Supper that night was a subdued affair. Higgins said, “You know, I’m gonna be right sorry, Mr. Long, to see you and Miss Rita Ann leave on that stage tomorrow. Place won’t be the same, will it, Sylvie?”
She said, “I should think not. I know I’ve enjoyed the company of another woman. Especially one as bright and gay as Rita Ann.” She sighed. “But then all good things must come to an end. That’s what my dear old mother said.”
Longarm looked at Rita Ann. “And bad ones too, I hope.”
They had gotten to bed early that night, not much after ten. Longarm had turned into his blankets naked, in anticipation of Rita Ann’s arrival. Part of him was aroused, but part of him was also angry. She had called the turn at every juncture. If she came to him this night it was going to be different.
She was so long in coming that he was almost asleep when he realized she was standing by him in the voluminous nightgown she had borrowed from Mrs. Higgins. He sat up immediately as she began to pull the gown over her head. When it fell to the floor she stood there, again reflected in the firelight, while he studied her beautiful body with true appreciation. Then she slowly knelt down, landing on her knees on the edge of his blankets. She was about to reach for him when he took her under the shoulders and lifted her onto his bed on her back. Then, moving too fast for her to realize what he was doing, he was on top of her, prying her legs apart. He fell forward, guiding himself into her and covering her mouth with his at the same time. He held her by the buttocks, one in each hand, and began pulling her into him, making her rhythm match his. He started slowly, but then he began thrusting harder and harder, almost angrily. As he probed her depths he could feel her gasping out of the corners of her mouth, but he wouldn’t let her mouth loose from his. Her hips were starting to arch up, clearing the blanket by six inches. She hoisted her legs and wrapped them around his middle, squeezing him tight. They were locked in an intertwined and frenzied embrace. He kept thrusting and thrusting, pushing her up the blankets.
She began to tremble, and then she began to shake. He poured more savagery into the rhythm of his plunging, speeding it up, filling her, forcing himself deep inside her. She was gasping now, trembling and shaking and clawing at his back.
Then, suddenly, he could hear her yelling inside his mouth. Her screaming went on for a long, long time, kept silent within his own cheeks and lips, as her heels drummed on his back and her nails raked his neck and shoulders.
As suddenly as it had started it ended. She went limp. Her arms slid from around his neck and fell to the blankets. Her legs came off his back and fell down beside his. He took his mouth away and she lay there, her eyes open, her mouth gasping, staring straight up. Very slowly he eased off her, casing off on the side toward the wall. He pulled the blanket up around his shoulder.
He said softly in her ear, “Good night.”
She turned her face and looked at him. “What?”
“I said good night.”
She sighed. “I don’t think I can move.” Then she turned her head back to him. “What about you?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I just wanted you to understand there was more than one unselfish person in this bed.”
Chapter 6
The stage arrived a little before three o’clock the next day. They’d been watching for it for a half an hour, and then it topped a little rise a mile away and was suddenly on them. Higgins and the two Mexicans went out into the stable yard to help the driver stop the team. Longarm could see from his vantage point that the mules were worked up and sweating. There were five span of them, ten mules, and the driver handled the double handful of reins with practiced ease. To his left the shotgun messenger, as such men were called, held on to the side of his high seat and waved as they arrived.
Longarm watched as the two Mexicans ran alongside the lead mules, catching them by the harness and turning them in an arc, bending them back so that they began to circle. The driver was standing up in his seat, his hands full of reins, pulling with all his might. But the mules were run out, and after one circle of the yard, they pulled up in front of the station and stopped.
The stage was empty. Longarm walked over and looked at it curiously. It was the same shape as a buckboard except considerably bigger. He reckoned it to be about five feet wide by ten or twelve feet long. It had big, steel-rimmed wheels that were at least six inches wide, the better to ride over the sandy dirt. The stage had an almost flat canvas top and long canvas curtains that could be let down on both sides, presumably to keep out the rain, though more likely the dust and the sun. At the very front was a wooden box that was about three feet wide and ran the width of the bed of the stage. It was high enough so that it extended up behind the driver’s seat and up to the canvas roof. Longarm figured he knew what was in the box, and he didn’t reckon it was used clothes. The end he could see had a door in it with a heavy padlock holding a hasp. He could see that the box not only served its function to hold the safe, but also stuck up high enough to protect the driver and the guard from attack from the rear, And the passengers would have a hard time reaching their way up to the driver’s box if they were of a mind to try. The box blocked their way, and there was nothing to hold on to while they tried to get at the driver or the guard.
He was a little surprised that the stage was empty, but Higgins told him that was the case more often than not. “Most of the traffic we get in people is when they let a bunch out at the mine or a new bunch is going down there or there’s some boss or such taking a vacation. Of course we get passengers will take the stage to get somewhere along the line, but not all that often.”
The driver’s name was Ben, and his guard was a man that Higgins called Wooly. They were both old stage hands who, as they all did, said they wished they had a nickel for every drop of mule sweat they’d wiped off their faces. They were wind-burned and sun-cured and anxious for a drink. Ben said, “We got a little ahead of schedule. Reckon we’ll shade up here a bit.”
Longarm was ready to go. While the drivers rested he carried his saddle and saddlebags out to the coach. There was a rack on top of the stage that he figured was for luggage. He stepped up on the bed of the wagon at the end and slung his saddle into the rack along with his saddlebags. After a moment’s thought he stepped up again, pulled his carbine out of the saddle boot, and looked into the interior of the coach. There were benches along each side with padded backs. He slid his rifle in under the left-hand one near the end. He figured it would be ready to hand from there. After that he went back into the station. Mrs. Higgins and Rita Ann were fussing over a cloth valise that Mrs. Higgins was insisting Rita Ann use to carry her new clothes. Her case had not come in on the stage and it appeared, Rita Ann said, that she’d have to make do with what Mrs. Higgins had given her until the stage company could find a way to get her case to her.
The biggest trouble was with Doctor Peabody. He was insisting that the stage owed him free passage back to Phoenix since they had thrown him off in the middle of nowhere. Higgins said heatedly, “We don’t owe you nothin’. It was yore bad actin’ got you throwed off that stage. Tryin’ to look up the dresses of a bunch of hoors. So now it is three dollars on the barrel head or you can sit out thar an’ drink with them Mexicans till they throw you out. Damned if I care.”
The doctor whined that the stage was furnishing passage for the lady, Rita Ann, and their cases were similar.
“Not a bit of it!” Higgins said staunchly. “She was done wrong. You done wrong. They is a ocean full of difference ‘tween them two.”
In the end the doctor fumbled through the pockets of his soiled suit until he found three crumpled one-dollar bills. Higgins issued him a ticket and a stern warning to behave himself. “Else they is liable to throw you out in the big middle of nowhere an’ you’ll have buzzards fer company.”