what have we here, a famous lawman too proud to jerk off and a sissy 'bo fixing to do it for him or... Bless my stars, is that a gal you've been hogging to yourself up here, Long dong?'
Daisy seemed to shrink down beside him like one of the wildflowers she was named for, caught in the glare of a desert sun. But Longarm didn't even sound as testy as he felt when he calmly replied, 'Watch your mouth. Miss Daisy, here, is with me, Bergman.'
The Black Swede looming over them said, 'So I see. We don't have to share the pretty little thing with the rest of the crew, as long as you're willing to share her with me.'
Longarm grimaced and quietly said, 'Hang some crepe on your nose in memory of the dead brain inside. We'll be rolling into Cheyenne soon enough, and I'm sure you have plenty of sweethearts along Crow Creek. I told you this young lady is with me. But if it's any comfort to you, she ain't with me that way, and there's nothing you'd be interested in to share.'
The Black Swede was suddenly looming over them with a snub-nosed nickel-plated six-gun in hand as he said, 'That tears it. I've had all of your smart mouth I can stand, and now you're fixing to get off my damned train and walk the rest of the way!'
Longarm shifted his weight some to stare thoughtfully through the spread legs of the bully at the passing scenery, observing, 'We're doing better than twenty miles an hour right now, Bergman.'
The Black Swede laughed with as much warmth as your average fox in a henhouse and declared, 'I've seen men jump off a train doing forty and still the rascals lived. You aim to jump off like a man or have me toss you off like a sack of dead shit? I ain't bluffing. Go for that.44-40 you're half laying across, if you doubt my word I'm willing and able to gun any son of a bitch who crosses me!'
Longarm tried, 'The rest of the crew saw me climb aboard this train, with the permit of your dispatcher, Bergman.'
The Black Swede proved how well he deserved his ominous nickname when he just shrugged and said, 'I ain't worried about them. I just told you nobody crosses me if they know what's good for them. Are you going to do as I say or do I have to waste a bullet on your thick skull?'
Then the Black Swede gave a sudden wild yelp, managed to fire one wild shot up into the car's roofing, and appeared to vanish into thin air with a mournful wail.
Daisy Gunn sat bolt upright, staring wide-eyed out the gaping doorway as she asked, 'How did you do that, Custis? Are you some sort of magician?'
Longarm rolled up to his feet and moved over to the doorway to lean out and peer back down the right of way, where a mighty dusty but still conscious form was trying to get back up from the summer-killed grass without much luck.
Longarm rejoined the girl and sat back down beside her, saying, 'Aw, he hurt his little leg. Might have been the fall. Might have been my kicking him in the kneecap like so. It wasn't magic, Miss Daisy. This other lady who taught me that particular trick called it Jewish Gypsy. It's a style of wrestling they invented over in Japan one time, and this Texas gal in the import-export business learned some from her Japanese hired help. I forget what they call the Jewish Gypsy trick I used just now. But like he pointed out, it would have been dumb to go for my six-gun or derringer with him standing over us point-blank. But I'd already noticed he was astride one of my boots stretched out in the hay, and I saw he was shifting his weight from one of his own legs to the other as the deck swayed under us. So I timed to when I should twist my right ankle to hook my toes behind his left heel, and next time he had his weight on that leg with the knee locked, I only had to kick the cap of said knee with my other boot to send him out the doorway backward.'
She marveled, 'You surely did. I wish I knew some of them Jewish Gypsy tricks. They'd surely come in handy, riding the rails.'
Longarm remembered the cheroot he'd been gripping unsmoked between his teeth and enjoyed a luxurious drag before he told her, 'We were talking about your future as a feminist up Wyoming way before we were so rudely interrupted. We'll be getting into the Cheyenne yards within the hour. Whether anyone else on board watched that brake bull learning to fly backward or not, I don't want anyone to see us getting off together. So we'd best drop off just outside the yards.'
She pouted. 'Aw, I ain't that disgusting to be seen with. Some say I ain't half bad to look at, bare ass, after a warm bath.'
Longarm said,'I mean to sneak you into the Pilgrim Hotel and let you enjoy a nice long soak whilst I rustle you up more ladylike duds and run some other errands. I have to pay a courtesy call, over to the federal building, and then, if they'll let me, I'd like to browse a mite through the newspaper morgue at the Wyoming Eagle. After that we'll be on our way. Whilst you're riding with me I can likely get them to pay you four bits a day and found. How do you like it so far?'
She clapped her grimy hands and declared, 'I like it a heap and you won't be sorry. I'll wash myself good, inside and out, and you can do it to me any way but Greek, if I'm half right about how a man your size has to be hung.'
Longarm sighed and said, 'I don't want to bugger you, and if I did I wouldn't. The deal I have in mind calls for you remaining as pure as the driven snow.'
She flared, 'What's wrong with me, you stuck-up thing? We've both agreed I could use a bath and these men's duds I stole off a clothesline may not do my girlish figure justice. But heaps of men have told me I look swell with no duds on at all. Would you like me to strip and show you?'
Longarm laughed and said, 'Hold the thought for now. I can see how pretty you are, and I ain't no sissy when it comes to pretty gals. But I'm a lawman, on a mission, and I want to hire you to help me carry it out, see?'
She didn't. She said she'd be proud to help him out any way but Greek, any time he said the word.
He said, 'Pay attention and you have my permit to help yourself out in that hot tub whilst I pay attention to them other chores I mentioned. I can't let you play that way with me, or vice versa, because with any luck I may wind up calling you as a disinterested federal witness, and you can't swear you ain't interested if the other side can accuse you of having enjoyed any slap and tickle with the arresting officer.'
She asked who on earth he wanted her to bear witness against in any fool federal court.
He answered, simply, 'If I knew that now, I wouldn't need your help. Somebody where we're headed may or may not be abusing his or her authority. If that ain't it, we'll still have to seek an injunction against sheer stupidity before some poor nester gal or schoolmarm is killed in a line of duty she was never meant for. We'll have heaps of time to talk about it later. Right now I can see by the truck farms we're passing that we're coming into Cheyenne. We ought to be slowing down for the trestle over Crow Creek and the yards beyond, ere long.
He rolled to his knees to slide his McClellan and possibles way closer to the open doorway as he told her, 'I'll tell you when to follow me, tight, as I roll out just before we enter the yards. This car won't be moving more than eight or ten miles an hour by then, and you did say you'd had some experience in these matters, right?'
She allowed she could teach him a thing or two about hopping on or off fool freight cars. Then she asked to hear more about this offer of a job that paid so well but didn't require her to pleasure him.
Longarm smiled wolfishly and said, 'Oh, I'll be pleased as punch with you if we can sneak you as far as Keller's Crossing without a Wyoming soul knowing you're really riding with me. You do know how to ride a horse good, don't you? I can't see any other way for the two of us to drift into Keller's Crossing in cahoots but not climbing down off the same train. The spur rails and the old Overland Trail both follow that stretch of the North Platte. But most everybody in your average trail town turns out whenever a train or coach rolls in.'
Daisy said she'd noticed that and asked, once more, for more details about the particular chores he had in mind for her, if none of them seemed to involve them even smiling at each other in public.
He said they had to be thinking of getting off, now, as they rolled across the Crow Creek trestle. He wasn't sure just how he ought to tell a determined shemale sufferer how he might have to ask her to help him fuck some other members of her sisterhood.
CHAPTER 6
A barefoot blonde wearing pants and pigtails seemed to attract odd looks as she tagged after Longarm and his saddle through the outskirts of Cheyenne. So when they stopped for some soda pop and directions at a neighborhood general store, Longarm bought Daisy a straw plowboy's hat and told her to shove her braids up inside the crown for now, in the hopes she might be taken for a raggedy farm youth instead of a gal dressed scandalous.
The Pilgrim Hotel near the U.P. Depot, like most good saloons or hotels, had discreet side entrances for social
