“I don’t care, as long as Tasker doesn’t show up and expect to ride along. Whew! I never knew a human being could smell so bad. He must not have taken a bath since he was a baby.”
Longarm chuckled. “I suspect that might be true. And sometimes, you get lucky and meet very nice people on these stagecoaches. It’s all the luck of the draw.”
“Yes, I’m sure that it is. Just remember that we’re supposed to be married.”
Longarm stopped outside the Belmont Hotel and winked down at Miranda. “Why don’t you set about reminding me of that when we get up to our room?”
“You didn’t get as beat up as I thought,” Miranda said, taking his arm as they went inside.
“Marshal Long!” an older woman, wearing a pink shawl and with her silver hair pinned up around her pleasant face, cried. “It’s good to see you again!”
“Well, thank you, Mrs. Jackson,” he said. “And allow me to introduce my wife Miranda.”
“Congratulations!” She gave Miranda a big hug.
“Thank you,” Miranda said. “We’re on our honeymoon and heading for Mesa Verde.”
“Why go there when you can stay here?” the older woman asked. “I shouldn’t think you’d want to waste so much time riding in a stagecoach when you could be … enjoying yourselves right here in beautiful Pueblo.”
“Miranda has always wanted to see the Anasazi cliff dwellings,” Longarm explained.
“Just a bunch of old caves and buildings, or at least so I’m told,” Mrs. Jackson said. “Indian stuff, and spooky at that. We have two excellent museums right here in town, and you can see all the old bones, pots, and baskets right here.”
“I’d still like to see Mesa Verde,” Miranda said. “But I’m sure that we’ll enjoy our stay here. The train ride down was a little more eventful than expected.”
Mrs. Jackson clucked her tongue and put her hands on her skinny hips. “Who hit you, Custis? Wasn’t her, was it?”
“No,” he said with a silly grin. “But I’d appreciate a good bath and some Epsom salts. We had some trouble with a man who needed a lesson in civility and manners.”
“I hope he looks worse than you do,” Mrs. Jackson said.
“I expect that he does,” Longarm agreed. “I broke both his nose and his jaw, and he was already ugly.”
Mrs. Jackson laughed and said, “I’ll give you my best room for the same price I always charge you for a single. Ain’t exactly what anyone would call a ‘honeymoon suite,’ but it has pretty wallpaper and nicer furniture than you’re used to. Some of it was my grandmother’s, and I want you to be careful and not bust up the bed.”
Miranda blushed, but Longarm pretended not to notice as they followed the woman up the stairs to the second floor and then down to Room 214. The room was nice, with some beautiful old furniture and a real brass bed with a lace-covered canopy and real oil paintings on the walls.
“Hazel, this is perfect,” Longarm said to Mrs. Jackson.
“It really is,” Miranda agreed.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” the woman replied. “Now, I’ll have that bath and salts brought up at once along with a bottle of free champagne.”
“Hazel, you’ve a generous and romantic heart,” Longarm told her.
“Your bride is very pretty, Custis. Can’t imagine why she would have married a big ugly galoot like you. But I guess that’s her secret.”
Longarm liked to be teased, and he was smiling when Mrs. Jackson closed the door behind them.
“She really likes you,” Miranda said.
“The feeling is mutual.” Longarm kissed Miranda and they sat down on the bed, her head resting on his shoulder, both very content to wait for the bath and the champagne.
Chapter 4
“The stagecoach for Durango and Cortez always leaves at noon on Monday and Friday,” Longarm explained as he and Miranda enjoyed breakfast at a nearby cafe. “it comes in from Durango and stays only long enough to change horses and drivers, then turns around and heads back again.”
“Well, this is definitely Monday,” Miranda said, glancing over at a wall clock, “and we’ve got all morning to enjoy ourselves.”
Longarm yawned. “I wish we’d have slept a few more hours. We stayed up kind of late.”
“Well,” Miranda whispered across the table, “that’s because we made love three times. No wonder we’re both tired this morning. I’m even a little sore!”
Longarm stifled a smile. They had overindulged a bit last evening. “It must have been because we were in the honeymoon suite.”
Longarm finished his coffee, and resisted the urge to smoke one of his cigarillos because they were pretty smelly. So he just leaned back and waited until Miranda finished her own breakfast. Miranda was a slow eater. She was relaxed at almost everything except lovemaking, and then she turned into a spitfire.
“You look good to me this morning,” he said as she finished her toast.
“Does that mean that you want to go back to the hotel room and do it again?”
“Yeah, but I think we’d better go over to the stagecoach office after we leave here and buy our tickets. I just don’t want to run any risk of the coach being sold out. That isn’t very likely, but it never hurts to get your tickets
