Longarm and the Sins of Laughing Lyle (9781101612101) Page 4

  When she’d pumped him gently several times, she scuttled up onto her knees with a girlish little grunt, shook her long, dark hair back from her face, grinned up at him, then leaned out from the side of the bed and touched her tongue to the tip of his swollen member.

  A warm, wet lance of desire jetted up the length of his cock to poke his prostate. He shifted his weight back to his heels, clenching his fists at his sides.

  “So big,” she said, and swirled her tongue along the swollen head. “So big . . . and fine. So . . . fine . . .”

  Then she opened her mouth wide and closed it over him. She took him as far back as she could and made little gurgling sounds as she lathered him with her saliva while tickling the underside of his cock with her tongue. She turned her head this way and that, making hungry sucking sounds, getting him good and wet.

  Slowly, she pulled her head back. Her lips rose up and over and back from the swollen, purple mushroom head glittering wetly in the lantern light. She swallowed, and raised those smoky, charcoal eyes to his.

  “I believe you’re ready.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he groaned.

  She lay back against her pillow, lifted her knees nearly all the way to her chest, and spread her legs wide, grabbing her ankles to draw them even wider.

  The dark pink rose of her vagina blossomed before him, her legs quivering gently with her need.

  Longarm climbed onto the bed. As he mounted her, she arched her back. Propped on his outstretched arms, he caressed the delicate, petal-like folds of her snatch with the head of his cock. She groaned, sighed, quivered. She tipped her head back farther, breasts lifting, pointing toward the ceiling, nipples hard as sewing thimbles.

  Her swollen breasts rose and fell heavily, a thin sheen of perspiration covering them as the amber light slid back and forth and the flame guttered.

  “You know how to torture a girl, Longarm.”

  As he thrust the head of his cock through the open, pink blossoms, she brought a hand to her mouth. As he thrust his hips against her and drove his cock deep, deep into her, she gave a sob and chomped down on her knuckles, squeezing her eyes closed. “Oh, God!”

  Chapter 5

  Longarm fucked the girl over and over again, desperately, with a passion that bordered on frenzy.

  It was an unself-conscious obsession to drive everything else away except for Alva’s breasts and lips and clutching wet snatch . . . her toes gently running up and down his legs . . . her hands gently tugging on his hair . . . her guttural groans and love cries . . . as he took her over and over . . .

  . . . before finally burying his face between her full, sweat-slick breasts and at last passing out with a great exhalation, letting his last sensation be the salty taste of her deep cleavage against his lips.

  He was only half-aware of her sliding out beneath him and his rolling slowly back with a weary groan against the bed, of her lips pressed lightly to his temple as she gently wrapped something soft around his wounded arm. Everything went dark and quiet again after that, until he opened his eyes to the wash of pearl light pushing through the window above the bed.

  He sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. His arm throbbed. With a groan, he tossed the covers back and dropped his bare feet to the floor. Both bottles—the cheap stuff and the good stuff—stood on the dresser. There was also a small burlap sack that hadn’t been there the night before. A sheet of lined tablet paper lay over the bag. Longarm opened it, tilted it to the light, read the words written in a flowing, feminine hand:

  Dearest Longarm:

  Take both bottles of whiskey. Use the cheap bottle on the wound, the bourbon for pain. In the bag I packed food for the trail and cotton for rewrapping your arm. Please, Longarm, do not taint our time together by leaving payment.

  I will think of you often, remember last night forever.

  Alva

  Longarm smiled thoughtfully as he lowered the surprisingly literate note. Not many girls with Indian blood were educated well enough to write such a flowing missive. Longarm wished he had time to get to know the woman he knew only as Alva. She likely had an interesting history. But last night, their bodies had done all the talking. Maybe he’d pass this way again sometime.

  In the meantime, he threw back several pulls from the bourbon bottle, filing down the sharp teeth of that rabid cur chomping into his arm, and ate one of the three apples that Alva had packed for him with several roast beef sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper. He’d save the sandwiches for later.

  His pain and hunger pangs sated, he dressed and slipped quietly out of the roadhouse. In the shadowy barn flanking the place, he saddled his dusty gray and Case Morgan’s bay, intending to use Case’s mount in relief of the gray, so he could ride twice as hard if he needed to. He doubted that Laughing Lyle, wounded as he was, would have gotten far, but he wasn’t taking any chances. The desire to run the killer to ground and return the sixteen thousand dollars that he and his gang had taken from the good people of Stoneville, before murdering a dozen bank patrons and employees in cold blood, was like a fire-breathing dragon inside of him.

  All the more so because they’d taken the life of one of his closest friends, one of the best lawmen on the frontier.

  He hoped Laughing Lyle hadn’t died from his wounds overnight. He wanted to take the man to Denver, put him before a federal judge and jury, and watch him hang in the gallows courtyard behind the Federal Building.

  It was a chilly morning, as they tended to be in early October in New Mexico, at about six thousand feet above the sea. The sun’s rays spearing over the eastern horizon were not yet offering warmth. Longarm unwrapped his buckskin coat from around his bedroll, pulled it on, returned the bedroll to its place behind the saddle cantle, and closed the barn doors behind him and the horses, whose tails blew in the cool breeze.

  The tall lawman swung into the saddle, gave his glance once more to the two-story roadhouse, the magic of last night with Alva reluctant to leave him, then pressed his heels to the gray’s flanks. The horses clomped around the saloon and pleasure parlor to where the trail left the yard—two pale wheel ruts jutting westward across the rolling, sage- and piñon-studded desert.

  The roadhouse must not have had much business the night before. Only one set of fresh prints scored the trail’s left track, the indentations light and crumbly, denoting a galloping mount. Laughing Lyle.

  Ignoring the constant ache in his right arm, Longarm booted the army gelding into a fast trot, jerking the bay behind him by its bridle reins. When the sun left the eastern horizon and started climbing the sky behind him, he put the horses into a hard gallop for a quarter mile before resting them for a short time and then started galloping once more.

  After an hour, he began sweating beneath the coat, so he stopped the mounts, removed the buckskin, and tied it around his bedroll. While the horses blew and cropped the fescue growing up between sage plants along the sides of the trail, he inspected the single set of prints scoring the trail ahead.

  He crouched over one print, removed his right-hand glove, and pressed his index finger into a brown spot in the clay-colored soil. He lifted the finger and inspected the flaky brown substance, smeared it with his thumb until it became red.

  Longarm smiled. Laughing Lyle had been losing enough blood that it was dripping onto the trail beneath his horse.

  Longarm splashed water into his hat for his own two horses, let them each drink, then corked his canteen and swung into the saddle once more. He continued following Laughing Lyle’s tracks for another hour, watched a mountain range rise ahead of him and slightly to his right—an island hulking against the western horizon. It was likely the Organ Range between the Black Range to the south and the Cactus Hills to the north.

  Longarm had been through this country a couple of times before, but he couldn’t remember any towns. There were a few, small, widely scattered
ranches, none of which he’d glimpsed so far today. Laughing Lyle had so far stuck to the trail, which seemed to be heading for the Organs, so he must have had some destination in mind. Maybe the mountains themselves.

  Possibly, he hoped to hole up in the rugged reaches and heal well enough to begin spending some of the stolen money that was all his now that the rest of his gang had gone to Glory. If so, Laughing Lyle wouldn’t be alone. The Organs were known for hiding outlaws of one stripe or another—desperadoes on the run looking for a rugged place to cool their heels before making a break for Arizona Territory to the south and west, and then possibly Mexico beyond.

  Laughing Lyle had slowed Merle’s horse down considerably this far out from Finlay’s roadhouse, and rarely run it down the stretch of trail that Longarm was currently fogging. The killer must have passed through here late last night, around midnight or later. It must have been cold then, in the lower forties—and cold is hard on a man losing blood.

  As Longarm rode through the early afternoon, switching horses every hour or so, he saw only two other people—punchers moving a small herd of cattle about a half a mile south of the trail. He passed a couple of forks in the trail marked with signs announcing distant ranches, but Laughing Lyle’s tracks continued along the main line, heading toward the Organ Range looming taller and broader to the west, the still-high sun revealing its rocky lower slopes and talus slides and jutting pinnacles of what appeared sandstone and limestone. Higher up, the slopes were dark green, with forest thinning toward more slides and barren, rocky knobs.

  Around Longarm the terrain was rocky and patchy with sage, prickly pear, and willows demarking thin watercourses, and occasional cottonwoods and cedars. He stopped when the twin furrows of a wagon intersected the hoof tracks of Laughing Lyle’s stolen horse. Nearby was a large splotch of blood and scuff marks where a man had fallen. There were two sets of footprints, as well—those of a large man in stockmen’s boots, and those of a smaller man, or more likely a woman, in small-heeled shoes.

  They’d obviously stopped and taken Laughing Lyle aboard their wagon, likely tied his horse to the wagon, and continued on up the trail.

  Quickly, Longarm mounted the gray and, leading the bay, gigged it forward, following a broad bend around a short mesa and then up a slope. He rode for another half hour, then checked both horses down when a town appeared ahead of him, the Organ Range looming tall and formidable behind it.

  The town was a sprawling, shabby affair—mostly log shacks, plank privies, and pole corrals scattered among the sage and broken red boulders that had long ago tumbled down the steep ridge to the north. The settlement sprawled on a shallow slope dropping from the foot of the mountain toward the valley to the south.

  As Longarm continued following the trail, he saw what appeared to be a business district ahead—eight or nine frame buildings with false fronts stretched out along both sides of the trail for no longer than a city block, with plenty of space between them. These business buildings were surrounded by more shacks sitting every which way, showing a lack of any sort of civic planning whatever, as though the whole place was a haphazard, makeshift affair.

  There were a few people milling along the raised boardwalks fronting the businesses, with saddled horses standing at hitch racks here and there, still as statues. A couple of horsebackers were just now riding toward Longarm, who’d stopped his own horses to get the lay of the land.

  As the two riders rode toward him, their horses kicking up little red dust puffs, Longarm pinched his hat brim affably. Both riders—ranch hands, judging by their dusty homespun clothes and brush-scarred leather chaps—looked right at him without expression, with no sign of acknowledgment whatever.

  They continued past him to head off in the direction from which he’d come. Longarm glanced after them, but their reception, or lack thereof, was no surprise. Folks who lived this far off the beaten path were just naturally suspicious of strangers.

  He gave his attention to the dirt street before him. The twin wagon furrows were less clear here, where they’d been somewhat obscured by horse and foot traffic, but the wagon’s trail was still visible in places. He followed it ahead to where it angled toward a large frame building over whose double doors a sign announced HUMPERDINK LIVERY AND UNDERTAKING.

  Inside the open double doors a bearded gent was hunkered over a coffin propped on sawhorses and filling the air with the fresh smell of pine resin as he ran a plane over the top of the coffin’s left side panel. To his right was a spring wagon with an open tailgate. Inside the wagon lay a dead man with a blanket thrown over him; his stocking feet stuck out the bottom. A big, blue toe poked from the dead man’s right gray sock.

  Longarm’s heart hiccupped its disappointment.

  He returned his gaze to the old man planing the coffin, and his voice betrayed his dread. “Who you got in the wagon, friend?”

  The oldster, wearing a tangled gray beard that hung down nearly to the paunch pushing out his striped coveralls, leaped back with a start, gasping. “Jumpin’ Jesus, would you mind announcing yourself, fella?” His freckled cheeks were bright red above the beard, and two blue eyes glared out from beneath shaggy brows the same color as the beard. “You damn near frightened me right into a goddamn heart stroke!”

  “Sorry,” Longarm said. “I thought you heard me ride up.”

  “Well, I didn’t! Can’t hear as well as I used to, so I would appreciate it if you’d announce yourself next time.”

  “How can I announce myself if you can’t hear?”

  The graybeard cupped a hand to his ear. “What’s that?”

  “Never mind,” Longarm said, raising his voice. “Who you got in the wagon there?”

  The old man glanced at the wagon, then returned his indignant blue gaze to Longarm. “Slash Hall. Who’s askin’?”

  “Slash Hall,” Longarm said half to himself, feeling better. He’d been sure the man was going to say Laughing Lyle or at least some gent whom someone picked up in a wagon a few hours ago.

  “What’s that?”

  Longarm swung down from his saddle and dropped the gray’s and the bay’s reins in the dirt. “Mind if I take a look?”

  “I asked you what your name was, boy, and don’t tell me you answered when I know you didn’t. I’m hard of hearin’ but I ain’t deaf!”

  Longarm walked over to the end of the wagon. “Custis Long,” he said. “Deputy United States marshal.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  “What’s a federal doin’ in Nowhere?”

  Longarm pulled the blanket down until the dead man’s head was revealed. The lawman grimaced at the grisly sight of the badly swollen face that had turned the color of a black eye. Even one ear was swollen as it poked out of the man’s shaggy mop of frizzy, gray-brown hair. His lips were puffed up to the size of large thumbs and stretched back from his teeth in a bizarre death grin.

  “Good Lord—what happened to him?”

  “Been warm the last few days, and ole Slash was ridin’ for the Dancing Bar W south of town when his pony threw him into a rattlesnake hole. By the time they managed to fish him out, it was all over but the screamin’. They said he wailed till well past midnight, Slash did. His bunkhouse pards was about to shoot him when he finally expired.”

  The undertaker, whom Longarm assumed was Humperdink, walked over to stand beside Longarm and stare down at the dead man. “His pards, J. T. Phipps and Bill Williams, brought him to town and pooled their money for a coffin and proper funeral in the church cemetery, with Reverend Henry Todd presidin’. Two more of his friends just rode out after payin’ their respects.”

  “Good of his friends to do that.”

  Humperdink nodded, then turned to look Longarm up and down. “What’s a federal lawman doin’ in Nowhere?”

  Longarm frowned. “Nowhere? That the name
of the town.”

  “Shore is.”

  “How come there’s no sign sayin’ so?”

  Humperdink grinned as though he was delighted whenever he got the opportunity to answer that question. “What’d be the point of identifyin’ Nowhere since anyone headin’ here already knows they’re Nowhere whether they know the name of the town or not?”

  He slapped his thigh and bellowed a laugh.

  Longarm waited until the undertaker’s raucous laughter had dwindled to chuckling before saying, “I’m here on the trail of the killer and bank robber Laughing Lyle May. I saw where he’d been picked up and—”

  “Yeah, he was hauled in early this morning by the Reverend Todd his own self. The reverend and his daughter, Bethany. I hailed a coupla fellas from the Nowhere Saloon, and they carried ole Laughing Lyle up to Doc Bell’s office.”

  “What about his saddlebags?”

  “What saddlebags?”

  “The saddlebags Laughing Lyle had on him.” Longarm regarded the man levelly and pitched his voice with steel. “Couldn’t miss ’em, mister—the ones full of stolen bank loot. Sixteen thousand dollars’ worth.”

  Chapter 6

  “Now, look here, Marshal—I hope you ain’t accusin’ me of stealin’ stolen money!” intoned Humperdink shrilly, scrunching up his face indignantly. “Why I never stole so much as a penny’s worth of hard candy in my whole life!”

  Longarm plucked a cheroot from the pocket of his frock coat and bit off the end with frustration. “You mean to tell me he was hauled in here without the saddlebags?”

  “Didn’t see no saddlebags.”

  “Where’s his horse?”

  “In the back paddock.”

  “How ’bout the gear the horse had on it?”

  “Right over there—by the Todds’ wagon its own self.”

  Longarm turned to stare into the musty dimness of the livery barn. A two-seater buggy with a leather canopy was parked against the barn’s right wall, tongue drooping. Longarm walked over to it, placed a hand on the left rear wheel—a stout wheel for traveling rough country—and glanced into the buggy’s rear seat. A dirty scrap of burlap, obviously cut from a large feed sack, was draped over the leather upholstery. The sack was liberally smeared with blood.