“Thanks, Quint.”
“Jess won’t be open till morning, of course. Meantime, you’d best avoid the hotel yonder and have a word with Mrs. Batson at the boardinghouse up the street there. She don’t usually let rooms for one night at a time, but she’ll take you in if you tell her I sent you. Her place is clean and cheap and you won’t be woke up by a bunch of drunks.”
“Again, thanks.” Longarm told the friendly driver goodbye, and shouldered his carpetbag and saddle, then ambled up the street in the direction Cooper indicated, a stream of cold rainwater pouring off the brim of his Stetson so that he had to be careful not to get the coal of his cheroot under the flow.
“Nope,” Maxwell said curtly. The storekeeper was busy arranging stacks of ready-made flannel shirts on a shelf. But he didn’t seem that busy.
“You mean no, you won’t let me catch a ride? Or no, you-“
“What I mean, friend, is no, I won’t be sending a wagon out there again.”
Longarm’s belly growled hollowly, but he ignored it. He hadn’t wanted to take time for breakfast this morning lest he risk missing his ride. Now he regretted that decision. It seemed he was not to have either breakfast or a ride. “Sorry,” Longarm told Maxwell. “Quentin Cooper told me you do business out there.”
“Quint didn’t lie. I did do business with the agency and the Beloit sutler too. But not no more. That’s why I can’t give you a lift, mister. I got no reason any longer to send a wagon out there.” He finished with the shirts and bent over to open another bale of merchandise, this one turning out to be a selection of heavy-duty canvas trousers with woolen leggings from the knee down, the sort of thing that would appeal to placer miners who have to spend long hours wading in cold creeks. “Anything else I can do for you?”
“I’d like to see what you have in the way of cigars. Cheroots like this one here if you have any.”
“That I can help you with.” For the first time since Longarm came in Jess Maxwell managed a smile.
“Three dollars a day,” the livery stable hostler said. He spat behind the heels of the animal he valued so very highly, a mule with hams like a house-cat and a tail no bigger around than a pipe cleaner.
“Three dollars!” Longarm said. “For three dollars I can hire a man.”
“Mister, if you want to hire you some Cousin Jack to carry you around on his shoulders all day, it’s fine by me. And I agree you can get you one for three dollars. But you’ll pay me three dollars if you want to put a saddle on something and ride.”
“It isn’t even a horse, dammit.”
“You got any idea how little call there is for saddle horses around here? Or how much for mules? You’re just damn lucky that one of my mules happens to’ve been broke to saddle when I bought it, or there wouldn’t be anything for you to hire short of a buckboard. And for that you’d pay five dollars a day. So tell me … you want to rent my mule? Or go look for a Polack to carry you piggyback to wherever you want to go?”
“Reckon I’ll take the mule. But at two-fifty a day if I keep him a week or longer.”
“Three dollars.”
“Two-fifty.”
“Two-seventy-five. Starting the eighth day you have him. Three dollars until then. That’s as low as I’ll go.”
Longarm grunted. And frowned.
The liveryman smiled. Hell, he ought to, Longarm thought. “Here, mister. Let me help you with that saddle. And to show you my heart’s in the right place, I’ll toss in a breastplate and crupper at no extra charge.”
“You’re a regular prince, you are.”
“Yeah, everybody tells me that.” The fellow whistled happily as he went about his work.
Chapter 9
Camp Beloit was … incomplete. That seemed the most charitable way to put it, Longarm decided. It would have been somewhat more accurate simply to say that the place was the asshole of the territory. But that would have been unkind.
Besides, he was not entirely clear on just exactly which territory Beloit should be considered the asshole of. Dakota? Montana? Wyoming? Longarm didn’t know, and in truth did not much care, where the various lines were drawn. His interest was in why in hell he had been summoned to this … place.
Beloit seemed mostly to be made of mud. Wet, sagging, slippery mud. About two more good rains, Longarm figured, and what little there was of it would slide down into the creek that ran through it and disappear. Which, everything considered, might be a very good thing indeed.
From the foot of the broad, shallow valley where Longarm sat on his rented mule and took in all the wondrous sights of Camp Beloit, there was damn little to see.
He could make out the sod roofs and smoke holes—nothing as fancy as chimneys or stovepipes for the poor sons of bitches who had to live here—of a dozen or more dugouts that had been gouged out of the hillside.
Two graying, mildewed, ratty tents sat at the head of a more or less level spot close by the creek.
And before them, not exactly grandiose or inspiring, was a crooked and twisted tree trunk that would best have served as firewood, but instead was being used as the garrison flagpole.
At the moment, presumably due to the fine drizzle that had been falling most of the morning, the flagpole was bare of its colors. Longarm considered that to be something of a blessing. He would have been embarrassed if he’d had to witness the desecration of a grand old flag by its presence above Camp Beloit.
Still and all, there was work to be done. He clucked softly to the mule and squeezed it lightly with his knees, putting the patient little animal in motion again.
A soldier appeared in the entry to the larger of the two tents and stood there peering at the newcomer, so
