“Ma’am, I wish you’d go put some clothes on. I’m done washing and I’d like to get out and put my pants on.”
“You’ve got a hard-on, haven’t you? You don’t fool me with that shy act! I’ll bet you’ve lost count of the women you’ve had.”
“Never occurred to me to keep a tally.”
He saw she wasn’t going to leave. So as she stood there, naked, watching, he got out of the tub, erection and all, and proceeded to dry himself off.
She sighed, “Oh, that’s a nice one!”
Longarm tried to keep his voice level as he said, “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to, for you are one handsome gal, even with your clothes on. But we’d best forget we had the notion, Nan. I know we’ve been acting sort of silly, but no harm’s been done and let’s forget it, huh?”
As he tried to dress she dropped the kettle and threw herself against him, bare breasts pressed to his naked chest as she wrapped her arms around him and insisted, “Just one time! I’m going crazy!”
“Yep, that’s likely what’s the matter with you, gal. Lucky I got a mite more self-control.”
“Control? You must be made out of iron! What’s the matter with you? Who would ever know?”
“We would, Nan. Maybe that wouldn’t bother you, but I ain’t done here, and I’d find it sort of difficult looking your man in the eye if I was to abuse his hospitality while his back was turned.”
She suddenly stepped back, jeering, “What’s the matter with you? Ain’t I good enough for you?”
“Honey,” he said gently, “I’ve bedded down with gals who Couldn’t hold a candle to you when it comes to looking pretty. But none of ‘em were married to my friends.”
“Oh, my, aren’t we godly and pious today? Next, you’ll have me down on my knees, repenting my wicked advances!”
“Not hardly. God is one thing, fooling with a friend’s wife is another. I’m going to forget we had this conversation, Nan. But, if you don’t like your husband, have the decency to just up and leave him. It ain’t seemly for a pretty gal like you to carry on like this.”
“I just need to be pleasured, damn it! I haven’t been loved properly since I don’t know when and it’s only natural to do what needs doing!”
“Well, sure it is. But the only thing that makes us humans better than most other brutes is, well, that we ain’t brutes. The Lord gave us common sense to go with our desires. So let’s use some, and forget this whole thing.”
“I thought a real man had to have all the loving he could get.”
“No, a real man doesn’t. A bull in the field, a dog in an alley, or a kid with a hard-on doesn’t worry much about the who and how of it, but us grown-ups study on it before we go leaping at folks. I’ll tell you the truth, I’m going to have hard-ons for a month over YOU, now, and I’ll likely kick myself for being a fool someday, when I hear you’ve ran off with a passing whiskey drummer or been caught with some cowhand. But when you bust this marriage up, it won’t be with me. So, while my pecker will tease me over lost opportunities, my conscience will be clear.” He stopped to catch his breath, amazed that he’d delivered such a long-winded sermon. He felt as self-righteous as a revival meeting Bible-beater, which he took as a sure sign that his resistance was breaking down.
“Oh, shit!” Nan exploded, “you think I don’t know about that half-breed girl and you?”
“Don’t know what Miss Two-Women might have said while you and she were jawing, ma’am. So I’ll not defend myself, save to point out that I never met anyone she was married to.”
“You … bastard!” she shrilled, turning from him to flounce out of the shed. She looked as nice going away as she had facing him, and Longarm sighed wistfully as he buttoned up his shirt.
“Damn fool,” he told himself, “she’ll likely play that trick the Egyptian’s old woman pulled on Joseph in the Good Book and tell Calvin I tried to screw her, anyway!”
That was something to ponder as he finished dressing. If Nan tried to revenge herself on him by playing Potiphar’s wife, Cal would likely come after him with a gun. Damn. Maybe he’d been too hasty, as well as mean to his poor pecker. A man could get killed either way and she’d purely had one nice little rump!
He finished dressing and decided to let Nan cool a while before he went back inside. He went down the back steps and walked over to the corral. He didn’t have anything to do there, but at least if he was out here where the Indians in the other houses could see him with his pants on
…
Then he grinned as he spied a dot on the horizon and recognized it as Calvin and Prudence driving back from town. They were two hours earlier than Nan had expected them to be. He hadn’t just been decent; he’d been goddamned lucky.
Prudence Lee had purchased a box of vittles in Switchback along with her other supplies. She insisted that everyone eat at her house that night, the house that Real Bear had been murdered in. Longarm didn’t go into the bedroom, but he hoped it had been cleaned up since last he’d seen it. The front room was cluttered with a big bass drum and religious pictures she’d cut out and tacked to the whitewashed Walls. The two women went out to the kitchen to fuss over the tinned food she’d brought from town while Longarm and the Indian agent sat on the porch steps, smoking as the sun went down.
Longarm mentioned the strange Indians he’d heard about in town and Calvin said, “I know. Rain Crow said he’d try to find out if they were staying with anyone out here.”
“Isn’t he with those Blackfoot that the Paiute missionary’s visiting with?”
“No, not if I can believe Rain Crow. Tell me something, Longarm. You know Rain Crow as well as, or better than I do. How far would you trust that boy?”
“About as far as I’d trust most, I reckon. Why?”
“I get the feeling he’s hiding something from me. He doesn’t seem at all interested in catching whoever’s been selling whiskey to his tribesmen; the other day, I was sure I smelled some on his breath.”
