Chapter 1
“Hey, Mr. Longstreet.”
Hearing his name, Morgan Longstreet broke stride.
He avoided trampling eleven-year-old Finn Collins because the boy was as slippery as quicksilver and scuttled sideways at the last possible moment.
Morgan looked down and gave him a brief nod.
His acknowledgement was not meant to invite conversation, but Finn did not appear to understand that.
The boy pivoted and loped beside Morgan, matching his pace across the platform to the station.
“Don’t see you much at the station,” said Finn. He glanced over his shoulder at the buckboard waiting at the end of the platform. “And you brought your wagon. I’m figurin’ you’re takin’ delivery of somethin’ pretty big. Am I right?”
Morgan ignored the overture and realized after the fact that it was the wrong tack to take.
Finn repeated himself, this time loudly enough to be heard by the couple standing ten yards down the platform.
Their heads swiveled in his direction. It took Morgan a moment to place the pair.
He was not used to seeing George and Abigail Johnson away from the mercantile they owned.
He touched the brim of his hat and nodded once.
Petite Abigail Johnson smiled fulsomely while George raised his hand in greeting.
Morgan was satisfied, even grateful, that the exchange ended there.
Morgan gauged the distance to the rail station’s entrance and lengthened his stride.
He turned sharply when he reached the door.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Finn make another artful dodge to keep himself from being bowled over.
Morgan could feel the boy dogging his heels right up to the counter.
“Afternoon,” Jefferson Collins said. The station agent raised himself a few inches above the stool he was sitting on, leaned over the counter, and extended an arm around Morgan Longstreet to grasp a handful of his grandson’s shirt and pull him sideways.
“You think I can’t see you hiding behind Mr. Longstreet?
What are you fussin’ at the man for, Finn? ”
“I wasn’t fussin’.”
Morgan looked down at Finn and saw the boy was regarding him hopefully, anticipating perhaps that there would be support for his denial. He promised himself he would make it up to Finn some other time. Today, Morgan said nothing.
Mr. Collins released Finn’s shirt, smoothed the material over the boy’s shoulder, and gave him a light swat. “’Course you weren’t. Go on outside. Find your brother and make yourself useful to Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. Their son will have bags, maybe a trunk. Mind you don’t get underfoot.”
“But I—”
The station agent stopped the protest with a stern look and pointed toward the door.
Finn hung his head and heaved a sigh. Mr. Collins was unmoved.
He kept his arm extended and his fingerpost firmly in place until Finn shuffled out.
When the door closed, he sat back on his stool, adjusted his spectacles, and sighed almost as heavily as his grandson.
“He’s a trial, Mr. Longstreet. Growing like a weed, but still a trial.”
Morgan thought he heard more affection than complaint. He shrugged. “It’s been remarked the same about me.” It was his recollection that there had been more complaint and less affection.
Mr. Collins nodded. “I reckon it’s a universal truth about boys. We are all of us trials.” He set his folded hands on top of the counter. “What can I do for you, Mr. Longstreet? Don’t often have the chance to inquire how I can help. You’re still a stranger to town.”
Morgan ignored this last observation and spoke only to the question. “Is the train running on time?”
“Since you’re standing here now, I suppose you’re asking about the two-forty train and not the one that passes through at eight.”
“Yes. The two-forty.”
The station agent checked his pocket watch.
“You’ve got twenty minutes, Mr. Longstreet.
Last communication was about an hour ago.
No reason to expect No. 486 is going to be anything but on time.
” He pointed to the long bench in front of the window.
“You’re welcome to wait there. I offered the same to George and Abby, but they’re too excited to sit.
They’ve been waiting since one thirty just in case the train arrived early.
Son’s coming home from college. That’s something, I can tell you.
Buster coming home and being a college graduate.
Only one other person in Bitter Springs with that kind of education. ”
Morgan watched Mr. Collins’s prominent Adam’s apple bob as the agent took a deliberate pause and swallowed.
Morgan supposed he was expected to ask after the identity of the only other person in Bitter Springs who could claim an alma mater, but he decided against posing the question.
It would make him seem interested, and he wasn’t.
He also figured that Collins would tell him anyway, and he was right.
Bitter Springs was the kind of town where you learned things whether or not you wanted to know them, and guarding secrets required the kind of vigilance that wore at a man’s soul. Morgan was better than content to live outside the town proper.
“That’d be the schoolteacher,” Mr. Collins said, filling the silence. “Mrs. Bridger. The marshal’s wife. But then, you probably guessed that.”
Morgan thought he might actually prefer Finn’s fussing to the station agent’s familiarity.
He made a quarter turn so he could see the platform.
The Johnsons had not moved. Morgan did not like his choices.
There was the rock, and then there was the hard place.
Stepping outside almost guaranteed Buster’s proud parents would lasso him, while staying at the counter meant he would remain Mr. Collins’s captive.
He did not want to sit, but the bare bench was looking more inviting.
“I think I’ll wait over there,” he said, lifting his chin toward the window.
“Suit yourself.”
Morgan sat and struck a casual, even negligent pose.
He leaned back against the window, stretched his legs, and tugged on the narrow brim of his pearl gray Stetson so that it shaded his eyes.
If Mr. Collins read the signs meant to deter further conversation, he ignored them.
Morgan sighed inaudibly when he heard the station agent draw a breath.
“You know my grandsons would have been happy to take your delivery out to the Burdick place. You could have saved yourself a trip to town.”
“It’s that kind of thinking that keeps me a stranger,” Morgan said.
“How’s that again?”
“It’s not the Burdick place any longer.”
Mr. Collins frowned. “Did I say that? Didn’t mean to. Takes a while to get used to, the Burdicks bein’ gone and all. Only been three years. And you’re the second owner since the property was sold at auction. Reckon it’ll be the Burdick place until folks know you’re the sticking kind.”
“I’m sticking.”
“Saying so doesn’t make it so.”
Morgan recognized the hard truth in that.
The Burdicks were early settlers to Bitter Springs, arriving as the railroad was being built.
The rails moved on, so did most of the men, but those who stayed behind saw opportunities.
Uriah Burdick had been a cattle rancher who benefited from the proximity of his spread to the new depot.
The way Morgan understood it, Burdick had acquired land and power in equal measure until his ranch was the largest in the southeastern quarter of the Wyoming Territory.
His influence extended beyond the bank, the land office, and the marshal’s jurisdiction and marked a clear trail to Washington.
For all intents and purposes, Uriah Burdick and his three sons had been the law in Bitter Springs for more than twenty years.
When the Burdicks were finally driven off like so much cattle, the spread was taken over by a consortium of eastern speculators.
They lost interest when they were unable to acquire an important government contract for water rights and hydraulic construction.
Morgan did not care about that. He was able to purchase the spread for well below the original asking price, below even what the speculators had paid for it.
Under the management of the speculators’ foreman, the ranch acquired the legal name Long Bar B.
It was a name of convenience since it meant adding only a single bar to the B brand that the Burdicks used.
As far as Morgan could tell, no one ever called the ranch the Long Bar B.
It wasn’t clear that many people knew the Burdick place had a new name.
What was clear was that it didn’t matter.
Morgan figured that at twenty-nine, he had maybe another twenty-five or thirty years to prove that he was the sticking kind.
He would need every one of them. In all likelihood, his ranch would not be known as Morning Star until he was buried under it.
Mr. Collins tapped his thumbs together. “Must be a special mail order to bring you around.”
“Must it?”
“I have a suspicion that you don’t like coming to town.”
Morgan shrugged. He didn’t dislike it. Mostly he would rather be doing something else.
“So what are you waiting for?” Mr. Collins checked his pocket watch again. “In ten minutes.”
“Just what you think. Mail order.”
“From Chicago.”
“From New York.”
The station agent whistled softly. “We take a lot of orders shipped from Chicago, St. Louis, even Philadelphia. New York is just about as rare these days as Paris, France. ’Course we do take delivery of books from Mr. Coltrane.
He sends them regular. You heard of Nat Church?
Whole series of dime novels about his adventures. Everyone in town reads them.”
“Read them at the ranch, too.”
“Is that right? Well, we get them from New York.”