Longarm #431 (10 page)

“Let me take care of you, honey,” Hortense said when they were in Longarm's room with the door locked behind them. She moved in close and began unfastening his buttons and buckles. Took his clothing item by item and carefully hung or folded each and set them aside. While she worked she hummed a pleasant tune. Longarm tried to recall the title of the song; he knew he had heard it many times before but could not now remember what it was called.

No matter. It was soft and nice.

So was Hortense.

When she was naked she was even prettier than when clothed. He had run into a few women like that. Being without covering of any sort made them actually better look- ing.

Hortense's body was compact, almost athletic. She was lean and firm. Her tits were pale, small, and tall. They stood up proud and tip-tilted, her nipples so red he suspected she put rouge on them to achieve their color.

Her belly was flat above a dark bush that had been trimmed short. She had a tiny waist with a flare of hip below and a round little ass.

Hortense released her hair from the pins and shook her head. Her hair cascaded down over her shoulders and back, reaching almost down to that round, pretty ass.

“Do you like what you see?” she teased.

Longarm smiled and nodded. “I like.”

She put her hands on his chest and moved him back to the bed. Sat him down there but stopped him from turning and lifting his legs onto the mattress.

“Not yet,” she said as she dropped to her knees in front of him. She was smiling.

Hortense leaned forward, so close he could feel her breath on his cock as she examined it. She ran her fingertips up and down the length of him. Peeled his foreskin back to expose the dark red bulb of its head.

She lifted his balls on the fingers of one hand and with her other hand lightly tickled the sensitive flat that lay between his balls and his asshole. Longarm squirmed, so worked up that he thought he might squirt come onto both of them without ever entering her.

When he was sure he had neared the limits of his ability to hold back, Hortense took him into her mouth.

And he had been right when he saw her over in that saloon. Those lips looked just fine when they wrapped around his prick.

She sucked. Gently at first, then harder, deeper, her head bouncing up and down on his cock, driving herself down onto it and sucking hard when she pulled back.

More quickly than he would have thought possible, Longarm felt the gather and rise of his sap.

He cried out as his jism shot hard and hot into Hortense's throat.

The girl continued to suck until the last drops were out. Then she gently massaged his balls, ran her hands over his chest and belly, pressed him down onto the bed.

“Right,” she said, sounding happy and eager. “Now that that is out of the way, you and I can get down to some real fun.”

She moved onto the mattress and began licking his nipples, which had become unusually sensitive under Hortense's touch. Her tiny body felt like it weighed next to nothing, and her breath was hot on his moist skin where her tongue had passed.

While she licked him she slowly moved on top of him, straddling his body and spearing herself on his cock, taking him deep, deeper until he was fully inside her body, surrounding him with the heat of her flesh.

He began to move involuntarily, his hips rising to meet her movement, softly at first, then quicker, deeper, harder until their bellies were pounding and pummeling, smacking wet with a mingling of sweat and pussy juices, until the sensation became almost too much to bear and again his loins contracted in an upward spasm of his climax.

Hortense collapsed on top of him, her hair spread out over his chest, her legs on either side of his, his dick still inside her.

Longarm closed his eyes.

He smiled and lightly stroked the back of her head. He remembered the old saying “pretty is as pretty does.” Little Hortense had it both ways, pretty to look at . . . and damned pretty in bed as well. It was not a bad combination.

He figured to rest a little, then see what else the girl could do.

“Breakfast?” Longarm offered around dawn the next morning as he washed himself after he and Hortense had again made the beast with two backs.

She smiled and came onto tiptoe to kiss the side of his neck. “Thank you very much, but I got to get back to my kids.”

“You have children?”

“Oh, yes. Two of them. They're the light of my life. Both of them boys. Two-year-old twins.” She laughed. “They're a handful, let me tell you.”

“But . . . uh . . .”

Hortense laughed again. “There is a lady who sits with them at night. Well, what it is, she sleeps in my place and watches the boys. The arrangement gives her a place to sleep and gives my kids someone to be there if they need anything. Now I'll go home and the sitter will leave, and I will give my kids something to eat.” She smiled. “This ten dollars you gave me will feed us for the next two weeks.”

“Shee-it,” Longarm mumbled as he dug into his pocket and came up with a handful of change. He plucked a five-dollar gold piece out of the mix and handed it to her.

“Honey, I wasn't telling you all that to get a tip from you. You already paid me plenty.”

“If I thought you was trying to sob-story me, I wouldn't have given you another dime,” Longarm said. “All I want is for you t' take care o' those boys, all right?”

Hortense looked like she might break into tears. “You're a nice man, Mr. Long. Thank you.” She sighed. “The truth is that I don't get many gentlemen. I'm not very pushy, and the other girls get most of the business. This money you gave me . . . it will go a long way toward taking care of all three of us.”

“Good,” he said. He kissed the top of her head and saw her to the door, then returned to the washstand and finished what he had been doing.

Day was just breaking when he went downstairs. Buck Walters had been open for business for some time and had eight customers already seated in the café when Longarm got there.

“Good morning, Long,” Buck called from behind the counter. “I'll be with you in a minute.”

“I'm in no rush,” Longarm said, helping himself to a seat on one of the stools ranged along the front of the counter.

Someone had left a reasonably fresh Kansas City newspaper on the counter. Longarm picked it up and began perusing it. Among the articles in the newspaper was an account of a train robbery that had taken place sixteen days earlier. The mail car clerk and two passengers were killed. The robbers got away with an undisclosed amount of cash and mail from the safe. The Tatum gang was suspected.

Mail and the guard being involved made the robbery a federal crime.

Longarm knew the Tatums well. He had arrested the youngest of the Tatum brothers up in Wyoming two years earlier. The whole clan showed up for his trial on a charge of robbery from the mail. Young had gotten off with a fine and six months in confinement. Longarm had always wondered if the judge had been intimidated by the hard stares he received from the older brothers and their cousins the McCarthy boys.

Now they were involved in stealing from the mail again.

And Longarm was almost certain he had seen one of the brothers in the saloon the night before.

“Shit!” he said aloud. Of course. Last night. On his way out. The fellow he nearly ran into. That man had looked an awful lot like the middle Tatum brother, whose name was . . . Longarm had to dig through his memory to bring the name back to mind. Kurt, that was the name. Kurt Tatum.

And where there was one Tatum . . .

There were three of them. Warren, Kurt, and Albert Tatum, he remembered. He had not thought about the Tatums in years, but now they were in the news. And apparently in Crowell City.

Bastards had killed an express car guard who was protecting the United States mail.

Their presence in town put Longarm in something of a quandary. He was trying to keep his identity as a deputy U.S. marshal quiet so as to bring Al Gray to him unsuspecting.

But the three Tatums trumped Al Gray, at least in Longarm's estimation. They killed an express guard. That made them wanted by the federal government. The deaths of the train passengers would be up to the state to prosecute. But the mail coach guard and theft of mail . . . that was up to Longarm and his fellow marshals.

If, that is, the man he saw last night was indeed Kurt Tatum.

Longarm had gotten only a glimpse of him, his main attention being on Hortense. He could have been wrong. Perhaps the fellow was not Tatum after all.

If he was, though, if he and the rest of the clan really were here in Crowell City, it was Longarm's sworn duty to take them in. As for Al Gray, it was a matter of birds in the hand versus birds in the bush.

The subterfuge that he hoped to toll Gray in with would just have to go by the boards. There was no way he would allow the Tatums or any of their gang to go free. Not after killing a mail guard.

The Kansas City newspaper article had not specified who the guard worked for, but it was very likely that the man had been a postal clerk. And theft from the mail alone, even if no one had been killed, was enough to make the robbery a federal offense.

Longarm did not want town marshal Wilson Hughes or anyone else in Crowell City to know that he was a deputy marshal, but if he had a chance to take down the Tatums, he would do so. Al Gray would just have to wait his turn.

“Everything all right?” Buck asked as he delivered a plate of bacon, biscuits, and gravy. “You look awfully grim this morning.”

Longarm looked up from his reverie. He nodded and managed a smile. “Sure, Buck. Everything's fine.”

And it was. He had worked out what he should do if—big “if”—he should run into either the Tatums or Al Gray. Now all he had to do was carry through with that resolve.

“Just fine.” He picked up his fork and dug into his breakfast with an appetite churned to a high pitch by all the acrobatics he and Hortense had performed through most of the night.

“I got a question for you, Wilse,” Longarm said to the crooked town marshal.

It had taken him until midmorning to track down the sometimes elusive Hughes. Now he was sitting in the marshal's office with a cup of truly terrible coffee.

“Care for a cigar, Wilse?” Longarm asked, pulling two cheroots out of his pocket.

“That's your question?” Hughes returned, taking one of the slender cigars and carefully cutting the tip off with a folding pocketknife.

Longarm bit the twist off his cheroot and spat it into his palm. “No, o' course not. The seegar is meant t' butter you up an' put you in a mood to cooperate.”

“The other hundred you owe me will do that nicely,” Hughes said. “You didn't need the cigar.”

“Wilse, I don't owe you a damn thing unless you deliver for me. But there's no sign of Al nor idea of when he might show up. Or might not show, I suppose. No, what I got in mind is something along the same line o' thinking but . . . different. A little.”

“How different?” Hughes asked.

“Different name,” Longarm said. “Same result.”

“You mean about the hundred?”

“Uh-huh.” Longarm struck a match and held the flame first to Hughes's cheroot and then to his own. When both cigars were burning nicely he sat back and made a few smoke rings, then said, “Last night I saw a fella that I think I recognized. It didn't dawn on me till later, but I think it might've been a man I'd seen a couple years back. Fella by the name of Tatum. The last I heard he was runnin' with his brothers. Good men, all of them. Salty, if you know what I mean.”

“I know the Tatum boys,” Hughes said. “Them and me have what you might call a business arrangement. Which, come to think of it, you might want to consider for yourself. If the law comes for you . . . and mind now, I'm not saying that you are wanted anywhere . . . but if the law were to come after you, I'd know about it, and I'd take care of it. Keep you safe and out of sight until the danger blew over. You know what I mean?”

Longarm blew some more smoke rings and nodded. “I think I do, Wilse. An' you would do this for a, uh, a modest fee?”

“Very modest. Twenty dollars per month per man, and you are safe from the law.”

“I like that,” Longarm said.

“I've never lost anyone yet,” Hughes said modestly.

“Al Gray, for instance, or his sharpshooting friend,” Longarm said.

“Or the Tatum boys or about a half dozen others I could name but won't.”

“You're pulling in a tidy sum,” Longarm observed.

“Yes, but for the parties involved it is money well spent. They get to walk free; I add to my retirement fund,” Hughes said.

“And everybody is happy,” Longarm said.

“Are you interested in meeting the Tatums?” Hughes asked.

Longarm nodded. “Ayuh, so I am. I could talk t' them about, well, about what I had intended for Gray.”

“And I would get the hundred,” Hughes said.

“That's right. You would get the hundred,” Longarm agreed.

“Understand now, I can't speak for the Tatums, but they might be interested in listening to what you have to say,” Hughes said.

“I understand that,” Longarm agreed. “You get yours for setting up the meeting, not for them agreeing to anything, same as our deal with Gray had been.”

“I tell you what then,” Hughes said. “Meet me here this evening after dinner. Say, nine o'clock. Even with my protection the Tatums don't like to show themselves around town in daylight, but they like to socialize the same as any man. Come twilight they like to unwind, play a little poker, have a drink or maybe get laid, you know.”

“Ayuh, I know how it can be.” Longarm grinned. “Just this morning I was reading about why they might want t' be careful for a spell. Nine o'clock, you say? Here in your office?”

“Right,” Hughes said. “I'm not making any promises on their behalf, but I will talk to them and see if they would like to hear what you have to say.”

“I can't ask fairer than that,” Longarm told the man.

“And if they do agree to meet with you, I get the hundred,” Hughes said.

“That's right. If this evening you tell me the Tatums will listen to what I say, then I'll pay you the hundred here in this office before we go an' meet them,” Longarm said.

“Done,” Hughes said.

“If they agree to the meet. Otherwise we go back to waiting on Gray and his partner.” Longarm stuck his cheroot between his teeth and held out his hand to shake on the deal.