Longarm helped her upstairs with her carpetbag, and she said the hot stuffy room needed airing. So he locked the door and opened a window while she naturally bolted for the door.
When he told her, not unkindly, "I locked it with the key, which I hold in my hand," she just shrugged and commenced to get undressed again, murmuring, "Oh, well, I haven't had any for weeks, and it's not as if you're deformed or busting out in boils."
He didn't see any reason to stop her from undressing. For openers it might make a gal think twice about unexpected dashes down the hall outside. He shucked his own hat and frock coat as well, saying, "My first hunch was that we'd picked up the more notorious Calvert Tyger after that less exciting robbery by Keller, and so you meant to surprise us with, say, Canadian newspaper clippings, proving they'd booked him wrong as Frank Keller. But as soon as I studied more on that, I saw it was just plain impossible. The cuss we're holding as Frank Keller, whoever he is, ain't old enough to have ridden in the war on either side. Besides, somebody in a leadership position has to have been issuing a heap of orders, and paying at least something to have them carried out. So an alive and kicking Calvert Tyger still at large works better than Tyger in jail, or the late Brick Flanders, albeit the third in command called Chief might have issued one or more orders before he wound up just as late more recently."
The big blonde gasped, "Brick and the Chief are dead?" Then she recovered and asked who they were talking about as she sat naked on the bed to take off her shoes.
Longarm hung his gun rig on a bedpost, and commenced to unbutton his shirt as he replied, "We've been sitting on both stories up to now. But the evening editions of both the Post and News ought to be reporting the deaths of Brick Flanders, Baptiste Youngwolf, and of course Calvert Tyger--many, many times, in fact. We figure he just meant to go on dying all over this country until he was sure we had him down as dead, and he sure seems a murderous cuss."
She purred she didn't know any of those people he mentioned, and didn't want to talk about such silly boys, alive or dead. So once he finished stripping down himself, Longarm joined her on the bed, on top of the covers, to see if they could get on a more trusting basis.
She parted her big creamy thighs with joyous abandon but as he entered her she stiffened and hissed, "My Lord, you might have warned me! I told you I hadn't been getting any for weeks, you overdeveloped stallion!"
He nibbled her ear as he told her he was sorry he'd thrust home with the first stroke, explaining, "I've been doing without aboard a mess of trains, and you have been acting like a gal who liked it barnyard style."
She raised her knees coyly to brace them against Longarm's bare chest so she had more control over the depth of his thrusts as she grinned up at him like a mean little kid and said, "I do, within the limits of my anatomy. I know I'm a big-boned woman of mature proportions, but I've always been a tad tight down there."
He allowed he'd noticed, in an admiring tone, as he began to move more cautiously in her surprisingly child-like privates. Few if any schoolgals would have gushed that wet or moved so fine while being ravaged by some older boy with a full grown hard-on. So a good time was had by all, and toward the end she'd wrapped her big old legs around him to take it all the way as she sobbed he was killing her and that she loved it. He was afraid they'd heard her down in the lobby when she came in broad daylight at the top of her lungs.
She wanted to come some more, and begged him to let her get on top. So he did, and that felt even tighter, with her bare heels dug into the mattress on either side of his naked hips as she bobbed all that lush meat up and down.
He told her a couple of dirtier jokes as he made her come some more. Then, while they were cooling their loving-flushed naked flesh in a lazy dog-style way, he felt it safe to ask her if she could see how dumb he was going to look in court if he ever repeated anything he heard in such relaxed surroundings.
She arched her spine with her cheek pressed to the covers as she crooned, "Oh, just keep that up, lover man. You've already figured out who I really am. I was going to admit the man you're holding as Frank Keller had to be somebody I'd never seen before, so-"
Longarm faked a dramatic sob. "You women are all alike. You get what you want from us poor weak men and then you feel free to taradiddle us with sweet dumb lies."
She groaned, "Never mind the taradiddles. Just diddle me some more, and could you do that a little faster?"
He could have. He felt like it. But he stopped with it deep inside her, bracing his weight with a palm on each of her broad hips as he said, "Let's see if I can convince you of my good intentions with a bit more of what I've already got, seeing you don't seem convinced by all I've just given you. Mayhaps we'd better lie down and share us a smoke as we see whether we can come to terms."
She gasped, "Don't you dare! I was just about to come again and I'll say anything you want if only you won't take it out too soon!"
Longarm wasn't sure he could have. So he just started thrusting again, with his bare feet spread wide on the rug by the bed to ram it up into her at an angle they both found mighty satisfying.
After he'd satisfied them both Longarm lay side by side with her, propped up on pillows as they shared that cheroot and he told her, "Once upon a time, as you've doubtless heard, there were three big outlaws who'd come West together to stop trains, rob banks, and such. For reasons I'm still working on they must have had a serious falling out. Brick Flanders was murdered by one or more of his old pals, and they tried to make it look as if he'd died in a rooming house fire under the name of Calvert Tyger. I reckon the game ain't as much fun after you've ridden the owlhoot trail a spell. Frank, Jesse, and The Kid are all laying as low as they can this summer."
He took a drag and passed the smoke to her, then continued. "By a series of pure coincidence proving what a small world or small outfit I ride for, I stumbled into Denver P.D.'s investigation of that deliberate rooming house fire. Then to make matters more nervous, a boss with limited manpower sent me first to guard you for a shift, and then assigned me to look into that hot paper turning up around their wartime stamping grounds, where old Youngwolf had just decided to hide out some more with your older sister."
She started to say something. Longarm figured it would be another lie. So he growled, "I ain't finished. I know this sounds like tooting my own horn, but facts are facts, and they must have figured I knew a heap more than I did when I kept stumbling around so close to their trail. So things have been noisy as hell, even with me shooting in the dark and just aiming lucky a few times."
She handed back the smoke and snuggled closer, purring that she really did enjoy bedtime stories when she wasn't half ready to go to sleep just yet.
Longarm swore, got rid of the cheroot, and sat up to shake her by both shoulders as he warned, "Can't you see you're done for, unless we get them before they get you and doubtless your sister Helga as well?"
She stared owlishly up at him. "Why should Cal be after my poor innocent sister, or even me?"
Longarm said, "For openers, in case you ain't noticed, he's a crabby cuss running scared. He's been busting a gut pretending to be dead, and both you and your sister know him on sight!"
She said, "Pooh, it's against the code of the trail to turn in a pal and Cal knows it."
Longarm said, "No, he don't. Whatever the original game was, he's been acting like a homicidal lunatic ever since I dealt myself in. He tried to stop me, but I got through, and how's he supposed to know I got all those pals, including Chief, by beginner's luck? Wouldn't you be worried about someone telling tales out of school if you were the leader of a gang already suffering from some internal struggle and the law kept foiling plan after plan on you?"