They wound up more naturally, like old pals, in the end. But neither felt like doing more than letting it soak inside her as she hugged him naturally with her bare arms and legs.
After a while in that position, she sighed and said, “Gee, I wish it wouldn’t get me fired if I were to bring you back to the agency with me for at least a year!”
He kissed her and pointed out, “I doubt we’d feel like this for more than a month. That’s how come they call it the honeymoon. Evolution’s always favored the gals who nag men to go out and bring back a side of mammoth meat. But I reckon I could ride on a few more trail breaks with you, honey.”
She sighed and said, “Lord knows when I’d ever get home at that rate. Please don’t feel hurt, but I think we’d better quit while we don’t want to, Custis. You’re so right about the way lovers turn on one another after the honeymoon is over, and I want to remember you this way, as an adorable brute with a streak of gallantry and just about the nicest cock I’ve ever had in there. Could you move it some more before we part, just for old time’s sake?”
He could and he did. Most men would have, including whoever she’d meant when she’d said “just about.”
Her point about not waiting until everyone was completely sated was well taken, and well understood by every tumbleweed gent with love-‘em-and-leave-‘em tendencies. He came in her one more time—it seemed to take forever and left him wondering if it had been worth that much of an effort—and then it was time to put on their duds and act grown-up again. So they did, and parted with a kiss they could have gotten away with in public before they mounted up and rode their separate ways.
It was well after midnight, Lord love her rollicking rump, by the time Longarm headed back to Pawnee Junction alone. This time he walked his pony more and stayed closer to the railroad, pausing under that trestle to scout, without finding any sign he could use against anyone. You could only ride so many ponies around in circles before there wasn’t any particular pattern left.
As he rode on north along the service trace with the wires above him humming in the dry night winds, he heard a faroff rumble and glanced up thoughtfully.
There wasn’t a cloud in a sky so clear it seemed you might be able to scoop stars with your hat if you stood tall enough in the stirrups.
“Gunplay? At going on three in the morning?” he asked his chestnut livery mount in a puzzled tone. The gelding didn’t act as if he’d even heard the far-off fusillade. Critters were better at judging how far off a night noise came from. They seldom spooked when it wasn’t as close as a bigger beast could charge flat out. That was doubtless how come human beings invented wheels and such. They kept thinking about things they couldn’t figure easy. As he rode on toward the once-more-quiet town, he decided some drunk had shot up the sky on his way home from the Red Rooster. Marshal Pronto Cross wouldn’t put up with much more noise than Longarm had just heard. The noisy cuss would be locked up or long gone by the time Longarm could make it on into town. So he decided it wasn’t his row to hoe.
Longarm wasn’t sure what Western Union and Billy Vail would tell him he was supposed to hoe come morning. On the face of it, their federal prisoner could be said to have died on them by accident when those Minute Men avenged a purely local crime. Billy Vail wouldn’t like it. Longarm didn’t like it. But there was only so much money and man hours to be spent on all the injustices of an unjust world, and nobody expected them to find Captain Kidd’s treasure or put a stop to child labor and patent medicine either. A whole township covering up for the rough justice of a lynch mob deserved such rough justice as they were likely to wind up with, and meanwhile, there was a new stenography gal at the Denver Federal Building who didn’t know a soul in town, so what the hell.
As he saw the winking lights of Pawnee Junction ahead, he wondered why. It was after three in the morning. So why should so many folks be up at this hour?
He rode on in, heading first for the livery next door to his boardinghouse, but then swinging up towards the brighter lights between the railroad stop and Courthouse Square as he spotted more signs of action up that way.
As he walked his mount around a corner, he saw other ponies tethered out front of the Red Rooster, with bright lamplight spilling out across the plank walk from the doorway. He patted the neck of his hired chestnut and said, “This must be the place. Must be something going on if they’re this busy at this hour.”
He dismounted out front, tethered the chestnut handy to a watering trough, and strode across the plank walk to part the batwing doors and step into the noisy glare.
The hulking Porky Shaw was holding court at the bar, surrounded by admirers dressed town, corn, and cow as he raised his beer schooner to crow, “Here’s to Longarm, who met his match! We drink to his dead meat! So down the hatch!”
Then he spied Longarm standing in the doorway with a thin bemused smile, and let go of the beer schooner to go for his guns as he screamed like an old maid who’d just found a man under her bed after all!
Porky was fast, and his side arms were riding side-draw in waxed leather. So he got his right-hand gun out first, and worse yet, it was double-action. But as he got off the first shot, it carried wide to spang a long splinter out of the doorjamb to Longarm’s left as the cooler lawman was cross-drawing and aiming cooler. Then a .44-40 slug hit Porky dead center to stagger him back against the bar. He shot another round of .45-28 into the sawdust between them, and then fell flat on his face with a sad little sigh and a mighty thud, still breathing but not long for this world, from the sounds he was making.
Longarm had already slid along the front wall to cover everyone politely from a corner as he calmly asked, “Would somebody please tell me why I just had to do that?”
That older man who dressed like Buffalo Bill’s rich uncle rose from the corner table he’d been seated at with others to call out, “Porky was just telling us you were dead, Longarm. He’d only hinted he might have had something to do with your demise. But you can see from the way he just acted that he thought you had just cause to be vexed with him.”
Longarm had just allowed he’d been vexed with Porky Shaw before the beefy bully had killed him when Marshal Pronto Cross and two of his town roundsmen came in to throw down on Longarm.
The barkeep called out helpfully, “Porky drew first, Marshal. Old Porky and those four, Baidy, Lefty, Riley, and Checkers, were with him. They’d just told everyone Longarm had been gunned by the Minute Men, for insulting them, when Longarm yonder came through that very door lively enough. Nobody but Porky drew on Longarm. You can see what a dumb move that was.”
Pronto Cross moved over for a better look at the downed two-gun man as he announced for one and all, “One can see why Porky might have been taken aback. We just now came from the Widow MacUlric’s. Porky or somebody just as mean shot up the front of that old frame considerable. They must have known which room our visitor from Denver had hired. It was a good thing for him he wasn’t in that bed upstairs when somebody stepped up on the porch and kicked in the front door to fire up into the ceiling with at least two pistols and a Greener. For they surely shot the liver and lights out of that there empty mattress!”
Chapter 10
Porky Shaw had gurgled his last and Pronto Cross had questioned everyone in the Red Rooster by the time Doc Forbes arrived to roll the two-gun man over, pronounced him dead, and declare that there’d be another coroner’s hearing that afternoon. Nobody there disputed his right to bill the county for another medical examination whether there was anything mysterious about the cause of death or not.