He learned not to tongue her when she sobbed she wasn’t that sort of a madel—and damned if he wasn’t starting to follow her High Dutch.
They said that famous British spy Richard Burton could learn a new Hindu dialect over a weekend by going to bed with what he called a “horizontal dictionary.” The queen kept refusing to knight him because he kept saying things like that in mixed company. But old “Nigger Dick,” as his fellow officers called him behind his back, had warned of that Sepoy Mutiny, if only his commanders had listened, because he could pass for a native and often did, carrying on scandalously with all those Hindu dancers who taught him how to talk as dirty as any Hindu.
Helga didn’t smoke in bed, although she seemed to enjoy toying with his old organ-grinder as they cuddled close for their second wind. She’d been right about her cot being sort of snug for two.
He lit a cheroot for himself as he stared up at the slanted ruby red ceiling, mildly surprised it was still so early. He could hear a lot of conversation coming down the sleepy trail at them. for it was way earlier than he usually turned in, and there were limits to what a man could do in bed with a gal, however bouncy, who’d only do it the old-fashioned way.
Blowing a thoughtful smoke ring, Longarm mused aloud, “I can’t go picturing the one left as a bewhiskered cuss with a vaudeville accent. There’s no natural law saying it has to be Wolf Ritter to begin with. And Ritter’s been running loose in this country, doubtless spending his own nights with horizontal dictionaries, and could sound like a natural cuss if he puts his mind to it.”
She murmured, “Bitte?” Which likely meant she was having trouble following his drift again.
He explained. “Neither of those two locked up by the town law could have shot out your shop window earlier. They were rounded up by your Werner Sattler as they were lurking down by the creek. They swear they were fishing. They were likely looking for their pals, Tiny Tim and old Slick. That washerwoman we figure all four were staying with backs up their stubborn story. I wonder why.”
Helga gave his tool a playful quarter turn as she said, “Ach, so smart you are! You at the table said those two in the saloon acted as if they were not you expecting!”
He took another drag on his cheroot and agreed. “The numbers tally to at least five with cause to disapprove of me. First one morose individual pegs a shot at my back, out front of your shop. A few minutes later Sattler’s boys grab two obvious strangers when they see ‘em hanging about down by the creek with no local address they care to give. Their two pals the local deputies failed to spot as suspicious were acting more innocently in that saloon. From what I heard passing through, Tiny Tim was for riding on whilst Slick Dawson was hoping to bail their pals out. Like you said, neither of ‘em spotted me as the law when I was drinking in the same room with ‘em. They only recognized me as trouble when I came back with a Winchester acting more troublesome!”
She kissed him under the ear and said, “The one who does know so much trouble you are was the one who chased you inside to meet me, so freundlich! So it is he who has your Washfrauh too afraid to tell the truth, ja?”
He shrugged a bare shoulder under her unbound blond hair and said, “That washerwoman could be just another hard case with no love for the law. To get such folks to talk, you have to convince ‘em there’s something in it for them. We couldn’t budge her at the hearing this afternoon. There’s not a dime’s worth of bounty posted on the two birds we have in the hand. We can’t tempt her with what was posted on those two more serious killers, now that they’ve been killed. I’ve told Martin Link and Trooper O’Donnel how to put in for the rewards on both those bad apples. My boss doesn’t approve when we do it, and somebody ought to collect on their otherwise worthless hides.”
She began to stroke him faster as she coyly decided there might be some value left in his hide down yonder.
He said, “Let me get rid of this smoke and position you a mite strategically then. It ain’t that I don’t enjoy swapping spit with you, pretty lady. But now and again it inspires a man to new heights when he enters at a new angle.”
She pouted that she liked to be kissed at the same time a lot, and bitched about a mean boy she’d almost married before she found out he had unnatural vices.
As he rolled her on her side with her smooth soft back to him, she gasped, “Nein! I will not in the Greek manner hear of it!”
Then she arched her spine and gasped, “Ach du Lieber!” as they both enjoyed the way his semi-erection slid into her smooth wet womanhood with her behind against his belly. So a good time was had by all as she decided that that seemed to be another proper position, although vulgar enough to feel wickedly exiting, like Gypsy music in church.
In the end he had her on her hands and knees, taking his full thrusts dog style, as she swept the rumpled bedding with her wildly tossed blond hair and moaned and groaned in High Dutch that sounded awesomely dirty. The room was almost dark by then. So he kept catching flashes of sweeping hair and pale bare buttocks as, outside, summer lightning proceeded to flash regularly. Then, as he was pounding her to glory, hail started pounding on the roof right over them. So he was mighty surprised when the buxom blonde suddenly shot forward, spitting him out like a big watermelon seed, and gasped, “Ach! Someone is coming!”
Longarm grunted, “Yep, me,” as he dropped down atop her to ram it back in—he thought. She sobbed, “Not in me there! Can’t you hear it? Someone in the shop is around fucking!”
Longarm was already off her and listening, hauling on his jeans as he decided, “She’s got good ears too. Or mayhaps she’s better at the night creaks of familiar surroundings.”
She groped for him in the gloom, saying, “Don’t go. I have angst and do not now hear anything!”
Longarm said, “That’s because he’s already busted off enough of that window boarding to get in. It’s likely a thief. I was afraid my hasty carpentry would be tempting.”
He strapped on his six-gun and then, since she’d started to cry, he groped in the duds on the floor for his watch c am, hauled out his watch and attached derringer, and placed the wicked little gun in her frightened right fist, saying, “Make sure it’s somebody you’d like to see dead before you even point this bitty thing. For it may seem small, but it packs two awesome punches.”
Then he rose on his bare feet and said, “Hold the thought. I’ll be right back if we’ve been imagining things. Where’s that key ring, honey?”
She said, “On that table near the door. Don’t leave me here so scared to feel! We can try it in the Greek manner if you will stay here only!”
He groped his way to her key ring, and headed down the steep steps and across the yard through the storm, grateful to the Ruggles gals if this was their doing. For while it had to be playing hell in the wheat fields all around, the widely spaced but seriously thudding hail served to mask any footfalls of a barefoot boy with a key ring in one hand and a six-gun in the other.
He crouched in the storm on the back steps as he slowly turned a key in the backdoor lock, braced for nasty surprises even though he knew that the big vault hadn’t been visible from the kitchen.
As he cracked the door open he heard someone whisper, “What was that?” deeper in the darkness. A louder, more assured voice replied, “Stray draft from somewheres. Told you it was going to rain fire and brimstone tonight. Knew Heger never gave them the money. Got the soap in place. So hand over that dynamite juice and … Careful, you butterfingered … Jesus!”
Longarm threw himself out of line with the doorway and hit the kitchen floor as the darkness was rent by a thunderous blast! His breath was sucked out of him by the shock wave through the air as the whole building bucked on its foundations. Then it got deathly quiet, save for the soft steady dripping of something soggy stuck to a wall somewhere in the smoke-and-nitro-fume-filled darkness.