length of the seat to ventilate the critter’s spine and only grab you by the balls if you wore your riding pants too loose. Better yet, the McClellan saddle had brass eyelets you could hang a heap of shit from. So aside from his saddle gun and canteens, Longarm had that tweed suit, other spare duds, trail grub, and such packed in the two saddlebags riding under the bedroll behind the cantle. It made quite a load as he limped across the dusty street from the train stop with all of it balanced on one hip. He had no need to make the usual courtesy call on the local law, seeing he’d be clean out of the state as well as the county by nightfall. So that might have been why the old boys watching from around the livery corral on the far side added two and two to get half a dozen.
When Longarm draped his heavy saddle over a corral pole and asked them about the hire of a pony, a gray old gent with a hatchet face spat ominously close to Longarm’s dusty boot tips and allowed they had no horses for hire to the likes of him.
There came a murmured growl of agreement from the eight others assembled, all dressed cow and no fancier than himself. So Longarm quietly replied, “Sure you do. That sign on the side of your whitewashed stable allows you hire livery for hauling or riding at two bits a head per them with deposit. After that, I can plainly see at least six or eight head of horseflesh in that corral behind you. So what’s your personal beef with me, old son?”
The hostler said, “It ain’t you personal. it’s your kind in general. I wouldn’t hire to Johnny Ringo, Billy the Kid, or any other wandering gunslick, if that’s any comfort to you.”
Longarm laughed and reached for his wallet as he sheepishly said, “That’ll learn me to pack guns in public without a suit and tie. I thought President Hayes was just being a priss when he ordered all of us to dress like whiskey drummers.”
By this time he had his wallet out to flash his badge and identification for all to see. The hostler gasped. “Great balls of fire! You must be that Deputy Long from Denver they call Longarm. We knew someone like you would be coming along sooner or later! How many horses do you need—on the house, Longarm?”
The denim-clad deputy put his wallet away as he chuckled and said he only needed one to ride and one for packing. Then he added, “I’d be proud to pay your going price. It don’t come out of my pocket. Not directly leastways. We all pay taxes. How come you gents here in McCook seem so proddy about gunslicks? I ain’t heard about any recent gunplay in these parts.”
The hostler took a throw-rope from a nail near a gatepost, swung the gate ajar, and said, “Come on in and point out the ones you want. You ain’t heard about the shooting because the shooting ain’t started so far.”
Longarm pointed with his chin at a wary-eyed but not too spooked gelding and said, “That cut bay neither dances nor drags his hooves in the dust. How come you’re expecting shooting if there ain’t been any?”
The hostler threw with considerable skill, gently caught the bay on the first try, and rolled him in slow but steady as he explained. “The reason me and the boys started out so surly was because you ain’t the first armed and dangerous-looking stranger to get off a train passing through such a normally quiet town. The spring roundup just ended. So our local cow outfits are more likely to be laying off than hiring and, no offense, none of you recent arrivals look like plow jockies, even if our newer homesteaders were busting new sod, which they ain’t.”
As the two of them got the bay gelding against the rails to saddle and bridle him, Longarm betrayed more of his West-by-God-Virginia boyhood than his Colorado-crushed Stetson might be letting on when he said, “You’re right. This late in the greenup all the spring planting’s been done, and it’s too early to reap last fall’s winter wheat. So what’s left?”
One of the other old boys who’d started listening chimed in with, “Nothing. The buff have been shot off in these parts, and we ain’t never had no mines or mills for old boys to work in. The range north and south or east and west is stock and farming country for many a mile. Some say it’s a range war brewing. Ain’t nothing else worth fighting over in these parts. Yet some damned somebody has invited a whole lot of hired guns to get off here!”
Longarm pointed at another steady-looking pony and said, “I like the way all four hooves of that paint mare match. I’ve yet to hear of a war over water rights this close to the Smokey Hills.”
The hostler shook out another loop as he replied, “It can’t be over water. The last month’s been dry, after a wet enough spring. But hell, it’s always dry out here on these prairies in summertime. Otherwise we’d be surrounded by forests. But even when the creeks run dry, a settler with a lick of sense would rather drill for water than fight a neighbor along that same dry creek.”
He threw, and again made an easy, clean catch. As he was getting a tad more resistance from the paint, the old boy leaning over the corral pole at them volunteered, “Water table’s always high in these parts. I can’t see a water fight neither. Ain’t no cows been getting stole or fences being cut. Country ain’t that settled yet. Of course, some of us real Americans can’t abide by them Minuets down the far side of Sappa Creek.”
As the hostler got the paint mare to the rails and Longarm calmed her with a bandana blindfold and a horsehair hackamore or soft hitless bridle, he felt obliged to observe, “Sappa Creek’s a good ride from here, and I understand you call them Mennonites. I know that much because I’m headed for Sappa Crossing, Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise. I understand I got more than one to cross betwixt here and yonder.”
The hostler thought and decided, “Mostly bitty draws and, like Lem just said, it’s been dry all month. Only one you’ll likely find with enough flowing water to matter will be Beaver Creek, this side of the somewhat wetter Sappa. You’re right about wells. Most every natural homesteader out this way prays for rain and drills for water. Save for them peculiar Anabaptists south of Sappa Creek.”
As he and the hostler got a hired empty packsaddle on the paint Longarm resisted the impulse to ask what was so peculiar about the Mennonite nesters to the south. The loafer called Lem volunteered. “They do everything bass-ackwards. They wait till their kids are full growed and out of most dangerous stages before they baptize ‘em to insure their souls. And they plow and plant in the fall, when all the sensible folk are reaping. So damned if they don’t pray for snow instead of rain, just as that crazy red wheat is commencing to sprout!”
Longarm knew better. He still said quietly, “That’s how come they call it winter wheat. The Mennonites met up with it on the back steps of Russia where the growing season’s even shorter than out our way. It sprouts before Yuletide, like you said, but as soon as the wolf winds nip, winter wheat dies above ground, goes dormant underground, and the process repeats through all the frosts and thaws until the stuff really gets to growing in the first real thaws in April, when nobody but a fool would try to plow shin-deep prairie muck.”
The hostler cracked the gate open. As they led the two ponies out, a couple of old boys with nothing better to do dropped down off the rails to shoo the other livery stock back with their hats. Country gents weren’t really as mean as they talked when they didn’t know you.
Lem, who hadn’t pitched in to help, spat and said, “It ain’t so smart to bust this sod at any time of the year. Most of the time it’s dried to ‘dobe hard as chalk, and on the rare occasions it’s wet, it turns to gumbo, like you said. There’s barely enough time in a good year to grow a cash crop of barley for piss-poor cash. That’s why I grow cows, like most of the other real Americans in these parts!”
