Chapter 2
Golden, Colorado, had been the territorial capital until 1867, when they’ve moved the seat of government to handier and flatter ground a few miles east and called it Denver. What was left sort of lazed in a hammock formed by the aprons of the fair-sized Lookout Mountain and the way smaller but more dramatic red sandstone butte called Castle Rock. The mines that had brought the foothill town into being were about played out, but Golden hung on as a satellite town of its big fat daughter, Denver, thanks to its spring water and the ever-growing local market for beer.
The well water of Denver was too hard to brew good beer, and nobody with a lick of sense drank from the polluted South Platte or Cherry Creek as they joined near the Denver Stockyards. But ideal beer water sprang abundantly from the quartz roots of the Front Range, and barley just right for making seemed to thrive where little else would, in the thin dry air where the High Plains swept up as grassy hogbacks to form the doorsteps of the Rocky Mountains. So there was still enough work to feed around four thousand souls, and a spur of the C&S RR ran over from Denver to fetch and carry for them.
Longarm got off the broad-gauge combination with no baggage, even though he was nowhere near his final destination. He liked to travel light, and he knew they had at least one hotel where he could stay the night in the even smaller mining town he was aiming for. It was only transfer layovers and turn-around time that old Smiley had been worried about to begin with. The round trip alone wouldn’t have added up to a full work day away from the office and Grange dances, if you didn’t have to spend more than half your travel time waiting for some other damned train to carry you another few damned miles. It made Longarm wish they’d get cracking with that horseless carriage they promised he’d see someday if only he’d keep reading the Scientific American.
It was now just after noon, without a cloud in the sky or a hint of moisture in the thin dry air. So Longarm consulted his watch and crunched off across the traprock ballast of the Golden rail yards as he idly wondered why it always smelled like a cobwebbed hayloft over in these foothills, indoors or out. The big dust-colored and butterfly-winged grasshoppers he seemed to be chasing across the bare stone, sun-silvered cross ties, and warm steel rails were another mystery. He always flushed the big bugs in warm weather as he cut across bone-dry yards or vacant lots. He’d yet to figure out what giant grasshoppers were doing where there wasn’t a blade of grass in sight.
He didn’t know such wondering habits made him as dangerous to the riders of the owlhoot trail as his fast draw and steady aim. He knew he’d solved more than one crime by recalling some hitherto useless bit of information he’d picked up and filed away as he wandered a world filled with wonders. But he was sure he’d never need any help from those rail yard grasshoppers, even as he filed away yet another dumb bug springing up from a switch point with a flash of its black and yellow wings. He was crossing the narrow-gauge rails of these modest yards now. He knew how they shoved or shoveled loads from broad-or narrow-gauge cars parked side by side. He knew the one-yard-wide narrow-gauge track could carry a dinkier train over giddy trestles and around mountain hairpins no man-sized train would dare on wheels set almost five feet apart. But he couldn’t figure out why the smaller tracks of this particular narrow-gauge were fastened to their cross ties in such a complicated way.
Like most self-educated men, Longarm tended to be a jack of all such interesting detail and a master of none. But he felt sure most of the narrow-gauge mountain track he’d noticed in his time had only been a smaller and if anything simpler version of plain old railroad track, with the broader bottom flange of the Stevens or All American rail either floating on flat steel cushions or spiked directly to the ties. This line that meant to carry him on up to John Bull one of these days seemed to be set as expensively as all get-out, with a sort of small steel vice gripping the bottom flange of lighter rail from each and every cross tie.
Longarm was on the far side of the yard and pushing through some trackside bugleweed toward the Mexican cafetin he’d recalled in these parts when he suddenly nodded to himself and, without bothering to look back, said aloud, “Well, sure, they told you the place was named John Bull to begin with!”
He’d read somewhere how some Englishmen had invented the steam locomotive just before the Prophet Joseph invented the Mormons in York State, back around ‘27. Seeing they hadn’t had to run railroads in England for long distances, the whole country fitting into Colorado with room to spare, they’d had no call to keep up with refinements such as the far less expensive Stevens rail, air brakes, Janney coupler, and such. The little he knew about the silver camp at the far end of those narrow-gauged but fancy tracks said the original strike had been developed by a syndicate of British investors. It stood to reason a bunch of mining engineers from England would lay tracks the way they’d been taught in their old country. He figured it had cost them three or for times as much for every twisty mile. But fair was fair, and it did seem less likely they’d derail on some lonesome hairpin with the tracks gripped so securely by all those bitty steel bulldog jaws.
As he entered the sudden shade of the trackside cafetin, he could only guess at what the lady seated at the counter with a couple of kids might really look like. Her voice seemed nice enough, considering, as she tried in vain to order broth and soda crackers from the willing but sincerely puzzled Mexican lady on the other side of the counter.
Ticking the brim of his Stetson as he deliberately took a seat a couple of stools down, Longarm declared, “I’d be of honest intent and some knowledge of the Spanish lingo if you all could use a hand, ma’am. After that, I ain’t sure they serve either broth or soda crackers here. You and your young’ns have strayed into what we call a cafetin because it ain’t half fancy enough to be called a cafe. If none of you are familiar with Mex cooking, I suggest you let me order you some arroz con pollo, which tastes like plain American grub, only more so, with some tortillas which are sort of a cross betwixt pancakes and soda crackers, in taste at least.”
The gal hesitated, then said she’d just had the boy’s tonsils out in Denver and wasn’t sure he was up to anything spicy yet.
Longarm was too polite to ask her why in thunder she’d hauled the kid into a Mexican restaurant before his throat had taken the time to heal. He said, “I’m fixing to order for the three of you then. It’s on me. So just don’t eat it if you can’t stand it.”
She started to protest, but Longarm was already explaining it all to the fatter Mexican gal, and she agreed in a motherly way that a kid with a raw throat would do better on a double helping of cascos de guayaba con queso, while the two ladies might fancy more modest servings of arroz con pollo, seeing they were new at the game. When he ordered huevos-rancheros for himself, the Mexican lady chuckled fondly and said she saw he wasn’t.
Then she said, “Se necesita un cuarto de hora,” and waddled off to fill their orders as Longarm noticed for the first time that the Anglo gal he’d ordered for wasn’t half bad-looking.
Her auburn hair was swept up under a straw spring boater, and her summer-weight blue calico dress went swell with her wide-set eyes. The half-grown boy and girl she had in tow favored her cameo features, but they seemed a mite old to be her own. Instead of saying so, Longarm told her, “They need a quarter hour here to whip up anything but regular hot chili, ma’am. I hope the three of you have that time to spare.”