by Tabor Evans
He brought up a bottle of thick brown glass and quietly began to fill three shot glasses as he grumbled on. "I've seen dumb bragging matches shift from bluff to bloodshed in the wink of an eye, and a couple of times stray rounds came perilously close to these tired old eyes. The last time Quirt got into one of his swaggering snits, I thought we were going to have us a dead breed and a couple of hung darkies on this post. It was all I could do to talk a couple of Tenth Cav into overlooking the babbling of a bratty kid. Fortunately, they liked grown-up liquor too."
Longarm gingerly tasted the amber liquor he'd been offered and had no doubt in his mind as he gravely pronounced, "Maryland rye. The real stuff. No moonshiner born of mortal woman ever sold you anything as fine as this, Ed."
The sutler smiled innocently and replied, "I never said any such cuss ever did. Do I look like the sort of fool who'd serve moonshine on a military reservation to a federal lawman? You'll note I've only served you gents, from my own private stock. I'd have to call any man who said I'd sold him hard liquor a liar."
Harry Carver looked puzzled and allowed he failed to see all that much difference, since Miss Lemonade Lucy had declared Fort Sill a dry post.
It was Longarm who explained. "She did and it is. The administrative order signed by her husband forbids the trafficking in or possession of strong drink by the surrounding Indians or the troops posted here to make 'em behave. Neither commissioned officers nor us way less disciplined civilians are required by federal law to follow the stern Articles of War nor tedious Army Rules and Regulations to the letter."
One of the closer cavalry troopers, possessed of a keen nose, got up to drift over, grinning, as he quietly asked, "Do I smell the aroma of rye whiskey coming from this corner, Mr. vernon?"
The bottle had already vanished. But Ed Vernon made no attempt to hide or polish off his own glass as he gravely replied, "If you did it was your misfortune and none of our own, Trooper Baily. We can serve you our beer or we can serve you soft cider. It was your own grand notion to sign up for a hitch, not mine.
The cavalryman told Vernon to do something that didn't even sound like fun, and went back to hear some more mouth-organ music. Ed Vernon chuckled and said, "It's the few native-born Americans we have the most trouble with. Most of the new recruits are German or Irish greenhorns who never read the U.S. Constitution or heard that a trail hand starting out can make twice as much as any soldier blue and drink like a grown man whilst he's at it."
Longarm didn't care. He told the sutler in a friendly but firm way, "I'm paid to ask questions, and so I'm asking you politely where you get this rye whiskey and how much you keep on hand here."
Vernon smiled easily and replied, "I have no secrets from my dear old Uncle Sam. I just told you I ain't been selling, and I only keep enough for my ownself and my pals. As to where it comes from, I send back East for it and have my hired help pick it up with other wares at the railroad freight dock at Atoka, about a hundred and sixty miles to the east and about as close as the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Line ever gets to this dusty swamp."
Longarm half closed his eyes to draw maps in his mind as he sipped the fine whiskey. He had no call to ask why Vernon sent away for such private stock. He nodded thoughtfully and said, "That railroad stop at Atoka would be in Chocktaw country on the far side of the Chickasaw reserve. What happens when your whiskey comes to a reservation line?"
Vernon looked blank, then replied, "It crosses it. Ain't no exact lines drawn across the buffalo grass betwixt here and Atoka. You just ride or drive 'till you're on or off any fool reserve. How come you ask? Ain't no way to get lost on an established wagon trace."
Longarm waved his empty shot glass at the trail boss beside him as he explained. "Harry and his cows got stopped by your Indian Police at the reservation line to the south the other day. They said they'd been told to collect a toll on such wealth on the hoof. Yet you say a man can drive in from the east with a wagon-load of valuables and those blue shirt riders don't say boo?"
Vernon shrugged and replied in an easy tone, "You have to meet up with riders before you can say what they might have to say. I can't recall me or my boys meeting up with any of them Indian Police on the trail save to say howdy. They ain't allowed to pester white folks."
Longarm knew that, strictly speaking, this was not true. But he didn't want to get into the complicated federal regulations giving the Indian Police limited authority on their own range. So as he stood there thinking hard, Ed Vernon got out that bottle some more to pour three more drinks as he said a mite uncertainly, "Quanah Parker has never tried to impose no import duty on the goods I sell to his own as well as these troops--at a fair price and modest profit. If ever a fool Indian did try to shake me down extra for the fees I already pay the government for my sutler's license, this child and all his goodies for sale would be long gone!"
Longarm said, "I'm sure the Army and the Indians already know that, Ed."
Vernon said, "I can tell you there's no Comanche police patrols along the western reservation line. That's Kiowa country, and not even Quanah can make Kiowa toe the line. They say it all goes back to when some Kiowa followed a younger and wilder Quanah up to Adobe Walls, along with some Arapaho and South Cheyenne. They say the experience made a Christian out of Quanah and disillusioned the Kiowa considerable. As the leader of the largest contingent, Quanah got to lay out the plan of attack, with the help of his private medicine man. But to make up for that he let the Kiowa under White Bear and Lone Wolf lead the charge, anxious to count COUP."
Longarm cut in. "We all know what happens when seven hundred riders charge across wide-open short grass dotted with prairie-dog holes at professional riflemen with telescope sights. If we could move it on up to the here and now, you're saying those police patrols are a sometime thing, with at least the one we rode into way closer to an open shakedown than I'd allow if I was running things."
Harry Carver shrugged and pointed out, "You told me when we first met that they'd sent you to straighten out an Indian police force. I don't see what's so mysterious about 'em needing guidance, old son."
Longarm grimaced and put a hand over his empty shot glass to decline a third shot as he said, "I'd best ask them about that in the morning then. Maybe they know something about those wild and woolly Kiowa we brushed with as well. Mean while, I reckon I'd best just sleep on it. So I'm callin' it a night if it's all the same with you gents."
Vernon simply bade him good night. But Harry Carver followed him out on the plank walk to say, "Me and my boys will be riding back to Texas tomorrow. So it's been nice meeting up with you if we don't meet for breakfast. What are you aiming to do about that kid who says he has it in for you, pard?"
Longarm said, "Nothing, the same as he figures to do about me for all his war talk. I must have missed a recent dime novel by Ned Buntline. For I met up with another such asshole in Amarillo not too many nights ago."
The grizzled train boss spat out into the darkness and opined, "There seems to be a lot of that going around since the papers first began to rank gunfighters as if they were competing athletes. Is it supposed to score higher if you beat a lawman to the draw instead of just another mean drunk?"
Longarm smiled thinly and replied, "War talk about a sober paid-up lawman is not only impressive but safer than, say, starting up with a morose cuss such as Clay Allison or Johnny Ringo. Either one would be delighted to blow you away and claim self-defense. But pests I keep bumping into seem to have boned up on what that High Dutch philosopher Nietzsche describes as the tyranny of the weak. That's the way women, servants, and hard-cases with a yellow streak get to sound off against gents they don't really want a fair fight with. A snotty schoolboy's safer sticking his tongue out at the teacher than the schoolyard bully. An armed and dangerous drunk in Dodge is safer challenging a sober lawman than another mean drunk. Neither that kid acting big in Amarillo a few nights ago nor this Quirt McQueen here on a dry army post really expected a grown man to slap leather on 'em just for actin
g like fool kids!"
Harry Carver thought, shrugged, and decided, "You must be right. I'd doubtless pistol-whup either one of the little shits if they was to talk like that about me!"
Longarm didn't want to go into all the bother it was after you got into a gunfight and won. He yawned on purpose and allowed he had to get a few winks before he rode over to the main Comanche agency in the morning. So they shook on it and parted friendly.
Longarm strode into the guest hostel to find nobody at the key desk. He didn't care whether the orderly had ducked out to take a crap or lit out for the night. He had his own key in a side pocket of his frock coat. So he just went on up to the top floor.
He found the hall dark, with the wall lamps trimmed or never lit that evening. As he groped his way along the doorways in the gloom, he decided someone had deliberately doused the lights. For someone was sure carrying on behind more than one door, and the place had been nearly empty when he'd arrived around sundown. He was paid to be nosey and would have been curious in any case. So he prowled about before he made for his own door. Moving quietly and listening sharp, he could tell almost every guest room seemed to be occupied, if not by a sudden influx of guests, then by couples who'd beaten him down here from that officers' club dance. He heard what sounded like male and female gaspings, male and male gaspings, and at least one set of female and female gaspings. It was small wonder someone had paid that desk clerk, or simply ordered him, to take the rest of the evening off!
When he got to his own room, he felt annoyed at himself for having taken that desk clerk for granted. Longarm had long made a habit, in strange hotels, of rigging a match stem in the crack of a locked door to warn him if it had been unlocked in his absence. But earlier that evening, anxious to make it to supper and unaware of that war talk about him on a damned old army post, for Pete's sake, Longarm had simply locked up and gone on about his business.
There was nothing he could do now but draw his.44-40 before, feeling like an old maid peering under her fool bed, he unlocked the damned door with his free hand and stepped into the darkness to slide swiftly along the wall as he kicked the door shut after himself.
He'd have shot the figure reclining across the room for sure if she hadn't giggled girlishly and whispered, "Where on earth have you been all this time? I was about to start without you, you slowpoke!"
Longarm laughed weakly with relief and whispered back, "Don't ever scare me like that again, honey. I figured you were gone and lost forever, like My Darling Clementine."
She started to ask who Clementine was, then giggled some more as she heard the distinctive sounds of a man undressing in the dark as fast as he knew how. As he hung his six-gun handy near the head of the bed, she started to explain why she was there instead of in her own quarters. But Longarm hushed her with, "Don't spoil the magic by excusing the feelings of a healthy young gal. I'll allow I felt a mite confused up the line at the dance tonight. But if you don't confuse me no more right now, we'll worry about the cold gray dawn when it gets here, agreed?"
She whispered, "Ooh, I was hoping you'd see it my way, you animal!"
So Longarm got rid of the last of his duds, and slid under the bed covers to find she was stark naked as well. He threw the fool covers down, lest they overheat, as he took her smooth nude body in his arms and hugged her tight for a welcome-home kiss.
Then, even though he went on kissing her, being only human, Longarm stiffened in surprise as it came to him that, whoever she might be, she couldn't be Godiva Weaver of the New England Sentinel!
The only other obvious suspect didn't work either. For the naked gal in his arms was neither as willowy as Godiva nor as short and plump as the colonel's lady. She was a gal of average height with a firm but junoesque figure. One suspected she hourglassed even better with a corset on. From the way she grabbed for his old organ-grinder with a skilled and friendly touch, one doubted she could have been one of the younger wallflowers looking so neglected at the dance earlier. That meant, no matter how you sliced it, he was in bed with some officer's lady and already stiff as a damned poker, with her cocking one long leg across him and crooning, "Ooh, is all this I have in my hand for little old me?"
It sure seemed to be as Longarm, seeing he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't, allowed her to impale her warm wet self on his raging erection, moaning, "Oh, yesss! You're everything they said you were and, praise the Lord, I knew I'd get to do it at least once with a real man before I died."
There was only one way a gent could respond to such a flattering lady. But when he rolled her on her back and spread her long legs with an elbow hooked under either of her knees, she sobbed, "Oh, not too deep! Give a girl a chance to get used to all this! I've only been married to a mortal human long enough to sense I was missing something, and to be frank, the few times I've done this with someone else, I've been bitterly disappointed!"
Longarm had to move faster in her to keep from going soft as he growled, "I thought I asked you not to spoil the magic. I don't want to share this moment with other men. But since you brought it up, I can't help feeling curious about this they you were jawing with about my physical endowments. I don't recall disclosing them to any of you Fort Sill ladies."
She wrapped her long legs around his waist and purred, "That's where you're wrong, you naughty tomcat. When Elvira Howard came in to tell us you'd broken up with that newspaper woman, a certain member of our little group who used to be somebody else in Denver volunteered how sweet you were when she told you she'd gotten the chance to marry a certain cavalry john."
Longarm thought back and silently nodded as that meshed with what had once been a henna-rinsed barmaid who'd doubtless changed some in the past few summers. Since this one dismissed a lieutenant as a john, it was safe to assume her man was at least a captain.
That was all he needed, after being sent all this way to avoid a showdown with a coal miner over a wife he'd never trifled with. He told himself this was as far as he wanted to go with any fool captain's wife, but then they were coming and, try as one might, it was tough to keep from saying stupid things and making empty promises while you pounded the rolicking rump of the most beautiful gal in the universe against the rosy clouds of heaven with a host of angels singing dirty to the both of you. He realized he'd been humming in time with their humping when she began to croon in his ear, to the same frisky tune:
Oh, some folk'l say he is a knave, Some folk say he can't behave, He screwed a virgin to her grave, With that old organ-grinder!
Then she pleaded for him to screw her to death because she was coming some more, and so he did his best until, as all good things must, it ended for now in a great gasping shudder of painful pleasure and they just floated down from the stars like thistledown, too satisfied to say anything until, still soaking in her, he asked her if she smoked.
She murmured, "I dip snuff too. But I don't want you to strike a match, darling. I've been thinking about what you said about magic."
He kissed her soft throat and gently protested, "That's not fair. You tracked me down to commit premeditated fornication knowing all my secrets, and I don't know your name or even what you look like!"
She kissed him back and moved her hips languidly as she murmured, "Just think of me as your fairy godmother, you good little boy. I'm not sure I'm ready to tell you who I really used to be. I'm afraid you may have just turned me into somebody else."
He said he didn't follow her drift.
She hugged him tighter with her crossed legs and softly told him she wasn't certain what she meant either. Then, before he could ask or she could explain further, some other gal was screaming fit to bust and all hell seemed to be busting loose out in the hall!
Longarm rolled from between her bare legs to land on his bare feet between the bedstead and one window. As he peered out into a mess of swirling gloom his mysterious visitor hissed, "Come back here and don't get into it! It sounds as if they're fighting over some other army wife, and it's not as if anyone will be look
ing for this one, darling!"
But Longarm was already hauling on his pants as he told her, "I wouldn't bet any eating money on that. I'm a peace officer, and at least a dozen others are disturbing the peace considerably right outside that hardwood door!"
As if to prove his point, something at least as large and solid as a human head thunked against the far side of the door, followed by an anguished moan of, "Take it easy, for Gawd's sake! You know I can't hit back, you crazy old goat! And I haven't done a thing a lot of your other junior officers haven't done, damn it!"
Then the brawl rolled down the hall in a series of loud thuds as Longarm shucked into his shirt, pinned his badge to the front of it, and strapped on his six-gun, muttering, "Bolt the door after me and don't open up to another soul, hear?"
She started to protest as, somewhere in the night, a voice rang out, "Corporal of the Guard! Post Number Nine and all is not well by a long shot!"
Knowing the military police were surely on the way, the half-dressed federal deputy stepped out in the hall to spy other guests gaping at nothing much. The action had apparently spilled down the stairs while he was getting up.
He moved down the stairs in his bare feet, his.44-40 undrawn on his left hip as he eased in on all those loud voices ahead. A voice of authority had just assured one and all that it was in full charge. But a sardonic Irish brogue replied, "Faith, and begging the major's pardon, me darling, general orders say that after Guard Mount and until I've been relieved as Corporal of the Guard, I'm to be after taking orders from the Sergeant of the Guard, the Officer of the Day, and nobody else, with the possible exception of the Regimental C.O. I forgot to ask about that. But sure and since you can't be any of the officers just described, I'll be placing you under arrest, sir. By this time Longarm had moved down far enough to take in the sad scene. A muscular stark-naked man reclined on his rump in a far corner, covered with bruises and bleeding from the nose and mouth as a half-dressed fellow officer tried to help him with a damp kerchief. The obvious Corporal of the Guard and two other enlisted members of his interior guard had a little old gray-haired and fully dressed major against the lobby desk. He seemed twice as mad and three times as confused as a gamecock caught by one leg in a rat trap. When the Irish noncom spotted Longarm and his badge, he nodded and told him, "The O.D. told us you'd checked in here and ordered us to keep an eye on you. So who might you have slept with after that dance, and what's the story about you and that darling Quirt McQueen?"