As Longarm turned to mount the gray, she moved cat-quick, raising the riding crop to slash at him. As fast as she acted, Longarm reacted faster. He caught her arm as it came down and held it firmly while he took the crop off her wrist and tossed it to the ground. She brought up her free hand to slap his face, but Longarm grasped it before the blow landed. For a moment they stood there with arms locked, anger flowing between them like an electric current where flesh touched flesh. Then she relaxed, and Longarm released her.
They were still glaring, eye to eye, when Sergeant Flanders came hurrying up. His arrival broke the tension. He said, "Now, let's don't you and the marshal go having words, Miz Stanley. I hope you won't blame me, but Marshal Long can carry his claim for whatever he needs clear up to Colonel Tompkins. I told him~"
"It's all right, Sergeant," she broke in. "Mr. Long's explained to me that you told him I always rode Tordo."
"Looks like I've convinced the lady I need him more'n she does, Sergeant," Longarm said. "Now, if you'll give me that form you got, I'll sign it and be on my way." He took the requisition Flanders had in his hand, rested it on the saddle skirt, and scrawled his name on the proper lines. Handing the form back to the sergeant, he said, "Now, if you'll show me where the commissary's at, I'll swing by there and pick up some rations and be on my way."
Flanders pointed to a sprawling warehouse-like building a short distance away. Longarm nodded and swung into the saddle. Touching his hat brim to the woman, he rode off, leaving them looking at his back as he made his way to the commissary. He didn't turn to look at them.
Chapter 2
While waiting for the rations he'd drawn to be assembled, Longarm had gotten directions to help him find the road he'd take out of San Antonio. After he'd reached the end of the town, he'd have to rely on the army ordnance maps he'd picked up at the same time. He rode due west from the quartermaster depot. The houses of San Antonio lay to his left; the city was just changing the direction of its expansion from west to north. The line of closely settled streets stopped nearly two miles from the depot, though there were a few scattered dwellings, mostly small truck farms, between the body of the town and the military installation.
Longarm was taking his time, getting acquainted with the habits of the gray horse. Tordo had been trained well. The animal responded to the pressure of a knee and the touch of a boot toe with as much readiness as it did to the rein. For the most part, after he'd satisfied himself that the dapple could be trusted, Longarm let the horse pick its own way across the grassy, tree-dotted, saucerlike plain that sloped gently to the banks of the San Antonio River, which now lay just ahead.
He'd reached the riverbank and was looking for signs of a ford when thudding hoofbeats caught his attention and he turned to look behind him. Mrs. Stanley, mounted on a roan that must have been her second choice of the horses in the corral, was overtaking him fast. Subconsciously, Longarm noted that she sat the horse well, holding easily to the saddle as the roan loped toward him. He reined in and waited. She drew alongside and brought her mount to a halt.
"If you're looking for a ford, the best one's only about two hundred yards upstream," she said. "If you don't mind company, I'll ride with you a little way."
"You'll be wasting your time, if you're scheming to talk me into swapping horses," Longarm warned her. "Otherwise, I'll be right pleased to have you ride alongside me for a spell, Miz Stanley."
"I promise that I won't try to persuade you." She seemed to have gotten over her fit of anger; her voice was light and pleasant. "I really rode after you to apologize for the way I acted back at the corral. I don't usually behave so thoughtlessly."
"Wasn't no need to come apologizing, ma'am. I don't hold grudges over things that don't amount to a hill of beans."
"Just the same, it was childish of me. I understand why you'd need the best horse you can find, in your job. It must be a dangerous one."
"I reckon it is, sometimes." Longarm wasn't given to dwelling on the danger of his work. In his book a job was a job, and a man did it according to his best lights.
"Here's the ford," she said, pointing to the spot where the river's olive green water took on a lighter hue as the stream spread to run wide and shallow over a pebble-covered underwater limestone shelf. Turning their horses, they splashed through water only inches deep and rode up the shallow bank on the opposite side.
"Guess you must ride this way pretty often," he suggested after they'd covered a few hundred feet on the west bank of the river.
"Almost every day. Riding's about the only relaxation I have in this dull little town. Especially now, when my husband's away on a training exercise."
"Funny. I never figured San Antone was so dull."
"I don't suppose it would be, for a man. You've got the gambling places and dance halls and saloons. But all I've got is the company of other army wives, and we get bored with one another after a few gossipy afternoon teas. At home, now, it's a different thing."
"Where's home to you, Miz Stanley?"
"New York. It's never dull there. We have the Broadway shows — musicals or dramas — tea dances at the big hotels, receptions, opera, always something interesting."
"I can see it'd be different. Can't rightly say much about New York; I never visited back there, myself."
"You should, sometime. It's a different world." She pointed to a thickly wooded area that lay just ahead of them, where trees in closely spaced groves dotted a wide stretch of grassland that ended on their right, at the foot of a high white bluff. "Of course, you won't see things like that in New York. The nearest thing to open country there is Central Park. Somehow, that area ahead reminds me of it; perhaps that's why it makes me feel at home when I see it."
"Seems like I recall this place from when I was in San Antonio before. San Pedro Springs, they call it, don't they?"
"Yes. It's one of my favorite spots. On Sundays and holidays it's overrun with families having picnics, but on days like today it's as deserted as the Forest of Arden."
"Can't say I been there, either. Matter of fact, I never got out to San Pedro Springs but once, when I was here last time."
Mrs. Stanley seemed compelled to talk. "Sometimes I bring my lunch out here and stay all day. I've found arrowheads and pieces of old Mexican army equipment from the Texas-Mexican war of fifty years ago."
"You interested in history, then, Miz Stanley?"
"Not especially. But it gives me something besides garrison gossip to think about."
They were approaching an especially large grove of hackberry and pinoak frees bordered by a heavy growth of low-branched chinaberry frees that formed a wide, dense belt around the taller growth. Longarm kneed the dapple to turn it and skirt the edge of the grove, but the lieutenant's wife was reining in.
"There's the most beautiful spring in the middle of this grove," she said. "I just can't pass by it without stopping for a sip of water."
Longarm thought the excuse was flimsy, almost as thin as her story of having ridden after him to apologize. His work took him to army posts quite regularly and he'd met bored, restless army wives before. Almost from the time they'd crossed the river he'd been getting the groin twitches he felt whenever he was with an attractive woman who was obviously making herself available to him. He pulled rein and swung out of his saddle before she was quite ready to dismount.
"I'm pretty thirsty myself," he told her. "We'll just go get some of that spring water together."
He moved to help her from her horse. She was riding sidesaddle, with her right leg hooked over the horn, and had to swing the leg high over the pommel to free it. Longarm caught her booted foot in one hand and steadied her to the ground. His free arm passed up the backs of her thighs, over the soft bulge of her buttocks to her waist. She was beginning to tremble before both her feet were on the ground. The trembling increased as he pulled her to himself and sought her lips. They locked together, tongues entwined. Longarm felt himself growing erect as she rubbed her hips against him.