fingers. She called him a meany and began to stroke him some more even as she pleaded, 'Can't we finish right, darling?'
When he didn't answer, she murmured louder, 'Matty? How are you coming with that basket for your momma?'
When there was no answer, Longarm reflected that the wind-flapped canvas and moaning prairie all around was making at least as much noise as discreet screwing. So he moaned himself and rolled atop her with his duds on, at first.
Then his naked shaft was in her to the hilt, and she was peeling his duds off for him with her hands as she moved those school marmish hips in a way that might have made her a rich woman in Leadville or Virginia City. The best part was that they didn't bounce the solid prairie under little Matty the way they'd have surely bounced any bedsprings they were sharing with her. Longarm didn't ask why Minerva tossed the top tarp aside as she wrapped her slender but surprisingly strong legs around his waist and softly begged him to thrust harder and faster. He knew full well how his bare ass would have whipped the covers back and forth across that sleeping kid's skinny naked hips. And thinking about the dark tawny Matty's younger and likely even tighter little twat, just inches away from the one he was in, inspired him to start hitting bottom with every stroke as Minerva gasped, 'My Lord, you're not at all like Ace after all, and to tell the truth you may be curing my warped hankerings for that tinhorn brute!'
Longarm allowed he was about cured of some heartless gals who'd used and abused him more recently. Then they came hard, and she agreed a shared cheroot might save both their lives.
It was tricky to light up, even with a wax Mexican match. For the wind eddied in under their flapping canvas shelter. But the match cast enough light to tell Longarm he'd been right about that other gal's skinny bare ass.
As if she sensed the light, or perhaps because of the chill in the air, Matty covered her bare butt with her blanket as she muttered some sleepy Kiowa curse words without turning over to face them.
Longarm hastily shook the match out, aware of how much of them the kid would have seen as he lit that cheroot. Then he and Minerva were snuggled under the tarp, naked limbs entwined, as they shared the one smoke. He wondered what other unmaidenly vices she indulged in, but he never asked. Billy Vail hadn't sent him all this way to investigate an almost pretty schoolmarm's morals.
But being a woman, Minerva naturally wanted to hear more about those other gals who'd been this mean to him. He figured that went with Professor Darwin's notions. He'd read how Mormons, Turks, and other such harem keepers were only carrying on traditions far older than, say, Queen Victoria. Menfolk, like apefolk, wolves, elk, and such, were inclined to hog all the females they could, fighting off any other males that might come courting.
But womenfolk, descended from many a great-granny who'd been part of some caveman's herd, were more inclined to size up the competition with a view to out-screwing them. So Longarm knew the horny schoolmarm wouldn't get sore if he told her the truth about that fickle newspaper gal or the mysterious stranger who'd taken cruel advantage of his weak nature the other night at Fort Sill.
Minerva laughed sort of dirty, and said she'd wondered why he'd seemed so anxious to lure her to that army hostel. She agreed it had doubtless been some army wife with a hankering for novelty. When he said he was worried about her damned army husband finding out, Minerva said she doubted many wives were in the habit of confessing such side trips to their menfolk.
He had to tell her the whole dumb tale of Attila the Hungarian and the confession of his Magda before he could ask her opinion, as a woman, on that mess.
Minerva agreed it made little sense from a male or female position. After a thoughtful drag on their shared cheroot she said, 'The only thing I can think of is that she was trying to protect her real lover. Didn't you say he'd been heard to speak Hungarian to her?'
Longarm replied, 'I never said it. Neighbor gals who know way more about the lingo say this rascal claiming to be me was some sort of greenhorn from their old country.'
Minerva passed the smoke back to him as she pointed out, 'He might not have told anyone he was anybody. When her husband heard she'd been billing and cooing with a tall dark stranger, it was Magda herself, a greenhorn bride who barely speaks English, who told her man an American lawman had done them both dirty, remember?'
Longarm did. He said, 'It's already been suggested there was this article about me in the papers about the time old Magda would have had to come up with some answers in a hurry. I'm glad you think that was what she might have been doing too. My boss has other deputies looking into it, and since all roads seem to lead to the same reasons, that's likely where they'll wind up. They'll get the real story out of the lying sass, and I'll be able to turn this other stuff over to the army and real Indian Police. Lord knows they ought to be just as good as tracking flimflam artists across their own range.'
She took the cheroot from his lips and flicked it far out into the windy darkness as she cooed, 'You don't have to leave just now, do you?'
So a grand time was had by all, or at least two out of three of them, and they even got some sleep, once the storm had blown itself over and it got too quiet to get dirty under the covers with little Matty snoring away.
They got up, ate a cold breakfast, and were on their way again as the sun rose off to the east in a cloudless windswept sky.
That shavetail's complaint that they'd been almost there when the storm hit had been well taken. They'd ridden less than an hour when they topped a rise to make out the fluttering flag and higher rooftops of Fort Sill to the south.
Seeing the Comanche sub-agency lay east-northeast of the actual fort, although within the sprawling limits of the military reservation, Longarm led the gals that way until they spotted the steeple of that church Quanah Parker and his band attended when they weren't beating drums for other puha. Somebody must have spotted them riding in, for old Aho Gordon came tearing out on foot to meet them, wailing at her daughter in Kiowa and saying awful things about Longarm in English until Matty calmed her down in their own lingo.
The dumpy Indian gal stopped cussing Longarm, and switched to cussing those lying two-hearts who'd endangered her only child and cost her two sleepless nights. She told Longarm she was sorry she'd called him a baby-raper, now that she'd been told he'd behaved so properly to both of his companions, and added she'd heard rumors of riders dressed as Kiowa who failed to respond to the hand signals all Horse Indians were familiar with.
As Matty helped her mother aboard her own pony to ride into the agency with them, Longarm said, half to himself, 'Paid-up Scotch-Irish outlaws have been known to gussy up like Indians, and a breed or Mex would look even more convincing to anyone but a real Quill Indian. We've established no Black Leggings Kiowa are wearing
