Longarm and the Sins of Laughing Lyle (9781101612101) (5 page)

Chapter 8

Butter was already in the dining room, waiting at a table near a front window and a dusty potted palm. There were three other men in the place—traveling drummers, judging by their cheap, gaudy suits, complete with checked or striped trousers and bowler hats with frayed brims.

Butter sat back in a Windsor chair, legs outstretched before him beneath the table, hands laced over his paunch. His cream hat was on the table, which was decked out with a white tablecloth and a green candle in a brass holder. A fire crackled in a fieldstone hearth on the room's far side, compensating for the evening chill.

Night had fallen over Nowhere. The room's three curtained front windows were dark.

Longarm dragged out a chair and sat down, and when the serving girl came, he took Butter's advice and ordered the elk and potatoes with a side order of buttered carrots, and, of course, a beer and a shot of the house's best whiskey.

When the girl had left, Butter frowned across the table at the federal lawman. “You seem troubled, Marshal. Don't worry—we'll find that stolen loot.” He fingered the mole at his left temple, rheumy brown eyes regarding Longarm reassuringly. “If Laughing Lyle don't make it, which looks likely, you'll at least have that to take back to Denver. That's the most important thing, anyway, right?”

Longarm had just bit the end off a nickel cheroot and fired a match on his shell belt. Leaning forward with both elbows on the table, he touched the flame to the cigar, and blew smoke into the air above the table. “Tell me something, Marshal—”

“Call me Roscoe.”

“All right, Roscoe—tell me about your town here. Tell me about Nowhere.”

Butter chuckled. “Don't the name pretty much say it all?”

“What about this hotel? Doesn't look like a place someone would build if they didn't think the town they were buildin' it in had a future. If they didn't think the town wouldn't be
nowhere
for long.” Longarm looked around at the lushly if sparsely appointed room, looking past the aged, ragged edges, including the faded quality of the Oriental rug at his feet and the faint coffee stains on the tablecloth before him. “If they didn't think the town would someday be
somewhere.
You get my drift?”

Butter leaned forward, slid his chair up closer to the table, and lifted the whiskey shot the serving girl had just set on the table before him, alongside a frothy, butterscotch-colored ale. He glanced over his left shoulder, then sipped the whiskey, showed his teeth, and said, “See those three men over there?”

Longarm glanced at the three hunkered over their plates and conversing in dry tones, and nodded.

“Railroad surveyors,” Butter said, keeping his voice down. “On a survey run for some third-rate railroad that
might
be laid fifteen miles south of here, along Sandy Wash, to connect Albaquerk to the mining camps in the Black Range.”

“I'm with you so far.”

“About five years ago we had a survey crew moving through Nowhere, and the word was that we were about to have a major line run through here—a line that would connect Albaquerk to us and the mining camps that were just then cropping up in the Organ Range. The line would then head off to the southwest and reach all the way down to Phoenix in the Arizona Territory. So, after all was said and done, Nowhere—this little joke of a town that started out as a cavalry outpost twenty-two years ago and never grew into much since but a supply camp for a handful of small ranches—would be connected to the entire country and the whole Pacific Ocean!”

Butter grinned exaggeratedly, eyes flashing, as he stretched his arms wide, as though to indicate the breadth of the entire planet.

“But it never happened,” Longarm said, tapping his cheroot against an ashtray.

“Nope, it sure didn't.”

“What happened?”

“No one found enough gold or silver to make the mining camps in the Organ Range profitable, and the rail line that had such big plans and got us all steamed up for wealth and prosperity fell apart on account of a bunch of crooks in their main office in Kansas City. Several o' them mucky-mucks were hauled off to jail. And Nowhere . . .”

Butter scowled down at his shot glass, threw back the rest of the whiskey, and set the glass back on the table, turning it broodingly between his fingers. “Well, the name was just so damn fittin' that we kept it. Now the only surveyors we see through here are workin' for a little narrow-gauge spur line to the south, and those fellas just remind us what could have been.”

“Somewhere,” Longarm said.

“You got it.” Butter laughed gratingly. “So we make a joke out of the name. Why not laugh about it?”

He removed his arms from the table, as did Longarm, for the serving girl had just brought a steaming plate of elk roast for each. She took their beer glasses away for refilling, and the two men dug into the food hungrily.

They'd gotten only halfway through the meal before Longarm saw Benji Vickers's broad, bulky frame fill the doorway that opened onto the hotel's lobby. The big man held his age-silvered bowler in his paws up close to his chest, kneading the brim uncertainly, fidgeting and looking around before he moved forward into the dining room, setting each foot down and wincing, reminding Longarm of nothing so much as the bull in the proverbial china shop.

Butter heard the big deputy's heavy footfalls and looked up, chewing. “What is it, Benji?”

Benji stopped before the table, shifting his deep-set, anxious gaze from the town marshal to Longarm and back again before saying haltingly, “The Widow sent me to fetch you, Marshal. She's havin' trouble gettin' the baby down to sleep and she says she's just fit to be tied!”

Butter's face turned the rose of a summer sunset as he glanced sheepishly at Longarm. He ran his tongue around over his teeth, apparently pondering the situation, before he slid his chair back, tossed his napkin onto the table, and grabbed his hat.

“Longarm, I do apologize, but there's a personal matter I must tend to.”

Longarm shrugged—curious but keeping it to himself. “Nothing to apologize for Roscoe. If you gotta go, you gotta go. Shame to leave half a plate of food, though. Perhaps Benji could finish it for you.” Why not take the opportunity to have a little sit-down chat with the oddly behaving deputy?

Benji was staring eagerly at the town marshal's food. But as Butter rose from his chair, donned his hat, and made his way around the table, he tugged gently on the big man's arm. “Benji's shift is gonna have to start an hour early, I'm afraid,” Butter said. “Come on, Benji. You'd better start makin' the rounds.”

Benji wore a pained expression as he dragged his eyes away from Butter's half-finished plate of elk roast, mashed potatoes, and gravy, but he dutifully turned to follow his boss on out of the dining room. Longarm watched them go, then glanced at Butter's plate, twiddling his fork over his own plate, even more puzzled than he'd been a few minutes ago.

Who was “the Widow” and why was she calling Butter away from his supper to tend a child? Was it his own child? Roscoe looked too old to be raising babies.

And what was it that Butter didn't want Longarm possibly finding out from Benji?

Damn, Longarm thought, I'm pret' near gonna have to sit this whole town down and whip them to get any information out of them. But then he remembered his intention of paying a visit to the Reverend Todd's residence, and he resumed shoveling food into his mouth. A clock on the far well read seven-thirty. He didn't want to get over there too late, as the clergy were known for retiring early to say their prayers and read their Bibles.

Or, in this case, possibly to count their money . . . ?

Just as Longarm had scooped the last forkful of potatoes and meat into his mouth and was swabbing the remaining gravy from his plate with a biscuit, the birdlike proprietor strolled over to his table and picked up Marshal Butler's half-empty plate.

“The marshal was called away again?” she said in her leathery rasp.

“I reckon he was. That a habit of his?”

“Oh, I wouldn't know,” she said quickly.

The old woman, whom the serving girl had called Ma, set the marshal's beer schooner and whiskey glass atop the plate and began to turn away.

“Oh, I think you might, Mrs. . . .”

She turned back to the federal lawman, pinching her thin lips together beneath a very slight mustache, just visible in the shadows shunted by the room's oil lamps. “Marcus. Margaret Marcus, but most folks call me Ma on account o' I'm so old. Funny thing is I don't have any kids of my own.”

She started to walk away again, and Longarm quickly wiped his mouth with his napkin and held her back with “Ma, I sure wish you'd be a little more specific about your warning earlier.”

She stopped and glanced cautiously around the room. A few more people had come in and were eating and conversing, raising a low hum, but none appeared to have overheard what Longarm said. She turned back to him, her gaunt, powdery cheeks flushing slightly, blinking her eyes slowly, portentously. “I said all you need to hear, Marshal, and that advice stands. Would you like to pay for the meal now, or shall I add it to your bill?”

A quick glance toward Butter's side of the table told him the town marshal hadn't left any money for his own food. Had he been in too big of a hurry or was he just the cheap sort?

“Add it.” Longarm rose, donned his hat, and adjusted the gun on his hip as the old woman reached for his empty plate. “How 'bout if you point me in the direction of the Reverend Todd's residence? That wouldn't be too much information, would it?”

“Little red shack on Third Street, just south of Norvald's Six-Shooter Saloon,” she said, shuffling toward the kitchen's swinging door with the empty dishes. “Go with God, Marshal,” she added amusedly as she disappeared into the kitchen. Or, at least, that's what Longarm thought he'd heard her say beneath the clattering of pans in the kitchen and the hum of various conversations around him.

Again, he adjusted his pistol on his hip and glanced around him skeptically. Several pairs of eyes quickly turned away from him. Feeling that uneasy stirring of his short hairs again, he headed on out of the hotel and onto the broad front veranda, the cool evening air pushing against him and filling his nose with the smell of burning piñon pine and the cinnamon tang of mountain sage.

The town's few saloons were easily identified by the lights in their windows and the horses nosed up to their hitch racks. From one of them to Longarm's left emanated the muffled tinkling of a piano.

He'd seen the sign for Third Street earlier, so he looked around carefully, then stepped down off the veranda and began angling west across the main drag, before turning south on Third Street, which was the last of only three cross streets in the little town. It was eerily dark out here, the black shapes of both short and tall buildings and stables hulking around him.

The darkness was tempered by the crisp light of the stars and, as Longarm continued walking, the lamplight of a distant building on the street's right side. It was Norvald's Six-Shooter Saloon, which was a tiny, adobe brick place with a brush roof and crumbling veranda and only two saddle horses tied to the hitch rack.

Both horses regarded Longarm curiously, angling looks behind them, as he continued south to where the town began to play out. Before it did, a little red shack slumped at the lip of a deep ravine that curved in from the south and then ran west behind the little place, which wasn't much larger than the Six-Shooter but which had a small second story perched precariously atop the first one.

There was a picket fence around the front yard, but it was lacking a gate, as well as more than a few pickets. Longarm tramped up the worn path through spindly clumps of sage and buckbrush. A faint amber light burned in an upstairs window over the porch, and there was another, dimmer lamp lit in a large, first-story window to the left of the front door.

Longarm's boots squawked on the loose boards of the six-by-six-foot stoop, atop which stood a rusting corrugated tin washtub. An unseen cat gave an indignant meow, and Longarm heard the little, padded feet scampering off across the stoop and the light
thump
as the frightened beast leaped into the yard.

He drew open the screen door and was about to knock on the inside door when he heard the crunch of a weed and the ratcheting click of a gun hammer to the left. A snarling voice said, “Best say your prayers, you bastard, because you're about to be blown to
hell!
”

Chapter 9

Longarm slowly lowered his right hand as he turned his head to the left, where a figure stood in the yard aiming a pistol at him over the porch rail. Starlight shone in long, blond hair and on the gun's blue barrel.

“I haven't said a prayer in a month of Sundays,” he said. “Perhaps you could teach me one . . . uh . . . Miss Todd . . . ?”

The girl was mostly in silhouette, wearing some kind of bulky coat, but he could see her nostrils flaring as she spat out, “Who the
fuck
are you, and just what in the
fuck
do you think you're doing—skulking around out here in the middle of the night. Be quick about it. I just love the sound of a gun's roar!”

“Is this quick enough for you? I'm Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long out of Denver. So if you trigger that smoke wagon, you'll just be doin' it to hear it roar, but you'll be killing a federal lawman in the bargain. That's a hanging offense. And, pardon me, but did you say ‘fuck'?”

The girl didn't say anything.

She depressed the pistol's hammer with a click.

She giggled as she lowered the pistol, and starlight glimmered off her white teeth and her eyes as she smiled. “You won't tell anyone, will you, Marshal? I save the farm talk for men skulking around my house of a night when my pa, the good Reverend, isn't here.”

“They do that often, do they?”

“Often enough that I keep Pa's pistol loaded and on my night table with my Bible. Well, well, I've been expecting you.”

“You have?”

“Oh, yeah. Word travels fast in Nowhere.” She ducked under the railing and stepped up onto the porch. When she straightened, the coat she was wearing—an old, molting buffalo robe—flapped open slightly. Longarm caught a glimpse of creamy, jostling flesh. Lightning forked in his loins automatically.

But he couldn't have seen what he thought he'd seen. The preacher's daughter couldn't be naked beneath her robe. But then he hadn't expected a minister's daughter to curse like a muleskinner, either.

“Whoops!” She folded the robe closed across her breasts, and giggled once more. “Yes, I've been expecting you,” she said, sidling past him, opening the screen door and pushing through the inside one. Around her was the faint odor of liquor. “Come on in. If anyone slipped inside while I was prowling around looking for whoever knocked over a stack of wood behind the house, no doubt trying to get a look through my bedroom window, you can shoot them for me in the name of the law.”

“All right—I'll do that.”

He went in and closed the door behind him. The house was small but neat. A lamp burned on the wall that divided the small kitchen to the right from a living area to the left. Stairs rising to the second story split the house in two.

The living room was dominated by a large hearth in which the coals of a recent fire glowed umber. The sparse furnishings included a rocking chair near the fireplace, with a small table beside it, and a horsehide sofa against the wall to Longarm's left, facing the chair and the hearth. There were a few bookshelves and oval-framed daguerreotypes. The air smelled of old pipe tobacco and coffee, and another scent—light cherry perfume, talcum, and brandy—that grew stronger as the girl passed him and strode into the room. She turned up a small, green-shaded lamp on the table and then plopped casually down on the sofa, lounging on her side and drawing her bare knees up toward her belly. When the coat had slid open, he thought he'd been given—accidentally, of course—a brief glimpse of the darker triangular area between her thighs and beneath her belly button.

The light shone golden in her blond hair, which hung in a sexy tangle about her fair, plump cheeks and green eyes. Her small, pink feet were perfectly proportioned.

“Have a seat, Marshal.” Her voice was as light and sonorous as glass chimes.

Longarm doffed his hat and crossed the room to the rocking chair. “Miss Todd, I presume?”

“You presume correct, sir,” she said with a slightly jeering, teasing air. “Call me Beth.” She rolled her sparkling green eyes up and down his long, lean, broad-shouldered frame. “Damn, you're tall!”

“The farm talk again.”

She feigned a gasp and closed her hand over her mouth. “Oh, what the hell—you already heard me curse. Would you like a drink? Don't tell anyone, but I tend to tipple when Daddy's away, and he's away tonight. All night. Edna Thomas's funeral is tomorrow out at the Triple 8 Ranch, and he decided to travel as far as the Spring Creek Ranch to cut his travel tomorrow in half. I'm not allowed to have boys over—as if there were any boys around Nowhere I'd
deign
to have over—so you're technically not allowed to be here. But since you're a lawman and all, I'm probably safe. You reckon?”

Longarm let his gaze drift up from her bare feet to her knees. Then it scuttled up the robe to where it was open just enough across her chest to reveal the inside curves of her creamy breasts. He looked at her face. She blinked slowly, obviously knowing exactly what she was doing to him.

“You bet,” he said, easing down into the leather-padded rocking chair. “But I'll forgo the drink. I'm here about the saddlebags that Laughing Lyle May was toting when you and your father picked him up on the trail out yonder.”

She arched a brow and stuck the tip of her tongue between her pouting lips. “Would you like to search me?” She smiled and wagged a knee.

Longarm bit back a hunger pang. It wasn't a hunger for food, however. His throat was a little dry. He cleared it, and put some steel in his voice as he said, “Miss Todd, the money is nothing to fool about. It was stolen from a bank in Stoneville, Kansas. After Laughing Lyle's bunch stole it, they locked up the employees and patrons in the bank and burned it down. That money belongs to their families and to the town of Stoneville, and I aim to get it back to them.”

She sat up and dropped her feet to the floor. Her expression was suddenly serious, sad, and she didn't say anything for nearly half a minute before: “That's just awful.”

Her sudden change of demeanor caught Longarm off-guard. It seemed genuine. He said, “Yes, it is.”

“Well, I don't know anything about any saddlebags. Father and I only saw Laughing Lyle himself layin' there in the trail. His horse was nearby, grazing, but it was only wearing a bridle, saddle, and blanket. Lyle must have hid the bank money somewhere before he passed out.”

Longarm stared at her—just her eyes this time, though the robe was still partly open and her legs were still nearly bare, of course. Only a hardened outlaw could manufacture an expression as genuine and honest-looking as the one Miss Bethany Todd was wearing right now.

Longarm sighed.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I do hope you find the money, Marshal Long.”

She rolled her eyes toward the neatly but sparsely outfitted kitchen, dominated by a black range and a square table covered with a green gingham oilcloth. There weren't many dishes on the shelves. The only wall hanging was an oil painting of Christ praying at a small, rough-hewn table. “Before my intruder disturbed me, I was enjoying a bottle of brandy. If you promise not tell anyone of my vices”—she mashed one of her sexy little feet down atop the other and let the robe fall open a little farther—“I'll share some with you.”

Longarm felt his throat swell. The lamplight shone on her beautifully, highlighting every other strand in her blond hair, flashing in her green eyes that appeared speckled with copper. Her face was heart-shaped, with a slender nose and rich, red lips. Her chin jutted just far enough, and there was a dimple in it, with a very small mole beside it and a quarter inch below.

Longarm let his eyes travel down the robe once more, and swallowed. It was an almost painful maneuver because of that hard cork in his throat. “Miss Todd, I believe I'd best leave now.”

She smiled knowingly, her eyes glinting jeeringly again. “All right. Go, then.” It was like a challenge.

Longarm sat like a dead, throbbing weight in the chair that he supposed was mostly used by the girl's father. He stared at her, trying to press his hands down on the chair's worn arms and hoist himself to his feet.

But he couldn't do it.

“You must get lonely here in Nowhere, Miss Bethany.”

“Don't I know!”

“You must have plenty of suitors.”

“There aren't many young men my age around. Oh, a few from the ranches come in with a spray of wildflowers from time to time, but it's hard to enjoy a man's company when everyone, including my own father, keeps such a sharp on eye me. I've never gotten that interested in any one man to invite him over, like you're here with me now.”

She blinked slowly, her twinkling jade gaze riveted on Longarm. She touched her tongue lightly to her upper lip before adding, “Alone.”

Longarm watched her bosoms rise and fall slowly behind the robe that now fully exposed her cleavage and almost the entire right breast except the nipple.

“You can't tell me you haven't . . .”

“Of course I have. A few times. But never to my satisfaction. Sometimes I find myself alone upstairs, just me and my brandy, and I start thinkin' about what it would be like with a real man . . . a large man with experience . . . one who knew his way around a girl's body . . .”

Color rose in her cheeks. She lifted her chin and drew a deep, calming breath, letting her gaze flick down lower on Longarm's big frame. “. . . and I just get so damn horny I feel like I could go out and fuck one of the stallions in Humperdink's back paddock.”

Longarm felt as though forked lightning had struck deep in his loins. He repressed a shudder. She smiled, knowing exactly the effect she was having. She wet her lips with her tongue and said very quietly, “Are you sure you wouldn't reconsider having a drink with me?”

“Why not?” he managed to rake out. Even to his own ears, it sounded like someone else locked in the kitchen's tiny pantry.

“I left the bottle upstairs in my room. Warmer up there; I have a fire burning.” Bethany rose from the sofa and strode gracefully toward the stairs, tossing her hair down one shoulder and giving him a devilishly coquettish look, her eyes flicking over his groin. “If you think you can manage it, I'll meet you up there.”

Longarm watched her disappear up the stairs. The girl was right. His pants were getting tight across the crotch, so he had to sort of turn to one side before hoisting himself out of the chair. He adjusted the twill, trying to drag some slack up from his thighs, then tossed his hat down on the sofa and climbed the short, steep stairs.

He turned at the top. There were two doors, a stretch of pine-paneled wall between them, on which a single wooden crucifix hung. The door on the right was open. Longarm walked to it and stopped in the doorway.

Bethany stood in front of the small bed in the room, which wasn't much larger than a sleeping compartment in a Pullman car. She faced him, the buffalo robe now hanging open. The girl lifted her shoulders, shook her creamy, pale body, and the coat dropped to the floor with a quiet, breathy
whump.

Her body was delectable, arms and legs slender, belly slightly rounded like her thighs, full breasts standing up proudly on her chest, pink nipples pebbled. The light from a nearby coal brazier flickered like liquid bronze across her from the side, raking her and the wall on the opposite of her with curving shadows.

“You like what you see, Marshal?”

“What's not to like?” Longarm shrugged out of his frock coat and kicked out of his boots, keeping his eyes on the delightful, blond-headed vixen with green, glowing eyes before him. Along with the smell of the coal smoke, he could smell the musky need of her. It seemed to radiate from her breasts and the thatch of glistening blond hair beneath her belly.

When he was naked, he walked to her. Her eyes widened, gained an almost apprehensive cast as she stared at the piston-hard shaft jutting at a forty-five degree angle above his belly, the mushroom head swollen and nodding.

“Oh, my . . . God!” she whispered, dropping to her knees as though in worship before him.

She stared at the raging hard-on, the light of the fire flickering in her wide eyes. Slowly, she raised her arms and wrapped her hands around him, then slid her head forward, stuck out her tongue, and touched it to the base of his organ. Even more slowly, she ran her tongue up the underside of his shaft to its head, which she kissed passionately, giving a little cry from down deep in her throat.

Holding the shaft in her hands, she looked up past it into his eyes. “Oh . . .
my 
. . . !”

“Call me Longarm.”

She rose, pressed her hands against his broad chest, and ran them in a swirling motion down across his belly. Longarm drew her to him and kissed her.

They kissed for a long time, and he savored the sweetness of her little wet tongue flicking against his own teasingly, further stirring the fires inside him. He massaged her firm breasts, feeling the pebbled cherry nipples raking his palms. As he did, she rubbed her snatch against his cock, squirming and groaning.

Finally, she pulled away from him, turned, and dropped to her hands and knees on the bed. She slung her hair back across her neck and looked over her shoulder at him, sticking her naked ass toward him with the little furry pouch showing beneath it, glistening in the light from the brazier, waiting . . .

He walked over to her, grabbed her hips, and slid his cock slowly, gently inside her. Twenty minutes later, cupping her breasts in his hands as he hammered his hips against her ass, he gnashed his teeth against her high-pitched, keening cry of ecstasy.