“More than enough,” Longarm said, paying his bill and starting for the door.
“You comin’ back for breakfast?”
“I expect so,” Longarm replied as he passed outside.
Longarm wasn’t paying attention to where he was going and had no excuse when he plowed into a couple on the busy boardwalk.
“Excuse me!” Longarm said, grabbing the young woman. “I am sorry!”
She straightened herself and looked up into his face. A big smile creased her lips and she exclaimed, “Custis! Custis Long! My gosh, but it’s been a while since I saw you last!”
“Irma?”
“Why, sure!” she squealed, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him tight. “Who else! And how could either of us ever forget that wild night we spent together in Denver?”
Longarm grinned. “I sure haven’t,” he said, remembering that Irma was one of the wildest women he’d ever had in bed. Not only that, but she was pretty and amusing. They’d had one hell of a good time together.
“Come on, dammit,” the man beside Irma growled as he yanked her roughly forward.
“Hey!” she cried. “Don’t be so rough!”
“Yeah, well I didn’t pay you three dollars to bat your eyelashes trying to drum up more business.”
Irma tried to pull away, but the man jerked her even harder. “You want your money or not?” he shouted.
“You can have it back!”
“I don’t want it back! Now come along or I’ll-“
Longarm had heard enough. He took three long strides and his hand locked on the man’s arm. “The lady is going to give you back your money, mister. I think you’d better take it and leave—while you’re still able.”
The man glared at him. He was smaller than Longarm and probably a little younger, lean and angry-looking. The man’s hand dropped to hover over the gun resting on his hip. “Stranger,” he growled, “I paid for this whore and I’m takin’ her to my room. Now, if you want to see another sunrise, you’d best get outa my way.”
Irma started to step between them, but Longarm eased her aside saying, “I think you’d better let me handle him.”
“Elliot is real fast with a gun. Custis, I don’t want you killed!”
“You hear the lady?” Elliot asked. “She don’t want you killed, which is what you are going to be unless you clear out fast.”
“Touch that gun and I’ll shove it down your throat,” Longarm warned.
Elliot went for his gun and he was fast. Longarm just had an instant in which to slam a straight right fist into Elliot’s jaw, causing him to fire his gun into the boardwalk. Before he could lift and take aim for a second shot, Longarm hit him with a vicious uppercut that sent him crashing off the boardwalk into an empty water trough.
When Elliot recovered enough to lift his gun in one last attempt to shoot, Longarm booted him in the crotch.
“Ahhhh!” the man howled, falling back into the empty trough and clutching his groin.
Longarm wrenched Elliot’s pistol from his grasp and hurled it end over end so that it landed on the roof of the nearest building.
“You big sonofabitch!” Elliot screamed. “I paid for her.”
“Here!” Irma snapped, tearing Elliot’s three dollars out of her handbag and hurling it into his pain-contorted face. “Keep your money! With your balls kicked halfway up your damn throat, I expect that it’ll be weeks before you’ll even be able to piss straight, much less pleasure yourself or some poor damn woman.”
Irma slipped her arm through Longarm’s as people from a nearby saloon began to emerge, curious as to what all the commotion was about.
“My room or yours?” Longarm asked.
“Let’s try mine first,” she said, leading him away.
Her room was not as nice as his own, but it would do. She led him inside and then locked the door, saying, “I’ve got some whiskey and I expect we both need a drink.”
“I expect so,” Longarm agreed. “Irma, I thought you were going to quit whoring.”
“I will, one of these days.”
“And one of these days some hothead like Elliot might kill you.”
“I know,” she said, finding a bottle and glasses. “Elliot is a bad one, all right. But he pays well and he never got rough with me before.”
Longarm knew it was pointless to give this pretty young woman a lecture. Irma was her own person and as tough as nails. She was a brunette with a full figure and a mischievous smile that bordered on making her look slightly devilish. She also had gorgeous legs and a beautiful bottom. But tonight, he could see that she looked worn and world-weary.
Irma was trembling too, and Longarm pretended not to notice how the bottle rattled against the rim of their glasses as she poured their drinks.
“You haven’t been taking care of yourself like you were in Denver,” he said. “Why did you leave to come up to a boom town like this?”
“They ran me out of Denver.” Irma handed him a whiskey. “Maybe I should have told the Denver law that you were my very good friend, huh?” she said.
She was teasing him and he knew it. “I very much doubt that would have cut you any slack,” he replied. “But you could have come to my place and holed up until things blew over.”
“I would have,” Irma said, “but I made a mistake.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” she said, taking a big drink and sighing with regret, “I met a man in Denver who had struck gold up here. He was doing the town and we got along pretty well. He had a damn feed bag of gold to spend, and I figured that he needed someone to help him celebrate.”
“I’ll bet.”
“He was even nice,” Irma said. “I tried to talk him into a share of his gold mine.
“Good for you.”
“He resisted … at first. But you know that I can be pretty persuasive.”
“I do know,” he said, eyes dropping to the lovely swell of her bosom.
“His name was Darin and he begged me to come up here and stay in Jasper Rock with him.”
“And you agreed.”
“Why, sure! He owned a big gold mine. But before I agreed to come, I got him drunk, screwed his brains out, and made him sign an agreement giving me a third of his gold mine. After that, I figured I was finally on my way to riches.”
“Why is it,” Longarm asked, “that I have a feeling this story is not going to turn out well?”
“Because you’re looking at a practicing whore. A very tired one too.”
“What happened to your mining man?”
Irma drained her glass. She poured a refill, then replied, “Darin was shot to death the first night we arrived in this town. The next day, four different men showed up at the courthouse with false titles to his gold mine. My title was just a scrap of paper with his drunken scrawl.”
“And you were left out in the cold.”
“Almost.”
“You should return to Denver.”
But Irma shook her head. “There’s a lot of money to be made in Jasper Rock. I intend to find myself another rich miner. I wish you were rich instead of just strong and handsome, Custis.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she whispered, hands reaching for the buttons of his pants. She extracted his rod and rubbed it against herself until Longarm grew hard. “Big as ever, honey.”
Longarm just smiled and sipped her good whiskey while she went to her knees and took him into her mouth. He closed his eyes and smiled with contentment.
“And you’re as good as ever, Irma.”
After several minutes, he took her to bed and they eagerly made love. They were both tired and not quite as lively as they’d been down in Denver, but neither of them complained.
After Irma stiffened in ecstasy and then hugged his neck tightly, she whispered, “Why don’t you take me down to Denver and make me an honest woman? I’d be a good wife for you, even a mother if you wanted children.”
“Of course you would be,” he whispered in her ear. “But I’m not a marrying man. And besides, you must have figured that I was here on business.”