Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

She said, "Oh," in an oddly pouting way. Then she told him to hold on just a moment, and shut the door in his face. Before he could get sore, however, she opened it again wider, and he saw she'd wrapped a towel around her tawny young charms. Indians didn't worry as much as Queen Victoria about bare shoulders and thighs.

He stepped inside with a tick of his hat brim and a nod of his thanks to simply bend over and pick up the saddle with other gear lashed to it. He'd been right about where it had landed amid the earlier confusion. As he straightened back up with the McClellan braced on one hip the pretty little breed softly murmured, "You used to call me honey, and I told you I was educated white, and I never applied to the B.I.A. for an allotment number when I went back to my mother in my teens."

To which he could only reply, with a wistful smile, "I've been known to call a lady all sorts of sweet things whilst we kissed a mite sassy, Miss Tupombi. But seeing we seem to have had us some second thoughts, I'll just tote this saddle and the rest of my awkward self out of your cooled-down presence, hear?"

He meant it. Women could tell, and it only counted when men meant it. So she somehow managed to bar the whole way out with her pretty little self as she sort of sobbed, "Don't speak to me so coldly. I was only trying to keep you from riding out in the dark to certain death. I wasn't trying to tease you, Custis. But now that we don't have to worry about that. . ."

"Nothing's certain but death and taxes," he said, adding, "If you're rich enough you don't even have to pay the taxes. But I get your general drift, and I'm glad you were so anxious to save my life for me, ma'am. It was an experience I'll never forget."

She didn't move her towel-wrapped hips from the door latch. He hesitated an awkward moment and softly asked, "Can I go, now, ma'am?"

She let go of the towel. As it limply peeled away from her slender but curvacious tawny torso in the soft romantic candlelight he was too thunderstruck to say anything. So it was she who asked, with a knowing expression, whether he really wanted to go.

As she'd doubtless suspected he might, Longarm let go of his dumb old saddle, skimmed his Stetson across to the chest of drawers, and hauled the naked lady in for an even friendlier kiss than that last time. But as they came up for air, with her groping at his buttons, she pleaded with him not to tease her anymore. So he swept her up in his arms, carried her over to her bed, and was in her, deep, with both pillows under her bounding buttocks, before he'd bothered with all his own duds.

She found it as amusing to help him undress without taking it out or even slowing down, once they had those infernal boots off. By that time they'd both come, Tupombi more than once, and so it was a calmer and more relaxed Longarm who settled in for a long bareback lope across clean sheets and a goose-down mattress. He had to chuckle as he thought back to his anthropology experiments with old Sandy Henderson back at that museum. For just as he'd told that curious redhead, gals used to screwing in a tipi screwed much the same as everyone else in a feather bed.

The only sign Tupombi gave of holding with some Indian notions was when she locked her bare ankles around the nape of his neck, dug her nails into his writhing behind, and sobbed, "Hai-hai-yee! Ta soon da hipey!" which hardly needed much translation because he was coming at the same time.

After that they put her candle out and shared a smoke in the cool darkness as they let their overheated flesh rest up and dry a bit. She smoked Indian-style, taking longer, deeper drags and trying to swallow it for keeps. He knew that in most dialects the Indian verbs for smoke and drink were the same. He liked his own way of smoking better, and it wasn't as if they were having some formal tobacco ceremony then and there.

He asked about that as he snuggled her bare flesh against his own. She said Pocatello and his Shoshoni-Bannock sub-chiefs would likely pass the calumet around with those gents from back East, if ever they wound up anywhere near Fort Hall. He was amused when she added, "My mother's people know your people don't feel a treaty has any puha unless everyone smokes from the same calumet. Most of our powamu keep a pretty calumet on hand for such occasions."

He laughed, took a drag on his less-impressive cheroot, and asked how Ho-speakers made peace with other Indians if a peace pipe wasn't all that important.

She explained, "Oh, we Ho you call Comanche make the same promises, with the same ceremonies, to everyone we don't want to fight with at the moment. It's usually a good idea to make peace with an enemy who has the advantage. It gives you the chance to recover and get back at the heyheyas when you have the advantage."