by Tabor Evans
She said, "They had to. He's long gone, wherever he went. The two riders who work for me--as hotel help, not riders--just told me they'd checked with all the surrounding spreads and homesteads for miles, and that nobody's seen hide nor hair of the mean little thing. As soon as I had someone to watch the desk I came after you to make sure you hadn't killed my Blue Boy and to tell you you can stop looking."
"I wish I could. But my boss has his mind set. The kid ain't anywhere around here, though. So what say we head for the nearest shade?"
He had meant Julesburg, of course, but she shot him an arch look from the shade of her hatbrim. "That would be a place I know, over by the river. We could enjoy a nice swim and, with something like that in mind, it just so happens I packed a picnic hamper to bring along."
He looked dubiously down at her. "Miss Myrtle, that same South Platte runs through Denver, a lot closer to the hills, and even there, it ain't deep enough to swim in at this time of the year."
"A lot you know. Follow me and I'll show you a spot where a gravel operation left the river deep enough to drown in."
Without waiting for an answer, she swung her pony around and drove off the trail. He followed her south, dubiously. Billy Vail hadn't sent him all this way to go swimming with women. On the other hand, heat-stroke had to be above and beyond the call of duty, and Black Jack Junior was as likely to be in the South Platte as anywhere else in the county right now.
It only took them a few minutes, and as they smelled the water, both Blue Boy and the cart pony got harder to handle. They busted through the wall of crack-willow and taller cottonwood rising like a planted hedgerow along the uncertain banks of the wide but shallow stream and let both animals drink like camels, standing fedock-deep in the tea-warm running water.
As Longarm took in the pleasant view he saw that this stretch of the South Platte was a lot wider than the same stream that ran through Denver. To make up for that, with less water this far from the mountain creeks that fed the South Platte, the misnamed river had become a glorified Cherry Creek, with the water braided between flat islands covered with sedge, brush, and even sweet gum. It was hard for a tree to grow up all the way on an island that got shifted about as the water level tried to make up its mind whether it was a summer trickle or a spring flood.
Myrtle said, "Let's go. The swimming hole I told you about is out beyond that willow bar."
He figured she should know. So he didn't argue as they moved on across the running water. It wasn't much deeper than Cherry Creek, but it was a lot wider, and he had to hope that kid story about quicksand was just a kid story. The wheels of the pony cart ahead sank in sort of ominously here and there. But then they were on the willow bar and the terra was not only firma but covered with lush green grass between the twisted tree trunks. As he dismounted and they tethered the critters on long leads to nibble, he already felt a lot cooler in the dappled shade. He said so, and told her she was smart to know of such an eden in a land that was mostly hell. She dimpled and told him, "Our swimming hole is yonder, through the trees. I mean to swim in my shimmy shirt, of course. I hope you're wearing underdrawers as well."
He assured her he had to, under tweed pants, if he wanted to ride at all. So she took a checked cloth from the cart, spread it on the grass, and placed her picnic hamper on it before she calmly tossed her hat aside and proceeded to shuck her dress.
Longarm had to gulp as he viewed the results. Her thin cotton chemise was so short it left little to the imagination. And for a gal who was no longer young, Myrtle had a body few teenagers could have matched. The same hard life that had hardened her features had kept her slim body and shapely limbs firm and limber. Without waiting for him, she laughed like a kid and ran across the grass to dive headfirst into what looked as shallow as the stretch they'd just forded. But she dove deep, stayed under a few strokes, and came up laughing, with her blond hair plastered to her skull and hanging down with a lot more shine and color now.
He wondered what he was doing with his duds still on and made haste to shuck and join her, naked save for his summer long-johns of somewhat more substantial cotton. The water felt just right as he dove into it. The long trip across the summer prairie had taken all the mountain sting out of it. It was just too warm to drink and a hell of a lot cooler than the air. He opened his eyes below the surface to see that, sure enough, the bottom he was gliding across was mossy gravel, and that Myrtle was blond all over. She was standing on the bottom with her chemise fluttering with the current above her waist and even her belly button was cute as hell.
He surfaced beside her to take his mind off such matters, splashed her, and swam about some more to explore the limits of the gravel pit and get his mind on something--anything--but the way that sassy chemise of hers refused to stay where it was supposed to. She swam some, but not as much, and it seemed that no matter where he swam in the modest-sized leeway he kept seeing her bare behind or exposed front ahead of him. He was suffering a raging erection when she called out, "I'm cooled off enough to eat, now. How about you?"
As they climbed out he could only hope he was bent over enough to keep from giving her the notion he wasn't really thinking about food.
But once they were stretched out side by side on the checked ground cloth, enjoying the sandwiches she'd made, as they let the warm shade dry their bare skin and soggy underwear, he was surprised at his own appetite. He'd forgotten until just now that he'd not eaten since morning, and it had to be mid-afternoon by now. The butter she'd spread on the wheat bread had melted and soaked in. The cold meat she'd placed between slices tasted cooked and the iced tea she'd brought to wash the eats down with tasted fresh from the pot after soaking up all that sun on the trail. But he said he couldn't recall a grander picnic spread, and he meant it.
She thanked him and looked sort of wistful as she added, "I guess a widow woman with nothing better to offer has to work more than most on her cooking, huh?"
He smiled reassuringly at her. "Don't mean-mouth yourself, ma'am. You can't be any older than me and you don't hear me bemoaning my lost youth, do you?"
"You're joshing but I love it, you sweet child. We both know I was a woman grown and married before the War."
"Well, that was only about fifteen years ago, and I was in the War, too. I disremember which side I rode for. We was all young and foolish, once."
"You must have been a baby if you were in the War. They should have been ashamed of themselves for letting anyone so young join up."
He shrugged a bare shoulder. "I thought they was sort of taking advantage of me, too, before it was over. My point is that even if you was old enough to go to war that long ago, you can't have more than a couple of years on me."
She sighed and said, "More like ten. Don't you think I look in the mirror when I pin up my hair? It's just not fair. It hardly seems yesteryear since I was young and pretty."
"Oh, hell, you ain't that bad. I'm more tanned and beat-up than you are and you don't hear me crying about it, do you?"
She said, "It's different for you men. Time doesn't treat a man as cruel as it does a woman."
"You're wrong, no offense. Time treats us all about the same, and it's human notions that's cruel. You poor gals is supposed to look like teenagers forever, whilst us brutes just get mature or, if we've really been beat-up, distinguished. A gent can sport a saber scar and gray sideburns and still be considered good-looking. You poor little things ain't allowed to have one laugh wrinkle if you still want men to admire you and women to hate you."
She sighed. "Do you think you have to tell any girl over thirty that? If I was a man, right now, they'd say I was just in my prime instead of an aging innkeeper. But I must say you're awfully understanding, Custis. How come you understand us women so well?"
He said, "Some of my best friends is women. Maybe I talk to them more than some gents. That ain't saying I understand them. All any man can do is try."
She favored him with a sort of motherly smile. "You do, don't you, you sweet bo
y." Then she laughed, perhaps at herself, and said, "I'll bet you don't go swimming with many as old as me, though."
He looked sincerely blank. "Hell, I've kissed gals older than you in my time."
She answered, "Oh!" and moved the hamper from between them to lie back and murmur, with her eyes closed, "Prove it!"
He did. It didn't hurt and, from the way she responded to his almost brotherly attempt at reassurance, she liked it even better.
He wasn't sure he ought to go farther. His life was already complicated enough and he felt sure the gal wanted to feel pretty again. So he kept his hands polite as she wrapped her bare arms around him and pulled him down half atop her. He knew he'd been right about how young and firm her breasts looked as he felt them pressed wetly to his naked chest. He decided it was time to stop while they were both ahead. But as he came up for air she moaned, "Oh, you will be gentle, won't you? It's been so long and you seem so big and strong."
He saw he was in trouble, now, no matter how he answered that. So, choosing the lesser of two evils, he assured her he would and though he meant it, she wouldn't let him do it gentle, once they got started. She had a lovely body, too, as she moved it up and down with both skill and enthusiasm, with little pinpoints of sunlight dappling her firm smooth naked flesh.
She beat him to a protracted climax. As he stopped and just lay there enjoying a warm soak she ran her palms over him from nape to buttocks, like a little girl surprised by Santa on a Christmas morning she hadn't been expecting, and crooned, "Oh, thank you. I'd forgotten how good that really felt, even though I've been dying for it for a long, long time."
He kissed her and said, "It ain't over yet. Just let me get my breath back."
Later, they went swimming again to cool off, and she was even more fun to swim with bare-ass entire, since they found a mighty interesting position that just wouldn't have worked on dry land. But by the time they were back on the grass, though she was more than willing to try yet another athletic way, and he sensed they were starting to show off more than they were still enjoying it. So, as they rested in each other's arms and shared a smoke, he suggested, "It's getting late, and the old livery man is going to gossip if I get you back to town after sundown. He does about other gals who meet gents out on the prairie in that pony cart."
She snuggled closer. "Pooh, I don't care." Then she sat up on one elbow to peer down at him uncertainly. "I guess you do? It's one thing to take pity on an old lady out here where nobody can laugh at you, but another thing entire to be seen on the streets of Julesburg with her."
He had not, as a matter of fact, meant to boast of his conquest back in town. But Longarm had been raised to believe in simple justice, as many an outlaw had been forced to notice. So he said, "I am forced by my job to move on a lot, just as I'm getting fond of a sweet little thing like you. But if you want to go steady as long as I'll be around Julesburg, it's jake with me, public or private. It's your reputation, not mine."
"Oh, you darling man!" But then, being a woman and thinking the same way, she said, "We'd better be discreet. It is a small, spiteful town. If you really still want me, I can sneak up to your room easy enough, late at night when all the gossips are asleep. But I don't think we ought to act too familiar in front of folk, do you?"
"It could cause talk. But what in thunder are we arguing about? I just told you I didn't give a hang one way or the other."
She said, "I know. If I asked you to take me to dinner at the depot diner, in front of God and everybody, would you?"
He said, "Sure. Why not?"
And she began to cry as she told him, "Oh, we couldn't! I'd never live it down. But you've no idea how nice and naughty and young you've made me feel by offering.
CHAPTER 8
They got back to Julesburg before sundown. Since she seemed more worried than he did about their wild fling, Longarm suggested they enter town separately and assured her he'd meet her later at the hotel, whether he'd have time to kiss her some more or not. She asked what he meant, and he explained that he meant to check the telegraph office in case the man he was after had turned up somewhere else. She looked so hurt that he promised, "I have to check out even if I have to leave, don't I? I can't wait to try those freshly oiled bedsprings, can you?"
She blushed and drove on ahead of him as he lit another smoke to give her a lead the village biddies might find acceptable.
As he rode in alone, he saw he had the main street all to himself. Despite the low sun and lengthening shadows it was still hot enough to bake potatoes in the road dust.
He rode Blue Boy around to the back of the hotel, unsaddled and rubbed him down, and left him in the stall, where Myrtle had already left more oats and water than the brute deserved.
He walked down the alley to a gap between the buildings and came out to the sleepy center of things to look about for a Western Union sign. He spotted one about where it should have been, near the depot, and strode over to it.
As he approached, two gents who'd been sitting and whittling in the shade of the office awning rose to greet him. Longarm sighed and said, "Aw, hell, why would even Billy Vail want to do a dumb thing like that?"
The two junior deputies from his home office were best known as Smiley and Dutch. The tall one, Smiley, was a morose, hatchet-faced breed who never smiled. It was his name. The shorter and stockier Dutch smiled all the time, even when he wasn't telling one of his endless dirty jokes. He was called Dutch because his German-American last name was so hard to pronounce they had all given up on it. Dutch didn't care. He said he only got sore when someone called him something dirty. He'd proven that more than once by slapping leather over something as mild as "bastard," and it was widely held he would gut-shoot a gent and drag him atop an ant pile to die slow for "son of a bitch."
As they shook, outside the Western Union, Smiley said, "There ain't no messages for you inside. We just asked. We figured you'd show up here sooner or later, though."
"Never mind how you hunted me down. Why in hell did they send you? I never asked for backup, no offense," Longarm said.
Dutch said, "Old Billy felt you might need some, anyway. Didn't you meet all them War Department assholes on the trail? We was told you'd headed out for Fort Halleck, and that was where they said they was headed, too."
Longarm said, "We must have missed each other as I was off the trail, heeding the call of nature. What about 'em? We already knew the army was after the same want."
Smiley said, "The boss sent us when he found out a short colonel called Walthers was coming up here, personal, to pick a fight with you. We made the same train as it was pulling out and, since they didn't know who we was, we got to listen as they called you all sorts of mean names. Old Walthers kept saying he meant to arrest you, even though one of the gents with him kept saying he didn't see how they could. We got the distinct impression old Walthers wants you more than he wants that young cuss who keeps shooting soldier boys. So we stand ready to back you if he tries. What makes you so popular with that stuck-up pain in the ass, Longarm?"
Their superior officer shrugged. "I've been a pain in his ass, through no fault of my own. A while back we had a heated argument over another prisoner we both had papers on, and I won. Later, me and Billy, personally, kept Walthers from mowing down a mess of coal miners when we solved a case that turned out to be a plain old crime instead of the labor unrest the army gets to deal with so noisy at times. I don't know why Colonel Walthers takes things so personal, but he does."
Dutch laughed and said, "I know. I was in the army one time, too. There's a brand of army asshole that's so used to giving orders that it just goes loco when a man who don't have to obey army orders points that out and, knowing you, you tends to say things plainer than some. I've heard you talk back to Billy Vail in a manner that would drive even a sensible short-colonel to total madness."
Longarm chuckled. "As a matter of fact, I just this day drove a career sergeant sort of mad, and we was talking about you two today, too. I'm sorry I did,
now. If either of you see a gent, wearing army blue or not, but sporting a nice set of shiners, keep an eye on his gun hand. His name is Fagan. I think he's just a windy bully. But he's dumb as hell, and if Walthers is out there cussing my name and allowing he'd like to see me dead or worse, there's no telling what a really stupid bastard nursing a grudge and a busted nose might think he could get away with."
Dutch laughed and said, "Let 'em come, all of 'em. I could never abide anyone above my rank when I was in the army, and for some reason I never got no higher than private."
"Our department ain't allowed to declare war on the War Department," Longarm told him. "I mean that. Colonel Walthers can rave all he wants, but he knows he can't do shit unless we give him an excuse. You go gunning any soldiers, even in self-defense, and you'll be filling out papers past Christmas. So pay no attention to the boys in blue. What's the latest on that boy in the goat-skin chaps?"
Smiley said, "There ain't none. Not since he shot up the army last night. Billy wired the sheriff's department, here. They wired back they couldn't pick up the rascal's trail and that, unlike the War Department, they'd take all the help they could get. They never said they'd back you against the army, though. That's what Billy sent us to do."
"Forget the fool army," Longarm said. "You couldn't have left the home office less than, say, four hours ago, so... Never mind. It was a dumb notion. It was more than four hours ago I heard the posse had given up and come on home. Let's go get a drink. If anything new has happened this afternoon, they'll have heard about it in the saloons."
As the three of them headed for the nearest set of swinging doors in sight, across the street, Smiley asked where Longarm had been all day if it hadn't been here or Fort Halleck.
Longarm said, "I was out over on the river, between here and there, scouting for sign."
