More likely the first twenty minutes would be shot, he realized once the persnickety, nose-high, smoke-hating ma’am came in.
While everyone else, which is to say all the menfolk, had been running to establish the line, she’d been outside taking her own sweet time about things. Primping, preening, whatever the hell it is that highfalutin women do to prepare themselves for their adoring public.
Now, drifting in well behind everyone else, she sailed through the door … and right on to the front of the line as if that was the only possible place she could be expected to put up with.
Longarm quietly seethed while the woman took her time about things, standing there and oh-so-slowly stripping off her ivory-colored, elbow-length traveling gloves one tiny finger at a time so she could handle a plate. She was in no damned hurry, that was for sure.
He might not have minded all this so much if at least she’d presented something interesting to look at. But while he’d been traveling with her since before daybreak—well, on the same vehicle as her if not exactly down inside there with her—he had yet to get so much as a glimpse of what she looked like.
A delicate blossom, he figured. Or anyway she must have believed herself to be. She was dressed ears to toenails in an oversized duster, and wore a hat with a brim wide enough to protect a span of oxen. The hat was hung all around with a thick netting that he hoped allowed her to peer out from, for it sure as hell kept anyone else from looking in.
Until she got her gloves off he couldn’t even have sworn that she was white. Until then he hadn’t seen a hint of skin. And thanks to the loose fit of the voluminous duster, he still had no idea if she was built like a barrel or maybe just a barrel stave.
Not that he particularly gave a damn what this female creature looked like.
What he wanted was for her to get the hell done so he and all the rest of the males in the crowd could get some hot food in their bellies.
But no, not Miss Priss. She had to examine everything. Take a utensil and poke and turn at a bit of meat, even a dab of mashed potatoes. Everything had to be peered at, pored over, and thoroughly considered. Then she might, that is might, consent to place a speck of the item onto her plate. And there wasn’t anything, not any-dang-thing, bigger than would conveniently fit into the mouth of a pigeon. A young pigeon at that. When she finally was done, having already used up a significant percentage of the total time that was available to the passengers, she didn’t have enough food on her plate to satisfy the hunger of a healthy earthworm.
Longarm was disgusted. Also famished. And all the more so when he finally did reach the food line mere moments ahead of Quentin Cooper’s loud call, “Outside, everyone. Drop your forks and move your boots, everybody as wants to make the next leg north. Stage leaves in one minute. You hear? One minute an’ I don’t wait for nobody.”
Longarm believed him. Dammit. He put the plate down, picked up two slabs of crumbling bread instead, and piled them thick with whatever he could reach. Including a molehill-sized heap of mashed spuds. At least a potato sandwich would put something hot and filling into his belly.
But he still would’ve liked to throttle that damned female for holding up the line on them all.
He built a pair of open-faced sandwiches big enough that he should have hired a helper so he could carry them, then turned and loped back out to the stagecoach.
It was just coming dark when Quint snapped his whip above the twitching ears of his leaders and the big coach rocked and lurched into motion again.
Chapter 5
“Whoa, whoa there, goddammit!” The driver came halfway off his seat as he hauled and sawed at the lines, trying to drag the lumbering horses to a halt in time to avoid a man who suddenly appeared in the road before them. The man, who was afoot and seemingly alone in the middle of the night, was holding a lantern high, waving it from side to side. “Whoa, I said, goddammit.”
Longarm reached under his coat and slid the .44 Colt into his hand, not making a big thing of it but intending to be prepared come whatever.
“Eddie? Is that you, Eddie?” Quentin Cooper called out. “Hold the light so’s I can get a look at you. Be damned, Eddie, it is you. What the hell are you doin’ out here on the road?”
“H’lo, Quint, it’s me all right. I come to tell you the crick is over its banks. You won’t be able to cross till the water goes down a good four, five feet.”
“How come the creek to rise, Eddie?”
“Rainstorms somewhere upstream, I reckon. I dunno for sure, but the ford here is swimming deep to a giraffe. Eli tried to walk it this afternoon, tryin’ to get the southbound across, but he like to drowned. Too much water running too fast for him to make it afoot. A coach and team would be swept away sure.”
“Where’s Eli now?” Cooper asked.
“He turned back. Said he’d take his passengers up to Howard Dancey’s place to spend the night, an’ asked me to wait here and tell you what was happening. Him and me figure you an’ your people can sleep over at our place tonight. Maybe by morning you and him can make your crossing. Barring that, we can rig some ropes and swim across any passengers in a hurry. Then Eli can turn around an’ finish your northbound leg whilst you take his people back south again. Depending on how the water is come daybreak, that is.”
“Sounds all right to me, Eddie.”
While that exchange was going on, Longarm returned the Colt to its holster and checked his pocket watch. It was ten before nine. Laying over for the night would put them behind schedule. Which was somewhat better than drowning, he had to admit. He stifled a yawn and pulled out a cheroot.
Looking at the bright side of things, maybe they could get something to eat at this farm or ranch or wherever it was they would be spending the night now. Longarm hadn’t had time to fill up back there at Moore’s Station, and a late supper would be welcome.
“I expect you all heard that,” Quint shouted down to the passengers inside his coach. “We’ll be turning off the road here and following this man for a half mile or thereabouts, then stop for the night.” Cooper spat a stream of dark tobacco juice in the general direction of his wheeler’s hocks and added, “Just don’t expect much in the way of accommodations. The Millers aren’t generally in the business of taking in travelers.”
Which, Longarm discovered shortly thereafter, was a truth and then some.
Eddie Miller’s place was a homestead. Barely. There was a cabin made of warped and twisted cottonwood poles, a three-sided shed, a rickety little crapper just about big enough to turn around in, a small corral, and a root cellar in the dugout that presumably had been the initial dwelling place on the claim.
Miss Holier-than-Thou naturally enough assigned herself the relatively comfortable sleeping possibilities inside the cabin with the Millers. The men would have to make do as best they could under the shed roof or wherever else they might find a soft spot to spread their blankets on.
“Miz Miller has some coffee and hoecakes cooked up for us,” the jehu announced before everyone scattered in search of sleeping space. “She has it laid out on a table on the porch over there, and she said she’ll do what she can to put out a breakfast for us all come morning. She’s a Christian lady, she is, an’ won’t take pay for being neighborly, but boys, if I was you I’d volunteer some little something by way of a thank-you for her trouble. And for the supplies she’s using up on us when she could be feeding her own with it.”
Longarm cooperated with the driver by taking off his own hat and passing it around. “None of that pale metal now, fellows,” he chided those who would have tossed silver into the Stetson. “If it ain’t yellow, then it better fold. You know what I mean?”