“Don’t worry, I’m capable of taking care of myself.”
“Yeah, I seen that little popper you had in Leadville.”
“That ‘little popper,’ as you call it, is quite the efficient weapon. I’ve turned many an hombre toe-down with it.”
Longarm arched a surprised brow at the girl. “‘Many an hombre toe-down’?” He snorted a laugh and closed his eyes, knowing that if any of the girl’s oglers approached he’d likely smell him before he heard him.
“What’s so funny about that, pray tell?”
“I do believe you’ve read too many yarns by Deadeye Dick, Miss Delacroix.”
“I thought you were going to take a nap, Marshal Long,” she said in a strained, admonishing tone, suggesting that she’d long come to the end of her leash regarding one Custis P. Long.
Longarm opened his right eye halfway, looked at the girl’s admirers once more through sun-bleached lashes. They occupied two seats, beneath a billowing cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke. There were five of them, and from what Longarm could see of them, they appeared well armed with both long guns, short guns, and knives.
A Mexican with a sweeping mustache grinned at the girl with his sombrero tipped back of his broad, sun-blistered forehead. Catching Longarm’s scrutinizing eyes on him, he blinked his own eye mockingly at the lawman and then spread his lips with a lascivious grin.
Longarm shook his head. He knew there’d be trouble. You couldn’t go anywhere in the West with a beautiful young woman, especially one as beautiful as Agent Delacroix, without there being trouble. He was surprised old Pinkerton allowed her to travel alone, doubly surprised that she’d been traveling alone and was still alive, not having been raped and shot and thrown in a deep ravine.
She may have been damn beautiful, but he’d had his fun with her in Leadville. And the novelty of the situation had worn itself out.
When it was all said and done, he worked better alone. Hell, he’d have preferred a male partner to one he was going to have to play bodyguard and nursemaid to…
He gave a fateful sigh and closed his right eye, allowing himself to tumble slowly into a light doze, one in which he could hear all the sounds around him but one that still offered a modicum of refreshment.
He had no idea how long he’d catnapped before the train shuddered suddenly, and the girl screamed shrilly.
Chapter 9
Longarm wasn’t fully awake before he realized his revolver was in his hand and he was sitting straight up, extending the gun out in front of him, swinging it from left to right, looking for a target. His heart was not hammering but warning bells were tolling in his head.
The girl sat straight across from him, a horrified look on her face. Only, the look of horror, he quickly realized, was because he was aiming his cocked Colt in her general direction.
Not because she was being accosted by the five brigands, because the five brigands were still seated where they’d been seated before. Three of the five, in fact, appeared to be sleeping while the other two were leaning forward, probably playing cards on their knees though Longarm couldn’t see below their seat backs.
The train continued shuddering, rocking Longarm back in his seat, nudging the girl slightly forward in hers. Longarm looked outside past the tattered clouds of coal smoke sweeping past the windows. They were on a brown, sage-stippled plain, and they were slowing—likely for the little settlement of the appropriately named Jerkwater. Longarm had traveled this way more times than he could count, and they’d always stopped in Jerkwater to take on water after climbing and descending Monarch Pass.
Longarm depressed the Colt’s hammer, raised the barrel, instantly feeling the heat of chagrin rise in his cheeks. Then he heard what he must have heard in his sleep—the train whistle announcing their arrival in Jerkwater.
The girl continued to stare at him, maybe wondering what grade of crazy man she’d found herself being accompanied to Arizona with, but she didn’t say anything. Longarm returned his pistol to its holster and snapped the keeper thong home across the hammer.
When the train had come to a final, shuddering stop, all the passengers, of which there were only around a dozen, detrained to take advantage of Jerkwater’s amenities. There was only a small café run by a gnarled Mexican lady, a saloon run by a fat Swede, and a feed store that doubled as a dry goods and post office, last time Longarm was through here. The buildings were all lined up along the tracks, their primary function to patronize the trains and the few area ranchers.
Since the five men who’d been appraising Haven’s wares had also gotten off, and Longarm could see them now stretching and sauntering over in the direction of the saloon, he decided to get up and see what the Swede was serving for sandwiches. And a beer on a hot, dusty dry day of travel might be a welcome bit of nourishment, as well…
He told Haven his intentions.
“I’ll stay here,” she said. “I can’t sleep while the train is moving, so maybe I’ll indulge in a doze while it’s stopped.”
“Sandwich?” he offered. “A beer? The Swede don’t keep it cold, but he makes a right malty ale.”
“No, thank you,” she said with her customary, strained tolerance as she sat back in her seat and crossed her long, fine legs under her dress.
Longarm indulged in a quick look, for it was hard not to look and keep on looking at a beauty as radiant as she, despite how much trouble she’d likely turn out to be. He pinched his hat brim to her, turned into the aisle, and left the coach car via its rear vestibule.
He stopped to stretch on the halved-log platform.
To his left, the engineers were maneuvering the wood-and-canvas spout into place, swinging it over the locomotive from the water tank that stood on stilts near a scraggly cottonwood that was currently being thrashed by a mean wind. The four crude board buildings that comprised Jerkwater lay straight out from the train, across a wide freight road. The wind was blowing dirt and sand and tumbleweeds every which way, and it was causing shingle chains to dance and squawk beneath porch awnings.
As Longarm headed on past the little, privy-sized shack that served as a depot here in Jerkwater toward the saloon, Longarm saw that most of the passengers appeared to be heading into the Mexican lady’s café sitting just left of the Swede’s saloon. She was deservedly reputed for her burritos, but she didn’t serve beer or allow it on her premises, so Longarm continued on up the saloon’s porch steps and through the batwings that the wind was flapping raucously.
“Swede, does the wind ever not blow here?” Longarm asked the big, blond-haired, blond-mustached gent slicing what appeared a deer or possibly an antelope quarter on the cottonwood planks that served as his bar. The lawman batted his hat against his whipcord trousers, causing dust to billow.
“Every night around midnight it settles down for about five minutes.” The Swede grinned his rosy-cheeked grin as he regarded the big lawman, who always asked the same question as he walked through the Swede’s doors, to the Swede’s customary reply. “You on the hunt for curly wolves again, Custis?”
“What the hell else would I be doing out here on this blister on the devil’s ass?” Longarm grinned. He always said that, too. The Swede didn’t take offense; he was only here because his wife’s father willed him the store and he’d had his fill of the big city Denver had become since the War Between the States.
It might be windy and ugly out here, but he was making a living, by God, and it was better than the stench and crowds farther north.
“Thought maybe you rode out here for my beer, got tired of that swill they serve up on Larimer Street.”