Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds (15 page)

"Then this Wabasha Chambrun could be a white man in the eyes of the law?"

Longarm shrugged. "Depends more on the B.I.A. than his biology. Chief Ross of the Cherokee was seven-eighths Scotch-Irish, and there's many a blue-eyed blonde drawing their government Indian allotment just by putting on a fringy shirt and lining up like the rest of their nation. Folks listed as Indians by the B.I.A. are identified as such by allotment number, tribal agency, and such. But there's nothing to prevent a member of a so-called friendly band from just going into town, getting a job, and forgetting the whole deal, no matter how much Indian blood he may or may not have in him. So saying what Chambrun says about a French-Canadian daddy is true, and if he's never been listed on paper as any particular sort of Indian, he's about as white as you or me, at least as far as federal law can prove."

She said she'd never heard such nonsense, and made as if to pour him some more coffee anyway. So he put a hand across the top of his empty cup. "Waste not, want not, Miss Ilsa. It ain't as if I don't admire your coffee. I just don't want to toss and turn all night, as I'm apt to with my mind filled with caffeine as well as a heap of other distractions!"

She sighed and said she knew what he meant, murmuring something about it having been over a year since last she'd felt really fulfilled in her lonely bed.

That was what womenfolk called getting laid, fulfilled, and hadn't she said her man had been dead longer than that?

Longarm tried to ignore the sudden tingle in his pants as he tried not to wonder too hard whether she'd made a slip or was out to tell him something. For a man could mess up either way at times like these. He had a good thing going already, with nobody in New Ulm so sure just where he was forted up after dark, and the sweet old widow woman was likely to think he was lower than a sidewinder's belly button if he abused her generous hospitality by grabbing for a dessert she wasn't really offering.

On the other hand, Hell had no fury like a woman turned down once she'd offered, however delicately. So he didn't dare say he'd had all the supper he cared for and just wanted to go to bed before he had a better handle on her own bedtime aspirations.

He figured it might be safest to ask her whether she knew that other Swedish gal, Helga Runeberg, out at the Rocking R. He sensed he might have been safer asking about somebody else when his hostess flared. "I've seen her around town in her silly hat and buckskin skirts, the self-satisfied young snip! I might have known she'd been flirting with you since you'd been riding no more than ten miles from her door!"

Longarm had to laugh. "Hold on, Miss Ilsa, I've never laid eyes on the gal in question. I was more interested in her common sense than her looks."

The older woman didn't sound too sensible as she snapped, "Helga Runeberg hasn't got any common sense. Her poor father would turn over in his grave if he knew how she rides all over, unescorted, as carefree as one of her cowboys."

Longarm said, "It was one of her cowboys as told me his boss lady had said she was able to tell a real lawman from a fake lawman at first sight. I was hoping to save me a ride out her way with some educated guesswork as to how a carefree cowgirl might know so much about lawmen."

The widow woman shrugged inside her loose nightdress and replied, "I wouldn't put anything past Helga Runeberg. They do say she was sparking a married deputy sheriff till Pastor Lindorm heard about it. Maybe she knows a lot of lawmen in the Biblical sense. I don't really care to know her at all."

Longarm made a mental note to drop by the Rocking R the next time he was out that way, and surprised himself by having to stifle a real yawn he hadn't been expecting.

The widow woman noticed and said, "Good heavens, it is almost ten o'clock, and I'm not usually such a night owl myself. I suppose you must be anxious to get to bed, right?"

He allowed that was about the size of it as they both rose from the table. He started to help her move the dishes to the drain board of her modern wet-sink, but she told him they could wait till she felt more in the mood for housework. So he didn't argue as he started to follow her out of the kitchen, Winchester in hand.

As she moved just ahead with her candlestick, she laughed and asked if he always went to bed fully armed. He told her he hardly ever got all the way in bed without leaning the Winchester in a handy corner and hanging his gunbelt over a bedpost. He assumed she was leading him to some guest room. So he was mildly surprised when they wound up in a perfumed chamber with a lot of Irish lace draped around the big fourposter.

Ilsa set the candlestick on a nearby bed table and softly asked, "Do you mind if I get undressed in the dark, Custis? I know it seems old-fashioned, but as I said before, I don't get to do this much anymore."

He figured the safest answer called for simply pinching out the candle without saying anything as the room was plunged in darkness.

He leaned his Winchester against the wall behind the bed table as he heard the soft rustle of cloth coming off and that odor of lilac water and vinegar grew stronger. He waited for her to shyly suggest it was all right for him to come to bed before he shucked his own gun, boots, and duds as calmly as he felt able, rolled in under the covers, and took the warm cuddly nakedness he found there in his own bare arms. Then as she sobbed, "Oh, Custis, I feel so low. Whatever must you think of me?"

He ran a friendly hand down her naked flank as he suggested he feel her somewhat lower, and then he kissed her firmly as she tried to cross her legs and say something dumb about what he was trying to do to a poor defenseless widow. Then he was doing it to her, and she was doing it back with considerable skill, as her poor embarrassed lips kept murmuring all sorts of accusations and excuses for what just came naturally at times like these.

He knew better than to say anything before he'd made her climax and allow she just might like it. So he tongued her ear and humped her hard, with her big bare breasts crushed against his naked chest and one hand under her tailbone as he helped her bounce in time with his thrusts. She suddenly wrapped both legs around his waist to hug him further into her as she sobbed, "Oh, Custis, I'm really trying to respond to you, but it's been so long and you have to give a girl time to warm up!"

He told her to take all the time she wanted, since he wasn't going anywhere but in and out of her for the foreseeable future. But he still had to wonder, even as he came in her and just kept going with no need to change positions, what a gal this tigress was jealous of might be like in her own right!

But of course he never said so. For even as he was pleasuring her dog-style a good half hour later, old Ilsa was purring, as she arched her spine to take it deeper, that he was never going to get away from her now that she'd caught up with him at last.

She seemed to think he had just what it took to satisfy her hungry ring-dang-do. But he didn't see why. She felt tight as a schoolmarm as he just went on doing what came naturally in anybody that passionate.

He could only hope she was feeling natural as she suddenly shot off his erection, rolled over on her back, and pleaded with him to finish in her the more romantic way.

He felt mighty romantic as well, coming with her softer warm flesh crushed beneath his excited heaving body. But then she sort of spoiled the afterglow by murmuring, her lips against his bare shoulder and her hand clutching his balls right firmly, "Oh, Custis, I'm so happy, and I can't wait to see how surprised everyone will be when we post the bans with Pastor Lindorm!"

He didn't answer. He sensed it could be considered impolite to tell a gal she was loca en la cabeza right after you'd come in her. There'd be plenty of cold gray dawn to go into why a man who packed a badge had no call marrying up with anybody young or old, for richer, poorer, or whatever, till Mister Death grinned that spoilsport grin at all concerned.

He was sure she'd follow his drift when he told her about those department funerals he had to go to all the time. A lot of gals had, and hell, some of them had been young enough to marry up with if a man was ready to do dumb things like that.

CHAPTER 14

It was a caution how some folks could think so smart with their heads and so dumb with their glands. But by the time she'd fed him a swell breakfast in bed, Longarm had convinced the hot-natured Ilsa it might be wiser to keep their understanding a secret until he found out who was gunning for him and how come.

It hadn't been easy. The strong-willed widow woman had said she'd be proud to share the fate of her new-found true love. She'd only given in after Longarm managed to convince her she was being downright sneaky in the name of the law. They said the glamorous Confederate spy, Miss Belle Siddons, had enjoyed the sneaky part of her services to the Southern cause even more than screwing all those Union officers half to death. Lots of men enjoyed it better sneaky too.

After breakfast, a tub bath, and a blow job, Longarm ambled over to the Western Union to see if anyone else was excited about him. He found some messages waiting for him there care of the telegraph office.

Durango and the South Ute agency were still working on just who that so-called Calvert Tyger they'd buried and the kid who'd gone off the trestle into the San Juan might have been. Longarm was even more certain someone ad been fibbing about that charred body registered as Tyger when he opened a message from his home office to discover his fellow deputies, Smiley and Dutch, had found two other rooming house registers that claimed, in different handwriting, Calvert Tyger had spent some recent nights in other parts of Denver at the same time, before somehow moving on alive and well as far as any fool records showed, So some damned body, for some damned reason, seemed to be going around checking in and out for the night under the assumed name of a wanted man. It made no sense to Longarm, but on the other hand, he wasn't the asshole doing it!

It got worse when he stopped by the nearby sheriff's office to ask if those other federal deputies from Saint Paul had by any chance arrived and asked for him the night before.

The same deputy sheriff he'd talked to before said nobody from Saint Paul had arrived at all. Then he handed Longarm a telegram they hadn't mentioned at the Western Union, since it had been addressed to other lawmen, and said, "Looks as if all you federal men could be barking up the wrong tree here in Brown County."

Longarm scanned the wire from the Texas Rangers, and heaved a vast sigh. For according to Texas, another of those recorded hundred-dollar treasury notes from the Fort Collins robbery had surfaced at a bank in Amarillo.

As he handed the message back, Longarm said, "Try her this way. A bank in any part of the country would have that list of serial numbers and money-changers who might give a shit. But nobody making change in a gambling hall or house of ill repute would have that list or care where the money came from as long as it was good."

The local lawman answered dubiously, "A hundred-dollar bill does stand out in a crowd, you know."

Longarm nodded. "I just said that. Any card dealer or crib gal presented with such paper would doubtless ask the floor boss or madam to okay it. But without that list, all the smartest eye could detect would be whether the note was genuine or not. Once they changed it for the high roller or low-lifer, they might or might not take it to their own bank for safekeeping. The odds are just as good they'd pass it on to some other business folks as rent, liquor-bill payment, or whatever. So there's just no saying how many hands any of these fool bills might have passed through before they were spotted by some sharp-eyed banker such as P.S. Plover around the corner."

The deputy sheriff shrugged and said, "I'll be damned if I see what we're arguing about then. I just said it may not mean a thing that a single one of them stolen treasury notes turned up here in New Ulm. I may have wax in my ears. But didn't you just agree with me?"

Longarm nodded soberly. "I surely did, up to a point. I can go along with that one note from Fort Collins just sort of finding its way here through a whole chain of innocent hands, if you'd like to tell me how come somebody seems so anxious to keep me from questioning your apparently innocent county residents about it. By the way, might either Israel Bedford or Wabasha Chambrun be registered to vote this fall here in Brown County?"

The deputy sheriff said the ones to ask about that would be over at the county clerk's across the square. So that was where Longarm turned up next. The older gent in charge reminded Longarm of what young Henry, back at the Denver office, was likely to look like in twenty years if he didn't watch out. But the skinny, balding, prune-lipped cuss seemed friendly enough as he scanned Longarm's badge and identification and said, "Figured you'd be along most any time now. Two other lawmen were here just this morning, asking if you'd been by."

Longarm put his billfold away with a puzzled smile. "It ain't considered polite to poke about another lawman's jurisdiction without letting him know you're in town, and I know for a fact the gents of whom we speak never checked in with the sheriff across the way. What might they have looked like and what sort of badges might they have flashed?"

The country clerk frowned thoughtfully and replied, "I never asked to see no badges. That might have been why they never offered to show me any. As to what they looked like, one was tall and the other short. They were both about your age and dressed like undertakers who punched cows or vice versa. Is that any help?"