He’d spoken more London-like than your average Cousin Jack from Cornwall. So he was likely some sort of engineer. That sea chest he’d boarded with was likely loaded with his drafting tools or chemistry kit. Silver mines were trickier than most. Longarm figured they were joshing when they said you needed a gold mine to operate a silver mine, but he knew they were always having to call in some experts to tell them what in thunder they were up to down there.
The train started with a sudden jerk as if to take a run at the nine-percent grade ahead before it got to it. The results were an unexpected pleasure as the pretty Flora Munro wound up in Longarm’s lap for as long as it took them to untangle, with everybody but the two of them laughing. Flora was blushing fit to bust, and Longarm felt sort of warm around the ears as she asked in vain for young Joel to trade places with her.
But big sisters didn’t hold the rank it took to make a nine-year-old boy forgo a seat by the window aboard a moving train, even when the scenery outside was less interesting.
Chapter 3
As they circled Lookout Mountain the conductor got around to punching their tickets, and Longarm asked in a desperately casual tone who that other gent, now smoking out on the platform, might be. The conductor agreed he talked like a lime juicer and seemed interested in American railroading. But that was all he knew about the jasper.
Joel opined he was likely a cow thief. Flora told him to behave himself, but the barley grower across from them confirmed that there had been purloined beef up their way.
The nester, Colman by name, painted the usual picture of a few earlier and hence bigger stockmen not at all happy about that fool Homestead Act, but even more suspicious of the smaller stockmen who’d moved in on their federally owned and hence open range. Neighbors in the business of producing butter, eggs, or barley weren’t as prone to increase a budding beef herd by roping with a “community loop” that included anything that looked at all like a cow.
Colman opined that the few big stockmen in the park were stewing over natural losses on rugged range, or at most, a few head stolen by the trash whites you generally found in any good-sized rural community. When Colman casually asked why Longarm was headed up to John Bull, it seemed wise for a lawman with a certain rep to answer just as casually that he wasn’t in either the beef or barley business. Stealing either was a local offense. But local folks who’d lost any faith at all in a county sheriff’s department were always pestering a federal deputy to hunt strays or adjudicate water rights.
He’d wired ahead he was on his way to pick up the notorious Bunny McNee, who’d been witnessed holding horses for more ferocious outlaws in the course of many a robbery, but had been arrested in John Bull for trying to sneak out of their one hotel without paying. So they wouldn’t have sent him on to the county jail or turned him loose on bail before a more serious lawman could get there. But Longarm knew he’d never be able to return with the rascal before the next train back to Golden built up a morning head of steam, and he didn’t want to spend the evening speculating about less important crooks.
Even Colman’s mousy young wife seemed sure nobody could move any substantial number of cows out of their secluded park without anyone noticing. The lush sod grew thick and springy in what they called an intermontane climate. But once you drove anything with hooves up the wooded slopes, the thin layer of forest duff over usually soft damp sandy loam wouldn’t hide the signs of your furtive drive from your average schoolmarm. So it hardly seemed likely too many cows could be all that gone. Cows were stolen to be sold for money. Nobody had any call to collect cows like stamps. But Longarm still caught himself in the act of asking whether John Bull beef was shipped out by rail or driven to market through all that pretty scenery outside.
The old lady said the railroad they were riding had helped its greedy self to the one practical right-of-way and that she and the other cow folks were mad as wet hens about that.
Colman made some soothing noises, and explained in a calmer tone how the railroad surveyors had had little choice in their route, and if anything, had shortened the original trail considerably with a cut here, a tunnel there, and more than one trestle straight across what had once been a pesky dip indeed. He said, “It hardly costs all that much more to ship beef down to the main line by narrow-gauge, if you add up the weight your cows lose on such a rugged drive. The old way was never more than a single-file trail, and the railroad’s a real blessing to us barley growers. Packing barley that far to market by mule train simply ain’t practical.”
Longarm didn’t ask why. Everyone knew pack critters had to graze for hours on free grass or be fed in far less time on grain somebody had to pay for. To pack, say, two hundred pounds of barley more than, say, sixty twisted miles, and eat as much all the way home, meant a good percentage of said barley rendered into mule shit scattered too inconveniently to gather for your rose garden. So even where farm folk moaned and groaned about rail freight charges, shipping produce more than fifty miles by rail had the dustier ways beat.
Longarm was about to inquire what this line charged by the ton when they suddenly plunged into a dark tunnel and he found it a mite more interesting to consider stealing a kiss from the perfumed temptation seated beside him.
He resisted the sudden impulse, of course. The main difference between a sensible human being and a dog was the ability to control such sudden silly notions. Then Flora was saying, “Oh, how beautiful!” as they came out the far side of the tunnel to view a wide beaver flat under a thick carpet of purple for furlongs in all directions.
Colman’s wife admired the “wild lavender” as well. So Longarm and the old lady just exchanged weary glances. She was the one rude enough to say, “Lavender my foot! That’s larkspur, and I take back what I may have said in haste about this railroad. Where on earth could all that cow-killing larkspur have come from?”
Longarm gently told her, “The old countries across the main ocean, ma’am. The oldtime Greeks and Romans knew better than to let livestock graze on the pretty stuff, albeit they used it to kill lice, and you can still buy larkspur lotion at the drugstore for that. I don’t know how or why larkspur wound up out this way. But as you can see, it surely has.”
The old lady grumped, “I’d like to get my hands on the fool who planted the first Russian tumbleweed in our cow country too. Things were much nicer in these hills before thoughtless folks messed ‘em up.”
