Godiva started to say she'd heard the poor Indians had been provoked into that suicidal uprising of the early 1870s by nasty white men. But recent events had given her a new perspective on at least some Indians. So she held the thought for now.
A million years went by. Then, through the rising heat shimmers, Longarm spied a Texan on foot with his own saddle gun at port atop that same rise the Black Leggings riders had been on earlier. So he let fly a cattle call and stepped out in the open, waving his hat until the cowhand spotted him and waved back.
Nobody ever figured out how those three dead bodies out back had managed to vanish in broad daylight. But by the time they had it all scouted safe around the soddy, the only Indian sign for miles seemed to be one feather and a whole lot of horse apples. The trail boss had to agree with Longarm that sometimes birds just flying over had been known to drop a feather that signified nothing much.
By now the sun was getting low, and old Harry Carver, as the trail boss introduced himself more formally, decided the timbered banks of Cache Creek, just to the east, were as handy a night campsite as he was likely to find. So Longarm and Godiva saddled their ponies and rode there with Carver and the four riders he'd chosen to scout ahead with.
That chuck wagon had crawfished down off the skyline along with the cows, of course. They'd wound up in the brushy draw that ran north and south in line with the drier trail. By this time the cook and his helper had rustled up a supper of sourdough bisquits, mesquite-smoked ham, and black-eyed peas.
Everyone had time to tend their riding stock first, and to her credit and despite her prissy sidesaddle, Godiva Weaver knew how to settle her mount in for the night, although she borrowed some oats from Longarm to do so. She said she hadn't been planning on the way to Fort Sill being so far.
Longarm didn't tell her you always had to figure on an easy ride stretching out some. For he could see she'd already learned that.
As the sun went down and the crickets started chirping in the trees and brush all around, they were seated side by side on an old fallen log, eating from tin plates and sipping coffee from clay mugs while, somewhere in the gathering dusk, that plaintive mouth organ began to moan about Aura Lee. Longarm nodded at the tailgate of the chuck wagon across the clearing and observed, "They're about to serve the last of the coffee, Miss Godiva. I'd be proud to fetch you another mug, if you'd like."
She shook her hatless head and replied, "I'm afraid I'll be too wound up to sleep tonight as it is. So much has happened all in one day, and I'm just now starting to relax. You did say it was safe to relax now, didn't you? It's so peaceful down here with all this company, and I've always loved this twilight time of the day."
Longarm glanced up at the gloaming sky through the cottonwood branches and replied, "Everybody seems to. This English traveling man who'd spent time in East India told me one time the Hindu folks call this time of day the Hour of Cow Dust, and I had to agree that sounds sort of poetical too, albeit I don't see why it ought to."
She nodded and said, "I do, now that all those longhorns have settled down amid the trees after a long hot day on the trail. The dust has just about settled now. But you can still smell just a hint of it as the cool shades of evening creep in all around us. Where am I supposed to sleep tonight, by the way?"
Longarm smiled thinly and said, "In those blankets lashed to your saddle, of course. I'd invite you to climb into my bedroll if I wanted my face slapped. Harry Carver ain't asked, but I'll have to offer to stand my own turn as night picket. Finish your grub and we'll see about finding some soft ground upslope to spread out our bedding."
She didn't argue, although she seemed a tad uneasy a few minutes later as Longarm indicated a shallow hollow between two trees as her best bet to get a sort of rugged night's rest. He noted her dubious look and said, "Forget anything you might have heard about piles of leaves. Dry leaves are dusty, don't really pad a hip bone worth mention, and they can keep you awake all night as they rustle every time you twitch. A couple of thicknesses of wool over bare dirt work way better."
She asked about the still-green leaves above that were ripe for easy plucking. He shook his head and told her, "Not as much padding as you'd think. Also, they draw bugs and stain your bedding. Half the trick of sleeping on the ground is sleeping on one side or the other with your knees drawn up. It's only where you grind a bone against the firm mattress that you wind up sore."
She dimpled and replied, "Thank you for not implying I was just a trifle mature across the hips. Where will you be reclining, on one side or the other, all this time?"
His own bedroll still across the arm that cradled his Yellowboy, Longarm pointed with his chin at another clear space a few paces off and said, "I was figuring on unrolling her yonder, past that clump of rabbit bush, unless you're worried it's too close for your own comfort, Miss Godiva."
She shook her head and softly replied, "It's a little far, as a matter of fact, should anything go boomp in the night around here. Isn't it funny how glades that appear so pretty in the glow of sunset can look sort of ominous after dark?"
He said, "The almanac says we'll get at least a half- moon later tonight. I'd best spread my own bedding before I go see when Harry wants me to stand guard."
It only took him a few seconds to unroll his own bedding at an angle on the wooded slope. But once he had, Godiva was already down atop her own blankets, moving her trim but soft-looking hips in an experimental way as she decided, "I see what you meant about bones."
Longarm just strode off down the slope, wishing woman wouldn't do that. He'd met that well-read and so-called sophisticated type of spinster gal before. You'd think independent single women who'd learned to talk like that suffragette leader Virginia Woodhull would know better than to talk bolder than they really meant to be around men. Miss Virginia Woodhull was always raving and ranting about the way men hurt women's feelings, as if men didn't have feelings themselves.
He found the trail boss jawing with some others around the small night fire near the chuck wagon. Carver seemed to think it was swell of a deputy marshal to bear his own share, like a dollar-a-day rider. When Longarm pointed out that he and Miss Weaver had been coffeed and beaned after their rescue from wild Indians, Carver allowed he could stand the first watch--along with three others, of course. So that was the way he spent the next four hours with his Yellowboy as the darkness fell and kept on falling. Neither the stars nor that moon the almanac had promised showed at all that night. For an overcast moved in from the west as the sun went down, and just kept coming, till the night air was downright clammy and Longarm was starting to worry about getting soaked to the skin before he could get to that vulcanized poncho atop his bedding.
But there was neither thunder nor enough back-wind to matter when, around a quarter to midnight, a gentle rain commenced to patter all around as he ghosted through the trees along his quarter of the far-flung picket. Carver had suggested, and they'd all agreed, it made the most sense for the dismounted picket guards to circle wider than the night riders holding the herd down in the draw. Any Indians out to lift stock, or hair, would be more inclined to creep in on the sounds of the mounted hand further down the slopes, whether they knew what he was making all that noise about or not.
Young Waco, the kid who played that mouth organ, had been replaced by a tenor of the Mexican persuasion who kept singing to the cows about a cielito lindo, or pretty little patch of sky, despite the way the real sky was acting.
The cows didn't care. You sang softly to a herd at night to keep them from spooking at more sinister night noises. It was only on a vaudeville stage, or maybe in town on a Saturday night, that anyone ever sang those whooping and hollering Wild West songs, lest they see the last of their herd stampeding over the far horizon.
The rain had soaked Longarm's shoulders downright uncomfortably by the time someone called his name and he was relieved by a cowhand smart enough to start out with a rain slicker. So he was peeling out of his wet shirt and vest as he moved downslope to his bedding with a rude remark about the weather. He tossed his wet hat atop the rainproof poncho, but hung on to his wet duds as he proceeded to slide into his roll.
Then he said, "What the blue blazes?" as Godiva Weaver gasped, "Oh, it's you. You startled me!"
Longarm said, "That makes two of us," as he slid on in beside her, noting how warm and damp it all felt at the same time. It was his bedding the two of them were under. So he felt no call to ask her permission.
She said, her breath warm on his wet face, "When it started to rain, I remembered you were smart enough to bring along a rainproof bedroll. I've stuffed both my own blankets and my silly self in here, and it still feels just a bit too firm under my poor tailbone, thank you very much."
Longarm could only mutter, "I noticed it was mighty warm in here. A mite crowded too. The only way the two of us are going to fit comfortably will call for you to let me stretch this one arm under you so's you can rest your head in the hollow of my shoulder."
She cooperated in the contortions it took to settle them, his peeled-off wet duds, and his shooting irons into a more or less comfortable position as the wind and rain picked up.
He said he was sure glad he'd made it back just in time to save himself from the cold shower he deserved.
Snuggled against him with the edge of the poncho pulled over both their heads, Godiva shyly confided, "Maybe we could both use a cold shower right now. I don't mean to pry, but where did you ever get all these muscles I can feel now that you've shed your clothes above the waist?"
Longarm shrugged the bare shoulder her head was resting on and replied, "Pure misfortune, I reckon. I'd have never worked half as hard growing up if I'd been born into wealth instead of a hard-scrabble patch of West-by-God-Virginia. Had I wound up alone in here, I'd have slid these damp jeans off my muscular hind end as well."
She laughed girlishly and demurely said, "Well, don't let me stop you, you big damp silly."
He considered her words before he soberly replied, "Unless you mean that sort of naughty, this is pushing past flirty into cruelty to animals, Miss Godiva."
She answered simply, "I'm never cruel to animals I'm fond of, Custis. What's the matter? I know I'm almost thirty, and I told you how that mean thing broke off our engagement. But he said it was because I wouldn't quit my job at the Sentinel, not because he found me disgusting in bed!"
So Longarm had to prove he didn't find her disgusting by kicking off his boots and jeans, moving her thin cotton frock up above her trim waist, and just rolling his own naked body between her welcoming thighs.
He didn't ask her how come she'd removed all her underthings to crawl into a male traveling companion's bedding. But she confessed she'd been gushing for him since before sundown as she finished the chore of shucking her frock over her head while he proceeded to put it to her.
It was a good thing she was as wet as she'd said inside. For she was tight as a girl in her teens despite her mature curves, and when Longarm tried to hold most of his weight off her, in consideration of the packed earth under her friendly tailbone, Godiva bounced her soft rump even friendlier and told him not to hold back, but to crush her, crush her, crush her. Gals who read a lot tended to talk like that when they were screwing.
After she'd been crushed enough to come more than once, Godiva wanted to get on top. So he let her, and didn't object when such a frisky little thing said it was awfully stuffy under all that vulcanized canvas and threw the poncho down to straddle him bare-ass in the gentle rain. For it felt swell to lie there, kissing both her cool nipples in turn as the rain ran off them while, below the waist, the two of them felt warm and wet as hasty pudding.
By the time Godiva bounced herself to climax and collapsed atop him, her bare back had gooseflesh and he had to roll her over on her back, haul up the covers, and warm her up some more. Then he rummaged around near the bottom of the bedroll till he found a dry feed-sack he'd packed away as a towel, hardly expecting to use it for such delightful drying.
He figured they'd just doze and cuddle with the rain gently tapping on their vulcanized cover. But Godiva seemed to be crying as she rested her damp head on his bare shoulder.
Longarm didn't ask why. No man who'd slept with more than one woman in his life would be dumb enough to do that. So just as he expected, Godiva finally volunteered that she just didn't understand what had just gotten into her.
He said, "Aw, come on, I ain't built that unusual, honey."
She giggled through her tears and replied, "Yes, you are. But I've no complaints about that. I'm just so ashamed of practically begging for it. Whatever must you think of me, Custis?"
He patted her bare shoulder and said, "That you wanted some almost as badly as I did? What just happened was natural as falling off a bronco. I'd be more concerned for the both of us if we'd just fallen asleep like babes in the wood, assuming said babes were way the hell younger than either of us."
She sighed and said, "It's true I'm a more experienced woman than I like to admit. I guess you could tell there's been more than one man in my unusual life."