Covina busted eggs over his ham as she countered, "if I understand way-freighting correctly, there's an alternate north-bound leaving later and stopping at Crow Bend, eight or ten miles up the line, and closer by beeline across the range."
Longarm nodded but said, "Already considered that, Miss Covina. But they likely have the livery staked out, along with my fool saddle in its tack room. I'd have never stored it close to the depot if I'd gotten Deacon Knox to talk earlier. I could likely beg, buy, or borrow another saddle as well as a mount to shove under it if I had more time. But, like you said, we're talking eight or ten miles, and I'd barely beat the iron horse with a real horse if I started right now!"
Covina tipped his ham and eggs on to a china plate and served him as she told Daisy to pour the coffee while she tended to something in her bedroom.
As she left, Daisy stood close enough for Longarm to smell the fresh-scrubbed flesh under that chenille nightgown as she filled a mug for him, murmuring, "I think she likes you, too. Wouldn't it be fun if the three of us all got naked and had us a party?"
He laughed and told her to behave herself, having no call to tell her about the party he'd just had with a more-than-enough frisky Lakota.
The ham and eggs were swell. The strong coffee offered to see him through the next few hours of the night. But then what? He could ask for help from the local law or Billy Vail's sullen opposite number. But that would only make the outlaws crawfish back into their hideyholes and tip their leaders off that he was on his way past them, even if he made the damned way-freight without having to jaw half the night away.
So mayhaps it was just as well, he thought, that he wasn't hard up enough at the moment to be tempted by a night in bed with two women. For Daisy's sassy suggestion made as much sense as trying to sneak past any number of owlhoot riders without knowing who they were or where they'd be laying for him!
He was sponging up the last egg yolk with a chunk of rye bread when Covina Rivers came back in, fully dressed in a tight-waisted navy velveteen riding habit, a bitty boater perched atop her pinned-up steel-gray hair, to ask if he was finished yet.
Longarm rose from the table to allow he sure was and ask if she meant to ride somewheres at that hour.
Covina said, "I keep my shay in the carriage house of a livery a block up the avenue. I don't drive enough to keep my own carriage horse, but I know all their good ones by name. So let's be on our way. If the one they call Blue Ribbons hasn't been driven this afternoon, she ought to get us there in plenty of time!"
Longarm was in no position to argue. He picked up his Winchester, grabbed for his hat, and followed her down the stairs as, behind him, Daisy wailed she wanted to go, too.
As he legged it up Central Avenue with the surprising fast-paced widow woman, Longarm asked why she hadn't told him sooner.
She said, "You men are all alike. I'd have never gotten you to eat a warm meal and put away that much coffee if you'd had any hope of beating that way-freight to Crow Bend."
He had to allow she was right. Long before they'd gotten the long-limbed chestnut, Blue Ribbons, hitched up to her private two-wheel shay, he was telling her they weren't going to make it. He was sure of this as they trotted out the north-west city limits in the moonlight, along the service road that followed the single tracks and sandy Crow Creek toward the Laramie range to the west. For as spunky as she trotted, Blue Ribbons wasn't going to average more than nine miles an hour, and even a way-freight rumbled across the prairie at better than twelve between towns.
Covina explained the tracks followed the easy route of the creek as it meandered across rolling prairie. He didn't ask why when she reined Blue Ribbons off the service road and out across open range in the moonlight. She drove with skill many a man might have envied, and Longarm would have told her, had not they been bouncing so hard on the seat of her one-horse shay as they tore across the prairie in the tricky moonlight.
He didn't have to urge her to whip Blue Ribbons with the rein ends as they both heard a locomotive whistle in the distance, albeit not as far a distance as Longarm would have asked if he'd had anything to say about the matter!
CHAPTER 13
They made it with less than five minutes to spare. As the gallant Blue Ribbons panted head-down between the shafts, Longarm helped the hard-driving widow woman down from her shay and kissed her without thinking before he said, "I want you to promise me both you real pals will head back to Cheyenne at a walk! I got to run down the platform and talk to the freight agent now. I'll wire more detailes when I send for Daisy."
Covina flustered, "When and why? She's not a bad girl, but she's had no upbringing and seems terribly stupid, even for a sort of white Topsy off a farm."
Longarm said, "You work with what you have to work with, and I just said I'd wire more detailed instructions, once I know what I want her to do or say on arrival. I don't know what I'll find waiting for me, up the line, myself. So thanks a heap for the buggy ride, and I got to move it out, ma'am."
She asked, "Would you kiss me again? Just to say goodbye? I was caught off guard by that first one, Custis."
Kissing any gal never took as much time as telling her you didn't want to. So he took the nice little old lady in his arms and gave her a good one, sort of surprised but not upset when she kissed back French.
Old Ben Franklin had warned younger jaspers things like that might happen around nice little old ladies, Longarm reflected as he legged it along the platform to where some dim figures were gathered near the only lantern at their end.
When he showed his badge and introduced himself to the small-town freight agent, he was told the line would be proud to ride him up to the North Platte as long as he didn't get in the way. So when the way-freight hissed in to a short stop a few minutes later, Longarm set his Winchester aside and helped them unload a mail-order piano before he swung aboard the caboose with a wave back down the tracks to any lady who might still be there. You couldn't tell with the moonlight and inky shadows shifting so in the night breezes.
He'd been asked to stay out of the way. So he found a seat on the rear platform and lit up as they followed the tracks away to the north from Crow Creek, hugging a contour line of the now not so distant Laramies, a sort of orphan range running in line with but apart from the main thrust of the Rockies.
They passed a ranch house with the lamplight from the windows somehow making a passing stranger feel left out. Longarm had assured himself often enough that he wasn't really missing anything when he lay snugabed with a train whistle calling far off in the night. But it often seemed to promise new thrills and adventure in some far-off parts he'd never been while, contrariwise, whenever he was riding a train through the night, he got to wondering what he might be missing behind those cozy lamp-lit window curtains he was passing with no chance to ever ask.
He laughed and told the Winchester in his lap, "The man of that house back yonder is likely stiff in the joints from working all day, and even if he does feel like turning in early with the lady of the house, she'll likely tell him she has a headache."
He found himself wondering how long it would take good old Covina to get home, and what she and little Daisy would talk about when they got back to pulling taffy or went to bed in those flannel nightgowns.
He laughed at himself and told his Winchester, "I reckon I've about recovered from that Indian campaign if I'm starting to picture nice little old ladies in flannel nightgowns or, better yet, nothing at all, and wouldn't that be a party!"
He'd seen enough of young Daisy to picture her buck naked in bed with him and French-kissing Covina. The way-older widow had as narrow a waist but fuller breastworks and bottom than the mature but not that mature Portia Parkhurst, attorney-at-law.