Stampede

by Len Levinson

  “Don’t need a guard,” Cassandra replied, drawing her six-gun. “If anything moves out there, I’ll shoot his lights out.”

  “Suit yerself,” Truscott said with a shrug.

  She holstered the gun and walked toward the water.

  She’d been dreaming of this bath ever since they left the Triangle Spur. Never had she gone so long without washing. She thought of cool, clear water on her skin. A good bath would improve her outlook.

  Before her stretched the open prairie, bisected by the stream, illuminated by the full moon. Willows bordered the stream, and would shield her from the prying eyes of cowboys. She pulled out her Colt and entered the willows, certain Indians wouldn’t come this close. She couldn’t take a bath with cowboys on guard, because she knew where their eyes would be.

  As the drive progressed, they’d gotten worse, their eyes roving lecherously over her figure. If she saw one of them peeking at her while she was bathing, she’d shoot his whatchamacallits off.

  ~*~

  One by one the cowboys meandered away from the campsite, and within minutes, it was deserted except for Ephraim. He sat on the wagon tongue and rolled a cigarette.

  Sometimes Ephraim thought he was going to kill somebody. White people drove him crazy, and he couldn’t fight back because lynchings, shootings, and nigra burnings took place fairly regularly. He had to be careful, and being careful meant acting stupid.

  He thought of Cassandra, unapproachable, untouchable, attracted to John Stone. The heat rose to his face. He remembered the night in San Antone when he and Stone had confronted each other in an alley. It felt wonderful when his fist smashed Stone’s face, but Stone shook it off as if it were the bite of a flea. The man had a head like rock, but Ephraim was sure he could defeat him. Pound the body, and the head would fall.

  Ephraim lit the cigarette and threw the match into the fire. He puffed smoke and thought of how satisfying it would be to jump, with both boots, on John Stone’s face.

  ~*~

  Cassandra stepped out of her underwear and stood naked in the moonlight. A delicious fragrance arose from the stream, and she picked up the Colt and bar of bashed lavender soap.

  The ground was moist beneath her feet, and she stepped « gingerly on sticks and small rocks. The night breeze rolled over her stomach and blew through her hair, and the stream sang a bubbly tune. She spotted a boulder in the water, and decided that would be her base of operations. Her toe touched the stream, but it was colder than she’d expected. She waded toward the rock bravely, and shadows mottled the far side of the stream. Goose bumps broke out on her skin, and her feet were like ice. Shivering, she bent over and placed the Colt and bar of soap on the boulder.

  The cowboys watched furtively behind trees and bushes on the other side of the stream. Their eyes were wide, their jaws hung open, and their heart rates increased considerably. They’d been lusting for her since San Antone, and there she stood naked in front of them, every man wishing he could put his hands on her. The bright moonlight revealed every nuance of her anatomy, and what they couldn’t see, they imagined. They’d undressed her many times with their eyes, but she was lovelier than their wildest dreams.

  Her breasts were perhaps a bit too large for a woman her size, but they weren’t complaining. The ripe melons stood up proudly, her belly was smooth, and her fanny a perfect shape rare in nature. Stone was struck by how much she looked like Marie, and thought they must have kinfolk in common. But they weren’t exactly identical. Marie had been slimmer and more delicate than Cassandra, and more poised. Marie also had a little of the devil in her, whereas Cassandra was serious and sensible, a typical rancher’s wife, but her husband was dead and she was fair game.

  She moved toward the center of the stream, and Stone was drawn to her succulent beauty. Marie probably was in bed with another man, doing all the wonderful things she’d done with him.

  He couldn’t forget her, and Cassandra brought her to mind whenever he looked at her, especially now. What’d happened to Marie? Was she dead or alive, or in a sanatorium, babbling about tea parties in the governor’s mansion and dandelion wine.

  Many nights he and Marie had gone swimming in streams at night like this. They’d sneak away from their homes and embrace in dark forests, with stars sparkling above and his heart beating wildly with joy, but it had been long ago, and all he had left was a broken photograph, a broken life, and memories that refused to die.

  But now, out there in the stream, Cassandra Whiteside walked gracefully, naked as the day she was born. She was lovely, she liked him, and he was crouching in the bushes with a dozen other cowboys.

  The cool current soothed her shapely limbs, and she wished she could bathe all night. She stretched her arms, dived beneath the silvery surface, and her breasts touched the smooth-pebbled depths.

  She surfaced in the moonlight, and every cowboy stared at her with hopeless admiration and desire. Her skin looked like alabaster, as if formed by a master sculptor. She turned sideways to them, and rubbed soap into lather against her smooth flat belly.

  Scrubbing hard, she systematically worked herself over, her skin tingling beneath her ministrations, while across the stream a group of men thought they were dying. Their throats were constricted, and they could barely breathe. If she told them to walk around on their tongues, they’d do it gladly.

  She washed her breasts, and every cowboy was transfixed by the spectacle that lay before them, only twenty yards away. It pushed them over the line, and they gave rein to their most outrageously depraved fantasies. Every man held her in his arms as she luxuriated in the stream.

  Stone’s mouth was like gunpowder, and thought he’d go blind from his intense focus. A man needs his woman, otherwise he becomes a castrated steer.

  Covered with suds, Cassandra dived beneath the black surface, and it rippled in widening halos to the shore. Stone shifted his vision and saw a figure creeping down the embankment, hatchet in hand.

  It was an Indian, and the cowboys had been so quiet in their perversions, he hadn’t even noticed they were there. He’d been scouting the area, heard Cassandra in the stream, come to investigate, and saw an opportunity to count coup.

  Stone pulled out his Colt and took aim at the Indian creeping stealthily toward Cassandra, the hatchet poised in his hand. Cassandra raised her head out of the water and heard footsteps rushing toward her. She turned around to a charging warrior!

  The night exploded around Cassandra, and the warrior was ripped by lead before her eyes. An expression of shock came over his face, he stumbled, dropped his hatchet, and in his dying moments gazed at the cowboys rising up magically from the ground. He landed at Cassandra’s feet, and she stared at him in horror as his blood trailed off in the stream.

  Her cowboys advanced toward her, smoking guns in their hands. She ran to her clothing and draped it quickly over her wet skin as they crossed the stream. A ball of rage swelled in her craw when she realized they’d been there all the time, watching her like the degenerate individuals that they were. Then her attention was drawn back to the dead Indian, floating near the riverbank. Indians were bloodthirsty fiends, like coyotes and buzzards, and the only thing to do was kill them all.

  “Spread out and see if there’s any more of ’em!” Truscott hollered.

  The cowboys entered the breaks on Cassandra’s side of the stream, and Truscott marched toward Cassandra, who was shivering and trying to cover herself with the clothes in her hands. She was embarrassed to her toenails, and yelled: “What the hell’re you doing here, Truscott!”

  “Toldja there was injuns about, but you wouldn’t listen! Din’t think I know what I’m talkin’ about! You wouldn’t look so pretty right now, young lady, with that hatchet stickin’ out of yer head!”

  “Would you turn around, please?”

  Cassandra dressed hastily, glancing toward the willows from which the Indian had come. She buttoned her shirt, while the cowboys and vaqueros returned with an Indian pony and guns in their hands.<
br />
  “Must’ve been alone,” said the segundo. “We plugged ’im good.” Then he turned to Cassandra and gazed at her with bottomless depravity.

  “If I ever catch you men peeping at me again, I’ll shoot you where it hurts the most,” she said. “Understand?”

  The men shuffled their feet and wished they were somewhere else, embarrassed that she knew they’d been peeping at her, and she was even more embarrassed than they, because the only people in the world who’d ever seen her naked were her parents and mammy when she was small, and her husband.

  She strapped the gun to her waist and tied the strap around her leg.

  “Where’d you git the iron?” Truscott asked, noticing it for the first time.

  “John Stone sold it to me.”

  Truscott spun around and faced Stone. “What you sell her a gun fer?”

  “Protection.”

  “She’s liable to shoot somebody by mistake.”

  “If I shoot somebody,” Cassandra said levelly, “it won’t be by mistake.”

  She picked up her dirty clothes and walked toward the campsite. The men watched her go, recalling her naked delicious body in the stream. No longer need they imagine what she looked like without clothes. They’d seen everything she had, and her most minute details had been committed to their turbid memories.

  The segundo clicked his teeth. “If I ever get my hands on that filly, there won’t be nothin’ left when I’m finished.”

  “Take the injun’s horse to the remuda,” Truscott replied, “and double the guard on the herd.”

  Truscott pushed his hat to the back of his head and returned to the campsite. The cowboys followed, and the wrangler, Ben Thorpe, held the reins of the bareback Indian war pony. When they arrived, Cassandra was wondering where to put her tore-up blanket roll. She didn’t want to be close to any of them, but they were her only protection.

  She decided to sleep near the fire, and spread out her bedclothes beside it. The segundo walked toward her and held out his fist. Grinning, he let it open, and her underpants fell to her bedroll. “You forgot these, ma’am,” he said with a wolfish grin.

  “Thank you, Braswell.”

  Her face flushed crimson as she tucked the underpants into her gunny sack. Around her, the cowboys prepared for bed. She walked to the chuck wagon and said to Ephraim, “Got any more of that range coffee?”

  He lifted the pot and poured some into a mug, and she carried it to the far side of the chuck wagon, facing north toward Abilene. She felt a presence nearby, and turned toward it. The segundo held a cigarette between his thick lips, and lit it. “Ma’am,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “how’d you like to go off with me fer a leetle fun?” He lowered his eyes and stared frankly between her legs.

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  “I’ll show you a real man, you go off with me.” He cupped his groin with his hand. “I got what you need.”

  They heard a sound, and it was Ephraim rounding the front of the chuck wagon. Ephraim saw them together, and his eyes narrowed.

  The segundo filled his lungs and hollered, “What the hell you lookin’ at, burrhead! Git the hell out of here!”

  Cassandra turned to the segundo. “This is his chuck wagon. You’re the one who doesn’t belong here.”

  Truscott appeared out of the darkness, craning his head. “What in tarnation is goin’ on?”

  The segundo turned to Cassandra. “I just asked you a question.”

  “Get away from me!”

  He stared malevolently at her, then turned and walked to the front of the chuck wagon. “I’m hungry, goddammit! Cook me a steak, burrhead!”

  “Finished all the meat,” Ephraim replied. “Got to kill another steer.”

  “Then do it, you son of a bitch!”

  Truscott stepped forward. “I give the orders around here. We’ll kill another steer tomorrow. You’ve already had yer supper.”

  The segundo spun around and grabbed Ephraim by the front of his shirt. Ephraim was several inches taller than the segundo, but the segundo was wider, with massive biceps.

  “This is yer fault, burrhead! Watch yer step or I’ll put a hunk of lead in yer black ass!”

  The segundo lifted Ephraim in the air, and Stone could see the torment on Ephraim’s face.

  “Sorry, boss,” Ephraim said. “Din’t mean no hurt.”

  “I’ll put some hurt on you, boy, you ever talk back to me like that again.”

  “Let him down!” Cassandra shouted.

  The segundo turned to her and sneered. “Is the nigra stickin’ it to you, boss lady?”

  Truscott stepped forward. “That’ll be enough of that!”

  The segundo threw Ephraim as if he were a toy, then faced Truscott. “You talkin’ to me, old man?”

  “You don’t insult the boss lady unless you’re ready to die.” Truscott lowered his hand to his Remington, and looked ready to go the distance.

  The segundo hesitated. He’d heard Truscott had been a gunfighter in his youth, and laughed. “You’re gonna shoot me over that bitch? Why, you saw what she did to you tonight. She took off’n her clothes and practically did a hootchy-kootchy dance in the water. You think she din’t know we was there? She’s just another jezebel with fancy manners, but she don’t kid me none. I ain’t ready to die for the likes of her.”

  Cassandra whipped out her gun and pointed it at the segundo’s face. “You ever bother me again, I’ll kill you.”

  The segundo’s face was pale as he stared down the barrel of her Colt.

  “Get away from me,” she said.

  The segundo mumbled obscenities as he walked away, leaving Cassandra with the other cowboys beside the chuck wagon.

  The ramrod drew himself to his full height. “I should’ve shot him.”

  “We need him,” Cassandra said, “as long as he does his job. Now if you don’t mind, gentlemen, I think I’ll turn in.”

  She walked toward the campfire and lay on her blankets. A few seconds later Stone dropped his bedroll between her and the segundo, who was snuggling up with his mongrel dog.

  The segundo hugged the dog and kissed his floppy flea-bitten ear, while the other cowboys threw their bedrolls around Cassandra, and she realized they wanted to protect her, or were they all like the segundo, waiting for the chance to get her alone.

  She closed her eyes and tried to sleep as the fire diminished in the pit and the sounds of the night invaded the campsite.

  ~*~

  Stone opened his eyes, awakened by his inner alarm clock. He knew it was time to ride night duty, although Don Emilio hadn’t awakened him. Every extra moment of sleep counted, but as he was closing his eyes, he noticed something move at the edge of the campsite. Stone was about to sound the alarm, when the man stood, and moonlight shone on his face.

  It was Ephraim, and Stone squinted in an effort to see what he was up to. Ephraim moved around the campsite silently as a big black panther, and then approached the segundo, who slept with his dog wrapped in his arms. Ephraim crouched near the segundo, picked up one of his boots, and poured something into it. Then he did the same with the segundo’s other boot. The sound of hoofbeats came to Stone’s ears, and Ephraim disappeared into the night.

  A few moments later Don Emilio rode into view. He climbed down from his horse and walked across the campsite, his spurs jangling in the night. When he reached Stone he stopped and said softly, “Arriba.”

  Stone opened his eyes slowly. “So soon?”

  “Be glad it is not Sister Death, amigo.”

  Don Emilio returned his night horse to the remuda, and Stone crawled out from beneath his blanket. He sat on the ground and pulled on his boots, wondering what Ephraim had done to the segundo’s boots. He rolled his blanket and threw it into the chuck wagon, then looked at Ephraim lying in his blanket nearby. The incident was so strange Stone wondered if he’d dreamt it.

  He walked to the remuda, feeling lopsided ever since he gave his gun to Cassandra. The horses were cluste
red in a rope corral, and Don Emilio removed the saddle from his night mount, throwing it onto the ground nearby.

  “How’re the cattle?” Stone asked.

  “Sleeping like babies in their cribs. You have any tobacco left?”

  Stone threw him his bag, and Don Emilio rolled a cigarette. “Tell me,” Don Emilio said, “speaking as one caballero to another, do you think we should kill the segundo?”

  “What for?”

  “Sometimes, amigo, you are a stupid gringo, you know that? The hombre is peligroso—dangerous!”

  “So am I, and so are you, but that’s no reason to shoot a man.”

  “If we do not shoot him, he will shoot one of us.”

  “If you want to shoot him, go ahead. I don’t give a damn either way.”

  “What do you think Truscott will say if I put a bullet in the segundo’s head?”

  “He won’t say a damn thing, as long as you do your job.”

  Don Emilio lit the cigarette, and Stone tightened the cinch under Tomahawk’s belly. He let the stirrups fall, placed his foot in one of them, and raised himself smoothly into the saddle.

  “It is so sad—about La Señora,” Don Emilio said. “Here she is all alone without a man. I know you have seen a mare in heat—well, that is what La Señora will be for the next man. Do you think it will be you, amigo?”

  “I think it’ll be you, Don Emilio.”

  “It should be me, I agree completely, but she may choose you, because women are crazy.”

  “I’d say a man’d have to marry her, to sleep in her bed.”

  “What is wrong with that?” Don Emilio asked. “I have married far worse in my life, for far less.” Don Emilio cocked an eye. “You know, I think you are in love with La Señora, but you do not even realize it yourself.”

  Stone didn’t know what to say, so he touched a finger to his hat and spurred Tomahawk. The animal broke into a canter, and Stone headed toward the herd.

  It was another clear starlit night on the prairie. Not one drop of rain had fallen since the drive began, and the longhorns were sleeping as Don Emilio had said. Stone heard a trumpet sound as an animal passed wind somewhere in the middle of the herd. A shooting star streaked across the heavens and disappeared behind buttes in the distance. Tomahawk plodded through the night, and Stone’s mind wandered.