by Tabor Evans
He considered her words before he soberly replied, "Unless you mean that sort of naughty, this is pushing past flirty into cruelty to animals, Miss Godiva."
She answered simply, "I'm never cruel to animals I'm fond of, Custis. What's the matter? I know I'm almost thirty, and I told you how that mean thing broke off our engagement. But he said it was because I wouldn't quit my job at the Sentinel, not because he found me disgusting in bed!"
So Longarm had to prove he didn't find her disgusting by kicking off his boots and jeans, moving her thin cotton frock up above her trim waist, and just rolling his own naked body between her welcoming thighs.
He didn't ask her how come she'd removed all her underthings to crawl into a male traveling companion's bedding. But she confessed she'd been gushing for him since before sundown as she finished the chore of shucking her frock over her head while he proceeded to put it to her.
It was a good thing she was as wet as she'd said inside. For she was tight as a girl in her teens despite her mature curves, and when Longarm tried to hold most of his weight off her, in consideration of the packed earth under her friendly tailbone, Godiva bounced her soft rump even friendlier and told him not to hold back, but to crush her, crush her, crush her. Gals who read a lot tended to talk like that when they were screwing.
After she'd been crushed enough to come more than once, Godiva wanted to get on top. So he let her, and didn't object when such a frisky little thing said it was awfully stuffy under all that vulcanized canvas and threw the poncho down to straddle him bare-ass in the gentle rain. For it felt swell to lie there, kissing both her cool nipples in turn as the rain ran off them while, below the waist, the two of them felt warm and wet as hasty pudding.
By the time Godiva bounced herself to climax and collapsed atop him, her bare back had gooseflesh and he had to roll her over on her back, haul up the covers, and warm her up some more. Then he rummaged around near the bottom of the bedroll till he found a dry feed-sack he'd packed away as a towel, hardly expecting to use it for such delightful drying.
He figured they'd just doze and cuddle with the rain gently tapping on their vulcanized cover. But Godiva seemed to be crying as she rested her damp head on his bare shoulder.
Longarm didn't ask why. No man who'd slept with more than one woman in his life would be dumb enough to do that. So just as he expected, Godiva finally volunteered that she just didn't understand what had just gotten into her.
He said, "Aw, come on, I ain't built that unusual, honey."
She giggled through her tears and replied, "Yes, you are. But I've no complaints about that. I'm just so ashamed of practically begging for it. Whatever must you think of me, Custis?"
He patted her bare shoulder and said, "That you wanted some almost as badly as I did? What just happened was natural as falling off a bronco. I'd be more concerned for the both of us if we'd just fallen asleep like babes in the wood, assuming said babes were way the hell younger than either of us."
She sighed and said, "It's true I'm a more experienced woman than I like to admit. I guess you could tell there's been more than one man in my unusual life."
He said, "Why, no, I figured you learned to screw so fine from reading romantic books. Have you read that new novel by Mister Zola about that frisky French gal Nana? I'll bet you hundreds of young gals are trying out those wild positions Nana and her frisky female roommate got into in that one chapter right this very minute!"
He chuckled and added, "Gives a man a hard-on just to picture those two pretty frustrated things trying to screw one another without a pecker to their name!"
Godiva reached down between them to gently take the matter in hand as she sniffed and said, "At least we don't have that problem. I'm not sure I want to be compared to Emile Zola's fallen women of the Paris underworld."
As she started to jack it up for him, she added, "I'll have you know I don't do this with every man I meet!"
"Nor I with every gal," Longarm primly replied as he found himself rising to the occasion. Then he moved his own free hand down her smooth belly to part her damp pubic hair with skilled fingers as he murmured in a more serious tone, "Don't give away all the magic by telling me all your secrets. You don't really want to know who taught me to strum your old banjo like this, do you?"
She sobbed, "Jesus, that feels good! Just keep that up until I'm almost there, and finish me off with this lovely thing I have in my own hand! I promise, I won't say a word about anyone else!"
CHAPTER 9
So a good time was had by the both of them, all the way up to Fort Sill. A good time at night anyway. Days on the trail with a herd of cows could get tedious.
It could have been worse. The Running X had contracted to be paid by the head, half in advance and half on delivery. So Harry Carver was only worried about getting them up the trail alive. With Quill Indians still skulking out yonder, for all they knew, that made for a faster pace than most market herds were driven. But less than a dozen drovers could only get cows to move so fast, and so the one day's hard ride on horseback stretched out to almost another seventy-two hours on the trail, meaning two more nights bedded down to one side after dark. Godiva could really get acrobatic on a clear cool prairie night with no covers in the way and nobody but Longarm to watch her wriggle and jiggle.
He wriggled and jiggled a heap himself, of course, but by the third night he was tempted to ask her to quit showing off and just enjoy it with him. For, not unlike that Nana gal in Mister Zola's sassy novel, she seemed to be working harder to pleasure him than to please herself, and while he was getting it all free and had no call to compare her with the hookers in that book, he recalled with some discomfort how they only relaxed and let themselves go all the way with old pals they felt more comfortable with.
He tried to make her feel more comfortable with him. During the sunlit hours on the trail he let her ride along beside him as he rode flank for old Harry Carver, and despite riding sidesaddle, the newspaper gal and erstwhile army brat got to where she could head off a straying yearling pretty fairly. When complimented, she sniffed and said it was no great wonder they called gents who did this as a full-time occupation cowboys. Longarm was too polite to start a stampede and show her how a top hand was occasionally called upon to earn his forty a month and beans.
It was after dark, with her duds off, when Godiva reverted from high-toned Eastern gal to dirty past the line of duty. Longarm had to draw the line their last night on the trail together when she sucked it hard again for him.
He demurred, "We're bedded down on a grassy rise with that water down in the creek too crowded for a midnight dip, honey."
She insisted, "I don't care. I've never had anyone built like you in me before, and I want to say you came again and again."
She said, "Let me get on my hands and knees, like a puppy dog, while you ravage me!"
So he did.
But when they finally rode into Fort Sill late the next day, he could sense a certain coolness in her manner, even before she broke free of the outfit to gallop on alone toward the cluster of frame barracks and outbuildings clustered around a flagstaff in the distance.
Longarm didn't chase after her. Aside from knowing how dumb a man looked chasing skirts at full gallop, he knew Harry Carver and his Running X riders could use all the help they could get right now. For like cowboys, although for different reasons, cows tended to get excited in the vicinity of any settlement. So you had to work harder to keep a herd together as you drove them on in.
But just as the cows were really commencing to act up, as was only to be expected, a dozen-odd riders came down the trail to head them off. As they rode closer, most of 'em seemed to be Indians or breeds, dressed like fringy cowhands. But their straw boss was a white civilian working for the B.I.A.
As he reined in by Harry Carver he explained they weren't supposed to drive the fool herd into the Fort Sill Parade, but downwind, to some corrals Chief Quanah had just flung up for the stock.
When Harry p
ointed out how he understood the beef to be meant for Kiowa consumption as well, the B.I.A. rider nodded but said, "It sure is. But try getting a damned Kiowa to feed himself like any grown child. Chief Quanah has his Comanche meeting us halfway. He ain't but half Indian, you know. His momma was a white gal, carried off and raped by hostiles whilst on her way to California with a wagon train."
This was not true. But Longarm only cut in to introduce himself and ask where Chief Quanah might be at the moment.
When the B.I.A. man suggested Quanah Parker might be visiting with his white uncle, Judge Isaac Parker, at Fort Smith, over beyond the Cherokee Nation, Longarm knew he didn't know. As any lawman had to keep in mind, witnesses who didn't know all the facts tended to fill in the blanks with guesswork.
Instead of saying this to a man who worked at Quanah Parker's own agency, Longarm asked the way to that agency. The B.I.A. man explained their main base was up in Anadarko, with a liaison post at Fort Sill and then substations further out in all directions on the sprawling Kiowa Comanche Reserve. So Longarm allowed he'd start at the fort, seeing how the army would want a report on that shootout in any case.
He shook hands with Harry Carver, rode back to pick up his hired paint and packsaddle, and rode on as the Running X riders drifted the herd around to where they wanted it.
Like Fort Cobb to the northwest or Fort Reno due north, Fort Sill had been built more as a small town for lots of soldiers than what Eastern folks pictured when they thought of a frontier outpost. Laid out in haste to enforce the treaty of Medicine Lodge with field artillery and the Tenth (Colored) Cavalry, Fort Sill had been neatly built on a dead-flat stretch of prairie where the grass grew stirrup-deep as well as emerald green well into summer.
This, as any plainsman, red or white, could have told you, was because the big grassy flat was a seasonal marsh, with the parade a boot sucking quagmire in wet weather.
A rare engineering officer of color, with the unlikely name of Henry Flipper, Second Lieutenant, U.S.A. Army, had salvaged the impractical site with ingenious drainage works, including the famous channel now called "Flipper's Impossible Ditch" because an optical illusion made it seem as if water was running uphill after a heavy rain.
These moat-like ditches, along with enough fencing to keep man or beast from falling in, made up such perimeter defenses as they thought such a big garrison, backed by cannon and Gatling guns, was likely to need against sane Indians. Most of the really crazy Kiowa and Comanche had gone under in that last big buffalo war.
Longarm rode through the official "Hog Farms," the tolerated shantytown you usually found outside such an outpost's gates. A sleepy white trooper posted by the gate to give directions, it being an open post, waved Longarm on to the nearby guardhouse, where he could report in to the Officer of the Day. The cheerful young O.D. said the Tenth Cav had just left for the border to stalk Apache, and that neither he nor any of the other recent replacements from the East had heard a thing about Longarm's mission. He had a clerk take down Longarm's account of that brush with apparent hostiles and said that they'd file it, but that he suspected some young bucks had just been drinking.
The O.D. said they'd take care of Longarm's riding stock, and ordered one of his enlisted men to show their guest to the hostel set up for such surprises. It was across the dusty parade, between the sutler's store and officers' mess. The enlisted clerk inside showed Longarm to a tidy spartan room, handed him the key, and said they were already serving supper. So Longarm tossed his saddlebags and rifle on the bed, dug out his razor and a cake of naptha soap, and then got to work at civilizing himself.
It wasn't true they had running water in every guest room, but they did have indoor plumbing, with separate facilities for ladies and gents, out in the hall. So Longarm treated himself to a warm tub bath and shaved his jaws cleaner than he'd been able to manage along the trail, even in mixed company. Then he put on a fresh shirt and that somewhat rumpled but far more prissy tweed suit, with a shoestring tie. He had to tell the desk clerk who he was when next he appeared in the lobby.
They had no hotel dining room because civilian guests were such rare events. The clerk explained tidy white civilians got to grub at the officers' mess next door, and that he'd best get cracking if he expected his mashed potatoes warm.
He thanked the enlisted man for the suggestion and got right over to the officers' mess. An orderly by the door took his name down, and said the meal would cost him eighteen cents.
Longarm paid without arguing. He knew that despite the way some raw recruits bitched about rank and privilege in the army of a fool republic, the officers paid for their finer food and fancier beer all out of their own pockets. So eighteen cents was a bargain for the fine steak, mashed spuds, chokecherry pie, and extra coffee he wound up with.
He asked an orderly how come he seemed to be eating alone at such an early hour. He was told everyone had headed up the line to the officers' club, another proposition entirely.
Every officer arriving on a post was assigned to a place in the officers' mess and had his meals docked from his pay. But their club amounted to a private lodge. There was a noncommissioned officers' club on most big posts as well. Nobody had to join up and pay dues at either, if he didn't give a shit about promotion in this man's army. Lower-ranking enlisted men and thrifty sergeants got to drink non-alcohol beer or soft cider at the sutler's store. Commissioned officers got hell or worse for hanging out there with their troopers.
Longarm glanced into the sutler's as he passed the saloon-like swinging doors. He spotted some visitors dressed cowboy or Indian at the tables inside. But none of the Rocking X riders had made it in from wherever they'd gone with those cows.
Longarm found the officers' club at the far end of the line, set on a corner angle to catch such summer breezes from the south as the fickle weather out this way allowed. As he mounted the steps to the wrap-around veranda he heard music. It sounded like a banjo, fiddle, and pennywhistle doing an Irish jig through Georgia. But when he got inside, the big dance floor was bare. The Irish-sounding trio in U.S. Army blue was jigging away in a far corner. Officers in dress blues and ladies in frilly summer dresses were seated at tables along the walls or clustered around the punch bowl and toy sandwich tray on a trestle table closer to the front. Longarm caught a couple of haughty looks as he handed his hat to a trooper by the door and approached the refreshment stand. Some of the gals looked surprised to see him too. But none of them managed to stare as snottily as your average second lieutenant. The army of a democratic republic made up for its low pay and slow promotions by allowing its officers to act like little tin gods, fooling with one another's goddesses as often as possible. Before any shavetail could ask him who he thought he was, Longarm spotted Godiva Weaver holding court at another table in the company of a saturnine civilian in a fringed white elkskin jacket, a florid gray-haired officer with the silver eagles of a bird colonel on his epaulets, and a once-pretty redhead who'd gone to fat and didn't seem too happy about the attention the younger beauty seemed to accept as her due. Godiva didn't greet Longarm as if he was the lover she'd begged to corn-hole her the other night. But she looked as if butter wouldn't have melted in her mouth as she introduced Longarm all around. The lean civilian was a liaison man from the main B.I.A. agency a day's ride to the north. His name was Fred Ryan. The colonel and his lady were the Howards of Ohio. Longarm was too polite to ask what had become of Colonel Ranald Mackenzie, who'd won the buffalo war, or Brigadier Ben Grierson, who'd accepted the Indians' surrender here at Fort Sill and had to feed them. Colonel Howard pointed to the one empty chair at the table and told Longarm to sit a spell, adding, "We're waiting for the cool shades of evening before we risk any polkas in wool pants. Miss Weaver here just told us about you nailing those Kiowa down near the Red River."
The B.I.A. man said, "I'm not surprised this is the first we've heard of it. Had they lifted your hair, they'd have never been able to keep from bragging about it, and we do have some few informants among b
oth nations. I reckon the inspired leader who led them into such a dumb fix doesn't want to talk about his spirit dreams now." Longarm said, "I reckon not. I understand the Comanche beat that old medicine man with whips after Adobe Walls, and would have killed him if Quanah hadn't stopped them. The medicine man's vision had assured him that nobody in that big party of professional hunters could hit the broad side of a barn with a Big Fifty scope-sighted out to a mile. Might you know a Comanche police sergeant called Tuka Wa Pombi, by the way?"
Fred Ryan frowned thoughtfully and replied, "Can't say I do. The breed who keeps the roll for Quanah's new police force over at their sub-agency would be the one for you to talk to.
When Longarm asked where he might find Chief Quanah himself, he lost a bit of respect for those fancy fringes and Comanche beadwork, even though it was Godiva who gushed, "You were right about Chief Quanah touring the other agencies to see how the more established tribal governments work, Custis. Mister Ryan here thinks the best place to head him off would be Fort Smith, just the other side of the Cherokee Nation. He has a great-uncle holding court there."
Longarm cocked a brow at Ryan and demanded, "Quanah Parker has a great-uncle working at the Fort Smith federal courthouse?"
Ryan nodded confidently and asked, "Who did you think old Judge Isaac Parker was, his great-aunt? It's a well-known fact that after the Texas Rangers rescued Quanah's white mother from the Indians, her uncle, Isaac Parker of Texas, took her in despite her shame."
Longarm laughed incredulously and said, "I've seen that in print too. But it's a fine example of what we in the outlaw-hunting profession call leaping to conclusions from disconnected evidence. I can't say whether Cynthia Ann Parker had an uncle named Isaac or not. But Judge Isaac Parker of the Fort Smith federal court is only in his early forties as we speak, and comes from Missouri, not Texas. So it don't add up as soon as you put all the figures down."
He resisted the impulse to reach for a smoke in the already damp and stuffy surroundings as he added, "I ain't as certain as the Texas Rangers that they rescued anybody, speaking of leaping to conclusions. Would anyone here care for a glass of punch? I don't know about you all, but them cool shades of evening had better get cracking."