Tabor Evans (4 page)

Working together--peeling and slicing potatoes, cutting steaks off the piece of beef loin, fixing them on split branches Longarm cut from a sweet gum tree to broil while the potatoes were fried, passing a casual remark about the food, the amount of coffee and water that would make a drinkable brew--brought a relaxation of the tension that until then had prevailed between Longarm and Maidia Harkness. She proved herself a reasonably adept cook, well able to hold up her end of the work.

In a surprisingly short time, they had the steaks over a bed of glowing coals, with the coffeepot sitting on one side of the coals, and potatoes sizzling in the frying pan on the other side. Longarm picked up the bottle of whiskey and held it to the firelight. The liquor showed a deep reddish brown through the clear glass of the bottle. He shook it hard several times, and nodded with satisfaction when no bubbles formed at the surface of the liquid.

"Whoever made it filtered out the fusel oil," he told Maidia. "At least that's how it looks. But we'll just make sure before we try tasting it."

He pulled the cork and trickled a few drops of liquor into the palm of one hand, set the bottle down, and rubbed the whiskey into the skin of his calloused palm with his fingertips. When he inspected his palm and sniffed at it, he nodded once again.

"It might burn our gullets," he said, "but it won't make us sick."

How can you tell?"

"Wasn't any oily scum left on my hand," he explained. "These bootleg stills on the whiskey ranches don't always have copper worms. If they don't, and if they don't get the fire hot enough and keep it going steady, the liquor'll come out full of fusel oil, and that stuff just turns your stomach inside out. This ain't what you'd get at a good saloon, but it's safe enough to drink."

He took a small swallow. The liquor was still raw, but it wasn't as bad as he'd been afraid it might be. He held the bottle out to Maidia, and she surprised him by accepting it. She poured a healthy drink into the tin cup they'd taken from Longarm's saddlebags. Maidia could see by Longarm's expression that he'd expected her to refuse. She smiled at him.

"I'm not a blue-nosed reformer, Marshal, even if I am a social worker. I enjoy a drink before dinner at home. There's no reason why one won't taste as good here in the woods."

"I'll take mine right out of the bottle, unless you object," he said. "I ain't too fond of the way corn whiskey smells when I drink it out of a cup. I'm a rye drinker, myself."

"I don't object, Marshal. And I like rye better than bourbon, too."

She took a swallow of the liquor and shook her head. "Oh, my! That's very potent!"

"Pretty strong stuff, all right." Longarm looked critically at the steaks, and went on, "It'll be a few minutes before they're done. I'll go get our bedrolls and tend to the animals, if you'll stir the potatoes to keep them from burning."

During supper, the pair of them found a rising number of things to talk about. Longarm was appalled at Maidia's conception of the way the Indians in the Nation lived, and the relationships between them and the whites. Like most post-Civil War Easterners, she saw the Indians of the Nation as a new kind of slave to be liberated from the white man's yoke.

"You don't really mean the Indians have their own police force?" she asked him at one point, when Longarm mentioned the Indian police.

"y, sure they do, with uniforms and everything. There just ain't enough of them to cover the whole Nation, that's all. And the Indian police don't let sheriffs or town marshals from Texas or Arkansas or Kansas come into their territory, either."

"But you can, because you're a federal officer," Maidia concluded.

"That's right. U.S. marshals and the army, that's all the outside lawmen allowed by the Indians into the Nation."

"But the army keeps the Indians penned up here!" she objected.

"That ain't quite all the army does, ma'am. Mostly, it keeps the Indian Wars from starting up again. Not against us white folks," he said hastily, as Maidia was about to break in. "Indians have been fighting each other since way back before history began. But it's getting to the point now where the Osages will talk to the Cherokees, and a Kiowa won't try to kill a Cheyenne on sight. Give them a little time, and they'll settle down like us, to a war every ten or fifteen years instead of just one war that goes on all the time."

Maidia studied Longarm's face for a moment, trying to decide whether he was joking or serious. Finally she said, "You really mean that, don't you, Marshal?"

"Why shouldn't I? It's the truth."

"You make the Indians sound so bloodthirsty."

"I wouldn't call them that, Miss Harkness. They just don't put on a lot of false fronts, the way we do."

"But I've always been taught-"

Longarm interrupted her, "I know what you were taught. Most of it was wrong. You'll see that, after you've been in the Nation awhile. No, ma'am, on the whole, there's not any better people than the Indians. Or smarter, or more truthful. An Indian gives you his word, he won't go back on it unless you go back on yours first."

"You're giving me new ideas, Marshal. I'll try to remember what you've said."

"You do that. But I reckon I've just about talked your ear off. If we're going to get started at daybreak, we better turn in."

Longarm busied himself with the fire, banking it for the night, to give Maidia a chance to go off into the bushes without her feeling that he was watching her. He heard her retreating footsteps and heard her returning, and quickly whirled back to the fire, bending to light a cheroot from a twig he picked up from its edge. He held the whiskey bottle out to her.

"I was just about to have my nightcap. You might as well take one, too. You'll sleep better if you do."

Obediently, she took a swallow of the liquor. Longarm smiled inwardly when he saw her drinking from the bottle, as he had, instead of looking for a cup. He drank his own good-night tot, and proceeded to make his bedtime arrangements: boots laid flat and covered with his folded coat; his Ingersoll watch and chain, with the mean little derringer attached to the other end of the chain, tacked into a boot. He spread his vest flat by his left shoulder, laid his unholstered Colt on it, and covered the pistol with his hat to shield it from the damp night air. He became aware that Maidia, already in her own bedroll, was watching his methodical preparations with a great deal of interest.

She said, "From the way you're arranging your things, Marshal, I get the idea you think those men might come back while We're asleep."

"They won't be coming back," he assured her. "One of them is dead, and two of the others have got bullet holes in them. But if they do show up, or if anybody else does, I'll be ready."

"So I see. That will make me sleep a lot better. Good-night, Marshal Long."

"Good-night, Miss Harkness."

Longarm watched through slitted eyes until he saw Maidia give up trying to gaze through the darkness. She looked in one direction, then in another, before she finally settled down to sleep. When her face settled into repose and her breathing became deep and even, Longarm closed his own eyes and relaxed. In no time at all, he was also asleep.

CHAPTER 3

Longarm might have been sleeping two minutes or two hours when Maidia's stifled, startled cry aroused him. He rolled out of his blankets, to his knees, in one swift motion, sweeping aside the hat that covered his Colt. In an instant, the revolver was in his hand. The banked fire gave off the very faintest glow. There was barely enough light for him to see Maidia. She was sitting up in her bedding. Her head was cocked, swiveling slowly from side to side as she peered into the darkness that surrounded them.

"What's the matter?" Longarm asked her.

"I heard something. A woman screaming somewhere, I think."

"Funny, I didn't hear it. And I count myself a light sleeper."

"Listen!" she said urgently.

He heard the sound then, from far off, a thin wail like the cry of a woman in agony. He said, "That's just a panther calling. It's too far off to smell us out."

"A panther? Isn't that a kind of lion?"

"They're cats," he replied. "Big cats. But they'll mostly let people alone unless they're starving, or unless somebody walks up on one unexpected."

Maidia shuddered. "It sounds so terrible! I've broken out in gooseflesh." She started to stand up, but changed her mind. "Where's the whiskey bottle, Marshal? I think I need some Dutch courage before I can go back to sleep."

"I'll hand it to you," Longarm said. "I'm already out of MY bedroll."

He walked gingerly on bare feet to the log where the bottle was sitting, and handed it to Maidia. She drank, gulped, waited a moment, and drank again. Then she handed the bottle to Longarm.

"I'm sorry I woke you up. I guess I'm just nervous, she told him apologetically. "I think I'll be all right now, though."

"Sure you will. You'll drop right off back to sleep." Longarm went to his own bedroll, rearranged the blankets, replaced the Colt on his vest, and covered it again with his hat. The wind had died as the night deepened and it was no longer so cold. Just the same, he tossed a few sticks of wood on the fire, thinking the light might add to Maidia's peace of mind. Then he crawled back between the blankets. He'd hardly had time to settle down when Maidia called him again.

"Marshal?"

"I'm right here. What's troubling you?"

"Would you"--she hesitated for a moment--"Would you think I was being terrible if I asked to come over there with you?"

It was the last question Longarm had expected someone like Maidia Harkness to ask. He took his time in answering.

"If you're sure that's what you want to do," he told her.

"I'm sure. I know what I'm saying. I'm not a child."

"Come on over and welcome, then."

Maidia slipped out of her bedroll and pattered across the few feet that separated them. By the light of the freshened fire, Longarm could see that she'd left her skirt in her own blankets. She had on only a blouse that fell to her waist. Her molded thighs gleamed pink-white. She stood briefly beside his bedroll, and Longarm lifted the corner of his blanket. Maidia eased under it beside him.

"I don't need to apologize for asking to join you, do I? You're not the kind of man who'd expect that," she whispered.

"You don't need to apologize or explain or anything else," he told her. "Anybody's likely to feel nerved up the first time or two they try to sleep outdoors."

"I was all right until that panther yowled. I was dreaming--well, I won't tell you what--I was dreaming."

"Like I said, you don't have to tell me anything."

Longarm was very conscious of the warmth that was reaching him from Maidia's nearly naked body. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but made no move to do so. He didn't want to do or say anything until he was sure what she had in mind. "It was the dream as much as the panther that Maybe woke me up," she said softly. "But--if it hadn't been for the panther, I might not have awakened and realized that I didn't have to be satisfied with just a dream."

Her hand crept out of the covers to caress Longarm's cheek. She ran her palm across his chin, his day-old beard rasping gently as she pressed harder. Then her fingers strayed up to explore the sweep of his mustache.

Not until Maidia's lips replaced her fingers did Longarm move to touch her in return. He brought one of his hands up from her knee, along the satin skin of her thigh and over her hip, and slid it under the edge of her loose blouse. His fingers brushed across her breast and found a nipple, hardening now, unfolding slowly until it stood firm and solid under his gently pinching fingertips.

"Oh, yes," she whispered. "Do that. And then, some more." She rolled closer to him, and Longarm felt the weight of her thigh resting on his.

Maidia's tongue was pushing Longarm's lips apart, and he joined his tongue to hers. He was springing erect quickly. Her hand had left his face now, and was stroking his groin, feeling him grow hard under its grasp. Longarm released Maidia's breast long enough to thumb open the buttons of his fly and let her hand find his bare, throbbing flesh. She closed her hand around him, and he felt her body ripple in a small, satisfied shudder.

"I like what I've got in my hand," she said softly. "That's what I was dreaming about, you know."

"And then you woke up."

"Yes. But I know how the dream would have ended. And I'm glad I woke up when I did." Maidia squeezed him, not too gently. "This feels a lot better to me than any dream could."

"There's a way to make it feel better than it does now."

Longarm slid his hand between Maidia's thighs and fingered the warm wetness that was waiting for him there.

"Don't hurry me, Marshal. I'm enjoying hefting you right this minute, and the longer I wait, the more I'm going to like it when it gets to where it belongs." She shifted her head a bit and began nibbling on Longarm's earlobe.

"You take your time, Miss Harkness."

Maidia's laughter exploded in Longarm's ear. Between chortles, she said, "That sounds so funny, I can't help myself. Here we are, with me holding onto this beautiful thing for dear life, and you with your fingers in me, and I'm calling you Marshal Long and you're calling me Miss Harkness. Don't you think we ought to be a little bit more informal before we really get serious? You could call me Maidia, you know."