rest of the passengers were concentrating on keeping warm. And for a fact, it was cold as a whore’s heart inside the coach. Now that he was awake and paying attention, Longarm wished to hell he was back in that dream. If not for the redheaded woman, then for the sunshine and greenery of the place where he and that horny redhead had been romping. Damn, but it was cold now that he was paying attention to the fact.
Up toward the front of the car the conductor dropped his voice to a whisper and leaned close to the face of one of the argumentative passengers. Longarm couldn’t overhear what the conductor said, but he was pretty sure the conductor was one feisty little sonuvabitch, because even though the passenger was half a head taller and likely thirty pounds the heavier, it was the passenger who went kind of pale and reeled a step backward.
“Do I make myself clear?” the conductor asked in a normal voice.
“I guess.”
“Do I? Or do you want me to prove it?” the conductor demanded.
“You make yourself clear,” the passenger conceded. “I understand.”
“Thank you.” The conductor gave the unhappy passenger a fake smile that wouldn’t have fooled a toddler, and turned to face the rest of the car. Raising his voice so he could be heard throughout, he announced, “Everybody will be getting off here, folks. There’s snow blocking the tracks in the Bird Creek Cut on up the line, and nothing will be moving until the plows can clear the blockage and the dispatchers get things sorted out again. The Union Pacific will put you all up at the Jennison Arms—that’s at the road’s expense, mind—for as long as it takes. The telegraph lines are still open, so if anyone needs to inform your families or employers or whoever about the layover, feel free. The Union Pacific will pay for one message for each of you, up to … well. I don’t recall how many words you’re allowed, but the telegraph operator will know. If you want to claim your luggage to use during your stay here, there will be someone in the baggage compartment to help you. And don’t bother asking me when the tracks will be clear again, because I surely don’t know any more about that than you do.” The conductor smiled—it looked like the genuine article this time—and added, “If anybody wants to get into a betting pool on what time the wheels move east again, see me in the lobby of the Jennison Arms once we’re all settled. And by the way, heavy as that snow is blowing out there, I suggest we all move from the train to the hotel in one group. I’d hate for anybody to get lost and freeze to death between the platform and the inn.”
Longarm tried to look outside again, but the spot he’d rubbed clear only a few moments earlier was already frosted over and completely opaque again. It could be that the conductor wasn’t bullshitting about the danger of a person getting lost and frozen if he didn’t know where he was going.
Where was he going? Longarm wondered where the hell he was.
For some reason the name Jennison Arms kind of struck a chord. He’d either stayed there before, taken a meal there, or at least been somehow familiar with it in the past. If he could just remember … hell, yes. Jennison Arms. Longarm hadn’t stayed there before, but he’d eaten at the hotel restaurant.
The train was stopped in Kittstown, Wyoming, not too awful far west of Medicine Bow and about a like distance east from Rawlins. He’d been here—what? A year and a half ago? Something like that. Came up to claim a prisoner on federal warrants and got acquainted with Town Marshal Clay Waring and his wife. What the hell was her name anyhow? Marjorie, that was it. Clay and Marjorie Waring. Helluva nice couple. That was why he hadn’t had to stay at the Jennison Arms. The Warings took him into their home and fed him and sat up talking half the night with him, and the next day he stood treat for them for a fancy meal at the hotel.
Oh, he remembered now, all right. It’d been their wedding anniversary and Clay had forgotten it, and Marjorie was going to cloud up and get her feelings hurt until Longarm pretended he’d talked Clay out of his own celebration plans and insisted on the best meal in town to honor the special occasion. Yeah Longarm recalled it now. Nice visit that had been. Nice folks. And if he was going to have to spend some more time in Kittstown, well, he would just have to look up Clay and Marjorie and make a pleasure out of the layover.
“Get your things together, everyone,” the conductor called from the front of the car. “Get ready to leave. I’ll be back in a few minutes with the people from the other car. Please be ready when I return. We wouldn’t want anyone lost, ha, ha.”
Longarm stood. He had everything he needed in his carpetbag, which was on the steel rack overhead. His saddle and rifle were back in the baggage car, but he couldn’t imagine needing either of them here in Kittstown. He hauled the bag down onto the seat beside him, lit a slim dark cheroot from the dwindling supply in his inside coat pocket, and waited patiently for the Union Pacific conductor to return.
Hell, with no work needing to be done until he could get home to Denver, and some friends in town that he could visit with, this layover was going to be the next best thing to a vacation.
Wasn’t it?
Chapter 2
“Marshal? You awake in there, Marshal? I have hot water here if you’re wanting to shave yourself.”
Longarm yawned and shoved the sheet and thick quilt aside, swinging his bony legs off the side of the bed and sitting up.
That, he quickly decided, was a mistake. Probably he should have stayed right where he was, chin deep in blankets, until the storm blew itself out. Which, judging from the screech and whistling beyond the hotel window, damn sure wasn’t yet.
Still, awake was awake and up was up. He might as well get on with things.
“Marshal?”
“Coming.” When he stood it felt like someone had glazed the floorboards with a thin layer of ice. He blinked, and with something of a start realized that the street-side wall of his room was iced over. A white, frosty rime of powder ice lay a quarter-inch thick on most of the wall and the window was completely opaque, buried under its own load of thick ice. No damn wonder the room felt so bone-chilling cold. The benefit of a couple of open registers to let heat rise from downstairs wasn’t anything like enough to combat the frigid wind that battered and rocked the three-story-tall building.
Longarm rubbed his eyes, and out of sheer force of habit picked up his gunbelt, before unbolting the door and peeping through a narrow crack to see a pair of huge blue eyes set in a freckled, gap-tooth face. The boy was carrying a crockery pitcher from which steam drifted like smoke. Longarm grunted—he wasn’t quite up to coherent speech just yet—and swung the door wide.
The grinning boy—damn anybody who could be so cheerful and bouncy on a lousy morning like this—half filled the basin on a corner stand and stepped cockily forward to accept the nickel Longarm handed him.
