Longarm and the Wyoming Wildwoman

by Tabor Evans

  As he headed back to his hotel to see if they served supper Longarm reflected that eliminating most everyone he'd met in Keller's Crossing as that sniper didn't mean he, she, or it hadn't been carrying out the orders of somebody more two-faced. He didn't see how he was going to eliminate anyone as the mastermind who'd almost surely done something to that Deputy Ida Weaver and been trying to do something to him ever since he'd talked to the deadly but not-too-bright little gal.

  As he approached the hotel, he spied Pony Bodie and another young buckaroo drooling at the passing womenfolk out front of the Western Union. Pony Bodie saw him and got up to lope over, calling out he'd just delivered a wire from Denver to the desk clerk inside.

  Longarm reached in his jeans for a silver dollar and handed it over, saying, "Keep the change. How would you like to make a little more on the side?"

  Pony Bodie looked wary and said, "Lord knows I could use some. But I ain't one for any queer stuff if that's what we're talking about."

  Longarm assured him that wasn't what they were talking about as he tore a sheet out of his notebook that he'd already made some notes on. Handing it to the delivery boy, Longarm said, "I don't need to read any private telegraph messages that are likely in code to begin with. You'll find just some dates and the names of other towns on this page. I need to know who got a wire here in this township on let's say more than three or four of them dates, and from where."

  Pony Bodie took the slip of paper but pointed out, "I generally deliver telegrams to all sorts of folk every day in the week."

  Longarm said, "You weren't listening. We call it a process of eliminating when one particular address gets more wires than anybody else from particular parts of this vast country, see?"

  Pony Bodie grinned and said, "I reckon I do, now. Maybe I'll be a lawman instead of a telegrapher when I grow up. I dasn't poke about in files until Old Wilbur leaves for the night. You just talked to him, and you should have seen what a prune he is. I get along better with the night man, Herb. I fetch sandwiches and suds for him after dark, and in return he's been showing me how to send dots and dashes when things get slow. He's even let me send night letters when nobody else was around. I reckon I can check these dates out for you, later, after I've fetched him them suds."

  They shook on it and Longarm went on in to pick up his wire from Billy Vail and ask about supper. They served plain-and-simple off the taproom grill. So he ordered a T-bone with home-fries and forget the damned turnip greens. He read the wire from his boss as he waited to be served. Vail wasn't able to tell him anything he didn't already know. But old Billy agreed that a missing witness and repeated attempts to stop a totally ignorant lawman meant they were likely worried little Ida Weaver might have given something away. Billy agreed that if the gal was still alive, she'd have been able to convince them by this time that she hadn't. He wanted to know if Longarm had the least notion who might be holding Ida Weaver, or her body, where. It was sort of comforting to see that even a paid-up U.S. marshal could ask dumb questions. He topped off his supper with serviceberry pie and went easy on the coffee because he'd had a long hard day, likely face another one, and a man had to sleep now and again, even alone in a strange bed.

  He went over to the tobacco shop near the railroad platform to buy some bed-reading and make sure he had the time table on that line right. Then he headed back to his hotel as the sun was setting, sort of glad they'd shut down all the rowdy saloons in town because it was easier to turn in early when everybody else had to.

  But when he got upstairs with his new edition of Police Gazette, he spied a match stem on the floor where no match stem was supposed to be unless some sneaky son of a bitch had opened his hired door while he was going about more honest chores!

  He had the key to the damned door in his jacket pocket. Before trying it in the lock, he cautiously twisted the knob to see if the door was locked. He found it wasn't. So he flung it open to dive through and roll across the rug with his six-gun drawn and the pink pages of the scattered Police Gazette fluttering in every direction.

  He kicked the door shut behind him with a bootheel as he yelled, "Freeze, you mother, and I don't mean mother dear!"

  "Custis, is that you?" a surprised familiar voice called back.

  Longarm was surprised, too, as he stared up at the womanly outline seated on his bed against the gloaming light from the window to reply, "What in thunder are you doing up this way, Miss Covina? I never sent for young Daisy yet!"

  The widow woman said, "Thanks for reminding me I'm not young. I thought you'd want your derringer back, and you can't send for young Daisy. She seems to have been born restless. I'd have worried about a kidnapping if she hadn't cleaned out the till while I thought she was tending shop for me."

  Longarm got up and put his gun away with a sheepish grin as he said, "I'll see if I can get my outfit to make up your losses for you, Miss Covina. I knew right off she was a tramp. But I thought she was too smart to bite hands that were feeding her that well, and I needed her help up this way."

  He tossed his Stetson on the nearby dresser and began to pick up the scattered pink pages as Covina replied, "Wasn't that just like a man to put all his eggs in such a trashy basket? I thought that I'd better warn you she was gone before you sent for her. So I caught the noon combination, and I've been here a while. I didn't think you'd want me to tell them we were plotting something when I checked in downstairs. Would you care to tell me what we're plotting now?"

  He could see her better as he tidied up closer to the window with the light coming over his own shoulder. She was wearing a silk brocade kimono with green and gold dragons crawling all over the black background. It was open enough at the top to prove what Ben Franklin had written about women and trees withering from the top. Her sweet face wasn't all that wrinkled, despite the mop of steel-wire hair.

  He said, "I see you left your travel duster and other baggage in your own room. How did you get in here without a key, Miss Covina?"

  She demurely replied, "The door wasn't locked. When I knocked and nobody answered, I tried the door and found it opened. So I assumed you'd be back soon, and here I've been sitting for what seems like a mighty long time. Do I get to hear the big secret now?"

  Longarm grimaced and moved over to the saddlebags he'd brought up from the tack room. As he went through them, he confided, "The one who picked that lock left me all my spare socks and such. I reckon he, she, or it was after the papers I've been packing on me, personal. Are you sure nobody downstairs knows you're in here with me?"

  She said, "I don't see who could have told them. I never mentioned you when I told them I was up this way from Cheyenne on business and couldn't say how long I might be here. How long might I be here, you secretive thing?"

  Longarm moved over to the door again and threw the bolt as he told her, "Ain't sure. We're waiting on a tip about another secretive cuss. I'll be mighty surprised if somebody doesn't suddenly tell Undersheriff Reynolds where Ram Rogers has run off to."

  Covina Rivers sighed and said, "I saw you and that other man talking to her up the street from my own window, earlier. I asked a chambermaid who that glamorous young thing might be. I can see why you men are so interested in her. What does that female judge look like?"

  Longarm knew better than to describe Edith Penn Keller, J.P., as anything worse than fat and opinionated. The old but nicely built shopkeeper sniffed and said, "Poor thing. According to our Daisy, you only seem to go for the young and inexperienced ones."

  Longarm laughed incredulously and replied, "I'd hardly call Daisy inexperienced. But if she told you I'd been messing with her, she was a bare-faced liar. I ain't no innocent schoolboy, and I'll allow she was tempting. But I wanted her to help me catch crooks more than I wanted to play slap and tickle with her, bless her devious hide."

  Covina leaned back on her elbows, one bare knee peeping out at him through the folds of her silk kimono as she calmly asked, "Does that mean we get to play slap and tickle after I help you catch s
ome crooks?"

  Longarm gulped as he considered his options. Then, seeing he was as damned if he didn't as he'd be damned if he did, he decided he'd as soon cuss himself in the morning for acting natural than cuss himself for sending her away mad.

  But as he flopped across the pillow beside her, the widow gal, being a gal, gasped, "Custis! Can't you take a little teasing?"

  To which he could only reply, taking her tenderly but firmly in his arms, "I reckon we've teased each other long enough. If the two of us are going to work as a team, we'd best get this bullshit out of the way."

  "Oh, Custis, you're so romantic!" She giggled as he ran his free hand inside her kimono to discover, as he kissed her, she was built as girlish as that sneaky little Daisy or even Inky Potts at the Riverside News. But picturing little Inky in this same position, with his hand inside a printer's smock instead of a kimono, inspired him to slide said hand down Covina's trembling bare flesh to part the thatch betwixt her thighs without considering how gray it might be while she tried to cross her legs, muttering, "No! Not yet! It's been so long, and I have to get used to the idea and..." But he'd whipped it out and rolled atop her in his duds to let nature take its course, and as it did so Covina sobbed, "Oh, my lands, it is so long and a girl could sure get used to this! But don't you want to take your clothes off, darling?"

  He said he sure did. But she had to help him some, and he still had his jeans down around his booted ankles when they came, and then came some more, as only a healthy young man who hadn't had any the night before and a sweet little old lady who hadn't had any for even longer could manage, sobbing in mutual sincere ecstasy.

  "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" the shopkeeper sobbed as he lay limp betwixt her surprisingly springy thighs, letting it soak in her as her warm wet innards pulsed around it.

  He began to move his hips experimentally as he got his breath back and said, conversationally, "It ain't that I'd be ashamed to be seen in public with you, Miss Covina. But it's important we keep it a secret that we've met before, see?"

  She thrust her pelvis up to him as she replied just as calmly that she'd already assumed that much.

  Then she marveled, "Are you really doing what it feels like you're doing down there, you naughty boy? Didn't I satisfy you, just now?"

  He kissed her some more and said, "You purely did and I hope you felt that grand a gallop up amongst the stars, Miss Covina. But if it's all the same with you, I'd like to satisfy us both again."

  She moaned that nothing would please her more and got to weeping and laughing at the same time when he hooked an elbow under either of her knees to spread her wide for some long-donging as she protested that she'd never taken it that deep before, then begged him not to stop when he eased back enough to keep from hitting bottom with every probing stroke. He suspected he was teaching her what a lot of gals went to their graves without ever learning. Gals tended to be as bossy as their man would let them be. So a heap of otherwise loving couples never got down and dirty because women never admitted they liked it that way. Old Covina swore at him and told him her late husband had never rutted with her half so cruel. But when he growled he didn't want nobody else in bed with them that evening, she giggled and told him her late husband had been a dear, but not near as much of a natural man. Then they were both too busy to talk for a spell.

  Later, as they lay still in the gathering darkness, sharing one of his cheroots, Longarm patted her bare shoulder and said, "I reckon I ought to tell you what the plan is now."

  But Covina asked, "Can't it wait, darling? I don't know what's gotten into me tonight but I'm still throbbing like a tabby cat in heat and... Would you mind if I sucked you hard again and got on top this time?"

  He lay back, legs ajar with the cheroot gripped in his grinning teeth as he told her, "Suit yourself, old pal. But whilst you're at it, here's my plan."

  CHAPTER 18

  Covina crept back to her own room in the wee small hours lest the hotel help give the show away. Longarm slept later than usual for some reason but finally decided there was no fun lying slugabed when there was no office to report in late to.

  So Longarm was having eggs over hash for breakfast in the taproom downstairs when Pony Bodie caught up with him, packing a sheaf of sealed telegrams and a handwritten list on brown paper.

  Longarm invited the youth to set and coffee up as he shoved the wires in a hip pocket for later and spread the list on the table beside his own mug.

  Pony Bodie said, "I ought to charge you and Western Union overtime. I had to hang around last night until old Herb dozed off in his chair before I snuck into the shithouse with a file drawer. Figuring out what I was doing was a bitch, too. But as I pawed through the delivery slips with your own list in hand, I commenced to see what you meant."

  Longarm said they called it a "pattern" in his line of work as he sipped coffee and perused the childish scrawls.

  He saw a pattern right off. Pony Bodie had only listed the names of locals getting wires from certain places on certain dates. So most of the names, including Big Jim Tanner, had no more than one or two listings under them. But Preacher Shearer, or at least his manse, had nine that fit like gloves and one left over.

  Longarm cocked a brow and observed, "I see you delivered a wire from Pueblo, Colorado, just yesterday."

  As the breed waitress put his coffee down in front of him, Pony Bodie said, "Sure I did. You asked me to make up that list long after. I don't know who sent it or what it said because they give me the telegrams sealed. I run it up to the manse early in the day. Way before somebody shot out Miss Rita's bay window. I don't know nothing about that, neither."

  Longarm smiled thinly and said, "I know. I asked where you were at the time. You and some pals were spitting and whittling across the street when them shots rang out."

  Pony Bodie blinked owlishly at him and said, "I'm sure glad I ain't out to steal that handsome buckskin you rode in on. I don't know who might have been up in that bell tower or how come Preacher Shearer got all them wires from all over. Why don't you ask him?"

  Longarm said, "I mean to. Soon as I finish my break fast."

  The kid wanted to tag along. But Longarm told him not to and added, "I'd be obliged if you refrained from repeating this conversation to anybody else. Anybody else at all. Comprende?"

  Pony Bodie gulped and allowed he did, sort of. So they strode out in the morning sunlight together and parted friendly.

  You had to pass the Riverside News before you got to the church in any case. So Longarm stepped inside to find little Inky Potts sticking type in the back, alone. Her hips looked a tad less full than he'd pictured them the night before, going dog style with old Covina.

  When she came to the counter with a wary smile on her ink-smudged face, Longarm said, "I'll get right to the point, Miss Inky. Your boss and me don't get along as well as I'd like. He may be innocent of any other crime, or you could be working for a killer. I need your help in finding out. You look smart enough to see it's in your own best interests to help me find out, either way. Your turn."

  She gasped. "Oh, dear Lord, I knew being paid a man's wages with nobody trying to get up my skirt was too good to be true! If you had any idea what a girl goes through in the newspaper game!"

  He said, "I do. Some of my best friends are newspaper gals. But I never asked about Big Jim's employment policies. He won't let me go through your morgue. I'd be able to tell you why, a heap better, if you were to go through it for me and answer the few simple questions I've put down on this one page from my notebook."

  She took the tightly lettered list warily and said she couldn't promise anything. He said, "I ain't asking for promises. I just need some answers. Before you go running with this to Big Jim, be advised I've already caught him in one lie. I'm still working on whether that means he's a self-important small-town big shot or a dangerous felon. So, for your own protection, slip the answers to me discreet as you know how as soon as you can manage."

  She said she'd try bu
t made no promises. Longarm had noticed the ones who hesitated to promise you the moon were most likely to show up with something.

  He left the newspaper just in time. Big Jim in the beefy flesh was coming down the walk. As they met, the newspaperman asked if Longarm had any scoops for him. Longarm replied it was too early to say and started to move on. Big Jim told him the good looking undersheriff was down the other way, in her substation.

  Longarm asked what had made the newspaperman think he was on his way to pester Miss Rita. Big Jim laughed and said, "Come on, I got a darkie keeping house for me, too, and you know how they gossip."

  "Almost as bad as the rest of us," Longarm conceded in a disgusted tone before he suggested, "Tell your darkie to tell Miss Rita's darkie that the lady of the house received me in her front parlor on officious business with her hair pinned up."

  To say they parted friendly would have been a fib. Longarm legged it on up to the church and knocked on the front door of the adjoining manse until he got tired of that and went around to knock on the back door.

  Nobody came. There should have been at least a cleaning woman in charge if the preacher was out saving souls or sending sneaky wires.

  Longarm started to go around the front to see if the older man was in the church, itself. Then he had a better idea and moved around to the back to find that, sure enough, there was a gap left in the hedge with just such a shortcut in mind.

  Longarm followed the visible path in the yard-grass to a cellar door at the rear of the bigger frame church. It wasn't padlocked. A man of the cloth who ran back and forth a lot likely figured nobody else would notice a cellar door in the shady gap between the church and manse. Longarm could see nobody had any way of watching him as he drew his.44-40 and pulled one leaf of the door up with his free hand.