It made sense to send a gal in ahead to scout the intended scene of the crime. But such sign as there was to read around their hideout said that no more than one or two had been left there with the spare mounts and changes of clothing. That meant the lawmen had to track down one or two strangers in pants before the U.P. tracks were repaired and most anybody could be long gone with all that money and no description worth mention.
Once holed up in South Pass City, without incident, the very ruthless mastermind, who’d never meant to share a penny with three dumber men and a girl, reflected on yet another job well done. For things had gone slick as a whistle, with the only surprise being that federal lawman on the scene, just long enough to catch a 20-gauge shotgun charge dead center at point-blank range.
Since he had, there was no need to worry about him, or so the hard but innocent-looking little killer thought.
Which only went to show what Mr. Burns had meant in his poem about the best-laid plans of mice and men.
Chapter 2
The young widow of a rich old mining man had given her hired help the night off. So she was alone in her kitchen, frying eggs, when there came a discreet rapping on her back door.
There was nothing to be done about her long brown hair hanging down her back at that hour. But she wrapped her beige pongee kimono more securely about her Junoesque curves as she moved over to peer through a side pane, gasp in surprised delight, and open up to haul Longarm inside for a nice warm kiss before she exclaimed, “Oh, Custis, I’ve been so worried about you! What are you doing out of your sickbed? The Rocky Mountain News said you’d been shot in the breast by a shotgun and weren’t expected to recover!”
To which Longarm modestly replied, “It was only a 20-gauge, half the bore and a quarter the blast of a serious Greener market gun. We were fixing to have them say I’d been killed all the way. But Henry, our fussy file clerk, convinced Marshal Vail and me that the payroll would be thrown all out of joint if a senior deputy died totally and then came back to life.”
Dragging him into the kitchen and seating him at the table, his radiant hostess said, “Just let me take these things off the stove lest they burn. Didn’t it smart to be shot in the breast with any sort of shotgun, darling?”
He explained, “Not half as much as it might have if I hadn’t been planning on some fry cooking of my own. On my way to that bank I’d picked up a big slab of bacon and a bitty frying pan, along with some biscuit flour and a bottle of tomato ketchup. My coat and vest wound up at the dry cleaner, once I got my breath back, but nary a lead shot got through that old frying pan. How come you don’t want to fry with your own pan anymore, honey?”
She moved over to sit in his lap, allowing her kimono to fall wide open as she husked, “I can get fried eggs most any time. How long has it been since last you darkened my door, you brute?”
Longarm replied by rising with her in his arms. They both knew the way to her bedroom. As he carried her out of the kitchen and up the back stairs, she repeated her question, and he said a man lost track of time when he had a mean boss who kept him so busy.
He felt sort of mean himself as he considered where else he’d been since the last time he’d been up here atop Capitol Hill. A man had to consider where he meant to indulge in slap and tickle when he was supposed to be crippled up or dying in the hospital. He didn’t think he ought to say as much to a gal he admired for her brains as well as her warm nature.
But of course, being a gal with brains as well as a warm nature, the Junoesque young widow only let him lay her across the bed and come in her once before she demanded to know what he’d been doing with that other woman up in Bitter Creek to begin with.
Longarm was sitting up to finish undressing all the way and she regarded him from a state of total nudity in her big four-poster. The bedroom lamp was trimmed low. But he met her eyes with a clear conscience and assured her, “That gal who shot me was neither a rival nor half as well built. I’d never seen her before, but the wanted flyers know her of old, and that’s how come we don’t want her to know she never shot me seriously.”
He shucked the last of his disordered duds, and flopped back naked beside her to take her in his arms again and treat her even better. She spread her soft thighs in wide welcome, but protested, “I do this way better when I’m not wondering about other women, Custis.”
Longarm eased his love-slicked organ-grinder in place between the gates of paradise as he said soothingly, “She was just an ornery outlaw gal. We don’t know her real name. But we call her kind a Medusa because of the way they kill everyone who gets a good look at their faces, like that Medusa critter in those old Greek myths. This particular cold-blooded she-monster is called Miss Medusa Le Mat because she’s been turning folks to stone, leastways, hash, with a Le Mat Duplex. That’s this freak revolver with its cylinder of .40-caliber chambers turning on a sawed-off 20-gauge shotgun barrel instead of a regular axis. After she shot me, my prisoner, and others at that Wyoming bank, it seems she wiped out her own gang and rode off with all the swag. She had us all confounded about that at first. She’d left the posse a ringer in the outfit she’d been wearing in the bank. It would have worked a heap better if she’d really left me dead with all the other witnesses.”
He found himself rising once more to the occasion as he kissed the widow’s soft throat and added, “We figure from other cases in other parts that the lady we call Miss Medusa Le Mat doesn’t want her sweet innocent face remembered by any witnesses or associates. I got a good look at her up close, just before she blew me off my feet. So I found her substitute corpse unconvincing when they brought it into Bitter Creek.”
The widow dilated to let him get the head in, then clamped down and sort of rolled the rest of it in as she moaned, “Ooh, nice! But there was nothing in the papers about you identifying any bodies, darling.”
He agreed it felt swell, but moved it nice and easy at first while he explained, “We didn’t want to run Miss Medusa to ground too deep.”
The young widow chuckled fondly, said she liked it as deep as he felt like running it into her, and added that she didn’t follow his drift about that other wicked gal.
So Longarm told her, without stopping, “We put her getaway together after it was too late, comparing notes with mighty uncertain witnesses who vaguely recalled a small nester gal in a drab Mother Hubbard dress and oversized sunbonnet. We figure she changed to yet another outfit as soon as she caught a stagecoach going one way or another out of South Pass City. The two ponies she abandoned there had been stolen over near the Utah line.”
Then they were both too busy loping over the rise of pure pleasure to worry about anyone else for a spell, which they did their best to hold on to.
But since all things good and bad must pass, it came to pass all too soon that they were sharing a three-for-a-nickel cheroot, propped up against the headboard with her head on his bare shoulder while she tried to fill in some gaps in her understanding of that other woman.
Longarm passed the smoke to her as he explained, “We know who the three drifters and one whore she recruited were. All four had long if somewhat pathetic records, albeit none of ‘em had ever done anything so serious before. Smokey Wade was the meanest, and he’d never killed for that much profit before. Bob Shingler had been fired from his job as a Wells Fargo guard when they caught him pilfering from passengers. Nick Parsons was a stock thief who could ride and shoot some. That other gal was a shopworn whore who shoplifted when she couldn’t find a paying customer on the streets of Cheyenne.”