Longarm preferred more certain shooting at the closer ranges most trouble arose from. He carried his saddle gun in its boot on the off side of his saddle, handy for a right-handed side-draw, with his six-gun balanced higher on his left hip, below the elbow of his rein arm, should any son of a bitch dispute his right of passage.
Once packed, Longarm toted the more awkward than heavy load back across Cherry Creek to the Union Station. Billy Vail had told him to give Deputy Ida Weaver a day's lead on him, and it was way too early to catch the same afternoon Burlington. But Longarm had pals about the railyards and couldn't say how long he'd be tied up along the way with courtesy calls, visits to local newspaper morgues, and such. So he hauled his load through the station and out across the already sun-warmed tracks and gritty ballast to a dispatch shed, to see if he knew anybody on duty there.
He did. One Thumb Thurber, a portly middle-aged cuss whose nickname had fit him since he'd made a mistake with one of those newfangled car couplers, allowed he'd be proud to introduce Longarm to the caboose crew of a northbound rattler that would be leaving within the hour for Cheyenne.
As the two of them stepped back out into the morning sunlight, One Thumb felt obliged to warn Longarm, "Be careful what you say when you meet up with the boys. Most of them are all right. But the company's taken on some hard cases to ride the rattlers in warm weather."
Longarm didn't need to ask what One Thumb was talking about. He traveled by rail enough to know a rattler was a string of empty cars being returned or forwarded to some yard in need of the same. Such trains attracted hobos and plain fool kids the way a shaggy dog in need of a bath attracted fleas. So the spoilsports who ran railroads had three choices. They could securely seal each and every empty car, which took heaps of time at both ends when time could add up to money. Or they could tolerate the 'bos in modest numbers, subject to sensible behavior. Or they could hire extra brake bulls to keep them off or throw them off the empties, standing in the yards or rattling across the great outdoors.
Longarm and more easygoing brakemen were inclined to feel sorry for 'bos and tolerate the ones who refrained from crime, vandalism, and shitting inside the rolling stock. Brake bulls hired to crack down on them were recruited amid natural bullies who enjoyed busting heads with baseball bats. Such gents were inclined to forget their manners around others they hadn't been paid to push around. So Longarm told One Thumb he only wanted a ride to Cheyenne, not any discussions about Indian Policy or Professor Darwin.
As they approached the dusty red caboose of the northbound string of empty cars, the dispatcher said the only one your average sane person had to worry about was a towhead they called the Black Swede just the same. Longarm didn't ask why. Assholes named for famously bad tempers didn't interest him, as long as they left him the hell alone. Longarm had never liked bullies to begin with and hadn't been afraid of them since he'd met up with his first one after school, back home in West-by-God-Virginia. He'd seldom had trouble with the breed since he'd grown up, considerable, with an easy smile and eyes the color of gun muzzles that seldom looked away first.
Nobody had to tell Longarm which of the five railroaders lounging about the caboose was the Black Swede. Aside from being introduced as a Bergman, he stood just under seven feet under his hatless thatch of almost white hair. As One Thumb introduced Longarm all around, it was the Black Swede, rather than the older Irish brakeman, who growled the caboose was already crowded for a dusty run in high summer.
The brakeman, who'd have usually been assumed to be the crewman in charge, shot the Black Swede a thoughtful look but didn't press it. Natural bullies had a sixth sense when it came to knowing just how far they could go with their childish games.
Longarm wasn't up to childish games all the way up to Cheyenne. So he just nodded and said, "He's right. I'd as soon ride lonesome but cooler with this load, up closer to the engine."
Nobody argued. He hadn't expected anyone to demand he crowd in with them. When the Black Swede smirked and asked if he liked to play with himself in the privacy of an empty boxcar, Longarm smiled back just as friendly to reply, "I was hoping you'd suck it for me, seeing you're so interested in another man's dick."
Everybody else laughed. The Black Swede swung down off the steps of the caboose to stand face to face with Longarm, staring down at the tall deputy for a change as he demanded, "Did I just hear somebody call me a cocksucker, little darling?"
Longarm went on smiling up at him as he replied, "I thought I just heard you make such an offer. Mayhaps it would be best if you'd just refrain from any and all suggestions about my cock if you ain't really interested in it."
Black Swede said, "I ain't interested in anything but your big mouth, passenger boy! Didn't your momma never tell you a man could get himself killed by shooting off his mouth around grown men?"
Longarm quietly replied, "You mention my mother one more time and you're the one who'll wind up deader than last summer's cow shit!"
Before the Black Swede could say anything else to make Longarm's eyes grow even colder, One Thumb snapped, "Swede, you're talking to a man packing three guns and a rep for sincerely. Why don't all of you boys get aboard this damn rattler, wherever you want to ride her, so we can send her on her damn way?"
Longarm picked up his awkward load, braced the saddle tree against his left hip to leave his gun hand free, and headed north toward the engine with no further comment.
One Thumb tagged along, saying something about handing orders up to the engine crew. But as soon as they were out of earshot, he muttered, "Jesus H. Christ, Longarm. I asked you to watch your manners around the Black Swede and you called him a cocksucker!"
Longarm shrugged and trudged on as he replied, "I was trying to be polite. You don't talk nice to a man who's just called you a jerk-off. If you let him get away with that, he'll call you something worse, and if you let him get away with that, he'll throw your hat up on the roof."
One Thumb said, "The Black Swede's outgrown that stage. The company don't allow it. But he still packs a Harrington and Richardson double-action belly gun. He's inclined to use it, too. We got him off the Kansas and Missouri, cheap, after he'd shot two 'bos in self-defense, or so he says."
They were passing the open doorway of a boxcar dunnaged with a carpet of clean hay. It smelled as if they'd been shipping kegs of rum. Longarm tossed his heavily laden saddle aboard as he assured the dispatcher he meant to stray nowhere near that caboose or the surly brake bull. So One Thumb wished him luck and went on up to jaw with the engine crew.
Longarm moved his saddle back from the doorway and cleared a space of bare flooring so's it would be safe to smoke a mite as he lounged with one elbow in the saddle. He didn't light up just yet. He had a long ride ahead with a limited quantity of tobacco. He fished some of the carbon copies old Henry at the office had let him have on the little anyone really knew about those Wyoming wildwomen. He'd read through the lot of them already. But he read through them some more as long as he had the time and no draft was fluttering the onionskin paper. By the time the train started up with a plaintive whistle and a rude jerk, he'd decided once again that Billy Vail was sending him on a snipe hunt. He found it tough to believe local, county, and territorial lawmen were party to some fiendish female secret society's evil plot to take over the West. The trouble with vast conspiracies by government officials was that nobody in charge of a whole government needed to behave so sneaky. Men in positions of power had no more call to hide the fact they were running things than a cattle baron or mining magnate had to deny he was rich. El Presidente Diaz down Mexico didn't need to plot against the folk he ruled. He just told them to jump, and if they didn't ask how high, he sent his rurales to shove 'em up against a handy wall and shoot them.