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nubs of her cheeks red as apples, which was probably how they always colored whenever she was lying, which was probably all the time. “And I must have had some kind of a spasm or some such, and the good marshal—Longarm, I call him since we’re such good friends and all—carried me over to the creek, as he thought the cold water would bring me back around. But I reckon your gunfire was the cure!”
    She tittered nervously, tapping a hand to her chest over her cleavage.
    â€œYou weren’t harmed then, dear?” Fancy Dan said, placing his arms on her shoulders and crouching to stare down at her worriedly. “I mean . . . that awful Heck Gunn didn’t—?”
    â€œOh, no! Rest assured, Dickie. Nothing like that. Oh, I’m sure he would have, given time. But I reckon the gang was so eager to get south as fast as they could that they were just too tired, the only night we camped together, to . . . to . . . well, you know—to do anything as awful as what you’re thinking, but they didn’t, Dickie. I assure you!”
    Longarm heard himself grunt, felt his eyes roll in his head. Christ, what a piece of work this girl was. A true artist of lies and other sundry deceits.
    â€œYou’re sure?” Dickie said, shaking her almost violently. “You’re sure he—they—didn’t . . . ?”
    â€œDickie, I would know, wouldn’t I?”
    Dickie stepped back away from her, dropping his lower jaw nearly to the bloodred neckerchief billowing down across the top third of his quill-adorned, elk-skin jacket. “Oh, God,” he said, laughing. “I thought . . . I thought for sure they must have . . . Oh,
God
!” he fairly squealed, his right hand reaching for the pearl-gripped Colt so quickly that Longarm found himself raising his Winchester defensively once again.
    But it was not at the federal lawman that the fancy Dan triggered off six shots in quick succession. Longarm watched in astonishment as the fancy Dan very neatly and efficiently blew six small branches off the end of a larger cottonwood branch about forty yards away from him, near where the creek flashed in the rising morning sun.
    As the last shot echoed around the near ridges, Dickie twirled the fancily scrolled silver popper on his finger and stepped back, chuckling his relief and wagging his head. “Oh, I’m so relieved to hear that, buttercup. I mean,” he added quickly, “I’m so glad they didn’t soil you. Er . . . you know . . . that you weren’t
soiled 
. . . !”
    â€œYou mean badly injured?” she asked, smiling up at him cheerfully.
    â€œYes, of course that’s what I mean!” Dickie grabbed his buttercup again and held her against him passionately. “I’m so glad they didn’t injure you, dear, and that the wedding can happen as planned.”
    Longarm had a flash of memory of himself and Dickie’s buttercup last night—Longarm driving her hard against the ground as he hammered away between her widely spread legs—and he heard himself groan his intensifying incredulity while at the same time wondering what it was, exactly, that this lovely little witch had up her sleeve
now.
    â€œOf course it can, dear,” said Lacy, placing a hand on her chosen one’s cheek. “I’m not injured at all . . . thanks to Longarm.”
    She turned to him, smiling wickedly.
    â€œOh, where are my manners,” she said. “Custis Long, meet the man I’ve been promised to—Dickie . . . er . . . Richard Shafter. Captain Richard Shafter of the United States cavalry stationed at Fort Riley, on the Brazos River in Texas.” She frowned up at the dandy curiously. “Or so last I heard . . . ?”
    Longarm had risen and was now holding his rifle straight down by his side. As the