an hour or so, earlier, with another mighty passionate gal. He was sort of vexed about that, too. For chubby little Felicidad had only been pretty, while Rosalinda was downright beautiful, and built a lot more interesting, too. He said, “We just got here. Give a man time to get used to the situation before he takes his gun rig and boots off, for Pete’s sake.” She asked, “Who is this Pete, some pretty gringo boy you like more than me? I can take it that way, if that is your desire.” He stifled the laugh he felt like laughing and said, “That’s an awful thing to say about the gent you call Pedro, and I feel sort of insulted myself. I like gals fine, the old-fashioned way, but there’s a time and a place for everything and, besides, I don’t know if I can afford you. I only make a little over five hundred a year plus expenses, and I’ve been spending money like it was going out of style since leaving Denver.”
“Oh, for why do you speak to me in such a cruel manner? Have I asked you for money, even when I risked my life for you?”
“No, and I admire gals with a romantic nature. I’ve always felt too romantic to pay for it, myself.”
But now she had her head down on her knees and was crying fit to bust, intimating he’d called her a whore. She was a whore, but a good old gal who’d backed a dangerous play as well. He took her in his arms to soothe her and say, “Aw, hush, there’s no need to carry on so silly, Rosalinda. Didn’t El Gato promise all you gals would get your names engraved on stone someday? I’m sure that once Don Julio overthrows the government he’ll be glad to put you in for a medal.”
She didn’t seem to be groping for a medal right now—Longarm was sure he hadn’t hung one on his fool pecker, ever. So as she got to working on his fly buttons he said, “Hold on, now. What do you think you’re doing?” even though he knew what it was.
She got it out and wailed, “I knew you loathed me! You are only half erect, you brute!”
He kissed her throat and told her, “That’s more than I had any right to expect, and you’re doing just fine, querida mia.”
So as he kissed her sweet passionate face and they both fell back across the bedding together, she got to playing with him more skillfully, and since it only seemed polite to run his free hand up under her satin skirts to return the favor, he forgot all about his earlier affair at the posada that same night. By now he might have gotten his second wind with old Felicidad in any case, if she hadn’t insisted on leaving early, bless her consideration.
Rosalinda purred, “Oh, it’s beginning to feel as if you do like me, after all. But don’t you think we should get out of all these awkward clothes?”
He said that sounded like a fine idea. She beat him, easy, having less to take off, and knelt naked on the floor to haul his boot off, panting, “Apresusa! I am mad with passion?”
That made two of them by the time their healthy naked bodies were entwined in good clean animal lust atop the rumpled bedding. But because he’d been with another animal, earlier, Longarm took longer than usual to satisfy himself, and she took that as a compliment that satisfied her immensely.
As she moaned like a coming cougar he warned her to keep it down to at least alley cat, explaining, “I’m hot, too. But let’s not forget our manners to the other guests downstairs.”
She gripped him tighter around the waist with her legs and said, “Forgive me. I seldom feel free to let myself go with a man, and I have not even done this with a customer since my last indisposition of the moon. Do you do this so good with all the other poor women you overpower, handsome yanqui?”
He said, “Only the pretty ones, and I’m not sure who might have overpowered whom, just now.”
“Are you cross with me for falling for you?” she asked.
He allowed he wasn’t and braced himself on stiff elbows to enjoy the view of what she’d gotten him into. There was only a little light through one dusty window to see by. It was enough to see she was built nice enough to pose for one of those marble statues the Old Greeks had gone in for, although he’d never yet seen a statue posed so sassy in any museum open to the public. Since great minds ran along the same channels at such times, she gazed up at him adoringly and said, “Oh, you are so handsome and so strong and, ay caramba, there is so much of you!”
He stopped what he’d been doing to ask if he was hurting her. She shook her head wildly, begged him not to stop, and told him it was most considerate to show such concern.
They’d just discovered he could when the door opened enough for El Gato to say, “Oh, excuse me. I thought you might want to know your prisoner, the Great Costello, does not seem to be with us anymore.”
Longarm swore and assured Rosalinda he didn’t mean her. “How great a lead are we talking about,” he asked El Gato, “and how come he has any at all, damn it?”
El Gato said, “The girl I sent to bed with him was watching. That is, she was until he knocked her out at a very rude as well as unexpected time. She just came to. She has no idea how long she may have been unconscious. But of course none of us have been here a full hour, you fast worker.”
Longarm began to haul on his duds as he growled, “He has to be headed for the horses, risky as that may be. I thought you told me a couple of patriotic pimps were keeping an eye on things down below.”
“They have been. Your prisoner did not leave by any of the usual exits. You’ll never guess how he got out of a room very similar to this one.”
Longarm said, “Sure I will. It occurred to me right off that if we got trapped up here my best bet would be straight up through them tiles and across the other rooftops.”
He strapped on his gun without bothering to button his vest. Rosalinda was welcome to his long johns if she had any use for them. He reached for his hat, found the gal’s bare rump in the way, and patted it fondly as he said, “I’ll never forget you and please hand me my hat, querida. I’m sorry, too, but I got to get going.”
As the girl passed his Mexican sombrero to him with a sad sigh, El Gato told him, “Wait, you are not thinking. That stable is right across from the bullring.”
“Yeah,” Longarm said, “but the boys we detailed to draw the whole town over that way are long gone by now and Costello knows it.”
“Not all the people attracted by the false alarm, and certainly not all the local lawmen. Even if he makes it to the horses, how far can he get? He’s a gringo, without a dozen words of Spanish. They’ll have roadblocks set up all around the city.”
Longarm said, “Yeah, but not looking for him, The Great Costello ain’t wanted on any charges in Mexico,
