by Tabor Evans
"You read my mind," she said. "Now make the dream I didn't finish come to life."
Longarm was in no hurry. He moved slowly, staying in her deeply until her inner muscles began throbbing against him. Then he began to thrust, withdrawing slowly and returning fast. Maidia gasped the first time she felt him pounding into her, but as the moments passed and Longarm showed no signs of slowing his pace, her excitement grew. She brought her hips up to meet his thrusts, her body heaving and turning under his, until the pace grew too much for her to maintain. She sank back under his weight and let her legs fall, spreading them wide to receive his strokes, her head pressed hard into the ground, her neck arched, her chin high in the air.
Longarm stopped thrusting. "You want to rest awhile?"
"I'm resting," she said gustily. "You go on. This is the dream I don't want to wake up from a man on top of me, making love to me like he'll never stop. Oh, I do love it, Longarm! But it's usually over so quickly that I miss the best part, just feeling a man big and hard in me while I lie back and enjoy it. You go on as long as you can. And you'll know when something wonderful's going to happen to me. Don't worry about that."
Longarm went on. As he continued, pounding deeply into her wet, hot depths, the very relaxation of Maidia's unresponsive body began to excite him. He felt himself building, and slowed to hold back. Maidia caught the change in his tempo.
"You're getting tired," she said. "Go on a little longer, if you can. I'm getting ready to come back to life."
Now Longarm no longer tried to keep from letting himself build. He was reaching the stage where he was about to lose control, when Maidia jerked under his pounding as though she had just awakened from a faint. She began to tremble. Her legs tensed and locked around his hips again. She rode with him as the pressure inside him mounted and reached the bursting point. Longarm gave a few last, fierce plunges while Maidia screamed as the panther had screamed earlier. She shook, her hips heaving, her body writhing, as Longarm stiffened and fell forward with a sigh.
Neither Longarm nor Maidia spoke for several moments. Then she said, "I'm glad I spoke up, Longarm. I almost didn't but if I hadn't, have, would you?"
"Not after the bad time you had earlier, with that fellow trying to rape you."
"Well, that wasn't very good, of course. I don't like to be treated like a thing, and that's what he was doing. And I'm sorry I tore into you the way I did. It was stupid, but I didn't know what had really happened. But you must have forgiven me, or you'd have said no when I asked if I could come into bed with you."
"You're wrong, Maidia. I figured, at the first, you just needed to be with somebody for comforting. After all, a lady like you-"
"There aren't any ladies," Maidia interrupted. "Just women. And we've all got that tickle between our legs, just like you men have. Only most of you are honest about it. Most women aren't." She yawned. "I guess I'm ready to go back to sleep now. It's all right if I stay, isn't it?"
"Why, I ain't about to let go of you," Longarm said with a wide grin. "I want to be where you can reach me easy if that panther wakes you up again."
Maidia went to sleep quickly, her head resting on Longarm's sturdy shoulder. He lay awake for a while, wondering if the panther might scream again, and trying to figure out how he was going to manage to get to Fort Smith on time after promising Maidia he'd see that she found a guide to get her safely to Choteau. He gave that up, deciding to leave it to chance. Then his mind turned to the case he was on.
You got a real pig in a poke here, old son, he told himself for the tenth time since Vail had explained his assignment to him. Just how in hell Billy expects me to come up with what him and his Arkansas District friend wants is way past anything I can see. I've got a sneaking hunch that Arkansas's chief marshal's just looking for somebody to blame when this business all goes up in smoke.
Vail had been unusually vague when he'd explained to Longarm why it was so important that he go to the Indian Nation. All he'd said was that there was a chance that whoever had been trying to spring Cole Younger from the federal pen in the Indian Nation had to be somebody close to the James gang, and might even be Jesse himself. Then, when Longarm had suggested that the Arkansas chief marshal had plenty of deputies who knew a lot more about the Nation than Longarm did, Vail had pulled rank and snapped, "Damn it, this is a case I'm putting you on, and I expect you to take it without any back-talk, just like any other case! Now, is that plain enough to suit you?"
"It couldn't be much plainer, Billy," Longarm had replied. "I still feel like it's something for the locals to handle, but if you want me to go to the Nation, that's where I'm heading."
"Fine. It's all settled, then," Vail had said curtly.
And that was that, Longarm thought. Not like the way Billy's been before, when I could talk things out with him friendly. But there's something to this that he ain't told me yet. I'll just have to keep eating the old apple a bite at a time, and maybe I'll find out what it is when I get down to the core.
He lay awake for a while after that, but the panther didn't scream again. After a while, Longarm went to sleep.
Sunrise found Longarm and Maidia Harkness halfway to Webbers Falls. They'd ridden, for the most part, in silence. Maidia was still tired from the harrowing events of the day before; she hadn't liked getting up in the dark and riding breakfastless except for a few bites of hard jerky. Longarm wasn't too happy, either. He faced losing a half-day of travel time in order to keep his promise to Maidia. That meant he'd have to push hard to make it up in getting on to Fort Smith. There, he knew, the chief marshal had already been notified, by a telegram from Vail, to expect him.
If it wasn't for that damn wire, he thought, looking at Maidia's sleepy face as she bobbed along on the horse beside him, I'd be right tempted to turn around and go up to Choteau with her. Let the Arkansas deputies waste their time nosing around trying to get a smell of Jesse James's trail.
Even while the thought was passing through his mind, Longarm knew he'd pull no such fool stunt. He'd never turned his back on his duty, and he wasn't about to start now, no matter how much of a fool's errand he figured an assignment to be.
Webbers Falls nestled on the west bank of the Arkansas, but a flat-bottomed ferryboat that plied between the two banks of the river got them safely across. On the ferry, Maidia asked Longarm, "What are you going to do about the mule and the two horses we seem to have acquired?
They don't belong to US."
"They didn't, but it looks like they do now. Only not to us, Maidia. To you. You were the one paying the freight for the outlaws that ganged up on you. I'd say you're entitled to keep them, as sort of compensation for what they put you through."
"Would that be honest, Longarm?"
"I don't see why not. If you'd found a silver dollar in the road and there wasn't any way to prove it belonged to anybody, and you didn't know who'd passed that way, wouldn't you keep it?"
"Yes, I suppose I would."
"all right, then. Keep the horses and the mule. If you don't want them after you get where you're going, sell them off, or trade them. If you're real anxious to get shed of them, chances are I can fix up a swap with somebody in the town there to guide you where you're going and take one of the critters for his pay."
"You don't think I ought to turn them in to the police, then?"
"What police? You might see an Indian policeman in Choteau, but chances are that's the only law you'll run into between here and there."
"Go ahead and trade, then. It hadn't occurred to me that I'm going to need a horse for myself. And I suppose the mule wouldn't be much trouble to keep, in this kind of country."
"Not if you're going to be working at an Indian school, it wouldn't. Well, we'll have to see what I can dicker out for you when we get ashore. But I don't suspicion there'll be much trouble."
Longarm's prediction turned out to be correct. Webbers Falls didn't offer much except a general store and a small sawmill powered by a waterwheel; the rest of the town cons
isted of a couple of dozen houses, mostly those of the families of men working at the sawmill. Longarm showed his badge to the proprietor of the store and described the kind of man he was looking for, and the job that needed to be done. The proprietor scratched his head for a moment.
"Guess Jared Phillips is the man you better talk to before you try anybody else. Jared traps up and down the rivers, so he'd know the land and the trails. And he's old enough so you wouldn't need to worry about him being flighty."
Jared Phillips wasn't just old, Longarm discovered; he was ancient--one of those wizened little men who seems to have an inexhaustible supply of energy, and appears destined to live forever. He was spry enough, though, and interested in taking on the job of guiding Maidia to Choteau in return for the spare horse.
"Yessir, Marshal, I'd be right glad to make a swap like that," he chirruped. "Trapping ain't much right now and a horse'd sure be a help to me in winter, when I go to set out my lines. And I get along just fine with the Cherokee people. My last wife was Cherokee, which makes me sorta kin to 'em, I guess they figure. So I'll take on the job, if you and the lady agree."
Shortly after noon, having seen Maidia and her new escort safely on their way to Choteau, Longarm was ready to resume his own interrupted trip. He'd planned, when leaving Fort Gibson, on being able to get to Fort Smith in two full days of travel. He was running about a half-day behind. Still, he now thought he might be able to make up most of the lost time. By pushing on a little bit harder than he'd planned, he had a chance of pulling into Fort Smith around midnight.
Unfortunately, his calculations didn't take ferry schedules into consideration. The last boat leaving the slip at Little Juarez on the west side of the Arkansas River pulled out at midnight, and he missed it by a full half-hour. He soon found that his luck wasn't altogether bad, though. There were always a few travelers who got to the slip just a little bit too late to catch the last ferry, and taking care of their needs between midnight and dawn had created a major industry in the settlement called Little Juarez, which had grown up around the landing.
Longarm found a saloon that not only had a good stock of prime Maryland rye, but a passable free lunch. There was a livery stable where he left his horse, and a barbershop that stayed open all night and offered hot baths in addition to the usual tonsorial services. A short stay at the saloon--just long enough to get a snack at the free lunch counter and three healthy shots of biting-good whiskey--prepared Longarm for an hour's soaking in a hot tub, followed by a shave and a trim in the barbershop. Then he had only another couple of hours to kill at the saloon, with all the ingredients at hand to make the killing of time a pleasant occupation.
When he led his horse off the ferryboat the next morning, Longarm felt fairly chipper. He mounted the animal for the short ride up Front Street to the old army headquarters building that had been turned into offices for the Arkansas Federal District. It was too early for Andy Gower, the chief marshal, to be in his office, so Longarm backtracked to a restaurant he'd noticed on the way to the federal building, where he dawdled over a leisurely breakfast and a succession of cups of chicory-laced coffee until he judged the hour was late enough. This time, he found Gower in his office, at a desk piled almost as high with paperwork as Billy Vail's always seemed to be.
Gower was a thin, rangy man with long eyebrows that hung down over chilly gray eyes set in a weatherbeaten face ending in a long lantern jaw. In defiance of the current style, he was clean-shaven. He wore a black-and-white checkered shirt with a puffed-out black cravat in which a diamond stickpin gleamed. A black Prince Albert coat, the mate to Longarm's, hung on a coat tree in one corner of the office, with a pistol belt looped over the hanger that supported the coat.
"You're Long, I suppose," Gower snapped before Longarm could introduce himself. "My clerk said you'd been here earlier, looking for me."
"That's right. It was a little bit early, I guess."
"Early, hell! You were supposed to be here yesterday. I guess you got in during the evening and spent the night tom-catting around the saloons and whorehouses instead of reporting in."
"Matter of fact, I got to the river too late to get on the last ferryboat. And I was too damn tired to report last night, even if I'd made it into town."
"All right, sit down." Gower pushed aside the papers he'd been working on. "Now that you're finally here, I suppose you're ready to go to work?"
Longarm traded stares with his temporary boss. Right at that moment, he'd decided that this case wasn't going to be one he'd enjoy working on. If the greeting he'd gotten from his temporary superior was a fair sample, Gower was a man he was prepared to dislike.
CHAPTER 4
"I came to work," Longarm replied at last. He kept his voice level and expressionless. "Billy Vail didn't give me a lot to go on. Only thing he said was that the grapevine's put Jesse James at some kind of outlaw hangout over in the Cherokee Nation."
"That's about all we've got," Gower affirmed. "I've been getting reports that there's a lot more activity than usual going on at Belle Starr's place. I guess you've heard about Belle? Calls herself the Bandit Queen?"
"I've heard her name, that's about all," Longarm answered. "And I know she operates in the Nation. But if you've got the time to pass on whatever I'd need to know about her and whoever she runs with, I'd sure like for you to."
Honey, old son, Longarm kept telling himself as he looked at Gower. Honey catches more flies than vinegar.
Gower had taken out a pouch of Bull Durham and papers, and was rolling himself a cigarette. He took his time, jogging the flakes of tobacco evenly, wrapping the paper tight, licking the seam, twisting the ends of the completed cylinder. Then he touched a match to the finished smoke. Longarm thought most of the men he'd ever seen smoking cigarettes looked sissified; he noted with mild surprise that Gower did not. Just the opposite, in fact.
Longarm countered by extracting a cheroot from his vest pocket and lighting it. The blue smoke from the cigar and the white, acrid smoke from the cigarette began to fume up the office, and, after a few moments, Gower started talking.
"There's a chance you might have heard about Belle Starr by another name. Belle's had so damn many names since she started out that I don't think she remembers all of them herself. You ever heard of a woman bandit that called herself Belle Reed? Or Belle Shirley? Or maybe even Belle Younger?"
Longarm shook his head. "I must've missed all them names. It's the same Belle, though, I take it?"
"Same Belle," Gower nodded. He took a final drag on the cigarette and exhaled a cloud of thin smoke, then tossed the butt into a cuspidor that stood handy at the corner of his desk. "Since you're new to this district, I suppose the first thing to do is to go back to the beginning."
"Might be, at that." Longarm settled himself back to listen.
"As far as my boys and I have been able to find out," the chief marshal began, "Belle's real name is Myra Belle Shirley. At least, that's how she started life. Her folks were from Missouri, up somewhere around Carthage, which would make them neighbors to the Jameses and the Youngers. Matter of fact, there's some kind of connection between the Shirleys and the Youngers--second cousins twice removed, or something--one of those vague family things that goes back God knows how many years since there was any close kinship. But the Youngers stayed in Missouri when the Shirleys moved to Texas, sometime back in the late sixties or early seventies. Belle's folks still live up in North Texas, somewhere around Fort Worth or Dallas."
"That'd explain how Belle got tied up with Cole Younger, then?" Longarm asked when Gower paused to start rolling another cigarette. "And you and Billy happened onto the connection when you went to talk to Cole Younger in the pen at Stillwater?"
"Damn it, Long, don't start guessing!" Gower snapped. "I knew about the connection before we talked to Cole Younger. Belle claims she was married to Cole when she was just a young girl, and she makes no bones about telling everybody Cole's the daddy of her daughter Pearl. Pearl's about eleven or tw
elve years old now. I guess you know that Cole was one of Jesse James's bunch before he got caught and landed in the pen."
"I don't have to guess about that," Longarm said shortly. "Everybody knows it."
"I suppose so. Well," Gower went on, "Belle had a whole string of husbands--or men she said were her husbands--after Cole pulled out of Texas and went back with the James gang. The thing is, Belle can't seem to get Cole Younger out of her craw. Maybe that's because, as far as we can tell, he's the first man that ever got to her. It happened that time when Cole and Jesse were visiting with the part of the Younger family that had moved to Texas and were living close to Belle's folks."
"Billy Vail told me somebody's been trying real hard to get Cole sprung out of the pen," Longarm said. "I got the idea that's one reason you two went to talk to him. You were afraid he might get out and join up with Jesse again."
"No, damn it, no! We went to offer to let Younger out if he'd lead us to where Jesse and Frank are hiding right now. You know the prison grapevine, Long. I'm dead sure Younger could lead us to the James boys' hideout. But he won't. Said so, flat out. But you are right about one thing. It is Belle Starr who's been trying to get Cole sprung. She's been working at that ever since he got locked up. Even while she was married to Jim Reed and Blue Duck and whoever else she was really married to before she hitched up with Sam Starr. And she's still trying, right this minute."
"Blue Duck would be one of Belle's husbands, I guess? Sounds to me like he's an Indian."
"Was Indian. Cherokee. So was her first husband--not counting Cole Younger, that is. Right after Cole left Texas, she married this breed, Jim Reed. And Starr's part Cherokee, too."
"I'd say Belle's got a soft spot for Indian studs," Longarm observed with a smile.