Longarm and the Colorado gundown

_{“But I could do it?” Longarm hadn’t come here to screw the pretty women of Glory. He’d come down here, dammit, with a job to do. In Snowshoe.}

_{The clerk sniffed and refused to answer such a patently silly question.}

_{Longarm thanked the fellow for all his help and ambled outside, where he stood in the slanting early morning sunlight and lighted a cheroot.}

_{A few questions put to a passing railroad brakeman, though, assured him that not everyone in the town of Glory mistook convenience for necessity. This man, a dark-haired little fellow with gaps in his teeth and a happy lilt to his voice, seemed to think it perfectly acceptable that someone might want to walk, climb, or crawl about the countryside without benefit of upholstered benches and dining car service. “Sure thing, mister. Easy t’ get there. Just you follow these tracks back toward the rail-end for, oh, four or five miles till you can look up an’ spot another grade up ’bove you. Then just pick you a spot an’ climb up. Don’t know for sure where their rail-end is right now, but they’d got that far along in their construction when they laid off for the weather last fall. Mayhap e’en all the way through t’ Snowshoe.”}

_{“Is that why neither line is building right now?” Longarm asked. ‘They still haven’t commenced the spring work yet?”}

_{“Me, I’m just a day-money hired man, neighbor. I ain’t paid to do no heavy thinking,” the brakeman said. “But anybody can see right plain that the weather’s broke a month ago an’ better. That makes for an excuse ’bout not having no construction crews yet, but it ain’t no reason. What I hear is that we’ve run outta money. An’ that Bitterroot an’ Brightwater line too, else I’d be up there lookin’ for a job. Hell, I’ll go you one idea more. If anybody was t’ ask me, which nobody has, I’d say that won’t very many o’ these camps survive long if they can’t get rails in to ’em.”}

_“No?”