Longarm and the Colorado gundown

_{“Kinda thought you might, neighbor. Be here a half hour past dawn tomorrow. ’Less you wanta wait another day, that is. Be all right if you want t’ do that, see. Once you have your ticket you can hold onto it to use whenever you please.”}

_{The man was genial. Friendly. Pleasant. Cheerful. Helpful. Nice as nice could be.}

_{Longarm felt an impulse to take the fellow by the throat and throttle him. “Dawn tomorrow will be fine,” he said just as nicely as he knew how.}

_{Longarm had never been bound for Glory before. And the times he’d heard the expression used in the past, well, this wasn’t exactly what he’d envisioned it would come to.}

_{He suspected that at least part of his morning doubts came from last night’s disappointments. There hadn’t been a decent rye whiskey available anyplace in Silver Creek— though he’d sure as hell searched the saloons of the town just as diligently and sincerely as ever a man could hope to—and the bed he’d taken at one of the hotels had turned out to be lumpy. Also empty. Longarm had ended up going to bed half drunk and wholly homy, and his discontent from last night was carrying over into this morning’s grumpiness.}

_{He gave the mule-drawn wagon a baleful look. The rig was old and rickety and might give faithful service for the next twenty years. Or it might just as easily fall to pieces five miles down the road. The four mules that were hitched to it were small and scruffy, built more on the lines of house cats than draft stock, and made all the poorer to look at from the fact that their heavy coats from last winter hadn’t yet fully shed off, so that now they were slick-skinned in some spots and hairy in others. The overall impression of the animals was that if there were any steep grades ahead, the passengers likely would have to get out and carry the mules.}

_{As for other passengers waiting for this trip to commence, there seemed to be three, not counting Longarm, two men in business suits plus a lady who was hiding behind}

_{a wide-brimmed hat and heavy veil. And there was the driver, of course. Total of five humans going to Glory.}

_{All of them, the driver included, were standing around like they were waiting for somebody to take charge, even though the stated departure time had come and then gone fifteen minutes ago.}