“I was hopin’ you would, Emmy.”
“Nothing but, dear. Forever.”
“You’re a good woman, Emmy. An’ a good friend.”
Emmaline tilted her head to one side and looked at him for a moment. Then she grinned and shook her head.
“What?” he asked.
She only shook her head again.
“Aw, tell me. I could see you was thinking something. Tell me.”
Emmy laughed. “I was wondering if this very lucky lady of yours has a father, Custis. Because I just realized that the thought of you having to ask some stern papa for your lady friend’s hand is about the funniest thing I could ever think of.”
Longarm chuckled too. “Y’know, Emmy, that’s something I hadn’t ever thought of my own self. Now that you mention it, it sure does sound scary.”
“So, Custis. Does she have a father?”
“Yes,Emmy, she does have a father.”
“Is he big, Custis? Does he have a mustache and scowl a lot?”
“Damn if I know, Emmy. I haven’t met him yet. He’s out in Idaho in a mining camp,” Longarm said, glibly making up the yarn at the same time he spun it.
“What if he says no, Custis?”
“Emmy! Really! Who could say no to me?”
She laughed again. “Not me, dear. Never me. And I can’t imagine anyone else refusing you either.”
“You’re a dear yourself, Emmy,” he said, feeling much more comfortable now that Emmaline was no longer intent on trying to rekindle cold ashes. “Could we talk now?”
She sighed. And glanced this time toward a velvet-cushioned barrel chair nearby. “Sit down, Custis. I’ll tell you everything I know about Harry. Including where he’s working nowadays.”
Chapter 10
To the great and overwhelming joy of such companies as the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, Colorado Fuel and Iron, Estero Mining and Minerals, and Great Western Coal and Coke, the foothills of southern Colorado were riddled with easily accessible pockets of soft coal. With railroads expanding rapidly throughout the entire West, and with the added needs of a burgeoning steel and foundry industry in nearby Pueblo—to say nothing of household heating and cooking needs—coal had quickly become a major factor in the mineral values of the state. Gold and silver were the headliners. But it was coal that was putting dividends into the pockets of investors, and in large measure too it was coal that was putting food onto the tables of the workingmen who laboriously dug it out of the ground. While relatively few men could handle the drilling and blasting that was required to extract gold ores, it took sweat and muscle, pick and pry bar—and plenty of manpower—to dig coal.
Fortunately for the needs of the state, there was a ready supply of coal available and of the men to dig it. Much of the Denver and Rio Grande right of way from the Arkansas River valley south all the way into New Mexico was paralleled by sharp-ridged foothills that held coal deposits lying conveniently close to the surface. The eastern slopes of the Wet Mountains and the Spanish Peaks were rotten with the stuff. And wherever coal was located, mines and towns grew ready to exploit the mineral wealth. The town of Cargyle was one of many such. Longarm had never been to Cargyle before. But he had certainly been to enough of its sisters to know what he could expect. A company town with company housing, company store, and company rules. The miners would take their wages from the company. And pay it all right back again for lodging, food, and whatever else a man might need. At Cargyle the company—if it mattered—was GWC&C, Great Western Coal and Coke. According to Emmaline Bertolucci, Harry Bolt was town marshal of Cargyle, which meant in essence that he was GWC&C’s figurehead, hired man, and bullyboy. It would be Harry’s job to keep the miners in line when they were above ground. The foremen and supervisors would ride herd on them the other twelve hours of each day.
Longarm roused to the call of the Denver and Rio Grande conductor and tipped his Stetson back away from his eyes. There was something about the racketing rattle-and-thump of a train in motion that oft-times made him sleepy. He woke completely when the friendly conductor spoke to him, though, and reached for a cheroot, first offering one to the gent in the visored cap who’d been nice enough to warn him that his stop was ahead.
“Thanks,” the conductor said. “Don’t mind if I do.”
“How long to Cargyle?” Longarm asked.
“You feel the train slowing?”
“Ayuh
“That’s for the stop at the Cargyle spur. Mind what I told you, though. There’s no regular passenger traffic back into the hollow.” Longarm guessed the conductor would be from Kentucky or possibly some other section in the heart of the Appalachians. Certainly not from the West, though, or he would have referred to the coal rich valley as a gulch, gully, or canyon. Only a mountain boy from somewhere in the South was likely to use the term hollow. “There might be some cuss with a cart come to see can he make a quarter, or you can tap into the wire and ask for someone to come fetch you in. One thing for damn sure, we ain’t gonna stop and back all the way into Cargyle for the sake of one passenger even if he is a deputy marshal.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to do that anyhow,” Longarm said. “You say it’s only a mile or so?”
“Call it a mile and a half or something like it.”
“Hell, that’s no distance. I can walk that easier than having somebody come out an’ get me.” The conductor gave him a look as if thinking Longarm might be slightly daft. But then in this country men weren’t much for walking, not when they could find any sort of a ride. “You do what you want, friend. Say, this is a mighty nice smoke. What brand did you say it is?”
Longarm told him and the man nodded sagely. Longarm did not mention the price. Probably the conductor would not have been quite so quick to nod if he knew that part of the deal. But then Longarm figured a man was entitled to treat himself to something special once in a while. After all, if he wasn’t worth it, who the hell was?
The train rocked and shuddered as the speed fell off and the imperfections in the rail joints became all the more noticeable. Up ahead the engineer gave a long blast on the steam whistle. “I asked Jules to let one go for you. It’s possible somebody back in the hollow might hear and bring a wagon out for you.”
“That’s nice of you, friend. An’ twice I owe you.”
The conductor gave his cheroot an admiring look and winked. Longarm took the hint and gave the man a couple more of the slim, dark cigars to slip into his pocket for later.
Five minutes more and Longarm was standing alone on the gravel ballast—there wasn’t even a platform for the use of main line passengers disembarking for Cargyle—beside a sign reading: CARGYLE, COLO, ELEVATION 4,216 Ft. Underneath the painted lettering a wag had used something, probably a scrap of soft coal, to scrawl an addition: POPULATION ONE TOO DAMN MANY. Longarm wondered what the unhappy fellow had meant by that. That he didn’t want to be there himself? Or that someone he didn’t like was there? It could’ve been either one, Longarm figured as he drew in the last drag on his smoke and tossed the butt to the ground. Standing there wasn’t going to get him very far. He picked up his gear and commenced walking.
Like so many of these coal camps, like Ludlow a few miles south or Collier about eight miles north, Cargyle was in no way scenic. There was dry bunchgrass, prairie and a set of lonesome railroad tracks leading across it to disappear between two fingers of loose rock, the hillsides studded with dark green cedar and, here and there, a little scrub oak and low, spreading juniper. A creek bed, dry now and likely dry most of each year, ran along beside the tracks, as did a wagon road that didn’t appear to see much use.