to get her to come to us. Like you read in both the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post, this child is supposed to be laid up in a private room at County General with a collapsed lung and possible lead poisoning too close to his old heart to operate.”
He blew another smoke ring, reached out to snub the cheroot in an ashtray near the bed lamp, and added, “There’s this dummy in a hospital bed with my name on its medical charts. We’ve naturally got a round-the-clock guard posted across the hall in another empty room. So that leaves the real me free to roam, as long as I stay out of the brighter-lit parts of town. So here I am, and ain’t this more fun than spending a night alone in a hospital bed?”
She gasped, “Powder River and let her buck!” as Longarm rolled over on top of her again to thrust his recovered manhood right where they both wanted it.
They had to work further down in the bed to get in position for a serious gallop. But part of the fun was getting there with an old pal whose body movements meshed with one’s own. So another good time was had by all, until they somehow wound up dog-style.
That position, as any experienced folks can verify, is the most natural position for conversation while fornicating. Longarm liked to talk to women almost as much as he liked to screw them. So when the horny young widow thrust her ample but well-formed behind up to take it just right, with a remark about no dummy ever passing for such a natural man in this position, Longarm sighed and said, “I sure hope she’ll read the same papers and rise to the bait at County General. I’d hate to have her pull the same stunt at another bank in other parts. Bank robbery is only federal when it looks as if state or territorial border-jumping might be involved. We’re hoping she’ll feel a call to eliminate me as a witness once and for all before she plans another bloodbath.”
The more distinctive beauty he was having his way with arched her back to give him more as she said, “I don’t think I’d risk paying you a hospital visit if I was on the run, darling. She did get away clean, and it’s a big country.”
He replied, thrusting it as deep as she let him, “I get to cover a lot of the country riding for the Justice Department. It all depends on whether or not she buys my rep as a lawman who never forgets a face. She might feel confident behind more powder and a wig than I reported. She might feel it’s safe to pull at least one or two more robberies before she comes to visit me. She might be dumb enough to think that would draw our attention away from County General.”
The smart young widow said, “Let me roll over and take it the good old-fashioned way while I’m coming. You’re right about her being sort of dumb. Why do you suppose she can’t see how using that same freakish gun the same way, over and over, is sure to get her caught?”
Longarm waited until they were going at it her way, with her long shapely legs locked around his bare waist, before he suggested that the other wicked lady might not care who knew that the same ill-tempered gal was robbing banks all over creation, as long as nobody knew who she was or exactly what she looked like.
The one in his arms came just ahead of him. He returned her compliment with more interest than she had any right to expect, and that inspired her to slobber all over him and sob, “Oh, Custis, how would I ever get laid right if somebody shot you with a Le Mat Duplex?”
He left it in to soak, but just rested his weight on his elbows and her pelvis as he chuckled and said, “Somebody already has, and as you might have noticed, it hasn’t slowed me down worth mention.”
She sighed, and hugged him tighter with her legs as she wistfully remarked, “I ought to say I’m sorry you didn’t get any of this up in Bitter Creek, but I’m not. How long do you and your boss, Marshal Vail, intend to leave you in that hospital bed?”
Longarm honestly replied, “Can’t say for certain. It’s up to the lady to make her own choices. It wouldn’t be realistic to have me take forever to get better or worse, even if the paymaster would go for it. I reckon we can give her to the end of the month to make some noticeable move.”
The woman, who’d started to move on her own under him again, sighed and said she wished he could stay sick in bed at least as long.
Longarm said, “So do I. Old Billy Vail ain’t taking this case as personally as me.”
She told him that was a sweet thing to say, and started moving her hips faster. So Longarm never told her he was taking the case personally because that other gal had killed a federal prisoner on him before he could bring the cuss in to be hanged.
Chapter 3
Nobody but some pesky newspaper reporters and an old flame with flowers went to see Longarm at County General for the next seven or eight days. The reporters were told Longarm was running a fever from his mortified wounds and was too delirious to see anybody. So Reporter Crawford of the Post ran what amounted to the obituary of his old town-taming pal, and Miss Morgana Floyd of the Arvada Orphan Asylum left the mason jar of blue chickory her orphans had picked for their hero at the front desk.
That widow woman up on Capitol Hill didn’t know about old Morgana Floyd, of course, and it was fun to read one’s own obituary in bed with her. She didn’t get half the jokes because she’d never been there at the times old Crawford had written about. So she got mad when they got to the part about Longarm taking Calamity Jane away from Wild Bill.
He hugged her bare body closer to his own as he assured her nobody with a lick of sense had ever fought over the dubious charms of Miss Martha Jane Canary, known as Calamity ever since she’d been fired from a Dodge City house of ill repute for clapping up her customers.
Holding the Post in one hand and a swell tit in the other, Longarm elaborated. “I’ve met up with both Calamity and Jim Hickok in my travels over the years since I came out here from West-by-God Virginia. Old Calamity would have it known that James Butler Hickok screwed her every chance he got, and she’s invited me to screw her every time we’ve met up. But for the record, Jim Hickok was married and not clapped up when he got shot in the back in the Number Ten Saloon.”
The suspicious-natured but pretty gal in bed with Longarm sniffed and said something about there being fire wherever there was smoke.
Longarm shook his head and insisted, “Not when hopeless drunks are bragging in a saloon to greenhorn newspaper reporters. The last time I met Calamity Jane, she was drinking herself silly up in Deadwood. I heard her say how she’d wept and kissed old Wild Bill’s coffin before they could lower it into the cold, cold ground of the Black Hills. But there’s no solid evidence the two of them ever even met up whilst he was above the ground. Nobody who really drank with Jim Hickok ever called him Wild Bill the way Calamity Jane and Ned Buntline’s Wild West Magazine likes to.”
