by Matt Braun
“I agree,” Vivian said as she fluffed the large pillow at the head of the wide bed. When she slapped at the pillow, her firm breasts, nipples extended, moved under the low-cut maroon silk. “The others are sharp,” she said matter-of-factly as she flopped supine. “Westfall is a real shitbird!”
Tallman, settled by the taste of the French brandy and the magical sight on the bed, got up, slipped off his jacket, hideout rig, and vest, and walked to the bed. “That wheatstalk didn’t give you any incurable diseases, did he?” Tallman kidded as he set the snifter on the bedside table.
“Not unless you can catch something off the handle of a cat-o’-nine-tails!” Vivian laughed, quickly checking the loud howl by burying her face in the pillow.
“One of those?”
“Yep,” she whispered. “The only way he could get it up was if I beat the shit out of him.” She giggled, her green eyes flashing her rare zest for life. “And I have to tell you,” she went on like a little kid talking of ghosts. “I’m plumb tuckered out.”
Vivian leaned toward the small table and took his glass.
“I gather you didn’t learn anything,” Tallman went on as he unlaced his shoes. He knew she would have told him right off if she had.
“No. I tried to snake something out of him, but he shut me off each time. I know when to stop.”
Vivian sipped the cognac from his glass as he put his trousers over the chair. His manhood had grown stiff in his drawers. As his partner lay there, she seemed to have a faint aura about her brushed auburn hair. Supported on one elbow, her ample breasts sloped, ever so slightly, down and away. She glowed under the kerosene light, her bare arms, lissome calves, and her face all in a sensual contrast with the maroon nightgown.
She set down the glass and reached for the lump in his shorts. “What’s this,” she asked as she gripped the oblong shape in his underwear. “And what’s that look in your eyes?”
“That thing in your hand is a three-hour erection that’s as hard as a railroad spike. And you see hunger in my eyes. The same horrible curse left upon us all by an angry God!”
“Thank goodness Adam and Eve took the temptation,” she said, her eyes fixed on his, her hands jerking down his drawers. “God’s anger is now my pleasure.”
Tallman stepped out of his shorts and settled in the goosedown. He rolled toward her and sought her lips with his as she reached for his cock and began to finger the swollen tip. He sucked her tongue into his mouth and cupped one cheek of her firm ass with his strong hand, his fingertips on the very edge of her opening. The feel of the flesh under the silk heightened his senses, and he pulled aside the nightgown, pushed one leg aside, and grabbed her damp crotch firmly. Slowly, he moved three fingers up and down the slick, pink meat between her throbbing lips. Once again, Tallman pondered her wetness as he had done many times before. Though he had sampled the fruit of many women, none got as wet as Vivian. He slipped his middle finger into her as she arched her back and drew her feet up to her buttocks and opened her legs wide.
“Harder, Ash!”
Tallman drove his finger deeper and pressed on the curls above the opening with his thumb.
She broke the kiss and sought his ear with her darting tongue. Tallman tightened his hold as he pulled down her thin straps and exposed a breast. Vivian began bucking against his hand as he latched onto her nipple with feverish abandon.
“Ooooo, Ash! God-I-love-to-fuck,” she groaned. Her speech was more guttural sounds than words. A rhythmic surging grew in her groin as he sucked loudly on her breast. She put a hand in his sandy hair and pushed him firmly against her breast as she flicked the bloodred tip of his cock with her other hand. Her hips moved faster. Her sounds became more primitive.
Then, in one lurching move, she dropped his cock, pulled away from his sucking, rolled over, and got to her knees. “Stick it in . . . fast! Fuck me hard!” she moaned, always aware of the effect such talk had on a man.
She dropped her face to the pillow and arched her back, exposing an oblong patch of hair that was matted with dampness. He got to his knees and inched forward, his thick shaft arching for relief. Once he had his knees between hers, he ran the swollow head of his cock up and down her slit, savoring her wetness.
“Ahhhhh. Jesus! Assssh!” she groaned as she tried to back on to him. “Fuck me!”
Tallman obliged. He stopped at her hole and bucked violently forward, driving his rod to the bottom of her hot cunt. Then he leaned over her and grabbed her tits out of the loose silk and began to twirl the hard nipples. Slowly, he pulled back and forth as her secretions flowed down his balls. Vivian moved her hand to the top of her womanhood, resting on her shoulder and one arm. While he pumped her wet cunt and fondled her hanging tits, she fingered her love button. Both were lost. Reality abandoned, they moved like a locomotive with four drivewheels, pistons throbbing, wheels spinning in perfect synchronization, steam hissing, connecting rods thumping.
“Fuck me!” she grunted as waves of pleasure began to overcome her.
Tallman held her tits and pumped with superhuman speed as he felt the first tingling spasm.
“Ahhhh. Oh! Oh, Ash!” she grunted between rapid breaths.
Oblivious of any other occurrence in the world, they tangled in final blows, Tallman gushing pent-up seed, Vivian releasing a flood of juice. Shuddering in unison, they pushed toward the final wave; then they slept.
FIFTEEN
As Tallman paced under the gray morning sky, he swore to himself that he would go to his Chicago hideaway after the pending Wells Fargo job and sleep for three days straight. His eyes were sore from a lack of shuteye and he longed for a steaming cup of coffee. Vivid images of his one decent breakfast at the Poste y Dehesa restaurant broke the morning’s boredom and caused his stomach to rumble. He’d been staked out near the house of the messenger for over an hour. Tallman looked toward the mountains and smiled. He reached inside his plain but carefully constructed rawhide jacket and snatched a thin cigar from his blue cotton shirt. Since he had decided to force the action in the case, he had discarded Cyrus Purdy in favor of his comfortable Levis, well-worn expensive boots, tailored shirt, and flat-brim Stetson.
He fired up the cheroot and looked toward the house of the stranger. Nothing. He flipped the match on to the damp earth, snugged his Stetson, adjusted the side holster he’d put on in place of his concealed rig, and resumed his pacing.
As the gray sky began to turn light blue, the residential street began to stir. Then, shortly after the warm rays of the sun broke over Eagle Peak, the man who had visited the bent-nosed Judd Hall the night before emerged from his little house. Tallman carefully noted the man’s clothing and hat and stayed well away from the unsuspecting stranger. After a short walk past plain women shaking carpets, slashing walks with brooms, and shouting kids off to school, the messenger turned on to Commercial Street. Tallman moved closer to his mark, as the business district was already teeming with activity. Two blocks north on the Commercial plank-walk, the man stopped, turned, and entered a familiar door.
Tallman stopped dead in his tracks, shook his head, and beamed a broad smile. Oldham’s problem was about to be solved.
The man had walked right into the Wells Fargo office.
Tallman lifted and reseated his Stetson and strolled into the office.
“Mr. Oldham in?” he asked the stranger, who was just hanging his coat on a wooden peg.
“No doubt,” the young Judas answered. “Usually the first one here and the last one to leave. Figure he loves this place more than life itself.”
Tallman caught a sour note in the man’s voice.
“What’s your name, mister?” Tallman asked the blond-haired young man.
“Billy Harkins. Express clerk.”
“Ash Tallman, Pinkerton agent,” he said, his eyes fixed on the man’s questioning gaze as he slowly unholstered his Colt, thumbed the hammer, and put cold steel right on the clerk’s forehead. One of the other employees gasped. Then the office went stil
l. “Billy,” Tallman went on. “What say you and I go talk to Mr. Oldham about stage robbery and murder.”
“Damn,” someone moaned.
“Let’s go, Billy,” he said as he pressed the barrel tighter to the express clerk’s forehead. “And I want the rest of you to stay put. No one leaves this office. And no one says a thing. Otherwise you’ll be up on charges. Conspiracy to commit murder.”
The clerk backed slowly toward Oldham’s door as Tallman kept the Colt’s muzzle pressed to his pale skin. The Judas was frightened white.
“What the hell’s—” Oldham stammered as the pair came into his office. “What the hell are you—”
“Thought you might like a few words with Judas reincarnated before I got to work on him,” Tallman said in a monotone. “Might not be much left of this slime by the time I’m finished.”
“Jesus Christ . . . Billy,” Oldham wheezed. “Why?”
“I don’t know what he is talking about,” the clerk spat, his voice cracking. “He’s crazy!”
“I caught him passing information on tomorrow’s shipment.”
Oldham sighed. Tallman had not known of the shipment.
“He told Judd Hall and Traber. And Hall then went right to Jarrott. And we know Jarrott is linked to Pearl Bowen and her cutthroats. Case is all but locked up,” he added, hoping to set the clerk up to squeal all he knew.
“You son-of-a-bitch,” Oldham shouted as he grabbed the clerk by the collar. His face went purple as he twisted the man’s shirt tight against his Adam’s apple and lifted him to his toes. “We’ve lost four good men, had two passengers killed, two women raped, and Wes Herman is over at Doc Alexander’s, gutshot and missin’ two balls!”
“But I didn’t—”
“Shut up, you scum!” Tallman said as he pushed Oldham off and put his Colt in its leather. “Keep your goddamned mouth shut and listen. You are likely going to hang with the whole town lookin’ on. We have you cold, son.” Tallman knew that they needed more than they had to lock up Jarrott and Traber. But he was hoping to turn the express clerk on the others. “But there is an outside chance we might be able to persuade the judge to let you live if you cut the bullshit and come straight with us.”
Harkins, seeing the Pinkerton’s gun holstered, darted for the open door. Tallman, expecting a move like that, swung on the willowy clerk, catching him between the shoulder blades with his right fist. With a thump and a whoosh of air, the man sprawled forward and skidded across the wooden floor on his face. Tallman walked over, picked the clerk up by his belt, and jerked him into a chair. Then the Judas began to sob, his shoulders bucking forward, bloody snot dripping from his scraped nose.
“All I did was tell ’em when,” he sobbed. “I never killed nobody.”
“You goddamned—you—you bastard! You might as well have killed them yourself,” Oldham shouted.
“Cool down, Perry,” Tallman broke in.
“Jesus. To think of Wes,” Oldham mumbled as he went to his desk.
“Go on, Billy,” he urged, affecting a fatherly voice.
“They gave me five hundred dollars each time. That’s all. I just told Judd Hall when, and they paid me.”
“Goddamn!” Oldham shouted. “Five hundred dollars! You sold out four of the people you worked with for five hundred dollars!”
“That’s right!” the clerk spat. His whimpering suddenly turned to rage. “A man can’t live on what you pay. Fuckin’ Wells Fargo. You and the bankers, the railroads, the shopkeepers, and the politicians. Break a man’s back and throw him away. My old man died laying rails, and they barely took time to bury the poor old son-of-a-bitch. Fuck all of you!”
Oldham got out of his chair, his arms tense, his fists balled the size of small melons. The barrel-chested district superintendent could have killed the spindly clerk with one blow. Oldham’s eyes were burning embers.
“Perry! Relax. You’ll get your satisfaction when he falls through the scaffolding.”
Oldham slumped back into his chair and slammed his fist on his cluttered desk, causing a large wind-up clock to jump to the floor.
“Stand up, Harkins,” Tallman ordered as he jerked the clerk out of the chair. He was now angry with the Judas after hearing the man’s little speech. Tallman had always believed that each man has control of life until the end, and that whimpering malcontents like Harkins were the curse of the earth, the pawns of vain politicians who rode to power on class-struggle rhetoric. They were, in his mind, evil men without even knowing it. And, in his mind, that made them more dangerous than any two Doc Strouds. “So you got it all figured out, Billy?” Tallman said as he undid the man’s belt and jerked it off. “Everybody in the world who ever got anywhere is the reason you’re nobody.” He tied the clerk’s hands behind his back. “People have been singing that tune since the beginning of time, my friend.” He pushed the clerk back into the chair. “And it got them just about as far as it’s going to get you,” he went on, as he pulled his five-inch boot knife and sliced the sleeve off the man’s shirt. “One-way fare to Hell, boy,” Tallman said as he gagged the Judas with his severed shirt sleeve.
He turned to Oldham. “That a closet?”
“Yeah.”
He grabbed the chair by its back and dragged the clerk and the chair into the closet. With the door still open, he asked Oldham if he could trust the district manager not to kill Harkins. He was only half kidding. Oldham was obviously enraged over the fate of his friend, Wes Herman.
“I have a mind to take his nuts,” Oldham answered.
“Leave his nuts,” Tallman said. “Just tap him in the head if he gives you any trouble . . . lightly.”
He slammed the closet door and whispered to Oldham. Tallman explained that if any word of Harkins’s confinement went beyond the office, they would lose the case and likely stand before the judge themselves. When Oldham suggested that they inform the law, Tallman reminded him of the trip Westfall made to the sheriff’s office. The Wells Fargo man got the message.
Once in the outer office, Tallman warned the employees that one word of the morning’s events would ruin their chances of capturing the outlaws and thus make the loose-lipped offender a party to the crime.
“I’ll go one further,” Oldham growled. “I’ve lost a couple of friends. And Wes Herman and I go twenty years back when we rode shotgun together. Any of you mess this up and I guarantee that you will not even make it to prison,” he went on as he put his hand on his small sidearm. “That clear?”
The nine people in the office understood perfectly, and it was obvious that most were eager to help.
“Let’s take a walk,” Tallman said, after carefully making eye-contact with each of the Wells Fargo employees.
Outside, he explained that he wanted someone to explain to Harkins’s wife that he’d been sent to San Manuel on business. He further explained that he wanted Pearl alive so that they could use her to break Jarrott.
“Then we’ll use Pearl, Jarrott, and Harkins to nail Traber and Hall. We’ll offer them a deal to testify against Traber. And believe me, we’ll need it. Something tells me Traber is more deeply entrenched in Territorial politics than we know. We will need everything we can get to make him walk the scaffold.”
“Those three should be enough.”
“No,” Tallman said as he bit the tip of a fresh cheroot. “I want insurance.”
“Insurance?”
“Westfall.”
Tallman waited in the shadows on the plankwalk across from the Buena Suerte. The street was alive with drunks, loud and on the lookout for a one-dollar piece of ass. The banjo, the bass, and the piano hammered out a lively tune, which easily rang beyond the stained-glass doors of Jarrott’s gaming joint. Westfall had been inside for two hours.
Finally, just after ten o’clock, the fat mayor waddled out of the jack-of-spades door. He hadn’t gone ten feet when he began jawing and backslapping with every other drunk he met on the boardwalk.
“Goddamn politicians,” Tallman
muttered under his breath. “God’s own personal joke on mankind.” He had been on Westfall’s tail for some time, hoping to find him alone, even though most glad-handed public officials were never alone.
But, to his distress, it was more of the same. It took the politician a half hour to go three blocks to his next stop, Novak’s Dance Hall, an obvious whorehouse.
As Westfall entered the pleasure house, Tallman slumped into a bench across the street and lit a cigar. One skill a good Pinkerton had to master was waiting.
Shortly after midnight, Westfall emerged from Novak’s. The streets had quieted some, as many of the locals had gone home to nagging wives. Only the hardcore drunks and gamblers remained. For them, the evening was just beginning.
After Westfall thumped along for two blocks, Tallman saw his first opportunity of the evening. He snatched his boot knife, surveyed the street quickly, and dashed the ten yards separating him from the mayor. He grabbed Westfall’s sleeve and flung him into the alley.
“One word, fat man, and I push a little harder,” he growled as he held the razor-sharp knife to Westfall’s throat, nicking the skin just hard enough to start a trickle of blood.
“Jesus, mister,” Westfall wheezed. “Take my money and my watch but please don’t hurt me! Please!”
“You are going to lose more than your watch unless you do just as I say. Now . . . let’s walk very slowly to the Wells Fargo office,” Tallman said, as he took the knife from Westfall’s neck and pressed the point into the fat man’s side. “One false move and I’ll slip this little baby into your heart so quick you won’t have time to say the first three words of the Lord’s Prayer.”
Without incident, they made their way to Oldham’s office. Westfall had kept up a steady stream of cowardly pleading all the while.
“What the hell is going on?” Westfall said when he saw Oldham. “What do you think you are doing?”