by Rob Rosen
INCIDENT AT YELLOW ROCK
T. Hitman
Nate Fremont had never felt so alone. He stared at the rough timbers that identified the grave. After four months of exposure to the same elements that had eroded the buttes surrounding Yellow Rock, the sagging marker now resembled an X more than a cross. The winds had blasted the words carved into the crossbeam almost smooth.
Zachary Fremont, Nate could still read, the last name more pronounced, the name he’d taken for himself. If he narrowed his gaze, he barely made out the rest of the words: Taken Too Soon, May the 17th, 1869. Zachary’s date of birth had vanished into the wood’s wind-smoothed burl, forever erased.
Nate knelt and placed the bouquet of wildflowers and sweet-smelling prairie grass at the base of the marker, the only bright color in an otherwise gray landscape. The breeze caught in the folds of his shirt—attempting to erase him, too, he mused—and created an angry snap of fabric that grated on the ear. The sound echoed and carried into the overcast sky. Then, there was the sound of a gunshot. He rose from his crouch and waited, his heart in a gallop. But the echo of thunder wasn’t repeated, and the day again fell eerily silent except for the ever-present whisper of the prairie wind.
The tears he expected never came. Nate wondered if life in Yellow Rock had beaten the ability to cry out of him. His eyes began to burn, and Nate realized he’d stopped blinking, and breathing as well. He sucked down a lungful of warm air and retrieved the Sharpe. The rifle stood against an outcrop of yellow rock for which the town had been named, at a respectable distance from Zachary’s grave. The eight-pound weapon felt more like eighty in Nate’s shaking fingers.
The shot must have come from the direction of the Green River and the new railroad. More trouble in this desolate kingdom of tears and tragedy, he surmised.
Nate glanced back at Zachary’s grave and saw the wind was already scattering his tribute of flowers. The tears didn’t fall because this harsh landscape so far from familiar soil had broken him. It eroded him, stripped away his identity, like the towering obelisks of exposed core stone at the peaks of the buttes. He was twenty going on two hundred.
Holding the rifle the way Zachary had taught him, Nate marched back to the house, his flesh a mess of shivers born of the fear that he was no longer alone. The prairie schooner rose ahead of him, to the right of the path Nate’s boots had pounded into the ground. His imagination again wandered—the hoops and spokes of the damaged hulk reminding him of some giant animal’s skeleton, picked clean and gleaming in the day’s murk. Only shreds of the wagon’s canvas tarp remained. Nate had salvaged the best of it, cutting the cloth into squares and stretching it out as well as he could between wooden frames.
Down a ways farther, near where the stream that fed the Green River ran, he caught sight of the house. Nate couldn’t make himself think of the place as home any more, even though it’d been built on Zachary’s sweat. And blood. The morning’s laundry swayed on the hemp line between the house and the lean-to for the pair of draft horses that had survived life with Nate, post-Zachary. Two button-down shirts, a bedsheet, a handful of the canvas squares that he’d scrubbed in the stream, hoping to clean them of the eighteen hundred miles of dust and grime they’d traveled, looked like tattered ghosts in the breeze.
He passed through the stretch of dry earth and brittle stubs: all that remained of that summer’s crops. The remaining distance to the front door—several dozen feet that felt like a gulf of miles—seemed to take forever. Nate reached for the latch, but the door already stood an inch open.
Nate moved into the house, passing the relics of exquisite mahogany furniture lugged along in the covered wagon all the way from Independence, Missouri. He shuffled beyond the two Hepplewhite chairs—only two had made the journey, and, at first, two had seemed the perfect number in this expanse of desolate gorge beneath the remains of the yellow hills, though that dream was dead now because a lone survivor was serving sentence in the house. He passed the framed prints of native Western territory birds, cut out of Mister Audubon’s book on the subject. Those pages looked fine on the walls, but they were only meant as temporary artwork until Nate’s own paintings were completed. Between working the unforgiving land, tending to the animals and a dozen other chores he alone was responsible for, there’d been little time for art.
The canvas Nate might never complete gazed back from beside a window at the middle point of the house. He’d painted half of Zachary’s face from memory. The other side of the canvas was mostly blank, barely touched. He knew he might never finish because he’d sadly started to forget what Zachary looked like.
The creak of a footstep from the direction of the bedroom confirmed Nate’s fear. He raised the rifle and forced his legs forward.
Obediah Winfield grabbed the barrel and pulled the Sharpe out of Nate’s grasp right as he poked its muzzle through the heavy purple velvet drapes that separated the bedroom from the rest of the house.
“Don’t you ever point that Jayhawker’s weapon at me, boy,” the tall man growled. “Filthy Free-Soiler’s rifle.”
Nate sucked down a deep breath. “What are you doing in my house, Obe Winfield?”
The terror gripping his insides unleashed alternating ripples of ice and heat, and the misery in Nate’s guts attempted to answer the question. Obe was in the bedroom; Nate knew without being able to see past the wall of the man’s muscular frame that he’d been pawing at his things, smelling them, flicking at them for a taste like any fork-tongued rattlesnake would.
Obe stepped into the light from the window nearest Zachary’s portrait, but the effect was still like gazing at the night. The other man’s black clothes and coat hugged his body. The only color in that canvas of shadows came from his gentleman’s vest, a shade of blue in some shiny textile, that and his gold pocket watch chain. Obe wore his hair cropped almost to the scalp and looked as impeccable as Nate had ever seen him, shaved and groomed, a man of power and presence.
Handsome, yes. But Obediah Winfield’s good looks were sinister around the edges. His gray-blue eyes reminded Nate of thunderstorms. A stink of whiskey leached through his pores. In the tense second or so that followed, Nate felt Obe’s eyes upon him, his tongue testing the corners of his mouth with a wet smacking sound.
“There’s a man name of Joe Dublin—one of them surly Micks working my railroad,” Obe said. “Turns out, he’s got a criminal record as long as the tracks.”
Obe examined the rifle and set it down against a wall, out of Nate’s reach. The bastard then adjusted his coat, being sure that Nate saw the Colt-made six-shooter, a gun unmistakable from all others, especially with its custom obsidian grip.
“You seen any such man out here?”
Nate shook his head. “Nobody. Only you.”
Obe tipped a glance at the canvas before his thunderhead eyes swept back in Nate’s direction. “You aren’t lying to me, are you, boy?”
“No.”
“Because this Mick is dangerous. A cold-blooded killer.”
Obe stepped closer. The clank of his spurs in counterpoint to the groan of the rough wooden floorboards created a terrible melody within the room’s confines. Nate matched the man’s advance with a step in retreat. The immovable wall behind him stopped Nate from escaping.
The dark cloud surged closer and grabbed hold. The odor of alcohol and bitter sweat burned in Nate’s next gasp for breath.
“You know how important you are to me, beautiful Nate,” Obe growled.
The storm swept him up, dragged him into the bedroom, and tossed him onto the blankets. Nate’s stomach threatened to disgorge its contents as a big hand caressed his cheek, worked down over his chest and threatened to go lower.
“No,” he protested, and prayed Zachary was still watching over him from the grave.
Nate reached beneath the pillow. The heavens rewarded him with the cold stock of the hidden six-shooter, Zachary’s. He drew it out right as Obe’s fingers were reaching for his belt.
“I do
n’t think so,” Nate said as he cocked the hammer.
Obe’s hand froze over Nate’s crotch and pulled away, rising with the other in surrender. The man’s face hardened with a look that was angry more than surprised. As Obe drew back, a surly grin spread across his mouth. “I’m disappointed in you.”
“And I’m telling you to leave.”
Obe slid off the bed, straightened, and adjusted the swell sticking out noticeably at the front of his black trousers. “As you wish. Remember, though: this Dublin Mick is dangerous. You see him, you’d best let me know. And I’ll be back, I promise.”
Obe’s footsteps across the house ended with the slamming of the front door. A shadow passed the bedroom window. Nate sat up and tracked the flicker of black to the lean-to, where Obe had likely hitched his horse. An explosion of hooves on hard earth followed. Mercifully, during these unwanted visits, the man always traveled alone without backup from his many thugs, whether by guilt, shame or design.
Nate lowered the pistol and, shaking all over, wept at long last.
Nate picked up the brush but did little more than stir the clots of paint around on the palette. Thoughts of Obe Winfield returning to finish what he’d attempted, perhaps that very night, made focusing impossible. With the sun hiding its face behind the clouds and falling closer to the time-eroded hills, he soon abandoned the effort at completing Zachary’s portrait.
He carried the tin can he used to rinse his brushes to the stream. Such common things in the city as art supplies were rarities here, and, despite his disappointment, Nate knew he couldn’t risk ruining paintbrushes in Yellow Rock. He continued past the house and outbuildings to the hemp clothesline whose dancing ghosts would need to be gathered before sundown. He abruptly stopped. A stroke of bold color teased the corner of his eye, vibrant against the shades of gray everywhere else. Red, fresh and glistening, stained one of the canvas strips he’d left on the line to dry.
Nate wasn’t certain how long he stood staring at the patch of red among the billows of white swaying in the prairie breeze. Time enough for the sun to have inched closer to the line of buttes standing like prison bars on the horizon. Blood, it had to be. Nate willed his boots forward through the folds of white. Drying blood, yes—he recognized its coppery smell. Gazing down, he saw more laid in a trail over the ground.
Nate followed. The man, bleeding profusely through the fingers of a large hand pressed over a wound at the upper right of his chest, reached out. Nate backed away, but even injured the man caught him. No malice came with the capture, unlike Obe’s grab. Nate recognized the difference.
“Please, help me,” the man said, his voice a deep and masculine baritone broken by pain. “I’ve been shot.”
“Clearly,” Nate gasped.
In the tense seconds that followed, Nate recorded the man’s damp thatch of dark cowlicks, the prickle of shadow on his chin, cheeks and throat, the wounded puppy-dog look in eyes so green they conjured thoughts of precious emerald gemstones. He was, Nate agreed, so handsome as to be almost painful to behold, like staring directly at the sun. So like Zachary, he realized.
The man stood at Obe’s height, but his clothes were disheveled, wet from his torn-open shirt—which showed a decent amount of muscled chest covered in dark hair—down to his feet, one of which was missing both boot and sock. Even the man’s bare right foot was attractive in a way that that part of a man’s anatomy wasn’t normally considered. He smelled of the stream and the clean sweat of a real man. Heroic, thought Nate, not sure why.
“You’re that man,” Nate said, aware of the mad hammering of his heart. “Dublin.”
The man nodded.
Curiously, Nate felt no fear, only breathlessness. Dublin was, he admitted, the most handsome man he’d ever laid eyes on. Even more so than Zachary, Nate’s inner voice guiltily admitted.
“They also tell you that Joe Dublin’s some kind of lawless murderer, killer of women and children?”
“Obe mentioned something along those lines, yeah.”
The handsome man winced. “My pocket. Please.”
Nate choked down a dry swallow and reached down. His fingers brushed the thickness at the front of Dublin’s crotch, and his mind took note of the details. He found the pocket, slipped in his fingers, touched the warm and sweating maleness through the thin cotton of the man’s undershorts before locating something cold and metal within. Nate withdrew a lawman’s badge with its star of honor.
“I’m a constable, working covertly under the direct orders of Ulysses S. Grant, the president himself.”
The handsome man moaned, and Nate understood the seriousness of his injury. “Let’s get you inside.”
The man nodded. Nate guided him through the front door, past the chairs for two and the half-completed canvas, and then into the bed.
Dublin drifted in and out of consciousness, a man only half there. Nate’s mind wandered back to the canvas—to Zachary’s portrait, which might never get completed. Steeling himself, he stripped the wounded man of his torn shirt, his remaining boot and boot sock, and reached for his buckle. Dublin returned to the land of the living and seized hold of Nate’s hand right as he undid the top button of his trousers.
Nate’s hand stilled. Dublin’s, so much bigger, hairy at the wrist, flattened over his with a gentleness Nate had only encountered once before from hands of that size.
“Thank you,” Dublin said.
Nate smiled, an uncommon gesture since landing in Yellow Rock and losing Zachary. “Do your best to stay as still as possible. There’s no way this isn’t going to hurt.”
Their eyes connected, and Nate fell into the hypnotic pull of the lawman’s emerald gemstone gaze. The temptation to linger was so great that Nate almost forgot the damning tick of the clock. He blinked, nodded, and worked Dublin’s trousers off magnificent legs, muscular and furry, and those big, bare feet, which again threatened to capture his attention, as did the meaty fullness hanging in the last remaining stitch of clothing, the lawman’s undershorts. Through the tang of blood, the scent of Dublin’s sweat filled his sips for air. It was both male and magical.
“Focus,” Nate whispered, and quickly assembled all he had in the house to save Dublin’s life: towels, hunting knife, wooden switch, needle and thread and the last bottle of whiskey left undrunk, another relic from before Zachary’s death.
He implored Dublin to stay still, worked the dowel between the man’s chattering teeth, and removed the bandage. Then, willing his fingers to steady, Nate poured.
The bullet sat among clots on the shred of canvas he’d used to bandage the wound. Dublin drowsed atop the bedclothes, the steady rise and fall of his chest a good sign. Still not convinced that he hadn’t killed the lawman while trying to remove the bullet, Nate waited and prayed—prayer another rarity in these recent months that had tested his faith.
He unintentionally ran his eye over Dublin’s body, perhaps for the thousandth time, and realized he’d gotten erect somewhere between the last examination and the latest. Nate adjusted his cock, winced, and said another prayer, begging forgiveness over his lust among pleas for Dublin to live.
Night pressed against the house. At some point, the clouds opened up and rain fell in heavy curtains, drumming against the roof and windows. The melody and late hour conspired against Nate’s eyelids. One last check on the lawman by the flicker of the oil lamp, and Nate crawled onto the mattress’s empty half. Sleep instantly claimed him.
He woke in the protective small of Zachary Fremont’s arm, his head nestled against the solid chest muscles of his lover. The scent of Zachary’s skin, so male and wonderful, teased Nate’s emotions. Eyes half shut in the foggy space between dreams and waking, his fingers wandered down Zachary’s abdomen, over the trail of coarse hair, tracing mounds of belly muscle as hard as boulder. Lower still he went, his hand seeking the other man’s cock. He found Zachary hard in his undershorts and appreciative of his caresses once Nate freed his maleness from the thin barrier of cotton. Up and do
wn his fist went. Faster and faster.
Nate unhooked from Zachary’s arm, the one that held him close, possessively, protectively, and wrapped his mouth around the head of Zachary’s cock. He sucked, as he had so often in happier days. A dream, he thought, because surely it had to be. Except the stiffness on Nate’s tongue, damp with nectar from the other man’s excitement, and the musky sweat from Zachary’s balls, testified otherwise. This was no dream.
Nate sucked Zachary’s cock and fondled his big set of balls, rolling them around in their loose, furry sac. He wasn’t alone anymore, even if some of the facets taking form were different from how he remembered. So much hair on those balls, so fragrant with a man’s smell…
Nate leaned lower and licked, loving their taste, their heat. A groan from the top of the bed approved of his worship. Strong fingers raked his hair, guiding him back up to their master’s cock. Nate resumed sucking, and was soon rewarded with more grunts, the kind that signaled Zachary was close, so close.
Salty-sour wetness quickly flooded his mouth. Nate gulped, convinced it was the most delicious of all the loads Zachary had ever rewarded him with. But as he swallowed, his eyes traveled higher, and he saw that it wasn’t Zachary’s needs he’d seen to. The lawman’s green gaze captured Nate’s, and Dublin’s expression, though grim from pain, also seemed one of deep gratitude.
Long hours later, into the next day, he swung his bare feet and legs over the edge of the mattress. Nate hurried over and helped Dublin up the rest of the way, doing his best to ignore the rush of desire born of their closeness.
“Easy,” Nate said.
Their eyes briefly met. Nate deflected away, plagued with worry for what he’d done. Dublin’s eyes scrutinized him.
“How do you feel?” Nate asked.
“Like I should be dead. But I’m not, thanks to you.”
Nate glanced back up. “Let’s take a look. Probably need to change that bandage.”
Dublin nodded his consent and suffered with commendable stoicism as Nate undid the tight wrapping and exposed the bloodied square of canvas. The skin beneath was tender but appeared healthy among the jagged sutures, which no longer wept blood.
