Longarm 397 : Longarm and the Doomed Beauty (9781101545973) Read Online Free PDF Page A

As she smiled with satisfaction at her words, Longarm glimpsed the vibrant blue of her right eye beneath the brim of her cream bonnet marred by a few gray smudges of gray soot from the locomotive’s smokestack and which dusted the hats and shoulders of nearly all the train’s passengers. Esther Anderson blinked once, resolutely and serenely, then turned her head forward and resumed work on the little cap she was knitting for her new grandson.
    The Andersons were on their way to live with their son, daughter-in-law, and newborn grandchild on a horse ranch in Nevada. Over the past six hours, Longarm had heard about the Andersons’ plans and nearly their entire family history, until he’d considered taking his rifle, saddlebags, and war bag, and repairing to the roof of the pitching coach car for a little peace and quiet.
    If there had been a saloon car, he’d have ridden there, his travel lubricated with Maryland rye and a distracting game of cards. But most of these mountain trains were fairly short combinations, as was this one, and there was nothing behind the chugging, smoke-spewing locomotive except a wood tender, two coach cars, a freighter, and caboose.
    â€œHoly moly, though, Mother,” intoned Hansel Anderson, nearly breaking his neck to peer up the twelve-hundred-foot, rocky, sunbaked northern ridge, “it may not be the stairway to heaven, but it’s still dang impressive. Never seen nothin’ like it before in my whole life!”
    Anderson glanced at Longarm. “We don’t have any hills even close to the size o’ them ridges anywhere in Dakota, I tell you, Custis. Leastways, in no part o’ Dakota I ever seen, and I lived there my whole life until just a few weeks ago.”
    The farmer and Longarm had been on a first-name basis for longer than the federal badge toter cared to think about.
    â€œOh, I reckon maybe the snowdrifts get almost that high, I reckon!” Anderson laughed at his joke and thumped his wife on the shoulder again. “Ain’t that right, Mother?”
    The old woman wagged her head agreeably and smiled down at her work. “Oh, Dad!” Anderson snorted raucously and laughed, sort of jumping up and down in his seat.
    â€œEasy there, Anderson,” Longarm urged. “This car ain’t none too solid. You’re liable to derail us, you keep jumpin’ around like a chicken with its head cut off.”
    The big farmer, who had a nose the size and texture of an old ax handle, guffawed as though that were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
    Longarm excused himself, and went out to the rear platform for a smoke, where he enjoyed his hard-won solitude and watched the canyon walls slide by the train that was rolling along at about fifteen miles per hour, if that. They were moving so slowly along the gentle incline of the gorge’s canyon floor that, he mused for lack of anything better to do, he could jump down on off the car, build himself a fishing pole out of string and an aspen stick, dig a worm out from under a rock, and snag a red-throated trout from the glistening waters of the Arkansas river sliding by, about ten feet from the railbed, and still hop the caboose before the train was out of reach.
    He sat with his back against the coach’s rear wall. He smoked, taking a few nips now and then from the hide-covered flask he carried in the pocket of his brown frock coat, his string tie buffeting in the wind. The Royal Gorge was a damn pretty sight with its sandstone walls, the river, and the cobalt-blue sky, the occasional hawk or eagle swooping over the sparkling water whose headwaters were high in the deep mountains.
    But Longarm had seen the gorge and the Arkansas enough times that he now just wished there were an easier, speedier route through the mountains directly west of Denver. He’d heard rumors of a planned east-west tunnel straight through the Continental Divide up around James Peak, but until that