"Can we do it again? This time I want to do it naked with me on top!"

Longarm rolled off her, slipped out of his shirt, and lay back, spread-eagled, as she tore off her last shreds of silk, and giggling like a naughty schoolgirl, climbed above him, with a knee by each of Longarm's hip bones. She toyed with his moist erection, guiding herself onto it with her hands. He sighed with pleasure as she suddenly dropped her pelvis hard, taking it deep with a breathless hiss of her own.

And then she was moving. Moving up and down with amazing vigor as she leaned forward, swinging her nipples across Longarm's face as she almost shouted, "Suck me! Suck my t.i.tties!"

He did, but not before he softly warned, "Take it easy You'll wake the kid! That part.i.tion between our rooms is paper-thin!"

"I don't care. He's too young to know what we're doing and he's a sound sleeper anyway. Oh, dear G.o.d, isn't this lovely?"

Longarm allowed that it was, but as he lay there, holding a nipple between his lips as she went wild, he heard a soft plop above the louder creaking of the bed springs. Longarm's keen ears were educated. So he knew what it was. The key he'd left in the door had just fallen on to a sheet of paper!

Longarm ran a big hand under each of Mabel's thighs and heaved, catapulting her up over him to crash, screaming, against the plywood part.i.tion at the head of the fold-down bed. At the same time, Longarm rolled off the mattress, grabbed the bed frame, and lifted hard, folding the bed, with Mabel in it, up into the wall.

Stark naked, he moved toward the door, s.n.a.t.c.hing his.44 as he pa.s.sed his gunbelt hooked over a chair. He heard running footsteps from the other side of the door, so he opened it and leaped sideways into the hallway, facing the stairwell in a low crouch for a split second to see nothing there, then pivoting fast to train his gun down the other end of the hallway. He saw that the door to Mabel Hanks's room was ajar, spilling candlelight across the shabby carpeting. Longarm made the door in two bounds, hit it with a free elbow, and landed in the center of the room, back to the wall and facing the other fold-down bed. The bed was empty. It figured. Longarm grabbed the metal footrail of the bed and slammed it up into the wall. Then he covered the small, froglike figure who'd been hiding under it with the muzzle of his sixgun and said, "All right, you little son of a b.i.t.c.h, on your feet and grab some sky!"

Little Cedric without his blond wig was even uglier, and his voice was deeper as he got to his little feet, saying, "Take it easy, Longarm. I'm a lawman, too!"

"Let's talk about it in my room. Your... mama is standing on her head against the wall. She's likely got something to tell me, too!"

He frog-marched the midget out to the hall as the hotel's desk clerk appeared at the far end, asking, "What in h.e.l.l's going on up here?"

Then he saw a full-grown naked man holding a.44 on what looked like a little boy in a velvet suit and decided to go away.

Longarm herded the creature called Cedric inside and slammed the door. Covering his odd captive as he bent to retrieve the door key from where it had landed on a sheet of newspaper, he shook his head and said, "Serves me right. I should have known better. Anybody can fox a key out of the inside keyhole to land on a paper shoved under the door. What were you fixing to do once you pulled it through on the paper, Cedric? You don't look big enough to whup me with your fists. No offense, of course."

"How'd you get on to us, Longarm?"

"Let's see what you're packing in that sissy little suit before we talk. Unless that's a cow I hear bellowing inside the wall, your partner's likely anxious to rejoin us."

He frisked the midget, relieving him of a man-sized S&W Detective Special .38 and saying, "Shame on you, sonny!" before he motioned the dwarf to a seat in a far corner and, still covering him, relit the room's candle. Then he went over to where Mabel Hanks was yelling curses through the mattress and pulled down the folding bed.

The naked woman rolled out of the wall and sat up, staring wildly around through the hair hanging over her face as she gasped, "What in the h.e.l.l's happening?"

Then she spotted the midget in the corner and sighed, "Oh, s.h.i.t!"

"Let's talk about it," Longarm suggested. He saw the girl moving as if to get to her discarded nightgown and said, flatly, "You just stay put, honey. It ain't like we're strangers and have to be formally dressed. Either one of you can tell me who the h.e.l.l you are, as long as somebody says something sudden."

The one called Cedric said, "We're private detectives. Our badges are in the other room. You want to see them?"

"I'll take your word for it. Why were you detecting me? I don't remember being wanted anywhere. Last time I looked, I was toting my own badge for Uncle Sam."

Cedric said, "h.e.l.l, we know that. We're out here after the reward."

"What reward would that be, friend?"

"The one on Frank and Jesse James, of course. Our agency works for the railroad and the James-Younger Gang has been playing h.e.l.l with their timetables. We was on our way to Crooked Lance, same as you, to fetch that Cotton Younger back to Missouri."

"Don't you mean to make a deal with him? Maybe a deal to spring him loose in exchange for Jesse James's new address?"

The midget detective shot a weary glance at his naked female partner and sighed, "I told you they said he was a smart one, Mabel. Look what your hungry old s.n.a.t.c.h has gotten us into, this time!"

"Oh shut up, you little p.i.s.sant! It's not my fault! I told you you were overplaying your part!" She smiled timidly at Longarm and added, "You might as well know the truth. I'll admit I did try to find out what you might know about Cotton Younger and the odd situation up in Crooked Lance. You see, one of our agents came out here a week ago and..."

"Spare me the details. I know something in Crooked Lance seems to eat lawmen for breakfast. As to overplaying parts, I'm sort of interested in why Cedric, here, was trying to creep in on us just now."

"I done no such thing!" the midget protested, adding, "I had my ear against the plywood when all h.e.l.l busted loose out there! I can see someone was using the old paper trick, but, honest Injun, you are barking up the wrong tree."

"Why were you hiding under the bed, then?"

"h.e.l.l, I was scared! I heard running in the hall, cracked open the door, and saw you bounce out stark naked with a full-grown gun in your fist! Before you could turn and blow my fool face off I dove for cover. You know the rest!"

"You're likely full of s.h.i.t, but saying you ain't, did you get a look at anyone attached to them running footsteps?"

"No. Whoever it was made the stairwell before I got to the door. Ain't you aiming to put that gun away?"

"Maybe. Tell me something a man with his head against that plywood might have heard."

"What are you talking about? All I heard was you and Mabel--you know."

"I don't know. I know what she was saying as I heard the key hit paper. If your ear was next to that plywood, you must have heard it, too."

The woman blushed, for real this time, and stammered, "Longarm, you're being nasty!"

But Longarm insisted, "Cedric?" and with a malicious grin at the naked woman on the bed, the midget said, "She said what you were doing to her was just lovely."

Longarm lowered the muzzle of his.44, nodded at the woman on the bed, and said, "You can get dressed now."

Mabel Hanks leaned over, grabbed up her nightgown and put it on, gathering the other things in one hand. He saw she was looking at the two gold eagles lying on the rug near the foot of the bed and said, "Leave 'em be, honey. I don't know what I owe you, but twenty dollars seems a mite steep, considering."

"You-you son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

"Will you settle for two bucks? I understand it's the going price, these days. I don't hold it against you that we never finished the last time."

She swept grandly out, too mortified to answer. The midget dropped off the chair with a smirk and edged his way for the door, saying, "I'd be willing to split that reward, if you want to talk things over."

"You talked just enough to save your a.s.s, old son. And by the way, you need a shave. You and your Mama hit Crooked Lance with that stubble on your pretty little chin and there might be some who haven't my refined sense of humor!"

Cedric hesitated in the doorway with a sly smile on his ugly little face as he asked, "You don't aim to give our show away, Longarm?"

The big lawman laughed good-naturedly and asked, "Why should I? I've enjoyed the show immensely!"

CHAPTER 5.

The sky was a starry black curtain fading to gray in the east as Longarm reined in on the Crooked Lance Trail and sat his mount for a time, considering the ink blots all around them. He'd slipped out of the hotel a little after three in the morning, gotten his borrowed army bay from the livery without being seen, and was now a distance from the town that he judged about right for a bushwhacking.

In the very dim light of the false dawn he could just make out a granite outcropping, covering the trail. Longarm clucked to the bay, eased him around to the far side, and tethered him to one of the aspens growing there. He slid the Winchester.44-40 from its boot under the saddle's right fender and dismounted. He soothed the bay with a pat and left it to browse on aspen leaves as he climbed the far side of the outcropping. He knew the treetops behind him would hide his outline against the sky as the light improved. He lay atop the rock, levered a round into the Winchester's chamber, and settled down to wait. If he'd timed it right, the sniper with that.30-30 deer rifle would be getting up here just about now, and if the rifleman knew the lay of the land along this trail he'd have a hard time picking a better place to set his own ambush. A million years went by, and the sky was only a little lighter. Longarm was used to waiting, but he'd never liked it much. The stars were going out one by one from east to west, but the sniper seemed to be taking his own good time. What was the matter with the fool? He wasn't dumb enough to stake out the front of the d.a.m.ned hotel, was he?

He wondered if Kincaid or any of the other missing lawmen had run into this situation. It made more sense than a town where they shot strangers on sight. Kincaid or any of the other missing men could be buried anywhere for a full day's ride or so. The folks in Crooked Lance, for all he knew, could be just as puzzled as everyone else. With the wire down, they were cut off, so n.o.body there would know who was coming or when.

He took a cheroot from his vest pocket and put it between his teeth, not lighting it, as he studied what he knew for sure. It wasn't much, but he could a.s.sume the hands who'd captured Cotton Younger and locked him up were acting in good faith. If they'd been on the outlaw's side, they never would have captured him. If they hadn't wanted the law to know they had him, they'd have just killed him and kept still about it. Could it be an escape plot?

Maybe, but not on the part of the folks in Crooked Lance, for obvious reasons. The most likely candidates to plot an escape would be friends of Cotton Younger, and if it was true he was tied in with Frank and Jesse James ... possible, but wild. None of the James-Younger Gang had ever operated this far west, and if it was them, they were acting differently than they'd ever acted before. He'd studied the working habits of the James-Younger Gang. They were given to moving in fast, hitting hard, and moving out even faster. Cotton Younger was being held in a log jail, probably loosely guarded by simple cowhands. If the James-Younger Gang had ridden out here to spring him, he'd have been long gone by now and there'd be no need for all this skullduggery.

On the other hand, the gang had been badly shot up in Minnesota and were scattered from h.e.l.l to breakfast. If a lone member of the old clan was trying to help his kinsman... that might fit.

Behind him in the fluttering aspen leaves a redwing awoke to announce its undisputed ownership of the grove. It sounded more like a wagon wheel in need of grease than a bird, and it meant the sun was getting ready to roll up the eastern side of the pearling sky. Longarm could see the trail he was covering more clearly now. In less than an hour things would have color as well as form down there. His sniper was either a late riser or stupid. Or he'd given up for now.

Longarm decided to wait it out till full light. Half the secret of staking-out lay in waiting out that last five minutes. It was tedious as h.e.l.l, but he'd made some good arrests by simply staying put a little longer than common sense seemed to call for. It was a trick he'd learned as a boy from a friendly p.a.w.nee.

Another bird woke up to curse back at the redwing and a distant peak to the west was pink-tipped against the dark blue western horizon as it caught the sunrise from its greater alt.i.tude. Innocent travelers would be taking to the trail soon. Where in thunder was his sniper?

Longarm's eyes suddenly narrowed and he stopped breathing as his ears picked up the distant sc.r.a.pe Of steel on rock. He saw two blurs moving into view up the trail. What he'd heard was a horseshoe on a lump of gravel.

He could see who it was, now. A lone rider on a big black plowhorse, with a teammate tagging along behind like an oversized hound. As the odd group came nearer Longarm saw that the man on the lead mount was carrying a rifle across his knees. He was riding bareback, his long legs hanging down to the end in big bare feet. The top of him was clad in patched, old-fashioned buckskins, a fur hat made of skunk skin with two feathers c.o.c.ked out of one side, and a long, gray beard covering the upper third of his burly chest.

He was peculiar looking, but Longarm decided he was likely not his man, as he studied the weapon the rider was packing. It was an old Sharps.50. Single-shot and wrong caliber. The lack of high heels, or even boots, was comforting, too. Longarm flattened himself lower against the granite to let the stranger pa.s.s without needless conversation. The odd old man and his pets pa.s.sed by the lawman's hiding place without looking up and vanished on up the trail. Longarm stretched to ease his cramped muscles, then settled down to wait some more.

it was perhaps five minutes before he noticed something else, or, rather, noticed something missing. The birds had stopped singing.

Longarm rolled over and up to a sitting position, his rifle across his knees, as he faced away from the trail into the aspen grove his mount was tethered in. The old man in the feathered fur hat was stepping out from between two pale green aspen trunks, the battered Sharps pointing up the slope at Longarm.

Longarm nodded and said, "'Morning."

The other called out, "By gar, Wsieu, she must think she's vairie clevaire, him! Myself, Chambrun du Val she has the eyes of the eagle!"

"I wasn't laying for you, Mister du Val. My handle's Long. I'm a U.S. Deputy Marshal on government business and I'd take it kindly if you'd point that thing someplace else."

"Mais non! You will throw down your weapon at once! Chambrun du Val she's demand it, him!"

"Sorry, I don't see things quite that way. You got the drop on me and I got the drop on you. If there's any edge, it's on my side. You got one round in that thing. I got fifteen in this Winchester."

"Bah, if Chambrun du Val she shoot, it is all ovaire!"

"You fire, old son, and you'd best do me good with your one and only try, for I can get testy as all h.e.l.l with a buffalo round in or about my person! But I don't see this as a killing situation. I'd say our best play would be to talk things over before this gets any uglier."

"What is Misieur's explanation for making the ambush, eh?"

"I told you, I'm a lawman. I was staked out here for a bushwhacker who took a shot at me in Bitter Creek last night. What's your tale?"

"Chambrun du Val she is going to Crooked Lance to kill a beast, he."

"feller named Cotton Younger?"

"Exactement! How does Misieur's know this thing?"

"Cotton Younger's wanted in Canada, and if you ain't a French Canuck you sure talk funny for Wyoming. Are you a lawman or is your business with Cotton Younger more personal?"

"The animal, she is murdaire mon pet.i.te Marie Claire! Chambrun du Val she swear on the grave revenge!"

"WelL you can stop aiming at me, then. We're on the same side. My boss sent me up here to carry Cotton Younger in for a hanging. Along with what he did up Canada way, he's killed a few of our folks, too."

"Bah! Hanging, she is too good for this Cotton Younger! It is the intention of Chambrun du Val to kill him in the manner of les Cree!"

"You'll likely have to settle for a hanging. One of your own Northwest Mounties is up in Crooked Lance ahead of us both. There's a sheriff from Missouri and at least a brace of private detectives working for the railroads, too. At the rate it's going, he'll be long hung before either of us gets there, so do you reckon we should shoot each other or get on up to Crooked Lance some time soon?"

"Misieur's knows the way?"

"More or less, don't you?"

"Mais non, Chambrun du Val, she is, how you say, looking for Crooked Lance."

"Well, I see the man I was laying up here on these rocks for don't seem anxious to show his face, so I'll be neighborly and carry you there if you'll promise not to shoot me."

The old voyageur lowered the muzzle of his buffalo gun, so Longarm swung his own muzzle politely to port arms and slid down the granite to join him. As they walked together to where their horses were munching aspen leaves, Longarm asked, "How well do you know Cotton Younger, Mister du Val?"

"Chambrun du Val, she's nevaire see the beast, but she will know him. It is said the animal is big and very blond. They call him Cotton because his hair, she is almost white. Also, she is now in the jail at Crooked Lance, and, merde almost, how many such createures like this can there be in any one jail, ah?"

"They say he's related to some who rode with the James-Younger gang a few years back. You hear anything about that, up Canada way?"

"Mais non, this createure rode alone through the Red River dimord Countries. Chambrun du Val was off on the traplines when he murdaire mon pet.i.te Marie Claire. Mon merde on what he do down here in les States. He shall die, most slowly, for what he do to Marie Claire!"

Longarm untethered his bay and swung up in the saddle, slipping the Winchester into its boot as he led off without comment. Behind him, the old man leaped as lightly as a young Indian aboard the broad back of his huge black gelding, calling its mate to heel with a low whistle.

The French Canadian waited until they were free of the trees and out on the trail before he called out, cheerfully, "Misieur's has not considered Chambrun du Val just had the opportunity to shoot him in the back?"

Not turning his head, Longarm called back, "You don't look stupid. You've got enough on your plate without gunning a U.S. lawman for no reason this far south of the border."

"Misieur's is a man who misses little, ah?"

Longarm didn't answer. What the man had said was the simple truth. The oldtimer's eyes were sharp as h.e.l.l and, together, they stood a better chance of riding into Crooked Lance alive.

Once they got there, Chambrun du Val would be one more headache. He'd want to kill the prisoner. The other lawmen ahead of Longarm would doubtless argue over who had first claim on Cotton Younger, too. in fact, by now, it was a pure mystery what the owlhoot was doing in that jail up ahead. The Mountie, the Missouri sheriff, or some d.a.m.ned lawman must have gotten through by now. Anyone riding in would be packing extradition papers, so why wasn't anyone riding out with Cotton Younger?

Longarm leaned forward and started to urge his mount to a faster pace. Then he eased off and shook his head, muttering, "Let's not get lathered up, old son. We've a long ride ahead and farther along we'll know more about it. Riding ourselves into the ground ain't going to get us there, so easy does it. Whatever in thunder is going on has been going on for weeks. It'll keep a few more hours."

CHAPTER 6.