by Jake Logan
In the hallway, he turned back and asked, “Where is Whey?”
Both of them shrugged—hell, for all they knew, he could be around the corner of the cantina. Time to use his brain. He must hide her until he could get her safely out of the mountains.
“I am going to hustle you down the stairs and to my horse. Keep your head covered. No one needs to see who you are.”
She nodded. He went to the back door and looked around at the bare ground. His spine tingled. One word, one shot were things he did not need. The girl didn’t look too wrought up about her captivity—some lost their minds after being repeatedly raped and abused. A strong young girl—but regardless, she was many miles from home.
Many dangerous ones too.
11
The tracks the two of them made going through the near-empty cantina were swift ones. He saw she wore some Apache moccasins and she could move. But outside, he worried she might tumble down the stairs at the rate they were taking them, but he kept a firm hand on her shoulder to steady her.
At the base, he boosted her in the saddle like she was a feather, undid the reins, and swung up behind her. They were gone in some hard cat hops uphill, and him hoping all the time that her identity was hidden under the blanket.
When they reached Dona’s house, he swung down and then caught her in his arms. “Go in the front door. You are in a safe place.”
He looked around the courtyard. Soon, the stable boy came on the run and took his horse. One more check—nothing, and he followed her in the front door.
Willa came running across the tile floor of the great room. “What—who is she?” she whispered.
“Estria Salazar, meet Willa Malloy.”
Dona, her skirts and petticoats in her hand, came running in from the other direction. “Is this her?”
Slocum nodded. “We have her. Now to get her safely home.”
“Ah, Señorita,” Estevan said coming in the room. “How are you?”
“Fine,” she said as they peeled her out of the hot blanket. “Good to see you again, Estevan.”
There was some restraint in her words that niggled Slocum, but the girls were already preparing to take her off for a bath and some clean clothing. So they didn’t like the smoky squaw perfume she wore. He never minded it.
The notion reminded him of the Apache girl called Cry, who nearly screwed him to death one night under the giant walnut tree in the dry wash between Fort Bowie and the Butterfield stage station. Cry had muscles in her pussy that could squeeze a man harder than a powerful man’s fist. Whew, she wore that mesquite smoke perfume and it took three hard fought rounds on top of her, bang, bang, bang, to even make her eyes swim in the moonlight as she lay underneath him.
His depleted balls ached for days after that occasion. The thing she whispered in his ear the next morning before dawn, he’d never forgotten. “Only thing better than you is a stud horse I know about . . .”
Then in a soft swish of her many skirts, she pulled them on over her shapely legs and tied the strings at her narrow waist, and in a flash she was gone in the shadowy light. He never saw her again. Though he’d looked over many of the women at San Carlos, Fort Apache, even Fort McDowell. Never did he find Cry again. He spoke to a few Apache scouts about the woman, and they were amazed that he knew her. She was legend, but they didn’t know where she had gone either.
The two women were going out of the room with Estria, leaving like noisy magpies and herding their ward with them. Good, she needed some tender care after all she’d been through. Those two could give her such tending.
“When do we leave for the hacienda?” Estevan asked.
“Shortly. I don’t want everyone to know who she is.”
“Her parents are very anxious to have her home again.”
“I know that. But my concern in this case means how do we get her back there without confronting any more Apaches or bandits. The four of us would stand little chance against any such force in these mountains.”
“How did you get her anyway?”
“The Apache women needed food for their children back in camp. One woman brought her to me. I paid her fifty some dollars I had on me.”
“Is that all?”
“It was all I had.”
Estevan shook his head. “Fifty dollars. That’s cheap.”
“You owe that blind singer Joaquin at the cantina a couple of hundred. He arranged it. I had no money left for him.”
“I’ll see they pay him.”
“Good.”
Slocum poured them both some of Dona’s good whiskey in small glasses and raised his in a toast. “Here’s to getting her home.”
“Yes, getting her home—safely.” They clinked their glasses.
Willa finally returned and took her place on Slocum’s lap. “She’s sleeping now. That poor girl has been through a lot.”
Estevan nodded. “I imagine so.”
“She asked about her fiancé. Do you know him?” Willa asked him.
“Ah, Felix Francisco.” Estevan shook his head to dismiss the notion of him. “She won’t need to worry about him. He gave up on her the day he heard that the Apaches had taken her—” Then he lowered his voice. “And they’d popped her cherry.”
Willa made a face of disapproval and then shrugged it off. “I guess men do that.”
“A man would be foolish to do that to such a fine woman,” Slocum said with a frown.
“Ah, you don’t know this man,” Estevan said. “He thinks so much of himself, he has no room for anyone else. She is better off without him.”
“Yes, but she must have had some attachment to him or she’d never asked,” Willa said.
“Those are rules she lives under. A man chosen to marry her is her husband-to-be or was. I think he’s near bankruptcy and only came into her life to save his own backside. You know the patron, her father, he is very rich. She is the only heir to all his ranches and mines. I think the patron thought Francisco was the man to run his businesses when he passed on. But he’s only a horny womanizer who expected to pluck a flower on his wedding night.”
“I guess being a pistolero for such a man, you know lots that goes on?” Willa asked,
“Security is my business.”
Slocum stood up and stretched. “I’m going to take a siesta before supper.”
She jumped off his lap and pulled him up. “There is plenty of time for that.”
“Estevan, you keep an eye out. I’ll do guard duty tonight. I don’t think anyone knows much right now, but the rumors will fly.”
“I can handle it.”
“Good.” Slocum pushed himself out of the deep chair and with his arm over Willa’s shoulder, they went off down the hall, talking softly to each other.
“How will we get out of here? Not that godforsaken hogback trail I hope?”
“We’ll have to go the best way that we can find.”
She ducked and looked back to be certain they were alone. Satisfied acting, she turned around and under her breath spoke, “What does he know about popping her cherry?”
“I’m not certain. Something’s going on there. Her coolness toward him was obvious when I introduced them. I may have to send him on a wild lark if he’s going to be a problem to her.”
“And where was he all that time he was supposed to be catching up with us?”
“Good question. I better find out from her exactly what is going on.”
Willa nodded and opened the heavy door to their apartment. A stiff breeze was coming through the open French doors and thunder rumbled in the distance. An afternoon shower was teasing the mountains. Soon cold breaths of air swept into the room, and goose bumps popped out on the back of her arms as he rubbed them, facing her.
“Let’s get in bed and under the covers.” She shuddered and hugged him, her face on his chest.
He toed off his boots. She fussed with the strings that held her skirt on. He hung his gun belt on the ladder chair. With a knowing wink at her, he shed his pants
and hung them on the other corner of the chair. Her shapely white legs exposed, she reached upward and shed her blouse, exposing her pointed breasts that quaked. Vest, shirt gone, he spanked her fine derriere as he climbed up onto the high feather bed and followed her.
Outside, the wind rustled through the garden, tossing small debris around and rattling the rose bushes. Far away, some horses whinnied as the storm drew closer. He was braced over the top of her, her knees wide spread and his growing erection against her flat belly.
With a grin, he bent down and sampled her mouth. Honey on his tongue never tasted any better. She reached between them, raised her butt enough, and inserted his dick in her gates.
A brilliant blinding flash and thunder crashed so loud, it rattled large pots in the courtyard. The report covered her sharp cry when the head of his throbbing dick passed through her ring of fire. Then the grumble rolled on and on forever as he eased his turgid tool in and out of her. Rain tore at the plastered adobe walls like her hands that clutched him, then raising her butt off the bed to meet his thrust. More wind whistled in the eves outside. Water ran off the tile roof and crashed on the walkways in torrents.
The storm and their lovemaking went on and on until he felt the swelling begin in his testicles, and then two arrows shot him in the butt and hot lava exploded out the end of his skintight cock.
She let out a sigh and collapsed, looking up bleary-eyed at him. “Stay in me a while longer.”
He agreed and propped himself up so as not to crush her.
Outside, the small birds had returned to chirping and the sunlight soon shone—the violent storm had gone on—but not before watering Dona’s flowers and garden.
“Where will you go after we return her?”
“I have no great idea. Right now I’m in your trap.” He winked at her.
She wiggled to stretch under him. “I could keep you right there forever. But I know someday you will have to go help Tom Horn or George Crook.”
“Yes, someday I’ll have to leave. Deputies from Kansas are after me. Sooner or later they’ll come looking.”
“Will the army tell them where you are?”
“Not Crook’s staff, but talk’s cheap at a fort. You get a few soldiers drunk and they’ll tell you the secret details.”
She began to work the muscles and hunch against him. “Let’s do it again. I’ve got an itching needs scratched in there again.”
He went back to work.
At supper, Estria told them that food was a short commodity in the Apache camp. While the people could live on little—they had nothing, especially with their men gone on hunts and even battles that produced little game meat.
“I think they are very tired of war,” Estria finally said.
“But men like Whey and Geronimo won’t let them quit, will they?” Slocum refilled his glass of wine.
“That is true. Those two keep seeing dreams where the white man leaves much like he did in the Civil War. Only now, the dreams are the white man goes in caves. They seal the entrance and the white man can’t ever come back.”
“How easy to get rid of your enemies.” Willa passed the meat tray.
“Only they believe it.” Estria shook her head. “The one thing I learned—they are very content to live in grass huts and under canvas shelters. And with little food, few personal belongings. Ken’yah pawned her Navajo silver turquoise necklace a few weeks ago for a sack of frijoles to feed them. I asked if that hurt her, and she shook her head. ‘Better my belly does not cry than my neck.’”
Slocum agreed, forking more meat on his plate. “They don’t want things better or even more peaceful. This is how they have lived for centuries. At war with everyone. They ran the poor Mexicans out of their northern provinces and controlled it with how many? A few hundred warriors?
“There couldn’t have been many more than that.” At last Slocum put his fork down, his stomach so full he thought he might explode. “The food was very good tonight.”
Everyone agreed.
Estria excused herself, and Dona told her to go back to the room and rest.
The girl paused and held onto the top of the high-back chair. “I am so grateful for your hospitality and all the dangers you have faced coming after me. I am certain that my father will pay all of you for your work in my behalf.”
“I will see to all of that, Señorita,” Estevan said.
“Very good. Be generous,” she said to him.
He nodded.
12
Later that night, past midnight when the others were in bed asleep, Slocum roamed outside the house in the starlight with a Winchester in his hands. Listening to the wind, he tried to imagine who might try to come for her. Finding her was one thing, getting her out of the Madres another.
The afternoon shower had dropped the temperature, so he wore a serape to turn off the chill. He rested on one of the benches that encircled the trunk of a great old oak.
“Señor?”
He twisted to see the shadow of her figure wrapped in a blanket in the dark doorway and nodded. “Yes, what can I do for you, Estria?”
“I couldn’t sleep.” Then, tightly wrapped, she came bare-footed across the flat rock laid for a sidewalk. “Who sent this Estevan after me?”
“Your father’s man, I guess. He was supposed to get the ransom when I found out the amount and bring it back to me. Why, don’t you trust him?”
“No. I—I once had an affair with him. I was much younger then and he was not much older.”
“How did that turn out?”
“You can imagine, can’t you? Him a common pistolero, me the heiress to one of the richest families in Mexico.”
Slocum smiled as she leaned forward and huddled in her covering. “He said he wanted me. Now, who knows?”
“Was he the first one?”
She blinked at him and shook her head, looking like she wondered why he asked. “No.”
“He says your fiancé left after the Indians took you and they broke you in.”
“Good, I don’t need him anyway. Francisco is such a donkey ass who my father thought could run our family business and would make me a good husband. Frisco thinks he’s a lover and lady killer.” She wrinkled her nose. “He has a small dog’s dick, need I say more?”
“No. What should I do about Estevan?”
“Nothing for now.”
“You give me a sign and his ass is gone from here.”
“You may need him. We all may need him to even get out of here.”
Slocum agreed. “Good night, Estria.”
“Good night, Señor.”
A short while later, satisfied there was no immediate problem, he undressed, then crawled in bed to discover Willa’s silky bare warm skin under the covers. His hands ran over her nakedness and she rolled on her back to face him with a sleepy “Yes” escaping her lips.
“The Apache didn’t get her virginity and neither did Estevan,” he whispered in her ear.
“How did you find that out?”
“We talked tonight.”
“Who took it then?”
“She never said. But not the Apaches or Estevan.”
Willa laughed out loud. “Our little lady is no helpless thing.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“Was it you who popped hers?”
“Not guilty.” He leaned over and kissed her hard on the mouth.
Recovering her breath, she gouged him in the side. “Pop mine then.”
“I can do that.”
And he did.
He slept till noon, then bathed and shaved. If he didn’t move quickly, from this point on he’d draw trouble like a dead cow at a water hole drew flies. Estria would need a good horse—Estevan could go find supplies and pack animals and could handle that chore, too. He’d need to hire three or four tough men. Joaquin would help him do that. And they needed to leave in the morning.
Slocum found Estevan in the great room. They sat at the end of the dining table and discussed their
needs. Willa joined them.
“We better plan on two weeks’ supplies for eight people,” Slocum said.
“Eight?”
“Yes.” Slocum knew he was figuring long, but better that than be short. “I intend to hire some men to ride with us.”
“But how will you know—”
“I’ll get men who you can buy their loyalty—today.”
Estevan shrugged. “So much to pay for in so short a time.”
“Add some extra saddle horses too. By dawn, with or without things, we ride out of here.”
“Sí.”
Estevan immediately left for town.
Willa nodded when he was gone. “What part is he playing? The loyal pistolero? Or something else?”
“I think he wants a chance to win her back. But I doubt he turns her head. She considers her affair with him as an inexperienced mistake the way I get it.”
Willa nodded.
“I must go see Joaquin and find some men.”
“I’ll ride along and hold the horses.”
“Tell Dona we’ll be back. I’ll go get my rifle just in case.”
She agreed.
In a half hour, they were at the cantina. Slocum left Willa with the horses at the base of the stairs. He was in the cantina talking to his blind friend at a corner table.
“Four men, I know I can get,” Joaquin said. “They may need rifles. They are not boys and would be tough under fire.”
“I can get them rifles. A hundred pesos per man.”
“For that much money you could hire a generale from the Mexican army.”
“Just so they are at Dona’s casa before dawn.”
“I’ll tell them to bring their horses in case your man can’t find them.”
“Yes. I’ll add fifty a man if they ride their own.”
Joaquin whistled. “Four men will be there before dawn—that you can trust.”
“Gracias, mi amigo.” They shook hands and Slocum left the cantina to hurry down the stairs. She was already mounted and handed him his reins.
“The deal is set?”
“Yes, ma’am. We will meet them in the morning at the casa.”
Estevan lived up to his duties to return with horses, mules, and supplies in the packsaddles. Willa went over the list of things he’d purchased. He lacked the four rifles, so Slocum rode back and bought them—two were used, but both had been well cared for—and several boxes of cartridges. His armory’s cost was put on the charges to the Salazar hacienda. Thank goodness their credit was good in Sonora. He rode back and handed them one at a time to Willa, who came out to greet him.
