important and I’ll be on my way now.”
He meant it, but as he turned away she called out to him, and so the next time he saw her she was standing in her doorway with that kimono back on.
She demanded to know the meaning of that sack on her steps. Longarm moved back toward her, explaining, “You ought to be able to sell two wagons for enough to carry you on to fame and fortune in other parts, Miss Rowena. But meanwhile you have to eat, and when a body with something to sell is really hungry, some buyers can tell. I had to sell a good pony for eating money one time, and I sure hate to see a skinflint take advantage of an empty belly.”
She said he was either a saint or out to take advantage of her empty belly, adding in a hangdog tone, “Not that I have much choice, and it’s not as if you’re old and ugly.”
He shook his head and said, “Being a crook has ruined your faith in the rest of mankind, Miss Rowena. It was you who just called me back, as I recall. You paid in advance for barely two dollars’ worth of coffee and staples by clearing up that matter of a missing gunsmith. Leastways, you’ve convinced me he never gave you ladies the money he was Supposed to. You’d have both been long gone by now if you had the small fortune that seems to be missing along with Horst Heger!”
He started to turn away again. She called out that she had no matches to start another cookfire. As he ambled back to give her some, she said she wanted to hear all about that gunsmith she’d never heard of, and asked if he couldn’t at least have some coffee with her.
So Longarm wound up gathering more kindling while Rowena got out her fancy coffee percolator and filled it with canteen water and a cheaper brand than he’d have chosen had he known he’d be invited to drink some of it.
On the prairie you found wind-fallen branches about as often as you found lost silver dollars. But there was plenty of dried sunflower stems, wind-cured tumbleweed, and such to crumple up under well-dried cow pats. But it took such a fire a time to boil water. So it was a good thing Rowena shared his wicked tobacco vice. They got to sit on the steps side by side and share a cheroot for a spell as he brought her up to date on all his tearing back and forth across the prairie of late.
But she was too hungry to hold out for coffee with her beans, and so she opened a can and ate them cold with gusto. Longarm had figured grub you could eat cold from the can might be best. He didn’t tell her what a swell breakfast he’d just had when he declined her kind offer to share her meal.
By the time they were sharing some coffee she was thinking clearer on a fuller stomach, and decided Horst Heger had indeed skipped out on his pals with all that money. She stared morosely at the telegraph poles alongside the nearby railroad as she said she knew the feeling.
He shrugged and said, “I’ve run across such tales of woe a heap in my travels. Folks who never set out to betray a trust just find it too tough to be trustworthy, feeling broke and desperate with temptation winking and pointing down the primrose path.”
She murmured, “That bitch said I was her one and only friend in this cruel world. Those wheat farmers have seen the last of that bribe their pal was supposed to offer Roxanne and me, unless … Oh, no! What if that Dutchman did get through to Roxanne, behind my back, and that was why we left Cedar Bend so suddenly? I never actually heard any of those corn growers telling us to leave!”
Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring at the dying fire near their feet before he said, “Works either way. You’ve about convinced me you haven’t been eating regular as your average rich lady. But forget anything they ever told you about honor among thieves. Old thieves tell that whopper to young thieves. You’d know better than me how well you really know your older pal, Miss Roxanne.”
Rowena laughed, in an oddly dirty way, and softly replied, “I’d been led to believe we were more than pals. Adventurous women can’t afford to take too many men into their confidence. But I guess when you get right down to it, anyone with confidence in you is a mark to a confidence woman, but damn it, she told me she really loved me!”
Longarm whistled softly and quietly said, “I’m starting to see why she left you feeling so teary-eyed. I’ve noticed how many shady folk seem to wind up more than friends. I’ve never decided whether you get that way being locked up so long with nobody of the opposite gender, or whether owlhoot riders who can’t afford to be too trusting find the notion more practical.”
He blew another smoke ring and continued. “I recall reading about this Greek general, Alexander, who ordered his army to satisfy one another as best they could at night rather than let barbarian gals wander all about their fortified camps after dark. That Was what the old-time Greeks called these white folks who behaved a mite like our modern Indians, barbarians. But our army gives you a dishonorable discharge if they catch you in the same bunk with another trooper, Indian country or not.”
“I’m not a lesbian,” Rowena pouted. Then she added, “At least I don’t think I’m a lesbian. What do you call a girl who only pleasures herself with another girl when, like you say, they have her locked up or surrounded by stupid hayseeds?”
Longarm shrugged and replied, “Practical? it works both ways, you know. Your erstwhile partner in pluviculture could have been scratching her own itches the same way and, now that you’ve run out of work, lit out with the proceeds. But if it’s any comfort to you, I doubt she’d have been so mean if she’d had all that money from Horst Heger. When I talked to her she struck me as smart, and it would have been dumb to strand you like this if she was running for the hills with real money.”
Rowena was too smart herself to need diagrams on any blackboard. She nodded thoughtfully and said, “Fifty dollars or less would have taken us both far and wide before she ducked out on me, and so you’d never have been having this conversation about her with me.”
Longarm didn’t answer. There was no call to say she was right when they both knew it.
Rowena borrowed the cheroot and took a deep drag on it before she handed it back and said, “Well, thanks to you and the way my brain is starting to tick again, I suppose I’ll just sit tight till I’m sure she’s not coming back. Then I’ll get dressed and go into town to see who’d like to buy all this useless gear and be on my way back East. I was planning on trying my luck as a stage dancer before Roxanne sold me this bill of goods and taught me some other bad habits. Maybe it’s not too late for me and the stage.”
Longarm had finished the cheroot. He ground it out in the dirt with a boot heel and declared, “I’m sure you’ll make a great stage dancer. You’ve sure got the build for it. It’s been nice talking to you, but like I said, I was up all night and I have a hired bed waiting for me at my hotel, so …”
“What’s wrong with catching a few winks here?” Rowena asked, bold as brass. “I mean, we’ve plenty of room
