Slocum and the Canyon Courtesans Page 9

  “Yeah,” Slocum said, his voice dreamy and low.

  “We did it a lot after that, and he sometimes brought a friend up to the loft, a boy friend, and he would tell his friend that he could do it to me. Kenny watched. And sometimes both Kenny and his friend fucked me, first one and then the other.”

  “That was quite an experience,” Slocum said.

  “I enjoyed it, but that’s why I left home. My brother wouldn’t leave me alone and then at church I learned how wrong it was, brother and sister, so I ran away. Kenny was very possessive. He was jealous of any boys I liked at school.”

  “How do you feel about it now?”

  She looked at him and moonlight glinted in her eyes, like a wispy vapor of smoke. She leaned closed to him and rubbed his crotch.

  “It’s been a long time,” she said. “And nothing I’ve had since has been as good as those times with my brother.”

  “I’m not your brother,” he said, starting to draw away.

  “No, but I want you, John. Up here. I want you real bad. Do you want me?”

  He heaved a deep sigh.

  “Lord, yes,” he said and touched her breasts, felt the nubbins of her nipples harden like tiny acorns.

  “Take me, then,” she said.

  He reached between her legs and touched her panties. They were wet, soaked with the fluids from her pussy, and her hand was unbuckling his gun belt and the other was stroking his manhood so that his pants stretched to the breaking point between his legs.

  Frantically, they both undressed and came together in a lusty embrace. He kissed her and felt her heat flow through him like warm wine. Then she lay down on her back and he rose above her like a conquering warrior, fully ready to drink from her loving cup.

  15

  Fanny was as frisky as a spring lamb. Slocum dipped his wick into her and she became animated, lifting her legs high in the air and rocking beneath him like a rowboat anchored in a storm. He plumbed her depths, and her body jolted as if hit by a thunderbolt. She cried out softly and gently scratched his back with her fingernails.

  Her brown hair was silky, soft to his touch. Her body was lithe and pliant, and as they made love, she mewed like a kitten in his ear. When she was in the throes of her first jolting orgasm, she quivered all over and her mouth opened, her eyelashes flapping as she opened and closed her eyes.

  “So good,” she murmured. “Don’t stop.”

  “No,” he said. “There’s more to come.”

  “Yes, yes,” she breathed, and he increased the speed of his strokes. Her loins answered the thrusts and she rose and fell beneath him like an ocean comber in a storm.

  Slocum held his seed through sheer willpower, and Fanny kept urging him on, kept calling to him that she wanted him to explode inside her.

  “You’re amazing,” she said. “Can we do it doggie fashion?”

  “Sure,” Slocum said.

  She turned over after he uncoupled and got up on her hands and knees so that he could enter her from the rear. He pushed inside her, past the soft folds of her portal, and Fanny bucked against him, overcome with a rush of pleasure. He pumped back and forth, delving deep into her vulva, grasping her legs with both hands and pulling her toward him as he pushed.

  “Oh, John,” she said, “that’s so good, I just keep coming and coming.”

  “I can’t last much longer, Fanny,” he gruffed. “I feel it coming. It’s boiling and . . .”

  She pushed back hard and Slocum drove deep to the mouth of her womb. He shuddered as his seed exploded and spurted like milk into her chamber. It was as if rockets had shot skyward in his brain. She screamed softly and reached back to touch him as her body spasmed with twin orgasms that set her entire body to tingling as if she had been plunged in an icy stream then stuffed into a roaring furnace. She shivered and shook as he pulled out of her, sated and exhausted but suffused with a pleasure beyond description.

  They lay together on their backs, she on the bedroll, Slocum next to her on a bed of scratchy straw. No matter. He was content.

  So was Fanny.

  They floated there in their matching euphorias without speaking. She clasped his hand in hers, and when he looked over after a few minutes, he saw that she was fast asleep.

  Slocum moved her hand slowly back to rest on her naked tummy, then got up and dressed. He buckled his gun belt after he pulled on his boots and tiptoed across the loft and descended the ladder.

  A voice from the darkness startled him.

  “Mr. Wilson, they’s somebody here to see you. He just come in and I was about to call up there to see if you was awake.” It was Caleb Lindsey speaking. Wide awake and fidgety as a kid called to the front of the schoolroom.

  “Who is it?” Slocum asked.

  “It’s one of the Messicans from the diggin’s,” Caleb whispered. “He’s just outside. Come lookin’ for you.”

  “Did he say why?” Slocum asked.

  “Nope, he just said it was muy importante. Real important, he means.”

  “I know what it means,” Slocum said. “Where is he?”

  “Out back. Like he don’t want nobody to know he’s here.”

  “Do you know him, Caleb?”

  “I knowed him when he first come here. We don’t see any of them Messicans ’cept when they come to town once’t a month or so. Scud, he keeps ’em out at the diggin’s pretty much.”

  “I don’t get it,” Slocum said. “Something wrong with Mexicans being in town?”

  “I dunno,” Caleb said. He looked down at his feet as if he was ashamed of something, or didn’t want to talk about the way Mexicans were treated in Polvo.

  “All right, I’ll talk to him. One thing you ought to know, Caleb.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “There’s a woman up in the loft. Sleeping. I rescued her from Scud. Another secret I’m going to ask you to keep.”

  “Why sure, Mr. Wilson, I won’t tell nobody.”

  “Not even your folks. I mean it.”

  “No, sir, not nobody.”

  “Fine,” Slocum said and walked to the rear of the stable. He walked through the small door where he and Fanny had entered earlier and looked around for the Mexican.

  “Mr. Wilson?”

  Slocum saw a shadowy figure standing near the water trough next to the side rail fence.

  “I’m Wilson. Who are you?”

  The man approached Slocum. He took off his hat and gripped it with both hands as if he had just entered a church.

  “I am José Delgado,” the man said. “I was at the saloon tonight when you made Sheriff Scudder walk down the stairs with no clothes on.”

  “And?”

  “I thought it was very brave. You are a brave man, Mr. Wilson.”

  “Scudder was responsible for shooting a woman dead up in her room. His deputy pulled the trigger, but Scudder brought him there to get after me.”

  “There was much talk after you left. Someone showed us the flyer with your face on it. There is a two-thousand-dollar reward for your capture.”

  “So did you come here to collect the reward, José?”

  Slocum let his hand drop to the butt of his Colt. Just in case.

  “Oh, no, I come to ask you to help us. For I know you are a brave man. Sheriff Scudder, he is a bad man. A very bad man and nobody ever stood up to him like you did.”

  “You speak very good English, José.”

  “I had schooling, Mr. Wilson, and I practiced my English since I was a boy. A little boy.”

  “What kind of help are you asking for?”

  “I have a story to tell you, and then I wish that you would ride with me to the mines so that I can show you how we live and why we hate Scud and his brother. We are prisoners and we are treated like do
gs.”

  “Can’t you get away?” Slocum asked.

  “Those of us who tried have the lilies over their graves,” José said.

  “You mean . . .”

  “I mean that if you run away, Scud’s men will hunt you down and shoot you. In front of everybody. Some they killed with the rope.”

  “Hanged some of your people?”

  “Many,” Delgado said. “This is what I want you to see. How we live. Where we live.”

  “What good will that do?” Slocum asked.

  “Maybe you will want to help us fight these men. What they are doing is making slaves of my people. Even the whites here in Polvo are afraid of Scud and his brother, the sheriff.”

  “Do you have a horse?” Slocum asked.

  José pointed beyond the fence.

  “I have a mule,” he said.

  “I’ll saddle up and meet you where your mule is tied.”

  José put his straw hat back on his head.

  Before he turned and left, Slocum looked hard at José and asked a question.

  “Are you allowed to come to town?” he asked.

  “Ah, some of us can come once a month and we must be back to work by morning. I do not have much time left, but I wanted to see you and talk to you.”

  “I won’t be long, José.”

  Slocum went back into the stables. Caleb was standing there with Ferro all saddled.

  “I knew you was a-goin’ to the diggin’s with that Messican, Mr. Wilson. So I got your horse all ready.”

  “How did you know that, Caleb?”

  “Because I heard from José what you done with Sheriff Scudder. Boy oh boy, there’s goin’ to be hell to pay, I reckon.”

  “You reckon right, Caleb. I think I made an enemy when I locked Sheriff Scudder up in the hoosegow.”

  “José said you marched him out of the saloon buck naked.”

  “Well, Scudder was buck naked. I wasn’t.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Remember our secrets, Caleb.”

  “Not a word, Mr. Wilson, only . . .”

  “Only what?”

  “Only José says that ain’t your real name. He said you was a wanted man. Back in Georgia.”

  “That’s right. I’m not guilty, but some people want to stretch my neck back home.”

  “Do I keep callin’ you Mr. Wilson?”

  “No, Caleb, the cat’s out of the bag now. You can call me by my real name. It’s John Slocum.”

  “Okay.”

  Slocum took the reins and led Ferro out of the barn.

  “You take care, Mr. Slocum,” Caleb said as Slocum walked his horse through the open big door.

  José opened the corral gate and closed it behind Slocum. He climbed onto his mule as Slocum hiked up into the saddle atop Ferro.

  “Lead the way, José,” Slocum said.

  “It is not far, but we will go a different way because there might be men looking for you.”

  “Is Scudder out of jail, then?”

  “Yes. Some men from the saloon went to the jail with his clothes and found him.”

  “That’s too bad. Maybe I should have thrown away the keys.”

  José laughed and they rode between buildings and out onto the rocky land beyond the town. There was no road, no trail, just an empty pewtered desert with its dark shapes of cactus and sage, jackrabbits and slinking coyotes, the distant call of an owl. It was still dark, but the moon was drifting above the horizon through wisps of clouds that were high and thin in the dark starred sky, like streamers of smoke floating from some long-ago campfire.

  Soon they began to see the murky shapes of adobe dwellings. These seemed to have no pattern, but were in small bunches, homely and humble as deserted beehives.

  “This is where we all live,” José said. “We must be careful. There are men guarding this place. They ride horses and they have rifles.”

  “Where are we going?” Slocum asked.

  “I will take you to my house. Then we will ride to the place where we dig in the mines for gold and silver.”

  “Are you paid for this work?”

  José cackled a dry laugh.

  “A little bit of money, each month. Scud gives us rice and beans, and we hunt for rabbits and the coyote. We starve and we do not have much money.”

  Slocum swore under his breath.

  They rode up to a small jacal with a rickety fence and a small adobe. There was a fire pit outside. José dismounted and tied his mule to the back fence. Slocum slid out of the saddle. The gate was held shut with baling wire. José opened it and the two men walked to the hut. José tapped on the door. It opened.

  A small woman wearing a shabby dress and worn sandals opened the door. She bade them enter and Slocum had to duck through the small doorway.

  A lamp burned low on a table in the single room. They passed the table and Slocum saw people sitting against the walls. There was no furniture besides the small table.

  “This is where we all live,” José said. “This is my wife, Perla, and those are her folks on one side of the room, my folks on the other. We have two little children. They are asleep in the corner.”

  “All of you live in this one room?”

  “It is a dungeon,” Perla said. She was young and pretty, but she had old eyes, puffy flesh beneath them, and the scrubbed hands of an old washerwoman.

  “Does everyone here in this little village live this way?” Slocum asked.

  “Como animales,” José’s mother said as she stood up, bracing herself against her husband’s knees as she rose. “Like animals.”

  “Mama Delgado,” José said.

  “Can you buy food?” Slocum asked. “If you have money, I mean.”

  “We can buy sugar and salt, but most of the time we do not have enough even for that.”

  Slocum reached into his pocket and pulled out some bills. He put them on the table.

  “Now do you want to see where we dig?” José asked.

  Slocum was standing slightly stooped. The room was small, the ceiling low. He had a strong feeling of claustrophobia, of being not in a home, but in a jail cell. He wanted to leave before he choked up at the sight of so many people living together in such a small place. They were not living there, they were confined there, by a cruel and heartless man, or a bunch of such men.

  He thought of an old saying he had heard back in Georgia, from his father.

  “Whatever poor people do,” William Slocum had said, “is against the law.”

  These people were poor. They were not lawbreakers. But they were treated like criminals.

  “Yes, let’s go, José. I want to see all that you’re up against.”

  “You will see,” he said, “but you will never really know. We are the only ones who know.”

  Slocum’s jaw hardened as he followed José out of the hovel where he and his family lived.

  He had already seen too much.

  And he knew that he still did not know what they were going through.

  A light breeze sprang up as the two men rode out from the barrio and the moon was setting. It was cool, but the clouds had all disappeared and the dawn sun would rise and bake the harsh land as if to bring the earth a taste of hell.

  16

  The diggings, Slocum thought, were along a deep wide gulley that was a miniature of Palo Duro Canyon. There were holes in the walls and timbers lying stacked next to tarped-over boxes of dynamite, fuses, caps, shovels, pickaxes, and other tools, hammers and iron wedges for splitting logs, and ropes and pry bars.

  “It is quiet now,” José said. “But when the sun comes up, there will be many men digging in those caves and setting dynamite. You do not see the ore carts because they are in the min
es, but there will be wagons and men breaking rocks we bring out, with sledgehammers and dull axes.”

  “I see some wheelbarrows, too. A lot of them.”

  “That is what I do. Men fill the wheelbarrows with rocks and I haul them over there where other men break up the rocks and load the rocks into wagons.”

  “Where do they take the ore when the wagons are filled?” Slocum asked.

  “They bring teams in and haul the ore to a smelter in Amarillo. We do not know what happens to the gold and silver after that because we do not get any of it.”

  “You’re paid in greenbacks?”

  José looked wildly up at Slocum. “We get paid mostly in chits, but we get some greenbacks and some coins.”

  “I’d like to see one of those chits,” Slocum said.

  “They are only good at the saloon or the small store where we buy salt, flour, and coffee. And we pay the high prices, whether we use the chits, the greenbacks, or the coins.”

  José reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a piece of paper. He handed it to Slocum.

  “That is a chit,” José said.

  Slocum looked it over. It was printed and bore the legend SCUDDER MINING COMPANY. The rest of it looked similar to a bank check and spelled out the amount of money the chit was worth. In this case it was fifty cents.

  “Four bits,” Slocum said as he handed the chit back to José.

  “We could wipe our asses with these chits,” José said. “Sometimes I am much tempted.”

  They rode down the length of the deep and wide ravine, a ravine that was scarred by diggings, holes blasted in the walls, and wheel tracks lacing the terrain around them. There were lots of horse and mule tracks, as well.

  “This is where we work,” José said. “Every day, even on Sunday.”

  “You have no church?”

  José shook his head.

  “We pray, some of us, but it is a secret.”

  “Do the old folks in your house work?”

  “Yes. They clean the latrines and cook the food for all of us who work in the diggings. They work very hard.”