He smiled down at her uncertainly to reply, “They'll never hear it from me. But to what might I owe this honor, Miss Connie?”
She turned to throw the barrel bolt and lock herself in with him as she said, “Family trouble. The
propietaria
just told me you were staying here. She feared you might have followed me to her door. Did you know I was staying here, Dunk?”
He answered, truthfully, “Not before El Moro told me. We were in that cantina across the way and I asked what sort of posada this might be. He said it was too luxurious for poor but honest cowboys and threw in the fact that you and Slim stayed here now and again when the two of you were in San Antone.”
She frowned and said, “I'll have to speak to him about that. Nobody riding for me has ever stayed anywhere with me. It's not that I'm a prude or a lesbian. It's simply not done!”
He nodded soberly and said, “Servants and enlisted men will get sort of uppity if you let âem, ma'am. You say you're having family troubles?'
She nodded and said, “More than I can tell you, until such time as I can be sure I can
trust
you!”
Then she commenced to unbutton her blouse as she added, “I never had much respect for Irene Pantages as a business-woman. But I'd have never thought of such an easy way to test a man with tailored gun grips if she hadn't been so forward first.”
Longarm gulped and said, “Hold on, Miss Connie, are you trying to seduce me to make sure I ain't no lawman?”
She tossed her blouse aside, having no call to be ashamed of her proud tawny tits, proportioned more for appearance than size, and he had no complaints about the firm but feminine torso they sprouted out from, either, as she calmly replied, “I've thought all along you were a hired gun or maybe a bounty hunter. I once served coffee and cake to a polite but impish older man called Buckshot Roberts. You knew him up in Lincoln County, of course.”
Longarm tried to converse as matter-of-factly as possible. It wasn't easy. She unbuttoned her riding skirt and let it fall to the floor around her ankles as Longarm was saying, “Heard tell of him, maâam. They do say he was a bounty hunter, hired by the Murphy-Dolan faction. Are you serious about this, ma'am?”
She stepped out of the skirt in nothing but her Justin boots, with spurs, dusky blond all over as she moved over to the pallet and sank down atop the covers, saying, “They told us Buckshot Roberts killed Dick Brewer and wounded some of the other McSween riders as he went down in a thirteen-to-one gunfight. I'm not asking you to face such odds for my mother and me. But first I have to know you will never be able to testify against us in court.”
She lay back on the pallet with her eyes closed and her bared teeth clenched as she gritted, “Come have your way with me. I don't really mind.”
Of course, and as any married-up gal could have told her, there is nothing short of throwing a bucket of ice water over a man's naked ass that could possibly discourage an erection better than a gal saying she didn't really mind, in that superior tone young boys heard, all the time they were growing up, from mothers fixing to wash their fresh mouths out with soap, or schoolmarms fixing to give them a few good licks with a ruler.
He knew Billy Vail wouldn't want him messing with her in any case. She was so right about it being mighty unwise for a man who might have to arrest a gal even staring at her turgid nipples and inviting ring-dang-doo in broad-ass daylight, like so!
On the other hand, he had seen all she had to offer, and she'd be as able to say so whether he did more than peek or not. He was still a tad undecided as he absently unbuttoned his own duds, considering how he'd likely never get her to talk unless he made just a few sacrifices in the name of the law.
She'd been peeking, too, despite the way she was pretending to have her eyes closed. For as he dropped his jeans to stand over her in all his own bare glory she gaped and knocked her knees together, pleading, “Please be gentle, Dunk. I'm not pretending to be a convent girl, but I haven't had
that
much experience!”
He dropped to the pallet beside her to take her in hand, both ways, with his free hand softly strumming her Spanish guitar as their lips met for the first time.
They were both surprised by how sugar and spicy an almost innocent kiss could feel betwixt two experienced adults who'd been sleeping all alone after a day in the saddle.
So it seemed to warm her up considerable when he commenced to explore her pearly teeth with his tongue while he fingered her crotch in three-quarter time. For her thighs had suddenly been flung wide, and she reached down between them to grope for his old organ grinder.
As she grasped it, they both gasped, because she grasped good and because she'd seldom grasped anything she wanted that much.
As she guided it into position and Longarm simply settled into her love saddle to touch bottom with his raging erection and let fly the wad he'd been saving up for days, she sobbed, “Oh, no! Not so soon!”
Then she saw he had no intention of taking it out, or even stopping, and so, as he churned their mingled body juices inside her whilst she moved her hips to help, Longarm couldn't resist remarking, “I'm sure glad you're being such a sport about all this, ma'am. I know it must feel disgusting as all get-out, but you know what brutes we menfolk are to you fastidious little things.”
She laughed like a mean little kid and said, “Shut up and do that faster. I'm surprised beyond words. But I seem about to come, and I'm so happy that you're going to kill that son of a bitch for me!”
Chapter 21
Connie got on top so he could nibble her nipples whilst she talked. Longarm might have felt bad about the two-faced position he was in if the position they were in hadn't felt so good.
When she asked how much he charged to kill a man, he told her he had to know who she might have in mind. So she said, “His name's Jim Hogan. He claims to be a friend of my kid brother. But would any friend blackmail your poor old mother, threatening to tell the law where her wayward son was unless she paid him to keep quiet?”
He didn't think he ought to tell her he'd be willing to make a deal with her Jim Hogan, seeing they had no outstanding warrants on anybody by that handle, once you left out the gunplay in Judge Dickerson's courtroom. He thrust his hips teasingly and asked, “How come you can't sic your high-priced law firm on the jasper?”
She clamped down with her vaginal muscles, saying, “I just told you. He told our mother he knows where David is, and he's warned her he'd be proud to tell anyone she brought in to the case. He says he has nothing to hide. It's her son the law wants to know about.”
Longarm kissed a bouncing breast thoughtfully and tried, “All I know about your kid brother is what I've been told about his wild nature. But didn't somebody say this Jim Hogan was one of the gents who busted him out of some jail?”
She nodded, bounced, and replied, “It was a federal court-house. David was on trial for his life. They even killed a lawyer on our side and wounded another. But Jim Hogan says nobody can prove who fired at whom or whether they fired at all. I told my mother I thought he was bluffing. She's too frightened to take that chance. I don't know how much he's extorted from her, so far. I've only seen him at a distance. Each time he gets word to her and she agrees to meet with him alone he tells her that will be the last hush-money she has to give him. I have told her there is never enough money to satisfy a blackmailer and since she won't listen, I want Jim Hogan dead. It is not as if I was asking you to shoot a business rival or even a false lover. The man is a wanted outlaw. You won't get in any trouble if you kill him. They may offer you a bounty on top of mine. How much do I have to offer you to rid us of this pest?”
He'd gotten poker-hard again but resisted the impulse to roll her over and finish right in her juicy little ring-dang-doo. He said he'd have to study on that and asked where her brother might be and why he wouldn't be willing to keep the business in the family, seeing nobody was after anyone else.
She answered, simply, “I don't know where David is. If our mother does, she refuses to tell anyone else. Not even me. I haven't been able to make her take me along when she goes to meet with Jim Hogan. David could be long gone, or my poor misguided mother could be hiding him as she has done in the past.”
He couldn't hold out any longer. So they came together with her on the bottom in a long mutual miracle, and then he felt calm enough to ask how come she thought her mother was misguided.
She kissed him, sighed, and said, “You've surely heard what sort of man my mischievous little brother grew up to be. We've tried everything. Nobody can reason with him. I know they say blood's thicker than water, but David is just plain evil! I don't know why she's the only one who's never been able to see that. But she's helped him time and time again, no matter what he's done or who he's hurt, and now she's throwing good money after bad, paying off a blackmailer with a bottomless thirst for blood money!”
He propped himself up on one elbow to twist some damp pubic hair thoughtfully as he asked why she couldn't just cut her mother's money off.
She moved his hand to a more serious position as she replied in a conversational tone, “It's her money as much as it's mine. I run the family business because I'm best suited to the chore, not because I'm the sole owner of the D Bar L.
I can't stop her from making payment after payment as long as Jim Hogan is alive. On the other hand, she'd have a time paying blackmail to a dead man, and, as I said, there may be extra bounty money posted on him. Can I get on top again?”
Without waiting for his permit she swung a tawny bare leg over him to plant a spurred boot on either side of his naked hips as she braced her hunkered weight under her center of gravity with a naked buttock almost getting spur-raked every time she squatted all the way with him as far up inside her as she went. So he didn't ask just how she meant to set the treacherous Jim Hogan up for assassination. They had a long and likely mighty pleasant ride back to Sheffield-Crossing ahead of them to work such details out. She must have been thinking along the same because once she'd pleasured herself another time that way she all of a sudden said, “I have to get back to my own room,
Querido.
My
segundo
must not know how much I favor you, and I asked him to awaken me early this afternoon so we can meet our buyer at the bank this evening.”
He almost asked a dumb question. But it stood to reason a bank that shut down for
la Siesta
early in the day would open up again once things cooled off. He asked if she wanted him to tag along and back Slim when they were payed off, seeing they were talking about real money.
She slowly slid off his semi-erection with a dreamy smile and told him, “The less others see us together, the less they may suspect us of what we might be up to. Chongo will be there with us, and we only have to take the money across Military Plaza from that meat packer's bank to my own. You did not think I meant to ride all the way home with that much cash, did you? My bank in Sheffield-Crossing draws on their main branch here in San Antonio to honor my checks for me. As I keep telling my poor mother, it's not safe to keep a lot of money around any house.”
Longarm started to ask if the older woman wrote checks or just drew cash from their family account when she met up with that Jim Hogan. But he didn't want her daughter to wonder why he was so interested in any members of her family.
So he lit a cheroot and watched fondly as she cleaned herself up at the corner stand and dressed with a facility that made a man wonder just how often she might find herself in such situations, whether it was smart to diddle the hired help or not.
Then she was gone, just as he was warning himself to be fair and not hold a sporting horsewoman to more rigorous standards than a rider of the male persuasion.
He rolled up to lock the door after her, had himself his own whore bath at the corner stand, rubbing the soap rag that had washed her old ring-dang-doo over his own organ grinder, and lay back down to smoke and laze as it got ever hotter, and he was sort of glad he lay there in his birthday suit alone.
He caught a few winks of fitful sleep, and then he was jarred back to his senses by a rumble of thunder and sat up to enjoy the sudden cool as little wet frogs seemed to be doing a war dance in the tree branches just outside.
He got up and rubbed a damp rag over himself to peel off another layer of sweat. Then, seeing his pocket watch said it was after four in the afternoon and his stomach said it was feeling empty, he began to slowly dress while the rain came down outside and heat lightning painted the 'dobe walls chalk-white from time to time.
He figured Connie and her boys would be fixing to meet that buyer over to Military Plaza any time, now. The banks would be opening once more and, even better, so would the swell chili joints of San Antone.
He dressed slow to give them time to catch up with him. Standing in a rain storm waiting for a chili joint to open would feel foolish as hell. He considered that cantina just across the way. You could likely see from the posada's front door whether they were open again or not.
But he didn't want to be bothered with El Moro, those two other jokers, or that lago Casas playing big bad man from Fort Sumner.
Fort Sumner wasn't a trail town to be compared with Dodge or even Abilene before they sissied it up. There was little there but a bunch of old army buildings converted to saloons, card houses, posadas, and such, with old Pete Maxwell living in what had been the colonel's quarters back when there'd been call for an army installation there.