She rather archly observed that that fat cook might not snore and certainly liked him. He'd already considered that and put it out of his mind without much strain. So he called ahead to their Ho-speaking guide, asking the kid just what the name Wadzewipa might mean.
The boy said, "Hard to say in English. Try someone who is lost, hopelessly lost, with no place to go back to."
Longarm thanked him and muttered he'd suspected it might mean something like that.
Dame Rora moved closer to murmur, "It has to be her, don't you think so, Custis?"
Longarm shrugged and replied, "Ain't paid to think about ladies who ain't done nothing wrong and just want to be left alone. They pay me to worry about ladies who've done something bad or had something bad done to them, like that lady of the locket."
"Una Munro," sighed Dame Flora, adding, "It's nice to meet such a gentleman of discretion. It's been over a year
since I have, and there are times I wish I didn't have to be so discreet myself."
He asked what she had to be so discreet about, aside from her nosing high and low for those missing Scotch spinsters. But she just shot a thoughtful look at the dark outline of their Shoshoni guide and suggested they discuss it in private later.
But of course they never had to. Longarm was a man who could take a hint as well as he could keep a secret. So he hardly needed to be slapped across the face with female underdrawers when Dame Flora hung around, staring at pictures on the walls, all the time an agency clerk was telling Longarm how to find the quarters they'd assigned him in a lean-to at one end of the stables.
They'd both been around enough to know it was far more discreet for a lady to slip into a gent's private quarters late at night than vice versa. So he was expecting her before she came discreetly tapping, and had her in the bunk bed with her skirts up and drawers down before she could finish all that high-toned sophistry about a grown woman's need to keep her plumbing in working order.
She said she was glad after he'd plumbed her good. She asked him why he thought she couldn't stop talking, even after he'd made her come, hotter than she'd expected to, and proceeded to strip her down to do things right now that he, at least, felt less awkward.
He told her she was talking too much lest he ask her things she might not want him to.
She started to deny that, laughed, and decided, "You're right, and I really do find it tiresome to make up a life story no blackmailer could ever use every time I wind up in this ridiculous position. And speaking of positions, just what do you think you're trying to do with that amazing erection now, darling?"
He got a better grip on her shapely but firm horsewoman's hips as he sort of let his old organ-grinder find its own way while he told her, "We call this dog-style. Once we get you up on your hands and knees all the way, I mean."
She laughed and said, "You lovable lout, you can't get it in me that way unless you let me raise my knees a bit more and ... Ooh, I see you can, and I must say it feels divine at that angle after so long without having a man in there at any angle."
He almost said he was glad he hadn't had any the night before too. But he didn't. She'd been right about the stories folks make up in bed together. It was less complicated to just let the loving tell its own sweet story. But damned if she didn't go on talking after he'd rolled her on her back to fuck her downright romantically.
Chapter 14
They were stuck up at Fort Hall the better part of a week because the dudes Lx)ngarm was supposed to ride herd on kept expecting Pocatello to settle for less than the fairer price he went on demanding no matter how many times they powwowed or how they asked old Wadzewipa to translate their cheaper offer. And Dame Flora wasn^t about to turn back without Longarm's help in her search for those missing women.
Longarm didn't mind. Old Flora was even more fun in broad day, on pine needles, when they went riding now and again to exercise their ponies, they said. For the creamy-skinned Scotch gal was auburn-headed all over, and she said she enjoyed watching his shaft parting that pretty fuzz down yonder when he did it to her braced on arms as straight and stiff.
Aside from so much pleasure, the stay was good for his business as well. Thanks to the government telegraph and the leisure he had to use it free, Longarm was able to telegraph all over creation, and with some of the answers he had time to wait for, waiting for old Senator Rumford to raise the ante or fold, he was able to tidy up some of his own concerns without missing a meal or as many sessions of sweet slap and tickle as a lady might want.
Dame Flora seemed to want a lot of them. She said she was
sure old Angus was getting some of little Jeannie and didn't want her hired help to get ahead of her.
Murgatroid Westmore's memory improved wondrously as soon as Lx)ngarm was able to uncover his true name and all the other silly things he was remembered for back home in Tennessee. Longarm had little trouble convincing the surviving member of Tim McBride's gang that most any federal prison had to be an improvement on Tennessee State Prison, or that seeing he was sure to do more hard time on those old local wants than Uncle Sam was likely to give him, it was mighty dumb to hold out the pure shit on pals who were too dead to care whether one peached on them or not.
So once Westmore and some confirming wires had identified all the bodies in the springhouse for certain, the agency buried them a polite distance from their more respectable and hence respected dead Indians. Westmore was even willing to help with information on those other poor souls who'd crossed Longarm earlier, with such sad results. According to Westmore, W. R. Callisher, the crude cattle baron Longarm had shot it out with in the Burlington train shed, had been acting on his own as the stupid bastard everyone had said he was. All the other attempts on Longarm along the way had been inspired by Pappy, or Tim McBride, to keep a savvy lawman from doing just what Longarm had done in the end.
Westmore denied any knowledge of missing Scotch spinsters, moonshiners running com to Indians, or Indians running smoke puffs up into the sky. Longarm decided his prisoner was likely telling the truth. He'd been holding out on Westmore just a mite. He'd meant what he said about forgetting to tell Tennessee he had their want on ice for them, provided Westmore wanted to cooperate. But he'd forgotten to tell Westmore about that murder warrant the state of Missouri had outstanding on a mean little bastard. He figured he might as well let that sheriff's deputy from Liberty, Missouri, tell Westmore once he got to Fort Hall. They likely owed the poor shit a few more days in Fool's Paradise for being so talkative.
Getting in touch with Zion County regarding the true names and records of those rascals in their potter's field was sort of complicated. Longarm decided to hold off until he passed through there on the way back. None of them would be going anywhere, and it hardly seemed likely anyone would ever want them dug up.
Since Dame Flora kept pestering him about those missing gals, when she wasn't pestering him to go riding with her, Longarm even got in touch with an old pal from Scotland Yard. It had been possible to cable London since just before the war, and while Scotland Yard was nowhere near Scotland, they did keep tabs on most all such shit anywhere in the British Isles.
His old pal. Inspector Fennel, who'd been looking for that mean Englishman in Colorado that time, wasn't able to tell Longarm and Dame Flora anything they hadn't already figured out, though.
As the pretty gal had already told Longarm, nobody could recall what the person or persons placing the classified proposals in the Scotch newspapers might have looked like. Fennel suggested by wire, and Longarm agreed, it hardly seemed likely nobody would recall a red Indian or even an obvious Yank. Dame Flora said she'd already had her Angus check that out. It seemed Angus had been a private detective she'd hired back home, first to see what he could find out for her there, and then to bodyguard her and Jeannie once she decided to track the missing spinsters all the way to the wilds of Deseret. She said his affair with her maid had started somewhere this side of the Mississippi and that she'd been feeling mighty left out, although her kind never dallied with the hired help, even when they were far better-looking than crusty old Angus.