Railroaders didn’t lay all that expensive trackage just to expend the time and money. Tracks smoothed out the bumps and steered such a sudden and heavy mass of machinery the right way. Nobody was likely to get anywhere with self-propelled vehicles before the roads got a whole lot smoother or those rubber tires got a whole lot softer than anyone knew how to build them yet.
Suddenly aware the dumb article was having the desired effect on his eyelids, Longarm got rid of the smoke before he could set himself and the whole hotel on fire. Then he tossed the magazine aside and trimmed the lamp, muttering, “That pretty widow would have no problem if only she could buy a cross-country steam tractor strong enough to haul, say, a string of sledges the length of that whole park in summer weather. But she can’t. So we’ll say no more about it.”
He plumped up his two pillows and flopped his head down on them to shut his eyes and try not to think of pretty gals in either red velveteen or ivory damask sheathing shapely derrieres. He and his dawning erection would have settled for a dishwater blonde in that cotton waitress uniform about now. So he idly wondered if he might have room for just a cup of coffee downstairs.
He muttered half aloud in the dark, “It’s barely ten o’clock, you poor hard-up simp, and even after she gets off at midnight you’d have to spend an hour or more getting her up here and into this blamed bed. So simmer down and let’s get a fresh start in the morning and, with any luck, that court stenographer called Bubbles will be willing to enjoy another noon break with you in that file room.”
Thinking about something else tended to help a poor cuss with a hard-on in a strange town. So Longarm pondered some more about the way Englishmen and Chinamen laid railroad track. He’d read a book on the subject one time, if only he could recall the title. It had given the advantages and disadvantages of either system. But all he managed to remember was that those heavier English rails cost far more money and took far more work to set securely in place. He’d already agreed with young Widow Farnsworth about that.
As he lay there in the dark, picturing cross sections of the two kinds of track in his mind’s eye, someone seemed to be gently tapping on his chamber door. He doubted like hell it could be a raven, and Matilda Waller was still on duty down below. So Longarm tossed his covers aside and rolled to his bare feet with a full erection and a knowing grin. For Red Robin had seen him like this in broad daylight and he could hardly wait to hear her explanation—after they’d torn some off, of course. If she still meant to ride off across the Divide with some other son of a bitch, he didn’t want to hear about it while he was coming in her fickle flesh.
That thought had Longarm a mite miffed as he flung open the door of his dark room to the dark hallway and simply grabbed hold to haul the surprised gal in, muttering, “Great minds seem to run in the same channels. I was fixing to start without you, but seeing you’re in as horny a mood, let’s ride her to Powder River and see how she bucks!”
“Not so loud!” his late-night female visitor whispered as he simply swept her off her feet and headed for the bed with her skirts brushing against his bare legs. He’d noticed back in that saloon how Red Robin’s large rump had spread across a piano stool a mite more since last he’d had her dog-style. But it wasn’t polite to warn any gal she was getting fat. So he never did as he flopped her across his rumpled bedding and hoisted her skirts high without further ado and she gasped, “What are you doing, you fresh thing?”
That seemed a dumb question from any gal who’d come calling on a naked man without any underdrawers on. So he simply parted her soft ample thighs and lowered his hips into her warm love-saddle with his feet braced wide on the rug and growled, “You knew what both of us wanted me to do to you since earlier this evening. So could we just hesh up and let me do it before I have to listen to exactly why you changed your mind?”
She laughed out loud, threw her thighs open wider, and grabbed both cheeks of his bare behind to dig her nails in as she thrust up to meet his questing shaft.
As he entered her, deep, he suddenly realized that, whoever this was, it couldn’t be Red Robin!
Not that he had any complaints, nor, judging from the way she was bumping and grinding, did she. So a grand time was had by all as they worked together to get her duds off over her head without missing a bump or grind.
It was once they were belly-to-naked-belly in the dark that a man began to suspect there was more to this one than met the eye. Her big old tits felt swell against his bare chest, and there was much to be said for a rump that didn’t need even one pillow under it. But this passionately panting total stranger was just plain fat anyway you might want to slice her.
He thought a moment and asked uncertainly, “Miss Peony, the upstairs chambermaid?”
To which she replied with a moan and another vaginal contraction, “Who did you think I was, that sissy boy in Room 203? I was just now fixing to leave for the night. I came by to ask if there was anything else I might do for you. I hardly expected to wind up doing this, but don’t stop now whatever you do!”
So he didn’t, and he soon had her moaning, “Oh, Lordy, you’re just a dreadful brute and I feel so low and wicked that I just can’t thank you enough and I’m cominnng!”
That made two of them, and he sure felt thankful too as they lay there gasping for breath in each other’s arms while the fat gal’s soft innards kept throbbing with pleasure.
He tended to believe her when she crooned, “My Lord, I haven’t been pronged so swell since I left my second husband. He was no damned good either. But I reckon a man who won’t work and never wins at cards had to be good at something!”
He didn’t ask why she’d left her first husband. She’d just told him the second one screwed better. He didn’t want to hear another sad tale about getting used and abused by mean menfolk, so he asked if she smoked and when she allowed she did, on the sly, he groped in the dark for that cheroot he’d snuffed out and thumbed a match head to relight it.
The total stranger smiling awkwardly at him in the flickering glow was younger and prettier than he’d suspected from the width of her bouncy hips and complaints about at least two husbands. Before she could brag on a third, he got their smoke going, shook out the match, and snuggled her closer to ask what she’d meant about Bunny McNee’s sissy ways.
She repeated what Matilda had told him in the dining room, then added some lip-smacking noises, now that she knew him well enough to talk dirty. She described young McNee by name, and called the other the strange one, although she made them both sound a tad strange.
She said she’d thought at first they were arguing about money, with McNee bawling like a worried gal that his visitor had said he’d bring some of the next time, which was then. But when she’d moved in closer, to sort of dust the wallpaper closer to McNee’s door, the stranger had been saying he wanted his “buggy bunny,” which did sound something like money when you studied on it. She said McNee had allowed he didn’t want to be abused for no good reason by a promise-busting polecat, and that then the stranger had slapped the smaller McNee hard enough to make him cry like a gal some more and promise some mighty vile-sounding tricks that had sounded even sloppier once they’d wound up on the bed.
When Longarm asked how she knew they’d been vile on the bed, Peony giggled and confided, “The bedsprings in Room 203 are the loudest on this floor. I’ve never gone for that Greek stuff. As I told my first husband, a man too small to enjoy a woman right ain’t much of a man to begin with. I’ll be switched if I can see why any sort of boy would be willing to let a man abuse him that way!”