Longarm and the Sins of Laughing Lyle (9781101612101) (3 page)

Chapter 4

When Longarm merely arched a curious brow at the woman, she smiled more broadly and lifted her chin toward the door. “I'm Tegan's sister. He's the apron. We own this place, him and me. Bought it from Finlay two years ago. Tegan said you're a lawman. Do you think, next time, you could do your law work
outside?
”

She and the other girls studied him.

“I do apologize,” he said, walking forward and doffing his hat. “Tegan said I could have a room, Miss . . .”

“Alva. Just Alva.”

“Should I call you ‘Just' or ‘Alva'?”

She tilted her head to inspect his arm. “You're gonna need that cleaned. Go on upstairs. Take the last room on the left. Door's open.” Alva addressed the four pleasure girls looking all dressed up with nowhere to go, as there were as yet no customers. “Ladies, haul a tub and water upstairs. Fill it full.”

“I'd be obliged,” Longarm said.

“Don't be,” Alva said, her chocolate eyes looking up into his, little sparks dancing in them. “I just don't want you bloodying up the place any more than you already have. It's hard enough keeping the place going way out here without your brand of trouble.”

As the girls started moving around behind the bar, Longarm said, “I'm obliged just the same, Miss Alva,” and started for the stairs.

“Here.”

Longarm turned back. Miss Alva was holding out a bottle. He took it, nodded cordially, continued to the stairs, and began climbing, feeling the heaviness of the day in every step.

Upstairs, he went into the last room on the hall's left side. It was obviously an extra room, with a made bed and an armoir, very neat and unlived in. The walls were paneled in pine, and there was a faint smell of pine resin. A washbasin sat atop a dresser that in turn was capped with an oval-shaped mirror. A moonstone lantern was bracketed to the wall near the dresser. Longarm lifted the mantle and lit the wick, the light instantly shunting shadows this way and that around the small, neat room.

Longarm had no sooner sagged down on the bed and popped the cork on the bottle than the door opened, and two girls came in lugging a high-backed copper bathtub. He paid them no attention but merely began taking liberal pulls on the bottle. It tempered the pain in his arm but did nothing to dull the mental agony of knowing one of his best friends, Case Morgan, lay outside under a few shovelfuls of desert sand and rock.

Two more girls came up with a bucket of water each—one with hot, one with cold. They glanced at him skeptically as they poured the water into the tub, obviously not sure what to make of him, a little afraid of him, then headed out, leaving the door open behind them. Longarm removed his string tie, untied the neckerchief from around his arm, and shrugged out of his coat. He pulled his shirttails out of his pants and lifted the garment as well as his vest straight up over his head, wincing as the shirtsleeve came away from the bloody wound.

He tossed the shirt and the vest into a corner with his tie, then kicked out of his boots and shucked out of his socks, long handles, and pants. Footsteps sounded in the hall. The door came open. The girl who'd been on the fainting couch with Kid McQuade stopped halfway through the door and gasped, another steaming bucket of water in her hands. Her hazel eyes raked over him, widening slightly, lips parting. Another girl poked her head in behind her, frowning. Then she sucked a breath as her eyes took in the tall, broad, well-seasoned naked man standing between the bed and the tub.

Longarm glanced at them, said with an annoyed air, “What—she tryin' to drown me?”

“Miss Alva said to fill it up,” said the petite, round-faced brunette, hazel eyes riveted on Longarm's midsection.

“Well, fill it up, then.” Longarm took another long pull from the bottle and went back to inspecting his wounded arm, scowling. “Don't tell me you've never seen a naked man before.”

The two glanced at each other, shrugged, then hauled their buckets into the room and emptied them into the tub. As they filed out, swinging their hips and shoulders, the second girl, a strawberry blonde with red ribbons in her hair that matched her nude corset bustier, glanced over her shoulder, once more raking Longarm's brawny frame up and down, and said thickly, “Not like you, mister.”

Her eyes glinted. She pulled the door closed behind her. In the hall, she and the brunette snickered as they headed for the stairs.

Longarm had been only half-aware of them. He took another long pull from the bottle, then set it on the floor beside the tub and stepped into the water. He winced against the heat and slid down slowly until his butt was resting on the dimpled bottom. Scooping water over his upper right arm, he washed the wound, which was a clean one. The bullet had gone in the front and out the back, likely only grazing the bone. He'd douse it with whiskey, wrap it, get a good night's sleep, and hit the trail after Laughing Lyle first thing in the morning.

One of the girls had set a cake of lye soap on the dresser. He grabbed it, stood, and lathered himself from head to toe. More footsteps sounded in the hall—the
clomp-clomp
of an assured stride. A single knock on his door and before he could respond to it, the door came open.

Alva came in holding a small leather kit in one hand, a bottle and two glasses in the other. She looked at Longarm standing naked and lathered before her, arched a black brow, then came in and kicked the door closed.

“This room's busier'n Larimer Street in Denver on a Saturday night.”

He continued running the cake of potash lye around on his chest and under his arms.

Alva stopped in front of the door, brashly appraised him once more, then set the bottle and glasses on the dresser. Longarm folded himself back down in the tub and splashed water up over his head and shoulders, rinsing. Alva pulled the room's lone chair out from the corner and set it beside the tub. She sat down in it and set the kit on her knees.

“What you got there?”

“Sewing needle and thread.”

“The wound'll heal on its own.”

“You'll probably get a fistful of dirt in it before it gets a chance to. Just sit back, Marshal. Me and Tegan have only been out here two years, but I've sewn up a good dozen men so far.”

Longarm looked up at the severely beautiful planes of her cherry-colored face between long, dark-brown tresses of her silky hair. Like her nose, her chin was at once strong and delicate. “Call me Longarm.”

Alva opened the kit and withdrew needle and thread. “Tegan said you buried a partner.”

Longarm sank back in the tub and sighed.

“A good man?”

“Yep.”

When she'd threaded the sewing needle with catgut, she set the kit on the floor, rose, and, the velvet gown swishing about her long legs, walked over to the dresser. She popped the cork on the bottle. “This is the good stuff.”

She filled two glasses and brought one over to Longarm. “Drink up. You'll need it.”

Longarm threw back the bourbon, smacked his lips. “Damn good.”

“We stocked it for the railroad men looking to put a spur line through. Probably won't sway them one way or the other, but a man likes a good drink even when he's way out in the tall and uncut.”

Longarm looked up at her again, feeling the liquor wash through him, warming him, dulling his aches and pains and softening the edges of his grief. “And a good woman.”

Alva nodded as she held his right arm over the tub and doused it with the whiskey from his own bottle. He hissed at the fiery claws digging into the wound. Alva set the bottle down on the floor, then crouched low over his arm, scrutinizing it closely, pressing her half-exposed breasts against his forearm and wrist. Her bosom was warm against his skin.

“We've got the best girls here. Best within a hundred miles, anyway . . .”

“I'll say you do.”

“It'll probably be pretty quiet tonight, it being a weeknight, but we have to be ready in case a mule train rolls in.”

She looked at him staring at her, then pinched the skin up around his wound and ran the needle through. “I'm not for sale, Longarm.”

Longarm gritted his teeth as she started sewing. “Good to know, Alva. 'Cause I don't like payin' for it.”

She poked him again, and the corners of her broad, enticing mouth quirked a faintly devilish smile. But when she'd finished sewing him up and had cut the thread and doused the sewn wound once more from the cheap bottle of whiskey, she walked over to the door and turned the key in the lock.

She turned back to him. Her lips were parted. Her full breasts rose and fell behind the gown. She blinked slowly, then lifted one foot after the other, removing her shoes.

Longarm watched her without expression.

He continued to watch until she'd gracefully removed the gown and her underclothes and stood before him naked, long hair curling around the fullness of her dark-tipped breasts. The flickering, amber lantern cast shadows into her cleavage, angled down across her flat belly, and into the tuft of curly hair between her long, shapely, naturally tan legs.

Longarm's expression must have betrayed his incredulity. Alva hiked a shoulder. “I don't know. I reckon you could use a friend.” She took long, leisurely, catlike strides to the bed, drew the covers back, and crawled under them, pulling them up only as far as her belly, leaving her breasts bare.

They sloped slightly to one side, the brown nipples hard and jutting. “And if you'll forgive me for saying so, it's been a long time since I've had a man's stiff rod between my legs.”

Longarm felt a shudder of desire ripple up his spine. His heart thudded. He closed his hands over the side of the tub, rose, and dried himself with the towel she'd laid across the back of the chair. Staring down at her, his heart continuing to thud heavily, loins running hot, he ran the towel through his hair. As he sawed it across his back, Alva reached out from the bed and wrapped her hand around his jutting cock.

Instantly, her breasts rose and fell sharply as she breathed harder, raspier. Slowly, she ran her hand from the base of his cock to the head and back again.

Longarm felt his chest rise and fall, his knees quake.

When she'd pumped him gently several times, she scuttled up onto her knees with a girlish little grunt, shook her long, dark hair back from her face, grinned up at him, then leaned out from the side of the bed and touched her tongue to the tip of his swollen member.

A warm, wet lance of desire jetted up the length of his cock to poke his prostate. He shifted his weight back to his heels, clenching his fists at his sides.

“So big,” she said, and swirled her tongue along the swollen head. “So big . . . and fine. So . . . fine . . .”

Then she opened her mouth wide and closed it over him. She took him as far back as she could and made little gurgling sounds as she lathered him with her saliva while tickling the underside of his cock with her tongue. She turned her head this way and that, making hungry sucking sounds, getting him good and wet.

Slowly, she pulled her head back. Her lips rose up and over and back from the swollen, purple mushroom head glittering wetly in the lantern light. She swallowed, and raised those smoky, charcoal eyes to his.

“I believe you're ready.”

“Oh, yeah,” he groaned.

She lay back against her pillow, lifted her knees nearly all the way to her chest, and spread her legs wide, grabbing her ankles to draw them even wider.

The dark pink rose of her vagina blossomed before him, her legs quivering gently with her need.

Longarm climbed onto the bed. As he mounted her, she arched her back. Propped on his outstretched arms, he caressed the delicate, petal-like folds of her snatch with the head of his cock. She groaned, sighed, quivered. She tipped her head back farther, breasts lifting, pointing toward the ceiling, nipples hard as sewing thimbles.

Her swollen breasts rose and fell heavily, a thin sheen of perspiration covering them as the amber light slid back and forth and the flame guttered.

“You know how to torture a girl, Longarm.”

As he thrust the head of his cock through the open, pink blossoms, she brought a hand to her mouth. As he thrust his hips against her and drove his cock deep, deep into her, she gave a sob and chomped down on her knuckles, squeezing her eyes closed. “Oh,
God!
”

Chapter 5

Longarm fucked the girl over and over again, desperately, with a passion that bordered on frenzy.

It was an unself-conscious obsession to drive everything else away except for Alva's breasts and lips and clutching wet snatch . . . her toes gently running up and down his legs . . . her hands gently tugging on his hair . . . her guttural groans and love cries . . . as he took her over and over . . .

. . . before finally burying his face between her full, sweat-slick breasts and at last passing out with a great exhalation, letting his last sensation be the salty taste of her deep cleavage against his lips.

He was only half-aware of her sliding out beneath him and his rolling slowly back with a weary groan against the bed, of her lips pressed lightly to his temple as she gently wrapped something soft around his wounded arm. Everything went dark and quiet again after that, until he opened his eyes to the wash of pearl light pushing through the window above the bed.

He sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. His arm throbbed. With a groan, he tossed the covers back and dropped his bare feet to the floor. Both bottles—the cheap stuff and the good stuff—stood on the dresser. There was also a small burlap sack that hadn't been there the night before. A sheet of lined tablet paper lay over the bag. Longarm opened it, tilted it to the light, read the words written in a flowing, feminine hand:

Dearest Longarm:

Take both bottles of whiskey. Use the cheap bottle on the wound, the bourbon for pain. In the bag I packed food for the trail and cotton for rewrapping your arm. Please, Longarm, do not taint our time together by leaving payment.

I will think of you often, remember last night forever.

Alva

Longarm smiled thoughtfully as he lowered the surprisingly literate note. Not many girls with Indian blood were educated well enough to write such a flowing missive. Longarm wished he had time to get to know the woman he knew only as Alva. She likely had an interesting history. But last night, their bodies had done all the talking. Maybe he'd pass this way again sometime.

In the meantime, he threw back several pulls from the bourbon bottle, filing down the sharp teeth of that rabid cur chomping into his arm, and ate one of the three apples that Alva had packed for him with several roast beef sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper. He'd save the sandwiches for later.

His pain and hunger pangs sated, he dressed and slipped quietly out of the roadhouse. In the shadowy barn flanking the place, he saddled his dusty gray and Case Morgan's bay, intending to use Case's mount in relief of the gray, so he could ride twice as hard if he needed to. He doubted that Laughing Lyle, wounded as he was, would have gotten far, but he wasn't taking any chances. The desire to run the killer to ground and return the sixteen thousand dollars that he and his gang had taken from the good people of Stoneville, before murdering a dozen bank patrons and employees in cold blood, was like a fire-breathing dragon inside of him.

All the more so because they'd taken the life of one of his closest friends, one of the best lawmen on the frontier.

He hoped Laughing Lyle hadn't died from his wounds overnight. He wanted to take the man to Denver, put him before a federal judge and jury, and watch him hang in the gallows courtyard behind the Federal Building.

It was a chilly morning, as they tended to be in early October in New Mexico, at about six thousand feet above the sea. The sun's rays spearing over the eastern horizon were not yet offering warmth. Longarm unwrapped his buckskin coat from around his bedroll, pulled it on, returned the bedroll to its place behind the saddle cantle, and closed the barn doors behind him and the horses, whose tails blew in the cool breeze.

The tall lawman swung into the saddle, gave his glance once more to the two-story roadhouse, the magic of last night with Alva reluctant to leave him, then pressed his heels to the gray's flanks. The horses clomped around the saloon and pleasure parlor to where the trail left the yard—two pale wheel ruts jutting westward across the rolling, sage- and piñon-studded desert.

The roadhouse must not have had much business the night before. Only one set of fresh prints scored the trail's left track, the indentations light and crumbly, denoting a galloping mount. Laughing Lyle.

Ignoring the constant ache in his right arm, Longarm booted the army gelding into a fast trot, jerking the bay behind him by its bridle reins. When the sun left the eastern horizon and started climbing the sky behind him, he put the horses into a hard gallop for a quarter mile before resting them for a short time and then started galloping once more.

After an hour, he began sweating beneath the coat, so he stopped the mounts, removed the buckskin, and tied it around his bedroll. While the horses blew and cropped the fescue growing up between sage plants along the sides of the trail, he inspected the single set of prints scoring the trail ahead.

He crouched over one print, removed his right-hand glove, and pressed his index finger into a brown spot in the clay-colored soil. He lifted the finger and inspected the flaky brown substance, smeared it with his thumb until it became red.

Longarm smiled. Laughing Lyle had been losing enough blood that it was dripping onto the trail beneath his horse.

Longarm splashed water into his hat for his own two horses, let them each drink, then corked his canteen and swung into the saddle once more. He continued following Laughing Lyle's tracks for another hour, watched a mountain range rise ahead of him and slightly to his right—an island hulking against the western horizon. It was likely the Organ Range between the Black Range to the south and the Cactus Hills to the north.

Longarm had been through this country a couple of times before, but he couldn't remember any towns. There were a few, small, widely scattered ranches, none of which he'd glimpsed so far today. Laughing Lyle had so far stuck to the trail, which seemed to be heading for the Organs, so he must have had some destination in mind. Maybe the mountains themselves.

Possibly, he hoped to hole up in the rugged reaches and heal well enough to begin spending some of the stolen money that was all his now that the rest of his gang had gone to Glory. If so, Laughing Lyle wouldn't be alone. The Organs were known for hiding outlaws of one stripe or another—desperadoes on the run looking for a rugged place to cool their heels before making a break for Arizona Territory to the south and west, and then possibly Mexico beyond.

Laughing Lyle had slowed Merle's horse down considerably this far out from Finlay's roadhouse, and rarely run it down the stretch of trail that Longarm was currently fogging. The killer must have passed through here late last night, around midnight or later. It must have been cold then, in the lower forties—and cold is hard on a man losing blood.

As Longarm rode through the early afternoon, switching horses every hour or so, he saw only two other people—punchers moving a small herd of cattle about a half a mile south of the trail. He passed a couple of forks in the trail marked with signs announcing distant ranches, but Laughing Lyle's tracks continued along the main line, heading toward the Organ Range looming taller and broader to the west, the still-high sun revealing its rocky lower slopes and talus slides and jutting pinnacles of what appeared sandstone and limestone. Higher up, the slopes were dark green, with forest thinning toward more slides and barren, rocky knobs.

Around Longarm the terrain was rocky and patchy with sage, prickly pear, and willows demarking thin watercourses, and occasional cottonwoods and cedars. He stopped when the twin furrows of a wagon intersected the hoof tracks of Laughing Lyle's stolen horse. Nearby was a large splotch of blood and scuff marks where a man had fallen. There were two sets of footprints, as well—those of a large man in stockmen's boots, and those of a smaller man, or more likely a woman, in small-heeled shoes.

They'd obviously stopped and taken Laughing Lyle aboard their wagon, likely tied his horse to the wagon, and continued on up the trail.

Quickly, Longarm mounted the gray and, leading the bay, gigged it forward, following a broad bend around a short mesa and then up a slope. He rode for another half hour, then checked both horses down when a town appeared ahead of him, the Organ Range looming tall and formidable behind it.

The town was a sprawling, shabby affair—mostly log shacks, plank privies, and pole corrals scattered among the sage and broken red boulders that had long ago tumbled down the steep ridge to the north. The settlement sprawled on a shallow slope dropping from the foot of the mountain toward the valley to the south.

As Longarm continued following the trail, he saw what appeared to be a business district ahead—eight or nine frame buildings with false fronts stretched out along both sides of the trail for no longer than a city block, with plenty of space between them. These business buildings were surrounded by more shacks sitting every which way, showing a lack of any sort of civic planning whatever, as though the whole place was a haphazard, makeshift affair.

There were a few people milling along the raised boardwalks fronting the businesses, with saddled horses standing at hitch racks here and there, still as statues. A couple of horsebackers were just now riding toward Longarm, who'd stopped his own horses to get the lay of the land.

As the two riders rode toward him, their horses kicking up little red dust puffs, Longarm pinched his hat brim affably. Both riders—ranch hands, judging by their dusty homespun clothes and brush-scarred leather chaps—looked right at him without expression, with no sign of acknowledgment whatever.

They continued past him to head off in the direction from which he'd come. Longarm glanced after them, but their reception, or lack thereof, was no surprise. Folks who lived this far off the beaten path were just naturally suspicious of strangers.

He gave his attention to the dirt street before him. The twin wagon furrows were less clear here, where they'd been somewhat obscured by horse and foot traffic, but the wagon's trail was still visible in places. He followed it ahead to where it angled toward a large frame building over whose double doors a sign announced
HUMPERDINK LIVERY AND UNDERTAKING
.

Inside the open double doors a bearded gent was hunkered over a coffin propped on sawhorses and filling the air with the fresh smell of pine resin as he ran a plane over the top of the coffin's left side panel. To his right was a spring wagon with an open tailgate. Inside the wagon lay a dead man with a blanket thrown over him; his stocking feet stuck out the bottom. A big, blue toe poked from the dead man's right gray sock.

Longarm's heart hiccupped its disappointment.

He returned his gaze to the old man planing the coffin, and his voice betrayed his dread. “Who you got in the wagon, friend?”

The oldster, wearing a tangled gray beard that hung down nearly to the paunch pushing out his striped coveralls, leaped back with a start, gasping. “Jumpin' Jesus, would you mind announcing yourself, fella?” His freckled cheeks were bright red above the beard, and two blue eyes glared out from beneath shaggy brows the same color as the beard. “You damn near frightened me right into a goddamn heart stroke!”

“Sorry,” Longarm said. “I thought you heard me ride up.”

“Well, I didn't! Can't hear as well as I used to, so I would appreciate it if you'd announce yourself next time.”

“How can I announce myself if you can't hear?”

The graybeard cupped a hand to his ear. “What's that?”

“Never mind,” Longarm said, raising his voice. “Who you got in the wagon there?”

The old man glanced at the wagon, then returned his indignant blue gaze to Longarm. “Slash Hall. Who's askin'?”

“Slash Hall,” Longarm said half to himself, feeling better. He'd been sure the man was going to say Laughing Lyle or at least some gent whom someone picked up in a wagon a few hours ago.

“What's that?”

Longarm swung down from his saddle and dropped the gray's and the bay's reins in the dirt. “Mind if I take a look?”

“I asked you what your name was, boy, and don't tell me you answered when I know you didn't. I'm hard of hearin' but I ain't
deaf!
”

Longarm walked over to the end of the wagon. “Custis Long,” he said. “Deputy United States marshal.”

“
What
did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“What's a federal doin' in Nowhere?”

Longarm pulled the blanket down until the dead man's head was revealed. The lawman grimaced at the grisly sight of the badly swollen face that had turned the color of a black eye. Even one ear was swollen as it poked out of the man's shaggy mop of frizzy, gray-brown hair. His lips were puffed up to the size of large thumbs and stretched back from his teeth in a bizarre death grin.

“Good Lord—what happened to him?”

“Been warm the last few days, and ole Slash was ridin' for the Dancing Bar W south of town when his pony threw him into a rattlesnake hole. By the time they managed to fish him out, it was all over but the screamin'. They said he wailed till well past midnight, Slash did. His bunkhouse pards was about to shoot him when he finally expired.”

The undertaker, whom Longarm assumed was Humperdink, walked over to stand beside Longarm and stare down at the dead man. “His pards, J. T. Phipps and Bill Williams, brought him to town and pooled their money for a coffin and proper funeral in the church cemetery, with Reverend Henry Todd presidin'. Two more of his friends just rode out after payin' their respects.”

“Good of his friends to do that.”

Humperdink nodded, then turned to look Longarm up and down. “What's a federal lawman doin' in Nowhere?”

Longarm frowned. “Nowhere? That the name of the town.”

“Shore is.”

“How come there's no sign sayin' so?”

Humperdink grinned as though he was delighted whenever he got the opportunity to answer that question. “What'd be the point of identifyin' Nowhere since anyone headin' here already knows they're Nowhere whether they know the name of the town or
not?
”