Longarm ducked back inside without waiting to see whether his last command to the kitchen boss had been obeyed. He saw right off why Zelda was still there. She'd gotten out of bed but she hadn't put anything on and she
was an ash-blonde all over as she stood there bold as brass and barefoot, defying him to say he didn't want her now.
To which Longarm could only reply, with a weary smile, "I never said I was a celibate monk. Miss Zelda. I said I was a lawman, on duty, who couldn't fuck with a known lawbreaker whether he wanted to or not."
She purred something about it hardly mattering since he'd said he felt no call to turn her in. So he found her duds atop her low-cut work shoes in one comer, and scooped them up in one bundle so he could grab her bare elbow with his other hand and steer her for the doorway while she protested he couldn't shove a naked lady out in the hallway as if she was some sort of trash.
But he could. So he did saying, "Aw, you ain't no lady, even if you are buck-naked, and the trash who sent you to buy off the law with some slap and tickle would know better than me what sort of trash you are."
Then he let go of her, her duds, and her shoes to crawfish back inside and slam the door with a grin as her wild swipe with clawed nails whipped through the empty space he'd just had his face in.
His grin faded as he bolted the door on the inside again while she bawled dreadful things about his manhood on the other side.
He was too proud, or perhaps too ashamed, to yell back he still had an erection Casanova might have been anxious to display as his own at one of his fancy French gatherings. He'd done what a man just had to do, at least with some women, and it was nobody's beeswax how damned stiff his old organ-grinder might be, or what he might be going to do about that now.
Chapter 6
A possibly sane old hermit who'd read the Good Book every night had once assured a much younger Custis Long that the Lord had not slain Onan, son of Judah, just for jacking off that time. The true sin of Onan, as soon as one studied on it, was the way a spiteful son of a bitch had jacked off smack in front of the poor widow woman the Lx)rd had just commanded him to come in.
It stood to reason that a Lord who took plain and simple jacking off hard would have wiped out the whole human race before poor Onan was ever bom, for as some prophet had once written, "Nine out of ten people play with themselves and that tenth one is a liar."
But Longarm managed not to that night, because of other considerations. It was true you didn't have to look your best or promise your hand you'd respect it in the morning, but as another prophet had written, likely in French, "Never jack off in the morning. You never know who you might meet at lunch."
A much younger Longarm had once been sore as hell at himself at a hotel fire, after meeting up after midnight with another guest who'd likely strummed herself to sleep just down the hall, unaware of how surprising life can get. So that night in Zion Longarm just sat on his damned windowsill, smoking in the dark and considering all the
trouble he might have just avoided, till he fell into bed too weary to care and hence woke up the next morning with an even stiffer one.
He just felt silly about that till he went downstairs to see if they'd still serve him some breakfast.
They wouldn't. The chairs were still stacked on the tables in the dining room, and when he stuck his head in the kitchen to ask how come, there was nobody there. He could tell by the cold clammy smell that they'd let the cast-iron range burn itself out entirely and they'd padlocked the far door to the pantry and root cellar.
It was true few if any wayfarers would show up for breakfast at an overnight stop they never stopped at. But Longarm had seen other names in the guest book when he'd signed in the night before, and even if he had been the only overnight guest, it seemed a tad unusual to let a wood-fed kitchen range cool down all the way if they ever meant to cook anything later in the day. For those heavy-duty ranges meant for serious restaurant cooking took their own sweet time to warm up, once you let them cool down to the temperature of Idaho in autumn.
He drifted out to the front desk, lighting a cheroot in hopes of staving off starvation till he could find somewhere else or, failing that, open a can of pork and beans up in his room. The big lobby, which doubled as a waiting room for the stage line, was a tad less clammy, thanks to a thoughtful fire of snapping and hissing pine logs in the big potbellied stove they'd planted smack in the middle of the cavernous space. Four earlier risers were seated around the potbelly. The only one worth looking at twice looked at least as hungry and twice as sore as Longarm. After that she was a high-toned beauty in a sidesaddle riding habit of loden green that made her auburn hair look more so. She wore that upswept, under a perky black derby held in such a precarious position by the veil that covered her cameo features as far down as her perky nose. As he stood there admiring her from the doorway with his morning hard-on,
she favored him with a frosty smile and asked if he worked for Overland. Her accent was hoity-toity British, and her tone was so cold he was glad he could deny the charge.
Once he had, he said, "I'm in the market for a good breakfast as well, ma'am. There ain't nobody in the kitchen, this morning. I ain't tried to jfind the manager yet. So why don't you all sit tight and I'll let you know as soon as I find out what's happened."
Neither the gal in green nor her drabber fellow travelers put up any argument. So Longarm ambled over to the desk by the front entrance, banged on the bell a few times, and when that failed to get results, strode through a far archway, yelling for some damned service. At that the room clerk from the night before stuck a bald head out his door to protest, "What's all this racket? Ain't Zelda minding the damned front as well as the dining room? It ain't as if this place gets all that busy this side of the evening stage, you know."
Noting the poor confused cuss was still wearing his nightshirt in the chill morning air, Longarm explained, "Ain't nobody here but five hungry guests, including me. Am I safe in assuming your missing mess staff might not be on the Overland payroll as regular help?"
The clerk nodded. "You are. I'm the manager here, and I make all the arrangements. Overland is interested in moving mail, freight, and passengers in that order. Feeding the sons of bitches has never been too profitable. So the company would as soon let others worry about that, on concession contracts. What might that have to do with the Robbins family running out on us so unexpected?"
Longarm asked more about the missing bunch, and established they were talking about Zelda, a half-wit they said was her brother, and an aunt and uncle named Robbins. Then he said, "It must have been guilty conscience, compounded by my unexpected willpower most likely. Miss Zelda's brother ain't the only dumb one in the family. But now that I think back, I ain't sure what she told me was
the only federal offense they were worried about. I wonder what I'd have found out if I'd spent a tad more time with that dishwater blonde they tried to tempt me with."
Then he took another drag on his almost-spent cheroot, shrugged, and added, "Be that as it may, they've lit out somewhere and it's past my usual breakfast time. So might there be another restaurant open at this hour in your fair city?"
The Overland man, being another gentile, felt free to laugh and make sneering reference to the odds on that in a close-knit little Mormon settlement. "Up to just a few minutes ago I'd have said this was the only place in Zion you could ask for coffee with your ham and eggs, or smoke afterwards. The local Mormons have their own places to eat all the meals a Mormon would want. They eat at home. Gentiles passing through have always eaten here. So I'll be switched if I can tell you where me and my Lulu are going to have breakfast once we get up."