Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

Longarm answered, with a weary sigh, "I did and you have. I don't want to repeat what I just told Miss Zelda about compromising a peace officer with swell presents and pussy. Suffice it to say, my flesh may be weak but my spirit carries a badge. So I want you to vanish forever from my sight, and meanwhile, I'll see why that other pest is taking so long."

Longarm ducked back inside without waiting to see whether his last command to the kitchen boss had been obeyed. He saw right off why Zelda was still there. She'd gotten out of bed but she hadn't put anything on and she

was an ash-blonde all over as she stood there bold as brass and barefoot, defying him to say he didn't want her now.

To which Longarm could only reply, with a weary smile, "I never said I was a celibate monk. Miss Zelda. I said I was a lawman, on duty, who couldn't fuck with a known lawbreaker whether he wanted to or not."

She purred something about it hardly mattering since he'd said he felt no call to turn her in. So he found her duds atop her low-cut work shoes in one comer, and scooped them up in one bundle so he could grab her bare elbow with his other hand and steer her for the doorway while she protested he couldn't shove a naked lady out in the hallway as if she was some sort of trash.

But he could. So he did saying, "Aw, you ain't no lady, even if you are buck-naked, and the trash who sent you to buy off the law with some slap and tickle would know better than me what sort of trash you are."

Then he let go of her, her duds, and her shoes to crawfish back inside and slam the door with a grin as her wild swipe with clawed nails whipped through the empty space he'd just had his face in.

His grin faded as he bolted the door on the inside again while she bawled dreadful things about his manhood on the other side.

He was too proud, or perhaps too ashamed, to yell back he still had an erection Casanova might have been anxious to display as his own at one of his fancy French gatherings. He'd done what a man just had to do, at least with some women, and it was nobody's beeswax how damned stiff his old organ-grinder might be, or what he might be going to do about that now.

Chapter 6

A possibly sane old hermit who'd read the Good Book every night had once assured a much younger Custis Long that the Lord had not slain Onan, son of Judah, just for jacking off that time. The true sin of Onan, as soon as one studied on it, was the way a spiteful son of a bitch had jacked off smack in front of the poor widow woman the Lx)rd had just commanded him to come in.

It stood to reason that a Lord who took plain and simple jacking off hard would have wiped out the whole human race before poor Onan was ever bom, for as some prophet had once written, "Nine out of ten people play with themselves and that tenth one is a liar."

But Longarm managed not to that night, because of other considerations. It was true you didn't have to look your best or promise your hand you'd respect it in the morning, but as another prophet had written, likely in French, "Never jack off in the morning. You never know who you might meet at lunch."

A much younger Longarm had once been sore as hell at himself at a hotel fire, after meeting up after midnight with another guest who'd likely strummed herself to sleep just down the hall, unaware of how surprising life can get. So that night in Zion Longarm just sat on his damned windowsill, smoking in the dark and considering all the

trouble he might have just avoided, till he fell into bed too weary to care and hence woke up the next morning with an even stiffer one.

He just felt silly about that till he went downstairs to see if they'd still serve him some breakfast.

They wouldn't. The chairs were still stacked on the tables in the dining room, and when he stuck his head in the kitchen to ask how come, there was nobody there. He could tell by the cold clammy smell that they'd let the cast-iron range burn itself out entirely and they'd padlocked the far door to the pantry and root cellar.

It was true few if any wayfarers would show up for breakfast at an overnight stop they never stopped at. But Longarm had seen other names in the guest book when he'd signed in the night before, and even if he had been the only overnight guest, it seemed a tad unusual to let a wood-fed kitchen range cool down all the way if they ever meant to cook anything later in the day. For those heavy-duty ranges meant for serious restaurant cooking took their own sweet time to warm up, once you let them cool down to the temperature of Idaho in autumn.