The kid said, “All right. I don’t want you messing with my Flora in any damned case. When I heard about her sparking with a big lawman from Denver aboard the train from Golden this afternoon, I had every right in this world to confront her about it. So I did. After a gal I’ve come calling on more than once told me I was a moon calf she didn’t want to visit with no more, I had every right in this world to suspect it was yourself she meant to be visiting with this evening. So I’ve been watching you, meaning to pop outten the shadows and call Flora Munro something worse than a moon calf when and if my suspicions panned out correct!”
Longarm laughed wearily and let go of the front of the lovesick cowhand’s shirt. “She had no call to imply you’re a moon calf when anyone can see you’re a total asshole. I don’t even know where your Flora and her kid brother and sister live. I got to talking with the bunch of them as we were waiting for that train together. On the way up the narrow-gauge line I talked as much to two other ladies and I sure hope nobody suspects me of sparking with them!”
He put his pistol away as he added, “Since this means so much to you, I was headed for the Elk Rack Hotel to hire a room for the night. After that I mean to enjoy me a sit-down supper and I may or may not seek further adventure with an old pal of the female persuasion. You have my word as a man I ain’t aiming to mess with any home gal you’ve been courting, and come morning I’ll be leaving town with my prisoner in any case. So do we have peace or war here?”
The big dumb kid said he reckoned he could have been mistaken.
Longarm nodded and said, “That’s good enough for me. You know who I am. So who might you be, amigo?”
The kid muttered, “I’d be Will Posner, off the Lazy Three, but I don’t see as it matters, seeing you’re leaving town with honorable intentions towards my Flora Munro.”
To which Longarm grimly answered, “It won’t matter to either of us unless I catch you trailing me through the gathering darkness again. I’m buying your story this time. You’re going to have more trouble selling your innocent foolishness a second time, and like you said, they expect official reports, with as many names as possible.”
Chapter 5
Summer nights were cool at that altitude. So Longarm hired a one-window room facing away from the street and then, with his hotel key in a side pocket, had a late supper downstairs. It was just as well he sat down to the table hungry as a bitch wolf. For while the spuds were fair and the peas were doubtless good for him, the meat they’d advertised as elk steak, ordered rare, seemed to have been left over from that elk rack the hotel was named after.
But he cut it fine and ate it all, reflecting on how the poor Ute and Kimoho had fought so hard to hang on to their elk-infested high country where the buffalo had seldom roamed.
Thinking about buffalo could make a man feel wistful as he gnawed on elk meat. But, of course, in their Shining Times the Indians had selectively shot does and fawns instead of magnificent stags for the pot. Lakota were about the only Indians in these parts who seemed to give a hoot about the skulls of bigger buffalo bulls, and even they preferred fat cows and calves for eating.
Reflecting on how the mummified elk remains he’d just swallowed would stick with him and blot up beer all evening, Longarm shoved his chair back from the table and called the lonesome-looking waitress to his side. She looked lonesome because at that hour there was nobody else to be seen under the log-beamed ceiling of the cavernous hotel dining room. When she nervously asked him what was wrong, he suspected other guests with weaker jaws had commented on a noble stag who’d been allowed to die of old age before they carved his carcass up.
He gently said, “There’s nothing wrong, ma’am. I generally eat till I’ve had enough and then I stop. I had some tuna pie earlier today, and I can still taste the sorghum sugar. So I reckon I’d as soon pass on them desserts you got on your menu. But you can fetch me another cup of black coffee if you like.”
She did, saying, “You must be that lawman from Denver.” As she refilled his mug, she added, “They said someone was coming to get that snotty kid who tried to leave town without paying all his just debts. How come they call you Longarm? I’ll allow you’re tall, but your arms don’t look unnatural to me, no offense.”
He chuckled and explained. “My last name’s Long. I mean I’d be Custis Long, not that my handle is protracted. Some reporter seems to have put that together with the way I’m sometimes sent to act as the long arm of the law and decided I was Longarm. But you can call me Custis, ma’am.”
She dimpled and replied, “In that case you can call me Matilda Waller, out of York State by way of some misspent years in Kansas, and I get off work here at midnight.”
Longarm sipped some coffee before he said, “I know the feeling. I would rather work most any shift but noon to midnight no matter what my job was. You say that outlaw Bunny McNee was snotty to you?”
She wrinkled her nose and replied, “He never got fresh with me, or left a tip for anybody during his stay here. Peony, the chambermaid, told us he was one of those sissy boys who didn’t like girls.”
Longarm took another sip and asked, “Do tell? How did Miss Peony come to this conclusion ? Did Bunny McNee tell her he didn’t like her?”
The waitress laughed and said, “Not many men pester poor Peony that way. I’ve told her to cut down on sweets, but she says she needs the energy. She says she was working upstairs when she got to Mr. McNee’s Don’t Disturb sign and heard all this moaning and groaning coming from inside, as if he wasn’t alone in bed after all.”
Longarm swallowed a little distaste with some coffee as well. Such petty gossip would have been none of his beeswax if Bunny McNee had been simply a fellow guest at a hotel with a nosy staff. But they’d sent him all this way in search of gossip along the owlhoot trail. So he suggested, “Young squirts have been known to moan and groan alone in bed, being broke in a strange town with nobody to talk to save for a friendly hand.”
The waitress grinned like a mean little kid and warned him such habits would grow hair on one’s palms. Then she confided, “He wasn’t playing with himself. Peony was watching, from another room, when another young rider she’d never seen before slipped out, grinning to himself like a dirty dog. Peony allowed he was more manly-looking and should have been able to get a real girl. But that’s the way some men seem to behave, the silly things.”
Longarm had about finished his second coffee. He asked if anyone had seen that other stranger since.
Matilda shook her head and replied, “That sissy deadbeat was all alone when they caught him just outside of town. They never expected to. For he’d already hopped the narrow-gauge to Golden by the time the manager discovered he’d skipped out on his bill. But the train got stopped by fallen rocks across the track and had to back up all the way home. So Constable Payne’s boys were waiting for him at the station. How come they sent a federal deputy all this way after a sissy who tried to cheat this hotel?”
Longarm murmured there was a mite more to it than that. Then he left a dime near his empty plate, knowing three meals a day would be covered by his American plan hotel bill, and mosied out to see what Red Robin might have to say for herself.
Red Robin was what they called a mighty pretty piano player with one hell of a figure and no musical talent worth mentioning. Longarm had met her down Texas way a spell back, when she’d fortunately been on the run after gunning a son of a bitch who’d deserved it to begin with and hadn’t really died in the end.
As Longarm parted the batwing doors of the saloon she was playing in that evening, he had to wince as he suddenly realized Red Robin was groping across the keys for the tune of “Lorena” when he’d been assuming she was trying to play “Aura Lee.” He liked the surprises she sprang pounding bedsprings better. But he found himself a place at the bar and quietly ordered a scuttle of draft to sip while she finished a set. It sounded dreadful when Red Robin was really startled at the piano.