“Are you tryin’ to call me a—”
“No! Oh, please don’t think that, darling, please don’t. It’s me who’s being so awful, not you. But it’s true, dear. I would follow you anywhere, do anything for you. Give you money, be your slave, go back to selling my ass to keep you in the chips, anything you like. It’s true. And I don’t know a thing about you. Not really.”
The crazy damn woman was carrying this kind of far in Longarm’s opinion. After all, a night of bounce and tickle was one thing. But no matter how damned good it was— and in Leah’s case it damn sure had been plenty good—a night of belly-bumping was all it’d been. And all he wanted it to be.
Better, he decided, if he could get his business in Snowshoe wrapped up quick so he could be gone again before Leah got around to joining him there.
“We’ll talk ’bout all that in Snowshoe,” he told her.
“Promise?”
“Absolutely,” he lied. He kissed her on the forehead, then left the bed and began dragging his clothes back on.
By the time he was back in his own room he had all but forgotten Leah.
Chapter 11
“I’m real sorry, mister, but you can’t hardly get to that place from here,” the railroad clerk said apologetically.
Longarm tipped his Stetson back and frowned. “But I’m sure the man in Silver Creek told me I could reach Snowshoe by way of Glory.”
“What he maybe didn’t tell you, mister, is that our rail line and theirs are on completely different levels. Run close together part of the way, but they’re real different. We’ve been building down low along the bottoms. They’re bridging and boring and building high. The two lines never do come together. Don’t now and never will.”
“He told me that,” Longarm persisted, “but he also said from Glory I should be able to get transportation up to the, oh, whatever the hell the name of that other railroad is, get up there to it anyway and take a train the rest of the way in to Snowshoe.”
“The Bitterroot and Brightwater is the name of their line,” the clerk helpfully supplied.
“Right, that was it.”
“But you can’t get there from here,” the man insisted. “We don’t have any connection with them and we don’t plan one. Honestly.”
“You’re talking about a rail connection,” Longarm said. The clerk gave him a blank look. “Certainly.”
“But I could walk up and make a connection, couldn’t I?” “Walk? Climb would be more like it.” The man sniffed. Loudly. Walking? Climbing? On one’s own feet? In the
mountains? Surely a man would have to be daft to even think of such a notion. He sniffed again.
“But I could do it?” Longarm hadn’t come here to screw the pretty women of Glory. He’d come down here, dammit, with a job to do. In Snowshoe.
The clerk sniffed and refused to answer such a patently silly question.
Longarm thanked the fellow for all his help and ambled outside, where he stood in the slanting early morning sunlight and lighted a cheroot.
A few questions put to a passing railroad brakeman, though, assured him that not everyone in the town of Glory mistook convenience for necessity. This man, a dark-haired little fellow with gaps in his teeth and a happy lilt to his voice, seemed to think it perfectly acceptable that someone might want to walk, climb, or crawl about the countryside without benefit of upholstered benches and dining car service. “Sure thing, mister. Easy t’ get there. Just you follow these tracks back toward the rail-end for, oh, four or five miles till you can look up an’ spot another grade up ’bove you. Then just pick you a spot an’ climb up. Don’t know for sure where their rail-end is right now, but they’d got that far along in their construction when they laid off for the weather last fall. Mayhap e’en all the way through t’ Snowshoe.”
“Is that why neither line is building right now?” Longarm asked. ‘They still haven’t commenced the spring work yet?”
“Me, I’m just a day-money hired man, neighbor. I ain’t paid to do no heavy thinking,” the brakeman said. “But anybody can see right plain that the weather’s broke a month ago an’ better. That makes for an excuse ’bout not having no construction crews yet, but it ain’t no reason. What I hear is that we’ve run outta money. An’ that Bitterroot an’ Brightwater line too, else I’d be up there lookin’ for a job. Hell, I’ll go you one idea more. If anybody was t’ ask me, which nobody has, I’d say that won’t very many o’ these camps survive long if they can’t get rails in to ’em.”
“No?”
“No, sir, an’ I’ll tell you why. The veins here run vertical. Takes a lotta gear an’ a lotta money to mine straight up an’ down. Whole lot more expensive than horizontal digging because you got to lift everything out a bit at a time. That makes it slow as well as hard. Worse, there’s a lotta water seepage in the deep shafts, so that has t’ be pumped out too, an’ it’s no easier to lift water than it is t’ lift gold ore. It takes heavy equipment t’ mine this country, neighbor. Big pumps, steam engines, fast hoists... all that stuff is easy enough t’ move on a railroad car, but damn difficult t’ carry on a mule’s back.”
“You sound like a man who knows what he’s talking about.”
The brakeman nodded solemnly and accepted the cheroot Longarm offered. He struck his own light and inhaled the smoke with obvious pleasure, holding it deep for a moment and smiling before he spoke again. “Thanks. That’s fine. An’ yessir, I know a thing or two ’bout hauling and ’bout mining too. I been a bullwhacker an’ a freighter an’ a powder monkey above ground an’ below it too. I’ve hauled light rails by mule train, an’ then turned right around an’ laid those rails inside mine adits t’ make track for ore carts. Then even hired on t’ work in one of those same mines an’ filled carts on track I’d just got done layin’ down. Yessir, I expect I do know a few things ’bout this country an’ what it takes to make a living in it.”
“And you don’t think Snowshoe or any of these other camps will make it?”
“That ain’t exactly what I said. Any of ’em can make it, I think. If they get the rails through so’s they can bring the proper equipment in an’ get their ores out at a reasonable cost. That’s one o’ the things about these camps, see. The ones farthest out get the shit end o’ the stick every way possible. Can’t get equipment in t’ set up mills an’ refineries that’d reduce the raw ore to something light an’ manageable. Can’t afford to haul raw ore out to have it refined elsewhere. That’s ’cause it costs, say, ten dollars t’ haul a ton of ore. Costs, say, another ten dollars to get
that ore outta the ground. And on top of everything else you got to pay to have your ore processed. An’ if a ton o’ ore is only yielding, say, fifteen dollars, well, you tell me how long a man can stay in business that way.”
“But if a railroad comes in .. . ?”
“Then you can bring in the equipment that lets you get your ore outta the ground for maybe six dollars a ton ’stead of ten. An’ you put in your own mill an’ process your ore right on the spot at a cost of maybe a dollar a ton ’stead of paying good money to haul it elsewhere. What all that means is that your same mine, same ore, same deal all around is earning you eight dollars a ton ’stead of costing you five or six.”