Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

So Longarm took a battered coffeepot out of the feed sack he'd brought down from his room and handed it to the young breed, saying, "If you'd like to fill this pot from the pump out back, I got some Arbuckle Brand coffee here for one and all."

Even the snooty-looking British gal brightened up as Longarm dug deeper, producing the canned goods he'd brought down as well. When she asked how much he wanted for a "tin," as she put it, Longarm told her, "Nobody gets a whole can of nothing, if we mean to make ends meet, ma'am. I got some tin plates in here somewhere, and if we share out these pork and beans, bully beef, sardines, and tomato preserves . . . What are you waiting on, boy? Don't you want no infernal coffee with your breakfast?"

The kid lit out with the pot as if he'd been stuck with a pin. The auburn-headed beauty laughed knowingly and said, "One can see you must have been an officer in your recent Civil War. My father served in the Sepoy Mutiny with the Queen's Own 79th, and do you really eat sardines mixed with corned beef for breakfast in America?"

He hunkered down to get to work with the can-opener blade of his pocket knife as he replied in as amused a tone, "Only when we can't shoot a muskrat or a yummy wolverine for breakfast, ma'am. On occasions such as this you eat what you can get, unless you'd as soon just listen to your innards growl till you can find some filet mignon with an amusing wine."

She sucked in her breath and her green eyes blazed a mite as he continued dryly. "As for your other questions, that war don't seem so recent to those of us who run off to it, young and foolish. I disremember which side I rode with, but I'm sure I was never no officer. I reckon I got used to giving orders later. I've been a trail boss in my time, and for the last six or eight years I've had to order others about as a federal lawman. I'd be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, ma'am."

She said in that case she'd be Dame Flora MacSorley of some glen and some lady-protecting society of some town in Scotland. Then she introduced a homely little sparrow gal sitting farther from the potbelly as her personal maid, and said the middle-aged gent with the muttonchop whiskers and slate-blue Tam o' Shanter hat was named Angus and was a retainer. The old coot ignored Longarm's offer to shake and said something in either Erse or English.

The other middle-aged gent, dressed more sensibly for riding in the high country, was the guide Dame Rora had hired down by Salt Lake. He was a gentile of the Hebrew persuasion called Rhinegold. When Longarm asked if he was any kin to Johnny Ringo, he chuckled and said he'd heard that other Rhinegold might be Jewish but that they'd never met and that he hoped they never would.

The kid came back with the coffeepot. Longarm told him to put it atop the infernal stove if he expected the water to boil. By the time he'd doled out a mixed dish of canned grub tasting just as good, or bad, cold, he had a better notion why Dame Flora hadn't wanted a Mormon guide leading her expedition up to this end of the Mormon Delta.

Glad to learn Longarm was a federal lawman owing no allegiance to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormans called themselves officially, the auburn-haired lady from Scotland confided she was on a mission for her society. Back in Scotland they suspected Mormon harem masters were keeping young Scotch gals as white slaves after luring them out to the Great American Desert with all sorts of big fibs.

Longarm handed out the last tin plate and rose to drop a fistful of ground coffee in the pot atop the stove as he said, "I buy Arbuckle Brand because it's meant for brewing crude along the trail, ma'am. As for Mormons keeping harems of captive white or even red gals out this way, I thought your own famous explorer, Richard Burton of British Intelligence, looked into that for Her Majesty a spell back, whilst Brother Brigham was still alive and living in dubious bliss

with those twenty-seven ladies who'd msirried up with him, willing."

Dame Flora sniffed in a high-toned way and said, "Black Dick Burton is hardly the one I'd trust to investigate dirty old men, after reading his scandalous accounts of Oriental domestic habits. And didn't that twenty-seventh wife escape from the clutches of Brigham Young?"

Longarm shook his head. "Nope. She left him plain and simple with nobody trying to stop her. Then she wrote a book that was scandalous in its own right, and went on the vaudeville stage for a few years, entertaining folks with tales of her mistreatment by a whole mess of dirty old men."