“I guess that’s all the business you and I have got to deal with,” he told Stone. “You don’t owe me a thing; I don’t owe you. That being the case, I’ll take a swallow of that rye now, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “No, by God, it’s not all the same to me!” Stone snarled. He picked up the almost-full bottle of special rye and threw it across the car. The bottle shattered on the paneling with a crash, and the scent of rye whiskey spread through the car.

  Mae Bonner ran in through the door that led to the staterooms. “What on earth—?” She sniffed. “Somebody spilled whiskey.”

  “Will you get back to wherever you came from, Mae? And keep your stupid damn comments to yourself!” Stone’s voice was bitter.

  Longarm saw that it was time for him to go. He said, “I’ll let you two quarrel in private. Glad we could finish our business so fast, Stone. Now I’ll bid you goodnight.”

  * * *

  Later, after two or three drinks of regular bottled rye at the Cattleman’s, he tried to convince himself that it was all for the best that Stone had broken the bottle.

  A few more drinks of that special stuff, old son, his thoughts ran, and you’d purely lose your taste for this kind. And this kind is about all you’ll ever be able to drink regular.

  Pushing through the batwings when he left the saloon shortly before midnight, Longarm’s first thought was that it was Madame Karsovana who called his name from the shadows on the dark side of the saloon. He stopped, trying to think up an apology for having left her so abruptly, and his relief was mingled with surprise when he saw that it was Mae Bonner who’d called to him.

  “Marshal Long! Please, I need to talk to you.”

  “Why, sure.” He held out his arm. “We’ll just talk while we go up the street. Nobody’s around to hear us, or if somebody is, he’ll be too drunk to pay any attention to what we say.”

  “Don’t make a joke of it, Marshal, please. I think I’m in terrible trouble.”

  Longarm saw that the girl was trembling. He became serious at once. “What kind of trouble?”

  “I just killed Oren.”

  “I won’t ask you are you joshing; I can see you ain’t. Where is he?”

  “I left him in the railroad car. I couldn’t stay there a minute with his—his body.”

  “Maybe you better tell me what happened,” he suggested.

  “Well—” Mae began, then stopped abruptly, unable to say anything more.

  “You and him get into a fight of some kind?” Longarm prompted her. “You were beginning to fuss when I left. I guess it got worse.”

  “A lot worse. Oren kept drinking, and the more he drank, the meaner he got. He—” Mae gulped and went on, speaking more coherently, “I suppose you’ve guessed that, well, that Oren wasn’t just my boss, that I was—”

  “You were his lady friend, is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “Yes. It just seemed to happen, after I’d been working for him for two or three months. That was about a year ago. For a while everything was all right, then he began to snap at me, curse at me sometimes. You heard him tonight. And a few nights ago, he—” Mae stopped short again.

  Longarm supplied the words for her. “He beat you up. I saw the bruise on your face, remember?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t the first time he’d hit me lately, but it was the worst. Then, after you left tonight, he really beat me.”

  Longarm looked at her closely, but the street was too dark for him to see anything more than a light-hued blur where her face was.

  Mae went on hesitantly, “I told him I wasn’t going to stay in the parlor with him any longer, and went to my room. He came in after I’d gone to sleep. He wanted to—well, he started to get in bed with me, after I’d refused to go back to his room with him. I got away from him and he chased me. I saw this big skillet when I went through the galley, and picked it up and hit him on the head with it as hard as I could.”

  “And then what?” Longarm asked, when she stopped talking.

  “Then he fell down. I couldn’t stay there. I dressed and came to town. You were the only one I could think of who’d help me. I asked at the hotel, but you hadn’t come in, so I looked in the saloons. When I saw you, I had to wait until you came out, of course.”

  “I see. Well now, I’ll tell you what. Supposing I take you up to my room, and you lay down and rest while I go out and see what it looks like at the railroad car. We’ll talk about what to do when I come back.”

  “If you’re sure it’s all right—”

  “It’s all right. Now come along.”

  * * *

  An hour later, when Longarm let himself into his room, Mae was lying fully clothed on his bed in the deep sleep that follows physical and emotional exhaustion. The lamp on the bureau was still burning. Longarm shook her gently by the shoulder.

  “What—?” She shuddered as memory flooded back. “Oh, God! Tell me, however bad it is, Marshal.”

  “It ain’t bad. Stone’s as alive as you and me. Not as wide awake, though. I’d say he’s more drunk than hurt, but he’s got a goose egg-sized bump on his head that won’t go away for a while.”

  “I didn’t, kill him, then? Oh, thank God! Did he say anything?”

  “He didn’t even wake up. I just left everything the way it was, and came on back. I figured he’ll sort things out when he comes to.”

  Mae sighed. “Well, I certainly feel better, even if I am out of a job and don’t know what I’ll do in a town like Junction,”

  “You wouldn’t want to stay here. There wouldn’t be any of the kind of work a smart girl like you does.”

  “I don’t know just how smart I am,” she said with a twisted smile. “I don’t have a dime, and the only clothes I came away with are the ones Í have on.”

  “Didn’t Stone pay you?”

  “Oh, sure. In a way. When we settled into our—well, our personal arrangement, he said he’d keep track of my wages. I just drew money for the expenses of the car—you know, food, liquor, things like that, out of the cash he kept on hand.”

  “How much do you figure he owes you in back salary?”

  Mae shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s—well, he stopped paying me about seven months ago.”

  “Paid you pretty well, did he?”

  “More than most male stenographers make. Fifteen dollars a week. And of course I didn’t have any living expenses as long as—well, until tonight.”

  “That’d mount up to a pretty good sum. Let’s see . . .”

  Before Longarm could multiply in his head, Mae gave him the answer. “Seven months at fifteen dollars a week would be four hundred and fifty dollars, Marshal.”

  Longarm reached into the deep side pocket of his coat and produced a handful of paper-wrapped coin rolls. Mae leaped off the bed and came up to him, her mouth agape.

  “I figured five hundred,” Longarm said. “That’s what I’ve got here, five rolls of gold eagles. Call the extra fifty a bonus, or to pay for the clothes you left behind.” He handed Mae the rolled coins. “Now you won’t have to go back to Stone for your back pay.”

  “You took this money out of his safe!” she gasped. “Isn’t that stealing?”

  “Not as long as it was money he owed you. I wrote him out a receipt and put it in the safe. Anyhow, I didn’t have to open the safe. He’d forgotten to close it up.”

  “Well—” Mae looked at the money. “You don’t know what this means to me, Marshal. I just don’t know how I can thank you!”

  “There’s one way I can think of without a bit of trouble.”

  Mae looked at him for a long moment, her mouth slowly turning down at the corners. Then, with a shrug, she said, “I don’t suppose, it matters much whether it’s you or Oren Stone.” Her hand went to the collar of her dress and she began to undo the buttons.

  Longarm took Mae’s wrist and pulled her hand away from the button placket. “Sex ain’t what I was getting at. Not that I don’t enjoy it, but I never did expect a woman to pay me in bed for anything I did to help her.”

  “Oh,” Mae sighed. “After Oren Stone, I guess I’ve got a pretty low opinion of men. Go on, Marshal. Tell me what I can do for you.”

  “You’ve been with Stone about a year. You must’ve heard a lot of his business talks, and I guess you wrote letters for him too.”

  “Of course. That’s what he hired me for. The personal part didn’t start for a while. But I told you that. And even after it did, he didn’t let me off any of the work I was supposed to do.”

  “A man like him wouldn’t. Well, what I want you to do, Mae, is to tell me everything you know about why a big important broker like Stone was so interested in this little jerkwater place where there’s not enough wheat grown to make a bit of difference to the price-rigging that goes on among the speculators in Chicago.”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. Oren and the few wheat pit operators who were in on Stone’s deal have kept it a pretty tight secret. And those poor rubes around Junction, the Brethren, or whatever they call themselves, they don’t know either, I guess.”

  “But you do?”

  “Certainly,” she replied. “Well. Let’s sit down, Marshal. It’s something of a long story.”

  Longarm sat in the chair by the bureau, within easy reach of the rye bottle, and lighted a cheroot. Mae looked around for another chair, didn’t find one, and sat down on the side of the bed.

  “I didn’t know any more than any other city girl about wheat, when I started to work for Oren,” she began. “Do you know how many kinds of wheat there are, Marshal?”

  “Sure, spring wheat and winter wheat.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean varieties.” When Longarm shook his head, Mae went on, “I’m not sure I remember the names of all of them. Some I do, like Calcutta and Fife and Vilmorin and Lund, but there are others besides those.”

  “Turkey Red?” Longarm suggested.

  “You do know!” she exclaimed. “What kind of game are you playing with me, Marshal?”

  “It’s not a game, I guarantee you, Mae. It just happens I know about Turkey Red wheat because the Brethren told me. But about all I know is the name, and that it’ll grow in the kind of short summers they have in these parts.”

  “Not only in these parts,” Mae said. “It’ll mature in Nebraska, Dakota Territory, Montana, Wyoming Territory, and Utah Territory—just about anywhere in the entire West. That’s why it’s so important to the speculators who operate on the Grain Exchange, and to the cattlemen. Except Turkey Red, there’s no other variety of wheat anybody knows about that will make a crop where wheat’s never been grown before.”

  Longarm frowned. “I still don’t see what makes it so special.”

  “Think about it, Marshal. The West’s mostly open cattle range, and the cattlemen want to keep it that way. Under the Homestead Act, any farmer tired of scratching out a living in the East can plant Turkey Red on his quarter-section, and make a living. What’s that going to do to the cattle range, when the word spreads that there’s a wheat that will do that?”

  Slowly, Longarm nodded. “Sure. All those people scratching out a living, from little hard-scrabble farms, twenty or thirty acres, are going to want to get into wheat farming. If enough of them move West, the cattle range is going to be fenced in after awhile, just like it is now around Junction.”

  “Not only that,” Mae said. “The speculators can make a lot of money in the wheat pit now because crops aren’t dependable from one year to the next. Bad weather sends wheat prices up. Good weather brings them down. They know that if Turkey Red wheat makes it possible for thousands and thousands more acres of land to be planted in wheat, those price fluctuations are going to even out. Maybe if enough wheat’s planted in places where it can’t be grown now, there might not be any more wild price changes overnight.”

  “So Stone found out about the Turkey Red, and set out to—what do they call it when somebody buys up all of everything?”

  “Corner the market. Yes. Stone and a few of his cronies set out to corner the market in Turkey Red wheat. And this is the only place it’s grown, except for one little farm run by a German fellow named Schmidt, up near Fort Leavenworth. And Schmidt won’t sell any of his crop.”

  Longarm nodded. “It all begins to make sense now. Including why Clem Hawkins and Stone were working together. Neither one of ’em wanted the Turkey Red seed to get out and be spread around.”

  “That’s right. These nesters here don’t know what a gold mine they’re sitting on. Oren and Hawkins didn’t want them to find out.”

  “Well, I feel better, now that I know.” He didn’t mention that the Brethren also knew.

  “I feel better too,” Mae said. “Like I’ve gotten back at Oren at least a little bit for what he did to me. Of course, I don’t have any idea where I’ll go, or how I’ll get there.”

  “I’ll see that you get out of here without any trouble,” Longarm promised. “I can fix it up for you to go out on one of the cattle trains that’ll be starting to roll to Dodge in a few days. From there, you can go on to just about anyplace you want to. Of course, you’ll have to ride the caboose, instead of that fancy private car you came here in, but I don’t reckon you’ll mind that.”

  “I certainly won’t.” Mae hesitated. “Can I ask another favor of you now, Marshal?”

  “Ask ahead.”

  “I’m as nervous right now as a cat with new kittens. I’ll get a room here in the hotel tomorrow, but—do you mind if I stay with you tonight? Not—well, you know what I mean, just stay for company? I can sleep on the floor or in the chair. I don’t want to take your bed away from you.”

  “You’re welcome to the bed,” Longarm told her. “My bedroll’s over in the corner there, I’ll just spread it for myself. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve used it on a floor, it won’t bother me a bit.”

  “If you’re sure . . .”

  “I’m sure.”

  Sometime during the night, Longarm woke up. The room reverberated with a noise like a bunch of Comanches on the warpath. He wondered if some of Stone’s irritation with Mae might not have been caused by the girl’s snoring. Pulling the blanket up over his ears, Longarm rolled over and went back to sleep.

  Chapter 16

  Sitting on the roan in the narrow alleyway between two of the Santa Fe’s shipping-out corrals, Longarm watched the Lazy Y hands roust the last dozen or so bawling steers into the loading chute. Across the way, on the other side of the corral, the cattle broker who had bid high on the herd was settling up with Charlie Bell, the Lazy Y’s owner. The snow was beginning to fall more thickly now, and the wind from the North Pole whistled in a higher pitch than it had, through the slat fences of the corrals.

  Longarm had been there since the first of the Lazy Y’s market herd had started trickling in, just before noon. His feet were cold, and his hands, exposed to the freezing air, were colder. Gloves were out of the question in a job like the one he’d assigned himself. There wasn’t any way of knowing when—or even whether—he’d see what he was looking for, or recognize it if he saw it.

  What he was looking for, of course, were the other three or four men who’d taken part in that night-riding spree Prud Simmons had organized. Since Prud’s death, there’d been no more night-riders out harassing the homesteaders, but the ones who had taken part in the fracas in which he’d been shot were probably still among the hands on the ranches dotting the prairie around Junction.

  Chances were, Longarm had concluded after studying things out, that those men were all cut from pretty much the same cloth Prud had been.

  Some of them might, like Prud, be fugitives with wanted circulars out on them, and Longarm had put in a lot of time at Sheriff Grover’s office studying the fliers that had come in from all over the country. Even with the descriptions he’d read, added to those he carried in his memory from fliers he’d looked at in the office in Denver, he wasn’t sure he’d recognize any of the wanted men if he saw them. A lot of the descriptions were pretty sketchy. On the other hand, there hadn’t been any certainty that he wouldn’t spot a bad apple or two among the temporary hands. If he was going to do anything at all, though, he thought he’d better do it while the crews from the ranches were all in Junction for the shipping-out. Once the cattle had been loaded, their jobs with the ranches would be finished, and they’d scatter.

  He’d weighed the chances and decided it would be time well-spent. He had little to do now before election day. Oren Stone’s private car had been coupled to an engine and was gone. Mae Bonner had left a day before Stone, riding the caboose behind another of the work engines assigned to the tedious job of car-spotting. After his abrupt departure from Ilioana Karsovana’s room, she’d showed an icy face to Longarm on the three or four occasions when they’d met on the street or in the restaurant. In fact, he hadn’t seen the Russian woman for the last couple of days, or her coachman, either.

  Until today, Longarm’s hours spent at the corrals hadn’t been bad. The weather had been fine, a prairie autumn, never hot enough to raise a sweat, never cold enough to bring up goose bumps. That had changed about midnight, though. He’d felt the cold seeping into his hotel room and had burrowed deeper under the cover. When he looked out of his room’s single narrow window a little after dawn, a few snowflakes had begun to drift down, but so far the snow had fallen in fits and starts, not enough to hamper work at the corrals.