by Tabor Evans
He said, "I like you too, Miss Ruby, and I mean that sincerely. I never said I didn't want to go to bed with you. I only said I had a mess of chores to tend to."
She said, "I'll bet. I just said I admired the polite way you got exactly where you wanted to go, with no straying from your very own determined course. Did you think I was inviting you up to one of the cribs in the... hotel I usually work in?"
He shook his head and said, "I know all sorts of ladies like to keep their own private notions in their very own quarters, ma'am. I ain't all that pure. I've made all sorts of friends along the way, and one of 'em was that very Colorado gal of easy virtue I was speaking of back yonder. They called her Silver Heels up in hardrock country. Some say she was a miner's young widow, whilst others say she wound up doing what she had to do because some worthless rascal ran off and left her stranded in a mountain mining camp."
Ruby leaned closer, as if someone might overhear her above the clopping hoofbeats in the middle of a deserted street, as she told Longarm, "She was either out to punish herself, or punish some man who'd betrayed her former true nature, or she just plain liked it. Nobody can turn a gal wicked against her will, no matter how she might lie to you men afterwards."
Longarm noticed some thoughtful souls, likely old-time Mexicans, had planted cottonwood, or alamo as they called it, along either side of the wagon trace outside of town. Cottonwood grew fast, but he figured it had been planted a while back, judging by how the fluttering leaves of the overhead branches shaded clean across the road in places while providing at least dappled sunlight most everywhere else. He really liked thoughtful souls. So thinking back to how a soiled dove called Silver Heels had turned out, he told Ruby the bittersweet story of a sister in sin as they drove on through the uncertain light.
Silver Heels, so called for the silver heels of her dancing shoes because she refused to give her real name, had been making money hand over fist as the prettiest and some said friskiest whore in a mining camp that varied some with the teller of the tale. But everyone who told it, one way or another, agreed it was smallpox, breaking out in mid-winter when the trails were closed, that made things get grim as all hell. Some said there was no doc in town at all. Others said there might have been, but not unlike Norma Richards, he'd been overwhelmed by the plague, and so Silver Heels had pitched in alone to help. In either case, it had been that one lone whore, working round the clock serving soup and cleaning the fevered, pussy bodies of half the folks in camp, who'd saved the fifty or sixty percent who'd come through alive. So later on, the grateful miners had picked out a particularly pretty peak and named it Mount Silver Heels. Longarm assured this other good-natured whore, "There's no doubt about where Mount Silver Heels is today. You can find it on any large-scale map of Colorado."
"Where might the real Silver Heels be found today?" asked Ruby in a pensive tone.
Longarm shrugged. "Nobody knows. She just left the hardrock country with the smallpox and the next spring thaw. You hear some say she had to quit whoring because her pretty little face had been scarred up hideously by the pox she caught helping so many others fight off. Others say she married a miner who'd struck it so rich he could afford to keep her and her frisky favors all to himself. I've even heard tell that today the former Silver Heels is a respectable and highly respected young matron of Denver high society."
"What's the truth, Custis?" Ruby asked, as if she felt sure he'd know.
He did, and it was a sin to lie when you didn't have to. So he told her, "Let's just say her story had an ending a lady asked me not to tell anyone else. My point was that a nice gal is a nice gal, no matter what others may think of her."
Ruby told him he was awfully nice too, and snuggled closer as Longarm drove on through the dotted line of sunlight and shadows. When he suddenly reined in, Ruby sat up with a start to gaze all about and ask why. They'd passed the last corn milpas north of town, and the tree-shaded wagon trace was surrounded by spartina reeds to seaward and thickets of gumbo-limbo saplings on the higher ground to their left. When Ruby asked why they'd stopped, pointing out the Coast Guard station was almost in sight ahead, Longarm told her, "I know where we are. You could doubtless see the station from here if it wasn't for all those cottonwoods and the way this wagon trace curves just enough to follow the natural lay of the land. I'm a lot more concerned about the way we've just come. I thought I heard some other hoofbeats behind us. But when I reined in just now, somebody else might have too!"
She leaned out her side to peer back around the oilcloth cover, saying, "I don't see anybody, Custis. Even if I did, this is hardly a private road, is it?"
To which he replied more soberly, "Innocent travelers on a public thoroughfare don't stop at least two furlongs back when someone out ahead reins in. So let's see if we can skin this cat some other way."
She assumed they were going on to the nearby Coast Guard station when Longarm clucked the bay forward some more but kept a tighter hold on the ribbons to just walk them along the wagon trace a ways. Then, leaning out his own side first, he swung them off through the rank Bermuda grass between the cottonwood holes, apparently heading right at a solid wall of close-packed saplings.
She said, "Chocolate can't pull us through that tangle of second growth, Custis!"
He said, "I know. It ain't second growth. Gumbo-limbo never grows much bigger. It can't make up its mind whether it's a big bush or a small tree. Meanwhile, that ain't exactly where I'm heading."
Ruby grabbed hold of the top braces on her side as he suddenly swung them broadside to the wagon trace, headed back the way they'd just come. He was as surprised as she was by the unexpected gap in the gumbo-limbo they almost passed. But he still reined in and backed them into it before handing her the reins and saying, "Hold on whilst I shut the door."
So she did as Longarm slid between the carriage poles and the slick thin trunks of gumbo-limbo to ease back out in the open and, spotting nobody else in sight, quickly cut and gather a big light but awkward bundle of sea grape.
Sea grape wasn't related to real grapes. Folks called the seaside bush growing all along the gulf coast that because its big thick leaves looked remotely like grape leaves. Left to itself, the stuff seldom grew shoulder high. But Longarm was able to pile his severed sea grape canes in the opening he'd found in the gumbo-limbo to where somebody passing on the nearby wagon-trace might dismiss the small hideout as something that just wasn't worth reining in to study.
He took the ribbons back from Ruby, gave the bay enough slack to lower its muzzle to the lush blue-stem growing in the shady slot, then lowered the shay's oilcloth top as he explained, "I left us just enough room to watch, yon wagon trace over the tops of that piled brush. I want anybody coming along now to have to guess where even the tops of our heads might be."
She didn't complain. It was just as shady under the gumbolimbo branches arching overhead. She took off her sunbonnet and shook out her long dyed hair, saying, "I hope nobody ever comes along. It's so cool and, well... romantic in this little nook you found for us, you devil."
He removed his own hat to break up the pattern someone tailing them might be watching for. It was no accident that the Indians made the hand sign for a white man by holding a stiff palm across their brow. Currier and Ives would have it that the Indians with their hands like that were shading their eyes as they peered off in the distance for white folks. Folks who knew Indians better knew any Indian holding his hand like so had already spotted white folks. The way a white rider's hat brim divided his head between light and shadow was more obvious at a distance.
They sat hatless for a long time, and nothing seemed to be taking place on the wagon trace. Longarm was dying for some sleep or a smoke, in that order. Since neither seemed safe just then he said, "They must have figured where I was headed and fell back when I spooked 'em by reining in, as if I'd spotted 'em."
She sniffed and asked if he might not be taking a lot for granted, adding she was used to being followed some herself.
> Longarm chuckled at the picture and assured her, "I'm sure I see why, Miss Ruby. But no offense, I figure the odds on a crook trailing me are greater than those for an admirer trailing a lady with an armed escort. To begin with, there's been a lot of such sinister trailing going on of late."
Since she seemed to care, he brought her up to date on his recent brushes with sinister strangers, having no call to hold back all that much. For as he'd told La Bruja around this time the day before, they hadn't sent him on any secret mission.
Once he'd told Ruby what he had been sent down this way to tend to, she said, "You're right. It's mysterious as hell. If someone was out to rescue that outlaw you were sent to fetch, wouldn't they do better going after the lawmen holding him before you ever got here?"
He repressed a yawn and said, "That's about the size of it. Marshal Vail never sent me down here to pester anybody else, and the Rangers in Corpus Christi agreed the two gunslicks I can account for by name ain't wanted state or federal. Not by those names, at any rate. So I'd say the mysterious mastermind offering money to have me back-shot has a mighty uneasy conscience and suspects I'm really on to him."
This time he couldn't help from yawning as he added, "I sure wish I knew what I'm supposed to have on him. So far two innocent bystanders, another nice gal and an innocent kid, have stopped bullets meant for me, and I'm commencing to feel mighty vexed!"
Ruby said, "I can see how anyone would. Tell me more about that Mex whore, La Bruja. You say she admitted she'd been offered money to do you dirty, Custis?"
He nodded but said, "Bruja stands for witch, not whore, and you might say she's more a doxy or outlaw gal than either. I suspect she operates something like an Anglo gal called Belle Starr, up north in the Cherokee Strip near Fort Smith. Gents on the dodge need places to stay, store their ill-gotten gains, and mayhaps swap mounts betwixt owlhoot adventures. Had La Bruja and her own gang wanted to do me dirty for that bounty on my fool head, she'd have had no call to tell me all about it and help me slip out of town on the sneak after dark, right?"
Ruby shrugged and replied, "I suppose not. What sort of a lay did you say this Mexican spitfire was, handsome?"
Longarm yawned some more and replied, "I never said. I never do. A man who'd talk dirty about a lady who's been nice to him would no doubt write dirty words on walls as well."
She insisted, "A lot of men do. I've been in the gents' room after visiting hours at my, ah... place of business. Is that why you'd rather fool with outlaw greaser gals than a white gal like me, Custis? I ain't been with a man since my last period, if that's what's stopping you!"
He laughed incredulously and declared, "For Pete's sake, we've pulled off the trail in broad daylight to find out who's been trailing us with possibly sinister intent!"
To which she demurely replied, "Pooh, nobody's coming on that old wagon trace, and I'd just love to come with you in this sweet old love nest you've brought me to, you big tease."
He fought back another yawn, knowing how cruel it might look to yawn at such a time, as he insisted, "There really was another pony trotting along under those infernal trees, Miss Ruby."
She began to unbutton her formatting calico bodice as she said, "I'm not calling you a fibber. As I told you before, some of us are wicked because we want to punish ourselves, whilst others are wicked because they want it, a lot. I lost track of how many lovers I had on the side before I decided it made more sense to just leave my old husband and get paid for what I enjoyed most. The poor dear I married young was rich as well as horny enough, at first. But I fear I'm just too warm-natured to ever settle down with one man. Do you think that makes me some sort of a freak, Custis?"
He answered honestly, "If you're a freak you've got plenty of company, Miss Ruby, albeit few are quite as honest about feelings a lot of us seem to feel. I like to tell myself I can't stay true to one particular gal because of the tumbleweed of occasions when I nearly got caught. I told myself, as well as the gal, that a man who packs a badge with my rep has no right to ask any lady to risk an early as well as likely widowhood, and I reckon I've really meant that more than once. But if the truth be told, I've always recovered from the wistful feeling of moving on."
She said she knew exactly what he meant, and added, "Let's get my lap robe out of the back and spread it on the grass in this sweet shade for some real sweet screwing!"
But he sighed and replied, "in tall, shaded grass, along the gulf coast after a rain, Miss Ruby? I can see you ain't been down this way long. They call 'em red bugs over near New Orleans and chiggers west of Galveston. By either name they bite like hell and itch way worse than mosquitos. There's one breed of red bug that burrows in under your nails and more delicate places to raise a rash that just won't quit. So take my advice and don't ever even spread a picnic blanket on the grass in a gumbo-limbo thicket, hear?"
Her form was popping out considerably now as she asked where, in that case, he wanted to screw her.
He gulped and started to point out he'd never asked to screw her anywhere. But he didn't want to sound like a sissy or, worse yet, a man who'd scorn a right nice-looking gal with one hell of a pair of naked tits. So he reeled her bare chest in against his thin shirt and kissed her on one ear as he muttered, "I've never found a better place than right betwixt a pretty lady's legs. But I hope it's understood I'd be aiding and abetting on duty if I was to offer money for any such favors."
She told him not to talk dirty, and added, "Does this one-horse shay look like a whorehouse, you stuck-up thing?"
So seeing she'd put it that way, he just peeled out of his own duds as she finished shucking her own, and laying her crossways on the leather seat with his own boots braced against a wheel and carriage shaft, stuck it to her as she thrust up to meet him, sobbing, "Oh, Lordy, just the way I like it! Just the way I needed it after washing off so many sick men's privates back there and not getting any for so many days and nights!"
He was glad he'd put his boots back on with just such purchase in mind. For there was much to be said for buggy riding when a man once got the hang of it, and as she gave it back to him with all the skill of a whore feeling really friendly, he surmised she'd done it in this very shay before.
But he never asked. It was her idea to note he acted as if he hadn't been in that Mexican gal after all. She was biting down hard with her innards as she husked, "You screw like a cowhand who's been out on the trail for months with nobody but his hand to put it in. Do you mind if I jerk my clit off whilst you prong me, honey? You do that so much better than your average horny cowhand, and I want to come a couple of times while I have your undivided attention!"
He grunted, "They asked the Prophet Mohammed about jerking off one time. He allowed he didn't see how it could be all that sinful, since nine out of ten folks did it and that tenth one was a liar."
So she laughed like a mean little kid, and slid her hand down between their bare bellies to strum her old banjo while Longarm shoved his own more sensitive parts as far up inside her as he could. So a great time was had by all, and when he asked Ruby how come she'd started crying at the end, she said it was because he'd kissed her on the mouth as she was coming. He started to say he never screwed anyone he found too disgusting to kiss. But upon reflection he felt that might sound sort of rude. So he just kissed her some more and confided he'd been coming too.
That inspired her to get on top, facing the other way so she could brace her high-buttoned heels on the floorboard and really bounce for him with her hands braced on her own knees while Longarm steadied her with a friendly grip on each bare hip. She allowed there was no need for her to strum herself anymore, now that he'd made her feel so womanly inside. He knew she was working harder to pleasure a pal when she peered back over her bare shoulder and confided, "As a rule I charge double to take it up my back door. But I'm not asking you for anything but... well, the nice way you treat a girl, if you want to shoot in my ass this time."
He'd been admiring the view of his love-slicked shaft going
in and out of her regular entrance, which had light blond instead of mock red hair by the way. So he thrust up to meet a downstroke as he told her, "I'm doing fine, unless you really like it in your corn hole, honey."
She shook her mock red head and replied, "It doesn't feel good or bad back there, once you get it all the way in. I just knew some men like to do that to a gal and, well, I like you, Custis!"
He said he liked her too just the way she was. So she giggled and commenced to really slide on up and down his old organ-grinder as he lay back and enjoyed her efforts. Poor old Lenore Colbert on that steamer coming north the other night had had ash-blond hair as well as a pussy she'd never really gotten to use like this. He found himself picturing that half-sated erection sliding in and out of that Boston virgin, and it felt pretty convincing with another gal's back to him as he rose to the occasion in her pussy with the light blond hair. But then Ruby shattered the illusion by declaring, "Oh, yes, I can tell you really like me and it makes me feel so grand to please you this way!"
Then she popped off, turned around, and swayed the shay under them alarmingly, before she dropped to her knees on the floorboards and kissed the turgid head of his aroused erection, cooing, "I want you to come where you weren't too proud to stick your tongue, darling!"
So he forgave her for not looking at all like the late Lenore as she proceeded to bob her mock red head up and down, taking him to the roots in a French sword swallow till he gasped "Jeeezusss!" and shot a wad he hadn't known he'd been saving somewhere on the far side of her tonsils.
He had to beg for mercy as she kept on swallowing, the rings of her deep throat rippling wetly up and down his shaft as she sucked every drop out of him.
So he was mighty tempted when she finally raised her head from his lap with a roguish grin, purring, "That was lovely. Would you like to take a nap with your head in Mamma's lap before we drive on? It's hot as hell out there right now, and you did say you hadn't had any sleep lately, didn't you?"
