He'd decided to just send Daisy on her way and proceed the usual way as he mounted the steps of the Western Union office near the depot.
But as he was block-lettering the telegram form to Billy Vail, he pictured how she was going to take it when he just told her to go hop another freight train. He'd told her she had a job at four bits a day, however temporary. After that he still couldn't see how the hell farm girls or shop clerks in the full flush of youth as well as skirts went about tracking down experienced owlhoot riders.
He explained about Daisy Gunn and his future plans for her as he lettered on. He had to send this already windy field report at nickel a word flat rates if he expected his home office to get it before it was too late in the day to matter. So he didn't waste nickels asking them to see if there were any wants out on little Daisy Gunn. He knew Henry would get cracking in the file room before Billy ordered him to scout her good.
He told them where he'd be that afternoon and which train they meant to catch to Fort Laramie after dark. Then he told the telegraph clerk to reverse the charges, and he left Western Union with a less troubled mind, humming the words to that old church song he often recalled at such times. It went,
"Farther along, we'll know more about it. Farther along, we'll understand why. Cheer up, my brothers, walk in the sunshine. We'll understand it, All by and by."
"There's got to be some iron-fisted man behind that velvet glove handing out cheap badges and childish arrest warrants," he decided, in spite of the advice he'd just given himself. It was all right, if not downright smart, for a lawman to keep changing his mind as he stepped through the sunlight and shadow of a mysterious world. Men in any line who made up their minds before all the cards had been dealt were most likely to get up from the table broke.
He came upon a lady's notions shop a block farther along and ducked inside to see about some decent duds for his raggedy recruit at the hotel. A little old lady with hair the color of a barbed-wire coil and an ass that wasn't half bad said she'd be proud to rustle him up a blue and yellow print frock if he'd tell her the size of his young lady.
Longarm squinted thoughtfully down at the little old lady in a manner to bring some color to her dear old cheeks as he decided, "She's about your height, but not built quite as curvaceous, ma'am. I reckon any pretty frock you could fit your own fine figure in would be safe for her to slip into."
The little old lady laughed in a surprisingly young tone and got some frocks to choose between from out back. Longarm could see at a glance how nice one print featuring yellow asters on a robin's-egg-blue background would offset Daisy's coloring. So he allowed he'd take it and added the gal might be able to use a travel duster to wear over her finery.
Finding an ankle-length tan poplin duster in the right size was easier. The elderly but nicely put-together shop lady balked when he asked her to hoist her skirts and throw one foot up on the counter.
She asked him what on earth he thought she was selling, and Longarm, almost blushed, his ownself, as he explained he had to pick out some shoes and socks for that other lady.
The one he was talking to asked if he couldn't check the size of the shoes his young lady was already wearing.
He didn't want to explain checking into the Pilgrim with a raggedy barefoot waif, so he allowed it was supposed to be a birthday surprise.
That worked. The little old lady lined up a whole mess of high-button shoes on the counter for him to make an educated guess. He squinted his eyes to picture bare feet on that hotel rug and decided, "I might be able to guess smarter if you were to show me riding boots, instead, ma'am. I'm used to taking army showers with bare feet of all shapes and sizes. But I picture the same in boots instead of fine footwear."
The little old lady pursed her lips and declared, "Riding boots, with a calico print? Well, you did say you wanted to surprise her!"
Longarm chuckled at the picture and replied, "Matter of fact, we may go riding, later. You'd best throw in a summer-weight riding habit. Split skirts, if you have 'em. I've never seen the lady ride, and some younger gals have taken to riding astride of late, out this way."
The older woman sniffed, said she'd noticed, and Longarm wasn't sure whether she was feeling shocked or left out as she rummaged in the back some more to produce a whip-cord bolero jacket and split calf-length skirt she allowed would fit anyone who could get into that dress and duster.
Longarm bought a frilly blouse and a silly gal's hat to go with the other purchases. He figured Daisy could wear that more mannish straw hat with her riding habit. When he paid off he was glad he'd told Billy Vail about hiring Daisy for four bits and found. Dressing her up civilized had used up some pocket jingle!
As he thanked the nice old lady and stepped back outside it came to him that Daisy was waiting, in her bath or wrapped in a towel, with nothing in the way of underwear if he was any judge of a gal's hind end in raggedy jeans. But he was out to make her presentable in public, not to fill her damned hope chest, and he was fixing to catch holy hell as it was when he charged that silly summer hat to the U.S. government.
But even as he stepped down off the walk to cross the dusty sunlit street, he could picture the gallant little smile of a gal putting on a spanking new dress over bare flesh. So he muttered, "Shit!" and spun on one heel to retrace his steps to that shop.
So the bullet aimed at him with his next step out of the shade missed the small of his back by a whisker to hum on up Central Avenue until it thunked into the rump of a tethered cow pony and caused considerable excitement out front of that one saloon.
As the rump-shot pony neighed and bucked loose up yonder, Longarm threw his package over a watering trough and followed it headfirst to land on one shoulder and roll across the plank walk behind a rain barrel as, sure enough, a second bullet thunked into said barrel and Longarm pegged a shot of his own at a haze of gunsmoke drifting up from behind the false front of a shop across the avenue.
The little old lady popped out of her doorway like she thought it was the front of a cuckoo clock, demanding to know what was going on.
Longarm yelled, "Get back inside before you get your ass shot off!"
So she did and then a million years went by as rainwater pissed out of the barrel he lay behind to run across the planks and water the dry dust and horse turds with nothing else moving for blocks until Longarm heard a voice from behind him calling, "I see you behind yon rain barrel, cowboy! Rise and shine with your hands polite if you don't want two rounds of number nine buck up your ass. For I am the law and I have the drop on you!"
Longarm rolled on one elbow to gaze back along the shady side of the avenue. He called out to the older jasper aiming a double-barrel Greener his way, "I'm the law my ownself. Federal. Watch out for the false front above the stationery store catty-corner across from me. I suspect it was a Henry or Winchester that just fired my way, twice. That pony running off from the saloon behind you would have gone down if it had been hit with a buffalo round."
The Cheyenne lawman eased along the walk toward Longarm with his Greener trained more politely, albeit no shotgun charges were about to hurt anybody sheltered behind plank siding, that far off.
But the old-timer wasn't dumb. As he joined Longarm behind that big barrel, a lesser light tagging after him asked what came next. So the Cheyenne lawman said, "Go back. Get Pete and Simmons to go with you as you circle wide to move in behind that stationery store. Some son of a bitch just shot Jeff Wolheim's pony from yonder rooftop, and if he's still there I want him dead or alive!"