Longarm #431 (7 page)

“Turn your head, Bob. You shouldn't be lookin' at this,” Longarm said before he leaned down and gave Leanne a light kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Leanne. The supper was wonderful.”

“Anytime, Custis. And next time if you give me a little more notice I'll have that rhubarb pie that you like,” the lady said.

“In the meantime you can practice making it,” Bob Kane said.

“Oh, you. You would have me baking rhubarb pie every night if you could,” she said, laughing.

“Not a bad idea,” Kane said.

“You two can work that out later. In the meantime I'll take my leave,” Longarm said, “and truly, I do thank you. Supper was the best I can remember in ages.” He turned to Kane and extended his hand to shake.

“Will I see you again before you go?” Kane asked.

“I may stop by the office in the morning for a little coffee before I get on the road back to Crowell City. My man is supposed to go back there. At least I hope he does. I haven't told Billy that I lost the son of . . . oh.” He looked over at Leanne, who was hearing this conversation, and stopped short of what he had been about to say.

“Anyway, I haven't told Billy yet,” he finished.

“Do you want me to tell him for you?” Kane offered.

“I don't think so. I don't know what circuit these telegraph lines are on. Might be that Crowell City can read traffic coming out of Wildwood, and I know the operator over there spills everything he hears to the town marshal, an' that man is bent in the wrong direction. He must be makin' a fortune off the bribes he collects.”

Leanne had drifted back into her kitchen. Longarm looked to make sure the door was closed, then said, “The son of a bitch seems t' have some sort of accomplice, too. Bastard shot me a week or two ago. Likely thinks I'm dead, an' I'd just as soon he keeps on thinkin' that until I can figure out who he is an' nab him, too. Assault on a fed'ral officer should get him about five to ten in Leavenworth to go along with Al Gray's sentence. Maybe the two o' them can bunk together in prison.”

“If your man shows up back here, I'll grab him for you,” Kane promised.

“Thanks, Bob.” Longarm shook the sheriff's hand again and said, “Dinner was even better than I remembered, and Leanne is even prettier. G'night now.”

Longarm turned toward the hotel where he had left the few things he brought with him from Crowell City.

He made a stop first, though, at the One Horn Steer for a drink or three, played a little poker, had another drink or two.

And succumbed to the charms of a little floozy who called herself Rose.

The girl was small, probably not standing more than five feet tall when she was wearing high-heeled shoes. She had coal-black hair that hung short and straight, dark eyes, and a dusky skin tone.

She was also very subtle. She walked over to Longarm and planted her palm on his crotch to feel what he had in there. When she discovered the size of him she shrieked and said, “You have the one horn, honey, but you're no steer. Now the question is, do you have a dollar?”

“One dollar, eh. What would you do for two?” he asked.

“Darlin', pay me two dollars and I'll fuck you clean into the ground. I'll drain you so dry you won't be able to walk. It will take two strong men to carry you down from my room,” she returned.

“Prove it,” Longarm challenged, laughing.

Rose took his arm and led him up the stairs.

Rose's crib was almost as tiny as she was, but she had taken some pains to decorate it with wallpaper and artificial flowers. A blanket was laid over the foot of the narrow bed. That was to keep the bed from being soiled by gentleman callers who chose to keep their boots on.

Gentle
men? Longarm doubted that. Men, certainly. But gentle? Not likely, as attested by a large bruise beneath Rose's left tit.

The girl stripped her dress off in one well-practiced motion and matter-of-factly began helping him to unbutton and shuck his clothing as well.

Rose was pretty in an elfin, little-girl way. She had a thin, heart-shaped face with a small nose and long eyelashes, very large, dark eyes, and rounded cheeks.

Her belly was flat and her waist so small as to seem almost nonexistent. Her tits were small, firm cones that stood tall and proud, her nipples tiny and dark brown.

She got his clothes off and for a moment looked worried. “Honey, I don't know if I can take all of that into me. Lordy, I can't remember ever seeing a pecker that big.” She giggled. “But I'm looking forward to give it a ride. First, though, do you mind . . . ?”

Rose perched on the edge of the bed and leaned forward. She took Longarm's cock in her hand and moved it from side to side, up and down, admiring it from all sides.

She peeled his foreskin back to expose the red head of his cock and took it into her mouth. She pushed down, trying to take it all into her throat, but she gagged and quickly withdrew, coughing.

Rose looked up at him. “Sometimes I can do that,” she said, “but you're just too big.” She grinned. “Bet I can take it in my pussy though.”

“Let's find out,” Longarm said.

He reached down to take Rose in his arms. He lifted her, stretched her out flat, and lowered her gently onto the bed.

Longarm nuzzled her tits and lightly sucked on her nipples, which turned hard and erect.

“Lie down for a minute, honey,” Rose said. Longarm complied and she began licking his nipples, then his belly and his balls. Finally she ran her tongue up and down the length of his dick and around and around the head of it.

“About that ride you promised me,” he said.

“I always deliver what I promise, honey,” she responded, straddling his waist and easing slowly down onto his cock until the warmth of her surrounded him.

Longarm smiled. “Reckon you can take all of it after all,” he said.

“It feels good in there, honey,” Rose told him. “Awful good.” She began moving up and down on him, at the same time rotating her hips. She braced herself on his chest and began moving faster, driving herself down onto him, working hard at it, gasping, eyes closed and head thrown back until the tendons on the side of her neck and the veins there stood out beneath the skin.

Rose squealed and shuddered, reaching a climax moments before Longarm shot his sperm into her pussy.

She collapsed onto his chest, stretching out and lying on top of him. Her breath was rapid and uneven. After a moment she said, “I didn't expect that, honey. It was nice. Thank you.”

“The pleasure was all mine,” Longarm told her.

Rose chuckled. “Not all of it, believe me.” She sighed and said, “I've been with a lot of gentlemen, but you're special.”

Longarm stroked her back and her hair. He knew better than to believe such compliments from a working girl. But it was nice to hear anyway.

He left his cock inside her and after a few minutes it began to swell with renewed interest. Rose felt the change, too. She kissed his throat and began slowly to move her hips.

She was smiling.

“You look like you didn't sleep well last night,” Bob Kane told him over coffee early the next morning. “Was there something wrong with the room?”

“The only thing wrong with it was that I didn't get into it sooner,” Longarm said. “Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I had a pretty good reason for not getting there.”

“I won't ask what that reason was. Or, rather, who it was,” Kane said, laughing.

Longarm took a swallow of the hot, bitter coffee and said nothing. But his smile said volumes.

Bob had brought some of Leanne's homemade crullers for Longarm to take with him on the ride back to Crowell City, but the men ate them with their coffee instead.

“Reckon I'd best be moving along,” Longarm said.

“I notice you don't think of that until all the crullers are gone,” Kane said.

“Hell, Bob, I'm not stupid.”

“I can't tempt you with another cup of coffee?”

“No. Thank you, but no. I don't want t' be too late getting in there,” Longarm said. He stood and stretched, yawning, then extended his hand to Kane. “Give my love to your bride.”

Kane remained behind in his office while Longarm walked over to the livery stable to get his rented horse. When the hostler brought the animal out to him and Longarm reached into his pocket to pay, the hostler said, “No charge, sir. Sheriff Kane said the board bill is to be charged to the county.”

“Thank him for me, would you, please?” He gave the man a half-dollar tip and swung into the saddle to start the ride back to Crowell City and, hopefully, to a meeting with fugitive Al Gray.

He nooned beside a tiny rill of sweet water and made a lunch off a handful of venison jerky he had brought along, thinking back to the excellent meals Bob Kane's wife could cook, that rhubarb pie in particular. It seemed a damn shame that she had not known he was in the vicinity in time for her to bake one this trip.

Next time, he promised himself.

But this time . . . Al Gray.

Getting back to Crowell City was not exactly like homecoming. The truth was that he did not much care for the town. Longarm admitted to himself that his view of the town was shaded by his view of Wilson Hughes, and while that might not be fair it was just the way things were.

He returned the horse to its owners at the livery and paid for its use out of his pocket. Usually, of course, that was an item that he would simply issue a voucher for payment. But the vouchers against the federal government were not exactly something a traveling crook would have, and as far as anyone here knew that was what he was. Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long did not exist here. Yet.

He carried his meager belongings back to the hotel and upstairs. There still was no sign of Melody Thompson. He checked and was disappointed to find her room empty. His room seemed undisturbed since he left it.

Longarm washed and went back downstairs in search of supper, which he found at the first place he came to. He ate quickly if not particularly well and headed for Bresler's Saloon, where they had fresh beer and reasonably smooth rye.

He was halfway there when a lance of yellow flame and white smoke pierced the twilight ahead of a loud roar.

Longarm heard more than felt the patter of something striking his tweed coat and stinging his belly.

His .45 appeared in his hand without conscious thought as he reacted to the assault.

The shot had come from an alley a hundred feet to his front. He snapped a shot in that direction, knowing there was almost no likelihood that it would connect with whomever it was that shot at him. He saw a spray of wood chips fly off the corner of Hatton's Sundries.

With the Colt in his fist, Longarm dropped into a crouch and charged straight at the alley.

A second blast followed the first, this one going somewhere astray. He did not know who or what might have been hit by that shot, but it did not come close to him.

Again he followed the attacker's fire with a shot of his own. He fired while he was still running and was fairly sure his bullet came nowhere near the man who shot at him.

Longarm heard footsteps receding through the alley. By the time he reached it and could see down its length, the gunman was gone, out of sight to either left or right at the far end of the alley.

He stopped, leaned against the side wall of Hatton's, and took time to reload the two chambers he'd already fired.

Only then did he start his stalk through the alley.

Longarm reached up with his left hand, touched the new skin on the back of his neck where the unknown rifleman had creased him. The scabs were all gone now and he assumed the skin there would still be red and raw. One thing he knew for sure was that this being shot at was a bunch of bullshit. He'd had quite enough of it.

He reached the end of the passage between Hatton's and the haberdashery on the other side. The son of a bitch with the shotgun could have gone in either direction.

His assailant almost had to be Timothy Wright's brother. Longarm could think of no one else in Crowell City who might want him dead. Al Gray would, but Wilson Hughes would warn Longarm before Gray returned. Certainly no one other than Wright would be fool enough to come at him with a shotgun. And to shoot from so far away that the shot pellets had so little effect.

The man was not terribly bright. Nor had his now dead brother been.

But where was the surviving Wright now? That was the question.

Longarm normally carried only five cartridges in his Colt and the hammer down on an empty chamber. That way there was no chance of an accidental discharge.

In the past he had seen more than one unlucky son of a bitch who accidentally shot himself by dropping his gun. And one especially unfortunate bastard whose horse kicked him, the animal's hoof striking the hammer of his Colt and firing a bullet into the poor sap's leg.

Now he flicked open the loading gate and dropped a sixth .45 cartridge in. Just in case.

He did not really think Wright would have the nerve to stand up to Longarm face-to-face. But he could be wrong about that. This situation could come to a gunfight, and if it did, he would want that sixth cartridge in the cylinder rather than in his coat pocket.

He took his hat off and peeked warily around the back corner of Hatton's. There was no sign of Wright in the growing shadows in that direction, so Longarm looked the other way. Nothing there, either.

It was nearly dark, and Longarm was not familiar with the town's back alleys. At close quarters a shotgun is a devastating weapon. Both good reasons to back off and wait.

Custis Long was not very good when it came to backing off.

It looked like he was going to have to go hunting.

After more than an hour of prowling the alleys and looking into saloons, Longarm found no sign of Timothy Wright's brother. Nor of anyone else wandering the streets with a shotgun and a grudge.

Al Gray would have killed him without a qualm and laughed about it afterward. But Gray was not in town. Longarm was confident that marshal Wilson Hughes would tell him when Gray did return; the man wanted that second hundred-dollar payout that Longarm had promised.

He sometimes wondered just what it was that the marshal thought Longarm wanted with Gray. Something far beyond the law to be sure, but Longarm had never said exactly what it was that he had in mind. And did not intend to.

For the moment, though, it was the Wright brother he wanted to lay hands on.

If he found the son of a bitch—
when
he found the son of a bitch—Longarm intended to beat the shit out of him and then break that shotgun. Preferably by smashing it over the man's head.

But first he needed to find Wright, and that was proving to be more difficult than it seemed.

Eventually he decided that Wright must have fled the city. His ambush attempt failed and he surely knew that Longarm would be hunting him, so it was logical that he would run away. After all, he was not really a gunman. A miner, perhaps, but not a gunman.

After being shot at Longarm was in no mood for a night on the town. Besides, some of the shot pellets that Wright fired at him had struck thin cloth as well as the stiff tweed that he favored, and his belly felt a little itchy. He suspected some of those pellets had gotten through to his flesh.

He stopped at an apothecary for some bandage cloths and a small bottle of alcohol, changed his mind, and went next to a saloon and bought a bottle of rye whiskey. After all, it had alcohol in it, too, and unlike wood alcohol intended for medicinal use, after he was done using it outside the skin he could pour some inside, too.

Longarm carried his purchases back to his hotel and upstairs to his room.

The door to the room stood slightly ajar.

It was not impossible that Wright and his shotgun could be inside.

Longarm transferred his bandages and the bottle of rye to his left arm and palmed his .45.

If someone was in there, the son of a bitch was as good as dead, for Longarm was in no mood to be fucked with.

He took a deep breath.

And kicked the door open.