He felt sort of mean himself as he considered where else he’d been since the last time he’d been up here atop Capitol Hill. A man had to consider where he meant to indulge in slap and tickle when he was supposed to be crippled up or dying in the hospital. He didn’t think he ought to say as much to a gal he admired for her brains as well as her warm nature.
But of course, being a gal with brains as well as a warm nature, the Junoesque young widow only let him lay her across the bed and come in her once before she demanded to know what he’d been doing with that other woman up in Bitter Creek to begin with.
Longarm was sitting up to finish undressing all the way and she regarded him from a state of total nudity in her big four-poster. The bedroom lamp was trimmed low. But he met her eyes with a clear conscience and assured her, “That gal who shot me was neither a rival nor half as well built. I’d never seen her before, but the wanted flyers know her of old, and that’s how come we don’t want her to know she never shot me seriously.”
He shucked the last of his disordered duds, and flopped back naked beside her to take her in his arms again and treat her even better. She spread her soft thighs in wide welcome, but protested, “I do this way better when I’m not wondering about other women, Custis.”
Longarm eased his love-slicked organ-grinder in place between the gates of paradise as he said soothingly, “She was just an ornery outlaw gal. We don’t know her real name. But we call her kind a Medusa because of the way they kill everyone who gets a good look at their faces, like that Medusa critter in those old Greek myths. This particular cold-blooded she-monster is called Miss Medusa Le Mat because she’s been turning folks to stone, leastways, hash, with a Le Mat Duplex. That’s this freak revolver with its cylinder of .40-caliber chambers turning on a sawed-off 20-gauge shotgun barrel instead of a regular axis. After she shot me, my prisoner, and others at that Wyoming bank, it seems she wiped out her own gang and rode off with all the swag. She had us all confounded about that at first. She’d left the posse a ringer in the outfit she’d been wearing in the bank. It would have worked a heap better if she’d really left me dead with all the other witnesses.”
He found himself rising once more to the occasion as he kissed the widow’s soft throat and added, “We figure from other cases in other parts that the lady we call Miss Medusa Le Mat doesn’t want her sweet innocent face remembered by any witnesses or associates. I got a good look at her up close, just before she blew me off my feet. So I found her substitute corpse unconvincing when they brought it into Bitter Creek.”
The widow dilated to let him get the head in, then clamped down and sort of rolled the rest of it in as she moaned, “Ooh, nice! But there was nothing in the papers about you identifying any bodies, darling.”
He agreed it felt swell, but moved it nice and easy at first while he explained, “We didn’t want to run Miss Medusa to ground too deep.”
The young widow chuckled fondly, said she liked it as deep as he felt like running it into her, and added that she didn’t follow his drift about that other wicked gal.
So Longarm told her, without stopping, “We put her getaway together after it was too late, comparing notes with mighty uncertain witnesses who vaguely recalled a small nester gal in a drab Mother Hubbard dress and oversized sunbonnet. We figure she changed to yet another outfit as soon as she caught a stagecoach going one way or another out of South Pass City. The two ponies she abandoned there had been stolen over near the Utah line.”
Then they were both too busy loping over the rise of pure pleasure to worry about anyone else for a spell, which they did their best to hold on to.
But since all things good and bad must pass, it came to pass all too soon that they were sharing a three-for-a- nickel cheroot, propped up against the headboard with her head on his bare shoulder while she tried to fill in some gaps in her understanding of that other woman.
Longarm passed the smoke to her as he explained, “We know who the three drifters and one whore she recruited were. All four had long if somewhat pathetic records, albeit none of ‘em had ever done anything so serious before. Smokey Wade was the meanest, and he’d never killed for that much profit before. Bob Shingler had been fired from his job as a Wells Fargo guard when they caught him pilfering from passengers. Nick Parsons was a stock thief who could ride and shoot some. That other gal was a shopworn whore who shoplifted when she couldn’t find a paying customer on the streets of Cheyenne.”
He took back the cheroot for a thoughtful drag, placed the tip back between her lips, and continued. “Miss Medusa Le Mat has played the same dirty game at least five times. Lord only knows how many times she might have pulled it off before anybody noticed certain tedious repetitions. With her natural face hanging out, smiling as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, she recruited the local talent she needed once she’d scouted the Bitter Creek Savings & Loan. I can say for certain she appeared an innocent high-toned lady as she stood in the bank ahead of the rest of us.”
The far-from-innocent young widow asked what that other woman had looked like, aside from being so socially acceptable.
Longarm patted a bare shoulder reassuringly as he replied, “She was out to kill me, not to steal me away from anybody. But like I said, I was standing close enough, in fair light, to recall her face forever more. Getting shot point-blank by a pretty gal has a wondrous way of concentrating a man’s mind.”
“I might have known you’d never forget a pretty face!” the pretty widow sniffed, reaching down to toy with his belly hairs while she brought up that other gal she’d heard about at his Chinese laundry.
Longarm protested he’d never messed with that pretty Chinese, which was true enough. Of course, the pretty widow had never mentioned the gal working at the Golden Dragon Chop Suey Palace.
He said soothingly, “Miss Medusa Le Mat looks all right because there’s nothing wrong with her. But had she not shot me with that trademark Le Mat Duplex, I’d have never paid her all that much mind. We figure that’s what makes her such a Medusa. She knows a change of costume and mayhaps hair color can turn her into yet another gal entirely to anyone who hasn’t been looking at her closely. So every time she plans a robbery, she plans ahead on killing everybody who might have regarded her more than casually. You see, the real Medusa, in those old Greek legends, petrified every man who saw her face. I’ll be switched if I can figure out how any of those old Greek sculptors knew how to carve her face out of stone.”
The naked flesh-and-blood beauty next to him chuckled and told him, “That was just a fairy tale, you big silly. We read about Medusa and that clever Greek who killed her when I was in grammar school. But I doubt you’ll ever kill Medusa’s modern namesake with a magic mirror and a sword, Custis.”
Longarm took a long drag on their cheroot, blew a ponderous smoke ring, and stared through it at their bare toes while he soberly said, “That Greek lawman knew where that earlier Medusa was hiding out. Seeing she was able to turn visitors to stone on sight, she never had to get around as much. Miss Medusa Le Mat, using a Le Mat Duplex instead of magic, has hit as far west as San Diego and far east as Saint Lou. We’re hoping we might be able
