Longarm was game for tea, no cream or sugar, and he knew he was supposed to let Constance Farnsworth pour and reach for that fancy pastry first. So he just sat tight and as she served them both, the widow woman quietly told him, “I’ve been thinking about the murder of Gaylord Stanwyk. I told you why I’d sent for him.”
Longarm nodded soberly. “Heard about them rockslides you have from time to time along your tracks. I reckon I’d send away for a civil engineer if I was having trouble with running a railroad through these mountains too, ma’am.”
She’d finished pouring and picked up her cup, meaning he was free to do the same, as she said, “Like the tracks up the slope to that British mining operation, the narrow-gauge line to the outside world was built by engineers trained in England, using the rails and other hardware they were accustomed to.”
Longarm picked up a macaroon, but didn’t bite into it before he told her, “I’d already noticed your rolling stock and sort of fancy tracks, ma’am. You’d hired Stanwyk to do some repairs on it for you because he knew how to work with it?”
She shook her head and said, “Not exactly. You’re so right about the line being overdue for some heavy repairs. Between the heavy ore loads and rocks that simply seems to fall on the track from the sky in this crazy Colorado weather, we’ve been running once a day each way at slower speeds than our customers approve of.”
Longarm had already noticed that coming up from Golden. So he just bit into the macaroon and sipped some tea as she went on about meeting up with that British railroad man in Denver and him telling her he could get her trains to running right again cheap.
When she got to the part about somebody hiring the late Ginger Bancott to gun her engineer before he could even take a gander at her beat-up tracks, Longarm cut in to say, “Hold on, Miss Constance. I follow your drift, and it’s already occurred to both Constable Amos Payne and myself that somebody with some motive must have paid that otherwise useless gun waddie to lay for your engineer like that. But even if you could give me some names and addresses, I’d still be the same federal lawman with no federal jurisdiction up here as far as I can see. Bancott shot a man dead in your local depot and got shot in return by your local law, making it a local matter for your local coroner’s jury to record and file. I don’t see how anybody could stand trial in any court local, state, or federal, on our mere suspicion of ulterior motives.”
She looked so let down by such common sense that, even though he knew better, he found himself saying, “All right. Who do you suspect of ordering your repair man murdered?”
She messed it up by answering in a reasonable tone, “I can’t be certain. But I’ve had more than one offer to take the line off my delicate female hands cheap.”
He quietly said he’d locked horns with such helpful gents in his time.
She said, “I know; I read about you dealing with that cabal trying to rob that young heiress. It was in both the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. That’s why I sent for YOU.”
He was too polite to remark that she hadn’t struck him as a young heiress. But as if she’d read his mind, she continued, “In this case it was my late husband who took over the narrow-gauge and some other local businesses as the original British syndicate found that silver operation ever less profitable and began to sell their local holdings off. I’ll admit it hardly seems anyone murdered him, the way that big Texas rancher was murdered by his business rivals n that case I just mentioned. My poor Claude simply died young, two years ago this summer, from working his Poor heart too hard at this altitude. But after that, all my troubles seem a lot like those of that younger and doubtless prettier businesswoman!
He assured her, “Looks had nothing to do with it, ma’am. The case to which you refer was federal because an interstate as well as ruthless bunch of killers was trying to horn in on a business empire that was far more widespread than Texas and doing business with the U.S. Government besides. No offense, but might you be carrying passengers or freight for, say, the army or an Indian agency across a state line?”
To which she could only reply with a gallant defeated smile that they both knew that Indian-fighting and all the poor Ute Indians were fading memories along the Front Range.
By this time Longarm had bitten into a chocolate-stuffed napoleon even better than her macaroons. So he agreed he’d at least hear a lady out. But it was a good thing her pastries were fresh, because her sad story wasn’t.
Longarm had read about why the nonferrous ores of the Rockies had settled out of solution much the same no matter where you built a boom town, but he hadn’t retained the details. Prospectors tended to pan loose placer gold in modest amounts from Colorado creeks, follow the color upstream to the mother lodes the nuggets and dust were washing out of, and dig through a crust of gold into silver with a little lead into ever-increasing amounts of lead.
It was at this point that hardrock mining turned from easy money to a serious industry, with the mine owners having to decide whether to go into the lead-extraction business at modest profit after a heap of retooling, or just pack it in and go find some high-grade somewhere else.
Many a recently booming mining camp had turned almost overnight to a ghost town, abandoned to the lonesome winds because it cost more to haul lumber and hardware to such a remote neck of the woods than it did to start fresh in other parts, paying for the more expensive hauling one single way.
Where bottomed-out lodes had been struck near more sensible townsites, their towns tended to hang on under new management. Denver had been the pre-war gold camp of Cherry Creek. Now it was the capital of Colorado without a speck of color to be panned for in that sandy old creek near Longarm’s hired quarters, save for hopeful kids from that brownstone school over on Lincoln Street.
Leadville was still going strong, and even growing, after changing its ways to smelt low-grade in bulk, while Golden was holding on as its gold ran low in a manner Constance Farnsworth recommended as the salvation of John Bull.
Longarm had to agree the town outside was nestled at the high end of a fertile mountain park with the surrounding slopes still fairly well timbered and, for all they knew, still infested with color nobody had prospected yet. Lots of housing and business structures still stood with their paint nearly fresh, and anyone could see how many folks there still were for the business district and railroad to serve.
When he finished a small jelly roll and said he’d just talked to a piano player getting ready to pull stakes and move on to another boom, the widow woman curled her kissable upper lip and said her town would be better off without the usual boom-town crowd. She pointed out—and he had to agree—that the gunslick he’d been sent to transfer back to Denver never might have tried to lie low in this part of the high country if he hadn’t been misled to believe it was still booming full blast.
Longarm smiled thinly and dryly replied that still meant three or more folks who were staying that night in John Bull would be long gone before the sun ever set again.
Then he relented and said, “Sorry, ma’am, that was aiming at an easy target with ten-gauge birdshot. I’ve met up with folks raising beef and barley up your way, and I know for a fact they’ll have to use your railroad if they mean to stay. It’s starting to sound like that joke about a town where everyone gets by by taking in one another’s laundry, but let’s buy the notion for now and get to why someone seems out to steal your profitable little railroad.”
She sighed and said, “You’re so right about it being little, and the profits are barely enough to keep it going. I’ve only kept the line running because it serves my more profitable enterprises here at this end of the park and, well … out of respect for a dreamer who literally worked his heart to an early grave in better times.”