The Harvey girl just looked confused. The manager said, "I saw it all from the kitchen too. You're lucky to be alive, Pronto. Had he been anxious as some to run up his score, you'd have never stood a chance. For they say Longarm's taken on some of the fastest guns in both the East and West, and won easy!"
Pronto sneered, "Don't care what anyone says about him. All I know is that I made him crawfish! Wait till I tell all the boys I backed down the famous Longarm in the flesh! Mayhaps then I'll get me some respect around Amarillo!"
The cook headed back for his kitchen with a snort of disgust. The night manager sighed and said, "I wish you wouldn't brag too loud, Pronto. We try to run a decent place here, and gunfire can play bob with a customer's appetite!"
While they were talking, a brakeman off a night freight came in to take a seat at the far end of the counter. Pronto had that effect on the regulars around the Amarillo depot. The burly brakeman was a decent tipper who never got too fresh. So Polly moved quickly up the counter to serve him.
The newcomer naturally asked the Harvey gal what the argument at the far end might be about. Polly told him, "Pronto's filled with himself just now because he thinks he backed down the famous lawman Longarm. You know how Pronto likes to glare at smoother-shaven gents. His victim was as likely a whiskey drummer as a famous gunfighter."
The brakeman frowned thoughtfully and muttered "Longarm, you say it might have been? That's funny. Someone on that night rattler crew from the north was just jawing about some little squirt in seersucker chasing that same Longarm out of the Denver depot at a dead run!"
Polly looked unconcerned as she replied, "We all have to grow up sometime. What if the famous Longarm has just gotten tired of silly showdowns?"
The brakeman flatly stated, "Then he's as good as dead. Once a man has established a rep as a gunfighter, he can't afford to lose his nerve."
Polly said, "The customer Pronto just had words with didn't seem all that terrified. He just walked away from a silly fight with a silly kid, if you want to know what it looked like to me."
The brakeman shook his head and explained, "Nobody's likely to ask what it looked like to you, Miss Polly. Your point's well taken that a serious gunfighter may take pity on an occasional squirt. But should word get about that a man of Longarm's rep backed down within the same twenty-tour hours from not one but two untested nobodies... well, do I have to go on?"
He did, because Polly said she didn't understand what on earth he was talking about. So the brakeman said, "They all seem to lose that edge it takes after they've been through enough gunfights. That's all greener gunfighters, who still feel immortal, have to hear. The most famous but far from the only example would be Wild Bill Hickok up in Deadwood. He'd taken to drinking more and practicing with his pistols less, and Cockeyed Jack McCall wasn't the only one who'd noticed. So if McCall hadn't gunned Wild Bill in the Number Ten Saloon, it would have been some other gun waddy in some other saloon." He paused. "I reckon I'll have ham and eggs," he said casually.
CHAPTER 6
Longarm had been studying his railroad timetables, and so he'd seen that if he rode on down the line to Cruces, he'd be better than forty miles further from Fort Sill and there wouldn't be a northbound for the next two days.
On the other hand, a body getting off at Spanish Flats in the chill before dawn might hire a livery mount and make it on up to Fort Sill by the time that weekly combination serving the Indian Territory ever left Cruces.
So as the moon still hung high, Longarm got off at Spanish Flats, due south of Fort Sill, thankful to be packing so little baggage for a change. Since he hadn't been planning on getting off there before he'd consulted his timetable after midnight, Longarm felt no call to worry about the few other passengers getting off at the same stop in the tricky light. He could still taste his midnight snack back in Amarillo, and he knew he'd sleep lighter if he quit while he was ahead. He knew they'd expect him to pay in advance at that hotel across the way whether he arrived with his usual McClellan and saddlebags or just this fool envelope. So he did, and in no time at all he was sound asleep in his small but tidy hired room.
It felt as if he'd slept less than an hour, but the sun was up outside as somebody commenced to pound on his locked door with a heap of authority and what sounded like a pistol barrel.
Longarm rolled out of bed in his underdrawers and grabbed for the.44-40 slung from a handy bedpost as he rose and called out, "I hear you, damn it. Who is it and what do you want?"
The pounding was replaced by: "Clovis Mason of the Texas Rangers, and we've had a complaint about you, stranger. Where did you get off signing the register downstairs as a federal deputy, by the way?"
Longarm held his own weapon politely pointed at the floor as he cracked the door, nodded at the badge on the other gent's freshly laundered white shirt, and opened wider, saying, "I signed in under my right name because that's who I am and I have nothing to hide. I am Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, and I'm bound for the Indian Agency up at Fort Sill on government beeswax. I've barely talked to a soul here in Spanish Flats, and you say someone's made a complaint about that?"
The Ranger, somewhat shorter and stouter than Longarm, stepped in to regard the half-naked hotel guest dubiously and replied, "A lady says you've been following her all the way from Amarillo after you conspired with another gent to try and move in on her. I hope you have some identification before we go on with this bullshit?"
Longarm hung on to his own pistol as he moved over to fish his wallet from the duds he'd draped over a chair. The Ranger hadn't drawn his own .45-30--rangers were like that--but he'd been eyeing Longarm through narrowed lids until he spied the federal badge and identification. As his poker face got more human he said, "I'll be switched with snakes if I don't buy you're being the one and original Longarm! But why in thunder did that newspaper gal just come over to our company to charge you with mashing and menacing her all through the night?"
Longarm put his wallet and gun away and got out a couple of his cheroots and some waterproof Mexican matches as he calmly replied, "I didn't know I was. I recall her accusing me of some diabolical plot when I told a cowboy to leave her alone back in Amarillo a few hours ago. I did see her boarding the same eastbound later. If she got off here in Spanish Flats, I can see why a pretty gal who thinks she's even prettier might think I followed her all this way to gaze upon her beauty some more. But you'd think she'd give a man half a chance to get fresh with her before she pressed charges. You say she claims to be a newspaperwoman?"
Mason said, "Our captain made her prove it. Her own identification shows she's a Miss Godiva Weaver, writing for the New England Sentinel. I can't say I've ever heard of it."
Longarm handed the Ranger a smoke and struck a light for the both of them as he wearily replied, "I have. It's one of them expose weeklies that accuses our tee-totaler first lady, Lemonade Lucy Hayes, of being a secret drinker. It's no wonder a female reporting for the rag suspects me of lusting after her fair white body."
He got his own cheroot going and asked, "Did she say what she was doing out our way, aside from being stalked by drooling maniacs?"
The Ranger took a drag on his own cheroot and replied with a thin smile, "Says she was headed home with one scoop when she got a tip on another up to the Kiowa Comanche Reserve. That's what you call a latrine rumor, a scoop. When we told her we'd heard of no Indian trouble up yonder, she handed us the usual shit about big bad palefaces screwing the buffalo and shooting the women of poor old Mister Lo, the Poor Indian."
Longarm put on his shirt as he made a wry face and said, "I told you I'd read her rag. Lord knows there are rascals on both sides a just Lord would fry in Hell forever, but that New England Sentinel only knows about bad palefaces. That's doubtless why they said those three women the Ute rode off with from the White River Agency a spell back were either treated with the utmost respect or, failing that, deserved to be raped by one and all."
Mason said, "You don't have to instruct this child. I've fought Mister Lo. But fair is fair and we haven't had any trouble with the rascals since old Quanah Parker saw the light, remembered he was half white, and brung his bands in to eat more regular off the taxpaying Taibo. That's what they call us, Taibo."
Longarm sat on the bed to haul on his pants as he resisted the temptation to explain the distinctions between the Comanche words for white folks. He didn't savvy more than a few dozen words of the Uto-Aztec dialect the Comanche spoke himself. So he neither knew nor cared exactly why they called you Saltu if they were willing to parley with you and Taibo if they were out to lift your hair. He'd never figured out exactly why a Paddy got so upset if you called him a Mick, come to study on it.
Mason didn't know anything more about the news tip inspiring a mighty suspicious newspaper gal to leap off a train out West and accuse Longarm of attempted rape. The Ranger had smoked enough of the cheroot to excuse himself by saying he had to get on back and report why he hadn't arrested or shot anybody that morning. As he let himself out, Longarm reached for his own stovepipes, saying, "Hold on. I got me at least two days on the open range to Fort Sill and as you can see, I ain't even dressed right for that much riding. Where would I go if I want blue denim, a Winchester, and a couple of ponies with the gear and grub to get me there and back?"
Mason asked if he was buying or hiring. When Longarm allowed he meant to just hire the riding stock and their harness, along with a Texas toper and packsaddle, the Ranger suggested a general store down the street to the north, with a livery that wouldn't cheat him directly across the way. So Longarm rose, they shook on it, and the Ranger left him to his own devices.
Longarm strapped on his six-gun and went down the hall in his shirtsleeves to take a good leak and wash the sleep gum from his eyes. He needed a shave, but his soap and razor were still up in that Denver baggage room, if he was lucky. So he let that go for now, went back to his room to put on the rest of his outfit, and went downstairs for a late breakfast.
As he consumed it in the back booth of a nearly deserted chili joint, he read Henry's typed-up onionskins casually a third time. Then he dropped them in a trash barrel out front as he was leaving. There'd been nothing all that secretive or hard to remember, and it was getting tedious to tote that dumb manila envelope all over.
He found the livery Clovis Mason had suggested, and evoked the Ranger's name to see if they'd treat him as a customer who might know which end of a pony the shit fell out of.
The old weatherbeaten geezer who led him out back to the corral acted sensibly enough until they'd agreed on a couple of aging but still serviceable cow ponies, a paint and a bay, both mares, and got down to brass tacks about money.
The old hostler wanted four bits a day for the hire of both the mares and the riding and packing gear Longarm would need to get him up to Fort Sill and back. That sounded reasonable. So did the old-timer's asking for a deposit against the loss of anything he hired out. But Longarm didn't think he was reasonable when he asked for a deposit of the full market price, and then some, for, say, two fine cutting horses and a spanking-new roping saddle silver-mounted.
Longarm snorted in disgust and said, "I was only aiming to ride them old plugs a week or so. Nobody said nothing about my proposing either should take my name and bear my children. I'll deposit, say, a hundred in cash for the whole shebang, and that's only on account I doubt I'll have to forfeit any of it."
The hostler naturally protested that the bridles and saddles alone would cost better than a hundred dollars to replace, and so it went until they'd settled on a deposit both found outrageous and Longarm was free to walk the two mares across to that general store, with the stock saddle cinched atop the paint and the bay stuck, for now, with packing.
He went inside to discover that, sure enough, they sold almost anything a man or beast might require out on the open range in the late summer months.
He bought some vulcanized water bags and a sack of oats for the ponies, knowing there'd be plenty of sun-cured but fairly nourishing grama to graze along the way.
He bought extra smokes and a few days' worth of canned grub for himself. It hurt to spring for a new Winchester when he knew he had an almost new one strapped to his McClellan in that baggage room up Denver way. So he bought a couple of boxes of Remington.44-40 that fit his revolver as well, and let the saddle gun go for the time being. He bought some new denim jeans, along with a razor, soap, and such. His hickory shirt and tweed vest would get him by after sundown this far south in summertime. But he figured he'd better pick up a vulcanized poncho along with the minimal bedding he might need for a night or so in the middle of nowhere much.
Once he and the shop clerk had loaded all his purchases aboard the two horses, Longarm led them on up the street until, as he'd hoped, he spied a pawnshop.
He was coming out of it a few minutes later with an older but well-kept Winchester Yellowboy, the original model with its receiver cast brass instead of machined steel. Most Indians and some cowboys still favored the Yellowboy over newer models because its rust-proof receiver made up for its loading a tad slower in a setting where a gun might be tougher to strip, clean, and oil very often. The Yellowboy, like the Henry all Winchesters were based on, would shoot as fast as any other saddle gun when fast shooting was called for.