Longarm quietly asked if their blasting wonder had a rep as a gunfighter.
The foreman looked blank and decided, "Never heard tell of old Attila fighting anyone with any weapon. We don't put up with horseplay around this operation. Digging coal is dangerous enough without the crews acting like assholes. Most trouble I ever heard of poor old Attila having was with his wife. I never met her myself. She was here from the old country just long enough to run off with some other man. But from what some of the younger bucks say, she was wilder than Leadville on payday. You had to ask for it in Bohunk, I heard, but after that you just gave your poor soul to Jesus because your body belonged to her!"
Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring, and said the Hungarian he'd been drinking with had told him much the same story. He grinned wickedly and added, "Ain't it a pain how you always seem to get there just after all the fun has ended? I mean, I got to Dodge just as the cattle shipping was starting and it looked wild enough to me, until the old-timers told me I should have been there during the buffalohide boom."
The mining man chuckled and said, "Reminds me of my first gold rush. The last of the gold and the best lay for a hundred miles had just vanished forever. Took me only four more gold rushes to decide my true calling was coal. You ain't after Bela Nagy's bitty daughter, Eva, are you?"
Longarm laughed incredulously and replied, "Hell, no, I'm a lawman, not a baby-raper. But I see you've heard about that wild gal as well?"
The mining man looked relieved and said, "You can't boss a whole herd of gossiping greenhorns without hearing gossip. I have met Eva Nagy, at a company picnic this spring. You're so right in calling her a baby. If she was any kin to me I'd invite that Kun to a showdown. But I know better than to butt into Bohunk beeswax, and they do say that Hunky never busted any cherry there."
Longarm casually observed, "I understand Zoltan Kun recruits and rides herd on disorganized labor for your outfit?"
The company man nodded with no trace of shame and said, "All the coal companies in this valley. We don't put up with any of that Molly Maguire or Knights of Labor shit."
Longarm blew more smoke and murmured, "Do tell? I heard old Attila Homagy was off at some union convention when his wife betrayed him with Lord knows whom. I have to confess I ain't half as sure as her husband seems to be right now."
The foreman said, "We don't mind if someone wants to listen to union bullshit on their own time, off company property. Our management takes a progressive attitude towards labor organizers. They can yell and wave their red banners all they want, outside Las Animas County. If they come any closer, well, the county sheriff and his deputies know who pays their wages."
Longarm agreed that sounded about as progressive as most county establishments dealt with such matters, and asked a few more questions about the way they ran this particular mine, seeing so many men he knew of were connected to it.
The American straw boss didn't act as if he had anything to hide. He seemed proud of the way they were winning expensive coking coal with cheap labor.
Longarm had figured they worked the mine around the clock with two twelve-hour shifts. But lots of mines followed the common practice of working their help only half of Saturday and letting them take the Sabbath off. The foreman said greenhorns just got in trouble if you didn't keep them busy. He waved his cigar at the view outside and said, "Anyone out yonder who can't put in a full day today is free to leave. He just won't have a job here come Monday morning."
Longarm smiled thinly, and allowed it was mighty progressive to give such undeserving Papists the Sabbath off at least.
The straw boss grinned and replied, "Hell, it's not so much that we give the greenhorns the Sabbath off. But us real Americans have to go to church, don't we?"
Before Longarm could answer, a short gnomish man, black with coal dust, came in with his hat in hand, having blown its candle out, of course. Longarm wasn't surprised to learn this was Bela Nagy. He'd figured the kid's dad had to be far smaller than Zoltan Kun.
When Longarm was introduced to him as an American lawman, the wiry little Hungarian protested, "I no press charges! I no make troubles for nobody! My Eva is bad girl, but I spend most of my life in mine and her mother is not strong enough to make her stay in house if she wants to go out!"
Longarm said nothing. Old Bela was doing just fine without any prompting.
A tear ran down through the black grime of the older man's cheek as he stammered, "What you want me to do? In this country everyone is free to tell parents to go bus themselves, no? I know Hodiak woman says I should go to the law about my Eva and her buggy rides. But what good will it do us to have child put in reform school? American law will do nothing to big man who thinks our Eva is just right size for him!"
Longarm quietly said, "That may not be true, Mr. Nagy. Fooling with little kids against their parents' wishes is against the law in this state. You could even be in trouble yourselves if you could be shown to be giving your permission to such goings on. Colorado courts can be easy on gents fixing to marry up with a young gal, with the permission of her family. But a father knowingly pimping for a daughter of any age could wind up making little paving stones out of bigger ones."
The gnomish Hungarian blanched under his coal dust and protested, "Who you calling pimp? Pimp is American for lazy no-good who lives off women, no?"
Longarm nodded and said, "You'd best work it out with a lawyer if you can't control your kid. I'm a federal lawman. I have no say on Zoltan Kun's skirt-chasing unless I can prove he's done something a tad more serious. We don't worry about jurisdiction when we stumble across something downright serious, albeit I might have to turn the case over to Las Animas County and the State of Colorado unless I can show someone hauled a body across the nearby state line."
Nagy just looked confounded. The American straw boss asked if they were talking about Magda Homagy.
Longarm nodded gravely but said, "Don't know. On the face of it I have no evidence she met with more than the good stiff dicking she likely hankered for. But I can't make all I've heard fit a sensible pattern."
He took a drag on the swell cigar and asked Nagy what he'd heard about Magda Homagy's warm nature.
As if glad to gossip about someone he wasn't related to, the coal-blackened gnome said his wife had told him she was a dedicated slut who was sure to get caught, whether her husband worked the night shift or not. Nagy verified that some of the gossips had said they'd seen her carrying on in town with the feared but handsome Zoltan Kun.
Longarm silenced the little miner with a wave of his cigar and said, "Hold it right there and let's backtrack over a mighty odd pattern. American ladies in town say they'd seen Magda and Zoltan together, sipping soda water and such around his hotel, just before she ran off with someone they also had down as me. I don't look at all like Zoltan Kun, praise the Lord, and he told me he'd broken off with her friendly before she could have confessed to her husband about anybody."
Bela Nagy said, "I didn't see it. After twelve hours in a mine a man needs his sleep. But both Hodiak woman and Ilona Kovaks say they saw Magda leaving forever around midnight, when her man was in mine."
Longarm glanced at the American straw boss as he mused, "A gent in charge of a blasting crew would be missed if he nipped out to murder a wayward wife, wouldn't he?"
The American mining man said he'd just been about to say that.
Longarm said, "I wish he didn't have an alibi. This whole puzzle would have a simple answer. I could say he was lying. It just makes no sense for a cheating wife to cover up for a lover who's called her a sex maniac and turned away from her."