nine out of ten of them were worth screwing, while that tenth one was worth it as a change of pace.
Chapter 16
No lawman with the brains of a gnat would have let himself fall asleep among thieves, and Roxanne had said that prospective buyer was due to show up any time after noon. So neither gal seemed to feel insulted when Longarm finally hauled ass out of there walking funny.
He made it back to his hotel, forced himself to take the time for a bath down the hall, and flopped bare-ass and alone across his hotel bed to catch forty winks through the hotter half of the day.
He felt way better after close to six hours’ sleep. Longarm arose around sundown to shit and shave, pay his hotel bill, and inhale some steak and mashed potatoes with plenty of black coffee downstairs.
At the Western Union he found answers to some of those earlier wires waiting for him. None of them told him all that much at first glance. He wadded them up and put them in a breast pocket of his jacket to go over again later. For as anyone who’d ever taken out a bank loan could tell you, it was easy to miss serious shit in the small print.
He picked up a sack of feed on his way to get old Rocket. As they helped him saddle and bridle her, Longarm lashed the trail rations to the saddle, balancing the Winchester’s boot on the far side, and told the perky roan, “We ain’t fixing to stop for conversations about your species along the way, Rocket. For I’ve a weak nature around women and we’re in a hurry.”
He led her outside in the gloaming, tipped the young stable hands, and mounted up, saying to old Rocket, “I make her a day’s cavalry ride if we push on through to old Helga and that swell carriage house without stopping anywheres along the way for more than a trail break. I’ll get you back to the Lazy B on my return swing, as I redistribute all you ponies.”
Rocket didn’t argue. Once they were south of the railroad tracks he let her have her head, and she loped as if she’d felt cooped up in that stall all day. She likely had. Mankind and horseflesh got along so well because a healthy horse enjoyed running across firm grasslands as much as most folks liked to ride.
But by the time they were even with her home spread, Longarm was a mite tempted to swing over and see how that paint felt about carrying him the rest of the way. For old Rocket was commencing to show the effects of her sportive gallop the night before.
It was only in Ned Buntline’s Wild West Magazine that true-blue cowboys rode one true-blue steed at least as smart as a math teacher. A well-founded beef outfit kept six or seven mounts for each human on the payroll. That way a man could get a hard day’s work out of a pony without permanent injury. He felt guilty about pushing another man’s pony this hard two long lopes in a row.
On the other hand it was after midnight by then, and Sappa Crossing lay almost within an hour’s ride downhill. So he pressed on, letting old Rocket walk every other furlong, till he had her in Heger’s snug carriage house, with Helga yelling things like “Wer is das?” down the stairs at them until he told her it was him, and then she wanted him to get right up stairs and into bed with her.
He chuckled fondly and told her he had a few less pleasant but more important chores to tend to first.
He tethered Rocket by the trough, unsaddled her, and rubbed her down with some handy sacking as she enjoyed some water and oats, in that important order, lest she bloat her fool self.
Then he picked up a manure shovel from another corner and went across to the gunsmith shop’s back door in the moonlight. He cussed when he recalled Helga’s key ring. But the back door wasn’t locked, bless her loss of interest in a boss who’d never paid her.
He went down to the cellar, lit that same lantern, and regarded the now dried-out dirt floor morosely. Save for a few tiny low spots hither and yon, the infernal floor had dried out evenly. You could smell stale piss and long-lost food scraps better now. But aside from being sort of sloppy as he worked at yon tool bench, the missing Horst Heger hadn’t hidden a dead wife down here after all.
Upstairs, in bed with Helga after the pleasant discovery that neither Rowena nor Roxanne had the best little pussies in the world after all, he told Helga about his experiment in the cellar across the way, and added, “He could have buried her under this carriage house and he could have buried her out back in his yard. But a man with a dirt- floored cellar he could work in with a constitutional right to privacy would be a total fool to bury her anywhere else.”
Helga shrugged a big soft shoulder and said, “I told you she had off with another man abluafen. We have more serious something to talk about, Custis.”
He cautiously asked what seemed more important than at least two missing persons. She said she’d been offered her old job back, and he agreed cleaning house for modest wages, room, and board had waiting here for Horst Heger beat.
He said, “They have a Western Union up in McCook. So by wiring all over I managed to establish that that horse and shay that Heger kept down below was left at a livery over to the county seat by a late-night customer who never came back.”
She asked if that meant her boss had hopped a train from there.
Longarm said, “Nope. They have a Western Union wire strung there, but so far, they’ve just been talking about a railroad spur to pick up all the grain hauled in to the county dealers and freighters. I never asked whether they haul it north or south to the rails from over yonder. Hauling grain more than fifty miles wipes out your profit. But like I said, that ain’t my problem.”
He took a thoughtful drag on the cheroot they were sharing and explained. “My problem is another missing man entirely. I’d be out of line searching for your missing boss if it wasn’t possible the man they sent me after had something to do with his vanishing. I told you why I was so interested in that LeMat revolver Heger was trying to sell at too high a price. What I’d really like you to do for me would be to teach me just a few words of High Dutch.”
Helga laughed incredulously and said, “Ficken mich immer wieder! Or at least let us until dawn do it. kh darf nichts carry on with you this way if I am back to work in a Mennonite home to go!”
He gallantly told her he’d try to be a sport about the need to be more discreet. She said she’d been so afraid he might not understand, and wanted to prove she was still mighty fond of him by getting on top. So he let her, but kept pestering her for easy words and phrases in her own native tongue as she enjoyed a nice steady lope with his old saddlehorn. She thought it was funny as well as fun, and asked him who in the world he was going to use such baby talk on.
