Longarm couldn’t help himself. He laughed despite the seriousness in Megan, and then he said, “That could change over time, Megan.”
“I hope not.”
“Come on,” he said, taking her arm and heading across the bridge. “Let’s find out if my baggage is on its way to Cheyenne or if the stationmaster was sharp enough to keep it here for me.”
Megan smiled up at Longarm and said, “I’ll bet I’m the worst kisser you ever kissed, huh?”
“Not the worst,” he said teasingly, “but you do have a ways to go.”
“Like what should I do different?”
“Relax and enjoy how it makes you feel.”
“And what if it ever makes me feel pukey?”
Longarm barked a laugh. “That’s a surefire sign that you’re kissing someone that you shouldn’t.”
Megan marched along beside him a few more steps, then looked up and blurted out, “Kissing you makes my toes curl and my insides feel weak.”
“Hmmm. Anything else?”
“Made … never mind.”
He looked down at her. “I got an idea what it did to you, Megan. And you had just better watch yourself or you’ll get to liking it and even wanting more.”
“Like a mare in heat, huh?”
“Something like that, but with all kinds of other things going on in your head and your heart.”
“Sounds to me like it could really mess a girl up.”
“It can, and it does when you get involved with the wrong kind of man.”
Megan didn’t say anything more after that. Longarm had given her plenty to think about, and she looked both excited and worried when they stepped onto the train station platform and then entered the station itself.
“Good evening,” a lone figure seated beside a telegrapher’s keys said. “Can I help you?”
“I hope so,” Longarm said, quickly explaining about his baggage. “I’m here to see if you’ve still got it or if it’s mistakenly been sent east.”
The telegrapher, a thin, balding man in his mid-forties with wire-rimmed spectacles, stood up and reached for a key that was hanging on the wall. “And your name?”
“Long. Deputy United States Marshal Custis Long.”
The telegrapher smiled. “Oh, yes. Marshal Long. Not only have we retained your baggage, but I have a very important telegram for you. Figured you’d come around soon enough.”
He turned to Megan with a warm smile. “Top of the evenin’, Miss Riley.”
“Evening, Carl.”
“Now,” Carl said. “Which do you want first? The telegram or the baggage?”
“I know what I’ve got in my bags, but I sure am curious about that telegram. I guess it’s the second one I received today.”
“Yes,” Carl said, “the first one was pretty short, wasn’t it.”
“It was.”
Carl rummaged around in a file and then retrieved the new telegram, which Longarm read immediately.
BIG TROUBLE IN BODIE STOP KANES MAYBE GONE BAD STOP UNOFFICIALLY CLEAN IT UP AND REPORT BACK IMMEDIATELY STOP “What’s wrong?” Megan asked.
“There’s some trouble in Bodie that I have to take care of,” Longarm said, thinking about Ivan Kane and judging he had not seen the old lawman in a good dozen years. Kane was a legend in the West, but like Wild Bill Riley, a man past his time. He’d started out as an outlaw and then had gone to prison, but had come out reformed and determined to redeem himself. And had he ever! Kane had become a one-man crusader against lawlessness, first in the California gold fields, and then on the Comstock Lode and in a slew of other notorious Nevada and Arizona mining towns.
“I know Marshal Kane personally,” the telegraph operator said. “And it disturbs me to hear the talk about what he’s been doing down in Bodie.”
“What exactly has he been accused of doing?”
Carl sighed. “They say he’s become more than a lawman. They say he is too quick on the trigger and ready to shoot down anyone who so much as looks crossways at him.”
“He always had a short fuse,” Longarm agreed, “but he’s not bloodthirsty.”
“He might have become that way,” Carl said, clucking his tongue. “I’m sure that you realize that power … real power … corrupts the morals of even the strongest man. Marshal Kane has ruled Bodie for at least eight or nine years. When the town fathers hired him to clean out the bad element, he did it without a badge, and anyone will tell you that he basically ambushed and backshot the outlaws. Those that he didn’t kill fled. Furthermore, we hear that he’s extorting protection money from Bodie’s merchants, mine owners, and professional people.”
“That can’t be true!” Megan exclaimed. “My father and Marshal Kane have been friends for the last twenty-five years. Kane is tough, but honest.”
