her teeth in his neck. He hadn’t felt a thing, such had been his passion. He said, “Well, damn you, Lily Gail. I ought to take a razor strap to your rear end for that little stunt. If I thought you had done it on purpose, I would.”
He crossed back to the whiskey bottle, poured some on a little towel, and placed it to the bite. It burned like hell and made him say damn several times until the burning subsided. Then he swabbed it off lightly until it finally stopped bleeding. It really wasn’t a very bad cut. He had been bitten by a woman before, but he was amazed that he hadn’t been aware of it when it happened.
He fixed two more drinks, one watered, and then sat down on the bed. He turned to the left and then set hers on her slightly rounded stomach. “Here’s a drink,” he said. “Maybe you’ll take this instead of sucking the blood out of me. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Her lips came up into a little smile, and she reached her hands up and clutched the glass with both hands. She still hadn’t opened her eyes. She said softly, “Oh, my, Mister Custis Long. That was ever so nice. Are you so nice to all of your girlfriends?”
He said dryly, “Lily Gail, I wouldn’t exactly classify you as a girlfriend.” He took another drink of whiskey and began pulling on the rest of his clothes. When he had his jeans buttoned and belted, he reached down and picked up Lily Gail’s dress from where it lay on the floor and carried it over and draped it over the back of a chair that was against the wall. He noticed how crisp and fresh it was. He looked back over his shoulder and said, “Lily Gail, did you tell me that you weren’t staying anyplace in Taos, that you had just gotten here?”
“That’s right.”
“And I’m to believe that you came from seventy miles out on the Cimarron Strip where it is hot enough to fry an egg on a rock right now and that you arrived in this freshly starched and ironed dress with your hair all done up perfect and all that rouge on your face and not a drop of sweat on you? Do you really want me to believe that?”
She looked at him round-eyed. “Why, whatever do you mean?”
He laughed. “Girl, I may have been born yesterday, but I wasn’t born the day before. Now, where are you staying? You walked into this hotel from someplace else where you got yourself all gussied up, and it damned sure wasn’t someplace out on the strip.”
She said, trying to sound indignant but not succeeding, “Why, Mister Long. That is certainly no way to talk to a lady. I have not misled you, as you seem to think. Did I once say that I had come from the strip? I said the Gallaghers had been on the strip, but I never once said that I was out there.”
Longarm gave her a long look. “You said you had just come from the Gallaghers and they were on the Cimarron Strip.”
“I said the Gallagher brothers want to meet you on the strip because they are comfortable in Oklahoma Territory.”
Longarm said, “I’m well aware of that, Lily Gail. Since they have bought off every sheriff in the territory, I can well understand why. Do you mean they are not on the strip right now? Where are they? Right here in town? I wouldn’t be at all surprised that you’ve led them to me and that they’re about to burst through the door at any moment.”
She said, “How you talk. There you go again. Such thoughts should never enter your mind. I arrived here from Raton, New Mexico, this morning, Mister Long, as if it is any of your business. I arrived here by train and I came straight to this hotel.”
Longarm looked at her again while he casually poured himself another drink. He said, “Let me get this straight. The Gallaghers want to meet me on the strip to turn over a bunch of small-fry in return for some kind of pardon for them. Is that what they are talking about?”
She fluttered her hands above her naked body. “I don’t know about that sort of thing. All I know is that they want to talk to you and they want to surrender some hooligans who have been doing some bad things in their name. All they want is a chance to have a talk with you and show you that they ain’t near as bad as they’ve been made out to be.”
Longarm laughed. “Nobody could make the Gallaghers out to be any worse than they already are.” He leaned down, took the edge of the bedspread, and flipped it across the bed. “Here, cover yourself with this while I think. You’re too much of a distraction for a man to get any serious thinking in when you’re lying there like that.”
“Well, pardon me!”
“Lily Gail, just be quiet for a moment.” He took a straight-backed chair, set it in front of the window that faced the side street, raised the shade, and then sat there with a glass of whiskey in his hand and a small cigar in his mouth, staring out thoughtfully while his mind considered all of the possibilities. Of course he was interested in any meeting, any confrontation with the Gallaghers. They were so elusive, so nigh on to invisible, that to even catch scent of them, much less sight, not to mention the sight over a gun barrel, even at considerable risk was worth the chance. He had no intention of buying into the game as they had it set up. He was no more going to ride out alone to meet the Gallaghers on the broad flat plains of western Oklahoma than he was going to join the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. He sat thinking, reviewing his options. He could wire Denver for some more deputies for assistance, but he was against that idea for two reasons. First, it might turn out to be nothing but a hoax and he hated to pull other marshals off their jobs to come up with nothing. Second, he’d told Billy Vail that he was on leave, that if Billy Vail bothered him with anything even remotely resembling law work, he would not only burn Billy Vail’s house and barn down, he would burn his neighbor’s house and barn down so that he would no longer be such a popular man. In short, he didn’t want to give Billy Vail any more ammunition than he already had to needle him with, and if he instigated some law work on his own, Billy Vail would cackle like the old hen he was.
Longarm took another drink of whiskey and continued to watch the slow traffic in the street. Unfortunately, he didn’t know any of the law around Taos, not well enough to risk his life with them. The only man he could think of who was in town or nearby was an old friend of some twenty years standing. Fisher Lee had been a sheriff down in south Texas until he had given up the job because of what he considered an ungrateful public who really didn’t want law and order. Now he was a professional gambler. Fish was a steady hand in a fight and a good man in almost any circumstance. More important, Longarm knew he could count on Fish’s help and he knew where he could lay his hands on him within the hour.
Longarm said, “When am I supposed to give you an answer?”
She said primly, “My train returns to Raton this evening by six. I’m supposed to bring an answer back by then.”
He said, “Hell, that don’t leave much time, Lily Gail. You ought to be up and dressing. I don’t think I can give you an answer by then.”
