A less self-impressed older gent who likely had more to do with running the settlement called out, more gently but firmly, “We told the ladies to try some more higher up, Dad.”
Dad Jergens shrugged and just stood there, cussing under his breath. Up closer, Longarm saw the two female scientists didn’t look near as spooky. They both wore black sunbonnets and poplin dusters over ecru summer frocks of shantung, which was nubby wild silk a mite lighter than plain old tan. Despite the breezes as the shadows lengthened, they both wore their dusters wide open down the front, with those ecru bodices cut mighty low. So it seemed safe to say both gals were shapely just this side of pleasingly plump. The one controlling the balloon tether had light brown hair. The slightly older one sort of supervising was darker. A man would have a chore figuring which was the better looking. Longarm didn’t find either pretty enough to settle down with. On the other hand, he couldn’t see throwing either out of bed just for eating crackers between the sheets.
Dad Jergens introduced Longarm all around as a famous federal lawman. The Ruggles sisters answered to Rowena and Roxanne. Longarm didn’t care which was which. The older one must have read his mind, for as her sister paid out more line and everyone else went back to staring up at their fool balloon, she moved closer to ask if he wanted to examine their government patents or look through their scrapbook of clippings and testimonials.
Longarm smiled thinly down at her. “Selling gold bricks or magic beans to simple folks ain’t federal offenses, ma’am. Whether you’re in violation of Dan’l Ruggles’ government patents or not is between you all and him, in civil court. I can tell you what’s in your scrapbook without putting you to that much bother.”
The darker sister stared up uncertainly. “Have Rowena and me run into you before, Deputy Long? I feel sure we’d have remembered.”
Longarm chuckled wryly and said, “I think you’re pretty too. Last time you were an old gray professor, sending up clouds of sulfur smoke. Before that—you were this goofy-looking young jasper with a swamping kite all studded with tacks. I reckon the grandaddy of you all was this slick caveman with a drum.”
She gasped. “How dare you compare the science of pluviculture with superstitious rainmaking rites! I can show you clipping after clipping attesting to our success in other parts, and written by impartial local reporters who never thought we’d do it either!”
Longarm glanced thoughtfully up at the now-tiny golden dot in a purple sky as he quietly replied, “I’ll bet you a hundred dollars it ain’t going to rain tonight.”
To which she replied with an angry face, “My sister and I are not gamblers! We’re scientific pluviculturists and we don’t ask anyone to risk a dime on our experiments. Feel free to ask anyone in this crowd if they’ve been asked to pay in advance for the rain they so desperately need!”
Longarm didn’t. He said, “I told you I’ve met you before, ma’am. You’ve gotten the Grane, the G.A.R., or mayhaps the First Methodists to ask everyone to chip in, at no risk to themselves if the conditions don’t work out right. If you ladies fail to make it rain, everyone gets their money back and you move on friendly with no posse dogging your trail. On the rare occasions it does rain, after you’ve expended a few dollars’ worth of dynamite, you collect all that money held in escrow for you and … What’s the going rate for a good crop-saving rain these days? Four figures? Five? That gent with the sulfur smoke walked away with close to twenty grand one lucky day.”
He thought she was going to spit at him. She looked as if she wanted to. Then she smiled sweetly up at him and said she had no idea on earth what he was talking about.
He didn’t explain further. She knew. That old boy in that cave with that drum had known better than to ask for a side of mastodon in advance when he offered to stay home and pray for good hunting. Just as he’d known that when and if the others had good hunting, they’d be proud to give him a generous share of meat and more credit than he might deserve.
Longarm stayed put as the one called Roxanne flounced over to her sister and murmured something. Longarm figured she was saying that the balloon was high enough. Then, as expected, the younger one set the winch’s spool and brought out a blaster’s generator box.
It was standard gear you could pick up anywhere they sold dynamite and other blasting supplies. The compact wooden box was lined with permanent bar magnets. There was another one stuck to the moveable plunger. When you shoved the plunger down to move one magnet past a mess of others fast, you got a sudden jolt of twelve-volt current, which was enough to make a swell electric spark most anywhere you wanted to string the attached wires.
Roxanne called out with a voice of authority, “Attention, everyone, fire in the sky!”
Then, sure enough, her sister shoved down hard and the dynamite blew up, a quarter mile above their upturned faces. It made a brighter flash against the darkening sky this time, but the noise was much less impressive and, as far as Longarm could tell, without any other result. So he wasn’t surprised when Roxanne allowed they’d try some more later.
He gazed about for Dad Jergens as the crowd began to break up. He wasn’t interested in any of this rainmaking nonsense. He wanted the local lawman to explain about more serious stuff. But it seemed tough to keep the old scatterbrain on one topic long enough to matter.
“Screw ‘em all but six!” Longarm muttered to nobody in particular as he drifted back towards town with the others. He figured it might make more sense if he just settled up at that corral, gathered his personal stuff, and hired a room somewhere before he tried some saloon gossip. It surely sounded like less trouble, and he doubted the town law here in Cedar Bend would know any more about events in Sappa Crossing than your average nosy local in any case.
By the time he’d made it to the stable next to the corral it was getting darker. Prairie sunsets could be like that when there were no clouds up yonder. He saw Osage Olive had an oil lamp going inside already as he approached the open doorway. She’d doubtless been looking outside to take in the sundown hustle and bustle. For she came to the doorway to greet him. She looked a lot less mannish in the red smock and sash she’d changed to. Those bib overalls had been hiding a shapely pair of ankles above her beaded moccasins.
He hadn’t noticed either his hired bay or the paint out in the open corral next-door. When he said so the gal replied, “I put ‘em inside with fodder and water after a rubdown. Your saddles and harness are in the tack room. Have you eaten yet?”
He shook his head and replied, “I was just about to ask if you knew a good place for a stranger to get some hash around here.”
She said, “I can’t offer you any hash. But if you’d like to try some roast beef with grits and gravy you’ve come to the right place. I was just about to have some when they set off all that dynamite out yonder and a bunch of old boys came by to take their ponies on home to their own suppers.”
Longarm started to say he didn’t want to put her to any trouble. Then he wondered why anyone would want to say a dumb thing like that. Next to a barber, hardly anybody heard more small-town gossip than a hostler helping riders from all about, drunk or sober, get off and on their ponies. So he said he’d be proud to sup with her, as long as he got to pay extra for it.
She said they’d work something out, and led the way back through a tack room, some storage bins, and a narrow hallway into a more brightly lit and sweeter-smelling kitchen. As she seated him at a pine table, she nodded at a curtained doorway across from the small cast-iron range and said that it led to her sleeping quarters.