Tabor Evans Read online

  Longarm dragged the late Jasper to the grave that had been intended for Maidia Harkness. He went through the man's pockets before covering the grave, but found nothing in them that would help identify him, just a few dollars in silver, some crumpled currency, and the usual oddments: a jackknife, a sack of Bull Durham tobacco and cigarette papers, matches, a dollar discount token from a Fort Smith whorehouse, and a gold tooth that he speculated must have come from some past victim. He took off the dead man's gunbelt and carried it back to the fire.

  "You generally carry a bandbox or something like that, don't you?"

  Longarm asked Maidia.

  "Of course."

  Longarm handed her the pistol. "Here. Put this someplace handy when you get around to it. Later on, you can swap it for something a little more a lady's size."

  Maidia pulled back. "A pistol? Oh, not- Why, I couldn't carry a weapon, Marshal. Even if I felt that I could bring myself to carry one, I don't know how to shoot it."

  "You can learn. I can teach you all you need to know in ten minutes. The rest is just practicing."

  "No, Marshal Long. I'm sure your intentions are good-"

  "Now, you listen to me, Miss Harkness. It's like you said yourself a minute ago. What you're used to from back East don't cut the mustard out here. You ain't going to find a policeman on every streetcorner that you can look to for help When you need it. Coming right down to cases, you're apt to be in places where there's not even any streetcorners for a policeman to stand on. Now, you do what I tell you. Take this Colt and learn which end the bullets come out of."

  Gingerly, Maidia extended her hand and took the weapon. She almost dropped it when Longarm let go of the gunbelt. "My goodness! It's a lot heavier than I thought it would be."

  "Part of that's the belt and cartridges. But a gun's going to be heavy, got to be. I'll show you a little bit about it later on. Right now, we better get some grub together before both of us starve."

  "I know there's supposed to be some food on the pack mule," Maidia said. "But I'm not sure what kind of food. I told you I'm not very good at camp cooking, but I'll do What I can to help you."

  Rummaging in the packsaddle together, they found a large chunk of beef loin, a half-side of bacon, a dozen or so potatoes, and several big white onions. In small cloth bags, they discovered flour, sugar, black-eyed peas, ground coffee, salt and pepper. There were also a few cans of tomatoes and peaches, a battered frying pan, and a large tin coffeepot. A cylinder of tattered rags had at its core an unlabeled bottle. Longarm pulled the cork and sniffed.

  "Whiskey," he told Maidia. "Either keg stuff, or out of a still on one of the whiskey ranches hereabout. Might be all right, might not be fit to drink. Well take it along and find out."

  "At least we won't go to bed hungry," Maidia said, looking at the food they'd found. "If we can get it cooked."

  "Oh, I can fix it so it's almost fit to eat," Longarm assured her. "Just don't look for anything fancy."

  "I'm so hungry I could almost eat it raw," she replied. "But there ought to be some plates and cups."

  "I got some tin plates in my saddlebag," he said, "but I only carry one cup. Can't seem to make room for two. But we'll get along all right. And there's water enough for coffee in my canteen. I'd bet there's a spring close by, but I don't aim to go looking for it in the dark. We might as well start supper. While it's cooking, I'll spread our bedrolls and rustle up a little wood for a breakfast fire."

  Working together--peeling and slicing potatoes, cutting steaks off the piece of beef loin, fixing them on split branches Longarm cut from a sweet gum tree to broil while the potatoes were fried, passing a casual remark about the food, the amount of coffee and water that would make a drinkable brew--brought a relaxation of the tension that until then had prevailed between Longarm and Maidia Harkness. She proved herself a reasonably adept cook, well able to hold up her end of the work.

  In a surprisingly short time, they had the steaks over a bed of glowing coals, with the coffeepot sitting on one side of the coals, and potatoes sizzling in the frying pan on the other side. Longarm picked up the bottle of whiskey and held it to the firelight. The liquor showed a deep reddish brown through the clear glass of the bottle. He shook it hard several times, and nodded with satisfaction when no bubbles formed at the surface of the liquid.

  "Whoever made it filtered out the fusel oil," he told Maidia. "At least that's how it looks. But we'll just make sure before we try tasting it."

  He pulled the cork and trickled a few drops of liquor into the palm of one hand, set the bottle down, and rubbed the whiskey into the skin of his calloused palm with his fingertips. When he inspected his palm and sniffed at it, he nodded once again.

  "It might burn our gullets," he said, "but it won't make us sick."

  How can you tell?"

  "Wasn't any oily scum left on my hand," he explained. "These bootleg stills on the whiskey ranches don't always have copper worms. If they don't, and if they don't get the fire hot enough and keep it going steady, the liquor'll come out full of fusel oil, and that stuff just turns your stomach inside out. This ain't what you'd get at a good saloon, but it's safe enough to drink."

  He took a small swallow. The liquor was still raw, but it wasn't as bad as he'd been afraid it might be. He held the bottle out to Maidia, and she surprised him by accepting it. She poured a healthy drink into the tin cup they'd taken from Longarm's saddlebags. Maidia could see by Longarm's expression that he'd expected her to refuse. She smiled at him.

  "I'm not a blue-nosed reformer, Marshal, even if I am a social worker. I enjoy a drink before dinner at home. There's no reason why one won't taste as good here in the woods."

  "I'll take mine right out of the bottle, unless you object," he said. "I ain't too fond of the way corn whiskey smells when I drink it out of a cup. I'm a rye drinker, myself."

  "I don't object, Marshal. And I like rye better than bourbon, too."

  She took a swallow of the liquor and shook her head. "Oh, my! That's very potent!"

  "Pretty strong stuff, all right." Longarm looked critically at the steaks, and went on, "It'll be a few minutes before they're done. I'll go get our bedrolls and tend to the animals, if you'll stir the potatoes to keep them from burning."

  During supper, the pair of them found a rising number of things to talk about. Longarm was appalled at Maidia's conception of the way the Indians in the Nation lived, and the relationships between them and the whites. Like most post-Civil War Easterners, she saw the Indians of the Nation as a new kind of slave to be liberated from the white man's yoke.

  "You don't really mean the Indians have their own police force?" she asked him at one point, when Longarm mentioned the Indian police.

  "y, sure they do, with uniforms and everything. There just ain't enough of them to cover the whole Nation, that's all. And the Indian police don't let sheriffs or town marshals from Texas or Arkansas or Kansas come into their territory, either."

  "But you can, because you're a federal officer," Maidia concluded.

  "That's right. U.S. marshals and the army, that's all the outside lawmen allowed by the Indians into the Nation."

  "But the army keeps the Indians penned up here!" she objected.

  "That ain't quite all the army does, ma'am. Mostly, it keeps the Indian Wars from starting up again. Not against us white folks," he said hastily, as Maidia was about to break in. "Indians have been fighting each other since way back before history began. But it's getting to the point now where the Osages will talk to the Cherokees, and a Kiowa won't try to kill a Cheyenne on sight. Give them a little time, and they'll settle down like us, to a war every ten or fifteen years instead of just one war that goes on all the time."

  Maidia studied Longarm's face for a moment, trying to decide whether he was joking or serious. Finally she said, "You really mean that, don't you, Marshal?"

  "Why shouldn't I? It's the truth."

  "You make the Indians sound so bloodthirsty."

  "I wo
uldn't call them that, Miss Harkness. They just don't put on a lot of false fronts, the way we do."

  "But I've always been taught-"

  Longarm interrupted her, "I know what you were taught. Most of it was wrong. You'll see that, after you've been in the Nation awhile. No, ma'am, on the whole, there's not any better people than the Indians. Or smarter, or more truthful. An Indian gives you his word, he won't go back on it unless you go back on yours first."

  "You're giving me new ideas, Marshal. I'll try to remember what you've said."

  "You do that. But I reckon I've just about talked your ear off. If we're going to get started at daybreak, we better turn in."

  Longarm busied himself with the fire, banking it for the night, to give Maidia a chance to go off into the bushes without her feeling that he was watching her. He heard her retreating footsteps and heard her returning, and quickly whirled back to the fire, bending to light a cheroot from a twig he picked up from its edge. He held the whiskey bottle out to her.

  "I was just about to have my nightcap. You might as well take one, too. You'll sleep better if you do."

  Obediently, she took a swallow of the liquor. Longarm smiled inwardly when he saw her drinking from the bottle, as he had, instead of looking for a cup. He drank his own good-night tot, and proceeded to make his bedtime arrangements: boots laid flat and covered with his folded coat; his Ingersoll watch and chain, with the mean little derringer attached to the other end of the chain, tacked into a boot. He spread his vest flat by his left shoulder, laid his unholstered Colt on it, and covered the pistol with his hat to shield it from the damp night air. He became aware that Maidia, already in her own bedroll, was watching his methodical preparations with a great deal of interest.

  She said, "From the way you're arranging your things, Marshal, I get the idea you think those men might come back while We're asleep."

  "They won't be coming back," he assured her. "One of them is dead, and two of the others have got bullet holes in them. But if they do show up, or if anybody else does, I'll be ready."

  "So I see. That will make me sleep a lot better. Good-night, Marshal Long."

  "Good-night, Miss Harkness."

  Longarm watched through slitted eyes until he saw Maidia give up trying to gaze through the darkness. She looked in one direction, then in another, before she finally settled down to sleep. When her face settled into repose and her breathing became deep and even, Longarm closed his own eyes and relaxed. In no time at all, he was also asleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  Longarm might have been sleeping two minutes or two hours when Maidia's stifled, startled cry aroused him. He rolled out of his blankets, to his knees, in one swift motion, sweeping aside the hat that covered his Colt. In an instant, the revolver was in his hand. The banked fire gave off the very faintest glow. There was barely enough light for him to see Maidia. She was sitting up in her bedding. Her head was cocked, swiveling slowly from side to side as she peered into the darkness that surrounded them.

  "What's the matter?" Longarm asked her.

  "I heard something. A woman screaming somewhere, I think."

  "Funny, I didn't hear it. And I count myself a light sleeper."

  "Listen!" she said urgently.

  He heard the sound then, from far off, a thin wail like the cry of a woman in agony. He said, "That's just a panther calling. It's too far off to smell us out."

  "A panther? Isn't that a kind of lion?"

  "They're cats," he replied. "Big cats. But they'll mostly let people alone unless they're starving, or unless somebody walks up on one unexpected."

  Maidia shuddered. "It sounds so terrible! I've broken out in gooseflesh." She started to stand up, but changed her mind. "Where's the whiskey bottle, Marshal? I think I need some Dutch courage before I can go back to sleep."

  "I'll hand it to you," Longarm said. "I'm already out of MY bedroll."

  He walked gingerly on bare feet to the log where the bottle was sitting, and handed it to Maidia. She drank, gulped, waited a moment, and drank again. Then she handed the bottle to Longarm.

  "I'm sorry I woke you up. I guess I'm just nervous, she told him apologetically. "I think I'll be all right now, though."

  "Sure you will. You'll drop right off back to sleep." Longarm went to his own bedroll, rearranged the blankets, replaced the Colt on his vest, and covered it again with his hat. The wind had died as the night deepened and it was no longer so cold. Just the same, he tossed a few sticks of wood on the fire, thinking the light might add to Maidia's peace of mind. Then he crawled back between the blankets. He'd hardly had time to settle down when Maidia called him again.

  "Marshal?"

  "I'm right here. What's troubling you?"

  "Would you"--she hesitated for a moment--"Would you think I was being terrible if I asked to come over there with you?"

  It was the last question Longarm had expected someone like Maidia Harkness to ask. He took his time in answering.

  "If you're sure that's what you want to do," he told her.

  "I'm sure. I know what I'm saying. I'm not a child."

  "Come on over and welcome, then."

  Maidia slipped out of her bedroll and pattered across the few feet that separated them. By the light of the freshened fire, Longarm could see that she'd left her skirt in her own blankets. She had on only a blouse that fell to her waist. Her molded thighs gleamed pink-white. She stood briefly beside his bedroll, and Longarm lifted the corner of his blanket. Maidia eased under it beside him.

  "I don't need to apologize for asking to join you, do I? You're not the kind of man who'd expect that," she whispered.

  "You don't need to apologize or explain or anything else," he told her. "Anybody's likely to feel nerved up the first time or two they try to sleep outdoors."

  "I was all right until that panther yowled. I was dreaming--well, I won't tell you what--I was dreaming."

  "Like I said, you don't have to tell me anything."

  Longarm was very conscious of the warmth that was reaching him from Maidia's nearly naked body. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but made no move to do so. He didn't want to do or say anything until he was sure what she had in mind. "It was the dream as much as the panther that Maybe woke me up," she said softly. "But--if it hadn't been for the panther, I might not have awakened and realized that I didn't have to be satisfied with just a dream."

  Her hand crept out of the covers to caress Longarm's cheek. She ran her palm across his chin, his day-old beard rasping gently as she pressed harder. Then her fingers strayed up to explore the sweep of his mustache.

  Not until Maidia's lips replaced her fingers did Longarm move to touch her in return. He brought one of his hands up from her knee, along the satin skin of her thigh and over her hip, and slid it under the edge of her loose blouse. His fingers brushed across her breast and found a nipple, hardening now, unfolding slowly until it stood firm and solid under his gently pinching fingertips.

  "Oh, yes," she whispered. "Do that. And then, some more." She rolled closer to him, and Longarm felt the weight of her thigh resting on his.

  Maidia's tongue was pushing Longarm's lips apart, and he joined his tongue to hers. He was springing erect quickly. Her hand had left his face now, and was stroking his groin, feeling him grow hard under its grasp. Longarm released Maidia's breast long enough to thumb open the buttons of his fly and let her hand find his bare, throbbing flesh. She closed her hand around him, and he felt her body ripple in a small, satisfied shudder.

  "I like what I've got in my hand," she said softly. "That's what I was dreaming about, you know."

  "And then you woke up."

  "Yes. But I know how the dream would have ended. And I'm glad I woke up when I did." Maidia squeezed him, not too gently. "This feels a lot better to me than any dream could."

  "There's a way to make it feel better than it does now."

  Longarm slid his hand between Maidia's thighs and fingered the warm wetness that was waiting for him there.r />
  "Don't hurry me, Marshal. I'm enjoying hefting you right this minute, and the longer I wait, the more I'm going to like it when it gets to where it belongs." She shifted her head a bit and began nibbling on Longarm's earlobe.

  "You take your time, Miss Harkness."

  Maidia's laughter exploded in Longarm's ear. Between chortles, she said, "That sounds so funny, I can't help myself. Here we are, with me holding onto this beautiful thing for dear life, and you with your fingers in me, and I'm calling you Marshal Long and you're calling me Miss Harkness. Don't you think we ought to be a little bit more informal before we really get serious? You could call me Maidia, you know."

  "I was waiting for you to tell me I could, Maidia."

  "And you must have a first name?" Maidia was tonguing Longarm's ear and squeezing him at the same time.

  "It's Custis. But I don't answer to it much. Mostly, my friends call me Longarm."

  "Not just of the law, either," she whispered. "Long something else, too, or my fingers are lying to me."

  "You think you're about ready to find out if they are?"

  "Yes." She positioned him. "Go ahead. Show me."

  Longarm showed her, deliberately and slowly, pressing into her with neither haste nor hesitation, feeling her breath come faster as he penetrated more deeply until they were fully joined.

  "Mmm," Maidia murmured in his ear. "No dream could ever equal what I feel now." She moved her hips from side to side. "Just lie still for a minute or two. I want to do it myself first. You won't get anxious, will you?"

  "Not a bit. You do what you feel like doing. I can wait."

  "I can't, though. I need to"--Maidia twisted more violently as she spoke--"I need to get my edge off so I can enjoy it more later." She was beginning to work her hips back and forth. "Then, when you get on me, I can-I can"--she shook in a long, shuddering convulsion--"I can hold on longer."

  Her voice faded in a sighing murmur, and the tenseness of her muscles melted away. Longarm felt her wetness trickling down his groin. He lay quietly for a few moments until Maidia sighed contentedly and stirred, then he rocked his own hips gently. She shifted her body to let him roll on top of her, and raised her thighs, locking her legs around his hips.