Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

He drifted out to the front desk, lighting a cheroot in hopes of staving off starvation till he could find somewhere else or, failing that, open a can of pork and beans up in his room. The big lobby, which doubled as a waiting room for the stage line, was a tad less clammy, thanks to a thoughtful fire of snapping and hissing pine logs in the big potbellied stove they'd planted smack in the middle of the cavernous space. Four earlier risers were seated around the potbelly. The only one worth looking at twice looked at least as hungry and twice as sore as Longarm. After that she was a high-toned beauty in a sidesaddle riding habit of loden green that made her auburn hair look more so. She wore that upswept, under a perky black derby held in such a precarious position by the veil that covered her cameo features as far down as her perky nose. As he stood there admiring her from the doorway with his morning hard-on,

she favored him with a frosty smile and asked if he worked for Overland. Her accent was hoity-toity British, and her tone was so cold he was glad he could deny the charge.

Once he had, he said, "I'm in the market for a good breakfast as well, ma'am. There ain't nobody in the kitchen, this morning. I ain't tried to jfind the manager yet. So why don't you all sit tight and I'll let you know as soon as I find out what's happened."

Neither the gal in green nor her drabber fellow travelers put up any argument. So Longarm ambled over to the desk by the front entrance, banged on the bell a few times, and when that failed to get results, strode through a far archway, yelling for some damned service. At that the room clerk from the night before stuck a bald head out his door to protest, "What's all this racket? Ain't Zelda minding the damned front as well as the dining room? It ain't as if this place gets all that busy this side of the evening stage, you know."

Noting the poor confused cuss was still wearing his nightshirt in the chill morning air, Longarm explained, "Ain't nobody here but five hungry guests, including me. Am I safe in assuming your missing mess staff might not be on the Overland payroll as regular help?"

The clerk nodded. "You are. I'm the manager here, and I make all the arrangements. Overland is interested in moving mail, freight, and passengers in that order. Feeding the sons of bitches has never been too profitable. So the company would as soon let others worry about that, on concession contracts. What might that have to do with the Robbins family running out on us so unexpected?"

Longarm asked more about the missing bunch, and established they were talking about Zelda, a half-wit they said was her brother, and an aunt and uncle named Robbins. Then he said, "It must have been guilty conscience, compounded by my unexpected willpower most likely. Miss Zelda's brother ain't the only dumb one in the family. But now that I think back, I ain't sure what she told me was

the only federal offense they were worried about. I wonder what I'd have found out if I'd spent a tad more time with that dishwater blonde they tried to tempt me with."

Then he took another drag on his almost-spent cheroot, shrugged, and added, "Be that as it may, they've lit out somewhere and it's past my usual breakfast time. So might there be another restaurant open at this hour in your fair city?"

The Overland man, being another gentile, felt free to laugh and make sneering reference to the odds on that in a close-knit little Mormon settlement. "Up to just a few minutes ago I'd have said this was the only place in Zion you could ask for coffee with your ham and eggs, or smoke afterwards. The local Mormons have their own places to eat all the meals a Mormon would want. They eat at home. Gentiles passing through have always eaten here. So I'll be switched if I can tell you where me and my Lulu are going to have breakfast once we get up."

Longarm asked about the stable help. He wasn't surprised to learn all but one of them were Mormons who doubtless ate at home whenever the spirit moved them. He sent the manager back to bed with his Lulu and went up to his own room to gather some makings before he went back down to the main room, where the original four others had been joined by a confounded-looking breed kid in overalls. Longarm asked the kid if he was a stable hand. When the kid allowed he was and asked where Uncle Pete Robbins had run off to, Longarm smiled and decided, "You'd know better than me whether they left serious by wagon or light on ponies, old son."

The kid said he hadn't seen them leaving. A Mormon hand had been the first to notice, just a few minutes ago, when he'd stopped by the kitchen on his own way to work that morning. The breed kid said the Robbins family lived on the outskirts of town, and that he just didn't know that much about any riding or rolling stock they might have had handy at home.