He laughed and pulled his coat on, finally settling the Stetson into position. “Don’t wait up for me.”
“I had no intention of trying,” she assured him.
He bent and gave her a perfunctory peck on the cheek before letting himself out of the cabin. What the hell, he decided, just because she was a lousy lay it didn’t necessarily follow that she was a totally worthless person. There were times when she was fairly pleasant company. That probably ought to count for something.
Longarm ambled off into the night in search of a glass of rye whiskey.
There are some genuine verities in life, pillars a man can depend on no matter what else befalls him, and one of those is that regardless of how badly a man hates your guts, he will still be willing to take your money.
Longarm might not be able to get anything in the way of cooperation in Snowshoe, but he could buy whiskey and lose at cards as well as the next guy. The whiskey wasn’t bad. His run of cards was terrible.
“Fold,” he said. “Again.” He dropped the five useless pasteboards onto the table and leaned back.
“I really should feel guilty about this,” the man on his right said. “1 don’t, of course, but I ought to.” The fellow was the big winner of the moment, and except for that seemed pleasant enough. He was dressed too nicely to be an underground laborer. Longarm guessed him as a storekeeper or the like. He played his cards cautiously but very, very well, riding the percentages rather than hunches. For him it seemed to work. For Longarm tonight nothing was working, not even bluffs. Better to fold and wait for the next deal on a night like this one.
Longarm sipped at his rye and spent a few moments looking around the smoky room. There was a good crowd on hand, but they weren’t rowdy. In fact, they seemed almost subdued. The noise level in the saloon was low enough that conversations two tables away could be followed if anybody was interested enough to bother listening.
The next hand played out—the same fellow winning it—and the players declared a short break, most of them dispersing in the direction of the outhouse, the bar, wherever. The gentleman who was doing all the winning sat back in contentment.
“Is it always like this?” Longarm asked.
“If you mean am I always this lucky at cards, the answer is that I only wish it were so. If, on the other hand, you mean to ask if it is always this quiet, the answer is that I only wish it were so.”
Longarm raised an eyebrow.
The man smiled and explained. “With everyone so solemn lately there has been hardly any absenteeism problem in any of the mines. Few hangovers, you see. No broken bones in fistfights or ears ripped off in brawls. None of that lately. I must say that I like that part of it.”
“Any idea why it’s so quiet?” Longarm asked.
“Oh, no question about that. It’s because of the robbery.”
‘The train robbery?”
“But of course.” Like it was inconceivable that any other robbery could be discussed.
“Why in the world would that make a whole town so fretful?”
“Very simple,” the fellow explained. “The concentrates that were taken represent the entire output of the major employers here. That was supposed to be the profit that would allow the mine owners, who happen also to be the railroad investors, to complete construction of the rail line, you see. This one robbery won’t be enough to sink us. But much more in the way of loss and there will be no railroad. And if there is no railroad, soon there will be no town. The mines will close and that will be the end of that, because our ore values have been declining. Plenty of value if we have heavy equipment to extract metal from the ore. Not nearly enough value at the present level of technology available to us. We have to have that railroad in place, you see, or eventually we will fail and Snowshoe will cease to exist
except as a curiosity. Other towns in the area too. We’re all in the same sad situation.”
“Serious,” Longarm agreed.
“Absolutely.” The gambler sighed and pulled out a pair of cigars. He offered one to Longarm, then accepted the light that Longarm contributed. “Thanks.”
“Mister, I can promise you I’d be willing to swap a match for one o’ these cigars any time you want,” Longarm said. “Now this is what I’d call a smoke.”
“I have them special made,” the gambler admitted. “The secret is a bright-leaf filler. Expensive but worth it.” “Worth it,” Longarm agreed. He was definitely getting the impression now that this fellow sitting beside him wasn’t any small-town shopkeeper. That sort of curiosity, though, would only be satisfied if the gentleman chose to volunteer information about himself. One man simply didn’t ask personal questions of another. “I’m surprised your shipment was taken,” Longarm ventured. “Unless you’re getting an awful lot of extraction outta your ore here. But then you just said that you aren’t, otherwise the future wouldn’t be in doubt like it is.”
“Frankly, Deputy ... it is no secret who you are, I hope you don’t mind.”
“No offense,” Longarm assured him.
“Frankly, Deputy, we were more surprised than anyone. We thought it impossible that anyone would have an interest in the shipment. Its value would be stated in the tens of thousands of dollars, true, but its weight was a matter of tons. Much too heavy to be moved by any conventional means. Mule train, for instance. It would have required a string of a hundred thirty mules to carry it. We calculated that first thing. And believe me, there are not that many mules in these mountains that were unaccounted for on the day of the robbery. That was the first thing we looked into.”
“Logical,” Longarm agreed. He glanced around, but the other players hadn’t returned to the table yet. None of them, in fact. Although he could see one of the men standing at
the bar in conversation with someone else. And now that he was paying attention he noticed another seated at a different table, already engrossed in a new game there. It occurred to him that perhaps this was something of a setup. Just maybe he’d been seated beside this pleasant fella for a purpose? Not that he minded. Yet. But it was something to keep in mind.
“Freight wagons could carry that much weight, of course,” the man went on, “but no wagons can reach the area where the robbery occurred. It simply isn’t possible. Even so, we searched for wheel tracks. There were none.”
Longarm grunted.
“We are at a loss as to how the concentrates were spirited away. And we are very much concerned that the thieves may successfully repeat their performance. Until we know how they did it the first time, we will have difficulty thwarting them the second time. If you see what I mean.” “I see what you’re saying,” Longarm admitted. “I’m not so sure I see what you mean. Not all of it anyhow.”
The gambler smiled. “Good. You are as bright as we’d hoped you might be.”
Longarm didn’t know quite what to make of that remark, so he let it slide by.
“We ... our little consortium of mine owners and railroad investors, that is... have mixed thoughts about your presence here, Deputy. I suspect you can understand that.” “Not particularly. Not unless you’re doing something you oughtn’t.”
“Oh, no. Nothing at all like that, I assure you. No, our, um, concerns lie with the Ute Indians. You are here to give them the freedom to attack us. Naturally we resist that. The other side of that coin, Deputy, is that your expertise could be useful to us when it comes to arresting whoever stole our gold concentrates.”