Helga said the sunset was wunderbar after all the cloudless and sudden sunsets they’d been having. He found himself humming a few bars of an old trail song.
She dimpled across the table and asked him to sing the words to such a schene Melodie.
He smiled sheepishly and said, “It’s just a verse allowing how it’s cloudy in the west and looking like rain, whilst I left my slicker in the wagon again. Such songs go on forever without saying a whole lot. Riders make ‘em up as they just keep riding with no end in sight.”
She commenced to softly sing in High Dutch. It was a haunting old melody, but of course he couldn’t follow a word of it. She sang a spell anyway, and then she explained it was about this soldier boy in her old country who’d warned a fair maid he only meant to love her a short spell. Longarm said he’d heard some soldier boys were like that. Helga said this particular one loved the fair maid just one year, then decided it wouldn’t hurt to love her another year, and before he knew it he’d loved her forever.
Longarm cautiously said he’d heard some fair maids were like that.
Helga wrinkled her pert nose and said the song must have been made up by a man, because it took so many things about maidens fair for granted. She said it would have served that soldier boy right if the gal had sent him packing when they’d made love as long as she’d said he might.
Longarm laughed and marveled, half to himself, “She cooks too!
She didn’t follow his drift. It was odd how some of the folks from her old country could speak English like everyone else while others, try as they might, sounded like vaudeville comics making fun of the poor Dutch greenhorns.
There came a low rumble across the sky. Longarm sighed and said, “If that ain’t the Ruggles sisters, I’m facing a moist midnight out on the lone prairie. I’d best see if I can scout up another hayloft here in town.”
She murmured, “We shall donnerwetter before midnight have, Custis.”
Then she reached across the table to timidly place a hand on his wrist as she added, “Don’t leave. I have fear, even if it wasn’t so wet outside going to be!”
He shot a thoughtful glance at the one cot across the room. Helga followed his glance, fluttered her lashes, and murmured, “There is for me alone more than room enough. So what if both of us in the middle tried to sleep?”
He took her hand more warmly in his own as he said he doubted either would get much sleep that way. Then he felt he just had to say, “About what that soldier boy told that fair maiden in that old song …”
But she was already on her feet, holding his one hand in both of her own, as she tugged him away from the table, gasping, “Forever is for human flesh so short, and one hour is better than never. Why are you teasing me so, Custis? I will better try to understand your jokes if you will better try to understand a woman’s needs!”
So they soon discovered she needed it most the old-fashioned way with a pillow under her already ample padding. He’d noticed she seemed to have a romantic streak before he’d gotten the two of them undressed and ready to get down to brass tacks. But she kept hugging and kissing like they were in a porch swing with her legs crossed instead of wrapped around him tight, as she combined the innocent schoolmarm kissing of a country gal with some bumps and grinds that would have made one of Madame Emma Gould’s gals envious.
He learned not to tongue her when she sobbed she wasn’t that sort of a madel—and damned if he wasn’t starting to follow her High Dutch.
They said that famous British spy Richard Burton could learn a new Hindu dialect over a weekend by going to bed with what he called a “horizontal dictionary.” The queen kept refusing to knight him because he kept saying things like that in mixed company. But old “Nigger Dick,” as his fellow officers called him behind his back, had warned of that Sepoy Mutiny, if only his commanders had listened, because he could pass for a native and often did, carrying on scandalously with all those Hindu dancers who taught him how to talk as dirty as any Hindu.
Helga didn’t smoke in bed, although she seemed to enjoy toying with his old organ-grinder as they cuddled close for their second wind. She’d been right about her cot being sort of snug for two.
He lit a cheroot for himself as he stared up at the slanted ruby red ceiling, mildly surprised it was still so early. He could hear a lot of conversation coming down the sleepy trail at them. for it was way earlier than he usually turned in, and there were limits to what a man could do in bed with a gal, however bouncy, who’d only do it the old-fashioned way.
Blowing a thoughtful smoke ring, Longarm mused aloud, “I can’t go picturing the one left as a bewhiskered cuss with a vaudeville accent. There’s no natural law saying it has to be Wolf Ritter to begin with. And Ritter’s been running loose in this country, doubtless spending his own nights with horizontal dictionaries, and could sound like a natural cuss if he puts his mind to it.”
She murmured, “Bitte?” Which likely meant she was having trouble following his drift again.
He explained. “Neither of those two locked up by the town law could have shot out your shop window earlier. They were rounded up by your Werner Sattler as they were lurking down by the creek. They swear they were fishing. They were likely looking for their pals, Tiny Tim and old Slick. That washerwoman we figure all four were staying with backs up their stubborn story. I wonder why.”
Helga gave his tool a playful quarter turn as she said, “Ach, so smart you are! You at the table said those two in the saloon acted as if they were not you expecting!”
He took another drag on his cheroot and agreed. “The numbers tally to at least five with cause to disapprove of me. First one morose individual pegs a shot at my back, out front of your shop. A few minutes later Sattler’s boys grab two obvious strangers when they see ‘em hanging about down by the creek with no local address they care to give. Their two pals the local deputies failed to spot as suspicious were acting more innocently in that saloon. From what I heard passing through, Tiny Tim was for riding on whilst Slick Dawson was hoping to bail their pals out. Like you said, neither of ‘em spotted me as the law when I was drinking in the same room with ‘em. They only recognized me as trouble when I came back with a Winchester acting more troublesome!”
She kissed him under the ear and said, “The one who does know so much trouble you are was the one who chased you inside to meet me, so freundlich! So it is he who has your Washfrauh too afraid to tell the truth, ja?”
He shrugged a bare shoulder under her unbound blond hair and said, “That washerwoman could be just another hard case with no love for the law. To get such folks to talk, you have to convince ‘em there’s something in it for them. We couldn’t budge her at the hearing this afternoon. There’s not a dime’s worth of bounty posted on the two
