Longarm and the Horse Thief's Daughter (12 page)

“Oh, God, I'm blind,” he moaned.

“Don't be silly,” a voice responded. “Your eyes are caked shut with mucus that accumulated while you were asleep.”

“Who the hell?” He tried to sit up but was held back by a hand on his chest.

“Lie still,” the voice—a woman's voice—said. “I'll get some warm water to bathe those eyes.”

He heard a rustle of cloth, then footsteps. Moments later she returned and he felt the brush of a wet cloth over his face. She scrubbed at his eyes—rather hard, he thought—and his left eye popped open. He strained a little and was able to open the right eye too.

He was in a cabin, lying on a soft mattress, looking up at the heavy beams of the ceiling and at a thin woman with graying hair pulled back in a severe bun. She was wearing a man's red-and-black checked woolen shirt, denim trousers held up by canvas suspenders that he recognized as army issue, and knee-high lace-up boots.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“My name is Katherine Jennings. That is Katherine with a K, please, but you may call me Kat.”

Longarm raised an eyebrow, and she smiled. “No, I am not the cat that chased you out of her den yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” he asked, his voice coming out as a weak croak.

Kat nodded. “She wasn't trying to kill you. She didn't really think of you as food. She just wanted you away from her babies. She has two of them, the cutest little kittens you ever saw.” She smiled again. Katherine Jennings had a lovely smile, in fact, wide and happy and reaching all the way into her eyes.

Then she laughed. “You are so lucky. She didn't like being out in that rain and hail. That's why she left you so quickly and ran back to her babies.”

“You . . . How would you know all this?” he asked.

“I am up here researching a paper for the national wildlife service. I've been living here since last winter. I spend most of my time in a blind that the wildlife here has come to accept as normal and nonthreatening. I was here when the kittens were born. I've watched them trying to learn how to hunt. Watched their mama bring live prey home for them to learn on. It is really wonderful the way nature takes care of her own.”

“If you say so,” Longarm mumbled. Hell, he hadn't known there
was
any sort of national wildlife service. “You say the lion didn't really want t' hurt me?”

“That is not exactly what I said, mister. I said she wanted to chase you away, but it would have been quite all right if she had killed you. From her point of view, that is, not mine. As it is, you were very lucky. That heavy vest you were wearing kept her from ripping your lungs out. A panther's hind foot claws are very powerful, you know. Because of the vest, however, she only scratched you in three places. Of course it remains to be seen whether those wounds will fester and turn green. A cat's claws are quite filthy, you know.”

“That's more'n I want t' know,” he said. “You say I was clawed?”

“Yes. But I brought you back here, you and your animals. I washed your wounds and put salve on them. It is too soon to know if they will turn bad.”

“If they do?” he asked.

“Then you shall die, of course.”

“I wouldn't much like that,” Longarm said.

Kat smiled. “Then by all means, let's make sure it does not happen.”

“When will I know?” he asked.

“Give it three days. I should be able to tell by then.”

Longarm nodded. “I might not be real good company for the next couple days.”

“That is all right. People say I am not good company anytime. I prefer solitude to the incessant yammering of most people.”

Longarm took that as a suggestion. He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep.

Longarm learned two things that afternoon. One was that Kat Jennings was a truly awful cook. The meal she prepared for him would have tasted better if she had simply put the ingredients into a bowl, raw, and given them to him that way.

The other thing was that the woman was not shy. Late in the afternoon she pulled her clothes off, poured a basin of cold water, and proceeded to bathe herself with a tattered sponge.

Longarm pretended not to watch. But he did, fascinated.

The woman was a collection of bones with a meager coating of skin stretched tight over it.

He had never seen any human creature in such a condition.

Hell, any sensible farmer would have rejected her if she applied to become a scarecrow.

Her hip bones stuck out like plowshares, and her chest was a ladder of bone and gristle.

Her tits were like pancakes that had nipples perched atop them. Thin cakes, at that.

Her pussy appeared to be normal enough, topped by a bush that was growing on the flat that separated her skinny thighs. Longarm would have wagered he could put his hands completely around those thighs. They were thinner than most women's calves. Hell, they were thinner than some women's ankles.

And her belly. Flat as a board, it did not begin to belly out.

He gave up pretending to be asleep and sat up on the side of the bed where she had somehow pulled, pushed, or dragged him, never mind that he probably weighed twice what she did. Or more.

He reached for his things, which she had laid out on a stool beside the bed, and picked up a cheroot and a lucifer.

“Oh, you're awake,” she said with a smile as soap suds dripped from her pussy hair. Then she went back to scrubbing.

He flicked the match aflame with his thumbnail and applied the fire to the tip of the cheroot. Lord, that was one skinny woman. He had seen mop handles with fuller bodies than that.

Longarm pulled the smoke deep into his lungs, then blew out a series of smoke rings.

Kat finished washing, dried herself off on a piece of burlap, and pulled her clothes on.

“Do you feel up to walking a little?” she asked.

Longarm nodded. He felt perfectly well except for some pain in his right shoulder blade and in the small of his back.

“Good. Those animals of yours need to be let out so they can graze. I don't keep any feed up here. It's too costly. And I can't take the time to mow wild hay, so I just don't have any livestock of my own. I tied yours to some trees down by the creek. They should be safe there unless a grizzly comes along. If that were to happen, they wouldn't be safe in a pen, probably not in a shed either. Grizzlies don't have much respect for mankind or our wants and needs.”

“Ain't that the truth,” Longarm said. He himself was as naked as Kat had just now been. He gathered that she had stripped his clothing so she could nurse him.

There seemed to be no point in becoming modestly shy at this late date so he simply stood and dressed. He felt twinges in his back but nothing serious.

It was worrisome, though. He had seen the ugliness of gangrene. And since the clawing had been on his back, amputation, the normal cure for gangrene, was not an option.

If the wounds festered, he would die. Plain and simple.

He stamped into his boots and went outside to find his mare and burro and tend to them.

After a supper that was every bit as awful as her lunch had been, Kat again stripped Longarm, then rolled him onto his stomach. She leaned over him and pulled away the gauze that she had used to cover his scratches.

“Mm.”

“What's that supposed t' mean?” he asked.

“What is?”

“You went ‘mm' when you looked at my back.”

“Did I?”

“Yes, dammit, you did. So what is ‘mm' supposed to mean?”

“Nothing to do with your wounds, actually. I was, uh, remarking unconsciously about your muscle tone. Most men are quite flabby, you know. I can't abide flab. You have excellent muscle tone.”

He did not know what to say about that, so he kept his mouth shut.

Kat rubbed something smelly onto his wounds and again plastered them with gauze.

“On your back now, please,” she said.

Longarm rolled over, his discomfort less than he might have expected.

Kat's attention shifted below his belt. Or where his belt would have been had he been wearing anything.

It occurred to him to wonder why the woman thought it necessary to completely strip him when it was only his back that had suffered the scratches.

“Would you mind?” she asked.

Longarm did not know what the hell she was asking him about, but he was the guest here and knew a little about proper manners for a guest in someone's home. “No, I don't mind,” he said.

Kat smiled hugely. Then stood upright and began stripping.

He at first assumed she was just going to bathe herself again.

Then, still smiling, she crawled onto the bed next to him.

And took his cock into her hand.

That muff of dark, curly hair hid a pussy that was hot, wet, and deep. Talented too.

Kat rolled on top of him, straddling his waist with those chicken-leg thighs. He was fairly certain her legs could serve a man as pipe stems. If he happened to smoke a pipe, that is.

She pulled his dick into position, then lowered herself onto it.

Longarm groaned and arched his back to meet her, to drive all the deeper into her. “Jeez, woman, that's good.”

“Better for me than for you, I wager,” she said. “I haven't been with a man for five months.” She laughed. “And a carrot just isn't the same.”

“You would really . . . ?”

“Of course,” she said and gestured toward his cock. “Wouldn't you play with this if it had been that long? Of course you would. What makes you think a woman's needs are any less than yours?”

“I never thought of it that way,” he said.

“Shut up and pay attention. You have a huge dick, so be still and let me enjoy myself here.”

“Be still?” he said.

“I didn't mean that literally. I mean just shut up and pay attention to business here.”

“Well in that case,” he said. And began to stroke up and down. Slowly at first, just enjoying the heat of her scrawny body. Then faster. Straining to go ever deeper, ever harder.

Kat responded almost immediately, her breathing coming quicker and her pussy becoming even wetter. Her thighs began to tremble and shake. At first Longarm thought she was overtired and about to collapse. Instead it seemed she was beginning to have an orgasm. A powerful one.

When she came the first time, she cried out and dug her hands painfully into his arms. The second time, which happened only seconds later, she shrieked. And the third time her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out cold.

The woman was so slight that Longarm scarcely felt her weight on top of him.

Not that he minded. He needed a warm blanket on the high country nights, and a living, breathing, self-heated blanket worked just fine.

Longarm reached his own climax, his cum spurting deep inside Katherine Jennings.

His cock still lodged inside her, he closed his eyes and went comfortably to sleep.

“I could get used to this,” Longarm said as he settled down to a plate of Kat's flannel cakes—that tasted pretty much like actual flannel instead of pancakes—but with a cup of morning coffee. And that made up for all manner of other things; there simply is not much that can compare with a steaming cup of coffee at dawn.

The woman was waiting on him hand and foot. Pampering him outrageously. Apparently she liked having a dick to play with.

“Of course you could,” Kat said. “All men are essentially lazy. It's women who do all the work. All you men do is go out once in a while and drag home some meat. Surely you have noticed.”

“Can't say that I have,” he said. “But then I haven't been looking.” He grinned. “Been too busy out there collectin' meat. Say, this coffee is good.”

Kat laughed. “Coffee is the only thing I know how to make that is worth spit. I don't care about food, which is probably why I am such a terrible cook . . . No, don't try to be polite. I know the truth. I am a lousy cook. It's coffee that sustains me, not food. But I do love my coffee. Are you done eating?”

He nodded. He hadn't filled his belly, but he would just as soon have chewed off a chunk of his sheepskin vest as have had any more of those flannel cakes.

“Bring your cup and come with me.”

“Where?”

“Out there,” she said, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him away from the table. “I want to show you something.”

“Show me? Woman, it's still dark out there.”

“Oh, don't be such an old woman. I know the path, daylight or dark. Now, come along. We have to get up there before it is too late.”

Longarm sighed. But he got up and went along with her, each of them carrying a cup of the good coffee.

“Out there” proved to be more “up there.” Kat led him up a steep, winding path, probably a sheep trail, to the top of a high knob of rock that hung poised above her cabin.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Sit. Wait.”

He sat. And waited. Sipping his coffee slowly and enjoying the aroma of it in the crisp, cold morning air.

Then he saw. The most glorious sunrise he had ever seen, streaks of red and gold across a cloudless eastern horizon. Or perhaps it was simply that this sunrise he could watch, coffee in hand, with no responsibilities weighing on him.

If he had nothing but these few minutes, his vacation was complete.

Kat nudged his elbow and whispered. “Look down there.”

She pointed below them to the creek and beyond it. In the golden glow of the early morning he saw a huge cat and two roly-poly kittens emerge from a patch of scrub oak. The mother lion sprawled placidly beside the creek while her babies stalked each other through the grass, pouncing and biting and rolling over and over.

“Is that the cat that . . . ?” he began.

Kat nodded. “She's the one who drove you out of her home. Beautiful, isn't she?”

She was. He had to admit it. The beast was magnificent. And her cubs were like kittens anywhere. Except bigger.

“If I had a rifle . . . ,” he said.

“If you did, I would club you with it before I would let you hurt her.” Kat sniffed her disapproval. “Men!” she declared.

Longarm chuckled softly, and Kat said, “You were teasing me, weren't you?”

“Hell, of course I was. Why don't we go back down? I dunno about you, but I've finished my coffee an' I'm commencing t' get cold. Let's go on down. You can take a look at my back, and we can fuck. Morning fucks can be the best, y'know.”

“Really?”

“Guaranteed.”

“Prove it,” she challenged, laughing softly.

Longarm stood and took Kat's hand, leading her back down to the warmth of the cabin. And to the bed there.