She laughed girlishly. "I can still see him flopping like a rag doll down those stairs you sent him, and I guess you did do it because you thought it was only right. For you never got fresh with me yourself, even after I'd called you my hero and got up on my tippy-toes to kiss you smack on the mouth!"
Longarm broke stride to spin her around and bend closer as he marveled, "You're that bitty orphan child that drunk from my old outfit was scaring that time? Well, I never, and Lord have mercy if you ain't growed some since that day in Dodge, Miss Annie."
She softly murmured, "I feel even older. For I've been scared a lot since. But they call me Amarillo Annie because I was working there until recent. I was dealing blackjack, just in case that matters to you, Custis. I deal cards these days at that Pronghorn Saloon up the street a ways. Sometimes I have the sort of trouble you just got me out of with idiots who think a gal willing to lie down with them for money would stay on her feet like that, hour after hour, for the commission the house pays a dealer."
Longarm nodded. "I figured they were idjets too. So where would you like me to carry you from here, Miss Annie?"
She said she lived up the slope and a couple of corners to the south. So that was the way they walked in the faint moonlight, with her doing most of the talking as she caught up on the more recent career of a handsome cowhand she'd once had a young girl's dreams about. It was her idea to confide that he could have had her virginity, once she'd kissed a grown man for the very first time and noticed how exciting it felt. He wasn't cruel enough to tell her he'd paid little attention to the shy lips of a little orphan gal. But as if she could read his mind, as they got to the gate of her hillside cottage, she confided, "I've followed your fame as a lawman in the papers, Custis. I was so surprised to read about you in that shootout shortly after you'd been so sweet to me in Dodge. But then I read where you'd been in the war even earlier, and so I suppose that to you I was just a silly little kid, even kissing you as grown-up as I knew how, right?"
"Wrong," he lied gallantly, moving the Winchester out of their way to kiss her some more in her front yard the way he figured she'd want to be kissed good night, these days.
Then he suspected, from the way she was kissing back, good night was not what she had in mind just yet. For this time, while she still had to stand on her toes to get at him right, her kissing was nothing at all like he dimly recalled from that awkward day in Dodge. He was sure glad he smoked instead of chewed as her nosy tongue seemed intent on exploring his surprised mouth. She sucked his tongue deep too when he tried to return the favor, and it was just as well she seemed to be hauling him inside her unlit cottage, once he considered where she'd grabbed hold of him to haul.
It was black as a bitch indoors, but when he tried to strike a light she blew it out, gasping, "No. Don't spoil it with the cruel teeth of time, Custis. Take me as if we were still a young cowhand and a maiden of fifteen!"
He allowed he'd be more than willing, if she'd lead him to some less vertical position. So she did, and they wound up across a bed in the blackness with her clutching at his duds and vice versa till he was in her, both of them still half dressed, and going at it with more enthusiasm than he'd thought he'd saved up aboard that train from Denver. She moved in a way no fifteen-year-old would have ever moved in, biting down hard with her vaginal muscles as she slid up and down his erection in time with his thrusts, gasping downright embarrassing love words as she pleaded with him to make a woman of her at last, after all these years. So he did his best, and managed to get them both entirely undressed by the time he'd come in her a second time. It was her fourth, according to her. When she shyly repeated she'd known it would be grand with him, although not this grand, he was too polite to observe she'd sure as shooting done it with somebody a lot to get that good at losing her virginity.
He finally got her to let him stop long enough to smoke at least one cheroot and maybe get his second wind. But when he thumbnailed a light with their naked bodies together across the rumpled sheets, she turned her head away, as if not wanting him to see more than the way her jet-black hair came out of the base of her skull mousy brown. He looked the other way, spied a candlestick on the bed table, and lit the candle along with his cheroot.
When she softly protested, Longarm got rid of the match and gently reached across her swell tits to take her small chin in hand and turn her face toward the light.
She sobbed, "Oh, Custis, you don't look like I remembered, and I've gotten so old and plain since then!"
He blinked in bemused delight. "I see what you mean about us both screwing somebody else just now. But it wasn't that long ago you were too young for me, and to tell the truth, I find you just about right and even prettier than I thought whilst I was coming with some other image just a moment or so ago."
She archly suggested they come some more by candlelight, and asked how long he'd be in town. Like most men, Longarm had found gals tended to freeze up on a man or demand a honeymoon's worth of humping when he told them they'd likely part by the cold gray light of dawn. So he answered, truthfully enough when you studied on it, "Ain't sure. My boss never sent me to Durango to begin with, and now that I'm here I ain't sure just what I was expecting to find."
She grasped his semi-erection firmly and forked a shapely and now full-grown leg across his naked flesh to impale herself on his suddenly inspired shaft, demurely demanding to know if he was disappointed in what he'd found in Durango so far.
Longarm laughed up at her sweet face and bouncing candle-lit bosom. "I like surprises more than I can say. So I'll just have to show you. But no offense, Miss Annie, you wasn't exactly what I was expecting to investigate in Durango."
She allowed no offense was taken as he rolled her on her back to treat her right in a softer, more romantic way. They took turns puffing on the cheroot with half his weight on one elbow. He was pleased to learn she knew how nice it could be that way too, despite all her virginity bullshit. For once a man and woman got past the mad dash for eternal orgasm, it could be mighty nice to just drift together down the currents of togetherness with calmer but lingering pleasures.
She followed his drift, dilating and tightening her innards in time with his languid thrusts as they shared a smoke and conversed like pals over coffee and dessert. He told her more about his own reasons for being in Durango, and added, "Seeing a lady dealing blackjack sees more of life than, say, a schoolmarm, I don't suppose you'd have noticed if anyone had been flashing hundred-dollar treasury notes where the lights are brighter late at night?"
She shook her head, putting the cheroot back between his lips as she replied, "Betting a twenty in paper raises an eyebrow and calls for the floor manager, Custis. Most of the miners and railroad men out our way are paid in silver cartwheels. A top hardrock man draws a double eagle in gold. The boys don't cotton much to paper, and the house likes it even less."
She thrust her hips for a better grip on him as she calmly went on. "Trying to cash a hundred dollars in paper would cause way more excitement in Durango than a Chinaman trying to marry that schoolmarm you just mentioned. What made you ask such a question to begin with?"
He got rid of the cheroot so he could roll her higher atop that pillow under her bare behind, and got deeper in the saddle with her soft thighs hugging his hips while he nuzzled her naked collarbone and explained, "Like I told you, that gang led by a cuss who seems to keep dying in one rooming house fire after another grabbed a heap of hundred-dollar treasury notes up Fort Collins way."
She seemed to be paying less attention as he continued. "Cashing hundred-dollar treasury notes attracts raised eyebrows no matter who tries to cash one, anywhere outside a bank, and you'd play the fool trying to cash a stolen hundred-dollar note in any bank worth its charter."
She murmured, "If you say so, darling. Could you move in in me a little faster?"
He could, and did, but whether she really cared or not he said, or panted, "I asked about somebody trying to cash such paper in a gambling house because I was on another case a spell back, on this same side of the Divide, where outlaws were trying to account for their ill-gotten gains by passing it off as gaming house winnings. But riding off to a remote mining town with the proceeds of that payroll robbery sounds even dumber when nobody seems to have cashed any of the proceeds and... Never mind, spread them sweet legs and come with Pappa!"
She did. It felt so good it almost hurt him, and seemed to cause her considerable agony, judging by the way she was moaning and groaning and carrying on till they somehow wound up with him pounding her even harder dog-style. She called him a brute for abusing her in such a beastly way and threatened to strangle him with her bare hands if he dared to take it out with her right on the razor's edge of infinite pleasure that would last for all eternity.
Then she came and said, "Shit. I was trying to make it last too. What was that about dying in one rooming house fire after another? I've heard of going back for second helpings of this hot stuff, Custis, but wouldn't one rooming house fire be enough for anybody?"
He planted his bare feet wider on the rug, and got a friendly grip on either of her hipbones so he could keep it in half soft as he explained. "I don't buy the same Calvert Tyger burning to death more than once, if he ever burned to death at all. We know for a fact who one of the victims was. I ain't sure it matters who they buried here in Durango by the same name. The real mystery, as soon as you study on it, was why in thunder anybody would check into any rooming house as Calvert Tyger to begin with."
Amarillo Annie arched her spine to encourage his questing moist glans as she shrugged her bare shoulders and suggested, "Isn't it likely somebody checking into a place on the sneak would give them a false name, darling?"
To which he could only reply, with a friendly thrust indeed, "I just said that was the mysterious part. Why in thunder would even a wanted outlaw check into anywhere under the name of another wanted outlaw? Calvert Tyger was wanted more seriously than the late Brick Flanders. I'm still working on who the cuss here in Durango might have been. But no matter who he was or what he was hiding, would it make sense for him to register under a name appearing on all those federal wanted flyers?"
She thrust her bare bottom upwards and backwards to encourage him as she insisted, "Whoever they were, and whyever they did it, they did it, didn't they? Maybe they thought this Calvert cuss wasn't wanted as badly as they were. Wouldn't that explain it?"
He muttered, "Not hardly. The bounty on Jesse James is double that of the one on Billy the Kid. But could you see Jesse checking into some hotel as Billy the Kid, so the local law wouldn't check up on who might be bedded down upstairs?"
She agreed that sounded dumb, and asked if she could get on top again if he was going to take so infernally long while he chewed a poor girl's ear off. So he let her, and he was glad he had, once she'd braced a bare heel to either side of his naked hip and literally jerked him off with her shapely bounding body. For it was true what some kindly philosopher, likely French, had said about a man's mind never being clearer than right after a good lay.
He felt sane as hell as he lay there in the cozy candlelight with a pretty gal snuggled close and telling him how smart he was. His completely satisfied flesh let his brain drift any way it wanted to as it tried to make sense out of the little he really knew.
The only trouble was, thinking clear and detached as he was, he still couldn't make a lick of sense of anything he'd been able to find out so far.
CHAPTER 6
The Durango Free Press was set up across from the Western Union office near the depot. Longarm found a little gray gnome sticking type behind the counter blocking access to the presses and such in back of him. Longarm introduced himself, and the gnome looked sort of wistful and went on about his two-fisted chore as he asked what he could do for a cuss who didn't want to place an advertisement or even buy a damned paper.
Longarm said, "I've already read your swell paper over breakfast with a pal this morning. Read some back issues on the premises as well. I know you never run no photo-engravings of that jasper who went up in smoke as Calvert Tyger a spell back, but in the unlikely event you took any pictures of the dismal scene..."
"We never did," the gnome said. "We can't afford that newfangled Ben Day process, and if we could we'd have never wanted to run no picture of that mess they hauled outten that burnt-down rooming house across the tracks. I heard you was in town and considering an exhumation order. Take my advice and leave the well-done remains in the ground. His own mother wouldn't have recognized him as they were lowering him down, and the worms have had their way with him by this time."
Longarm nodded soberly. "A tad over six feet tall and weighing around one-eighty, the last anyone on our side saw of him alive and raw. Might have been harder to judge as they dug him out of the ashes curled up in a ball and baked like a potato, though."
The older man grimaced. "You'd do well to rake your spuds out of the coals before they bake that black. I was there and it could have been most any cuss, or critter, you'd like it to be. But your description of Calvert Tyger don't fit the Calvert Tyger we had here in Durango for a week or more before that fire."