Harry Carver shrugged and pointed out, "You told me when we first met that they'd sent you to straighten out an Indian police force. I don't see what's so mysterious about 'em needing guidance, old son."
Longarm grimaced and put a hand over his empty shot glass to decline a third shot as he said, "I'd best ask them about that in the morning then. Maybe they know something about those wild and woolly Kiowa we brushed with as well. Mean while, I reckon I'd best just sleep on it. So I'm callin' it a night if it's all the same with you gents."
Vernon simply bade him good night. But Harry Carver followed him out on the plank walk to say, "Me and my boys will be riding back to Texas tomorrow. So it's been nice meeting up with you if we don't meet for breakfast. What are you aiming to do about that kid who says he has it in for you, pard?"
Longarm said, "Nothing, the same as he figures to do about me for all his war talk. I must have missed a recent dime novel by Ned Buntline. For I met up with another such asshole in Amarillo not too many nights ago."
The grizzled train boss spat out into the darkness and opined, "There seems to be a lot of that going around since the papers first began to rank gunfighters as if they were competing athletes. Is it supposed to score higher if you beat a lawman to the draw instead of just another mean drunk?"
Longarm smiled thinly and replied, "War talk about a sober paid-up lawman is not only impressive but safer than, say, starting up with a morose cuss such as Clay Allison or Johnny Ringo. Either one would be delighted to blow you away and claim self-defense. But pests I keep bumping into seem to have boned up on what that High Dutch philosopher Nietzsche describes as the tyranny of the weak. That's the way women, servants, and hard-cases with a yellow streak get to sound off against gents they don't really want a fair fight with. A snotty schoolboy's safer sticking his tongue out at the teacher than the schoolyard bully. An armed and dangerous drunk in Dodge is safer challenging a sober lawman than another mean drunk. Neither that kid acting big in Amarillo a few nights ago nor this Quirt McQueen here on a dry army post really expected a grown man to slap leather on 'em just for acting like fool kids!"
Harry Carver thought, shrugged, and decided, "You must be right. I'd doubtless pistol-whup either one of the little shits if they was to talk like that about me!"
Longarm didn't want to go into all the bother it was after you got into a gunfight and won. He yawned on purpose and allowed he had to get a few winks before he rode over to the main Comanche agency in the morning. So they shook on it and parted friendly.
Longarm strode into the guest hostel to find nobody at the key desk. He didn't care whether the orderly had ducked out to take a crap or lit out for the night. He had his own key in a side pocket of his frock coat. So he just went on up to the top floor.
He found the hall dark, with the wall lamps trimmed or never lit that evening. As he groped his way along the doorways in the gloom, he decided someone had deliberately doused the lights. For someone was sure carrying on behind more than one door, and the place had been nearly empty when he'd arrived around sundown. He was paid to be nosey and would have been curious in any case. So he prowled about before he made for his own door. Moving quietly and listening sharp, he could tell almost every guest room seemed to be occupied, if not by a sudden influx of guests, then by couples who'd beaten him down here from that officers' club dance. He heard what sounded like male and female gaspings, male and male gaspings, and at least one set of female and female gaspings. It was small wonder someone had paid that desk clerk, or simply ordered him, to take the rest of the evening off!
When he got to his own room, he felt annoyed at himself for having taken that desk clerk for granted. Longarm had long made a habit, in strange hotels, of rigging a match stem in the crack of a locked door to warn him if it had been unlocked in his absence. But earlier that evening, anxious to make it to supper and unaware of that war talk about him on a damned old army post, for Pete's sake, Longarm had simply locked up and gone on about his business.
There was nothing he could do now but draw his.44-40 before, feeling like an old maid peering under her fool bed, he unlocked the damned door with his free hand and stepped into the darkness to slide swiftly along the wall as he kicked the door shut after himself.
He'd have shot the figure reclining across the room for sure if she hadn't giggled girlishly and whispered, "Where on earth have you been all this time? I was about to start without you, you slowpoke!"
Longarm laughed weakly with relief and whispered back, "Don't ever scare me like that again, honey. I figured you were gone and lost forever, like My Darling Clementine."
She started to ask who Clementine was, then giggled some more as she heard the distinctive sounds of a man undressing in the dark as fast as he knew how. As he hung his six-gun handy near the head of the bed, she started to explain why she was there instead of in her own quarters. But Longarm hushed her with, "Don't spoil the magic by excusing the feelings of a healthy young gal. I'll allow I felt a mite confused up the line at the dance tonight. But if you don't confuse me no more right now, we'll worry about the cold gray dawn when it gets here, agreed?"
She whispered, "Ooh, I was hoping you'd see it my way, you animal!"
So Longarm got rid of the last of his duds, and slid under the bed covers to find she was stark naked as well. He threw the fool covers down, lest they overheat, as he took her smooth nude body in his arms and hugged her tight for a welcome-home kiss.
Then, even though he went on kissing her, being only human, Longarm stiffened in surprise as it came to him that, whoever she might be, she couldn't be Godiva Weaver of the New England Sentinel!
The only other obvious suspect didn't work either. For the naked gal in his arms was neither as willowy as Godiva nor as short and plump as the colonel's lady. She was a gal of average height with a firm but junoesque figure. One suspected she hourglassed even better with a corset on. From the way she grabbed for his old organ-grinder with a skilled and friendly touch, one doubted she could have been one of the younger wallflowers looking so neglected at the dance earlier. That meant, no matter how you sliced it, he was in bed with some officer's lady and already stiff as a damned poker, with her cocking one long leg across him and crooning, "Ooh, is all this I have in my hand for little old me?"
It sure seemed to be as Longarm, seeing he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't, allowed her to impale her warm wet self on his raging erection, moaning, "Oh, yesss! You're everything they said you were and, praise the Lord, I knew I'd get to do it at least once with a real man before I died."
There was only one way a gent could respond to such a flattering lady. But when he rolled her on her back and spread her long legs with an elbow hooked under either of her knees, she sobbed, "Oh, not too deep! Give a girl a chance to get used to all this! I've only been married to a mortal human long enough to sense I was missing something, and to be frank, the few times I've done this with someone else, I've been bitterly disappointed!"
Longarm had to move faster in her to keep from going soft as he growled, "I thought I asked you not to spoil the magic. I don't want to share this moment with other men. But since you brought it up, I can't help feeling curious about this they you were jawing with about my physical endowments. I don't recall disclosing them to any of you Fort Sill ladies."
She wrapped her long legs around his waist and purred, "That's where you're wrong, you naughty tomcat. When Elvira Howard came in to tell us you'd broken up with that newspaper woman, a certain member of our little group who used to be somebody else in Denver volunteered how sweet you were when she told you she'd gotten the chance to marry a certain cavalry john."