Shotgun Riders

by Orrin Russell

  “This ones going clear to Texas.”

  “Texas? Shit, what’s that fool done to earn a stagecoach ride clear to Texas?”

  “Plenty,” said Balum.

  “At least you the one in control this time. Ain’t got no damn Johnny Freed posse chasing after you.”

  Balum and Joe shared a look.

  “Whoa,” said Caleb. “What’s that?”

  “It’s no posse this time,” said Balum. He stepped down from the bench. “But we’ve got a problem riding along behind us.”

  Summer pushed through the gathering crowd and straight to Balum with her arms open wide. She took him in a hug before he could scarcely move, and in an instant he was transported to the memory of her body laying naked in the snow, the heat of her skin and the sound of moaning pleasure escaping her lips. He wrapped his arms around her and smelled the sweet perfume of her neck, the glow of perspiration still fresh on her skin. Immediately he became aware of his own self, the fact that he’d not bathed in a week, the sleep-deprived look he must have carried on his face. His clothing was a wrinkled mess, stained by dirt and grass and sweat. When her hug ended he stepped back, momentarily dazed.

  “What a treat it is to see you, Balum,” she said. She turned to Joe and gave him a hug that, though not as long, was nonetheless filled with genuine kindness. “You’ll be staying more than five minutes this time?”

  “At least long enough for a meal, if that’s an option.”

  “You two must’ve planned this out,” said Caleb, “cause you’s rode up just as supper’s about to come off the stove.”

  “Is there time for a bath?” asked Balum. “We’ve been a week on the trail, and a dip in a tub would go a long way.”

  “You got fifteen minutes if you don’t mind using the common baths.”

  “Fifteen minutes?”

  “That’s when supper will be ready, and the missus don’t allow for folks coming late to the table.”

  “Lead the way,” said Balum.

  It was Summer who took them. She led them past the curious faces that had milled into the lane, and Balum waved and shook a couple hands of men he’d met and friends he’d made during his brief stay the winter before. He followed her, aiming to keep his eyes off her backside, but unable to do so. She was giving it an extra wiggle just for him, he had no doubt of it. She wove through a back alley and stopped suddenly at a makeshift curtain made from poles drilled into the ground around which were tied ropes that held thick canvas sheets. They ducked through one where a tub sat in the grass, half full of water.

  “It’s cold,” she said, “but it’s clean.”

  While she said it, several boys stepped through the curtain, each with pail of water freshly drawn from the well.

  “You can have this one, Joe. Balum, follow me.” She took his hand and led him through the back side of the curtain into another similar cubicle surrounded in hung canvas. The children ducked in after them with water pails, emptied them into the tub, and ran out giggling.

  “I’ll come back with a clean set of clothes,” she said, and ducked out the same way the children had gone.

  The water was indeed cold. Balum touched a finger to it. He shrugged, then peeled off his clothes and stepped in. If he wasn’t awake before, he was then. The temperature took his breath away, and for a moment he only sat with his eyes closed and his teeth clenched. After a while he plucked a bar of soap from off the rickety table beside the tub and rubbed it until the tub was sudded with bubbles. It reminded him vaguely of Maxine. The thought of her body lying naked in the Sagebrush tub was a memory fine enough to arouse him as he lay there in the out of doors, the sun shining on him and the sudsy water peeling away a week’s worth of trail dust.

  Just then the canvas flapped open and Summer came through with an armload of clothing in hand. “Courtesy of Caleb,” she said, setting them on the side table. “They’ll be enormous on you, but it’s only until yours are washed.” She gave them a pat, then lifted her skirt and knelt on the ground with her arms crossed over the tub ledge.

  Balum watched her move. His head rested against the bow of the tub. He saw her smile, saw her eyes roam down his chest to where it disappeared beneath the bubbles.

  “I wondered when I’d see you again,” she said.

  “I’ve thought about it myself from time to time.”

  “The last time you passed through you seemed shy. You barely spoke to me.”

  “A lack of manners is what it was. I apologize.”

  Suddenly, in a motion smooth and unhurried, she dipped an arm into the tub and took hold of his cock. “Ooh,” she said, clearly surprised to find him already erect. “You could offer an apology with this.” She gave the length of it a stroke. “It’s a shame you only have a few minutes until supper.”

  The urge swept over him to grab her by the waist and pull her into the tub. But before he could do so she stood and flicked the water off her hand with a snap of the wrist. “But you might have already missed your chance,” she said, and left suddenly through the canvas, bending at the hip so the fabric of her skirt stretched taut over her ass.

  Balum’s breath came heavy, but not from the coldness of the water. He gave his body a quick rub, stepped out of the tub and dried off with the towel, then dressed himself in Caleb’s oversized shirt and pants.

  When he knocked at Caleb’s front door, Joe answered. The Apache was dressed in clothing so oversized that he looked like a young boy who’d stolen his father’s garments. The two of them together could have been mistaken for traveling circus fools with their sleeves hanging past their wrists and the collars loose about their necks. Those gathered in Caleb’s house for supper burst into laughter. His in-laws, his wife, a neighbor who had brought over a pecan pie. Even Summer, who stood smiling from the kitchen with her eyes twinkling in some mischievous thought that Balum wished he could decipher.

  They took seats at the table, Caleb at the head with his wife and father-in-law seated to his left and right. Balum sat near the center alongside Joe. Summer chose her seat directly across from him. Supper was a few meatballs, nothing more. There was no sauce to accompany it, no bread, no nothing. The table sat over a dirt floor, the chairs were weak and wobbly, and in a quick glance around the room Balum could spot several items that needed replacement. The degree of poverty in Blacktown was a crime in itself, made more bitter by the fact that the men and women who lived there were such hard workers.

  The conversation didn’t take longer than a minute to drift away from banalities. Talk of the weather was not what they’d come for. It jumped instead to the nature of Balum and Joe’s trip and their reason for stopping in Blacktown.

  Balum spelled it out in simple terms. How the Bells had stolen cattle, the violence they’d unleashed. He told them about Sara Sanderson and the governor waiting in Texas for Buford’s delivery, and all in the same breath he revealed that somehow Buford’s brothers had gotten free of the Denver jail and were trailing them across the plains.

  Caleb forked a meatball into his mouth and shook his head. “Folks is crazy.” He looked at Balum while he chewed. “So you come to Blacktown for a good night’s sleep? I don’t blame you. Why don’t you stay two nights-- get yourselves good and rested. It’s a long way to Texas.”

  “We need sleep bad,” said Balum. “We need something else too.”

  “You know we here to help, Balum,” Caleb smacked. “Now what you need?”

  Balum hesitated a moment. He wished to form the request in the best possible manner, make the most convincing case, but just as he was about to speak he felt a pressure on his shin. Across the table Summer’s eyes met his. She had slipped off her shoe and was gliding her toes up his leg, around his knee, along his inner thigh.

  “We all listening, Balum,” said Caleb.

  “Ahem,” Balum reached a hand beneath the table and shoved Summer’s foot away. “Fact is, Caleb, one or two nights of sleep isn’t going to cut it. What we need is a third man.”

  �
��Why you looking at me?”

  “Because you’re that man.”

  “Ho!,” Caleb’s face spread wide. The skin against his eyes crinkled, and he glanced around the table with a chuckle bouncing from his throat. “You must be out your mind! You think I want to take my black ass to Texas? You know what they do down there with folks like me?”

  “We need you, Caleb.”

  “Lynch my ass, that’s what.”

  Summer’s foot came up again. Her toes pressed into Balum’s thigh and tickled their way to his crotch. He wrapped a hand around her foot and squeezed, and shot a look across the table.

  “I’m calling on you for a favor, Caleb.”

  “That’s a hell of a favor.”

  “Let me ask you something,” said Balum. “What did you do with Bert?”

  The laughter left Caleb’s eyes. Backs stiffened around the table. An uneasy silence hovered. Balum didn’t let his eyes go from his friend. He knew what Caleb was thinking; Balum had ridden into Blacktown the previous spring and dropped off the very man that had sent Caleb to the Colorado State Penitentiary. It was a favor nearly impossible to repay.

  “I’ll tell you what I did,” Caleb set his fork on his plate. He spread his thick hands over the table and cocked his head slightly. “I chained that fool cracker up to a plow and whipped his ass over three acres until he’d turned every inch of soil. I had him plant seed, dig a maze of trenches, fell thirty trees and split ‘em in lengths and haul ‘em to the woodpile. I worked that boy till his fingers bled. And then you know what I did?”

  “What?” Balum held Summer’s foot below the table. Her skin was warm, he could feel the muscles move, the small slender bones beneath his fingers.

  “I let him go.”

  “Let him go?”

  “That’s right. Cause I’ll tell you something, Balum-- life ain’t all about holding grudges. Sometimes a man has got to forgive.”

  “Alright,” said Balum, sensing where the story was going.

  “And that’s what you got to do,” Caleb continued.

  “What,” said Balum. “Forgive?”

  “That’s right. Cause that’s all this trip is about. It ain’t about delivering some fool to Texas, it’s about you getting revenge on a woman that wronged you. That’s all.”

  “That’s not all it is.”

  “Damn right it is. You know it and I know it. Joe knows it. Hell, everybody at this table knows it.”

  He felt their stares. With a push he let Summer’s foot go. “Alright. It’s true, I’ve got a grudge. And I want some revenge; you got me. But I’ll tell you something else, there’s also a matter of justice here. She killed a man. More than one, actually. She’s a criminal, a killer, and she’ll only keep on wrecking lives until someone stops her. So I’m going to Texas and I’m going to find her, and I’ll be damned if I don’t see her either hanged at the end of a rope or behind bars.”

  “Ok,” said Caleb. “But I ain’t running to Texas to help you. I got folks here that needs me.”

  “It’s not purely a favor I’m asking. There’s something in it for you too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The reward offered by the governor is five thousand dollars. You help us get Buford to Texas and one third of that will be yours.”

  A new silence settled over the table. Balum knew how hard up Blacktown was for money; he could see it all around him. They needed draft animals, tools, seed, construction materials, a list of items that could go on for an hour. A cowpoke earned hardly thirty dollars a month, and Balum knew full well that no one was earning even that much in Blacktown. For Caleb to come back with over fifteen hundred dollars in his pocket meant the entire town would benefit. When Caleb’s wife spoke, Balum knew he had him.

  “That’s a lot of money,” she said.

  Caleb nodded. He looked at his father-in-law, then looked away. “Let me think on it,” he said. “Right now I’m going to need some of that pecan pie.”

  Joe passed the pie down the table, and Balum agreed to wait until morning for an answer. It was a bit of theater, for the whole table knew the decision had been made. Balum stuck the last meatball in his mouth, and when Summer worked her toes back up along his thigh and rubbed them over the length of his cock, he gave her a wink and waited for his piece of pie.

  11

  On the floor of Caleb’s home, a few feet from the dinner table, blankets were spread out along with cornmeal sacks filled with wads of grass. Before Balum had kicked his boots off, Joe was already asleep beside. He wasn’t a snorer-- he’d have been shot in the woods already if he was-- but the steady rhythmic breathing from the dark edge of the house told Balum that his partner was out for the night.

  Balum eased his head onto the makeshift pillow. The relief of not needing to worry about the Bell brothers storming in and shooting them to pieces made the dirt floor feel more like a mattress of goose feathers. But sleep did not arrive. He turned to his side and pulled the blanket over his shoulders. Tired as he was, he could not erase the image of Summer kneeling beside the tub with her full lips so close to him, her eyes sparkling with laughter. He could still smell her, still feel the soft give of her foot in his hands.

  He turned his head to where Joe slept, then pulled the blanket away. With a silence no different than deep in the woods, he pulled his boots on and softly crossed the floor to the front door.

  Outside by the stage a couple men stood watch with shotguns. The odds of the Bell brothers galloping into Blacktown were next to nothing, but neither were the residents of Blacktown fools. One of them saw Balum crossing the yard and raised a hand.

  “Out for a stroll, Balum?”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” he lied. “Is Buford behaving himself in there?”

  “Not a peep.”

  Balum turned the corner of the house and out of sight of the stage. He wondered if the watchman really believed that Balum was out for a stroll. But what did it matter? The urge building in Balum since Summer had hugged him that afternoon would not relent. He would get no sleep, as tired as he was. At that moment he didn’t care if the entirety of Blacktown knew what he was up to; the force driving him was not one he’d ever been able to control.

  He proceeded up a back alley. Once he came within sight of Summer’s grandparent’s house where she lived, he slowed his walk. The night was dark. Unlike the chorus of nightlife ever present in the woods, the silence of the town was as thick as the mud underfoot. His boots made soft squelches, then fell silent.

  The house sat as dark and quiet as the rest of town. Maybe he’d been wrong. After all, she had said by the tub that he might have missed his chance. But her foot…

  His head throbbed from lack of sleep. When he saw the flash of movement from beside the window his hand dropped automatically for the Dragoon, but he’d left his holster in Caleb’s house. Then his sleep deprived vision came into focus and he saw that it was Summer standing there in the dark. She motioned him closer with a wave of her hand.

  He jogged a few paces through the mud. When he reached her he wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her into his chest and kissed her. She melted against him. Her body was warm and firm and thick with the curves of a well-formed woman. She reached her hand down to his and pulled him through the door.

  He let her lead him in the dark. The house was made of thin clapboard. From the next room he could hear the snores of her grandparents rumbling in synchronized harmony. To the kitchen she led him. She pulled him against the stove and put a finger to his lip and warned him with a shush to stay quiet.

  It was a warning he didn’t need. A block away a horse stamped a foot. The sound flew through the thin walls as if they were made of paper. Balum could hear the two guards lounging by the stagecoach debating the value of shoeing a horse versus leaving it unshod. Their conversation seemed to take place directly on the other side of the wall.

  This acute awareness of the travel of sound disappeared without further thought when Summer pressed against h
im and clamped her lips over his. Her tongue slid into his mouth. He wrapped his arms around her waist and ran his hands along her rear while he tasted her mouth and inhaled in great blind gasps the sweet smell of her skin. In that pitch-black kitchen he could see nothing. By his hands alone his mind formed an image of her body. She stood perhaps five foot six inches, small rounded shoulders beneath a smooth neck. Her arms were sleek and strong, her breasts as round as cannonballs. He remembered how they looked against the snow, the skin dark, the nipples darker. The dress holding them fell away suddenly, and he bent his head to them and took them in his hands. He sucked them, bit them, took the nipples in his mouth and ran his tongue around them.

  A single note came from her lips like a muffled piano key tapped in the dark. He reached his own finger to them and she took it in her mouth and sucked it with the same ferocity as he sucked her nipples.

  The dress had fallen completely away. Balum sank further down her body. He traced the flat of her stomach with his tongue. His hands fell to her waist, narrow and suddenly bulging in a meaty ass over thick firm thighs. He felt her leg rise up and he sunk his mouth against her waiting pussy, laying the width of his tongue against it and tasting the sweet wetness like a starving man come upon a golden honeycomb. She moaned again, louder. With his arm stretched out above him he clasped his palm over her mouth and continued his devouring between her thighs.

  The taste and smell and lack of sight was like floating weightless in ecstasy. He sensed only what he felt, the tactile pleasure of Summer’s body, the rush of blood careening through his veins. His shaft was engorged. It pressed against the oversized trousers he wore. He stood and unlatched the belt and let them fall, then pried off the boots with the toes of his feet. Suddenly Summer was kneeling before him. He felt his cock enveloped by the hot wetness of her mouth.

  A groan flew from his mouth. Summer drew back quickly and shushed him from where she knelt. He braced his hands against the stove behind him and fought to stay silent as she brought her lips forward again and sucked the length of his cock with his balls gently cupped in her hand. A steady slurping was the only noise in the unlit kitchen. Balum put a hand on the soft curls of her hair and began to rock his hips forward in a rhythm intoxicatingly harmonized to the sucking sounds below.