by Tabor Evans
Portia absently replied, "I think I'm jealous. Why do you and all those other lawmen care about a girl with a gun and a mind of her own treating killers the same way the rest of you like to?"
Longarm grimaced and said, "Nobody with a lick of sense likes to gun another human being. We generally give them a change to surrender, and then we get to gun 'em. To begin with, it ain't always clear a man is guilty as charged before he's stood trial before a judge and jury. That's why them dead-or-alive warrants on men who ain't been indicted have so many cautious thinkers worried. I say when, not if, because as sure as you're concave where I'm convex, a Wyoming wildwoman suffering delusions of deputization is sure to blow away some innocent cuss, and then where will we be?"
Portia replied without hesitation, "She'll be in a whole lot of trouble! But, since you asked, I think I'd plead her not guilty by reason of orders from higher authority. You did say she was able to show you a valid arrest warrant, or at least a writ that read like a valid arrest warrant, didn't you?"
Longarm said, "I did. Billy Vail says the one we saw might stand up in court as long as the cuss she served it on was guilty. Rusty Mansfield would have had grounds for damages against little Ida, her undersheriff, that J.P., and Keller's Crossing if he'd live to prove he was innocent! Your turn."
Portia took a deep drag on the cheroot, handed it back to him, and let fly some smoke signals a Kiowa might have bragged on before she decided, "Try it this way. An out-of-the-way Wyoming county might save a lot on courtroom expenses if they recruited unpaid volunteers to simply smile pretty at no-goods and mow them down. What did they call that bunch of young gun waddies Uncle John Chisum and his trading partner, McSween, swore in as unrecognized but efficient lawmen back in seventy-eight?"
"Regulators," Longarm replied, adding, "They didn't work out all that efficient. Both factions in the Lincoln County War wound up flat busted, and they say Billy the Kid was last seen washing dishes down in Shakespeare near the border. After that, this undersheriff Rita Mae Reynolds ain't stuck with the situation Uncle John was, with the county run by a rival faction and his cows vanishing into thin air. Like I said, less than half the elective positions in the township are held by the menfolk of the womenfolk who seem to have grabbed the rest. But they've other J.P.s and Rita Mae works under a male county sheriff, who's yet seen fit to deputize any ladies to go after anybody charged as a felon by Justice of the Peace Edith Penn Keller of Keller Township."
Portia suddenly laughed and said, "I think this must be what some of my married friends mean when they mention pillow conversations. I'm lying in bed with a naked man, still wet with his passion as I snuggle my naked flesh against his, and I'm talking about small-town politics?"
He snuggled her closer and asked how she felt about that so far. She chuckled and said, "Depraved. I'm supposed to be locked in my bath, weeping in shame because I let you touch me in such vulgar ways. But since you ask, I do find it odd that this rather drastic lady's club seems to be dominated or even partly dominated by a woman who has her own division of her county named after... whom? Her father or her husband?"
Longarm said, "I don't know. That's one of the things Billy Vail wants me to look into. As far as we know, none of the younger gals sent out of the territory to gun men down in cold blood in other parts of the country are married up. I for one would be mighty surprised to learn any man with hair on his chest would allow his woman to pin a badge on and go chasing after other men with any aim in mind."
Portia sniffed, allowed that was how come she preferred to remain a spinster, and pointed out by asking, "Then it's safe to assume none of the male officials of this remote rural community are too opposed to whatever that small clique of gun-slinging bloomer-girls may be up to?"
Longarm shook his head, put the smoke back to her lips, and told her, "Nobody in Wyoming Territory seems to give a hoot, male or shemale. Like I said before, crime is down, it's an election year, and no registered voter's ox has been gored. So what the hell."
She passed the cheroot back, lightly asking, "What the hell indeed? I can see why the Cheyenne District Court doesn't seem half as interested as your own nosy Billy. Speaking as a lawyer, and don't you dare think I want you to spend even one more night with me, you brute, I can tell you what you're going to find when you arrive up there in that tightly knit community. You're going to cast your questions in deep water and reel in bare hook after bare hook. If even Cheyenne had received one complaint from one concerned citizen of the town or county, male or female, Billy Vail wouldn't have to send you all that way on such a fool's errand, Custis!"
Longarm sighed and replied, "I told you it wasn't Billy Vail's grand notion. He's passed on orders from higher up. I don't doubt the federal lawmen out of Cheyenne reported just what they'd seen and heard, after they'd seen and heard nothing much. I've been places where nobody talked much to outsiders about the comings and goings of insiders. I've usually discovered that when anything really dirty was going on, I could get somebody to tell me about it, off the record."
Portia took the cheroot away from him and snuffed it out in a bed table ash tray as she pointed out, "What might you and your Denver District Court be able to do about it if you do uncover some sort of fiendish female plot against wanted criminals? People want killers killed, Custis. The double-jeopardy hanging of Jack McCall for the murder of Wild Bill Hickok was unconstitutional but just, as far as anyone ever cared!"
To which Longarm could only reply, "Jack McCall must have cared, and I'm sworn to uphold that constitution. I don't hold with lynch law or vigilante justice, Miss Portia. So I reckon I'd best get on up yonder and file a full report on just what's been going on, constitutional or otherwise. I'll come by to tell you which, as soon as I get back."
Portia forked a long bare leg across him to once more impale her lean but tender flesh on the boner she was gripping with such skill. But even as she took his latest inspiration up inside her to the roots, she sternly warned him, "Don't you dare come mooning around my office like a love-struck schoolboy! What do you want my neighbors to think of me? They're sure to gossip if the same man escorts me home more than once in the same month."
So he asked if she thought it might be safe for him to come around for more legal consultation after harvest time, and she allowed that sounded a tad soon but that she'd risk it, seeing he was able to touch bottom with every stroke whenever she got on top.
CHAPTER 4
There was much to be said for self-supporting women, but waking a man gentle wasn't one of them. So Longarm found himself out on a deserted Denver street in the cold gray light of dawn with no more than black coffee for breakfast.
He reflected wryly that some might consider that his own fault as he headed over toward the Union Station, walking funny. For Portia had given him his choice of hasty scrambled eggs or more of herself when she'd literally jerked him awake at cock's crow and told him she'd have to hang herself if any of her neighbors spied him leaving after daybreak.
It was way too early to catch any train, if he'd had his saddle and possibles with him. He went to catch some eggs over chili con carne at the all-night beanery next door. The pleasantly plump waitress filled his order and confided she'd be getting off for the day in just a few minutes. Women were like that. Longarm knew that had he been forced to lay over between trains with a raging hard-on a long way from home, she'd have had a boyfriend coming to pick her up after work.
He ordered a slice of mince pie with his third cup of coffee and left a dime on the counter by his empty plates to show her he didn't think she was too fat. Then he ankled across the Larimer Street bridge to his furnished digs on the less fashionable side of Cherry Creek.
Neither President Rutherford B. nor Miss Lemonade Lucy Hayes were going to know he was in violation of their prissy dress code for government employees whilst he was out in the field in high summer. So he changed into a faded but clean denim riding outfit to separate his well-broken-in cavalry boots from his coffee brown Stetson.
He strapped his cross-draw rig around his more comfortable lean hips and filled the pockets of his lighter duds with the usual clutter he packed in the more capacious pockets of his tobacco tweed suit, including the double derringer clipped to one end of his gold-washed watch chain with a plain but accurate timepiece at the other. Having a concealed weapon handy could be as important as knowing for certain what time it might be.
Longarm got down his McClellan army saddle and draped it over the footrail of his seldom-slept-in bed to pack more possibles in the saddlebags. You could carry a heap on a McClellan. Poor old George McClellan had been a failure as a general but one hell of a saddle designer when he'd adapted an Austro-Hungarian cavalry saddle to be issued to the U.S. Army just in time for the War Betwixt the States. It rose higher fore and aft than the English flat saddle, and that open slot running the length of the seat was meant more to cool the horse's spine than to castrate a rider with carelessly loose pants. One of the general's slicker improvements had been studding his new army-issue saddle with brass fittings just right for threading cord or harness straps through. What amounted to a dotted line of such flattened brass loops ran along the leather rim ahead and behind the stirrup leathers. So Longarm always wound up with extra fittings despite all the shit a rider had to carry along when he wasn't certain where he'd be headed or how long it might take.
Seeing it was high summer, the bedroll lashed behind the cantle had been packed more waterproof than for warmth, with extra cans of grub forming the core of the roll. You seldom needed more than two canteens of water where he'd be riding this time. So he removed a pair. Weather could be tricky up around the North Platte any time of the year. So he added a sheepskin jacket and some woolly chaps to ride under his oilcloth slicker, hoping not to use any of the same but certain it would rain fire, salt, and snowballs if he wasn't ready for 'em.
He packed extra.44-40 rounds for both his six-gun and Winchester '73, chosen with matching loads in mind. He'd scouted for the army often enough to know what a pain in the ass it could be to fumble for a.45 short and wind up with a fist full of.45-70 rifle rounds, albeit, to be fair to the general staff, you sure could hit a man-sized target harder and way farther off with a swamping.45-70.
Longarm preferred more certain shooting at the closer ranges most trouble arose from. He carried his saddle gun in its boot on the off side of his saddle, handy for a right-handed side-draw, with his six-gun balanced higher on his left hip, below the elbow of his rein arm, should any son of a bitch dispute his right of passage.
Once packed, Longarm toted the more awkward than heavy load back across Cherry Creek to the Union Station. Billy Vail had told him to give Deputy Ida Weaver a day's lead on him, and it was way too early to catch the same afternoon Burlington. But Longarm had pals about the railyards and couldn't say how long he'd be tied up along the way with courtesy calls, visits to local newspaper morgues, and such. So he hauled his load through the station and out across the already sun-warmed tracks and gritty ballast to a dispatch shed, to see if he knew anybody on duty there.
He did. One Thumb Thurber, a portly middle-aged cuss whose nickname had fit him since he'd made a mistake with one of those newfangled car couplers, allowed he'd be proud to introduce Longarm to the caboose crew of a northbound rattler that would be leaving within the hour for Cheyenne.
As the two of them stepped back out into the morning sunlight, One Thumb felt obliged to warn Longarm, "Be careful what you say when you meet up with the boys. Most of them are all right. But the company's taken on some hard cases to ride the rattlers in warm weather."
Longarm didn't need to ask what One Thumb was talking about. He traveled by rail enough to know a rattler was a string of empty cars being returned or forwarded to some yard in need of the same. Such trains attracted hobos and plain fool kids the way a shaggy dog in need of a bath attracted fleas. So the spoilsports who ran railroads had three choices. They could securely seal each and every empty car, which took heaps of time at both ends when time could add up to money. Or they could tolerate the 'bos in modest numbers, subject to sensible behavior. Or they could hire extra brake bulls to keep them off or throw them off the empties, standing in the yards or rattling across the great outdoors.
Longarm and more easygoing brakemen were inclined to feel sorry for 'bos and tolerate the ones who refrained from crime, vandalism, and shitting inside the rolling stock. Brake bulls hired to crack down on them were recruited amid natural bullies who enjoyed busting heads with baseball bats. Such gents were inclined to forget their manners around others they hadn't been paid to push around. So Longarm told One Thumb he only wanted a ride to Cheyenne, not any discussions about Indian Policy or Professor Darwin.
As they approached the dusty red caboose of the northbound string of empty cars, the dispatcher said the only one your average sane person had to worry about was a towhead they called the Black Swede just the same. Longarm didn't ask why. Assholes named for famously bad tempers didn't interest him, as long as they left him the hell alone. Longarm had never liked bullies to begin with and hadn't been afraid of them since he'd met up with his first one after school, back home in West-by-God-Virginia. He'd seldom had trouble with the breed since he'd grown up, considerable, with an easy smile and eyes the color of gun muzzles that seldom looked away first.
Nobody had to tell Longarm which of the five railroaders lounging about the caboose was the Black Swede. Aside from being introduced as a Bergman, he stood just under seven feet under his hatless thatch of almost white hair. As One Thumb introduced Longarm all around, it was the Black Swede, rather than the older Irish brakeman, who growled the caboose was already crowded for a dusty run in high summer.
The brakeman, who'd have usually been assumed to be the crewman in charge, shot the Black Swede a thoughtful look but didn't press it. Natural bullies had a sixth sense when it came to knowing just how far they could go with their childish games.
Longarm wasn't up to childish games all the way up to Cheyenne. So he just nodded and said, "He's right. I'd as soon ride lonesome but cooler with this load, up closer to the engine."
Nobody argued. He hadn't expected anyone to demand he crowd in with them. When the Black Swede smirked and asked if he liked to play with himself in the privacy of an empty boxcar, Longarm smiled back just as friendly to reply, "I was hoping you'd suck it for me, seeing you're so interested in another man's dick."
Everybody else laughed. The Black Swede swung down off the steps of the caboose to stand face to face with Longarm, staring down at the tall deputy for a change as he demanded, "Did I just hear somebody call me a cocksucker, little darling?"
Longarm went on smiling up at him as he replied, "I thought I just heard you make such an offer. Mayhaps it would be best if you'd just refrain from any and all suggestions about my cock if you ain't really interested in it."
Black Swede said, "I ain't interested in anything but your big mouth, passenger boy! Didn't your momma never tell you a man could get himself killed by shooting off his mouth around grown men?"
Longarm quietly replied, "You mention my mother one more time and you're the one who'll wind up deader than last summer's cow shit!"
Before the Black Swede could say anything else to make Longarm's eyes grow even colder, One Thumb snapped, "Swede, you're talking to a man packing three guns and a rep for sincerely. Why don't all of you boys get aboard this damn rattler, wherever you want to ride her, so we can send her on her damn way?"
Longarm picked up his awkward load, braced the saddle tree against his left hip to leave his gun hand free, and headed north toward the engine with no further comment.
One Thumb tagged along, saying something about handing orders up to the engine crew. But as soon as they were out of earshot, he muttered, "Jesus H. Christ, Longarm. I asked you to watch your manners around the Black Swede and you called him a cocksucker!"
Longarm shrugged and trudged on as he replied, "I was trying to be polite. You don't talk nice to a man who's just called y
ou a jerk-off. If you let him get away with that, he'll call you something worse, and if you let him get away with that, he'll throw your hat up on the roof."
One Thumb said, "The Black Swede's outgrown that stage. The company don't allow it. But he still packs a Harrington and Richardson double-action belly gun. He's inclined to use it, too. We got him off the Kansas and Missouri, cheap, after he'd shot two 'bos in self-defense, or so he says."
They were passing the open doorway of a boxcar dunnaged with a carpet of clean hay. It smelled as if they'd been shipping kegs of rum. Longarm tossed his heavily laden saddle aboard as he assured the dispatcher he meant to stray nowhere near that caboose or the surly brake bull. So One Thumb wished him luck and went on up to jaw with the engine crew.
Longarm moved his saddle back from the doorway and cleared a space of bare flooring so's it would be safe to smoke a mite as he lounged with one elbow in the saddle. He didn't light up just yet. He had a long ride ahead with a limited quantity of tobacco. He fished some of the carbon copies old Henry at the office had let him have on the little anyone really knew about those Wyoming wildwomen. He'd read through the lot of them already. But he read through them some more as long as he had the time and no draft was fluttering the onionskin paper. By the time the train started up with a plaintive whistle and a rude jerk, he'd decided once again that Billy Vail was sending him on a snipe hunt. He found it tough to believe local, county, and territorial lawmen were party to some fiendish female secret society's evil plot to take over the West. The trouble with vast conspiracies by government officials was that nobody in charge of a whole government needed to behave so sneaky. Men in positions of power had no more call to hide the fact they were running things than a cattle baron or mining magnate had to deny he was rich. El Presidente Diaz down Mexico didn't need to plot against the folk he ruled. He just told them to jump, and if they didn't ask how high, he sent his rurales to shove 'em up against a handy wall and shoot them.
