Seated across the pine table from him, the redhead said he’d just missed her husband. It appeared Old Jed, as she described him, had ridden into town early to attend some business before catching his train.
When Longarm remarked that the train would be leaving later than usual that day, she said they’d heard, and added, “Business, business, business, morning, noon, and night! That’s all Old Jed is interested in, and I swear he won’t be satisfied until he owns all of Colorado and has me knitting socks in an insane asylum!”
Longarm refused to even nibble at the bait. It sure beat all how pretty young gals turned down honest work or simple young men in favor of rich old farts, and then complained that their husbands were rich old farts.
It wasn’t easy, but he managed not to comment on her big fancy kitchen range and such being bought and paid for by a man who spent more time at business than, say, strumming a guitar or reciting poems to her. He wasn’t totally unsympathetic to her plight. He knew he’d never in this world be rich as J.P. Morgan, or even Old Jed, unless he learned to drive himself with a whip and never waste time wondering about things like why roses were red and violets were blue instead of the other way around. But fair was fair and he couldn’t fault a man who only thought about business, as long as his business was within the limits of federal law.
He washed down some cake and casually asked the scatterbrained redhead if she knew how her husband meant to find a narrow-gauge refrigerated car. He explained, “Most of those mountain railroads are short-line, meant to just carry ore and produce down to where it can be loaded on regular rolling stock. It ain’t for me to say, but I’m sure it would be simpler to ship livestock at least as far down as Golden, slaughter ‘em there, and send the trimmed sides to market in regular refrigerated cars you could buy or, heck, rent off the broad-gauge by the shipment.”
She just looked blank. He explained, “You folks may be big by the local standards, Miss Amanda. But not even your husband could raise enough beef up this way to get that serious. Gents who talk business more than we do call it ‘economy of numbers’ because the way you sell produce changes as you change the amounts.”
She looked stunningly stupified.
He insisted, “You take the Colmans, growing barley up the line a piece. Barley grows good up here where it’s well watered and cooler. Those big breweries down Golden way will likely buy all the barley Colman cares to grow for ‘em, so’s they can turn it into barley malt and mix it with hops someone else grew to make lager beer for the big Denver market. But Colman just can’t grow enough barley on his homestead claim to justify his own processing. He’s better off selling his grain fresh from the combine and letting them worry about all that processing, see?”
He could tell she didn’t. He still said, “The butchertowns over Chicago way, Omaha way, and even Denver process more cows in a day than all you stockfolk up this way could ship ‘em a year! They run ‘em in single file to be sledged, hoisted, bled, and drawn almost as fast as I can say it. The neighboring plants along Butchertown Row process every part of the cow but the moo, from horn, hide, and bonemeal to disgusting leftovers I’d as soon not mention in front of you ladies. You can make a pretty penny processing pure trash, if you have enough of it in one place. But setting up a butchertown up at this end of that narrow-gauge? I just don’t know, Miss Amanda.”
The redhead simpered and said, “There’s a lot you don’t know.”
So their Indian cook murmured, “Miss Amanda!” in a desperately quiet tone.
But her mistress said, “Pooh, he’s a lawman and there’s nothing unlawful about moving this whole shebang up to Wyoming Territory, where the grass grows fair-green on the prairie and you don’t have to wait forever for the damned train!”
The older Indian gal sighed and said, “Just the same, we were told it was to be a family secret until the time came, Miss Amanda.”
The redhead shrugged and smiled as shrewdly as she knew how at Longarm, saying, “You won’t tell anyone like Granny Boggs, will you? I do go on in front of company, and Ute Mary is right. We weren’t to tell anyone.”
Longarm assured them both he only had to report federal offenses he might come across. Then he politely declined a second slice of cake, polished off his black coffee, and excused himself to see how they were doing with his borrowed mare.
The old Mexican and his young helper had done her proud. She barely limped at all when they led her around out in front of the forge. So he thanked the farrier, asked what he might owe, and insisted on leaving at least a fistful of cheroots when the older gent refused any dinero.
He was still riding her at a walk on soft ground when, just west of Mudpuppy Creek, he met up with another town deputy, headed the other way on a lathered bay. The younger lawman said, “It’s awful! How far up this trail might Nate and the others be?”
Longarm said, “No more than two hours ahead of you at the rate you’re riding. What’s so awful, old son?”
The deputy tersely replied, “French Sarah, the stuck-up maid who worked for Widow Farnsworth. They dumped a whole tram of ore atop her in the hopper of the stamping mill before they noticed her frilly white petticoat and naked thigh. She’d have really wound up awful if they’d tossed her in whilst the mill was processing ore! The assistant coroner and undertaking druggist agree she must have been strangled last night and tossed in that ore hopper like a rag doll nobody wanted no more.”
Longarm said, “They could be guessing closer than they really tried. Her boss lady noticed she was missing yesterday afternoon. Before that, she’d been seen in the company of the late Quicksilver Quinn.”
The deputy marveled, “Kee-rist, she was sparking with that gunslick you had it out with at the school?”
Longarm nodded grimly. “The same. I’d say she heard her lover had been killed, went to his pals for consolation or mayhaps a train ticket out of here, and like the dentist and druggist suggested, they had no further use for her!”
The young deputy gulped and said, “She’d have never been found if the mill crew hadn’t spotted her in their hopper before they had a head of steam up in their boiler. I know she was stuck up, but wasn’t that a mighty shitty way to treat any woman?”
Longarm allowed it seemed a shitty way to treat anybody, and the deputy rode on to catch up with the posse as Longarm continued his slower ride back to town.
As he forded Mudpuppy Creek again he stared ahead, and saw that track crew and all those carriages he’d seen on the wagon trace beyond were gone. Hearing one of her help had been murdered had likely unsettled Widow Farnsworth a mite. So he and his gimpy mount had the wagon trace to themselves, or thought they had, as they moved up the grassy slope at a walk, taking little notice of the close-growing and fluttering aspen on the far side.
It was just as well Longarm was a kindly rider. For had not he noticed the far shorter but far steeper berm of the wagon trace and reined in to gracefully and suddenly dismount, that rifle spanging up amid those gray-green aspen trunks might have blown him backwards over the cantle of his borrowed stock saddle.
It had surely been aimed his way!
The pony, unmindful of his intent to lead it up on the roadway on foot, simply spooked at the noise and lit out for the familiar smell and security of its stall in town, dragging its reins and going like blazes despite having to favor its off-front hoof.
By this time Longarm had landed in the grass on one shoulder and rolled as he drew his six-gun, cursing that fool buckskin for running off with that Winchester.
But at least he had plenty of ammunition in one pocket of his tweed outfit. So he cranked off the five he’d been packing in the wheel through the dust thrown up by his bolting mount. Then he flattened behind the berm and rolled some more as somebody returned a heap of shots through the cloud of gunsmoke he’d just offered them as another target.