Slocum and Little Britches Read online

  “They’re still coming?” Her wide blue eyes questioned him as she held the reins.

  “They are,” he insisted. “If we can make the Springs by dark, maybe we can fool them.” He grasped his saddle horn in one hand and vaulted on his horse.

  “Fool them?”

  “The Apaches. They hate to fight at night.”

  She nodded woodenly, turning her horse around. They fled up the dusty ruts of the stage road. A bloody sunset washed the jumbled malpais formation that resembled huge toy blocks stacked on each other.

  Silver Temple was her name. He glanced over at her dirt-streaked face as she urged on the tired sorrel horse. He saw lots of grit beneath her disheveled hair. He swallowed hard crossing over the pass into the vast San Pedro Valley as twilight softened the harshness of the high desert. With a little luck, in an hour or so he’d be cutting the trail dust out of his throat with some of Corbett’s good whiskey.

  He glanced over at her. Silver Temple, whoever you are—we’ll be beyond them red devils in a short while. He urged the roan on.

  2

  “Slocum, that you, you ole coyote?” The barrel-chested man standing in the doorway’s illumination said the word coyote like a Mexican. It came out of his full beard sounding coy-oat-tay.

  “It’s me all right,” Slocum said, and went around to help Silver down. “We’ve been dodging some bucks since midday back down in the Sulfur Springs Valley.”

  “Who’s she?”

  Slocum heard her suck in her breath, and reached up to catch her. She’d fainted again. With her thin form in his arms, he boosted her up and nodded at her horse. “Catch him. I’ll tell you all about it inside.”

  “She okay?” Corbett asked, catching the reins and leading the sorrel up to the rack.

  “She’s sunburned to death. Dehydrated, I’d say. I don’t know when she ate last. She lost her man and some real estate guy named Bacon to the broncos, and they were fixing to haul her butt off to Mexico when I came along.”

  “She got a name?” Corbett stepped in alongside him to look at her. “Manuel, take these horses and put them up.”

  “Thanks. Her name’s Silver Temple.” Slocum twisted to take her through the door into the lighted eating hall where the stage patrons dined.

  “Never heard of her. Put her on the table.” Corbett indicated the long wooden table.

  “No. No,” a buxom Mexican woman said, coming from the kitchen while drying her hands on a towel. “Follow me.”

  Corbett shrugged in disgust. “Hell, all I do is own this place.”

  “Bring her to a jacal I have for guests,” the woman ordered.

  “Yeah,” Corbett said to Slocum. “The President Grant Suite.”

  “You don’t know who may come here to stay.” Acting haughty, the woman swept up a brass candle lamp and led the way out back over the hard-packed caliche to the jacal.

  “Consuela, if Grant ever comes out here, some Johnny Reb will put a bullet in his ass before you can even show him your suite.”

  At the doorway, ignoring his comment, the straight-backed woman looked with concern at the limp girl in Slocum’s arms, and then shouted for someone to bring medical things. The room was nice enough. An iron poster bed, dresser, fancy pitcher and bowl, and even a rocker.

  Consuela swept back the bedcover and indicated for Slocum to put her down there. When he did and straightened, she herded both Slocum and Ben toward the door.

  “This is woman business.”

  Corbett looked at Slocum and grinned. “Hell, me and you wanted to see what her hatchet ass looked like in the buff.”

  Consuela boldly threatened him with her forefinger, and he retreated. Both men, laughing, went outside, where they about collided with a short Mexican woman on a mission with a basket. Skirts in her hand, a third, older woman rushed by them, and closed the door at Consuela’s order.

  “Come on,” Corbett said. “If anyone can save her, they will. Besides, I have some good whiskey up there. What brought you here anyway?”

  Slocum looked up at the star-studded sky. “I was cutting across from John Slaughter’s hacienda headed for Tucson when I saw some buck had her. I got him, and when I went to get her, some others showed up.”

  “Broncos—been coming up out of Mexico and visiting at San Carlos. I had word from the soldiers out of Fort Bowie that there were a couple of small bands passing through.”

  Slocum shook his head. “This Silver Temple and her fiancé were looking at lakefront property with a real estate agent called Bacon.”

  “Playas?” Corbett asked, about to laugh.

  “That’s what he showed them till the Apaches killed him and her man.”

  “My pappy said you can go to hell for lying same as you can for stealing.” Corbett found the bottle and two glasses. He motioned to the long table and set the tumblers down on the top. Then he uncorked the whiskey and poured some in each glass. Slocum straddled the bench and sat down.

  Glass in hand, Slocum saluted his friend and took a sip. The whiskey cut through six inches of dust in his throat. “Those two must be in hell by now. I didn’t have any time to go look for them. We were busting our asses to get the hell out of there.”

  “An army patrol will find them with the help of buzzards. They’ve got the whole area covered with patrols.”

  Slocum paused before taking another drink, and looked into his friend’s blue eyes. “I never saw any buzzards.”

  “Oh, they’re out there. So are the buffalo soldiers from Fort Huachuca.”

  “Good.”

  “Bet you could use some food.” Corbett looked around pained. “All them damn women are out there with her.”

  “I bet I can rustle up something back in the kitchen.”

  “Come on. Probably get my ass ate out, but we’ll find something.”

  “Consuela runs things?” Slocum smiled and stood up.

  “Runs the whole damn stage stop.”

  They both laughed, and Slocum downed the rest of his glass.

  In the kitchen, he found a portion of a browned beef roast on the countertop. He used a long sharp knife to slice off some of it. Then, from a kettle, he piled some still warm brown beans on his plate. Corbett added several flour tortillas, and they went back out into the eating hall.

  “What was in Mexico?” Corbett asked.

  “I guarded some gold shipments from a mine in the Madres.”

  “Tough business.”

  His mouth full, Slocum nodded as he chewed and at last swallowed. “You ever heard of Henry St. John?”

  “No, who’s he?”

  “Some Mexican bandit I got cross with down there.”

  “Hmm, Henry St. John don’t sound Mexican to me.”

  “He is, and a bad bandit, too. Take my word. He’s all bandit and a cutthroat as well.”

  “St. John run you out?”

  “No, I told my man I needed some more help to stand off this St. John. He refused and I quit.”

  “And?”

  “On the next pack trip that went out, they killed six guards and took the bullion.”

  Corbett nodded like he understood, and leaned over with the bottle to pour Slocum some more whiskey in his glass. “He offer you a raise to come back to work for him?”

  Slocum shook his head as he was busy cutting up the rich meat. “You know those rich Castilians. They would never let it show that they did something wrong. He sent for some more gunhands.”

  His blue eyes dancing with amusement, Corbett laughed. “Ah, those snotty rich ones are really that way, mi amigo. I am never wrong.” He struck himself on his proud chest mimicking them.

  Slocum nodded. “Señor Valenta is going to find Henry St. John is a formidable enemy.”

  “But St. John isn’t your problem anymore.”

  With his glass raised in a toast, Slocum nodded.

  “So you left your former employer to his own fixings. Did you leave any sad pretty señorita in Mexico?”

  Slocum put down h
is utensils, reared back, and rubbed his palms on his canvas pants. “Ah, always in Mexico, one finds lovely ladies. That is the hard part of living down there.” He could even recall her perfume a week later.

  “This skinny gringa you brought in wouldn’t make a bump on a log beside a fiery Latin one.”

  Slocum shook his head to dismiss her as only a short inconvenience in his life. He hoped that the flat-chested girl recovered and could be put on a stage to go to her home or her parents. His obligations to the skinny one were over— he’d saved her from the Apaches.

  Then, as he went back to rolling up his meat and beans in a tortilla, he considered Señora Lucia Valenta in Sonora, her brown milky flesh, firm breasts, rock-hard nipples, fiery lips, and the molten volcano between her legs. It made his guts roil to even consider her.

  “You can have the jacal beside hers to sleep in tonight.”

  “I am not routing anyone out of their bed, am I?”

  “No, the bed is made. Here’s to good women.” Corbett raised his glass and clinked it against Slocum’s raised one. “May God make many more.”

  “Yes.” Then Slocum downed the whiskey. “Many more.”

  3

  A coyote cut loose as Slocum walked under the stars from the stage station to the dark jacal. Corbett had offered him a lamp, but he scoffed at the notion. He was used to moving under the cover of night. The small adobe room that Corbett had provided for him was only a short way from the stage depot, and the soft light in the Grant Suite shone out the open door and windows.

  How was the girl doing?

  Crickets chirped when he opened the door to his own jacal and went inside. He could see the bed, and began to toe off his boots. Then he hung his gun belt and vest on a wall peg, and pulled the shirt off over his head. Thoughts of a real bed to sleep on made his tight back ache to be on it. He shed his pants. It would be a wonderful night.

  He moved the covers back and sat down on the bed to take off his socks and underwear. It was a nice night since, after sundown, the temperature had cooled considerably. Be great for sleeping. He looked up in time to see the door open, and the short Mexican woman slip inside, holding her finger to her mouth to silence him.

  “Shush,” she whispered. “Consuela is still next door.”

  “Who’re you?”

  “Ah, that will be for you to find out.” She pulled the blouse over her head. In the room’s dim light, he could see her breasts shake as she wiggled the skirt down off her hips. “You don’t want me?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Oh, hombre, you will want me.” She came over and hugged him around the waist. Her warm lips kissed the corded muscles below his chest. She was very short, maybe four feet three, but feeling her firm breasts pressed against him, he smiled to himself. Dynamite came in small packages.

  Her small hand soon reached in and began to jack his rising dick. “Ah, you are muy grande, cabrón.”

  His head swirled until he reached down and lifted her up so he could kiss her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and her lips sought his mouth like a hungry vixen. Out of breath, she panted as he held her in his arms.

  “We need on the bed, my lover. I am on fire for you.”

  He stood her atop the bed, and she pulled him down on top of her. She raised her short legs and spread them apart in the half-light that filtered onto the bed. Then, with her powerful small hand that grasped his shaft, she guided it into her wet gates. Once he was inside her, she tightly clasped his arms and he went halfway into her.

  She cried out, “Oh, sí Oh, sí.”

  Then he began to probe her tight pussy. Her moans of pleasure were loud enough that he was worried Consuela next door might hear her. With her legs spread out, his hard erection was raking over her nail-like clit going in and out. The contraction soon began to squeeze him, making it harder and harder each time to reinsert himself to the previous depth. Her hunching to meet him helped as the sweat began to lubricate their bellies. Soon, their pubic bones were rubbing on the coarse pubic hair between them and grinding out their effort. He felt a cramp in his left hip, and knew the time was coming. He drove deep. His cum flew out the end of his swollen dick, and she collapsed, her passion spent.

  “Oh, hombre,” she said, sounding half drunk and shaking her head as he raised off her. “You are mucho hombre. Oh, I am on fire.”

  “Fire?”

  “Yes, you burn me to a crisp.”

  “That’s okay.”

  She reached over to him. “My name is Donada.”

  “Slocum.”

  “I know your name.”

  “How did you end up here?”

  “When I was seventeen, my mother had me marry a dumb boy. His father had some land and cattle, but Arturo was stupid. On our wedding night, he went off and got drunk with his favorite puta and left me to cry in his bed. The next morning, he told me to dress, that he was going after firewood in the mountains and I was to help.”

  She scooted closer, and Slocum put his hand on her breast to feel it. “He was so hung over that I had to drive and he kept falling asleep. Then, when he woke up, he said I had gotten us lost. He recognized none of this country after I had begged him all morning for directions.

  “He got off to pee, and three Apaches came out of the chaparral. They killed him, took his gun and all his money, and one of them came over and smiled. He spoke Spanish and said I was his woman.

  “Nothing I could do. I hated Arturo, I hated my mother for making me marry him, but I cried anyway. This one who said I was his woman was called Ateez, and he swept me up and took me with them. I was very afraid they would kill me—I had heard so many bad things about them.

  “He separated from the other young men later that day, and they teased him in Apache about me, I know. He took me up in a canyon with a small waterfall. There he told me to undress. I told him I had never been with a man. He frowned and smiled. ‘Today you will be with a man who appreciates you,’ he said.”

  She paused to raise up, and kissed Slocum on the mouth. Then she pushed her breast at him to tease her nipple some more. Her small hand was caressing his side.

  “He appreciated me. We did it maybe six times that afternoon. Each time it grew wilder and wilder, until I finally fainted.”

  “So you lived with them?”

  “For two years. I lost the child I was carrying while running from the federales. Then he was killed in a fight in a small town where we traded. I never knew how. Apaches don’t talk about the dead. Oh, I mourned for him.”

  Slocum nodded and slid down in the bed. Raised up, he asked, “How did you get here?”

  Then his lips closed on the hard pointed button that capped her right breast. She tasted sweet, like it had been dipped in honey, and she clutched him to her.

  “Oh, a gunrunner named Freddie Fine kidnapped me when I was picking berries, and after two weeks of his beatings and him trying to stuff his half-limp dick in me, we arrived here. Corbett said I could stay here and work. He sent that bastardo down the road.”

  Slocum raised up and looked at her. “Corbett send you to me?”

  “I am not a puta.” She sounded indignant.

  Slocum raised up on his knees. “I never said that.”

  “Well.” She stretched her arms over her head while squirming on her back. “He did say you would be a good lover if I wanted one tonight.”

  On his hands and knees over her, he smiled. “Maybe we should try this again.”

  “Yes,” she said, and pulled him down on top of her. “Corbett—he never lied either.”

  4

  In the predawn, Slocum dressed, left her sleeping, and started for the stage depot, a squat adobe building across the small compound. He went in the back door and could smell coffee. Consuela was busy making flour tortillas, but she looked him over from head to toe.

  “I suppose you are the reason Marie and I have no help this morning?” Her put-on frown almost made him laugh.

  “Was I supposed to w
ake her?”

  “No, I usually do that, but she wasn’t to be found in her bed. Marie, get him some coffee.”

  “Gracias.” He took the steaming mug.

  “The stage will be here in two hours. But I have the food about ready. You never asked about the white girl you brought here.”

  “Sorry. How is she?” He’d been so preoccupied with Donada and her body, he’d nearly forgotten about the skinny one. Squatting at the fireplace by the warmth of the glowing mesquite blaze, he blew on his steaming cup.

  “I think she will be fine. She asked about you last night and again this morning.”

  Still squatting, he twisted around to look at the woman. “That’s fine. When she gets up, I’ll talk to her. I imagine she wants to get back to her own people as soon as she can.”

  “I think she ran off with this man who was killed. I think her family has disowned her.”

  He shook his head. Consuela knew more than he did about the woman. Lots more than he did, that was for sure. A woman would tell another woman such things. “What are her plans?”

  Consuela shrugged. “I think you.”

  Slocum nodded slowly. That would never work. He looked, pained, at the two women. “You mean she doesn’t think she can go home?”

  “I think—how do you say that? She burned the bridge to go back.”

  “How is she other than that?” He sipped some of the rich coffee. It would clear out the cobwebs.

  “Her arms, shoulders, and face are badly sunburned. She’s weak from the heat and no water, but she is gong to be fine.”

  “She awake?”

  “She won’t want to see you like she is.”

  “I better go see her anyway.”

  Consuela made a face of disapproval. “Don’t say I sent you.”

  “I won’t.” He let the quiet, older Marie refill his coffee cup; then he headed out of the depot and across the compound. He heard the whit-woo whistle of the Gambrel’s quail out in the chaparral as his boot soles crushed the fine grit on top of the caliche surface. At the doorway, he cleared his throat and knocked on the open door. “Silver.”