But before Longarm could rise to the occasion, a skinny young squirt sporting a red shirt and a high-crowned hat big enough for a family of average-sized Indians chimed in urgently with, “Don’t do it, Lash! I heard the turnkeys talking about him when they brung him and old Waco in. They said he put old Waco’s lights out sudden with his bare fists, and as you can plainly see, not a mark on him to show for it!”
The bigger one called Lash got just a tad green around the gills as he and Longarm stared into one another’s eyes. The bully’s eyes were oyster blue and bloodshot. He lowered his gaze from the twin gun muzzles of Longarm’s steel-gray eyes, but being an old hand at his kid games, he tried to crawfish gracefully by asking Longarm why he hadn’t said he’d been run in for punching out Waco McCord.
He added, “Any man who’d punch out that disgrace to the Lone Star State has to be a pal of mine. They call me Lash Flanders, and I rode with General Sibley when he took Santa Fe in ‘62.”
Longarm was too polite to mention the licking Sibley’s Texas raiders took a few days later at Glorieta Pass. He said, “They call me Buck Crawford. I disremember who I rode with. I’ve been riding ever since, with hands from all over, and fighting old wars over again for less than a private trooper’s pay sounds dumb, no offense.”
Lash Flanders hunkered down beside him. “None taken. I read the Colorado crush of that hat. How come Waco and the rest of us met up with you in Kansas, Buck?”
The crap game came back to life as Longarm dryly remarked, “That’s where I am now. Got handed the shovel, and nobody’s hiring where I was known better. Heard some of the outfits over this way might need a few extra hands, seeing the price of beef has riz and your greener grass ain’t been as overgrazed during the dry years we’re just now getting past. Knock wood.”
The younger peacemaker in the flashy shirt and monstrous sombrero hunkered down by Longarm’s right and observed, “I’ve punched me out a boss or two in my day too. Leaving one outfit under a cloud can sure make it hard to hire on anywhere’s near.”
Lash snorted, “Shoot, you’ve yet to punch your way out of a wet paper bag, Silent.”
Then he confided to Longarm, “We call him Silent Knight because he never shuts up. When there ain’t anything sensible to say, old Silent has this habit of stating the obvious. Do you rope dally or tie-down, Buck? Reason I’m asking is that most of the Flint Hill outfits cotton to tie-down topers for the same reasons you wear your hat north- range style. Me and Silent have to admit we’re Texicans because it shows. But we’ve both larnt to rope less overtly rebellious.”
They both seemed to relax more when Longarm allowed he could rope north-or south-range style. Silent Knight opined, “It might be a hard row for a total stranger to hoe, Buck. The last of the spring calves have been branded and marked. Won’t be much for anyone to do but watch ‘em grow until the market roundup come September. What brands did they tell you to try for, Buck?”
Longarm honestly replied he hadn’t heard tell of any particular Flint Hill brands. Then he stretched the truth with: “Heard there was this lady hiring help around Minnipeta Junction, a hard morn’s ride from this railroad stop.”
The two local hands exchanged glances. Silent Knight nodded and told Longarm, “We know the Junction’s a good morning’s ride because that’s where we’ll be headed come morning. But we ain’t heard tell of any lady taking on help.”
Lash Flanders muttered, “What about that widow gal who just bought the old Nesbit place?”
Silent Knight laughed lightly, and replied in a dismissive tone that they were talking about a quarter-section homestead claim, confiding to Longarm, “The Nesbits were greenhorns who tried to drill corn into sod-covered bedrock. The widow gal who bought ‘em out cheap keeps a milk cow, pigs, and chickens like the Nesbits should have. She and her daughter run the bitty spread without no hired help. I don’t see how they could afford no hired help if they wanted any. But you can try-“
Longarm didn’t answer, but he meant to. Two strange women on a small claim near that Minnipeta Drover’s Bank sounded just like a lead Bill Vail would expect him to follow up on.
He was tempted to divide at least one cheroot with them, now that he’d established his right to decide such matters for himself. But the night was young and his resources were limited. So he just nursed his own smoke until, sure enough, they lost interest in trying to butter him up and went back to the crap game. Nobody else came over for a spell. It was surprising how much attention jailbirds paid to what was going on within possible earshot.
A hundred years or so later, the turnkey came to let Lash and Silent out, announcing their foreman was out front with a bail bondsman. You didn’t bail out on a morning hearing in a magistrate’s court when you bedded down a hard morn’s ride from it. So the two Lazy Eight riders had been picked up on some charge calling for a more serious circuit court hearing sometime in the future.
Longarm reflected that the hired foreman of any spread would hardly lay his own money out to bail saddle bums who got in trouble on their very own. He told himself he hadn’t been sent all this way to delve into local brand running or stock stealing. Lots of foremen running a lot of big spreads for absentee owners had side interests they ran for fun and profit with some of the boys. It was up to their own county sheriffs to worry about such local enterprise.
A spell after Knight and Flanders had been bailed out, a more obvious thief was thrown in with them by Hard Pan Parsons in person, who warned one and all not to beat up old Sticky Fingers Sam again. Once Hard Pan had gone out front, the sheepishly grinning sneak thief was told to go sit against the wall and stay there lest he wind up with every damned one of his sticky fingers too swollen to stick in anyone’s pocket for the foreseeable future.
A spell later another local pest who rated circuit court was bailed out. Then two roaring drunks were tossed in, warned to simmer down, and hit alongside their heads a few times to calm them some. Longarm was sorely tempted to go over and give first aid to the one whose scalp seemed to be bleeding so seriously. But it was best to be able to say you’d just never noticed when they asked you how come a cell mate seemed to have died during the night.
And so it went for what would have seemed even longer if Longarm hadn’t been able to console himself with the thought that he could get out any time it got too tedious.
During the long, dreary night he managed to strike up casual conversations with most everyone there. For even roaring drunks commence to make sense after they haven’t had anything to drink for a coon’s age.
Only a few of them were as familiar with the Flint Hill range around Minnipeta Junction as Silent Knight and Lash Flanders had been. But one townsman who said he’d only been out there a time or two on business confided, “There’s hardly nothing there but a general store and post office, a bunch of saloons, and twice as many whorehouses. The state of Kansas just voted itself dry. So neither the saloons nor whorehouses are supposed to be there. But you know what Minnipeta means, don’t you?”
