Longarm and the Horse Thief's Daughter

by Tabor Evans

  He finished his cigar and tossed the butt into the water, then stood, brushing off his britches. “Ready?”

  Longarm got up too and the two men walked back to the camp.

  Longarm spread his bedroll on the ground inside Alva’s cooking tent and told his hosts good night, then lay down and was instantly asleep.

  Come morning he asked Jonas, “Which way did the Nellis family head from here?”

  Jonas pointed. “I don’t know exactly where they went, but that’s the direction we advised them to go. We prospected up there a little bit last fall. Found a little molybdenum and what might have been a trace of copper. This find seems the better of the two, so we told Nellis about the moly. I . . . The truth is, I don’t think Frank Nellis knew enough about minerals to recognize molybdenum, but he might have figured out the copper.”

  “Don’t even think about leaving us before you have some breakfast,” Alva warned.

  Longarm grinned. “Wouldn’t think of it, ma’am.”

  Breakfast was more of the excellent venison stew. Longarm had two bowls of it and would have eaten more if he’d thought he could hold it without incurring a bellyache from overstuffing himself.

  “If I was a rich man,” he said, “I’d hire you t’ do my cooking.”

  “What about me?” Jonas asked.

  The grin returned. “You could wash the lady’s dishes.”

  “I see where I stand,” Jonas said, smiling.

  Longarm stood and dropped his bowl into the washbasin. “Folks, you’re both wonderful. Thank you for all you done.”

  “Head off like I told you,” Jonas said. “I’m thinking you might find Frank Nellis’s diggings up that way.”

  “I’m fixing to find out,” Longarm said. He rolled and tied his bedroll, then carried it to the mare and the burro, Jonas coming with him to toss some feed to his mules.

  Once Longarm was saddled and his pack reloaded onto the burro, the two shook hands and Longarm got onto the trail.

  He was several miles away before he remembered that he had not offered Jonas Morgan anything in exchange for the food and hospitality.

  He kicked himself much of that morning for the oversight.

  Chapter 45

  The sky clouded up with rain-laden gray that afternoon, and a wind kicked up out of the northwest. A sudden chill made Longarm dismount and fetch his heavy coat from its perch atop the burro. The temperature must have dropped a good thirty degrees, he suspected.

  Standing in his stirrups and craning his neck, he sent worried glances into the face of the wind.

  There was a storm brewing, and it would be on him soon.

  Colorado mountain storms could be violent if often brief, and Longarm saw no point in riding through this one.

  He thought wistfully of Alva Morgan’s cook tent, where he had spent the past night, but it was many miles and many hours behind him now.

  Instead he thought it sensible to look for a place where he could hole up until the storm blew itself out.

  Fat raindrops and a scattering of hailstones were falling by the time be spotted a deep overhang on the rock face above him. He reined the mare into a stand of young aspen and tied her there, then untied the burro from his saddle horn and tied it separately.

  “Now, you children mind your manners till I get back,” he admonished them, before he scrambled up the loose rock slope to the shelter offered by that overhang.

  The niche was deeper than it had first appeared. About four feet high at the mouth, it leveled off about two feet tall and extended so far back into the rock that he could not see the back wall.

  Longarm chose a spot close to the lip and settled into a comfortable, cross-legged position. From there he could stay out of the storm while at the same time keeping an eye on his animals.

  Having not bothered to stop for lunch, he munched on a handful of jerky while he watched the quick flurry of hail and listened to the strong drumming of large raindrops.

  Both mare and burro turned their butts to the wind and tucked their tails in tight. Had his niche in the rock been more accessible, Longarm would gladly have shared his shelter with the animals, but that was not possible here.

  When he was finished eating, he gathered up a handful of hailstones that had bounced inside his shelter. He popped them into his mouth one by one and let them melt to wash his lunch down. A man could hardly find purer water than that.

  Finally he lighted a cheroot and sat back to enjoy the show of nature’s fury.

  The cigar, it turned out, may well have been a mistake. Perhaps the smoke, but then possibly the cheroot had nothing to do with it.

  Whatever the cause, Longarm heard a low, rolling rumble somewhat like the purring of a cat.

  A very big cat.

  Then the mountain lion hit him from behind and bowled him over, the two of them in a tangle tumbling end over end down the rocky slope.

  Chapter 46

  “Oh, God, I’m blind,” he moaned.

  “Don’t be silly,” a voice responded. “Your eyes are caked shut with mucus that accumulated while you were asleep.”

  “Who the hell?” He tried to sit up but was held back by a hand on his chest.

  “Lie still,” the voice—a woman’s voice—said. “I’ll get some warm water to bathe those eyes.”

  He heard a rustle of cloth, then footsteps. Moments later she returned and he felt the brush of a wet cloth over his face. She scrubbed at his eyes—rather hard, he thought—and his left eye popped open. He strained a little and was able to open the right eye too.

  He was in a cabin, lying on a soft mattress, looking up at the heavy beams of the ceiling and at a thin woman with graying hair pulled back in a severe bun. She was wearing a man’s red-and-black checked woolen shirt, denim trousers held up by canvas suspenders that he recognized as army issue, and knee-high lace-up boots.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “My name is Katherine Jennings. That is Katherine with a K, please, but you may call me Kat.”

  Longarm raised an eyebrow, and she smiled. “No, I am not the cat that chased you out of her den yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?” he asked, his voice coming out as a weak croak.

  Kat nodded. “She wasn’t trying to kill you. She didn’t really think of you as food. She just wanted you away from her babies. She has two of them, the cutest little kittens you ever saw.” She smiled again. Katherine Jennings had a lovely smile, in fact, wide and happy and reaching all the way into her eyes.

  Then she laughed. “You are so lucky. She didn’t like being out in that rain and hail. That’s why she left you so quickly and ran back to her babies.”

  “You . . . How would you know all this?” he asked.

  “I am up here researching a paper for the national wildlife service. I’ve been living here since last winter. I spend most of my time in a blind that the wildlife here has come to accept as normal and nonthreatening. I was here when the kittens were born. I’ve watched them trying to learn how to hunt. Watched their mama bring live prey home for them to learn on. It is really wonderful the way nature takes care of her own.”

  “If you say so,” Longarm mumbled. Hell, he hadn’t known there was any sort of national wildlife service. “You say the lion didn’t really want t’ hurt me?”

  “That is not exactly what I said, mister. I said she wanted to chase you away, but it would have been quite all right if she had killed you. From her point of view, that is, not mine. As it is, you were very lucky. That heavy vest you were wearing kept her from ripping your lungs out. A panther’s hind foot claws are very powerful, you know. Because of the vest, however, she only scratched you in three places. Of course it remains to be seen whether those wounds will fester and turn green. A cat’s claws are quite filthy, you know.”

  “That’s more’n I want t’ know,” he said. �
��You say I was clawed?”

  “Yes. But I brought you back here, you and your animals. I washed your wounds and put salve on them. It is too soon to know if they will turn bad.”

  “If they do?” he asked.

  “Then you shall die, of course.”

  “I wouldn’t much like that,” Longarm said.

  Kat smiled. “Then by all means, let’s make sure it does not happen.”

  “When will I know?” he asked.

  “Give it three days. I should be able to tell by then.”

  Longarm nodded. “I might not be real good company for the next couple days.”

  “That is all right. People say I am not good company anytime. I prefer solitude to the incessant yammering of most people.”

  Longarm took that as a suggestion. He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep.

  Chapter 47

  Longarm learned two things that afternoon. One was that Kat Jennings was a truly awful cook. The meal she prepared for him would have tasted better if she had simply put the ingredients into a bowl, raw, and given them to him that way.

  The other thing was that the woman was not shy. Late in the afternoon she pulled her clothes off, poured a basin of cold water, and proceeded to bathe herself with a tattered sponge.

  Longarm pretended not to watch. But he did, fascinated.

  The woman was a collection of bones with a meager coating of skin stretched tight over it.

  He had never seen any human creature in such a condition.

  Hell, any sensible farmer would have rejected her if she applied to become a scarecrow.

  Her hip bones stuck out like plowshares, and her chest was a ladder of bone and gristle.

  Her tits were like pancakes that had nipples perched atop them. Thin cakes, at that.

  Her pussy appeared to be normal enough, topped by a bush that was growing on the flat that separated her skinny thighs. Longarm would have wagered he could put his hands completely around those thighs. They were thinner than most women’s calves. Hell, they were thinner than some women’s ankles.

  And her belly. Flat as a board, it did not begin to belly out.

  He gave up pretending to be asleep and sat up on the side of the bed where she had somehow pulled, pushed, or dragged him, never mind that he probably weighed twice what she did. Or more.

  He reached for his things, which she had laid out on a stool beside the bed, and picked up a cheroot and a lucifer.

  “Oh, you’re awake,” she said with a smile as soap suds dripped from her pussy hair. Then she went back to scrubbing.

  He flicked the match aflame with his thumbnail and applied the fire to the tip of the cheroot. Lord, that was one skinny woman. He had seen mop handles with fuller bodies than that.

  Longarm pulled the smoke deep into his lungs, then blew out a series of smoke rings.

  Kat finished washing, dried herself off on a piece of burlap, and pulled her clothes on.

  “Do you feel up to walking a little?” she asked.

  Longarm nodded. He felt perfectly well except for some pain in his right shoulder blade and in the small of his back.

  “Good. Those animals of yours need to be let out so they can graze. I don’t keep any feed up here. It’s too costly. And I can’t take the time to mow wild hay, so I just don’t have any livestock of my own. I tied yours to some trees down by the creek. They should be safe there unless a grizzly comes along. If that were to happen, they wouldn’t be safe in a pen, probably not in a shed either. Grizzlies don’t have much respect for mankind or our wants and needs.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Longarm said. He himself was as naked as Kat had just now been. He gathered that she had stripped his clothing so she could nurse him.

  There seemed to be no point in becoming modestly shy at this late date so he simply stood and dressed. He felt twinges in his back but nothing serious.

  It was worrisome, though. He had seen the ugliness of gangrene. And since the clawing had been on his back, amputation, the normal cure for gangrene, was not an option.

  If the wounds festered, he would die. Plain and simple.

  He stamped into his boots and went outside to find his mare and burro and tend to them.

  Chapter 48

  After a supper that was every bit as awful as her lunch had been, Kat again stripped Longarm, then rolled him onto his stomach. She leaned over him and pulled away the gauze that she had used to cover his scratches.

  “Mm.”

  “What’s that supposed t’ mean?” he asked.

  “What is?”

  “You went ‘mm’ when you looked at my back.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes, dammit, you did. So what is ‘mm’ supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing to do with your wounds, actually. I was, uh, remarking unconsciously about your muscle tone. Most men are quite flabby, you know. I can’t abide flab. You have excellent muscle tone.”

  He did not know what to say about that, so he kept his mouth shut.

  Kat rubbed something smelly onto his wounds and again plastered them with gauze.

  “On your back now, please,” she said.

  Longarm rolled over, his discomfort less than he might have expected.

  Kat’s attention shifted below his belt. Or where his belt would have been had he been wearing anything.

  It occurred to him to wonder why the woman thought it necessary to completely strip him when it was only his back that had suffered the scratches.

  “Would you mind?” she asked.

  Longarm did not know what the hell she was asking him about, but he was the guest here and knew a little about proper manners for a guest in someone’s home. “No, I don’t mind,” he said.

  Kat smiled hugely. Then stood upright and began stripping.

  He at first assumed she was just going to bathe herself again.

  Then, still smiling, she crawled onto the bed next to him.

  And took his cock into her hand.

  Chapter 49

  That muff of dark, curly hair hid a pussy that was hot, wet, and deep. Talented too.

  Kat rolled on top of him, straddling his waist with those chicken-leg thighs. He was fairly certain her legs could serve a man as pipe stems. If he happened to smoke a pipe, that is.

  She pulled his dick into position, then lowered herself onto it.

  Longarm groaned and arched his back to meet her, to drive all the deeper into her. “Jeez, woman, that’s good.”

  “Better for me than for you, I wager,” she said. “I haven’t been with a man for five months.” She laughed. “And a carrot just isn’t the same.”

  “You would really . . . ?”

  “Of course,” she said and gestured toward his cock. “Wouldn’t you play with this if it had been that long? Of course you would. What makes you think a woman’s needs are any less than yours?”

  “I never thought of it that way,” he said.

  “Shut up and pay attention. You have a huge dick, so be still and let me enjoy myself here.”

  “Be still?” he said.

  “I didn’t mean that literally. I mean just shut up and pay attention to business here.”

  “Well in that case,” he said. And began to stroke up and down. Slowly at first, just enjoying the heat of her scrawny body. Then faster. Straining to go ever deeper, ever harder.

  Kat responded almost immediately, her breathing coming quicker and her pussy becoming even wetter. Her thighs began to tremble and shake. At first Longarm thought she was overtired and about to collapse. Instead it seemed she was beginning to have an orgasm. A powerful one.

  When she came the first time, she cried out and dug her hands painfully into his arms. The second time, which happened only seconds later, she shrieked. And the third time her eyes rolled back in her head a
nd she passed out cold.

  The woman was so slight that Longarm scarcely felt her weight on top of him.

  Not that he minded. He needed a warm blanket on the high country nights, and a living, breathing, self-heated blanket worked just fine.

  Longarm reached his own climax, his cum spurting deep inside Katherine Jennings.

  His cock still lodged inside her, he closed his eyes and went comfortably to sleep.

  Chapter 50

  “I could get used to this,” Longarm said as he settled down to a plate of Kat’s flannel cakes—that tasted pretty much like actual flannel instead of pancakes—but with a cup of morning coffee. And that made up for all manner of other things; there simply is not much that can compare with a steaming cup of coffee at dawn.

  The woman was waiting on him hand and foot. Pampering him outrageously. Apparently she liked having a dick to play with.

  “Of course you could,” Kat said. “All men are essentially lazy. It’s women who do all the work. All you men do is go out once in a while and drag home some meat. Surely you have noticed.”

  “Can’t say that I have,” he said. “But then I haven’t been looking.” He grinned. “Been too busy out there collectin’ meat. Say, this coffee is good.”

  Kat laughed. “Coffee is the only thing I know how to make that is worth spit. I don’t care about food, which is probably why I am such a terrible cook . . . No, don’t try to be polite. I know the truth. I am a lousy cook. It’s coffee that sustains me, not food. But I do love my coffee. Are you done eating?”

  He nodded. He hadn’t filled his belly, but he would just as soon have chewed off a chunk of his sheepskin vest as have had any more of those flannel cakes.

  “Bring your cup and come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Out there,” she said, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him away from the table. “I want to show you something.”

  “Show me? Woman, it’s still dark out there.”

  “Oh, don’t be such an old woman. I know the path, daylight or dark. Now, come along. We have to get up there before it is too late.”