delicacies such as a man wanting to smuggle a gal in for a drink or whatever without the whole world having to know about it.
So Longarm had Daisy roost on a hitching rail by the hotel stable entrance while he and the McClellan went into the lobby to hire adjoining rooms up on the second floor. He signed himself in as who he was and told them he was expecting another government agent to arrive later in the day. He signed Daisy in as D. G. Crawford and never said word one about her gender. He pocketed both keys and said he'd store his own baggage topside before he went to see what was holding old D. G. The musty-haired old room clerk didn't seem to care one way or the other. Hotels only worried about baggage or just how many might be upstairs when they suspected they might be stiffed on the going room rates.
Leaving the McClellan in the room he'd hired for his own use, he went out through the stable exit to fetch the barefoot Daisy. He led her in and up the back stairs as he explained why she was signed in as somebody else. He said, 'It's more important for me to remember your fake name because folk are less likely to ask you who I've been expecting aboard the afternoon train from Denver. I like to use the name, Crawford, because it's easy for me to recall. Crawford Long, the doc who invented painless surgery, was a hero to a heap of us during the war, and I've always hoped we might be kin. After that I know a reporter Crawford on the Denver Post who lies about me all the time, and I figure one good turn deserves another. I think Crawford is a Scotch name, like Gunn, anyways.'
She asked him who he was calling Scotch. He told her he'd known a Scotchman named Gunn one time and added, 'Came from a part of Scotland they call Sutherland because it's as far north as Scotland goes. I've yet to fathom why Scotchmen wear skirts and like oatmeal, either. How come you didn't know your name was Scotch? I've yet to meet anybody with a Scotch name who didn't know it was Scotch.'
She didn't answer as they entered the room he'd hired for her near the head of the back stairs. Before she could come up with a lie, Longarm told her, 'I might of known today ain't the first occasion a runaway by any name might have had occasion to change her name. Don't confound me with any other names, true or false. Just remember you're the one and original D. G. Crawford until further notice.'
He opened the door to the bath her room shared with his own. He told her, 'Both doors bolt on the inside lest two hotel guests who don't know each other meet buck-naked in here. I want you to keep your hall door bolted. I'll hang one of them don't-disturbs on it, and none of the hotel help have any call to come in here before we check out, official, in twenty-four hours.'
She looked unsettled as she asked him where he was going without her. So Longarm said, 'I told you I had some chores to tend here in the territorial capital. I'll bring you back some more ladylike duds to wear as we wend our way on to Keller's Crossing. What are your favorite colors, Miss Daisy?'
She said yellow and blue.
He said he'd try to match the colors of her hair and eyes when he shopped for her. He added, 'I'll bring us some warm grub whilst I'm at it. I dasn't take you out to supper because I don't want anybody to know we're together. Keep your door bolted and don't answer if anybody knocks, in spite of the don't-disturb. It won't be me because I'm booked in next door. I'll let my ownself in or out through the don't-disturb on my door with my key. I'll come back to you by way of this bath. So don't bolt that door after you finish scrubbing behind both ears.'
They both smiled at that picture. But then she allowed she felt scared as well as totally at sea about all this mysterious shit, as she put it.
He took out his double derringer and unhooked it from his watch chain as he told her he'd explain the whole deal before he'd call on her to do anything but stay put. He asked if she knew how to use a gun. When she said she did, he wasn't surprised.
He handed her the derringer and said, 'Don't use this unless you have to. I'll be switched with snakes if I can see why you might have to, but, like Ben Franklin said about death and taxes, nothing else in this old world is certain. Just make certain it ain't a nosy maid or a drunk at the wrong room door before you let fly.'
As she gingerly took the bitty pistol, Longarm hauled out his wallet and produced a ten-dollar paper certificate. She stared at it goggle-eyed as he held it out to her, explaining, 'If I ain't back by checkout time, you'll know I ain't coming back and you're on your own. I can't spare more. But a gal with a gun and a week's wages ought to get way farther than she might without 'em.'
The dirty-faced waif almost sobbed, 'What are you talking about? Why do you say you might not be back? Who's after you? Who's after either one of us, Custis?'
Longarm smiled down reassuringly and told her, 'Nobody is after you, unless you've been hiding more than your real name from me. I don't know as anybody in particular is after me. But a man picks up enemies riding six or eight years for the Justice Department. You were there when that surly brake bull started up with me. I reckon there's something about my rep or the way I walk that inspires the mean and restless to start up with me. I've never liked them all that much, and I reckon they sense it some way. Like wild critters can tell when you're drawing a bead on 'em.'
He didn't have the time or inclination to go into the times a crook with something to hide had seen fit to set up an ambush for the lawman probing into his or her shady doings. If there was some master plan behind those Wyoming wildwomen, neither local, territorial, nor federal lawmen from the Cheyenne District Court had been able to detect it. Gunning the first outside lawmen sent to poke around would be sort of dumb for a mastermind.
He had no call to tell a white gal how to run a bath or use the hotel soap and towels. So he just asked her to save one towel for him to use later, then let himself out the far door between the tub and commode.
He picked up another don't-disturb in the room he'd signed himself into, ducked out in the hall, and locked up before he hung both the don't-disturbs on their adjoining hall knobs. He made certain nobody was anywhere about before he dropped to one knee and wedged a match stem in the crack of his locked door, under the bottom hinge, because an inside bolt was one thing, but a latch key was easy to duplicate.
Then he eased down the back steps and out by way of the stable to the sunny street.
He'd gone two city blocks before a hall porter on a landing he'd avoided asked an upstairs maid, 'What's going on in two hundred eight and nine? They both have don't-disturbs out and it's barely afternoon.'
The maid smiled dirty and confided, 'Nobody's asleep in either room. I was just coming from a checkout down the hall when that one who says he's a lawman snuck his pretty boy up the back stairs.'
The hall porter blinked and demanded, 'Are you sure it was a boy? I've heard heaps of things about the famous Longarm, but this is the first I've ever heard of him queering young boys!'
The maid, a plain woman who might have felt left out, shrugged and said, 'Have your own way. It was a girl with dirty bare feet, ragged jeans, work shirt, and straw hat. Those trash whites down along Crow Creek have adopted a new fashion. They've taken to wearing men's duds to make themselves more tempting.'
The hall porter laughed, dirty, and decided, 'Wait till I tell the boys the famous Longarm is a queer! I mean, I always had my doubts about Wild Bill's shoulder-length curly locks, but who'd have ever thought a gunslick with Longarm's rep as a lady's man would shack up with young boys for Gawd's sake!'
The lady's man they were gossiping about made it to the Cheyenne Federal Building before they were done with him. Once inside he found that the cuss who'd declared virtue was its own reward had never had to argue Federal Jurisdiction with Billy Vail's thoroughly pissed-off opposite number in Wyoming Territory.
The somewhat younger and leaner but just as crusty U.S. Marshal Winslow Morris, formerly of the Iowa Volunteers and mighty stuck up about that, too, told Longarm he was the victim of a cruel practical joke or riding for blathering assholes. Gritting his big yellow teeth on his own version of an expensive cigar in an oak-paneled office of his own, Marshal Morris insisted he's had his own deputies look into the rash of arrest warrants breaking out in Keller's Crossing. He said they'd gone over the township's voter registration and financial ledgers while they were at it.
Longarm, seated in a guest chair made out of elk antlers in this case, nodded soberly and said, 'I've read your own reports. More than once. Anyone can see nothing cruel or unusual seems to be going on up here in Wyoming Territory, sir. Those lovely young things your lady J.P. keeps arming with dead-or-alive warrants have been gunning men down in other parts. As far south as Texas and as far east as Missouri. We make it eight such men, so far. Shot down like dogs without even the pretence of due process.'
Marshal Morris grimaced and said, 'I told Simp Glover it looked a mite neater when a deputy throwed a suspect's hat across an alley and ordered him to run and fetch it before he fired. But old Simp says-'
'Simp?' Longarm cut in, demanding, 'Might we be talking about the county he-sheriff up yonder, name of Glover, now that I think back to my own notes?'
Marshal Morris nodded and replied, 'We are. Simp's a good old boy with a herd of nigh two thousand head
