Slocum and Pearl of the Rio Grande Read online

  13

  After a frigid sunrise, the weather broke, temperatures rose above freezing, and the snow began to melt. They loaded a packhorse with supplies and headed south, planning to meet Bledstone at the Flores stage stop. Slocum trusted Flores. Besides, Flores’s wife Juanita was a great cook and good company. By mid-morning, the solar heat was enough to keep Slocum and Collie Bill warm in the new long handles and woolen shirts, and they could unbutton their coats.

  Though a cool south wind swept over the snow cover, Slocum enjoyed the respite from the storm. He and Collie Bill rode stirrup to stirrup down the forest-lined road with virgin timber towering on both sides. By evening, they’d made Wall’s stage stop. After a meal of white beans and venison, Wall told them they could sleep in a shed attached to the main structure. The tobacco-spitting old man had a young Ute breed wife he called Girl, and her dark slanted eyes kept sneaking looks at him and Collie Bill behind the old man’s back.

  She stood about four feet six and wasn’t bigger than anything, but she worked. Dressed in deerskin-fringed clothing with lots of beads sewn on the front, and with a belt of hammered silver dollars around her waist, she cut a nice small figure moving around the room serving them. But Slocum knew Girl wanted more than the two bits she charged them for their supper.

  Her high cheekbones left her face too long to be pretty, but she had a rich brown coloration. The slender nose had been broken at least once. The way she whirled around and stayed busy made him admire her.

  When Wall and Girl were out of the room, Collie Bill looked over his coffee cup and grinned. “Bet she’s a damn sight tighter than Madge was.”

  “Madge wasn’t tight?”

  Collie Bill glanced at the doorway and then shook his head. “Loose as a goose. But she was warm to sleep with.”

  “That counted for something.”

  “Yeah, but I should have gone and found Lucia instead.” Collie Bill shook his head in defeat. “Now, that gal had a real bear trap. But I figured by the time I found her again, I’d be the sixth one that night.”

  Slocum chuckled. He was probably right.

  Everyone turned in after the meal. The old man showed them the shed on the side. There were some bunks for them. Wind came in through several un-chinked cracks between the small logs, but for Slocum’s part, the add-on shack beat sleeping in the wet snow. He soon fell asleep, and awoke when he felt a silencing finger pressed to his lips.

  His fist closed around the Colt grips in the bed beside him. And in the near darkness, he could make out her long braids hanging down. He threw back the cover and moved over. She wore a too-large nightshirt that hung to her knees, and she jumped back when he raised the revolver to put it on the crate beside the bed. When the gun was set aside, he pulled her toward him and she relaxed some. She acted like the whole thing was new to her and she’d needed lots of courage to even wake him. Good actress or not, he wasn’t certain, but she did not stink of bear grease, and might have had a recent bath since she didn’t have a musky smell. She snuggled against him on her side and put both hands under her head.

  He undid the buttons on her shirt from the bottom up. She didn’t act upset, nor did she act anxious for him to hurry. When he finished, he pushed the shirt off her shoulders and felt her warm smooth skin. With his thumb pad, he rubbed on her left nipple until it popped alive. Her breath began to come faster. Then she hugged him to make him stop.

  With his fist under her chin, he drew her up on top of him until he could raise his head up and kiss her lips. She drew back afterward, and in the dim starlight coming in a small window, he saw the mixed emotions written on the face of an Indian woman who’d been kissed for the first time. As she sprawled on top of him, her skin felt warm against his. Her small knee in his crotch nudged his privates. He reset his blankets to cover them, and then cupped her firm small butt in his hands and they kissed again. This time, he sought her tongue and she responded.

  Soon, she spread her short legs apart and reached under to insert him. The gates were tight and his swollen erection large, but she kept pumping it in deeper and deeper. While he enjoyed her, he really wanted her underneath him. He raised her up and she frowned in the silver light, but obeyed.

  Soon she was on her back with him on top. He threaded his hard dick into her wet gates. A small “Oh” escaped her lips when he passed through her tight ring. Her back arched and she pulled him down on top of her. They went and went, trying to control their gulping of air, until at last he came deep inside her and she pressed her hips to him for all of it.

  Side by side, they huddled on the cot. He was about to go to sleep when she slid down, pulling on his half-deflated dick with her small hands. Her lips soon closed around it, and the hard roof of her mouth rubbed the head so hard, he felt his hard-on swell up to even larger proportions.

  He clutched her head as she grew wilder and wilder. His hips ached to plunge it into her. His butt rose up with each deep movement she made. Then, from the action of the edge of her small teeth and her hand cuddling his sac, he came, and she raised up from under the blanket tent with white cum trailing out the right side of her grin.

  With the back of her hand, she wiped at it, and then crawled up to whisper in his ear, “You fuckee me one more.”

  He scratched his sac, then felt his depleted testicles and closed his eyes. Was there any more in them? He rose up and, like a river otter, she slipped under him.

  He had the stiffening dick in his hand ready to insert it in her when he began to hear the hard coughing coming from the station. It was the old man. Like a fleeting shadow, she slipped out of bed and put the white shirt on while going out the door. More coughing, and Slocum listened hard for any words. There were none, and things went silent again save for the creaking of the old building. He finally fell asleep again.

  In the darkness, he woke and heard the sound of pots and pans. She was up out there, getting food ready. He got out of his bunk and shook Collie Bill. “We need to shake a leg.”

  “Coming, pard.” He lowered his voice as he threw his stocking feet over the side. “Was it tight as I said?”

  Slocum nodded.

  “Good.” Then he chuckled. “That old man ain’t worn it out, that’s for sure.”

  They dressed—then pulled their boots on and stomped out of the shed. Slocum went to the kitchen side door and saw her busy at the iron stove frying corn mush.

  “He around?” he asked in a soft voice.

  “Him get horses ready. Stage come soon.”

  Slocum nodded. “You all right?”

  “Me fine. You leave today?”

  “We got to get down in New Mexico on business.”

  With a confident grin on her coffee-colored face, she turned from her cooking to look him up and down. “You come back. We fuck big-time. All night.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  She nodded in approval and turned back to the sizzling mush. “Girl be here then.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  After breakfast, the stage still hadn’t arrived. Slocum paid the man forty cents for their food and lodging. He offered them a swig of his corn liquor from a crock jug, but they declined and went to saddle and pack their horses.

  “Even whiskey might not kill the germs that old man has.” Collie Bill scowled across the white staging area at the building. He jerked his latigo tight and threaded it through the ring. “Consumption. He’s coughing up his rotten lungs in bits and pieces.”

  “Yeah, he’s got it and bad.” Slocum was satisfied with the diamond hitch on the packhorse, but his feet were cold from stomping around in the wet snow.

  In the saddle at last, they rode out. The brown vixen had never made eye contact with him.

  “Stage must have got stopped somewhere south of here,” Collie Bill said in his saddle.

  “Yes, it might have.” He was thinking more about May Booster and her mules than the stage. Had she made it? The old man had never mentioned her passing, but the wagon tracks went by
there. He’d noted them the day before, halfway expecting to run into her on the road. Maybe she’d made it fine.

  The brown vixen back there acted like she was ready for another round. He wanted to laugh about her unexpected escapades with him in the bed, but instead, he kept the whole matter to himself and rode on.

  In mid-morning, they came over a rise and he smelled wood smoke. He could see someone around the fire built at the edge of the road. He thought there was a stage wheel sticking up on the lower side of the road.

  “They have a wreck?” Collie Bill asked, reining up his horse.

  “Looks like it.”

  They rode on to the fire. The driver was holding his hands out to the fire’s heat. The coach was over on its side and almost upside down. A dead horse in harness lay on the ground with the broken tongue.

  “What happened here?” Collie Bill asked.

  “A mountain lion spooked ’im,” the whiskered man said with a disgusted shake of his head. “I sent for help. Some gal in a wagon came by here a couple of hours ago. She’s going to telegraph it in.”

  “Everyone all right?” Slocum asked, dismounting.

  “I sent the only passenger I had back with her. Poor old boy broke his arm. Maybe more. Hell, there ain’t no medical doctor short of Española or Pagosa Springs. Figured he might get a ride on down there. My name’s Byran.”

  He stuck out a hand.

  “Slocum. That’s Collie Bill. You want a ride out of here?”

  “Nice to meetcha. Naw, I’ll have to stay here until they send another coach. I’ve got mail and shipments to look after.”

  “A man could get damn cold up here before they get up here.” Collie Bill led his roan across the snowy ruts to look closely at the upset stage.

  “It’s my job,” Byran said, spitting black tobacco juice on the melting white stuff. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Sure gets to be a damn tough job. Holdups, snow and ice, colder than blazes.” He drew in a deep breath until his shoulders shuddered under his heavy wool coat.

  Slocum nodded. “Hate to leave you to freeze up here.”

  “Go on. I’ll be fine.”

  Slocum and Collie Bill remounted and rode on.

  “Wonder who the gal with the wagon was that was out in this kind of weather and conditions. Must be a tough ole heifer.” Collie Bill shook his head, and they trotted south toward the sun, which had warmed as the day progressed.

  “Must be,” Slocum answered. He wanted to smile at his words, recalling the strong sulfurous vapors swirling around his head in the snowflakes and beneath the swirling surface with him hunching it to her tight core. Yes, she must be.

  Trotting their horses to gain time, at this rate Slocum expected they’d overtake the wagon in a few hours. Collie Bill could see the “old heifer” for himself. He might change his opinion of her. With the rising temperature, Slocum opened his jacket more. They were coming down a long grade when Slocum caught first sight of the tarped-down rig ahead. He could only see one person on the seat driving, and wondered where the passenger was riding.

  “That must be her,” Collie Bill said.

  “Must be.”

  She sawed her mules to a stop when they drew alongside her, and then she nodded at them. “Howdy, gents.”

  “Good day, ma’am,” Slocum said and took off his hat. “You still have the passenger that was hurt?”

  She tied off her reins on the brake pole. “If he’s still alive, he’s in the back under the tarp. He was sure bad battered up from that wreck.”

  Collie Bill slipped off his horse and scowled. “Byran said he had a broken arm.”

  “He didn’t tell you the rest of the poor man’s problems?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  She jumped down and strode to the back of the wagon in her knee-high black boots. Over her britches, she wore a full skirt and a long black woolen coat, with a blue silk rag tied around her throat. By this time Slocum figured his partner, by the look on his face, had changed his mind about the sparkling blue-eyed “heifer.”

  Slocum dismounted and watched her undo the tarp tie-downs, and then Collie Bill flipped the tarp up.

  From his higher vantage point, Slocum could see someone tucked under several blankets in a space that had been made between barrels and crates. The injured person never moved. He must have been hard for Collie Bill to see standing on the ground, and the cowboy scrambled up into the wagon.

  “You sleeping?” he asked, kneeling down in the box between all the items on the wagon.

  No answer.

  “Is he dead?” she asked, standing on her toes but lacking the height to see over the tailgate.

  Collie Bill bent over and then straightened up with a wary headshake. “He ain’t breathing.”

  “We did all we could for him,” she said, jerking off her thin leather driving gloves and looking disappointed at the mushy snow. “Me and that driver—all I wanted to do was—”

  “Sure wasn’t your fault, ma’am.”

  “My name’s May.”

  Then Collie Bill asked her the question burning a hole in Slocum. “You alone out here, May?”

  “You can see my help.” She made a sweep around with her hands. “What do we do now?”

  “Roll him up in a blanket and drop him off at the next stage stop,” Slocum said, walking up leading Heck. Where was Udall? He was supposed to go along with her.

  Collie Bill took out the dead man’s wallet, went through it, shaking open a small letter and reading it to himself, and then waved a wad of folding money he’d discovered in it. “Wow. He must have sold the ranch. This letter says his name is Gunther Gauge. Lives at Mason, Texas.”

  “Don’t sound German enough for me,” Slocum said, amused at his own thought about the man’s origin.

  She blinked at Slocum. “What does that mean, Tom?”

  He caught Collie Bill’s reaction to her calling him Tom. He’d never said his real name to her, and the Tom part must have jarred his buddy.

  “Aw, that western Texas hill country is full of the Hauns and Heinrichs. Gauge ain’t German enough.”

  She nodded and turned back to Collie Bill. “Do I need to help roll him up?”

  Colllie Bill shook his head. “I can do it. I’ll stuff this money and his wallet back in his coat.”

  “Fine, I guess they will send all that back to his heirs.” She undid her coat and opened it. Hands on her hips, she stood waiting. It exposed the .30-caliber Colt and holster she wore on her waist. Also showed off the shape of her breasts under the man’s shirt she wore.

  “In a country like this—why ain’t a pretty girl like you found a man to help you?” Collie Bill asked, busy preparing the body.

  “You’ll have to ask my brothers that question.”

  “They won’t let you?”

  “You have that right.”

  “What’s your brothers’ names?” He was busy securing the corpse in a gray blanket.

  “Booster, Cal and Rip.”

  He blinked at her words in disbelief.

  “You know them?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “We can leave him at the next stage station,” Slocum said.

  “I won’t miss him,” she said with a scowl. “Wasn’t nothing I could do for him. I just wanted to try to get him to help.”

  “No one’s blaming you.”

  “Well, I sure ain’t no doctor,” she said, downcast.

  Slocum hugged her shoulder, realizing how hard she was taking the man’s death. “We better get moving.”

  He and Collie Bill tied down the tarp. Slocum waved her toward the seat, and watched her step up and settle on it almost effortlessly. She unwound the reins, stomped off the brake, and spoke sharply to the mules, holding them back as the wagon began to roll.

  Slocum swung in the saddle and Collie Bill rode over. “Where did you meet her, Tom?”

  “Pagosa.”

  Collie Bill nodded as if satisfied, and they set their ponies in a l
ong trot after her.

  The snow had begun to melt and water dripped off the rocks and hills, turning the road into a mushy mess. Slocum wondered about Udall and where he’d gone—according to what Slocum knew, he was supposed to go along with her. Had he joined Cal to go after Bledstone?

  Collie Bill had warned Bledstone that Booster or one of his bunch might try to kill him. Bledstone had told Collie that Thorpe wanted One-Eye Davis stopped more than the Boosters and that Slocum and Collie needed to capture One-Eye’s gang first. They were the worst stage robbers in the territory. Bledstone was to join them at Española in a few days.

  Slocum still had the planned meeting with May on his mind. He shed his coat in the warming sum. In the saddle, he turned and looked over his shoulder. Nothing.

  “I’m going to ride with her on the seat for a while,” he said to Collie Bill. “I might learn something.”

  Collie Bill agreed. “I’ll take care of the buckskin.”

  Slocum nodded, and loped Heck up beside her. She looked a little surprised at his appearance, then began to grin as he stood up on the saddle, bounded over to the side of the wagon box, and caught the spring seat. He stepped in, and she scooted over to make room for him.

  “Figured you needed a little company.” He sat down beside her and slipped his arm around her shoulders.

  “I can always use company. Especially you.”

  With a sly smile for him, she turned back to driving her mules. Collie Bill rode up, caught Heck by the bridle, and waved to them, settling into riding behind them. Four iron rims cut the slop, flinging some of it in a spray from each. The harness chains jingled to the mules’ hard clop of hooves in the melting mess. Warm sun and her company against him settled Slocum on the seat.

  “Where are you two going?” she asked.

  “Española, to look for a man.”

  “Who?” She cut her blue eyes around at him.

  “Ike Taylor, he owes Collie Bill some money,” he lied. She might know One-Eye and that would be a mess. A sister to outlaws knew more outlaws than ordinary folks. They usually met each other over the course of time and mixed in social ways. So Ike Taylor would have to do. Besides, Ike was buried below the Canadian in the Nation.