Longarm

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One gray Monday morning it was trying to rain in Denver. A herd of wet Texas clouds had followed the Goodnight Trail north, tripped on the Arkansas Divide, and settled down to sweat itself away in the thin atmosphere of the mile-high capital of Colorado.

In the Union Yards a Burlington locomotive sobbed a long, lonesome whistle as Longarm awoke in his furnished room a quarter of a mile away.

For perhaps a full minute, Longarm stared up from the sagging brass stead at the smoke-begrimed plaster. Then he threw the cover off and swung bare feet to the threadbare gray carpet and rose, or, rather, loomed in the semidarkness of the little corner room. Longarm knew he was tall. He knew he moved well. He didn’t understand the effect his catlike motions had on others. His friends joshed about a man his size “spooking livestock and making most men thoughtful with them sudden moves of his.” But Longarm only thought it natural to get from where he’d been to where he was going by the most direct route. He was not a man who did things by halves. A man was either sleeping or a man was up, and right now he was up.

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