Death Valley Vengeance

by James Reasoner

  She sounded skeptical as she said, “Why would you do that?”

  “Because you need help.”

  For a long moment, she was silent, as if she was thinking over what he had just told her. Then she said, “So what you’re saying is that you’re some sort of saint?”

  He felt a flash of anger. “Not hardly. Nobody’s ever accused me of that.”

  “Then you must not find me attractive.” Now she sounded hurt.

  Fargo suppressed his impatience and irritation. “I find you damned attractive,” he said bluntly. “I’d like nothing better than to crawl into that bunk with you right now. But I don’t want it to be just because you feel like you owe me.”

  Now it was Julia’s turn to sound angry. “You’re a damned fool—you know that? I want you, Skye . . . because I want you.”

  Fargo grinned in the darkness. “I’ve been called a lot worse than a damned fool. And that was what I was waiting to hear.”

  He moved closer, reached out, touched warm, soft skin. Julia moaned softly. Fargo sank onto the bunk that was built along one side of the wagon and drew her into his arms. She came to him eagerly.

  She wore only a thin wrapper. Fargo stripped it off of her as he kissed her, finding her lips instinctively in the darkness. He filled a hand with one of her firm, apple-sized breasts. The nipple was already hard. He stroked it with his thumb.

  Julia’s lips opened to his questing tongue. Fargo explored the warm, wet cavern of her mouth as he shifted his hand to her other breast and kneaded and caressed that globe of female flesh. Her hands went to the front of his buckskin trousers over the bulge formed by his hardening manhood.

  Deftly, Julia worked at the buttons of his trousers until she freed his erect shaft. She wrapped her fingers around it and stroked up and down the long, thick pole. Fargo put a hand on the back of her neck, under the thick dark hair, and drove his tongue deeper into her mouth. Her tongue darted around his in a sensuous dance.

  He slid his other hand down over her nude, quivering belly to her thighs, which opened instinctively to allow him to caress their inner softness. His touch moved slowly, teasingly, toward the molten core at the juncture of her legs but pulled back every time. She panted against his mouth as passion rose in her.

  Finally he slid his hand onto her mound and cupped it, enjoying the feel of the thick, silky thatch of hair against his palm. His thumb nudged the tiny bud of hard flesh as his middle finger dipped lower and ran along the damp, fleshy folds of her femininity. He slipped his finger inside her wetness.

  Julia’s hips came up off the bunk as she thrust her pelvis against his hand, seeking to draw his finger farther into her. Her hands tightened reflexively on his shaft.

  Fargo added a second finger to the first one and worked them back and forth inside her. She forgot about caressing him as she threw her arms around him and held on tightly. Her hips began to pump frenziedly as he manipulated her closer and closer to her culmination.

  Finally she cried out and clutched him even harder. Her juices drenched his hand. A shudder went through her, evidently shaking her to her core. It died away slowly, and she lowered her head to rest it on his shoulder as she sagged against him.

  “Oh, my,” she said raggedly a few moments later, when her heavy breathing and her pounding pulse had slowed enough so that she was able to talk again. “That . . . that was wonderful, Skye.” Something else occurred to her fevered brain then. “Oh! But you didn’t . . . you haven’t . . .”

  “That’s right,” Fargo told her. “We’re not through yet.”

  He lowered her onto the bunk and then quickly peeled his clothes off. When he moved into position, he found that she was ready for him, her legs spread wide to receive his shaft. He brought the tip of it to her opening and ran it up and down along the folds, wetting it thoroughly with her juices and his.

  Then with a surge of his hips he penetrated her, sliding into her slowly but inexorably until his manhood was fully sheathed within her.

  Julia cried out eagerly as Fargo launched into the timeless rhythm of man and woman, filling her, withdrawing, filling her again. His own arousal grew even stronger as he pounded in and out of her. The pace of their lovemaking increased as Julia, too, came closer to a climax. She raised her legs and locked her ankles together above Fargo’s thrusting hips.

  She met him stroke for stroke and drew his head down so that she could kiss him. This time her tongue went eagerly into his mouth. Fargo felt himself cresting and drove into her as deeply as he could, holding himself there as his climax boiled up his shaft and burst out into her in a series of throbbing white-hot explosions.

  Julia screamed and clutched him with the strength that only a climaxing woman could muster. Fargo’s culmination seemed to last forever as he emptied himself into her.

  Finally, though, everything had to end, even something this good. As Fargo’s shaft spasmed softly inside her for the last time, he started to pull out so that he could roll to the side and avoid crushing her with his weight. She held on to him, though, with her arms and legs and murmured, “No. Stay here, Skye.”

  Fargo obliged her, lying there for several minutes and feeling the pounding of her heart as her breasts flattened against his broad, muscular chest. He supposed she could feel his heart, too, because it was certainly pounding just like hers was.

  When he sensed that she was ready for him to move, he slid off of her and lay on his side. Julia turned so that her back was to him and snuggled against him as his arms went around her. She worked the soft roundness of her hips back against his groin.

  Fargo cupped her breasts, buried his face in her hair, and nuzzled her neck. She sighed in contentment as he held her. It was a quiet, tender moment they shared as they recovered from the exertions of their lovemaking.

  But the position was not without its own excitements, and after only a short time, Fargo began to get hard again. Julia felt his thickening shaft prodding against her and said in pleased amazement, “Again? So soon?”

  Fargo didn’t bother telling her that they had all night.

  He would show her instead.

  By the time they fell asleep and stayed asleep, it was long after midnight, so it wasn’t too surprising that they slept late the next morning. It seemed late to Fargo, anyway. The sun was almost up.

  He got dressed, climbed out of the wagon, started the coffee brewing and the beans cooking in a large pot. As he sat for a moment by the fire, he thought about the previous night and grinned. Julia had proven to be as eager and inventive a lover as he had thought she would be.

  “What are you smirking about?” she asked from the back of the wagon.

  “I didn’t know you were awake,” Fargo said.

  “Well, I am, and you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Just thinking about what a pretty day it’s going to be,” Fargo said as he glanced up at the lightening sky. A few tendrils of pink-painted cloud showed against the pale blue.

  “It won’t be pretty at all, later,” Julia said as she climbed out of the wagon. Instead of getting dressed, she had wrapped one of the blankets around herself. With her shoulders bare like that and her hair tousled from sleep, Fargo thought she was one of the loveliest women he had ever seen. She went on. “It’ll be hot as hell.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Fargo said.

  She smiled. “Right now, though, with the air still cool and the sky looking like that, it is pretty nice.”

  Fargo nodded. “It sure is. Coffee?”

  “That sounds wonderful.”

  They didn’t talk about what had brought them here until after they had finished breakfast. Then Fargo said, “We’ll head on up the canyon this morning and take a look around.”

  “You’re going to let me go with you?”

  He took a sip of the coffee that remained in his cup. “Well, it’s sort of like it was back in Blackwater. I’m worried about taking you with me, because I don’t know what, if anything, we’ll find up there. But I r
eckon I’d be more worried if I left you here alone. There’s no telling when Puma Jack or some of his men might come along.”

  “I’m glad you’re taking me, Skye. I hope we won’t be separated again while we’re out here.”

  “We’ll see. Why don’t you go ahead and get dressed while I tend to the mules and my horse?”

  “All right.” Clutching the blanket around her, she climbed up into the wagon, then paused just inside it. “Skye?”

  When he looked up at her, she dropped the blanket around her feet, leaving her standing there in all her nude, glorious beauty.

  “There won’t be any more of that foolishness about you sleeping under the wagon, will there?”

  “No,” Fargo said with a shake of his head. “I reckon not.”

  Fargo kept them on the opposite side of the canyon as they passed the spot where the dead horse lay, but he couldn’t get them far enough away so that Julia couldn’t see and smell the corpse. She saw the mound of rocks that marked the dead man’s grave as well, and she was solemn as she handled the reins and kept the mule team moving.

  “I’d still like to know who that man was and why he was killed,” she said.

  “We can ask around when we get back to Blackwater,” Fargo said. “Somebody might recognize the description.”

  He didn’t add that because of the damage scavengers had done to the body, all he could describe was the dead man’s size, clothes, and hair color.

  He was glad when they were out of sight of that place of death. They followed the canyon on into the hills, where it ran for more than a mile. Gradually, the floor of the canyon rose until they came out on a flat, level shoulder that jutted out from the side of the hill. Fargo reined in and looked around.

  The terracelike ledge they were on stretched as far as he could see to the north and south. It was wide enough for several men to ride abreast. He had been right in his guess that many of the canyons connected to a single trail.

  “What is this?” Julia asked.

  “I’ve heard it said that at one time, this whole valley was nothing but a big lake, back in the days when there weren’t any people around here except maybe a few Indians. I reckon if that’s true, this ledge could be the shoreline of that old lake.”

  “As dry as it is now, it’s hard to believe there was ever that much water here.”

  Fargo nodded. “I know what you mean. But if you go out there on the salt flats and dig down a couple of feet, you’ll find all the water you’d ever want. The only problem is that it’s even saltier than the ocean.”

  “I didn’t see any sign of my father in that canyon, or of anyone else, for that matter.”

  Fargo had noticed a few tracks, some shiny spots here and there on the rocks where horseshoes had nicked them, but other than that he agreed with Julia. He thought the tracks he had seen had been left by the men who killed that gray-haired stranger.

  “The ledge is wide enough for the wagon,” he said. “We’ll travel up here for a while. That’ll give us a good vantage point.”

  They were at least five hundred feet higher in elevation than the salt flats, which were below sea level. That old lake, if indeed there had been such a thing, had been a deep one.

  As they moved along the ledge, Fargo looked down over stark, sweeping vistas. From up here he could see the fan-shaped hills, the canyons and washes, the distant salt flats that now shone brilliantly white in the sun.

  As they headed farther south, a surprising bit of color caught Fargo’s eye. It was only a drab green, but even that was rare in this land of grays and browns and tans. As they came closer, he saw a few small bushes growing around a cluster of rocks and knew that within those rocks there had to be a spring.

  He rode ahead to check it out and found that he was right. A spring bubbled out from a cleft in the hillside and trickled down to form a small pool in the rocks. The pool was only about four feet across, but the water was clear and inviting.

  Fargo swung down from the saddle and knelt beside the pool, holding the Ovaro back while he scooped up a handful of water and smelled it. It had a slight mineral odor, but not bad. Fargo put out his tongue and tasted. Finding the water cool and good, he drank what was cupped in his hand and reached down for more.

  Satisfied that the water was all right, he moved aside and let the stallion drink, too. Then he stood up and took off his hat to wave Julia on. She brought the wagon to a stop beside the clump of rocks that formed the pool.

  “This is one of those springs Mr. Jordan talked about, isn’t it?” she asked.

  Fargo nodded as he put his hat back on. “That’s right. There are several of them on this side of the valley, along the Panamints. They’re more plentiful on the other side, but the water’s not quite as good. This is all snowmelt, and it hasn’t had a chance to get much salt in it yet.”

  Julia climbed down from the wagon and asked, “I don’t suppose the spring is big enough so that I could have a bath?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Fargo said, shaking his head a little regretfully. The thought of Julia rising nude and wet from a pond of clean, clear water was a mighty appealing one. “You can probably wash up a mite, though, if the mules don’t drink it dry first.”

  She made a face. “I suppose the animals have first call on the water. We need them more than we need to be clean.”

  Actually, Fargo filled all the canteens first, then let the mules at the pool. Not wanting them to founder, he didn’t allow them to drink their fill but instead tugged them away after a short time. He would let them drink again later.

  Since it was past midday, they ate a cold lunch of leftover bacon, beans, and biscuits. As Julia sat on one of the rocks next to the spring, she said, “It’s almost nice here. In a way, I hate to leave.”

  “We can’t find your father by staying here,” Fargo pointed out.

  “I know,” she said with a sigh. “The water just makes it seem cooler somehow . . .”

  She might have said more, but at that instant, the sharp crack of a rifle filled the air, and Julia screamed as a bullet spanged off the rock next to her hand.

  5

  Fargo’s instincts took over, galvanizing his muscles into action and flinging him across the shallow pool toward Julia. He tackled her, bringing her to the ground among the rocks. She cried out in pain as she landed hard.

  Better a bruise than a bullet hole, though. Another slug ricocheted near them. Fargo said, “Get as low as you can and stay there!”

  Then he sprang up and sprinted toward the Ovaro, who stood steadfast despite the shooting. Fargo heard the wind-rip of another bullet close by his head as he snagged the Henry from the saddle boot. He dived behind another of the small boulders.

  He didn’t know yet where the shots were coming from, or even how many riflemen were shooting at them. Until he knew that, he couldn’t fight back, so he risked lifting his head long enough to take a look around.

  A hundred yards to the south, the ledge that marked the shoreline of the ancient lake twisted around some rocks. Fargo saw a puff of smoke from among those rocks just as another rifle shot blasted out. The slug whined overhead.

  So far, Fargo thought he had heard only one gun, and what he saw seemed to confirm that. Gun smoke drifted up only from that one spot among the distant rocks. It was a good bet there was only one bushwhacker.

  Knowing that didn’t tell Fargo who the rifleman was or why he was trying to kill them, but at least now he knew they were dealing with just one enemy.

  Fargo waited until the bushwhacker’s rifle had cracked again, having noticed that the man’s shots were spaced out a little. That might mean the man was using a single-shot rifle and had to reload after each round. He hoped he was right as he surged up on his knees and fired three times as fast as he could work the repeater’s lever.

  Then he hit the dirt again and waited to see what would happen.

  Nothing did. The bushwhacker’s rifle had fallen silent. Did that mean he was hit, or was he just trying
to lure Fargo into the open again?

  “Skye?” Julia called. “Skye, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he told her. “How about you?”

  “Just scared. Who’s shooting at us?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Could be one of Puma Jack’s men. They seem like a pretty proddy bunch. Maybe even Jack himself.”

  “But why?”

  “Pure meanness, maybe. They might not need a reason.”

  Still, no more shots came from the rocks where the unknown rifleman had been hidden. Suddenly, Fargo heard a loud, raucous sound. It was the unmistakable bray of a donkey.

  He knew a lot of the prospectors who came to Death Valley used donkeys as pack animals instead of mules or horses. These burros, as the Mexicans called them, were small but strong and were almost as surefooted as mountain goats.

  It seemed highly unlikely to Fargo that an outlaw would be riding a donkey. Stranger things had happened, he supposed, but the braying made Fargo wonder if the man trying to kill them was a prospector. Maybe the man had mistaken them for someone else . . .

  “Hey!” he yelled into the silence. “Hold your fire! I think there’s been a misunderstanding here!”

  A scratchy, querulous voice came back at him, raised so that its owner could be heard. “Ain’t no misunderstandin’!” the hidden gunman shouted. “Just a mistake, and you made it by ridin’ in range o’ my rifle, you no-good owlhoot!”

  Movement seen from the corner of his eye caught Fargo’s attention, and he glanced around to see that Julia had crawled around in the rocks so that she could see him. She gave him a confused frown and shook her head. Fargo took that to mean that she didn’t recognize the voice.

  Neither did he. As far as he knew, he had never heard it before.

  “We’re not outlaws!” he shouted. “We thought you were one of Puma Jack’s gang!”

  That brought a burst of profanity so scorching it seemed to turn the very air blue. The rifleman concluded by saying, “I’d apologize for talkin’ like that around a lady, but there ain’t no lady here, only that harlot!”