Longarm held his own weapon politely pointed at the floor as he cracked the door, nodded at the badge on the other gent's freshly laundered white shirt, and opened wider, saying, "I signed in under my right name because that's who I am and I have nothing to hide. I am Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, and I'm bound for the Indian Agency up at Fort Sill on government beeswax. I've barely talked to a soul here in Spanish Flats, and you say someone's made a complaint about that?"
The Ranger, somewhat shorter and stouter than Longarm, stepped in to regard the half-naked hotel guest dubiously and replied, "A lady says you've been following her all the way from Amarillo after you conspired with another gent to try and move in on her. I hope you have some identification before we go on with this bullshit?"
Longarm hung on to his own pistol as he moved over to fish his wallet from the duds he'd draped over a chair. The Ranger hadn't drawn his own .45-30--rangers were like that--but he'd been eyeing Longarm through narrowed lids until he spied the federal badge and identification. As his poker face got more human he said, "I'll be switched with snakes if I don't buy you're being the one and original Longarm! But why in thunder did that newspaper gal just come over to our company to charge you with mashing and menacing her all through the night?"
Longarm put his wallet and gun away and got out a couple of his cheroots and some waterproof Mexican matches as he calmly replied, "I didn't know I was. I recall her accusing me of some diabolical plot when I told a cowboy to leave her alone back in Amarillo a few hours ago. I did see her boarding the same eastbound later. If she got off here in Spanish Flats, I can see why a pretty gal who thinks she's even prettier might think I followed her all this way to gaze upon her beauty some more. But you'd think she'd give a man half a chance to get fresh with her before she pressed charges. You say she claims to be a newspaperwoman?"
Mason said, "Our captain made her prove it. Her own identification shows she's a Miss Godiva Weaver, writing for the New England Sentinel. I can't say I've ever heard of it."
Longarm handed the Ranger a smoke and struck a light for the both of them as he wearily replied, "I have. It's one of them expose weeklies that accuses our tee-totaler first lady, Lemonade Lucy Hayes, of being a secret drinker. It's no wonder a female reporting for the rag suspects me of lusting after her fair white body."
He got his own cheroot going and asked, "Did she say what she was doing out our way, aside from being stalked by drooling maniacs?"
The Ranger took a drag on his own cheroot and replied with a thin smile, "Says she was headed home with one scoop when she got a tip on another up to the Kiowa Comanche Reserve. That's what you call a latrine rumor, a scoop. When we told her we'd heard of no Indian trouble up yonder, she handed us the usual shit about big bad palefaces screwing the buffalo and shooting the women of poor old Mister Lo, the Poor Indian."
Longarm put on his shirt as he made a wry face and said, "I told you I'd read her rag. Lord knows there are rascals on both sides a just Lord would fry in Hell forever, but that New England Sentinel only knows about bad palefaces. That's doubtless why they said those three women the Ute rode off with from the White River Agency a spell back were either treated with the utmost respect or, failing that, deserved to be raped by one and all."
Mason said, "You don't have to instruct this child. I've fought Mister Lo. But fair is fair and we haven't had any trouble with the rascals since old Quanah Parker saw the light, remembered he was half white, and brung his bands in to eat more regular off the taxpaying Taibo. That's what they call us, Taibo."
Longarm sat on the bed to haul on his pants as he resisted the temptation to explain the distinctions between the Comanche words for white folks. He didn't savvy more than a few dozen words of the Uto-Aztec dialect the Comanche spoke himself. So he neither knew nor cared exactly why they called you Saltu if they were willing to parley with you and Taibo if they were out to lift your hair. He'd never figured out exactly why a Paddy got so upset if you called him a Mick, come to study on it.
Mason didn't know anything more about the news tip inspiring a mighty suspicious newspaper gal to leap off a train out West and accuse Longarm of attempted rape. The Ranger had smoked enough of the cheroot to excuse himself by saying he had to get on back and report why he hadn't arrested or shot anybody that morning. As he let himself out, Longarm reached for his own stovepipes, saying, "Hold on. I got me at least two days on the open range to Fort Sill and as you can see, I ain't even dressed right for that much riding. Where would I go if I want blue denim, a Winchester, and a couple of ponies with the gear and grub to get me there and back?"
Mason asked if he was buying or hiring. When Longarm allowed he meant to just hire the riding stock and their harness, along with a Texas toper and packsaddle, the Ranger suggested a general store down the street to the north, with a livery that wouldn't cheat him directly across the way. So Longarm rose, they shook on it, and the Ranger left him to his own devices.
Longarm strapped on his six-gun and went down the hall in his shirtsleeves to take a good leak and wash the sleep gum from his eyes. He needed a shave, but his soap and razor were still up in that Denver baggage room, if he was lucky. So he let that go for now, went back to his room to put on the rest of his outfit, and went downstairs for a late breakfast.
As he consumed it in the back booth of a nearly deserted chili joint, he read Henry's typed-up onionskins casually a third time. Then he dropped them in a trash barrel out front as he was leaving. There'd been nothing all that secretive or hard to remember, and it was getting tedious to tote that dumb manila envelope all over.
He found the livery Clovis Mason had suggested, and evoked the Ranger's name to see if they'd treat him as a customer who might know which end of a pony the shit fell out of.
The old weatherbeaten geezer who led him out back to the corral acted sensibly enough until they'd agreed on a couple of aging but still serviceable cow ponies, a paint and a bay, both mares, and got down to brass tacks about money.
The old hostler wanted four bits a day for the hire of both the mares and the riding and packing gear Longarm would need to get him up to Fort Sill and back. That sounded reasonable. So did the old-timer's asking for a deposit against the loss of anything he hired out. But Longarm didn't think he was reasonable when he asked for a deposit of the full market price, and then some, for, say, two fine cutting horses and a spanking-new roping saddle silver-mounted.
Longarm snorted in disgust and said, "I was only aiming to ride them old plugs a week or so. Nobody said nothing about my proposing either should take my name and bear my children. I'll deposit, say, a hundred in cash for the whole shebang, and that's only on account I doubt I'll have to forfeit any of it."
The hostler naturally protested that the bridles and saddles alone would cost better than a hundred dollars to replace, and so it went until they'd settled on a deposit both found outrageous and Longarm was free to walk the two mares across to that general store, with the stock saddle cinched atop the paint and the bay stuck, for now, with packing.
He went inside to discover that, sure enough, they sold almost anything a man or beast might require out on the open range in the late summer months.
He bought some vulcanized water bags and a sack of oats for the ponies, knowing there'd be plenty of sun-cured but fairly nourishing grama to graze along the way.
He bought extra smokes and a few days' worth of canned grub for himself. It hurt to spring for a new Winchester when he knew he had an almost new one strapped to his McClellan in that baggage room up Denver way. So he bought a couple of boxes of Remington.44-40 that fit his revolver as well, and let the saddle gun go for the time being. He bought some new denim jeans, along with a razor, soap, and such. His hickory shirt and tweed vest would get him by after sundown this far south in summertime. But he figured he'd better pick up a vulcanized poncho along with the minimal bedding he might need for a night or so in the middle of nowhere much.