mostly wanted you the way I'm holding you right now. But I told you over to your office I needed a natural woman with a law degree, remember?'
She murmured, 'I remember, and I'm so glad, right now, that is. I know I'm going to hate myself in the morning. But you did say you'd be on your way to Wyoming's Cow Country by then and... Could we do this right some more, Custis? I can always play with that thing myself.'
He said they sure could, and they sure did, with two pillows under her shapely but sort of lean hips as she locked her ankles around the nape of his neck and warned him she'd never forgive him if he ever stopped.
Of course, there came a time when he had to, because he couldn't come any more. So whether she forgave him or not, Portia seemed as willing to share a three-for-a-nickel cheroot and let her throbbing flesh cool off a spell as they cuddled atop the covers in the lamplight spilling in from the front room.
Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring at the open doorway before he asked her how she'd go about defending someone such as Deputy Ida Weaver when, not if, she got her fool self arrested by shooting the wrong man in cold blood.
Portia absently replied, 'I think I'm jealous. Why do you and all those other lawmen care about a girl with a gun and a mind of her own treating killers the same way the rest of you like to?'
Longarm grimaced and said, 'Nobody with a lick of sense likes to gun another human being. We generally give them a change to surrender, and then we get to gun 'em. To begin with, it ain't always clear a man is guilty as charged before he's stood trial before a judge and jury. That's why them dead-or-alive warrants on men who ain't been indicted have so many cautious thinkers worried. I say when, not if, because as sure as you're concave where I'm convex, a Wyoming wildwoman suffering delusions of deputization is sure to blow away some innocent cuss, and then where will we be?'
Portia replied without hesitation, 'She'll be in a whole lot of trouble! But, since you asked, I think I'd plead her not guilty by reason of orders from higher authority. You did say she was able to show you a valid arrest warrant, or at least a writ that read like a valid arrest warrant, didn't you?'
Longarm said, 'I did. Billy Vail says the one we saw might stand up in court as long as the cuss she served it on was guilty. Rusty Mansfield would have had grounds for damages against little Ida, her undersheriff, that J.P., and Keller's Crossing if he'd live to prove he was innocent! Your turn.'
Portia took a deep drag on the cheroot, handed it back to him, and let fly some smoke signals a Kiowa might have bragged on before she decided, 'Try it this way. An out-of-the-way Wyoming county might save a lot on courtroom expenses if they recruited unpaid volunteers to simply smile pretty at no-goods and mow them down. What did they call that bunch of young gun waddies Uncle John Chisum and his trading partner, McSween, swore in as unrecognized but efficient lawmen back in seventy-eight?'
'Regulators,' Longarm replied, adding, 'They didn't work out all that efficient. Both factions in the Lincoln County War wound up flat busted, and they say Billy the Kid was last seen washing dishes down in Shakespeare near the border. After that, this undersheriff Rita Mae Reynolds ain't stuck with the situation Uncle John was, with the county run by a rival faction and his cows vanishing into thin air. Like I said, less than half the elective positions in the township are held by the menfolk of the womenfolk who seem to have grabbed the rest. But they've other J.P.s and Rita Mae works under a male county sheriff, who's yet seen fit to deputize any ladies to go after anybody charged as a felon by Justice of the Peace Edith Penn Keller of Keller Township.'
Portia suddenly laughed and said, 'I think this must be what some of my married friends mean when they mention pillow conversations. I'm lying in bed with a naked man, still wet with his passion as I snuggle my naked flesh against his, and I'm talking about small-town politics?'
He snuggled her closer and asked how she felt about that so far. She chuckled and said, 'Depraved. I'm supposed to be locked in my bath, weeping in shame because I let you touch me in such vulgar ways. But since you ask, I do find it odd that this rather drastic lady's club seems to be dominated or even partly dominated by a woman who has her own division of her county named after... whom? Her father or her husband?'
Longarm said, 'I don't know. That's one of the things Billy Vail wants me to look into. As far as we know, none of the younger gals sent out of the territory to gun men down in cold blood in other parts of the country are married up. I for one would be mighty surprised to learn any man with hair on his chest would allow his woman to pin a badge on and go chasing after other men with any aim in mind.'
Portia sniffed, allowed that was how come she preferred to remain a spinster, and pointed out by asking, 'Then it's safe to assume none of the male officials of this remote rural community are too opposed to whatever that small clique of gun-slinging bloomer-girls may be up to?'
Longarm shook his head, put the smoke back to her lips, and told her, 'Nobody in Wyoming Territory seems to give a hoot, male or shemale. Like I said before, crime is down, it's an election year, and no registered voter's ox has been gored. So what the hell.'
She passed the cheroot back, lightly asking, 'What the hell indeed? I can see why the Cheyenne District Court doesn't seem half as interested as your own nosy Billy. Speaking as a lawyer, and don't you dare think I want you to spend even one more night with me, you brute, I can tell you what you're going to find when you arrive up there in that tightly knit community. You're going to cast your questions in deep water and reel in bare hook after bare hook. If even Cheyenne had received one complaint from one concerned citizen of the town or county, male or female, Billy Vail wouldn't have to send you all that way on such a fool's errand, Custis!'
Longarm sighed and replied, 'I told you it wasn't Billy Vail's grand notion. He's passed on orders from higher up. I don't doubt the federal lawmen out of Cheyenne reported just what they'd seen and heard, after they'd seen and heard nothing much. I've been places where nobody talked much to outsiders about the comings and goings of insiders. I've usually discovered that when anything really dirty was going on, I could get somebody to tell me about it, off the record.'
Portia took the cheroot away from him and snuffed it out in a bed table ash tray as she pointed out, 'What might you and your Denver District Court be able to do about it if you do uncover some sort of fiendish female plot against wanted criminals? People want killers killed, Custis. The double-jeopardy hanging of Jack McCall for the murder of Wild Bill Hickok was unconstitutional but just, as far as anyone ever cared!'
To which Longarm could only reply, 'Jack McCall must have cared, and I'm sworn to uphold that constitution. I don't hold with lynch law or vigilante justice, Miss Portia. So I reckon I'd best get on up yonder and file a full report on just what's been going on, constitutional or otherwise. I'll come by to tell you which, as soon as I get back.'
Portia forked a long bare leg across him to once more impale her lean but tender flesh on the boner she was gripping with such skill. But even as she took his latest inspiration up inside her to the roots, she sternly warned him, 'Don't you dare come mooning around my office like a love-struck schoolboy! What do you want my neighbors to think of me? They're sure to gossip if the same man escorts me home more than once in the same month.'
So he asked if she thought it might be safe for him to come around for more legal consultation after harvest time, and she allowed that sounded a tad soon but that she'd risk it, seeing he was able to touch bottom with every stroke whenever she got on top.
CHAPTER 4
There was much to be said for self-supporting women, but waking a man gentle wasn't one of them. So Longarm found himself out on a deserted Denver street in the cold gray light of dawn with no more than black coffee for breakfast.
He reflected wryly that some might consider that his own fault as he headed over toward the Union Station, walking funny. For Portia had given him his choice of hasty scrambled eggs or more of herself when she'd literally jerked him awake at cock's crow and told him she'd have to hang herself if any of her neighbors spied him leaving after daybreak.
It was way too early to catch any train, if he'd had his saddle and possibles with him. He went to catch some eggs over chili con carne at the all-night beanery next door. The pleasantly plump waitress filled his order and confided she'd be getting off for the day in just a few minutes. Women were like that. Longarm knew that had he been forced to lay over between trains with a raging hard-on a long way from home, she'd have had a boyfriend coming to pick her up after work.
He ordered a slice of mince pie with his third cup of coffee and left a dime on the counter by his empty plates to show her he didn't think she was too fat. Then he ankled across the Larimer Street bridge to his furnished digs on the less fashionable side of Cherry Creek.
Neither President Rutherford B. nor Miss Lemonade Lucy Hayes were going to know he was in violation of
