Longarm and the Deadwood Shoot-out (9781101619209) (3 page)

Longarm visited with the ladies and spent most of his afternoon and evening playing card games with Liberty.

Supper was light but the service was formal. Afterward Longarm retired upstairs where a room had been prepared for him. There had been no invitation for him to join Carmichael in the study for brandy and cigars. It was a lack Longarm could live with. His only purpose for staying was to please Liberty. The child was such a joy that he almost wished for a daughter of his own.

But then, he realized with a chuckle, it was more convenient to borrow one.

Before she was up to bed Liberty went onto her tiptoes and gave Longarm a good-night kiss.

The child just plain melted his heart; that was the truth of the matter.

Upstairs, tucked away at the back of the third floor, the family being somewhere below, he sat in the bedroom rocking chair long enough for a smoke and a nip of rye from the bottle he carried in his carpetbag, then he stripped, blew out the lamp, and crawled between the fresh, sunlight-scented sheets.

He was asleep almost immediately.

He came awake again to a light knocking on his door. In this genteel upper-class house there was no need for him to reach for the .45 he had placed on the bedside table. He sat up and reached for it anyway and had the revolver in hand when he stood and padded to the doorway.

Lamplight shone beneath the door.

“Who is it?” he asked, standing to the side of the door.

“Cornelia,” the answer came back.

Longarm’s eyebrows went up. “Yes, I, uh, just a moment.” He hurriedly put the revolver back into its leather, then returned to the door and pulled it open.

Cornelia Blaise, sometimes known as Gramma, stood there holding a hurricane lamp. She was wearing a sleeping gown of pale silk with pearls and fancywork sewn on. The gown came to her throat and had long sleeves, but the way the silk clung to her curves—and Cornelia Blaise had what Custis Long considered to be quite splendid curves—it managed to be sexy as hell.

“May I come in?”

Longarm stepped back and the lady swept into his bedroom.

She very carefully set the lamp onto the bedside table,
quite matter-of-factly shifting his Colt to one side when she did so.

When she turned to him the lamplight was behind her. He could see the outline of her figure through the backlighted silk. Her legs were long and slim. Her breasts small and shapely, riding high on her chest despite her years.

Her hair was down, flowing loose and long. It caught the gleam of the lamplight and seemed almost to shimmer.

Longarm’s cock had no notion of a houseguest’s polite behavior. It immediately jumped to attention.

Cornelia looked down and saw the sudden bulge in his balbriggans.

The grand lady smiled and said, “Good. Would you like to fuck?”

Longarm was too surprised to speak, but his pecker, lightly throbbing behind the thin cloth of his balbriggans, spoke for him.

Cornelia stepped forward. One arm crept around Longarm’s neck. Her other hand very matter-of-factly gripped his cock. She lifted her face to his and kissed him, her tongue sliding into his mouth when she did so.

“Beautiful,” she whispered.

Longarm lifted an eyebrow and the grand lady smiled and said, “Not you, dear. This is what I was thinking of.” She squeezed his prick and laughed.

“Beautiful? Why, you ain’t even seen it yet,” Longarm said.

“We can correct that, can’t we?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. Reckon we can at that.”

Without waiting for more of an invitation, Cornelia unfastened the buttons at the neck of the balbriggans and slipped the undergarment off his shoulders. She pushed them down past his hips and let them drop to the floor around his ankles.

“Lovely,” she said, looking down at the powerful erection that was standing tall down there. “See? I was right all along.” She took hold of him and squeezed again.

“Careful what you’re doin’ there or you’ll get a fistful of jism,” he warned.

“I can think of better places for it,” Cornelia said.

He reached up to the neck of her nightdress and felt for the closure. Found it at the back, hidden beneath her hair. He slipped the button free and the silky garment slithered to the floor under its own weight, pooling there in a cream-colored pile.

“Damn, woman, you’re mighty fine,” he observed. And indeed she was. Tall and slim and with only a hint of belly. Her tits were pale, the nipples small and pink. The bush at her crotch was a vee of gray fur, tightly curled and already moist with her juices.

Cornelia came to him, this time wrapping both arms around his neck. She raised herself on tiptoes and lifted one leg high. Longarm was surprised to find that she had easily impaled herself on his cock, taking him deep into her cunt while they stood belly to belly and lip to lip.

She kissed him, pulling his tongue into her hot mouth while she ground her hips against his.

Cornelia was able to take every inch of him, something that not every woman could handle. She rocked back and forth against him, his prick sliding in and out with the woman’s motion.

Without warning she tightened her arms around his neck and lifted herself, wrapping her legs around Longarm’s waist and driving herself onto him. He was holding her completely off the floor, his arms around her torso, her tits warm and soft on his chest.

He felt the heat of her pussy. Felt the slippery moisture
of her juices. Felt his own sap quickly rise in response to her.

Cornelia bit his ear but Longarm scarcely felt it. His concentration was on the exquisite sensations of being deep inside this handsome woman’s body.

He groaned and shuddered as his come exploded into her. Cornelia began to shudder and moan as he did so. If she was faking her orgasm, he realized, she was doing one hell of a fine job of it.

He clung tightly to her, all of her weight on his sturdy frame as both of them came.

After another minute or so he sighed. Cornelia unwrapped herself from around him and dropped her feet to the floor once more. But she continued her hold around his neck, her mouth on his, her breath rapid and hot.

“Damn,” she whispered when she pulled her face an inch or so away from his.

“Yeah,” Longarm agreed.

“You are good, dearest,” she said.

“Glad y’ think so, ma’am.”

The lady giggled and asked, “Do you think we can do it again?”

“You bet, but let’s lie down an’ try it this time.”

She took his hand and led him onto the bed, placing herself wide open for his entry when he joined her.

Cornelia stayed with him until dawn, then she slipped out of his room. When Longarm went downstairs for breakfast an hour later the woman acted like she scarcely knew him.

Liberty begged him to stay “just one more day,” which Cornelia, with a twinkle in her eye, seconded, but he kissed the little girl on the forehead and declined the invitation.

“It’s work that brought me up here, an’ I’d best get to it.”

“Finish your breakfast then and we shall drive you back into town,” Cornelia said.

The distance was not so much that he could not walk it but he was glad enough for the offer. Donald fetched his bag downstairs and escorted him outside where a light wagon was waiting for him. Half an hour later he was deposited in front of the Cheyenne post office.

“Mornin’,” he greeted the clerk on duty. Longarm showed his badge, then said, “I’m looking for a gent name of Osgood. I don’t know his first name.”

“That would be Clarence,” the clerk said. “He’s in the back sorting mail. Is this important?”

“Very,” Longarm said.

The clerk frowned but said, “All right then. Come inside the cage. I’ll take you to him.”

Clarence Osgood turned out to be a burly, rather tough-looking man with hairy arms and heavy beard stubble. When Longarm introduced himself Osgood nodded and said, “I thought one of you fellows would be along. That’s why I put that mail in the strongbox.”

“That was good thinking,” Longarm said.

Osgood grunted. “Look, Marshal, I been on the far side of the law a time or two before I found the Lord. Now I try to do right.”

“Well, you did right this time,” Longarm said. “My boss tells me you have information on the folks those letters were going to. I’d like that list if you don’t mind.”

“Why is that?” Osgood asked.

“That will be part of the evidence against these people when I bring them to trial,” Longarm explained. “Dependin’ on how things go, I might want t’ get statements from them for the prosecutor t’ use when it comes down to that.”

Osgood grunted. “Yeah, that makes sense. Just a minute. I got the list in my locker. Wait here.” He disappeared into the back of the post office and returned a minute later with an envelope that he handed to Longarm. “Is there anything else I can help with?” he asked.

Longarm shook his head and said, “Not that I can think of. But if I do, I’ll be back.”

“Anything,” the postal worker said. “Anytime.”

“Thanks.” Longarm shook the man’s hand and left. He retrieved his carpetbag from the lobby, where he had left it, and walked to the Laramie County sheriff’s office.

“I’m hoping to find some information on the Salter gang,” he told the tall, sun-bronzed sheriff. “Whatever you know, anything you know, would be a help because I don’t know much of anything about them other than the fact that they are damned good at robbery.”

Sheriff Bertram Rutter took Longarm into his office and motioned for him to have a seat. He went around behind his desk and settled into his swivel chair. He leaned back and asked, “Do you mind if I smoke while we talk?”

Longarm grinned. “Not if you don’t mind if I do.”

Rutter loaded a pipe and fired it up while Longarm nipped the twist off one of his cheroots. Rutter held a match for him to light the cigar and both men leaned back in their chairs.

“What little I know about the Salters,” Rutter said, “comes from an article in a back-East newspaper. From Philadelphia. It was written by an Englishwoman who claimed she was able to interview the gang on the promise that she would not reveal their names or where they lived. They told her…allegedly, that is…told her that they rob in Wyoming and Nebraska but live in a different jurisdiction where they have committed no crimes and are not wanted.”

“That would make it Dakota or Montana,” Longarm observed.

“Right,” Rutter said. “If they were telling the truth.”

“And if the reporter really did get an interview like that. She could have made it all up.”

“She could have,” the sheriff agreed, “but hers is the only information we have.”

“Is the reporter available for me to talk with?”

Rutter shrugged. “Who knows. I’ve never met her
and don’t know if she is still out here. For all I know she could be back East again by now. Or all the way home to England. The article came out weeks ago.”

“Do you have a copy?” Longarm asked.

“No, I don’t, but maybe one of my people or someone over in the courthouse has one. I can ask around for you.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Longarm said.

“Other than that,” Rutter said, “we know practically nothing about these people. The way they work, they seem to know what stages to hit. They never bother to steal an empty strongbox, only worthwhile targets. One or two of them will step out in front of the stage with shotguns leveled. They never speak. Not a word. They just motion with those shotguns. After the box has been thrown down they get the passengers out and rob them…still without saying a word out loud, mind you…then step aside and let the stage go on its way. They’ve never harmed anyone. They have gotten away with half a dozen of these robberies now.”

“What do they look like?” Longarm asked. “After that many robberies you should have a pretty good description of them.”

“Ha,” Rutter grunted. “You would think so, wouldn’t you? In fact we have no idea what they look like. They always wear full-length dusters buttoned to the throat plus flour-sack hoods covering their heads. They even wear gloves, more like gauntlets, to cover their hands and forearms. No one except this newspaper reporter has ever gotten a look at them.”

“Assuming she really did,” Longarm said.

“Exactly.”

“Well, someone, somewhere, has to know some-damn-thing,” Longarm said.

“I wish you luck finding them,” Rutter said. “The robberies occurred outside my jurisdiction, but if there is any way I can help, Long, I’ll be glad to do so.”

“I thank you, Sheriff. What I’d like from you, if I may, would be the name of this Philadelphia newspaperwoman. Just in case she’s still out this way.”

“Of course,” Rutter said. “Anything I can do. Anything at all.”

Longarm returned to the Cheyenne post office, but this time instead of Osgood he asked the clerk if he might see the Cheyenne postmaster.

“Look, mister, we got work to do here,” the clerk complained.

“Yes,” Longarm said agreeably, “and so do I. Mine includes talkin’ with your postmaster. So you can politely point the way for me or I can discuss with your p’lice chief about charging you with obstruction of a federal officer in the performance o’ his duties. I dunno. Maybe the judge will let you off with, say, ten or twenty days. Prob’ly no more’n a month.” Longarm put on an innocent and open expression and smiled at the man.

The mail clerk blanched and stepped back away from his cage. “I, um…this way, please.”

Longarm went inside the caged area and meekly followed the postal clerk to a tiny cubbyhole of an office that was protected by a door stout enough to stop at full-on assault by Viking warriors.

The postmaster was inside, caught reading the morning newspaper with his feet propped up on his desk. He did not bother dropping them to the floor until he saw that the clerk had brought a stranger with him. The man’s shoes, Longarm noticed, were high-topped and shined to a gleam. Old-fashioned, he thought, and something of a fuddy-duddy.

“Who are you,” the man challenged, “and what do you want?”

The clerk extracted himself from the situation and got the hell out of there. Longarm smiled again and fleetingly wished he could follow the clerk back to wherever the man went. Instead all he did was to introduce himself and show his badge.