He washed down another napoleon, allowed her sentiments did her late husband proud, and asked her what her other enterprises might be.
They turned out to be cattle, barley, a lumber yard, and a hardware store. He whistled and said he saw why she needed a railroad. She told him the same people who’d bought out the British silver mine and aimed to smelt lead ingots on their site had offered to buy her railroad as well.
So despite knowing better, he had to dig deeper by saying, “Some business tycoons would sell their mother’s false teeth the day she dies and had no profitable use for ‘em. But that leaves others such as the lamp oil king, John D. Rockefeller, who’d rather buy out everyone they do business with. So, no offense, gents offering a lady good money for her railroad don’t have to be up to anything more sinister than pure greed.”
She grimaced and replied, “I’d be perfectly willing to sell out for good money. They’ve offered a tenth what Claude and I paid when we bought it from investors anxious to divest themselves of American holdings.”
He didn’t answer. His mouth was full. He just listened as she continued. “Rail fares and other investments we made up this way have paid off the bank loans and left me moderately well off, as you can see. I don’t mean to leave all we built here unless selling out would leave me stinking rich. But when I told those mean people that, they said they’d just wait until my railroad went broke and buy it off the bankruptcy court clerk even cheaper!”
Longarm whistled and said, “That does sound mean, and patient as a beaver trapper besides. Ain’t you likely to keep your narrow-gauge going indefinitely, in its own pokey way, no offense?”
She sighed and said, “Not without some serious track maintenance. It keeps getting worse as my few track workers make jury-rig repairs on breaks that are often suspicious along close to eighty miles of curves. I can’t lay new trackage with the Stevens pattern rails I can afford in sensible amounts. I have to replace rail that’s banged up or dangerously worn down with that heavier and more expensive Wilkinson rail from England, when I can get it. None of the other lines this far west have any on hand, even as scrap. The oily new mine owners have offered to sell me some of the replacement stock left by that original British syndicate, at about the price for sterling silver. Before they had him killed this morning, Gaylord Stanwyk was going to show me how to get around the stranglehold. Down in Denver he assured me he might have a simple solution, once he surveyed just what Claude and I had bought up here in the first place.”
Longarm put down his empty cup and gravely said, “A railroad who learned his craft in England would have doubtless known way more about fancy English railroad tracks. Have you considered just converting the whole line to far cheaper American rails, speaking of solutions?”
She shook her brunette head and replied, “It’s not that cheap when you’re talking about tearing out and replacing that much track. It was naturally the first thought I had, when my maintenance crews first told me we were running low on replacement stock. I had an American civil engineer run an estimate for me. I’d come out ahead if I sold my line to those mean people at their price.”
Longarm started to reach for his notebook. Then he reflected there could be no secret as to who might own and operate the only mining operation for miles. Besides he’d never been sent up this way to investigate that. So he politely covered his empty cup with a palm before she could pour more. Then he told her, “When I get back to Denver I can lay your business worries before a firm but fair old cuss I know on the state railroad commission. But I fear nothing you’ve been able to tell me sounds at all federal and, no offense, I was aiming on an early start in the morning with my prisoner. I got to get him up, feed him, and process some infernal paperwork long before your morning train heads down to Golden.”
She rose with him, placing a hand on one sleeve as she insisted she stood ready to make it worth his while if he’d like to work for her as well as the government.
He wasn’t sure just how she meant that, and he was still hurting from Red Robin’s unexpected change in his plans. But he still told her, “I’ll be seeing that railroad commissioner for you on my own time, ma’am. That’s about the best I can offer. My boss, Marshal Vail, frowns on his deputies renting their guns by the hour on the side.”
She gasped. “Good heavens! Nobody said anything about hiring you as a gunfighter, Custis!”
To which he could only reply, “That’s what it boils down to as I consider your tale, ma’am. You offer no evidence a lawman could use to make any arrests. We both know I ain’t a Civil engineer. What’s left after that but gunning your rivals for you?”
She protested she’d had no such thing in mind. So he didn’t press her. He left her stewing there and ambled off to find that butler and get his hat back.
As he was doing so, the pretty but hard-eyed maid who’d served him and her mistress in the parlor was out back in the darkness with a gent in the business Longarm had just said his boss disapproved of.
The maid repeated that she’d been able to hear every word from her position just outside an open doorway. But the gunslick and occasional lover who’d stationed her there wanted her to assure him some more.
She said, “I told you, hon. Miss Constance tried to recruit him as her own Pinkerton man and he kept saying no. He really did come up our way just to carry that prisoner in the jail back to Denver.”
Her late night caller shrugged and replied, “I’ll be back to tell you exactly what I want from you after I report to the powers that be about that keen-edged lawman. They’ll likely be inclined to agree with you if he gets aboard that morning train with the McNee kid.”
Then he said, “We’ll know he was on to you, or playing some sneaky lone hand, should he fail to catch that morning train out of here!”
Chapter 6
Longarm got back to his hotel at a hellishly awkward hour. It was way too late to meet up with any dance-hall gals who hadn’t already met somebody else if they had one head and two legs. But it was way too early for that friendly waitress, Matilda, to be getting off.
Hotel people tended to work staggered shifts, from, say, nine in the morning to nine at night or, like poor Matilda, from noon to midnight. He didn’t peek in as he passed the archway leading into their dining room as he crossed the lobby once more. He could hear enough clinking and jawing to tell business was picking up again in there. Gents who ate early suppers so they could go out and paint the town tended to console themselves with late snacks before they gave up and went to bed alone. Longarm knew the feeling, but thanks to all that fancy pastry up the slope just now, he doubted he could get down so much as a bowl of chili.
He climbed the stairs, hauling out his key on the rise, and made sure nobody had been inside in his absence. That only called for a suspicious nature and a match stem wedged in the bottom door hinge as you locked up.
Inside, he struck a fresh match to light the bed lamp, shot the bolt as he shut the door, and peeled down to the buff before he got in bed with his magazine and a fresh cheroot. He read that that one-armed explorer, John Wesley Powell, was trying to start up a U.S. Geological Survey, run by the government, to figure things out more sensibly out this way.
As a lawman, Longarm had to agree a heap of folks had managed to get killed fighting over fool’s gold or range that wouldn’t support a really hungry rabbit. Old Powell was for irrigating the best parts and leaving most of it the hell alone.
Then there was yet another plan to build horseless carriages or rubber-tired locomotives that didn’t need tracks. Longarm could have told the poor inventor why his invention wasn’t going to work. Anyone who knew how to make a steam engine could see how to set a small one on a wagon, hooked up to the wheels instead of steamboat paddles. A Frenchman had built himself a three-wheeled horseless carriage back before their revolution, scared folks half to death, and damned near gotten himself killed when he ran off the road and through a stone wall.