below, fooling with a cabbage-sized wad of sweet sticky goo.
Covina told her to put it back on the stove for now and turned back to Longarm to ask, 'You say this member of the gang told you all this, Custis?'
Longarm removed his Stetson and hung it on a kitchen hook as he replied, 'Not hardly. He switched sides sudden when I got the drop on him and likely scared him honest. He swore he hadn't known they had orders to gun me. He'd now have it known he was simply a poor dishonest cardsharp who fell in with the wrong companions. His conversion may be sincere. Old Deacon Knox has no rep as a gunfighter, and it must have been a sobering experience to have me nail his pal Texas Tom and get the drop on him with this Winchester, all within hours. I chose to believe his sad story because I didn't want more paperwork on my plate, and it was just as easy to run him out of town. I knew Deacon Knox ran out of town easy, and I suspect he'll keep running.'
Daisy asked if he'd ever been to bed with two women at the same time.
As old Covina blushed beet red, Longarm refrained from bragging to reply, 'Right now I'd rather have something to eat, no offense. I've had no sleep and barely enough grub to go with the hard day I've put in since leaving Denver a million years ago, and Lord knows when I'll ever get there at the rate I've been going!'
Covina turned to her kitchen range, allowing there were still some coals left from their taffy making, as Daisy asked why Longarm didn't spend the night with them and get an early start in the morning.
Covina hushed her but volunteered, 'I do have extra rooms and so wouldn't it be a good idea to lay over here until those killers lose interest in that railroad depot?'
As she broke out a skillet and a smoked ham he could already taste, Longarm shook his head and said, 'They ain't being paid to lose interest, and I'd lose yet more time in vain. My boss wants me up in Keller's Crossing. Their boss don't. They've had plenty of time to stake out the railyards, and they're likely staked out comfortable for as long a wait as they want.'
As she sliced ham for her skillet and got out a basket of eggs, he continued, 'I only know one of them by description and rep. He has at least one shemale with him who might be better at recognizing me in tricky light than vice versa. In sum, they have the deck stacked to their advantage, and even if I won, I'd be tied up here with the paperwork too long to catch that way-freight. It'll be pulling out before ten and then where would I be?'
The gray but fine-figured Covina put the ham on to sizzle first as she calmly replied, 'Safe here with us? Why do you keep calling that last train out to the north a way-freight? I know what a freight train is, but I'm not sure I've ever heard one called a way-freight.'
It was Hobo Daisy who chimed in from her own perch across the table. 'Silly, a way-freight is a local that makes every stop along the way. They run them when the passenger varnish and fast freights ain't using the track, which is usually single line betwixt towns, out this way.'
Longarm chuckled and told Covina, 'That's about the size of it. Night-crawling way-freights ain't much. But they purely beat walking, or even riding, once you're talking about any distance. The old iron horse keeps chugging long after a regular horse is through for the day.'
As a heavenly smell of frying ham filled Covina's already sweet-smelling kitchen, Longarm mused, half aloud, 'Already thought about hiring myself a bronc at the livery across from the depot for some serious riding. But it's too far to push a pony, or even a rider, at any speed.'
Covina busted eggs over his ham as she countered, 'if I understand way-freighting correctly, there's an alternate north-bound leaving later and stopping at Crow Bend, eight or ten miles up the line, and closer by beeline across the range.'
Longarm nodded but said, 'Already considered that, Miss Covina. But they likely have the livery staked out, along with my fool saddle in its tack room. I'd have never stored it close to the depot if I'd gotten Deacon Knox to talk earlier. I could likely beg, buy, or borrow another saddle as well as a mount to shove under it if I had more time. But, like you said, we're talking eight or ten miles, and I'd barely beat the iron horse with a real horse if I started right now!'
Covina tipped his ham and eggs on to a china plate and served him as she told Daisy to pour the coffee while she tended to something in her bedroom.
As she left, Daisy stood close enough for Longarm to smell the fresh-scrubbed flesh under that chenille nightgown as she filled a mug for him, murmuring, 'I think she likes you, too. Wouldn't it be fun if the three of us all got naked and had us a party?'
He laughed and told her to behave herself, having no call to tell her about the party he'd just had with a more-than-enough frisky Lakota.
The ham and eggs were swell. The strong coffee offered to see him through the next few hours of the night. But then what? He could ask for help from the local law or Billy Vail's sullen opposite number. But that would only make the outlaws crawfish back into their hideyholes and tip their leaders off that he was on his way past them, even if he made the damned way-freight without having to jaw half the night away.
So mayhaps it was just as well, he thought, that he wasn't hard up enough at the moment to be tempted by a night in bed with two women. For Daisy's sassy suggestion made as much sense as trying to sneak past any number of owlhoot riders without knowing who they were or where they'd be laying for him!
He was sponging up the last egg yolk with a chunk of rye bread when Covina Rivers came back in, fully dressed in a tight-waisted navy velveteen riding habit, a bitty boater perched atop her pinned-up steel-gray hair, to ask if he was finished yet.
Longarm rose from the table to allow he sure was and ask if she meant to ride somewheres at that hour.
Covina said, 'I keep my shay in the carriage house of a livery a block up the avenue. I don't drive enough to keep my own carriage horse, but I know all their good ones by name. So let's be on our way. If the one they call Blue Ribbons hasn't been driven this afternoon, she ought to get us there in plenty of time!'
Longarm was in no position to argue. He picked up his Winchester, grabbed for his hat, and followed her down the stairs as, behind him, Daisy wailed she wanted to go, too.
As he legged it up Central Avenue with the surprising fast-paced widow woman, Longarm asked why she hadn't told him sooner.
She said, 'You men are all alike. I'd have never gotten you to eat a warm meal and put away that much coffee if you'd had any hope of beating that way-freight to Crow Bend.'
He had to allow she was right. Long before they'd gotten the long-limbed chestnut, Blue Ribbons, hitched up to her private two-wheel shay, he was telling her they weren't going to make it. He was sure of this as they trotted out the north-west city limits in the moonlight, along the service road that followed the single tracks and sandy Crow Creek toward the Laramie range to the west. For as spunky as she trotted, Blue Ribbons wasn't going to average more than nine miles an hour, and even a way-freight rumbled across the prairie at better than twelve between towns.
Covina explained the tracks followed the easy route of the creek as it meandered across rolling prairie. He didn't ask why when she reined Blue Ribbons off the service road and out across open range in the moonlight. She drove with skill many a man might have envied, and Longarm would have told her, had not they been bouncing so hard on the seat of her one-horse shay as they tore across the prairie in the tricky moonlight.
He didn't have to urge her to whip Blue Ribbons with the rein ends as they both heard a locomotive whistle in the distance, albeit not as far a distance as Longarm would have asked if he'd had anything to say about the matter!
CHAPTER 13
They made it with less than five minutes to spare. As the gallant Blue Ribbons panted head-down between the shafts, Longarm helped the hard-driving widow woman down from her shay and kissed her without thinking before he said, 'I want you to promise me both you real pals will head back to Cheyenne at a walk! I got to run down the platform and talk to the freight agent now. I'll wire more detailes when I send for Daisy.'
Covina flustered, 'When and why? She's not a bad girl, but she's had no upbringing and seems terribly stupid, even for a sort of white Topsy off a farm.'
Longarm said, 'You work with what you have to work with, and I just said I'd wire more detailed instructions, once I know what I want her to do or say on arrival. I don't know what I'll find waiting for me, up the line, myself. So thanks a heap for the buggy ride, and I got to move it out, ma'am.'
She asked, 'Would you kiss me again? Just to say goodbye? I was caught off guard by that first one, Custis.'
