Bowie's Knife

by Jon Sharpe

  “Yet you’ve been married more than once, I hear,” Lester threw in.

  “What does marriage have to do with true love?”

  Dandy wasn’t paying attention to them. She was reverently running her hand over the oak case and now she tilted it to look at the bottom. “There aren’t any markings to show who made this.”

  “Who cares about the case?” Sarah said. “It’s the knife that counts.”

  Dandy drew it closer and delicately opened a tiny bronze clasp. She gripped both ends of the lid, took a deep breath, and slowly raised it.

  Fargo saw her eyes widen. He couldn’t see why; the lid blocked his view. When she sat there staring, he prompted her with, “Well?”

  “Yes. Say something, consarn you,” Lester said. “Don’t keep me in suspense. Will we waste more of Father’s money or not?”

  “Waste?” Sarah Patterson said.

  “Come see, both of you,” Dandy said, beckoning.

  Fargo came around the table on the right, Lester on the left.

  “It can’t be,” Lester said.

  Fargo had to admit the knife appeared authentic. It was old, for one thing. The hilt was well worn. He guessed the blade to be nine to ten inches long and half as wide as his palm. A guard between the blade and the hilt prevented the hand from slipping during a fight. But it was the blood that piqued his interest. Blotches marked the blade, from tip to guard, the red long since faded to a rust hue.

  “It has to be a fake,” Lester said.

  “Are you suggesting that I’m trying to dupe you?” Sarah Patterson testily asked.

  “My apologies,” Lester said. “I should be more respectful of my elders.”

  “I’m commencing to dislike you, boy,” Sarah said.

  “What did I do?”

  Dandy bent over the bowie and respectfully touched the hilt.

  “It won’t bite,” Sarah said, laughing.

  “That it might actually be the knife Jim Bowie wore at the Alamo . . .” Dandy said in amazement. “Who knows how many lives it’s taken?”

  “There’s a little issue of the money,” Sarah said.

  “I’ll make you an offer after I’ve examined it,” Dandy said. “It could take a while.”

  “Take as long as you need.” Sarah looked at Fargo, at a spot below his belt, and smirked. “Whatever will I do with myself while you’re busy?”

  “Let’s eat so I can start,” Dandy said.

  The meal was an unusual mix of steak and potatoes and pinto beans and tacos. Fargo washed it down with two glasses of some of the best whiskey he’d ever tasted. When he pushed his plate back he was fit to burst.

  Sarah Patterson didn’t eat enough for a bird, which explained her figure. “Who wants dessert?”

  “Not me,” Dandy said. “I’d like to get started on the knife. Is there somewhere private, if you don’t mind?”

  “Why would I?” Sarah rejoined. “I hope you don’t think I’d try to deceive you? To what end? I’m quite wealthy, thanks to my dear, departed husbands. I don’t need your money. I merely expect our agreement to be honored.” She smiled and crossed her legs. “To be frank, I don’t know why I contacted your father. I happened to see the case one day on the stand where Charlie kept it, and remembered hearing that your father collects things from the Alamo. And here you are.” She flicked a finger at the case. “It means nothing to me.”

  “But you’re a Texan,” Dandy said. “How can you say that?”

  “I don’t have much interest in the past,” Sarah said. “I live for the present and take what joys I can while I’m alive. I could stare at that knife all day and not get the tingle I feel when I stare at you.”

  “At me?” Dandy said.

  “I also get a tingle from men with lots of money,” Sarah went on with a grin. “When I met Charlie Patterson and learned about his ranch and his bank account, I tingled all over.”

  Dandy appeared shocked. “Surely that wasn’t the only reason you married him?”

  “What other reason is there?”

  “Love,” Dandy said.

  “You must not have heard me earlier. I don’t believe in all that romantic nonsense,” Sarah said, shaking her head in amusement. “It’s hogwash.”

  “You didn’t love any of your husbands? Not a single one?”

  “I loved their money. Each was richer than the last. Charlie had the most of all of them, and the most land, besides.” Sarah cocked her head. “Don’t look at me like that, my dear. He benefited, too. He had my company all those years. And I let him poke me whenever he wanted.”

  “I’d rather not hear that aspect,” Dandy said.

  “Why not? It’s as much a part of life as breathing. We eat when we’re hungry, we hop into bed when we’re randy.”

  “Women don’t get randy. Only men do.”

  Sarah laughed and winked at Fargo. “Listen to her, would you? She’s a child.”

  “I am not,” Dandy said, blushing.

  Sarah gazed fondly at her. “Sweetheart, you can deny it all you want, but when you strip away the pretense, women like to do it as much as men. Sometimes more. I happen to love it more than anything, and with anyone who strikes my fancy.”

  “That’s outrageous,” Dandy said.

  “I prefer to regard it as being honest with myself. Not many people can be. They don’t have it in them. They’d rather pretend life is what it isn’t.”

  “I’m not quite sure I understand.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to,” Sarah said. “You’re young yet. Give yourself time. A few more years and you’ll see that there’s no such thing as love.”

  “I firmly believe there is. Just as I suspect that deep down you really did care for Mr. Patterson.”

  “He treated me decent, I’ll say that for him. I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but when it came to frolicking under the sheets, he was about as exciting as a lump of clay.”

  “Mrs. Patterson!”

  “The truth is the truth,” Sarah said. “That’s why I had to look elsewhere for my fun.”

  Dandy was shocked. “Wait. You’re saying that you slept around while you were married?”

  “I told you. I like it more than anything.”

  “Did your husband know?”

  “Do I look stupid?” Sandy said tartly. “I did him the courtesy of being discreet.”

  They ate their dessert in silence.

  When they were finished, Sarah rose and announced, “I’ll have Miquel show you to your room, Miss Caventry, so you can examine the knife. My maid, Lupe, will escort your brother.” She looked at Fargo. “I’ll take care of you personally.”

  Fargo stared at her bosom and did some tingling of his own.

  A flight of stairs with a mahogany rail brought them to the second floor. Sarah led Fargo to a room at the end.

  “Here you go. As far from the others as you can be. One of us could scream and they wouldn’t hear us.”

  “I try not to scream more than once a year,” Fargo said.

  Sarah pressed against him, her hands on hips. “If I don’t scream at least once a night, I’m a grump the next day.” She touched a painted fingernail to his chin and lightly traced his jaw to his ear.

  Squeezing her bottom, Fargo said, “Keep that up and you’ll be screaming yourself hoarse.”

  Sarah suddenly cupped him between his legs. “What do we have here?” she teased. “You get hard fast. How about if we put this to the use the Good Lord intended?”

  10

  Fargo rarely said no to a willing filly. There had been a few times but so few he could count them on one hand and have fingers left over.

  An inviting smile and a pair of shapely thighs always brought out a hunger in him. He craved the female body like some folks craved pie or cake or opium.

  Som
e would say it was all he ever thought about but that wasn’t true. Sure, he had it on his mind a lot, but it wasn’t his fault he had a pecker.

  A lot of folks thought it was sinful to like to make love. He thought it was loco not to.

  Those same folks claimed there wasn’t any fooling around on the other side of the pearly gates. That once a person reached heaven, they had no interest in “that.”

  To Fargo, that would be sheer hell. He liked pearls, himself. The twin pearls at the tip of a woman’s breasts and the tiny pearl between her thighs.

  When he didn’t answer right way, Sarah Patterson got the wrong idea.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t tell me you’re married or you’re hankering after sweet Dandelion and don’t want to spoil your chances?”

  “I wouldn’t let that stop me,” Fargo said.

  “A man after my own heart. Then why aren’t you taking me into your room and ravishing me? Are you shy when it comes to females?”

  “Shy as can be.” That Fargo was able to say it with a straight face was remarkable. Poker-playing came in handy.

  “Don’t fret. Lovemaking is like riding a horse. Once you learn, you climb on and do it without having to think about it.” Sarah caressed his chin and kissed him on the lips. “Leave everything to me. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  “I could use some lessons.”

  “You’ve come to the right gal,” Sarah said, and chortled. . “I know more than most females forget.”

  Fargo liked confident women. They were much less inhibited. The timid ones had to be coaxed into doing something as simple as touching tongues. Ones like Sarah would suck your tongue down their throat.

  Sarah kissed his neck and his cheek while running her hand up his thigh. “Far be it for me to brag but I’ve yet to meet anyone who has made love as many times as I have.” She paused. “How many times have you done it?”

  Fargo made a show of trying to remember. “Five or six.”

  “Then you’re in for the time of your life.”

  “Shouldn’t we go in the room first?”

  “Oh.” Sarah opened the door and sashayed in like a whorehouse madam entering her private boudoir. “This is one of my special rooms.”

  “Special?” Fargo stepped over the threshold and stopped in astonishment.

  The room was pink, like the outside of the house and the rest of buildings. Only the room was completely pink: pink walls, pink ceiling, pink carpet, a pink dresser and a pink chair, a pink quilt on the bed. Even the bedposts were pink.

  “Let me guess what your favorite color is,” Fargo said.

  “It’s blue.”

  Fargo stared at her.

  “I’m female,” Sarah said, and nothing more, as if that alone explained it.

  “Women,” Fargo muttered.

  “We have our uses. But you haven’t seen the best part.” Sarah walked to a closet on the far wall. Opening it, she gestured with a flourish. “Take a gander, handsome. I’ll put on whichever you like.”

  Fargo went over.

  It was as long as the room and filled from end to end with clothes of all kinds. Dresses, some short and some long, all of them cut low at the cleavage. There were the fancy dresses rich women liked to wear and the plain dresses of, say, a farmer’s wife. There was a riding habit, a maid’s uniform, a cook’s uniform. And of all things, a nun’s habit. Every last garment was pink.

  “Were you kicked in the head by a horse when you were little?” Fargo asked.

  Sarah laughed. “You haven’t seen anything yet.” She moved along the row and selected one and held it out for him to see. It had a strip of fur along the collar and at the ends of the sleeves. It also had holes where the breasts would be and another, larger, cutaway triangle low down.

  “God in heaven,” Fargo said.

  Sarah nodded at the bed. “Shuck your hardware and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right out.” She grinned and moved to another door and disappeared.

  Fargo unbuckled his gun belt and hung it over a bedpost. He took off his spurs and tugged out of his boots. Sitting on the end of the bed, he leaned back to wait.

  In barely two minutes the door opened and in came Sarah, smiling seductively. She had changed,. The dress fit her so perfectly, it must be tailored. “Like what you see, big man?”

  Fargo liked what he saw a lot.

  Sarah’s nipples poked from the holes, and her bush showed at the triangle. The hem hung an inch below her nether charms, and with each sway of a leg, she showed creamy thigh.

  Fargo got a lump in his throat.

  “I had to pay twice what most dresses cost for these,” Sarah said. “The damn seamstress thought it was unseemly.”

  It was about the most perfect dress Fargo ever laid eyes on, and he said as much.

  Sarah laughed and turned in a circle, showing off her body. “I knew you’d like it. I sensed the moment we met that we’re kindred spirits.”

  “Oh, hell,” Fargo said.

  “All I mean,” Sarah said, “is that you and I have something in common. Something that most folks are too sissified to admit.”

  “I don’t like pink,” Fargo said.

  “Not that, silly goose,” Sarah said, coming to the bed. “I mean we both like to screw.”

  Fargo had to admit she had him pegged.

  “That you’ve only done it five or six times is no fault of yours,” Sarah said. “It’s just that most people are too scared or religious to put their bodies to the use God intended. Or else they’re cold fish who’d rather collect coins or some shit.”

  “The mouth you have on you.”

  “You’ll see it put to good use in a bit. But first.” Sarah moved around to the side and crouched and pulled at a drawer under the bed. “Take a gander at these. They cost a pretty penny, too.”

  Fargo peered over, and was dumbfounded.

  The drawer was filled with all kinds of things to use while frolicking under the sheets: whips, chains, handcuffs, a riding crop, several “ticklers,” they were called, and polished wooden manhoods in several sizes and shapes.

  “You use all of this?” Fargo marveled.

  “Only when the real thing isn’t available,” Sarah said, “and it usually is.”

  “None of them are pink.”

  Sarah chuckled. “That would be overdoing it.” She gestured. “Any you’d like us to use?”

  Reaching out, Fargo grasped her wrist and pulled her to him. “The only toys we need,” he said, placing a hand over a nipple, “are these”—and he placed her hand on his bulging pole—“and this.”

  Sarah’s eyes became hooded with lust. “I like it natural as much as the next gal.”

  “You call that pickle collection natural?”

  “I can’t help it you were born with one attached to you and I have to make do.” Sarah bent and rimmed his ear with the tip of her tongue. “How about we get to it?”

  In no time they were naked.

  Fargo had lied to her. He’d been with more than five or six women. He’d been with a lot. But never, anywhere, had he come across a female like Sarah Patterson. She didn’t just make love to him. She devoured him. She was more aggressive than any woman he’d ever met. As aggressive as, say, a man. Sarah gave as good as she got, literally, and then went further.

  She was all over him. Her lips, her hands, her tongue. She left no square inch untouched. She fondled, caressed, licked, bit.

  She would do anything. Anything at all.

  It was like making love to five women at once. Five women who had gone without for a year and were starved with desire.

  Keeping up with her was a challenge. Where a lot of females would lie there like bumps on a log and not do much, Sarah was a bubbling volcano of carnal cravings. Her energy was boundless. So was her hunger. She exhausted him.
>
  The first time they made love with him on top. The second time with her on top. Incredibly, she got him hard a third time, pulled him to the carpeted floor, got down on her hands and knees, and said, “Do me like I’m a mare and you’re a stallion.”

  Fargo did the Ovaro proud.

  Later, much later, they lay side by side on the pink carpet, gasping for breath.

  “Not bad, handsome,” Sarah said.

  Fargo was stiff and sore in parts of his body he never realized could get stiff and sore doing that. He was caked with sweat and he’d swear that he’d pulled a muscle down low.

  “Not bad at all.”

  “I’ve had better.”

  “Like hell you have,” Sarah replied. “There’s no one better than me.”

  “Modest, too,” Fargo said.

  “Why should a person be modest about something they’re good at?”

  The meal and the sex had made Fargo drowsy. He struggled to say awake, saying “And you are damn good, lady.”

  “Thank you, kind sir.” Sarah chuckled and caressed his cheek. “It riles me, though, that I can’t do it openly without people pointing their fingers and wagging their tongues.”

  “You want to do it right out in the street?”

  “Would that I could,” Sarah said, and sighed. “But in the city, any city, I’d be a scandal. There would be whispers behind my back, and I’d likely be brought up on charges of inciting indecency or some nonsense.”

  “If you wear that dress to the market you would be.”

  “I’m serious, damn it. Those who don’t like to screw are always trying to control those of us who do.” Sarah rolled onto her back. Her eyes closed and she said tiredly, “Why do you think I stay at the ranch when I could just as well move to a city and live in a mansion?” She answered her own question before he could. “Out here I have the privacy to do as I please.”

  “That’s nice.” It seemed to Fargo that she had sex on the brain, but who was he to talk?

  “It’s another reason I chose Charlie for my last husband,” Sarah said. She was almost asleep and he barely heard her. “I knew once he died, I’d have the privacy I needed.”

  “Lucky you” Fargo said.