if you've no place better to bed down. Our quarters are right out back, off and since Agent Ryan won't be staying here tonight...'
'Can't use another gent's bed behind his back,' said Longarm, getting to his feet with a suddenly uneasy feeling about that flat-chested but mighty girlish young jasper.
Hino-Usdi Rogers insisted, 'Uncle Fred won't mind. But if you're bashful, why don't we just go back right now and have a little fun in my little bed?'
Longarm found himself backing away from the fluttery but brazen advances of the eager young squirt. He laughed awkwardly, and said, 'I hate to be the one who has to tell you this, but I'm incurably queer for women, if that was the fun you had in mind.'
The breed licked his pouty lips and puffed, 'I can do anything for you any woman can. Better! Don't be bashful. Nobody else need ever know, and you can't tell me you've never been even a little weeny bit curious about the joys that dare not speak their names!'
Longarm laughed, too loudly for the way he felt, and confessed, 'I've always wondered what the main entree at a cannibal feast might taste like too. That don't mean I'm ever fixing to eat anybody!'
The breed flicked his pink tongue like a snake's, and told him not to refuse a friend just a little taste of his own flesh raw. Longarm had to shove past to get closer to the door. So he did, saying, 'I don't hold with hitting other gents just because I don't agree with their, ah, tastes. But don't start no wrestling match if you ain't ready to land flat on your ass, old son.'
The breed kid wrapped both arms around Longarm and buried his head in the taller man's tweed vest, sobbing, 'Don't humiliate me this way! You said you and Uncle Fred were pals. How was I to know you were one of those blue-lipped Holy Rollers who can't admit their own passions?'
Longarm gently but firmly disengaged himself from the confounded clerk as he observed, 'I doubt you've been to many gatherings of the Pentecostal Movement if you don't find them capable of passion. But through no fault of anyone, everyone feels passionate in different ways. I'm sorry I ain't like you and your Uncle Fred. But that's just the way things are and... Hold on, am I to understand that Fred Ryan is a, you know...?'
'Queer is the word you were groping for,' said Rogers, striking a haughty pose. 'We prefer to call ourselves free to love as we please and... what's so funny, damn you?'
Longarm sheepishly confessed, 'Wasn't laughing at you. Laughing at me. I thought old Fred stick-talked a gal away from me the other night. I reckon she did too. But he must have just wanted company on that long ride east, unless he was one of them free thinkers who like everybody a heap. You call gents like that bicycles, right?'
Rogers laughed despite himself and said, 'The only way Uncle Fred would screw a woman would be if she was willing really to take him through her back door. Sodomy seems to make him feel romantic!'
Longarm shrugged and said, 'Lucky for you. Most Indians I know are tolerant of your kind, but no more inclined than the rest of us to take you up on your kind offers.'
Then he brightened and said, 'That's it! I was wondering what old Fred had to offer that newspaper gal that I couldn't match. She was one of them adventurous gals who wanted to try everything. But somehow, I don't feel as jealous about the two of 'em now.'
Hino-Usdi blanched and demanded, 'Are you suggesting Uncle Fred is cheating on me, with a woman?'
To which Longarm could only reply gently, 'Why not? You just now tried to cheat on him with a man.'
Then he was out the door, smiling wearily but not sure who might be the biggest fool of them all. Life would surely be less confounding if folks got to screw like flowers, just letting the bees worry about who got to couple with whom.
By this time it was pushing noon and he hadn't had a warm meal in recent memory. So Longarm went over to that officers' mess and treated himself to eighteen cents worth of corned beef and fried spuds. He washed down his raisin pie dessert with two cups of black coffee, and then, feeling human again, he strode on up to the sutler's store to replenish his tobacco supply.
Ed Vernon seemed surprised as well as glad to see him. The sutler said, 'We figured you'd ride north with Colonel Howard. Wasn't you the one sending up them smoke signals yesterday?'
Longarm nodded and said, 'Told Lieutenant Standish why too. Never told him those mystery riders were headed north for certain. I reckon they were in too great a hurry to wait for me this morning. I had to carry two ladies home to Comanche Town. I could use another dozen of these same cheroots.'
Vernon reached under the counter for them as he said, 'Maybe just as well. Quirt McQueen just said he was riding after the column to have some words with you. I don't know if we talked him out of it or not.'
As Longarm reached in his jeans to pay for the smokes he muttered, 'That makes no sense, if we're talking about that silly kid who rides shotgun for the mail ambulance. There's no way in hell they could have driven all the way to Fort Smith and back by this morning.'
Vernon handed over the fistful of cheroots and accepted Longarm's quarter as he casually explained, 'Quirt says they fired him at the Mud Creek relay stop. Seems to think you had something to do with it. I told him if he wasn't working for the government no more I couldn't let him wait here on a military post to clean your plow. Last anyone I know seen of Quirt, he was getting liquored up over in Shanty Town, allowing he meant to kill you on sight and asking if anyone would lend him a pony.'
The sutler handed Longarm his nickel in change as he added in a cheerful tone, considering, 'By now someone's sure to have put him on a pony, if only to get rid of him. Quirt can be obnoxious as all get-out when he's drunk.'
Longarm put his tobacco and change away as he thoughtfully said, 'He ain't all that pleasant sober. But there's no way I could have wired mean things about him to Mud Creek. I didn't know he was there, and even if I had, I'd have been out on the range with more serious things on my mind at the time.'
He lit one of the smokes he'd just bought as he considered all his options. Then he said, 'Reckon I'll have to track the kid down, if he's still over yonder, and just ask him what this is all about.'
The sutler blinked and replied in a worried tone, 'You don't want to meet up with him before he's had time to cool down and sober up a mite, Longarm. Quirt is one mean drunk, and he's sworn he means to slap leather at the sight of you!'
