Longsirm was already leaning his back against the bulkhead. So he couldn't back up any farther, and said so in as amiable a tone as the situation called for. He'd already decided that while most Texicans wore their hats crowned tall to keep their scalps a shade cooler under their more ferocious sun, this one had his hat crowned even taller to look ferocious, which hardly seemed fair since the asshole stood close to seven feet tall in his high-heeled border boots to begin with.
The big man in the big hat placed a thoughtful palm on the grips of his big gun as he repeated, "I'm trying to get
through here whilst you block egress with that sissy see-gar, sonny."
Longarm blew some smoke in the bully's beefy face before he quietly said, "Don't fuck with me. I mean it."
The big Texican reared back on his high heels to demand, "Who do you think you are and who do you think you're talking to so suicidal, little darling?"
So Longarm had the muzzle of his own .44-40 imbedded deep in the bully's beefy gut by the time he softly replied, "Let's just say I'm as harmless a cuss as you'd let me be, if you had a lick of sense, you loud-talking and slow-drawing bastard!"
The stranger, now sort of ashen-faced, allowed that since Longarm was putting it that way, he'd just as soon mosey on up to the old dining car and see what they were serving for dinner.
Another million years went by while Longarm memorized that menu and searched his memory for the ugly face that went with that handsome ten-gallon hat. By the time the colored dining-car gonger got back to him he'd decided that fried ham and hash browns might be safer than anything off the steam table after fifteen hours out along the rails. He'd also decided that he'd never seen that swaggering Texican before. »
He told the colored gent to just forget the deep-fried greens they offered with the ham, and asked if they could have some extra coffee with their apple pie instead.
The gong-wrangler said that part would be easy, but warned Longarm there might be a wait, since the car up ahead would be full of earlier famine victims and only one of the cooks really had four arms. So Longarm told him to take his own good time because waiting for a meal passed time aboard a train almost as good as eating it slow could.
After they'd parted friendly Longarm settled back against the bulkhead to smoke and stare through the glass across the corridor some more. He knew the passing scenery would be
just as tedious from their compartment windows, and if he waited in there he'd have to unchain his prisoner, lest he seem downright chickenshit.
Putting those leg-irons away again seemed only decent, as long as things up forward went as planned. But he knew that the best-laid plans of mice and men could turn out unexpectedly, and if he had to track down their noon dinners in the sweet by and by, his prisoner would say something mean about him acting nervous with those leg-irons again.
But what the hell, time passed as slow or fast out here in the corridor, and it wasn't as if a man had to rest a good pair of legs after spending the better part of the trip on his ass.
He didn't have to tell himself the true reason he preferred his own company out here was the iota of sympathy he'd caught himself feeling for the poor brainless boob he was transporting back to Denver for that doubtless-overdue rope dance.
It wasn't going to take them long, once old Blue Tooth Tanner had been handed over to the hangman's tender mercies. For the not-too-bright bandito had already stood trial in federal court in Denver for killing that schoolmarm in the process of robbing a U.S. post office. Old Judge Dickerson had naturally sentenced Tanner to death for his misdeeds in Colorado. But then Illinois had asked if they could tidy up their own books by trying him on earlier charges stemming from his salad days in the Chicago stockyards. Judge Dickerson, being a sport, had said it was jake with him as long as somebody hung the son of a bitch.
Illinois had tried. But in the end all they'd nailed Tanner on was armed robbery and bestiality with a lamb that his lawyers had insisted he'd saved from a worser fate. So after some wires back and forth it had been agreed their best bet would be to hang him back in Colorado for the slaughter of that schoolmarm in Castle Rock, and where was that confounded dining-car gonger with the damned old grub?
7
Longarm finished another cheroot in vain, only to see even more famine victims traipsing forward to hog all the grub. Longarm was tempted to just go back inside and wait sitting down. But he doubted it would be more comfortable with a growling gut and a condemned man for company. So he stood pat and waited another million years, staring out at mile after mile of mighty-wide-open nothingness.
The High Plains would begin to roll more interestingly later in the day as they approached the Front Range you could admire from downtown Denver. But this far east the prairie lay as flat and dull as an awesomely big doormat from horizon to horizon, and when it was dry, like today, the sky could get mighty dull to look at as well. They called this stretch the Big Lonely, and the monotonous-looking homestead gals along the way were in the habit of slashing their own throats with monotonous regularity.
He told himself not to study on that homestead gal he'd found all aswarm with blowfly maggots once, not with greasy ham and hash browns due to come his way anytime now.
After riding through a war or more and serving with the Justice Department six or eight years, one might expect a man to pay less heed to the sweet and sour breath of Mister Death. But while not a sentimental sissy when it came to outlaws and other varmints, Longarm seldom enjoyed killing and tended to hold his fire when .it was at all practical.
He knew it wouldn't be practical to spare Blue Tooth Tanner's miserable neck, of course. For whether the simple bastard had killed with malice or by accident, as he claimed, the rest of the human race couldn't afford to let such a dangerous animal live. But it seemed just as well to Longarm, after getting to know the old boy for just one morning, that somebody else would be stuck with the chore of executing him.
Newspaper reporters and other folks who didn't have to tidy up after killers tended to consider hangmen cold unfeeling butchers because they handled their chores with such
swift and sometimes brutal effectiveness. But Longarm had bellied up to many a bar, afterwards, with such notorious hangmen as old George Maledon of Fort Smith, who'd likely hung more poor bastards than anyone. Old George and all the others, save for a few mean-hearted bastards, agreed that the meanest way to hang a man was to draw the process out with mock kindness, urging him to say just a few last words and giving him plenty of time to choke back sobs and piss his pants, instead of just frog-marching him up those thirteen steps to have the halter around his neck and the trap sprung under him before he felt dead certain he was really done for.
Longarm swore at himself for dwelling on matters that he couldn't do enough about to matter. Despite how long it felt just waiting, Longarm was a good enough judge of true time to wonder how that pretty blonde could have ordered and eaten so soon when she suddenly popped back through the front doorway of the car, her face flushed and more than one hair out of place.
He wondered even more when she suddenly swung belly to belly with him, as if she wanted to kiss him, save for the expression of total dismay on her pretty face.
Then Longarm saw the big male paw that had gripped her by one arm of her duster and swung her into such a mutually awkward fix. So as the burly Texican who went with the big fist followed it the rest of the way into view, Longarm quietly asked the lady if she was arm in arm with that other gent of her own free will.