Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds (37 page)

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?"

He saw those wheels going round in her big blue eyes again. So he said, "I'd be lying if I said I knew for sure whether those two he sent to the Tremont House were out to kill you or get you safely out of our clutches. Either way, I took 'em both so neat and tidy, it must have occurred to their boss that someone had tipped us off. With Flanders dead and Chief hiding out back in Minnesota, if you take my meaning."

She had turned a shade green around the gills before he continued. "It gets worse. Whatever you and your sister had agreed to, I nailed his second in command, Chief, whilst he was supposed to be hiding safe and sound with Miss Helga at your family spread. Then I nailed Laughing Larry, no matter who'd sent for him to do me in, as neatly as if I'd been tipped off he was coming. You want some more? I just left your sister free as a bird, despite an easy chance to nail her on aiding and abetting, if not criminal conspiracy."

The younger and prettier Runeberg sister reached down between them with a Mona Lisa smile as she murmured, "My, you have been busy, and so here we are, alone at last."

He let her fondle his semi-erection. Most men would have. But as she did so, he smiled thinly and said, "Yep. With you screwing the same lawman who seemed so easy on your sister back in Minnesota. You can see, of course, how I'd never be able to hold you as either a prisoner nor hostile witness after getting on such friendly terms with you. So you're free as a bird to leave this little love nest as soon as you can get dressed, unless you'd rather get even friendlier."

He could see she surely did when she rolled over on her plump knees and one hand to lower her blond head to his lap. He didn't try to stop her. Few men would have. But as he grinned down at the bobbing part of her hair he said, "That sure feels friendly. But what I meant was that I could get you out of Colorado in one piece, with no charges pending against you and mayhaps a pocketbook full of bounty money, if you'd only help me make the bad dreams of a bad man come true."

She took her lush lips from his raging erection to impale her tiny twat on it instead as she pleaded, "You're so right about how mean old Cal can be when he thinks he's been crossed. But roll me over and do this to me right before I tell you the whole dumb story!"

CHAPTER 28

The next morning, having hidden the repentant outlaw gal with Madame Emma Gould, a real soiled dove who owed him some favors, Longarm got down to the less amusing chore of seducing a prosecution team and at least one senior judge.

The meeting was held in Judge Dickerson's smoke-filled chambers, with Longarm's superior, Marshal Vail, naturally on hand to back his play unless it sounded wilder than usual.

Once he had everybody sitting down and lit up, Longarm declared, "Before I tell you gents what I want you to do for me, I'd best tell you a bedtime story, as amended for me in bed last night."

Vail growled, "I was just fixing to ask you why you registered at another hotel with that material witness. You told me you were out to get her to tell the truth, not go to bed with you, damn it!"

Longarm smiled sheepishly and said, "Sometimes you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, Boss."

The fair but firm Judge Dickerson snorted, "Never mind how he got what out of a hostile witness and let the man tell us what he got!"

Longarm nodded thankfully and said, "Once upon a time there was this outlaw gang. Much like what we know about the James-Younger ways of pulling similar jobs, the three experienced leaders--Tyger, Flanders, and Youngwolf or Chief--stuck together and made plans, but picked up such extra help as they might need for a particular job from a way wider circle of kith and kin."

A lawyer who'd doubtless read a recent edition of the Denver Post said, "What has any of that got to do with Elvira Carson, or with you letting her go after a night of slap and tickle?"

Longarm said, "We call it giving them enough rope, and I got more'n slaps and tickles out of a gal who's really Margaret Egger nee Runeberg, the common law wife of the Fulton Egger you've been holding for trial as the late Frank Keller. But this would still make more sense to you if you'd just shut up and let me tell it from the beginning."

Judge Dickerson warned everybody to be still and told Longarm to proceed. So Longarm said, "All right, moving closer to our own time, the three old pals hid out from time to time on this cattle spread close to their old stamping grounds, where they'd met as half-ass Indian fighters. The spread was owned and operated by the Runeberg sisters, at least until the younger one, pretty Miss Margaret, fell for the exciting bullshit of a part-time gang member called Fulton Egger and told the neighbors she'd be living in Chicago with somebody not quite as exciting."

"You mean it was the Tyger gang, not the Keller gang, who tried to rob that train and-"

"The judge just told you to be still," Longarm told the lawyer. Then he relented enough to explain. "We all know what a piss-poor train robbery that was. Young Egger got treed by the posse, and threw lots of sand in your eyes by confessing he was the leader, Frank Keller. And then you picked up a reluctant witness, coached in advance to blow the case sky high in court when the defense proved she'd been held as a trail-town whore instead of the innocent Minnesota miss she could be if she wanted. After the jury finished laughing about that, they were fixing to spring the death certificate of the real Frank Keller on the prosecution."

There came a rumble of discontent. But Judge Dickerson, who'd had folks trying to laugh in his court in the past and didn't much approve of it, ignored his own injunction to gravely observe, "It wouldn't have worked. Horseplay in court may or may not amuse the jury. But I've been over the briefs and I'd say the prosecution has young Keller or, very well, Egger, as charged. If giving the arresting officer a false name was enough to get you off, nobody would ever be convicted. Who came up with such a sophomoric scheme to disrupt the majesty of my damned court?"

Longarm said, "Brick Flanders, Your Honor. He was the big spender of the bunch. Tyger and Chief wanted to keep laying low, and told him his proposal to stop that train was dumb. But he tried to do it on his own, or with only his own fraction of the gang, at any rate, and we all know how that turned out."

He saw nobody had any objections and continued. "It got worse. The murderous but somewhat cooler heads heard the gang they'd thought they were leading had robbed that payroll office up to Fort Collins, and that the high-denomination treasury notes were hot as a whore's pillow on payday night because the government had a list of all their serial numbers."

Billy Vail just couldn't help but ask, "Which one of them was fool enough to spend one of those very treasury notes in the very county they'd always felt safe to hide out in, old son?"

Longarm said, "Tyger and Chief were sure it was Brick Flanders. The red-bearded and glass-eyed wonder had been identified by survivors of that robbery. He denied having pulled the robbery. So he naturally had to deny spending the hot paper like a drunken sailor, and this got Tyger and Chief so mad they beat and shot him, not far from that rooming house he was found in well toasted. Margaret Egger couldn't say just how they managed to smuggle his body in and register it as the late Calvert Tyger. But she agrees with me that Tyger might have made a habit of dying in fires because he's an ordinary-looking cuss who feels better off with us not looking for him above ground. Chief ran back to the old Santee country where, being Ojibwa, he didn't have to worry as much about being recognized by anyone who'd known him of old. Nobody from the gang bought any riding stock with a note from that payroll job. So you can imagine how chagrined they felt when I showed up as well."