“We gonna spend some time in Denver City?” York asked.
“Few days. Maybe a week. We both need to get groomed and curried and bathed, and our clothes are kind of shabby-looking.”
“My jeans is so thin my drawers is showin’,” York agreed. “If we goin’ east, I reckon we’re gonna have to get all duded up like dandies, huh?”
“No way,” Smoke’s reply was grim. “I’m tired of pretending to be something I’m not. We’ll just dress like what we are. Westerners.”
York sighed. “That’s a relief. I just cain’t see myself in one of them goofy caps like you wore back in Dead River.”
Smoke laughed at just the thought. “And while we’re here, I’ve got to send some wires. Find out how Sally is doing and find out what’s happened up on the Sugarloaf.”
“Pretty place you got, Smoke?”
“Beautiful. And there’s room for more. Lots of room. You ever think about getting out of law work, York?”
“More and more lately. I’d like to have me a little place. Nothin’ fancy; nothin’ so big me and a couple more people couldn’t handle it. I just might drift up that way once this is all over.”
“You got a girl?”
“Naw. I ain’t had the time. Captain’s been sendin’ me all over the territory ever since I started with the Rangers. I reckon it’s time for me to start thinking about settlin’ down.”
“You might meet you an eastern gal, York.” Smoke was grinning.
“Huh! What would I do with her? Them eastern gals is a different breed of cat. I read about them. All them teas and the like. I got to have me a woman that’ll work right alongside me. You know what ranchin’ is like. Hard damn work.”
“It is that. But my Sally was born back east. Educated all over the world. She’s been to Paris!”
“Texas?”
“France.”
“No kiddin’! I went to Dallas once. Biggest damn place I ever seen. Too damn many people to suit me. I felt all hemmed in.”
“It isn’t like that up in the High Lonesome. I think you’d like it up there, York. We need good stable people like you. Give it some thought. I’ll help you get started; me and Sally.”
“Right neighborly of y’all. Little tradin’ post up ahead. Let’s stop. I’m out of the makin’s.”
While York was buying tobacco, Smoke sat outside, reading a fairly recent edition of a Denver paper. The city was growing by leaps and bounds. The population was now figured at more than sixty thousand.
“Imagine that,” Smoke muttered. “Just too damn many folks for me.”
He read on. A new theatre had been built, the Tabor Grand Opera House. He read on, suddenly smiling. He checked the date of the paper. It was only four days old.
“You grinnin’ like a cat lickin’ cream, Smoke,” York said, stepping out and rolling a cigarette. “What got your funny bone all quiverin’?”
“And old friend of mine is in town, York. And I just bet you he’d like to ride east with us.”
“Yeah? Lawman?”
“Businessman, scholar, gambler, gunfighter.”
“Yeah?” Who might that be?”
“Louis Longmont.”
“By the Lord Harry!” Louis exclaimed, standing up from his table in the swanky restaurant and waving at Smoke. “Waiter! Two more places here, s’il vous plait.”
“What the hell did he say?” York whispered.
“Don’t ask me,” Smoke returned the whisper.
The men all shook hands, Smoke introducing York to Louis. Smoke had not seen Louis since the big shoot-out at Fontana more than a year ago. The man had not changed. Handsome and very sure of himself. The gray just touching his hair at the temples.
Smoke also noted the carefully tailored suit, cut to accommodate a shoulder holster.
Same ol’ Louis.
After the men had ordered dinner—Louis had to do it, the menu being in French—drinks were brought around and Longmont toasted them both.
“I’ve been reading about the exploits of you men,” Louis remarked after sipping his Scotch. York noticed that all their liquor glasses had funny-looking square bits of ice in them, which did make the drink a bit easier on the tongue.
“We’ve been busy,” Smoke agreed.
“Still pursuing the thugs?”
“You know we are, Louis. You would not have allowed your name to appear in the paper if you hadn’t wanted us to find you in Denver.”
York sat silent, a bit uncomfortable with the sparkling white tablecloth and all the heavy silverware—he couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to do; after all, he couldn’t eat but with one fork and one knife, no how. And he had never seen so many duded-up men and gussied-up women in all his life. Even with new clothes on, it made a common fella feel shabby.
“Let’s just say,” Louis said, “I’m a bit bored with it all.”
“You’ve been traveling about?”
“Just returned from Paris a month ago. I’d like to get back out in the country. Eat some beans and beef and see the stars above me when I close my eyes.”
“Want to throw in with us, Louis?”
Louis lifted his glass. “I thought you were never going to ask.”
Smoke and York loafed around Denver for a few days, while Louis wrapped up his business and Smoke sent and received several wires. Sally was fine; the baby was due in two months—approximately.
“What does she mean by that?” York asked, reading over Smoke’s shoulder.
“It means, young man,” Louis said, “that babies do not always cooperate with a timetable. The child might be born within several weeks of that date, before it or after it.”
Louis was dressed in boots, dark pants, gray shirt, and black leather vest. He wore two guns, both tied down and both well-used and well-taken care of, the wooden butts worn smooth with use.
York knew that Louis Longmont, self-made millionaire and world-famous gambler, was a deadly gunslinger. And a damn good man to have walkin’ with you when trouble stuck its head up, especially when that trouble had a six-gun in each hand.
“Do tell,” York muttered.
“What’s the plan, Smoke?” Louis asked.
“You about ready to pull out?”
“Is tomorrow morning agreeable with you?”
“Fine. The sooner the better. I thought we’d take our time, ride across Kansas; maybe as far as St. Louis if time permits. We can catch a train anywhere along the way. And by riding, we just might pick up some information about Davidson and his crew.”
“Sounds good. Damn a man who would even entertain the thought of harming a child!”
“We pull out at dawn.”
Sally had not shown her family all the wires she’d received from Smoke. She did not wish to alarm any of them, and above all, she did not wish to alert the local police as to her husband’s suspicions about Davidson and his gang traveling east after her and the baby. Her father would have things done the legal way—ponderous and, unknowing to him, very dangerous for all concerned. John had absolutely no idea of what kind of man this Rex Davidson was.
But Sally did. And Smoke could handle it, his way. And she was glad Louis and York were with him.
York just might be the ticket for Martha out of the East and into the still wild and wide-open West. He was a good-looking young man.
The servant answered the door and Martha entered the sitting room. Sally waved her to a chair with imported antimacassars on the arms and back. The day was warm, and both women fanned themselves to cool a bit.
“I was serious about going west, Sally.”
“I thought as much. And now,” she guessed accurately, “you want to know all about it.”
“That’s right.”
Where to start? Sally thought. And how to really explain about the vastness and the emptiness and the magnificence of it all?
Before she could start, the door opened again, and this time the room was filled with small children: Sally’s nieces and nephews and a few of their friends.