But since he only knew Ram Rogers by description and ill repute, and had even less on the shemale accomplice who could be staked out most anywhere, Longarm had to reconsider his immediate travel plans.
A stranger in town didn't lay low in waiting rooms, saloons, or an all-night chili parlor. As he drifted back from the part of town those rascals would expect to see him in, he considered returning to that hotel across from the Pilgrim to see whether little Sue still liked him. But parting was a sweet pain in the ass when you only had to do it once and he wasn't sure he could get it up again with a block and tackle if Sue had stopped cussing him.
He'd missed his supper during all the earlier excitement, and now that he found himself and his Winchester hugging the shadows with nothing better to do, he felt hungry as a bitch wolf hunting prairie dogs.
But all the places he passed that served grub were lit up inside like display cases for the perusal of any gunslick shopping for a target along the darker walks. So there had to be a better way.
It came to him as he'd circled aimlessly, or so it had seemed, to the stretch of Central Avenue where he'd had that shootout with the late Texas Tom.
He'd already decided not to hole up with any other lawmen there in Cheyenne before he was certain where those gunslicks Deacon Knox had been with knew anyone else with an ear to the neighborhood gossip. He'd never told anyone he'd been told to stop over in Cheyenne for some courtesy calls on other lawmen. Whatever the gang's leaders had heard about him being in the Parthenon Saloon in Denver at the time of Rusty Mansfield's death by gunfire, they should have expected him to arrive that afternoon on the passenger varnish and lay over by the depot just long enough to catch the earlier local he'd been forced to miss. Not the night freight that only went as far as Fort Laramie.
As he stood on the plank walk in front of Covina Rivers's notions shop, dark and shuttered at this hour, it came to him she and little Daisy were no more than a door knock away. So he moved to the side door betwixt the shuttered front window and that now half-empty rain barrel to knock on it.
A familiar voice from inside called out, "We're closed for the night. You'll have to come back in the mornin'."
Longarm called back that he didn't want to buy any ribbon bows or yard goods, and his voice must have seemed familiar, too. Because old Covina opened up to greet him at the bottom of the stairs in a flannel robe with a candlestick in one hand and her long gray hair down.
She said, "Daisy and me have been pulling taffy in our nighties. What on earth brings you here at this hour? You told us you'd be out of town aboard that late local."
Longarm replied, "I noticed. Since last we discussed my travel plans, I've changed them some, and even worse, it seems somebody out to gun me knows my next move by the time I can manage to make it."
She told him to come inside before somebody saw her talking to a man in her nightgown with her hair down, land's sakes.
As he stepped inside, he could smell hot buttered taffy, and he'd never known he liked the sticky sweet shit that much as his empty stomach rumbled.
She led him up the narrow stairs as he told her what he'd been up to since that afternoon, leaving out his friendly meeting with the Lakota nation but telling her what Deacon Knox had said about hired killers hiring others to finger him there in Cheyenne.
She gasped. "Heavens, you say you even suspect your fellow lawmen, Custis?"
To which he replied, "Not all of 'em. Maybe none of 'em told any drinking pals that much about me with any malice aforethought. You know how idle gossip makes its rounds until somebody with way more interest overhears it. I know neither you nor Daisy could have told Deacon Knox and his pals I was planning on missing that last afternoon local up to Keller's Crossing because I thought I'd make it, as I was leaving here, earlier. I had time to catch my intended train when I found out someone had been acting cute and could be laying for me at the Pilgrim Hotel. Their tinhorn scout gave up when I hadn't shown up by the time I should have left town. When he rejoined his pals, they told him they'd been watching at the depot and I still had to be in town. So they figured I meant to catch the later train tonight and sent him back to the Pilgrim to see what else he could find out."
By then they were up in her kitchen, where young Daisy sat grinning in her own nightgown, from the stock below, fooling with a cabbage-sized wad of sweet sticky goo.
Covina told her to put it back on the stove for now and turned back to Longarm to ask, "You say this member of the gang told you all this, Custis?"
Longarm removed his Stetson and hung it on a kitchen hook as he replied, "Not hardly. He switched sides sudden when I got the drop on him and likely scared him honest. He swore he hadn't known they had orders to gun me. He'd now have it known he was simply a poor dishonest cardsharp who fell in with the wrong companions. His conversion may be sincere. Old Deacon Knox has no rep as a gunfighter, and it must have been a sobering experience to have me nail his pal Texas Tom and get the drop on him with this Winchester, all within hours. I chose to believe his sad story because I didn't want more paperwork on my plate, and it was just as easy to run him out of town. I knew Deacon Knox ran out of town easy, and I suspect he'll keep running."
Daisy asked if he'd ever been to bed with two women at the same time.
As old Covina blushed beet red, Longarm refrained from bragging to reply, "Right now I'd rather have something to eat, no offense. I've had no sleep and barely enough grub to go with the hard day I've put in since leaving Denver a million years ago, and Lord knows when I'll ever get there at the rate I've been going!"
Covina turned to her kitchen range, allowing there were still some coals left from their taffy making, as Daisy asked why Longarm didn't spend the night with them and get an early start in the morning.
Covina hushed her but volunteered, "I do have extra rooms and so wouldn't it be a good idea to lay over here until those killers lose interest in that railroad depot?"
As she broke out a skillet and a smoked ham he could already taste, Longarm shook his head and said, "They ain't being paid to lose interest, and I'd lose yet more time in vain. My boss wants me up in Keller's Crossing. Their boss don't. They've had plenty of time to stake out the railyards, and they're likely staked out comfortable for as long a wait as they want."
As she sliced ham for her skillet and got out a basket of eggs, he continued, "I only know one of them by description and rep. He has at least one shemale with him who might be better at recognizing me in tricky light than vice versa. In sum, they have the deck stacked to their advantage, and even if I won, I'd be tied up here with the paperwork too long to catch that way-freight. It'll be pulling out before ten and then where would I be?"
The gray but fine-figured Covina put the ham on to sizzle first as she calmly replied, "Safe here with us? Why do you keep calling that last train out to the north a way-freight? I know what a freight train is, but I'm not sure I've ever heard one called a way-freight."
It was Hobo Daisy who chimed in from her own perch across the table. "Silly, a way-freight is a local that makes every stop along the way. They run them when the passenger varnish and fast freights ain't using the track, which is usually single line betwixt towns, out this way."
Longarm chuckled and told Covina, "That's about the size of it. Night-crawling way-freights ain't much. But they purely beat walking, or even riding, once you're talking about any distance. The old iron horse keeps chugging long after a regular horse is through for the day."
As a heavenly smell of frying ham filled Covina's already sweet-smelling kitchen, Longarm mused, half aloud, "Already thought about hiring myself a bronc at the livery across from the depot for some serious riding. But it's too far to push a pony, or even a rider, at any speed."