She sipped more soda through her love-grass straw as if to allow herself time to choose her words before she confided, "It all came out in the Homagy scandal. Trinidad's not half as big as Denver, so a scandal as juicy as that one gets told and retold until everyone has every detail whether they wanted them or not."
Longarm sighed and said, "I know this young widow woman back in Denver who'd agree with you on back-fence sass in any size town. I swear that if you drop a jar of olives on Lincoln Street, it'll grow to a wagon load of watermelons by the time the gossip gets all the way to Sherman, a block up the slope. So ain't it possible to mistake one tall cuss with a mustache with another?"
Cora Brewster sipped more soda and demurely decided, "I've never confessed adultery to a husband after midnight. So I can only try to imagine the scene inside the Homagy cabin when she told him she'd been seduced by a blackmailer who'd threatened to have the two of them deported. I remember how surprised we were at the notions shop to hear it had been an American government official instead of the immigrant bully we'd thought we'd noticed pestering the immigrant girls of Bohunk Hill while their men were down in the mines or out of town to those anarchist meetings immigrants go in for."
Longarm frowned thoughtfully out the grimy glass at the passing grassy swells. "Hold on," he said. "I'm missing something. Just who come down off the slopes of Bohunk Hill to tell the rest of the world Attila Homagy had caught his woman with the one and original Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, ma'am?"
She shook her pretty head and replied, "Nobody. Had the poor man actually found an intruder under his roof, dressed as suspiciously as in his shirtsleeves with his vest unbuttoned, the code of any gentleman, foreign or domestic, would have called for the spilling of blood on the spot!"
Longarm soberly said, "I know how that fool code's supposed to work, ma'am. I told you I was a lawman. Is it safe to say Homagy beat his wife and announced his even grimmer intentions about a famous American lover after she told him that was who he was after?"
Cora Brewster demurely replied, "I told you I wasn't there. But I suppose she must have, since her husband never actually caught her with anyone!"
Longarm took a deeper pull on his beer than he'd meant to as he mulled one gal's suspicions about another over and over in his own head. Then he said, "There's no better way it works. Homagy was out of town a spell on union business. When he came back he must have heard his woman and some other pretty Bohunk gals had been seen carrying on with a handsome stranger. It was you, not me, who allowed everyone but at least one jealous husband was pretty. A gal trying to cover up for a handsome Bohunk boyfriend might grab at an American name off a newspaper she'd just wrapped the garbage in. It might be as tough for a Bohunk to come up with an American name on short notice as it would be for a scared American to recall some Bohunks are called Attila!"
He scowled down into his beer stein and added, "There was a front page or more covering some court proceedings last May too. So how do you like a false-hearted woman betraying her husband with another man, and then betraying a federal deputy she'd never laid eyes on to her husband's vengeance, by naming him as the one to be struck down on the field of honor?"
Cora Brewster wrinkled her pert nose. "If what you say could be true, Magda Homagy carried casual adultery on to premeditated murder! The only question left would be just whom she had in mind. They say this Longarm is fast on the draw and quick on the trigger, while poor little Attila Homagy is at best a handy man with a star drill and dynamite!"
Before Longarm could get into the unwritten law and the edge it gave even a mediocre fighting man, the Trinidad gal added, "I heard a lot of the Hungarian folks down our way have tried to persuade poor Mister Homagy to forget it. They seem to feel there's no shame to accepting things in their new land as they just have to be. They've told both the husband and wife it was more like a natural disaster than an affair of honor. They feel it's hopeless to resist the iron whim of any government official, and they've warned Attila Homagy the Americans will surely hang him if he kills such a famous American lawman, even though he'd be in the right with simple justice on his side!"
Longarm didn't answer right off. There was more than one way to shovel any stall, and he didn't want to pile on any more lies he might want to take back in a hurry. He knew he'd doubtless be able to convince this bright young Trinidad gal he couldn't be the jasper she'd had pointed out as himself earlier. She'd just told him he looked nothing like the man she'd been told was Longarm. She knew lots of other Trinidad gals. Including more than one who'd be as willing to depose in writing that they'd seen yet another handsome stranger messing with those sassy Bohunk gals while their menfolk hadn't been looking.
But Billy Vail had issued direct orders forbidding him to go anywhere near Trinidad. Meanwhile, it was going to take them at least another four hours to get there at this speed, Lord willing and no trestles were down. So Longarm let her rattle on about treacherous young wives stuck with musty old men as he sipped away the rest of his beer and asked her if she'd like some sandwiches to go with her next soda.
She hesitated, then calmly replied, "It's been hours since last I ate back in Denver, and I fear we'll be pulling into Trinidad past my usual supper-time. But I think we'd better go Dutch treat, Deputy Crawford. It wouldn't be right for me to lead a strange man on, and it's not as if I can't afford some ham on rye. I forgot to tell you I was just up to Denver on business, and we made out right handy on some yellow cheese we've started to make at our dairy."
Longarm felt no call to press it. The pretty gal's husband or a hand who worked for them figured to be waiting for her when they both had to get off at Trinidad. He wasn't looking forward to the overly hearty handshakes and cautious smiles such occasions seemed to call for. But when a man had to change trains he had to change trains, and at least it would be old Cora, not himself, who got to explain how innocent it had all been, for as many times as it took to sink in.
He caught the eye of a colored club car attendant, and once they were fixed to order he made sure they'd be getting separate tabs.
Cora Brewster had been serious about that ham and rye.
She made Longarm feel a mite prissy by ordering a scuttle of beer to wash it down.
He allowed he'd have his next beer by the scuttle instead of the far smaller schooner, seeing it saved trips back and forth from the bar, and ordered Swiss and salami on pumpernickel.
He could tell she'd been raised almost as country as himself, and as a rule country folks got right down to business with their grub so they could get on with any chores that needed tending. But as Longarm and Cora found themselves with nothing better to do than talk as they chugged on south with the foothills of the Front Range to their right and the rolling swells of the High Plains going from tawny to golden in the late afternoon sunlight, they just nibbled, sipped, and speculated about that tearful Bohunk gal confessing she'd been untrue with a lawman called Longarm when her husband hadn't really caught her in the act with anyone.
Meanwhile, back in Denver, the somewhat confused streetwalker called Consuela meant no harm to El Brazo Largo, known to be more friendly to her own people than many of his kind. It was loyalty to her own social class as well as La Raza that inspired Consuela's hiss of warning as she spied two Mexican street urchins stalking a little old gringo in a seersucker suit, over by the baggage windows of the crowded Union Depot.
The bigger boy, who usually held the mark from behind as his wiry compadre grabbed for his watch chain and wallet, drifted over to the slightly older whore, a violet-scented cigarette rolled in black paper dangling from his pouty lip as he quietly observed, "We know he wears a gunbelt under his jacket. For to use a gun on anyone one must be able to get at it, no?"