He asked about that as he followed the pretty breed down the hall. She said it made no sense to her either if those government gents were really dealing in good faith with as smart an old cuss as Chief Pocatello. He followed her into her own room, and realized he might have made a tactical error when Tupombi slammed the door shut cuid turned and grabbed for him in the sudden darkness.
He suspected she'd played this sort of nanipka in the dark in the past, judging from her aim as she took advantage of the load he was packing to kiss him, French, and grope him, dirty, at the same time.
He let go of his saddle to grab her back, if only in self-defense, as she demurely hoisted her fringed deerskin skirts to run a naked thigh between his legs when they wound up against the securely shut door. He savored her sweet kissing a spell, being only human, but warned her as they came up for air, "I'd sure like to. Miss Tupombi. I want you so bad right now I can taste it. But there's a time and a place for everything, and we'd never forgive ourselves if we found out Dame Rora and her party were being tortured to death all the time we were enjoying one another!"
She hadn't been wearing anything at all under that red deerskin, and began to rub her fuzzy little self against the bulging front of his tweed pants as she clung tightly to him, husking,
"Speak for yourself. I'm not going to let them torture you, Custis. Not if I have to shame myself all the way with you right here and now!"
He was feeling mighty ashamed of the way his old organ-grinder was rising to the occasion despite his determination to behave in a more responsible manner. He caught himself wondering whether it would matter if they tore off just a quick one to sort of settle their nerves before they rode out to see if Dame Flora and her party needed help. Then he gently but firmly stiff-armed Tupombi away, growling, "Hold the thought, and once we know what's up out yonder I promise I'll get it up for you some more."
When she tried to press close again his voice got harder, saying, "I mean it, honey. I'm a lawman first and a ladies' man when it don't stand betwixt me and my duty. So stand aside and let me be on my damned way with or without your help, hear?"
Before she could answer they both stiffened in each other's arms at the roar of at least two revolvers, big ones, blasting the shit out of something, or somebody, close!
Longarm shoved the little breed gal so hard she wound up flat on her bed covers across the room. He hadn't meant to shove her that hard but damn it, she'd been in the way of his cross-draw as he'd spun and grabbed the knob with his other fist.
He had his .44-40 out as he slid out into the hallway from a direction that other cuss down the way must not have expected. The buckskin-clad stranger gasped in wide-eyed terror as he turned from the smoke-filled doorway of Longarm's original room, two smoking .45-55 Schofields in hand, as Longarm told him conversationally, "Drop them guns and grab some rafters nowV
The mysterious stranger hesitated. So Longarm fired thrice, dead center between those fucking gun muzzles trained his way, and that, of course, inspired the unfortunate who'd just shot up his room to stagger back, bounce off a stucco wall, and thud wetly to the floorboards faceup, atop
the nastier exit wounds of Longarm's rapid fire through his rib cage.
Longarm stayed where he was, reloading, as Tupombi joined him by her doorway while others called up the stairs at them. Longarm called back, "Somebody best fetch Bishop Reynolds some more. I suspect I just got the one who got away this afternoon."
Moving in through the clearing smoke with his own gun loaded six-in-the-wheel, Longarm spotted one of the other man's bigger thumb-busters on the floor between baseboard and bloody buckskin. The stoutly framed army-issue revolver had been rechambered for those more lethal rounds and fitted with tailored grips, likely Mex, carved from mussel shell or maybe real mother-of-pearl. So Longarm muttered, "Howdy, Pearly. Now all we got to figure out is the true identity of Pappy, after which we might be able to figure out why killing me was so important to you determined rascals."
Tupombi pointed through the clearing smoke at some goose down floating out the door of Longarm's room. He nodded and said, "Yep, it was my own poor feather bed he just shot the liver and lights out of, the poor bastard."
He couldn't resist adding, with a lopsided grin, "Ain't you glad you waited till we was in your room before you tried to get us both into such a ridiculous position?"
Chapter 9
The gunplay had naturally been heard all over a town as modest as that one, and one advantage of small-town crowds for a lawman was the simple fact that most everyone in such a crowd knew most everyone else in town. So it didn't take long to establish Pearly as a total stranger to those parts as well.
This time Bishop Reynolds showed up with his temporal boss, a High Sheriff Alcott who didn't rank as high in church affairs but still seemed a Saint it wasn't safe to offer a cheroot to. So Longarm didn't, and when he said he had to ride on after those Scotch folk as soon as possible, the stem old High Sheriff told him it wasn't possible, but that he'd send a posse comitatus out to bring Dame Flora and her party back, dead or alive.
Meanwhile, having shot two men within twenty-four hours in or about Zion County, Deseret, they thought the least a gentile stranger who claimed to be a lawman could do would be to explain some of this infernal gunplay at a formal sit-down with the county coroner, who was off somewhere hunting strays at the moment. It didn't really cheer Longarm all that much to learn they'd elected a gentile stockman with some knowledge of veterinary medicine as their county coroner.
But after some consideration Longarm decided it might be best if he went along with the local lawmen, who knew the
local lay of the land way better than he did.
It stood to reason a posse of riders familiar with the rugged range this side of Fort Hall would be able to search it at least as thoroughly, in far safer numbers. And besides, he'd still been sent all this way to ride herd on those other dudes, bogged down or forted up, whichever, in the other direction entirely.
The manager allowed they'd be proud to overnight him some more, and rustled him up another room, a couple of doors closer to the one Tupombi and his possibles were in. He didn't say so as Lulu led him up there after things had simmered down and then left him unmolested to go back down and molest the manager some more.
Longarm lit a sneaky cheroot from the candlestick Lulu had left him and smoked it down, reclined across the unwounded feather bed with the window sash flung wide. Then, figuring the others had bedded down for a spell, he got back up and slipped out into the mighty dark hallway without that lit candlestick. For he knew where he was headed and it was nobody else's beeswax.
Tupombi opened up, although just a candlelit slit, without yelling through the door he'd tapped on discreetly. He could still see she didn't go to bed in deerskins. But she was standing sideways lest he spy anything important as she braced her bare hip against that damned door, murmuring, "Heavens, I was almost asleep and what are you doing at my door at this hour, Custis?"
He said, "Rapping on it, of course. Ain't you fixing to invite a man in for just a minute?"
It was tough to read her eyes with all the light coming from behind her bare ass like that. So when she fluttered her lashes and demanded to know what sort of a girl he thought she was, he decided to take her at her word. He didn't know any Indian words for "prick-teaser," although that game was hardly confined to the gals of his own persuasion.
He said, "I ain't out to trifle with any wards of the government. Miss Tupombi. I only need some stuff from my saddlebags, and as you'd likely notice if you'd be kind enough to