The brunette set the Le Mat aside to hold up the much more fashionable calico dress and wool coat she’d worn at the bank. “Never mind all that,” she said. “We have to be on our way, and the sun won’t set on you before you’re nice and dry.”
Still naked, and smiling in a mighty worldly way for such a simple soul, Pinkie moved closer, husking, “All this worry and excitement has made me sort of horny. How about you, honey?”
The older and obviously wiser brunette French-kissed her, but drew back to insist, “We don’t have time for that here and now. We have to get our fannies and our bank withdrawal up to South Pass City before we pause for other pleasures. Put on this damned outfit, Pinkie!”
So Pinkie began to, even as she casually asked, “Wouldn’t it make as much sense if we left our coats aside whilst we haul these dead boys out back? How come you’ve already put that riding duster on, honey?”
The brunette replied, “In case anybody rides in before we hide all the evidence, of course. There won’t be much time to put things on or off if we have to shoot our way out of here.”
Pinkie went on dressing, even as she said that she didn’t want to wear such a distinctive spring bonnet.
When the brunette said she wouldn’t have to, Pinkie absently put on the wool coat, finding it mighty snug in spite of the way the seams had been knee-popped across the shoulders.
Then the brunette said, “You look adorable. Let’s saddle the ponies we mean to escape on before we do anything else.”
The ash blonde asked, “Why can’t we just ride? Why do we have to do anything else? I say let the posse find these old things and be damned to them. If I was chasing three old bank robbers and found the three of them had been shot, I’d have no call to search any further for ‘em, would I?”
The brunette smiled indulgently and said, not unkindly, “I tend to forget what a deep thinker you can be, Pinkie. No posse will expect to catch up with three men. Someone in town has surely told them a tale about three men and a girl. If they find them here, without the money or the girl, they’re going to suspect that just about what happened here, happened here, see?”
Pinkie brightened and asked, “You mean they might think the gal they rode off with gunned them, to ride off with the money?”
The brunette nodded soberly and replied, “That’s why I don’t want them to find things exactly this way. I want them to assume they’re looking for a fifth member of the gang who gunned all four of them when they rode in here to change outfits and ponies, see?”
Pinkie looked confused, and started to say there was no female body for any posse to find. Then the Le Mat roared at close range to make an unrecognizable hash of her face.
So when the posse rode in an hour or so later, they read things that way. The bank robbers had been surprised in the act of changing disguises. But clothes they’d worn at the bank, along with their calico bandanna masks, were there for all to see, along with the still shapely but mangled gal in the same wool coat, with that veiled spring hat in one far corner.
Nobody who noticed a distant farm gal riding a paint and leading a gray had any call to chase after her on such a busy afternoon. For just as the treacherous little brunette had planned far in advance, the local lawmen figured the gang had been double-crossed by one or more mighty fast gunslicks of the male persuasion.
It made sense to send a gal in ahead to scout the intended scene of the crime. But such sign as there was to read around their hideout said that no more than one or two had been left there with the spare mounts and changes of clothing. That meant the lawmen had to track down one or two strangers in pants before the U.P. tracks were repaired and most anybody could be long gone with all that money and no description worth mention.
Once holed up in South Pass City, without incident, the very ruthless mastermind, who’d never meant to share a penny with three dumber men and a girl, reflected on yet another job well done. For things had gone slick as a whistle, with the only surprise being that federal lawman on the scene, just long enough to catch a 20-gauge shotgun charge dead center at point-blank range.
Since he had, there was no need to worry about him, or so the hard but innocent-looking little killer thought.
Which only went to show what Mr. Burns had meant in his poem about the best-laid plans of mice and men.
Chapter 2
The young widow of a rich old mining man had given her hired help the night off. So she was alone in her kitchen, frying eggs, when there came a discreet rapping on her back door.
There was nothing to be done about her long brown hair hanging down her back at that hour. But she wrapped her beige pongee kimono more securely about her Junoesque curves as she moved over to peer through a side pane, gasp in surprised delight, and open up to haul Longarm inside for a nice warm kiss before she exclaimed, “Oh, Custis, I’ve been so worried about you! What are you doing out of your sickbed? The Rocky Mountain News said you’d been shot in the breast by a shotgun and weren’t expected to recover!”
To which Longarm modestly replied, “It was only a 20-gauge, half the bore and a quarter the blast of a serious Greener market gun. We were fixing to have them say I’d been killed all the way. But Henry, our fussy file clerk, convinced Marshal Vail and me that the payroll would be thrown all out of joint if a senior deputy died totally and then came back to life.”
Dragging him into the kitchen and seating him at the table, his radiant hostess said, “Just let me take these things off the stove lest they burn. Didn’t it smart to be shot in the breast with any sort of shotgun, darling?”
He explained, “Not half as much as it might have if I hadn’t been planning on some fry cooking of my own. On my way to that bank I’d picked up a big slab of bacon and a bitty frying pan, along with some biscuit flour and a bottle of tomato ketchup. My coat and vest wound up at the dry cleaner, once I got my breath back, but nary a lead shot got through that old frying pan. How come you don’t want to fry with your own pan anymore, honey?”
She moved over to sit in his lap, allowing her kimono to fall wide open as she husked, “I can get fried eggs most any time. How long has it been since last you darkened my door, you brute?”
Longarm replied by rising with her in his arms. They both knew the way to her bedroom. As he carried her out of the kitchen and up the back stairs, she repeated her question, and he said a man lost track of time when he had a mean boss who kept him so busy.
