Longarm #431 (2 page)

Her name was Nicole but she went by the name Nic. She had a man's strength and in many ways a man's outlook. She was out here in the mountains, she explained, because this was where the mineral was. Exactly what mineral she was digging she did not say and Longarm knew better than to ask. A direct question like that would have been considered an intrusion on her privacy.

She did feed him. She propped him up in the bed and spooned a little warm broth into him. He did not ask what was in the broth. Suspected it was something he did not want to know. All he cared about was that the broth was warm in his belly and wondrously filling, and he was truly grateful for it.

“More?” he asked when she set the bowl aside. His breath came hard and it was difficult for him to speak.

“No more. You'll shit yourself again,” Nic replied.

She did take some warm water from a kettle on the stove—or boiling for all he could feel—and again dipped a cloth in to wipe his face and chest and cock.

“What are you? Something over six feet, I'd say,” Nic mused while she washed him. “Damn good-looking man. It'd be a shame to see you die.” She laughed. “Especially with a pecker like that. Why, just look at this thing.”

He was lying flat again, she having removed whatever it was she used to prop him up so he could eat. Consequently he could not see exactly what Nic was doing. But he could certainly hear her exclamation of joy.

“Why, will you look at that,” she yelped. “You can't feel shit, but your body knows. Damn thing stands tall as a tent pole, doesn't it? Just a minute. Let me see what it tastes like.”

Nic bent her head. He craned his neck so he could see a little. She had his cock erect and eager, not that he was aware of feeling anything. She had his foreskin peeled back and was running her tongue around the head.

After only a few moments of that she started bobbing up and down on it. Sucking it, he supposed.

Ugly as Nic was, Longarm nevertheless wished that he could feel her sucking him.

But then at the moment he wished he could feel most anything.

Nic sat up, smiling, and unfastened the straps on the bib of her overalls. When she did that the heavy denim dropped to the floor. Nic stepped out of the trousers. She was naked underneath.

The woman was not fat but she was thick. She had a roll of belly and a dark, curly bush. Her pussy hairs dripped with unspent juices.

Longarm quickly learned why. Still smiling, she joined him on the bunk, straddling him and lowering herself onto his cock.

He dropped his head back and closed his eyes. Nic, and what she was doing down there, was not a pretty sight.

He could close out the view but not the sounds Nic made as she grunted and wheezed and bounced up and down on his prick until with a cry she achieved her climax.

Finally she climbed off of him.

At least then she had the decency—if he could call it that—to again pick up the bowl of hot water and cloth and once again wash his cock and balls of the juices she had left on him.

“You didn't feel any of that?” she asked.

“No.”

“Damn shame, Marshal. I enjoyed it right fine. Filled me up, and there's not many men can do that. We'll do it again tonight, but right now I got work to do.” She dressed and over her shoulder called, “Don't you go anywhere, honey.”

Nic's laughter was the last thing he heard before the cabin door shut and he was alone again.

Longarm closed his eyes and hoped for sleep. Or for death. Anything other than this uselessness.

It startled him so much that it woke him up. An itch. A simple little thing like an itch. He could not even be sure
where
he itched. Somewhere down south, that was as close as he could differentiate. In his foot, perhaps, or his leg. But he was sure that it was an itch.

And he could feel it!

“Did you say something, honey?” Nic asked from the stool where she was having her breakfast.

“No.” He shook his head. “I di'n say anything.”

“Tonight, honey,” she said around a mouthful of beans and pork fat. “Tonight we'll have us a fine time.” She looked at him. At his crotch, actually. He could see where her eyes were directed. He was still naked. She kept him that way. Liked keeping him naked so she could look at his cock and play with it. And when she had the time could fuck herself with it.

Five days now. He was her own personal dildo, and she had no intention to let her toy get away from her.

He had given up asking for her to go get help for him. Or to pack him on the back of the mule and haul him out to someplace where there was a telegraph so he could inform U.S. Marshal Billy Vail that Al Gray had gotten away. Again.

Back in Denver, Billy would still be thinking that Longarm was somewhere on the trail. Bringing Gray in for trial. Overdue but somewhere out there.

And Gray. What had become of him while Longarm was laid up here as Nicole whatever-her-name-was's playtoy?

But he definitely had felt an itch somewhere low on his body.

He had never before felt so gloriously wonderful about as simple a thing as an itch, but this one made him feel like rejoicing.

If he had breath enough, he would break out in song. Something good and bawdy. Something loud and happy.

Custis Long chuckled.

And hoped to feel another itch.

Nic finished her bowl of slop and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “I'm going to work now, but don't you worry. I'll be back this evening, and we'll have us a fine old time.”

The thought made her laugh. It made Longarm cringe. The woman was insatiable. On the other hand, she had saved his life by bringing him back here and feeding him.

“I'll clean you up when I get home, honey. You've shit yourself again. I can smell it.”

He could smell it, too. The heavy stink humiliated him almost as much as his immobility did.

But he had felt an itch, an actual, honest-to-goodness itch, and under the circumstances that seemed quite the grand triumph, for where there was an itch there might well be other feeling.

For the first time in days, Custis Long had hope.

The itch. That damned, miserable itch was back with a vengeance. It was driving him crazy. It was everywhere. Intense and all consuming.

Then, worse, the itch turned to a tingle. Then a burning sensation over every surface on his body.

Longarm cried out aloud, hoping Nic was not close enough to hear. The tingle was just short of being severe pain, and there was nothing he could do to stop it or even to make is lessen.

But he rejoiced in the pain of it because it meant he was
feeling
.

Feeling, even feeling pain, was far better than feeling nothing.

His body was coming back from the shock to his spine that the assassin's bullet had caused.

While he lay immobile on Nic's bunk he had more than enough time to think. He had to conclude that the rifleman, whoever he was, shot Longarm so as to free Al Gray and that he likely believed Longarm was dead. Damn near had been, actually. A quarter-inch difference in the placement of that bullet and he would indeed be dead now.

It was pure luck that he survived, and a man in his line of work could not count on luck.

Longarm craned his neck to look at his bare feet. His whole body felt like it was on fire, but he twitched one big, hairy toe.

And grinned.

He had actually moved that toe.

He did it again and the grin got wider.

He moved a toe on the other foot, then lay back, exhausted by the simple act of holding his head up that long.

Longarm had to admit that he was not in the best of shape after nearly a week flat on his back and with nothing but a few spoonfuls of broth to sustain him.

But by damn he was on his way back. Feeling was returning to his body. He was able to move his toes. With effort and concentration he was able to move a finger as well. And then his hand.

It occurred to him that Nicole was guilty of false imprisonment. And of a federal officer at that.

If he wished, he could arrest her for that and she probably knew it. She was a rough old bat but not stupid. The woman might not want to lose her toy. Might not want him to recover.

Sweating now, Longarm steeled himself against an impulse to move his limbs lest he give himself away. The itching fires that covered his flesh raged, and he could do nothing to stop them.

But, oh, he was able to feel again.

He gritted his teeth to avoid crying out and waited, waited for full movement to return, waited for Nic to return.

He waited until she had gone out, then got up, found his clothes, and got dressed for the first time in a week. He felt much better when he had boots and clothing and, even more importantly, his double-action, .45-caliber Colt belted around his waist.

It occurred to him now to wonder what had happened to the horse he was riding when the bullet struck Longarm and Alton Gray was a free man again.

Temporarily free, Longarm growled silently to himself. He had been sent to bring Gray back to Denver for trial. And likely for hanging. Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long fully intended to do exactly that, never mind that Gray was no longer in his custody.

Longarm had been sent to do a job, and he was going to do it or some son of a bitch was going to die.

Better, he thought, that that son of a bitch be Al Gray or the unseen rifleman than that it be Longarm himself, but the thought of coming up against the rifleman again was not going to deter him. If anything it made him all the more eager. Whoever the bastard was, Longarm wanted a crack at him.

Longarm would take them both in to face the law, Gray and the rifleman, if he could. But if he could not take them in then he intended to take them down. Their choice how that worked out.

He stood, more than a little weak after a week in bed, and swayed from side to side.

Before he could go looking for Gray, he needed something to eat.

He opened the stove door and built up the fire in Nicole's tiny cabin, then rummaged through her things looking for something to eat.

“What are you doing out of bed?” Nicole gasped when she returned home that evening. “You . . . why didn't you tell me? How long have you been, uh, how long have you been able to get up like this?”

Longarm ignored the questions and said, “I took some o' your food. Don't feel bad about doin' it since you've robbed me of all my money. Now I want it back, all except for a dollar, which oughta cover the cost of the few bites o' grub I've et this afternoon. And mind you, I know how much I had there so don't try an' short me.” In fact he had no idea how much had been in his pockets the day he transported Al Gray. But Nic did not know that.

The burly woman—Longarm had known stevedores who would have envied Nicole's biceps—reluctantly dug a purse out of a pile of rags and opened it. She seemed surprised. “It's all there. You didn't take anything.”

“I'm no thief,” Longarm said. “I coulda found your poke but I had no interest in it. Now give me back what's mine.”

“I deserve something for my trouble,” Nic whined.

“Yes, an' you already got it. You took it when I couldn't resist nor do for myself. That's true enough. We both of us came out ahead on the deal,” Longarm said. “Me with healing, you with, well, you with what you took from me.”

The woman, he thought, had about the ugliest pussy he ever saw. And about the strongest appetite to use it. He remembered her expression as she pumped her ass up and down on his cock. That had been pretty ugly, too. All in all, his experience here was not one he would remember with any sort of fondness.

“What happened to my horse?” he asked. “And my hat?”

“I don't know. I never saw no horse. When I found you, you was laying there sprawled out on the grass. There was no horse. Some tracks, but no horse. No hat neither, at least none that I noticed.”

Longarm grunted. He was not surprised. Likely Al Gray took the animal with him when he rode away. If not that, then the untended horse simply strayed, maybe heading back to its home or maybe simply wandering from grass clump to grass clump until it was impossibly far away.

It was on loan from the Army Remount Service, and Lord knew where it originally came from.

Losing the horse was only a minor annoyance. But, damnit, he had liked that saddle. He regretted that loss and that of his nearly new flat-crowned brown Stetson.

“You owe me,” Nic said. “I gave up my bed and slept on the floor so's you could heal proper.”

“You used me for a toy,” Longarm accused. “I owe you nothing.”

“Where are you going?” Nic asked. “Don't you know it's evening already? Won't you stay one more night?”

“I'm not afraid of the dark,” Longarm snapped back at her.

“At least stay and eat with me. We could . . . one more time?”

Longarm ducked his head to get through the door on his way out.

Longarm's feet hurt like a son of a bitch. He was not sure of the distance from Nicole's mine to Crowell City—some called it Cruel City because of the heartbreak of failed mines in the surrounding hills—but he guessed it to be at least twenty miles and possibly more.

The thing he knew for certain was that it was too damn far. By the time he limped into town he had worn a hole completely through the sole of his right boot and the left one felt paper thin. He could feel every pebble through the worn leather.

It was nearly dawn when he reached the town. Chickens and dogs were awake but not much else.

Longarm spotted the yellow glow of lamplight coming from a storefront in the next block and headed for it.

It was funny, he noticed—funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha—but he had been comfortable enough while he was on the trail hiking in. Now that he had arrived he felt like his feet were close to falling off. And he was so tired he just wanted to lie down somewhere, anywhere, and get some rest.

Funny, too, he mused, but he had been doing nothing
but
resting for the past week. Now he wanted more of it.

He limped on to the lamplight and found it was coming from a café window. The door was latched, but a little tapping on the glass brought the proprietor to open it a crack.

“We're closed, mister. Come back in an hour.”

“Look, I don't want t' cause you no trouble, but I been walking all night. My feet hurt an' I'm hungry an' I'm thirsty and those stools by your counter are lookin' awful good to me about now,” Longarm said past the crack in the door.

The fellow smiled and shrugged and pulled the door open. “Come in then. The coffee's about ready. I'll get you a cup.”

The place seemed to be run by a couple, the man shaggy and his woman worn down before her time. Longarm guessed they were both in their thirties, but the woman looked a good ten years older than her man. She wore an apron and a white cap with flyaway strands of hair poking in all directions from beneath it.

The man immediately poured a cup of steaming coffee and set it in front of Longarm. Only then did he mention, “I got to ask you, mister. Can you pay for your meal? I mean, coffee is one thing. A hot meal is another. If you know what I mean.”

“No offense,” Longarm said. “I can pay.” He pulled a dollar out of his pocket and placed it on the counter.

The café man grunted, turned to his wife, and said something that Longarm could not hear. To Longarm then he said, “Breakfast will be up in a couple minutes.”

The pair were as good as their word—well, the man's word, anyway—and quickly laid a spread in front of the dusty traveler. Hotcakes, ham, sorghum syrup, and a dollop of sticky oatmeal, too.

Longarm felt a hell of a lot better once he had that meal in his belly. It gave his gut the feel of a nice, warm glow.

“Thanks, friend.” He smiled. “Any idea where I can find a cobbler in this fine community?”

“Glenn isn't a cobbler exactly. More like a saddle maker. But he fixes boots when need be,” the café man said.

“An' where would I find this gentleman?”

The café owner gave directions while he made change out of Longarm's dollar. “'Tisn't far,” he concluded.

“And a good thing that it isn't,” Longarm agreed, thinking of his aching feet.