Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

But they didn't pay Longarm to deal with local killings. So he left the killing of O'Hanlon to the Denver P.D. as he toted his saddle and other possibles over to the Burlington yards late in the afternoon. They allowed him six cents a mile traveling alone. So he came out ahead if he traveled free, and that was easier to work out when a good old boy bought a beer now and again for a certain freight dispatcher he usually found a good quarter mile catty-comer from the regular ticket office off the waiting room of the Union Depot.

That was why Longarm left for Cheyenne aboard the caboose of a way freight almost an hour before the passenger train a greenhorn might have to pay his way aboard pulled out. And that was why a hard-eyed gent wearing a new hat but the same .45-55 failed to spot Longarm anywhere amid the folks boarding almost an hour after Longarm had left town.

Way freights, as their name indicated, took their own sweet time as they poked up the line, stopping along the way. So Longarm's free ride was on a siding near Fort Collins, dropping off some bob-wire and ladies' notions, when the passenger train overtook them and roared grandly by. But Longarm didn't care. He'd planned on an overnight stay in Cheyenne with a certain brunette who dwelt alone, and it was smarter to show up with a sack of gumdrops and mayhaps some flowers after supper time.

He felt he was still likely to beat those Eastern dudes to the rail junction at Ogden, west of the Divide, if the

brunette asked him to stay over for the whole weekend. If he was wrong and the party started north into Indian country without him, he'd doubtless catch up with them in a day or so along the trail, knowing a shortcut or more after scouting in the recent Shoshoni Scare.

So once again, without knowing he was doing it, Longarm escaped a swell ambush they'd set up for him in Ogden.

Trisha, the gal he knew in Cheyenne, would have deserved some of the credit, had either of them known what else she was doing for an old pal as she served him home-cooked meals and other delights in bed for a good three nights and two whole days. When he finally boarded his ride to Ogden, walking a mite funny after all that riding, Longarm had no call to suspect someone might be laying for him up ahead. His reasons for dropping off at Huntsville, a few miles east of Ogden, were less devious. After a good tedious rest aboard yet another way freight he was feeling restless, and so, needing to hire some horseflesh in any case, he toted his McClellan and such over to a livery corral within sight of the tracks to see what sort of deal he might make this far from the bright lights of Ogden, with a population as high as two thousand when the herds were in town.

The Mormons who mostly hired horseflesh to other saintly members of their sect didn't cotton to the notion of hiring Longarm any at any price until they tumbled to just who he was. Once they had, they allowed that a dollar a week a head, with no deposit, sounded about right for a gentile lawman in good with the elders of their main temple in Salt Lake. Longarm had dealt firmly but fairly with a wayward Saint or gentile outlaw out this way in the past and, to the relief of many a Mormon, he'd done so without either low-rating their somewhat unusual faith or pretending to believe every word of it. When he allowed that he'd neither smoke inside their city limits nor throw every three-for-a-nickel cheroot away, they allowed that sounded fair, as long as he didn't teach their livestock to chew tobacco or sip tea on the sly.

When he told them where he was headed they agreed he'd make the best time riding one horse and leading a lighter-packed spare. When they suggested a pair of fourteen-hand geldings, one a paint and one a roan, both with obvious cayuse bloodlines, Longarm almost said he could see they knew which end of a pony the shit fell out of. But he never did, because Mormons didn't hold with rough talk either.

He road down Twelve Mile Creek into Ogden aboard the paint and leading the roan, with no trail supplies as yet. He knew that just as it was smarter to hire livestock a ways out of town, it could be dumb to buy trail fodder and canned goods at a country store that paid extra wagon-freight charges from the nearest railroad.

He knew that whether he'd beaten those others to Ogden or vice versa, it made more sense to ask at the Land Office, where he'd been told they'd all wind up. So he naturally rode into town well clear of the railroad depot, and hence had no idea anyone could be waiting for him there with an innocent expression and a brace of Merwin Hulbert horse pistols.

When he strode into the Land Office a snippy young priss pushing pencils for the Bureau of Land Management demanded to know where in thunder he'd been all this time, as if it was any of his business, and said the dudes he'd been detailed to ride with had ridden out the day before, tired of waiting for him and mighty vexed with him as well.