He told her to take all the time she wanted, since he wasn't going anywhere but in and out of her for the foreseeable future. But he still had to wonder, even as he came in her and just kept going with no need to change positions, what a gal this tigress was jealous of might be like in her own right!
But of course he never said so. For even as he was pleasuring her dog-style a good half hour later, old Ilsa was purring, as she arched her spine to take it deeper, that he was never going to get away from her now that she'd caught up with him at last.
She seemed to think he had just what it took to satisfy her hungry ring-dang-do. But he didn't see why. She felt tight as a schoolmarm as he just went on doing what came naturally in anybody that passionate.
He could only hope she was feeling natural as she suddenly shot off his erection, rolled over on her back, and pleaded with him to finish in her the more romantic way.
He felt mighty romantic as well, coming with her softer warm flesh crushed beneath his excited heaving body. But then she sort of spoiled the afterglow by murmuring, her lips against his bare shoulder and her hand clutching his balls right firmly, "Oh, Custis, I'm so happy, and I can't wait to see how surprised everyone will be when we post the bans with Pastor Lindorm!"
He didn't answer. He sensed it could be considered impolite to tell a gal she was loca en la cabeza right after you'd come in her. There'd be plenty of cold gray dawn to go into why a man who packed a badge had no call marrying up with anybody young or old, for richer, poorer, or whatever, till Mister Death grinned that spoilsport grin at all concerned.
He was sure she'd follow his drift when he told her about those department funerals he had to go to all the time. A lot of gals had, and hell, some of them had been young enough to marry up with if a man was ready to do dumb things like that.
CHAPTER 14
It was a caution how some folks could think so smart with their heads and so dumb with their glands. But by the time she'd fed him a swell breakfast in bed, Longarm had convinced the hot-natured Ilsa it might be wiser to keep their understanding a secret until he found out who was gunning for him and how come.
It hadn't been easy. The strong-willed widow woman had said she'd be proud to share the fate of her new-found true love. She'd only given in after Longarm managed to convince her she was being downright sneaky in the name of the law. They said the glamorous Confederate spy, Miss Belle Siddons, had enjoyed the sneaky part of her services to the Southern cause even more than screwing all those Union officers half to death. Lots of men enjoyed it better sneaky too.
After breakfast, a tub bath, and a blow job, Longarm ambled over to the Western Union to see if anyone else was excited about him. He found some messages waiting for him there care of the telegraph office.
Durango and the South Ute agency were still working on just who that so-called Calvert Tyger they'd buried and the kid who'd gone off the trestle into the San Juan might have been. Longarm was even more certain someone ad been fibbing about that charred body registered as Tyger when he opened a message from his home office to discover his fellow deputies, Smiley and Dutch, had found two other rooming house registers that claimed, in different handwriting, Calvert Tyger had spent some recent nights in other parts of Denver at the same time, before somehow moving on alive and well as far as any fool records showed, So some damned body, for some damned reason, seemed to be going around checking in and out for the night under the assumed name of a wanted man. It made no sense to Longarm, but on the other hand, he wasn't the asshole doing it!
It got worse when he stopped by the nearby sheriff's office to ask if those other federal deputies from Saint Paul had by any chance arrived and asked for him the night before.
The same deputy sheriff he'd talked to before said nobody from Saint Paul had arrived at all. Then he handed Longarm a telegram they hadn't mentioned at the Western Union, since it had been addressed to other lawmen, and said, "Looks as if all you federal men could be barking up the wrong tree here in Brown County."
Longarm scanned the wire from the Texas Rangers, and heaved a vast sigh. For according to Texas, another of those recorded hundred-dollar treasury notes from the Fort Collins robbery had surfaced at a bank in Amarillo.
As he handed the message back, Longarm said, "Try her this way. A bank in any part of the country would have that list of serial numbers and money-changers who might give a shit. But nobody making change in a gambling hall or house of ill repute would have that list or care where the money came from as long as it was good."
The local lawman answered dubiously, "A hundred-dollar bill does stand out in a crowd, you know."
Longarm nodded. "I just said that. Any card dealer or crib gal presented with such paper would doubtless ask the floor boss or madam to okay it. But without that list, all the smartest eye could detect would be whether the note was genuine or not. Once they changed it for the high roller or low-lifer, they might or might not take it to their own bank for safekeeping. The odds are just as good they'd pass it on to some other business folks as rent, liquor-bill payment, or whatever. So there's just no saying how many hands any of these fool bills might have passed through before they were spotted by some sharp-eyed banker such as P.S. Plover around the corner."
The deputy sheriff shrugged and said, "I'll be damned if I see what we're arguing about then. I just said it may not mean a thing that a single one of them stolen treasury notes turned up here in New Ulm. I may have wax in my ears. But didn't you just agree with me?"
Longarm nodded soberly. "I surely did, up to a point. I can go along with that one note from Fort Collins just sort of finding its way here through a whole chain of innocent hands, if you'd like to tell me how come somebody seems so anxious to keep me from questioning your apparently innocent county residents about it. By the way, might either Israel Bedford or Wabasha Chambrun be registered to vote this fall here in Brown County?"
The deputy sheriff said the ones to ask about that would be over at the county clerk's across the square. So that was where Longarm turned up next. The older gent in charge reminded Longarm of what young Henry, back at the Denver office, was likely to look like in twenty years if he didn't watch out. But the skinny, balding, prune-lipped cuss seemed friendly enough as he scanned Longarm's badge and identification and said, "Figured you'd be along most any time now. Two other lawmen were here just this morning, asking if you'd been by."
Longarm put his billfold away with a puzzled smile. "It ain't considered polite to poke about another lawman's jurisdiction without letting him know you're in town, and I know for a fact the gents of whom we speak never checked in with the sheriff across the way. What might they have looked like and what sort of badges might they have flashed?"
The country clerk frowned thoughtfully and replied, "I never asked to see no badges. That might have been why they never offered to show me any. As to what they looked like, one was tall and the other short. They were both about your age and dressed like undertakers who punched cows or vice versa. Is that any help?"
Longarm got out a couple of smokes as he mused, half to himself, "Two deputies riding out of the same federal district court as me describe about the same way. But I can't see Smiley and Dutch behaving so unprofessional. If my boss sent them all the way to New Ulm for a damn good reason, they'd have strode right into your sheriff's office to ask about me, knowing I'd have been there ahead of 'em if I was anywhere in this county."
He thought some more as he got both their cheroots going with a wax Mexican match. Then he shook out the light. "Well, since they seem to be looking for me, I'll let them worry about who they might be until they catch up with me and I can just ask. What I'm here about is voter registrations. To be specific, I'd like to know whether two different Brown County boys who seem to have handled the same suspicious money might be on your books as registered resident voters."