Clint was in the lobby the next morning when Talbot Roper came walking in at eight-fifty-five a.m.. He saw Clint and walked toward him with his hand out. The two men shook hands warmly.
“Good to see you, Clint,” Roper said.
“Thanks for coming.”
“Sorry about last night,” the detective said. “Just had to tie up some old business. Shall we have breakfast?”
“By all means. I skipped dinner last night, fell asleep early. Train rides, you know?”
“I know,” Roper said. “They’re taking more and more out of me, too. Rather ride a horse, anytime.”
They walked to the dining room, which was only about half-full at that time of the morning. Clint had them taken to the same table he’d had the evening before. They both ordered steak-and-eggs and coffee.
“Well,” Roper said, “I’m all yours, Clint. My slate is clean.”
“I have a story to tell you,” Clint said, “started almost a week ago.”
“By all means,” Roper said, “tell me a story, Clint …”
Labyrinth, Texas
Clint was in Labyrinth, Texas when he got the telegram to come to Washington D.C. .
“Jim West?” Rick Hartman asked.
“No,” Clint said, “but close. Jeremy Pike.”
“The Government?”
Clint nodded, folding the telegram. It was morning and they were sitting in Rick’s Place, a saloon and gambling hall that was not open yet.
“Yes.”
“And when the government calls you always go running, don’t you?”
Clint shrugged. “I’m a patriot.”
“Yeah, I’m a patriot, too,” Rick said, “but that just means I vote. What do they want you to do this time?”
“I won’t know that until I get there,” Clint said, as Rick’s bartender brought their breakfasts out.
Rick shook his head. “You know, I’m glad I don’t leave town anymore.”
“I think it’s a condition with you now,” Clint said. “I don’t think you could leave if you wanted to.”
Rick smiled and cut off a hunk of ham steak.
“Then it’s lucky I don’t want to.”
Each trip back to Labyrinth Clint would meet a new group of girls working for Rick in his saloon. Saloon girls did not stick around for very long, looking for any reason to move on to the next town, the next job. But Rick had a system. He usually hired one older woman—early thirties, maybe—and then the rest all under thirty, and the older woman became like a den mother to the others.
And Rick had extremely good taste in women. The girls were always beautiful, And he usually picked out a young one for himself.
The last few years, though, Clint had found himself spending time with the “den mother.”
Elizabeth Downing was thirty-three, and while that may have seemed old for a saloon girl, there was nothing over-the-hill about Liz. She was a busty blonde who breasts were still high and firm, still slim-waisted, appearing even more so because of her hour glass hips.
He had been in Labyrinth for several weeks when the telegram came—a longer stay than usual. But he had spent a lot of time on the trail recently, and a good long rest in Labyrinth had been just what he needed—and so had Liz.
They were in bed together the night he received the telegram, and he told her he’d be leaving the next morning.
“That’s kind of abrupt, isn’t it?” she asked. She propped herself up on one elbow, her long blonde hair flowing down over her shoulders. One large breast was flattened beneath her, but he could see the large, pink nipple of the other one very clearly.
“It can’t be helped,” he said. “My country calls.”
“Your country, huh?” she said. “Not another woman?”
“Definitely not another woman,” he said, reaching out to cup her breast and thumb her nipple. She closed her eyes and bit her lush lower lip.
“You bastard,” she said, “you know I may not be here when you get back.”
“I have no idea when I’ll be back,” he said, “or if.”
“Oh, Mr. Adams,” she said, lifting his hand to her mouth, running the tip of his thumb over her bottom lip, “you’re a bad risk for any woman, aren’t you? She’d never know if you were alive or dead.”
He pushed his thumb between her lips into her mouth, and she sucked on it.
“I’m afraid that’s always going to be the case, Liz.”
She sucked his thumb until it was thoroughly wet, and then he slid it from her mouth and circled her nipple with it again.
“Oh, God …” she said.
She pushed him down onto his back, kissed his mouth hungrily, then kissed his chest, and his belly, running her tongue around his navel, and then lower still. When she was nestled comfortably between his legs, her elbows resting on his thighs, she licked the head of his penis, and then drew it into her mouth. She sucked it a while, just the spongy head, getting it very wet, holding his think penis with one hand. Then, little by little, she took more of it into her mouth, until suddenly she swooped down on him, causing him to catch his breath.
She began to suck him in long, slow strokes of her lips and tongue, holding onto the base of his penis with one hand, using the other hand to cup and caress his swollen testicles.
She slowed his cock to slide out of her mouth and looked up at him with her beautiful blue eyes.
“You’re gonna miss me, aren’t you?”
“Terribly.”
She stroked his cock with her hand and said, “How much?”
“Awfully,” he said, “thoroughly … amazingly … what else do you want me to say?”
“Nothing,” she said, “you’ve said enough. Here’s our reward.”
She took him into her hot, hungry mouth again and sucked him until he lifted his hips off the bed, bellowed, and exploded into her mouth…