“Sorry,” Longarm repeated. He took a few steps away from the others and lighted a cheroot. The dry, clean flavor of the smoke tasted good and seemed to help settle him down. Longarm decided he was just being jumpy now because of what he could expect to face in Snowshoe. Every white in the country would despise the man who’d come to stand up for the hated Utes. Longarm could handle being an object of scorn and hatred. It wouldn’t change a thing about what he thought or how he acted. But he didn’t have to look forward to it or pretend to like it. Duty didn’t go so far that it made a man less than human, and even a deputy U.S. marshal had feelings.
He grunted softly to himself. There he was, borrowing troubles that weren’t in front of him. Why, he could think about all this when he got to Snowshoe. No point in fretting over it before then.
Once he’d given himself that little talking to, and had decided he could wait there cheerfully for however long it took, the last passenger arrived.
“All right, Jimmy, hurry it up. I don’t have time to waste for the likes of you,” the big boss snapped at the driver.
The man helped himself to a seat immediately behind the driving box, and gave everyone else impatient glares while the driver supervised the loading of several bags that a uniformed porter had carried in the big man’s wake.
Longarm shrugged and helped the lady onto the wagon, then stepped off to the side to take a few last puffs on his cheroot before he got aboard. He frankly didn’t give a damn what the other men might think of his smoke, but he wouldn’t
have considered getting on with a lighted cigar unless he checked with the lady first. The two businessmen, drummers presumably, got onto the wagon next, with Longarm finally trailing them and the driver climbing up last.
The lady sat across from the railroad boss. The drummers took up the bench in back, leaving Longarm a choice between planting himself next to the lady or beside the railroad boss. He chose to squeeze the railroad bigwig rather than force his presence on the woman.
The railroad boss was a large man. Not at all fat but definitely large. He was at least as tall as Longarm but probably was twice as broad. The fellow was middle-aged now, and certainly softer of body than he would once have been. Although anything harder than this guy now was would pretty much have to be classified as a metal, Longarm decided. He looked just plain solid.
And however he might have come to be where he now was, it hadn’t been by shuffling papers from one drawer to another. The man’s nose had been battered into a shape approximating that of a turnip, and there was scar tissue over both his eyes and across the knuckles on both his hands. If he hadn’t been a professional pugilist he’d been one hell of a brawler.
The driver released his brake and clucked softly to the mules. The tough little animals tiptoed forward to take up the slack in the traces, then leaned into the load and began drawing the wagon along at a slow roll. It was a nice performance, Longarm noticed, accomplished without any lurch or jiggle. Very pleasant.
This was going to take a while, Longarm decided, so they might as well all be civilized to one another. He turned half around on the bench so he was more or less facing the railroad man. Longarm extended his hand and said, “Custis Long, sir. And you are ... ?”
The railroader acted like he was all of a sudden smelling something that’d spoiled. He gave Longarm a cold, lengthy stare, then lifted his nose into the air and turned his head away without acknowledging the offered handshake.
Longarm chose not to make an issue of it. He sat back on his half of the seat and looked off in the other direction.
The railroader moved, jostling Longarm slightly as the big man reached inside his coat and pulled out a fat, expensive-looking pale-leaf cigar. He took his time about sniffing it, trimming it, wetting the wrapper leaf. Finally he clamped it between his lips and got out a match.
Without asking the lady’s permission, Longarm noted.
The railroader scratched his lucifer aflame, and Longarm began to turn.
A slight motion of the woman’s gloved hand got his attention. Longarm couldn’t see her features behind the dark, heavy veil, but he could see the movement of her hat when she shook her head in a silent warning that he knew was intended for him. No, she was saying, don’t make an issue of it.
Longarm grimaced. For his own satisfaction he might have wanted to. It might be kinda pleasant and personally rewarding to deliver a lesson in manners to this SOB. But that would only distress the lady, wouldn’t it. And that wasn’t at all what Longarm had in mind here. Dam it.
He grunted softly to himself and settled back into the corner of the seat bench again.
“This is gonna take me a few minutes, folks. Got some fallen rock on the road, and I don’t want to risk an axle going over it. So if anybody wants to stretch a bit or get a drink this is your chance.” The driver set his brake and climbed down to begin the task of kicking chunks of stone out of the path. They had come to a halt on a flat, narrow ledge that ran between the creek they’d been following for the past half dozen miles and a steep, clifflike hillside above. It was from somewhere up there that the rock had fallen, partially blocking the way.
Longarm nodded to the lady and touched the brim of his Stetson. “Ma’am?”
“I am comfortable here, sir, thank you.” Her voice was pleasant. Throaty and on the deep side for a woman, yet most definitely feminine. No doubt about that.
“Could I bring you a drink then?”
“That would be pleasant, thank you.”
He touched his hat brim again and joined the two drummers in leaving the wagon. The railroad boss pulled another cigar out of his pocket, but made no effort to climb down to ground level where his smoke would not be so close to the veiled lady.
Longarm waited until he was clear before he pulled out a cheroot and allowed himself the pleasure of its flavor. He went around to the back of the wagon and reached into the luggage boot for his bag. He knew precisely where to find the article he wanted. It was ... uh ... he groped,
grunted . .. there. He located it by feel and pulled it out.
The camp cup was a cunning little thing. It had been a gift. From a lady. But then cute, collapsible, silver camp cups, particularly ones with sentiments engraved on them, weren’t exactly the sort of thing a man would buy for himself.
The cup consisted of a set of interlocking silver bands set one inside another and another and so on. Collapsed small for the purposes of carrying, the cup looked all the world like a circle of thick silver metal, yet one good shake and the rings would slide apart and lodge top to bottom to form a cylinder capable of holding eight or ten ounces of liquid. Clever, even if not as convenient as one’s own palm when it came to drinking from mountain streams. Longarm opened it and gave it a tug to make sure the rings locked tight, then ambled over to the swift-running stream. The water was icy on his hand when he dipped the cup full, and before he was back to the wagon there was condensation forming on the outside of the metal cup. He walked around to the far side of the rig and handed the cup up rather than get back on board with his lighted cheroot.
“Thank you, sir.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.”