Longarm started to explain the obvious as he felt himself getting hard in spite of himself. Anyone with a lick of sense could see what a difference it made when you knew for certain a gal was married up with a gent you knew to howdy. She was likely just out to make sure he'd be in no position to bear witness against her, the wicked old thing.
Then she had her hand on it and marveled, 'Oh, my, is all this for little old me?'
So he decided he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't as he reeled her in for a friendly howdy, seeing she was already hauling his raging erection out into the cool shades of evening.
She kissed back with a passion suggesting she might not just be gripping his shaft that tight to prevent his arresting her. When they came up for air and he asked if she was sure they were alone in the house now, she gasped, 'I told the boys to leave the dishes in the sink, but I don't care! I want you now. Right there on the rug, the way we used to do it when I was eighteen and we could have eloped if you hadn't ridden off with your damned regiment, darling!'
So they wound up on the rug with half their duds off, screwing the hell out of other folks long ago and far away.
Longarm didn't know who her darling was, once she'd wrapped plump but surprisingly limber legs around his waist. He decided she reminded him of good old Roping Sally, up Montana way, who'd had such a well-rounded rump they'd never needed any padding under it. Although, as this one thrust her twat in time with his thrusts, it felt different. He was glad they all seemed to feel a mite different. For if all of them felt exactly as swell, a man would have no call to ride on, and then where would he be?
An hour later they were in a small bed in what she described as their guest room. It didn't make him feel as dirty as it might have in a bed she shared with the colonel. He didn't want to hear how many 'guests' she'd been this nice to.
Her shorter, plumper body didn't seem at all like Roping Sally's as they came again in the nude on top of the bedding. But he didn't care. Old Elvira had a lot to offer, once a man persuaded himself he was sacrificing himself in the cause of investigation.
Sharing a smoke with her as they cuddled in the dark like old pals, Longarm had little trouble worming the petty details of a familiar arrangement out of the no-longer-worried colonel's lady.
She had the colonel sincerely convinced it was better for their enlisted men to let off steam in Shanty Town than, say, some Indian settlement a short ride further out, where they'd be harder to keep an eye on.
In return for this reasonable attitude, Miss Spike and the other trash whites just outside the gates gave 'presents' to a lady with appetites her husband couldn't afford on his army salary. Longarm was paid by the same government. So he had to agree President Hayes seemed mighty tightfisted.
He didn't go into the mostly civilian government officials he'd had to arrest for augmenting their modest civil service salaries with the graft almost built into the system. He didn't want to remind her how Washington gave petty officials almost god-like powers over richer folks and then paid them three-or four-figure salaries to get by on. He'd often thought it was dumb to pay a bank teller barely enough to eat on and then trust him with the combination to the vault too.
Once he'd convinced her they hadn't sent him all this way to see where the troops at Fort Sill got laid, Elvira seemed more interested in the case he was really on.
He snubbed out the cheroot and got his bonier hips between her plump thighs again, to slide it back in sideways half erect, as he repeated there were only a few details to clear up and that he was leaving them to the army and the Indians.
She thrust her own hips languidly as she said, 'Oh, yes, this is a nice friendly way if the man's, ah, man enough. But why were those mysterious riders act so mysterious to begin with, dear?'
He shrugged a bare shoulder, thrust a stiffer erection, and told her, 'When the cat's away the mice will play, as if I had to tell you that. Somebody heard Quanah's Indian Police were resented and not too well understood by the folks around here.
Meanwhile, Quanah was away on his own mysterious business, and this gave them the chance to move in and try the Black Hand flimflam from New Orleans.'
She said, 'I thought you said they were Mexican, or maybe Pawnee. Could you move a little faster, honey?'
He could. He rolled atop her as he explained in the same conversational tone, 'They read about war paint in books. I ain't saying the mastermind is Indian or Mex. He adds up as some sneaky white. But as soon as any of 'em are caught, they'll doubtless talk. So like I said, I can't hang around forever to pull routine police chores.'
She moaned, 'oh, Lord, don't you dare leave before you make me come again! I'd forgotten how grand it can feel and... Jesus, Teddy, why did you have to get yourself killed like a mere human being in that bloody mess at Lookout Mountain?'
He started to tell her a lot of Confederate widows doubtless shared her distaste for that particular battle. But he never did. He knew Elvira was thinner and younger and coming with her Teddy right now. So he just thrust it in and out of her moaning flesh until they'd both gone to Heaven again. Then all hell Seemed to be busting loose outside in the night, and he pulled out of her as she gasped, 'My God! We're under attack! That was gunfire just now!'
He sat up, reaching for his duds at the foot of the bed as he said, 'Two six-guns, fired fast as possible but empty by now, with nobody shooting back. Stay here and I'll find out what's going on out yonder.'
She didn't argue, but groped for her own clothes as he quickly got dressed, buckled on his own six-gun, and grabbed his hat on the way out. Nobody was looking his way as they all converged on the post's guest hostel down the parade.
Longarm had time to break out his badge and pin it to the lapel of his frock coat before he got to where he'd booked a room for the night. It was just as well he had. Two military policemen were blocking the front door to the simply curious. They let Longarm through. Inside, four uniformed figures were poking about with confused expressions. One wore the arm brassard of the Officer of the Day. Another had the gilt oak leaves you'd expect on a post provost marshal. Before they could ask Longarm anything, or vice versa, another officer and two enlisted military policemen came down the stairs, confused in their own right.
The shavetail in charge said, 'We found the room clerk upstairs, Major. Shot in the back in one of the rooms. There was nobody else with him. But the bed had been shot up worse! Feathers all over the place!'
