Slocum and the Santa Fe Sisters Read online

  They rode on up to the flag that McKee had made somewhere, and it showed a bull buffalo and a great bear fighting. He called it the “Where All Hell Broke Loose” flag.

  When the black Indian dogs discovered them coming and began barking, some squaws came out first. They used their hands to shade their eyes from the glare to see who it was. Then armed with a rifle and wearing buckskins, the big man himself came out to observe the latest invaders.

  “Well, I’ll be fiddle-damned,” he shouted. “It’s ole rootin’-tootin’ Slocum come to see us, women. We better get cooking. He ain’t ate in a week, I bet. Get down here. What’re you doing, peddling whiskey?”

  “No, these are Julie Henry’s burros and a trader named Wolf’s whiskey. They got separated back a ways and she hasn’t seen him in four days.”

  “I bet sure as hell that he finds you.”

  “I don’t care, except he owes me some for saving that whiskey and his woman in a damn dust storm.” Slocum threw his leg over the horn, slid off the horse, and shook the man’s hand.

  “By God, you’re a sight for sore eyes, Slocum. Howdy, ma’am.” He doffed his big felt hat for her. “Welcome to Fort Contention.”

  Slocum caught and set Julie down. “We’ll put the whiskey in Mac’s warehouse, and it will be safe there.”

  “You can bet your squaw boots it’ll be in there when you want it.” He spun around to face Slocum. “And where in the hell’ve you been?”

  “I spent some time over in Silver City, then went down to see Virgil Earp at Tombstone.”

  “I always liked him. The other one’s there, huh?”

  “Doc’s still drinking but his lungs won’t last much longer.”

  “He always was a horse’s ass in my book. Virgil I could stand, but the rest of them never amounted to much. What’re they doing down there?”

  “Doing some law work and trying to get rich. They’ve got a gaming concession in a saloon.”

  “They got whores, too.”

  “Doc’s got one. Big Nose Kate.”

  “Oh God, I recall her from Dodge. Meaner than a rattlesnake.” McKee shook his head.

  “We’ll unlock the storeroom and put the whiskey inside.” Slocum looked around. He didn’t see any stray horses so there must not have been any other visitors there at that time.

  “Take them jasshonkeys behind the main building. I’ll give the keys to my women and they’ll help you unload them,” he said to Julie. “I’ll borrow Slocum here, and you can join us in the store when you get the whiskey unloaded. Put them donkeys in a pen by themselves. We’ll see you when you’re done.”

  Julie nodded.

  “The boss of my crew is the tall woman. Willow’s her name,” he said after her.

  With a nod, Julie led the burros off, and a short Mexican boy took Slocum’s mount and the packhorse.

  “Put his saddle and pack stuff in the Jefferson Davis House,” McKee told the boy. “It’s the best guest quarters on Cap Rock. Build a fire in there for him and have them heat some water for their baths. He’ll want one, I know.”

  “So will she.”

  “Tell ’em two bathers, savvy, hombre?”

  “Sí, señor.” The boy led off the two horses. Julie already had taken the burros around in back.

  They went in and sat down at a round table with a scarred top. Slocum held up his hand to stop McKee when he raised a small jug to fill a glass for him. “I’m not drinking right now.”

  “Hell, did you go turn preacher on me?”

  “No, I’m just not drinking right now. It’s been a helluva haul to get out here. I want to rest up some.”

  “You seen Slim Jenkins or Rowdy Bill?”

  “Rowdy Bill I heard fell down the stairs in a Socorro, Texas, whorehouse and broke his neck last year. They said the whores cried for a week over their loss. The undertaker told me why. He said Rowdy had a dick as big as a stud horse’s even after he was dead three days.”

  “He could make all them whores smile.” McKee shook his head and then downed a big swig of wild cat piss from his glass. “Here’s to Rowdy, my old friend, who fell down the whorehouse—what rhymes with ‘friend’—oh, fell down the stairs in the end. With a dick bigger than a horse, he had no money, of course. But he screwed them all and made his life a ball. Ole Saint Peter gave him his call when he came through them gates, and back on earth, all them gals showed their hates at the death of their greatest man of all.”

  “You call that the ‘Ode to Rowdy’?”

  “Sorry I wasn’t there at his funeral, or I could’ve told them of the time I seed him up on the Green River at Rendezvous, when he screwed four squaws in a row. When he finished with one, he went on to the next. He was better than any stallion I ever seed.”

  Slocum nodded. “They said he was eighty-two when he died and could still do three in a row.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Last time we got drunk together, I think he had four gals in one night.”

  “Sounds like something you’d do, McKee.”

  “Yup. And no one can do it like I did. I left Saint Louie right after Lewis and Clark did. I always wanted to seduce that woman who went with them. Her name was Sacagawea. Married to some Frenchman and she had a baby. Man, to a kid of fourteen, she was like a goddess.

  “I seen her in the Mandan camp. Man, what a woman. She carried herself like royalty and her tits held out that beaded elk skin dress. I got a hard-on just watching her walk by me.”

  “You liked them two guys?”

  “I really liked Captain Clark—he was a man’s man. Meriwether was always looking at things and writing ’em down like a schoolmarm. I traveled with them for a while.”

  “You’ve lived a helluva life,” Slocum said as Julie joined them.

  She said, “They have brought hot water to our cabin.”

  “Well, I better go get a bath. Thanks for your hospitality.” He rose and shook McKee’s hand. “We’ll talk more later.”

  McKee nodded at both of them. “Don’t you two go do what I’d liked to do right now.”

  Then he laughed aloud.

  “I didn’t want the water to get cold,” Julia said, hurrying beside Slocum as they crossed the snowy yard toward their guest house. It was actually a jacal, a small thatched hut with walls made from upright poles joined together with clay. The flaming sun was setting in the west on another short, cold, wintery day.

  “No, I was ready for a bath. Thanks for coming for me.”

  She smiled, pleased by his answer. “I am, too.”

  As soon as they were in their jacal, Slocum undressed quickly, then climbed into the half barrel of steaming water and began soaping himself. Julia used a long-handled brush on his back and he laughed. Then she shed her clothing and he saw her small pear-shaped breasts, which shook as she worked naked on him with a soapy rag. At last, holding his white-lathered dick in her hand, she nodded in approval at the sight of it, then she released it.

  With a smile, she leaned over, reaching into the barrel to gently heft his balls in her palm. “I am glad you are here.”

  “Do you miss Wolf?”

  She shook her head, as if disgusted. Then she took the pail of water, stood on a chair, and poured it over Slocum’s head to rinse him. He stepped out and she began to vigorously dry him off with sack towels. Dry, he lifted her under the arms and put her in the barrel. He kissed a pointed nipple as it went by his mouth and brought a genuine smile to her face. She quickly washed and nodded to him for the last rinse pail. He doused her, then lifted her out and kissed her on the mouth.

  Her dark eyes flew open, and she threw her arms around his neck and really kissed him back. He could hardly wait to get her dry. After she was dry enough, he carried her to his bedroll, which she’d already spread on the bed, and laid her on it. The fire in
the corner fireplace crackled and consumed a mixture of mesquite and oak logs. Its warmth spread over their exposed skin and he kissed her small, hard nipples. Slowly his mouth traced a line down her flat belly until his lips reached the mound of pubic hair. Sighing, she spread her short legs wide apart for him.

  When he kissed the lips of her vagina, she cried out loud and pulled hard on him to get him to climb on top of her. But he made her wait, licking and teasing her into a blazing flame of wantonness. His lashing tongue destroyed her sanity and he found her desperate for his growing erection, which he soon drove into her slick wetness. She moaned and tossed her head on the blanket underneath him.

  Her fingernails dug into the flesh on his back, and her loud cries filled the room. After a long series of shudders, she came, and her juices flooded over his dick and balls. She lay back, limp, but he began to thrust inside her again, watching her recover then suddenly come a second time. He drove his swollen dick as deep as it would go into her. With the pressure rising in his tubes, he let go with a cannon shot of seminal fluid. She screamed out her pleasure as he filled her to the brim. When he had fully emptied himself inside her, they both lay still, exhausted and satisfied.

  They rested there for a long time, connected, in a nap. Long after sundown, they awoke in the dark room, with only the dying fire’s light dancing off her smooth copper face. This time they had more controlled sex.

  Later that night, McKee’s three Mexican helpers returned with a fresh-killed buffalo carcass in a carreta, which squeaked so loud it woke Slocum up a half hour before it ever reached the fort. He dressed and went outside to see. Julie got up, did the same, and soon found him by the carreta.

  “He’s a big bull,” he pointed out to her. The hide from his large set of balls had been saved to shrink-wrap on a saddle horn. Dried, it would make dally roping easier. Light came from the open back door of the large kitchen as two squaws in the carreta used a hatchet and handsaw to butcher the carcass into more manageable pieces. Other women carried large portions of the cut-up meat inside to work them over in there. The sour smell of guts along with the copper flavor of blood were on Slocum’s tongue as everyone huffed out steamy clouds of breath while they worked to break down the carcass.

  A tall Indian woman brought some sliced fried liver on a tin plate for them to eat.

  Slocum thanked her, and they began to enjoy the strong-tasting hot strips, feeding each other with their fingers. As the big squaw was about to go through the lighted doorway, he shouted after her, “Thank you.”

  She waved and went back to finish her task.

  “I can help her,” Julie said, then left Slocum to go inside to find the tall woman.

  The night wind was cold, but the fried liver filled his guts and warmed him. Julie brought him a tin cup of steaming coffee and he thanked her. Savoring the richness on his tongue, he listened to the three men’s Spanish bragging about killing the bull with two shots from a Sharps .50- caliber rifle.

  In his days spent as a hunter, Slocum had shot lots of them. He made one shot do. If the buffalo discovered someone was shooting at them, they fled. Any wounded bawling buffalo would stampede. The object was to keep them in the gun’s range and pick them off one at a time while they grazed or switched pesky biting flies with their small tails. His largest count was fifty-two, all falling dead in a small pattern and not one stampede. But the days of such wild commercial hunting were over. The buffalo were now found only in small scattered herds. In a few years they’d all be gone.

  At last, Slocum went back to their small jacal to catch some more sleep. Julie was busy working with McKee’s women and didn’t appear to care. He undressed down to his long-handle underwear, banked the fire in the fireplace, and climbed under the covers. In the bed, he reached down and felt his half-full erection. Oh well, in the morning he’d use it again. Amused by his thoughts of the excitement he’d given her, he soon went back to sleep.

  Before dawn Slocum arose, pulled on his boots, and went outside in the hard rush of air full of cold sleet striking his cheek. He emptied his bladder on the lee side of the adobe building. Back inside, in the orange light from the fireplace, he slipped back into bed and discovered Julie’s naked form under the covers. He worked his way carefully, trying not to wake her, until he was up against her bare ass. His fingers were at last warm enough to probe her.

  Then gently he rolled her over on her back under the covers. On his side next to her, he began to gently probe her pussy with his fingers. Very slow and easy. She soon split her legs farther apart for him and moaned. Her clitoris grew harder as the tip of his thumb stirred her sexuality. Her heartbeat and breath increased as his dick began to swell. He unbuttoned the lower portion of his long johns so his privates were exposed to the outside.

  Watching her tan face in the orange glare of the fire, he noted that her eyes never cracked open. He rose on his knees and she made a place for him between her short legs. On top of her, he moved forward to slip the head of his cock into the wet lips of her vagina, only inches inside her sacred cavity.

  Slowly he eased it in a short ways then he backed it out. The sharp point of her erect clit scratched the hard tender head each time it went in and out. When he plunged into her again, she raised her hips to meet him, and her small hands clutched the cheeks of his ass, pushing him in deeper. Her legs wrapped around his, and they fell into a fast rhythmic pattern of pumping into her moist, tight pussy.

  Out of breath, she smiled in the dim light. “After the last few years of being with Wolf, who is small, you are real big treat to me.”

  Then she lifted her hips off the mattress again and humped him furiously toward the end. They went on forever, but finally she began shuddering and clamping down on him and he came in a thunderous ejection of hot seminal fluid. Finally they collapsed in a blinding finish of wet kisses.

  He closed his eyes, then he lay back down beside her and cupped a rock-hard teacup breast. What a wonderful treasure he’d found in a severe West Texas dust storm.

  The next day, the low cloud cover moved stiffly northeast over Cap Rock. It spit some snow, and at midday a band of Comanche came to trade. They brought four women with them. That meant they weren’t a war party. Still, Slocum had never felt completely comfortable about the crooked-legged warriors who rode horses wherever they went.

  These men had no respect for their women, who lived a harsh slave’s role. He recalled a chief down in West Texas who forced a white captive woman to blow his dick in front of some traders to show how he treated her. For Slocum, it was a gruesome sight to endure. These four females had had their hair slashed off short by knives and wore rags so they would not appeal to other men.

  He knew old mountain men like McKee never took a Comanche woman for a bride. They lived in such a dry land they never took baths, and most of the white men out there avoided their smelly camps and rode upwind from the old ones. On Slocum’s trips with Comancheros, he learned lots about the whole stinking business of the Comanche lifestyle.

  Wrapped in blankets, the band sat on the cold ground around a large fire and tried to trade with McKee. Slocum and Julie walked past them and entered the post to get some breakfast. The tall Indian woman, Willow, met them and invited them into the kitchen, which smelled of cooking food.

  She brought him some coffee and her a cup of cocoa, which made her smile.

  “Are they doing anything out there?” the tall one asked him.

  “Talking,” Slocum said.

  “They said when they got here that they have two white captives who belonged to a rich man in Santa Fe. That he would pay a big price for them.”

  Julie wrinkled her nose at him like she didn’t believe that. “They are all such big liars and smell like they’ve never wiped their asses.”

  Slocum chuckled at his woman’s words and watched her pinch her nose. “They are big liars,” Julie said again befo
re taking another sip of her hot chocolate.

  “Do you want some roasted buffalo and fry bread?” Willow asked.

  “Sounds wonderful,” Slocum said and turned as McKee came in the door, allowing some cold air inside with him.

  “How’s it going out there?” Slocum asked.

  “Like all trading with them bastards. Red Bear has two girls out there. He took them off a stage he says and wants to sell them. I can’t hardly stand for any white girl to be in their grasp, and by now they’re both probably pregnant.”

  “Have you seen them?”

  “No, they’re holding ’em out at some camp they have over the hill.”

  “How much do they want for them?”

  “Plenty. I won’t pay ’em that much.”

  Slocum nodded. “What can I do?”

  “Eat some breakfast. I will, too, Willow,” he said to the woman. “They can think on what I offered and go get those white girls if they accept it.”

  “I saw four women were with them when they rode in,” Slocum offered. “I looked them over.”

  “That’s not the girls they want to trade. Two of those are Mexican women. No doubt captured in raids they made in Mexico, but they are filthy stinking slave-wives, too.”

  Willow brought them heaping plates of browned rich-smelling meat and puffy hot fry bread. Then more coffee for the men and chocolate for Julie.

  Between bites, Slocum asked him what they wanted for the captives.

  “Oh, the usual. Whiskey, sugar, cornmeal, and gunpowder. I have plenty of whiskey and cornmeal. Maybe a couple sacks of sugar and a keg of gunpowder. They can’t get any more than that anywhere out here for those girls. But I want to see them and be certain that they are who he says they are. These people lie like a dog barks—all the time.”

  They all laughed and enjoyed their breakfast.

  When they’d finished, McKee asked Slocum to join him. “Come along with me. We’ll see who they have as captives.”

  Slocum agreed, squeezed Julie’s shoulder, and told her he’d be back. He buttoned up his blanket-lined canvas coat and followed the older man out the door into the mouth of winter.