The kid deputy grinned sheepishly and allowed he'd forgotten. So Longarm knew he was free to climb down from the roof and elbow his way against the current of the gathering crowd.
There was hardly anybody on the far side of the street in front of the notions shop. He saw nobody had lifted the brown paper package he'd thrown against the siding near the entrance. As he bent to pick it up, Daisy Gunn A. K. A Crawford joined him, breathless, barefoot, and back in her mannish duds, to sob, "Oh, Custis! I knew you were mixed up in it as soon as I heard the shots and folk in the hall commenced yelling about a shootout betwixt lawmen and a rooftop sniper!"
Longarm grabbed her gently but firmly by one thin arm and frog-marched her inside, where the nice old lady was holding a broom as if to repel boarders as she wailed, "Get out of here before I call the law, you ruffian!"
Longarm moved Daisy back from the front glass as he told the little old lady, "I am the law and I only talked rough because you were in the line of fire, ma'am. This other lady, though you wouldn't know it, is the one I just bought them more ladysome duds for. Now, I have yet another business proposition for you. How much would you charge me to let my deputy, here, dress up more girlish and stay here with you as if she was hired help or a visitor from other parts?"
The older gal told him not to be ridiculous. Then, being a gal, she asked him what they were talking about.
Longarm explained, "I am U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long. This here is Deputy Daisy Crawford. Like you can see, I've had her disguised as a boy because she's working undercover for the U.S. Government and me. Them shots just fired at me from across the way may mean the crooks we're after have been watching us a spell. Me and Miss Daisy were checked into the Pilgrim Hotel. By now the other side might know this."
The older woman stared primly at the raggedy barefoot waif he'd just described as a girl checked into a hotel with him and sniffed, saying, "You should both be ashamed of yourselves, working under cover or on top of the covers!"
It was Daisy who blazed, "He ain't been fucking me, ma'am. He's been so pure it makes me want to puke!"
The older woman looked away, red-faced and trying not to bust out laughing. Longarm said, "I ain't asking you to hide me, ma'am. I need a place to hide Deputy Daisy where I won't have to worry about her as I do some scouting ahead."
She didn't look convinced.
Daisy asked what he was talking about, asking, "Didn't you tell me we were fixing to sneak out of town together as soon as it got dark?"
Longarm nodded and said, "I did, and like Mr. Robert Burns wrote, the best laid plans of mice and men get old and gray when the other side could be on to 'em. They may or may not know I checked into that hotel with a ragamuffin of indeterminate sex. Whether they've taken you for a sissy boy or a mighty rough gal, they'll be expecting us to still be together when, not if, they notice we ain't at the Pilgrim Hotel no more. So I'd be harder to spot, sneaking about alone, while you'd be harder to spot doing the same, in a whole new outfit, as soon as I figured it was safe to send for you, see?"
Daisy didn't. It was the more worldly shopkeeper who set aside her broom to explain, "I see his plan and it makes a lot of sense, dear. He chose some much more feminine clothes for you, earlier. If we did something about those farm girl braids... Perhaps an upswept hairdo with just a little discreet powder and paint... I could introduce you as a niece I'm breaking in, unless you'd feel safer hiding out up in my quarters above the shop."
Daisy said, "Oh, Lord. I've been cooped up less than one day in a hotel room and it feels like being in a soft jail. I got this gun in my hip pocket if anybody comes in here after me."
Longarm and the older woman exchanged more grown-up glances. He shrugged and said, "I had to deputize her in a hurry. The right sort of help can be hard to find at short notice."
The little old lady smiled thinly and replied, "So I can see. May I consider myself one of your posse, or would you describe us as a harem?"
Longarm laughed easily and said, "My boss would never go along with that notion and, even if he would, I ain't a Turk nor Mormon, ma'am. So I reckon we'd best describe you as a concerned citizen, and how much is this going to cost the justice department?"
The little old lady said, "People who know me well enough to ask such questions call me Covina, Covina Rivers. If Daisy, here, is willing to help around the shop, make her own bed upstairs, and behave herself in general, we'll call it even. As you said, good help is hard to find."
Longarm said she had to charge Daisy's grub at the going army and civil-service rate of four bits a day. So they shook on it, and old Covina carried Daisy and her new duds to the back of the store, where she was supposed to change and stay put until quitting time.
As she drifted the other way with Longarm, she told him she knew how to make a tomboy look like a young lady. She suddenly blurted out that she'd been considered poised as well as pretty, one time.
Longarm smiled down at her in the doorway to reply, "You're still a handsome woman, Miss Covina. I've known ladies with older-looking faces who did wonders and ate cucumbers with a little help from a bottle of henna or sepia tincture."
She sniffed and said that would be a cheap trick. He had no call to argue. Portia Parkhurst, attorney-at-law seemed sort of proud of her gray hairs, all over, as well. As they parted in the doorway he tried not to picture either sweet old thing allowing him even a peek at their pubic hairs by lamplight. He assured old Covina he'd wire complete instructions from wherever he might be when and if he thought it safe for Daisy to break cover.
As he made to leave, old Covina grabbed his sleeve and demanded, "Have you two been telling me the truth, about your relationship, I mean? She's really attractive, and a woman can tell when another woman is ready and willing."
Longarm sighed and said, "I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't willing, Miss Covina. I'm a natural man, and all men should be horsewhipped regular for the willing thoughts they have about you ladies. I ain't got time to explain why a lawman can't afford to indulge such thoughts with a lady who may have to back his play in a federal court. I told her why, and I'm sure the two of you will have plenty of time to jaw about each and every thing I've ever said or done to her."
The older woman showed how worldly she might be indeed by laughing lightly and declaring, "I guess that means there's no hope for poor little me, either, you unfeeling brute."
He laughed back and lit out, lighting up along the way as he told himself to stop picturing that nice little old lady buck naked. She'd likely been a looker as well as a prick teaser in her day. And he'd found what Ben Franklin had written about older women could come as a pleasant surprise, indeed.
Dr. Franklin, writing to a young diplomat in Paris, France, had advised him to take up with old French widow women instead of young wives who'd get them into duels or chambermaids who'd get them into trouble with their papas. Franklin had opined and Longarm had found it true that, just as a tree could turn funny colors from the top as the sap was still running sweet farther down, in older-looking gal could still have a lot of juicy life left in her while, above all, as old Ben had pointed out, they were more likely to feel grateful than sore at a man in the cold gray dawn.
Longarm laughed at himself and Ben Franklin as he strode on to the hotel with neither Daisy's duds nor Daisy waiting for him now. He had to go back, himself, to fetch his possibles, saddle, and Winchester. If he hadn't, he'd have holed up somewhere else, himself, until it was safer for certain to move on. For anybody who'd learned he was there in Cheyenne was as likely to know which hotel he'd checked into under his own fool name, leaving instructions for his home office to wire him there.