It said:
ARRIVING EARLY AM DAY AFTER TOMORROW STOP TWO OR THREE AM STOP MAKE SURE I SEE YOU BUT MAKE NO SIGN OF RECOGNITION STOP I WILL GO TO WHITE’S HOTEL STOP FOLLOW ME STOP WILL FIND THE CHANCE TO TALK DURING THE NIGHT STOP
He signed it C. L. and gave it to the telegrapher with instructions to put it on the government’s bill.
After that, there wasn’t anything he could do except get as much sleep as he could and get ready for a hard trip. One thing he hated was that because of the number of train changes, it would be too difficult to take his own horse. He didn’t like that part of it because one thing a man in his profession needed between his legs was an animal he could depend on. More than once, his skin had been saved by the speed or endurance of a good horse. If you didn’t take your own, then you were just drawing potluck on what you could find to borrow or buy or rent. But there was just a chance that Lee might have some connections and be able to help him out in that area. With nothing else in mind and nothing else to do, he turned his footsteps toward the boardinghouse, worried about the young man, feeling guilty that he hadn’t gone himself, and blaming himself in advance for what might happen.
Chapter 4
It was a long and boring train trip. The first part of it, through the mountains of Colorado, wasn’t so bad. At least there was something to look at out the window. It didn’t seem like there was ever much to look at inside a passenger coach, mostly drummers or cattlemen or grandmothers who were taking the chair cars. Longarm never understood why pretty young women never rode the trains much, or at least the trains he rode. It would have been a pleasant way to have passed the time, he thought, to have had a pretty young woman to talk to, even though it might never have gone any further. Longarm was willing to admit that there were other things you could do with women, and talking was one of them.
Unfortunately, all of the lines he would be taking were locals. They didn’t go far enough to include a parlor car where a man might find a poker game. As a result, you could either stare out the window or drink whiskey or smoke cheroots, or you could do all three. Longarm had never believed in thinking much about the situation that lay ahead. He found that when you did that, you got set ideas in your mind that were always different from what you saw when you got there. It was a dangerous habit and practice to preplan your reactions in an unknown situation.
He had told Billy Vail he was going to button his marshal’s badge into his pocket and leave it there. That wasn’t necessarily the truth. He might be better off putting it on. He would just have to see when he got there.
As he rolled around, swaying with the motion of the train and listening to the clickity-click as the wheels passed over the rail joints, he reckoned that Lee Gray was delighted at the prospect of meeting him at the rail depot at two or three o’clock in the morning. He would probably want to carry Longarm’s valise for him. His valise was stored in the overhead rack above his head. He had three extra shirts, an extra pair of Levi’s, and his other Colt .44 revolver to match the one on his hip. Strapped to the valise was his lever-action .44-caliber rifle, and inside were several boxes of .44-caliber ammunition that fit both of his revolvers and his rifle. He also had four bottles of Maryland whiskey, all he could carry. If the job stretched out to any length, he’d soon be out of it and would be forced to drink the local rotgut, which he hated.
As well as he could remember, Santa Rosa wasn’t exactly a thriving city. Unless it had grown considerably, it was probably still a cattle town of no more than a thousand inhabitants, with about twelve saloons to every church and four hardware stores for every grocery store. It wasn’t a place a man would choose to spend a vacation.
He could visualize White’s Hotel in his mind because he had stayed in a hundred places just like it. The hotel would be a rickety, weather-beaten two-story affair with beds that sagged in the middle and doors that wouldn’t stay closed, and certainly wouldn’t stay locked. It would have windows that wouldn’t open and floorboards that creaked and lamps and lanterns that never seemed to have enough kerosene in them. If it hadn’t been early summer, the place would have been as cold as the North Pole with the wind blowing eighty miles an hour. As it was, it would probably still be blowing eighty miles an hour, but instead of snow, it would be blowing dust.
Longarm let his mind play lightly with this family called Nelson, if there even was such a family. He wondered what kind of people they could be and what they had against him.
But then, he cut that thinking off short. It wasn’t going to do any good to speculate, nor was it going to do any good to guess. He never had. You got the facts in hand and you handled them. That was the only way it worked.
Mrs. Bodenheimer had made him up a sack of food for the road. She had put in some sliced ham, some sliced roast beef, and some big chunks of bread along with some cheese. Fortunately, he had managed to avoid Lucy as he was making his getaway, as he thought of it. He was well supplied with food and there was water on the train and he was well supplied with whiskey, so he guessed he would make it. If only he didn’t have to make so many changes.
The train rolled on. Day turned into evening and evening became night. Sometime around ten, Longarm changed trains at Raton, New Mexico, and started the run up to Santa Fe. He supposed the mountains of northern New Mexico would have been worth seeing, but it was too black out the train’s windows to see anything except his own reflection. Now and then, he snatched a quick nap. Mostly, he just did what he did on all train trips—endured it. He was a man whose seat was meant for the saddle of a horse, not for the seat of a railroad coach.
Close to midnight, he made the switch in Santa Fe for the short haul down to Albuquerque, where he caught the train heading east that would take him into Santa Rosa. At that hour, he was the only passenger in the coach besides one fat drummer with his sample case on his lap, a derby hat on his head, and a cigar in his mouth. The conductor came through, calling out Longarm’s stop, and he got up, stretching, tired and sore from the long spell of sitting. He got his valise down, and was halfway off the train by the time it pulled into the platform at Santa Rosa.
It was a dark night with very little moon. Longarm walked across the planks of the passenger platform toward the streets of the town. It was, as he had guessed, not much more than a village. It looked to have one main street, with several others branching off. As he went down the steps from the platform to the street level, he glanced across and saw, in the shadows of a building, a tall angular man who looked vaguely familiar. Longarm headed toward the center of town, and saw the man slouch along, paralleling him. It was Lee Gray. There was no mistaking the walk. Longarm had always said that Lee walked like a man whose joints were half asleep. Most people thought that Lee was a touch on the slow side, until they realized how fast he could move when they tried something. Gray gave the appearance of being more than just a little relaxed. In actual fact, he stayed on a hair trigger most of the time.
Longarm didn’t glance his way. He walked down the middle of the dark street, heading for the center of town, where he expected to find White’s Hotel without too much trouble.