by Jake Logan
“Army’s working me too hard.”
“Well,” she said, leaning back and looking him over from head to toe. “They ain’t overfed you none.” With a wary headshake, she led him and Chako to the table. “Food’s hot. Have a seat and I’ll be right back.”
“What ja going to do about Diaz?” Birch asked in his deep drawl.
“Scout him, I guess, is all. Maybe he’ll slip back up here and I can cut him off.”
The rancher shook his head. “Mexican bandits and bronco Apaches—throw in old man Clanton and hell might be a nice address to have.”
“Clanton giving you any trouble?”
“Naw, but having that many cattle rustlers in your backyard is like living next door to a den of wolves.”
“Guess he’s finding enough cattle in Mexico to steal to fill all his government contracts.”
“He’s bought some up here to finish out some contracts, I figure. Course they average out cheap with the free ones.” Birch chuckled deep in his throat. “Aw, you boys eat now,” he said as she brought them heaping plates of beef, beans, and flour tortillas.
The next morning, after a big breakfast and thanking their hosts, Slocum and Chako rode on. They dropped off into the Santa Cruz River Valley and headed into Mexico. Near sundown they reached a small cluster of jacals called Saint Francis. No church there, but Slocum always thought the name came from the wishes of the earliest settler that maybe if they named it that, the early Spanish church builder Father Kino would put one there. Kino never did.
In the dim twilight, a barefoot woman stood in the doorway of a run-down adobe hut, smoking a corn-husk cigarette. She nodded when they rode up.
“Could a starving man buy supper here?” Slocum asked in Spanish, sitting his horse.
She threw the cigarette down and ground it under her sole. “If he had any money.”
“Oh, we have mucho dinero.”
“You look like beggars to me.” Then she laughed and ran over to hug him when he dismounted. Her large breasts jammed into his stomach, she threw her head back to clear the wavy hair from her face and looked up. “Where have you been so long?”
“Trying to get back here.” He slid his hands along her cheeks until he clutched her face and then held it as he kissed her. She parted her lips and teeth so his tongue sought hers, and her arms tightened around him. She pressed her hips to him so her lower stomach was hard against his upper right leg. Then she separated her legs so she could rub her mound on him. Fire began to come from her nostrils, and when their mouths parted, she sucked for air.
“Mother of God, Slocum—you want food?”
He looked down in the dark pools under long lashes and slow-like he nodded. “Me and my pard ain’t ate since before sunup.”
She buried her face in his shirt and snuggled against him. “All right, I will find you some.”
“Wonderful. Tell me what you’ve been doing.” His arm over her shoulder, they started inside. Chako pointed to the horses, indicating he’d put them up, and Slocum agreed with a nod.
“Doing in this place? Existing is a better word. Nothing.”
“Aw, bet you’ve been partying every night.”
“Partying? Ha, they never have a fandango here anymore.”
“This used to be a live place.” Slocum took a seat on the palette she showed him.
“The young men are all gone or killed,” she said, bent over the fireplace, feeding it small sticks to start her cooking fire again. “Only the old men with weak dicks are left here. No, this place is dead for me.”
Straightening, she shifted the low-necked blouse so the deep V showed, as well as the firm tops of her cleavage. Theresa Montez was in her late twenties, widowed by a knife fight in a border bar that took her young husband Valentine. She’d worked in the whorehouses up there in the territory for a few years; then an old man named Arnold offered her a job cooking at his mine. Slocum met her there—Arnold was killed by bandits and Slocum brought them to justice. Then he made sure she was awarded enough of Arnold’s estate to live on and she moved to St. Francis.
“What are you doing down here anyway?” she asked, twisting around to look at him.
“Looking for broncos and,” he lowered his voice, “checking on a bandit named Diaz.”
She frowned at him for a second then nodded. “The broncos I hope stay in the mother mountains, and Diaz is a big bag of wind with the dick of small pig.”
He chuckled. “You know him then?”
She wrinkled her nose and knelt down on her knees to make tortillas. “I knew him five years ago in Nogales. He swaggered around and told all the girls that worked there in the Loso Luna, ‘I have a dick like donkey.’” She shook her head in disgust and put the first tortilla on the griddle. “Big as my small finger.” She held it up in the candlelight to demonstrate the size and then laughed. “Oh, the grande Colonel Diaz is a mean, dumb ass donkey.”
“He made a raid over the border and tried to make it look like Apaches did it.”
She shook her head, patting out the tortilla between her palms. “He has a place they say in the Conchos.”
“A grand hacienda?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Probably some straw wickiups left by the Apaches.”
He nodded that he’d heard her. Then he looked up when Chako came to the doorway. He motioned for the Apache to join them.
“Chako—Theresa.”
They both nodded to each other and the scout sat down beside him.
“She doesn’t think Diaz has a great place in the Conchos.”
“I think it is at an old rancheria. I was there once a long time ago.”
“Yes,” she said and her face brightened. “The Arterio ranch. There was a spring there.”
“Big spring,” Chako said and grinned. “I can remember swimming in the tank.”
“Cold too.”
“Ah, very cold.”
“Good,” Slocum said. “We’ll go see what we can find at this cold spring.”
Her brown finger waved at him in warning. “You must be careful going there. He may have a small dick, but he would kill you fast as this.” She drew her hand across her throat.
“Yes, we are always careful.”
On her knees making more tortillas for them, she looked at the ceiling for God’s help. “Not always.”
After her meal, Chako slipped away in the night. No telling where he might put his bedroll. Slocum didn’t worry about the boy; Chako slept with one eye open and at a good vantage point when they were away from the safer places.
“I must bathe before we go to bed,” she said and blew out the flickering candles.
He watched her in the dim light, studying the curves of her small supple body as she washed over the surfaces, and each time dipped her cloth in a pan, then wrung it out. At last she wrapped herself in thin robe and held out her hand to him.
“We have business to finish,” she said in a husky voice.
“Yes.”
“I have a great bed outside. Come. I have dreamed of your return to me.”
He followed her out into the night full of crickets and chirping sounds. Under the paloverde, the hammock looked inviting in the filtered starlight. She helped him undress, putting his gun and holster, then his clothes over a straight-back chair as he handed them to her. At last with him naked, she opened the shift and pressed her skin to his and hugged him. He felt her warm breath on the top of his breastbone and her small fingers fondling his genitals.
“Oh, Slocum, I would go where you say.”
He hugged her to him. “But I wouldn’t know where to tell you to meet me.”
“I know. Those two deputies have been here twice looking for you. The Abbots.”
Slocum frowned at her over the information. “They haven’t hurt you?”
“No.” She pressed her face to him. “They must never get tired of looking for you.”
His hands massaging her rock-hard butt, he shook his head. “Never.”
�
��Get in bed,” she whispered and gave him a nudge. “We can talk about that later.”
He let her get on first and then he joined her atop the springy swing. She acted anxious to begin. She made him get over her and between her knees. Scooted down under him, she drew hard on his hardening erection. Raising her butt up she inserted him in the moist gates.
Slocum felt his chest tighten and a great urgency rise in his hips as he eased his dick through the ring and began to pump her. In pleasure’s arms, she threw her head back. The shadowy light showed her mouth open in ecstasy’s relief. The soft moans from her throat spurred him onward.
His prick began to swell rock hard and her ring began to contract. Soon waves of contractions began to meet his thrusts into her pleasure palace. Her small hands clutched him as their world began to spin away into space beyond their surroundings under the stars. The place where the guttural sounds from their throats matched the efforts of two athletic bodies in their drive for some new plateau as one. Where nothing else existed, but his rock-hard sword plunging into her fiery body again and again. Until all was skin stretched tight, to the point of pain, and a tingling in the bottom of his scrotum, drawing all of his strength for its force, then exploding like a volcano out of the splintered head of his dick. And then they collapsed in a spent pile.
“Mother of God,” she whispered and hugged him tight. “Oh, my lover, I want to hold you forever.”
He chuckled and pushed his weight off of her. “Ah, Theresa. We always could make love.”
“But sometimes I forget—” Then she began to pull on his slick, dying erection. “Do it once more, my lover. Then I will let you sleep.”
He bent over and kissed her forehead. “Once more.” Then he looked to the stars filtered by the paloverde foliage for help. But her growing actions were reactivating him. In minutes, he was back inside her, easing in and out and grinning down at her as she tossed her head in pleasure’s arms.
“Yes, yes,” she whispered.
4
Diaz’s ranch was tucked into a valley of palms. The mountains consisted of black to purple rocks, giving it a dark cast, and little grew on them but some greasewood and cactus. Any horse feed had to be brought in, Slocum decided, lying on his belly looking through his scope.
“The last ones kept too many goats and sheep,” Chako said as if he had asked him.
“This used to be a goat and sheep ranch?”
The buck nodded his head, bellied down beside him.
“How many men are here?” He handed him the telescope.
“Only a handful.”
“Where are the rest?” He could see the thatched roofs of the few buildings clustered near some pens and the sun reflected off the water in the large rock tank.
“He may gather them from other villages when he is ready to go on a raid.”
“That’s an idea. How many horses are there?”
“Only a handful.” With a shake of his head, Chako dismissed them.
“Then if we steal them and then find his main herd, we can put him afoot.”
The Apache grinned at the prospect of some excitement. “We could have fun trying.”
“After dark we’ll take them.”
“Yes.” Chako rolled back on his belly and looked intently through the eyepiece. “Mexicans are not as good as Americans as sentries. What will we do with the horses?”
“What if we give them to old man Clanton as a present?”
“Huh?”
“That would make Diaz think Clanton stole them and he can be mad at him.”
Chako went to chuckling. “That general would find he had el tigre by the tail if he tried to attack Clanton, no?”
“Exactly. Can we do it?”
“I think so.”
“Let’s ride back to Saint Francis and get some sleep.”
Chako collapsed the scope and agreed.
Midday, they arrived at Theresa’s. She inquired about what they’d found and busied herself cooking food.
Slocum explained the plan.
“I want to go along. I can hold the horses, bring them to you when you need them.” Excitement danced in her eyes. “It gets very boring in this village.”
Slocum looked at Chako—he nodded as if he didn’t care.
“All right, but we need to nap this afternoon. It will be a long, long ride. You know where he keeps the rest of his horses?” he asked her.
“No. But there is a bosquet and tules north of there where there is some grass. I bet the other horses are up there.”
“Chako, you know where she means?”
“Yes, that would be a good place.”
“How far is Clanton’s from there?”
“A long ways.”
“One or two days?”
“Two.”
“We can make that.” Slocum grinned, satisfied. “It won’t be easy, but we can do that.”
“You are going to deliver them to Clanton?” she asked with a frown.
“I want Diaz to think he stole them.”
“What for?”
“So the general takes Clanton on.”
“Who will win?”
“Clanton—” Slocum shook his head and hugged her. “The old man has a hundred of the toughest, meanest gunmen in the West on his payroll. Diaz messes with him—he’ll damn sure lose.”
“And then Diaz won’t raid over the border anymore?”
“Exactly.”
She hugged him. “And the army sent you here to do this?”
“Only to look, but they’ll unofficially like my plan.”
“I am excited.”
“It won’t be easy and it will be dangerous.”
“I understand. Come and eat. The frijoles are hot.”
She packed them food and loaded some things on a mule he discovered when he awoke from his nap. Before the moon rose, they left her casa, with her riding a thin horse they promised to replace and leading the pack mule. It came at a trot so Slocum’s concern about it keeping up soon evaporated.
They left her and their saddle stock in the canyon below the ranch. That would be the way out if they could get to the horses and drive them away from the headquarters.
“We get caught or anything goes wrong,” Slocum said to her in the starlight, standing beside her stirrup, “you get the hell out of here and don’t look back.”
She glanced away.
He clapped her on the leg through the dress to get her attention. “Hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Be damn sure you mind me.”
“I will.”
He nodded and took off on foot after his scout. Not any cover, so they kept to the wash, using it to keep their silhouettes out of sight. Chako led the way in the soft alluvial fill swept in by flash rains and spread over the bottom.
They soon reached the palms and eased out into the shadowy night among them. Night insects and men snoring were all that reached Slocum’s ears. Obviously the camp was quiet. He saw no fires, and the place sat bathed in the pearl starlight, with the thatched roofs showing up like piles of snow.
“One guard at the corral,” Chako whispered, giving a head toss in that direction.
Slocum nodded. He saw the man wandering around by the pen of horses as if to stay awake. Chako indicated he would go around—Slocum agreed.
In minutes, Chako was behind him and knocked him out with a swift blow to the head.
Looking both ways, Slocum broke from the palms to help him drag the unconscious sentry into the shadows. The youth bound and gagged at last, they listened and waited. Satisfied that nothing was astir, they took bridles from the fence and went into the corral. In minutes, they had two horses saddled and the gate open.
Hissing at the sleepy horses to make them move, they drove them out the opening and headed down the canyon at a trot. Slocum looked over his shoulder to check—nothing. They pushed the dozen horses ahead. The bosquet bunch was next if that was where they were grazing them.
“How far to thi
s place where the rest of them might be?” Slocum asked his man.
“An hour.”
He nodded and looked back. Diaz might be a blowhard, but he damn sure would be mad when he learned his horses were gone. And angry men made tough enemies. He wondered how many guarded the herd.
Theresa joined them. He swapped her saddle over and put her on his roan so she could keep up better than on her thin pony. A big smile creased her face when she reined the horse around.
“No trouble?”
He shook his head. “But we haven’t stolen his main one yet either.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “I am not worried.”
“That makes one of us,” he said and booted his horse after the rest.
At the approaching dawn, he’d fretted about the big steal. Their capture went smoothly. The guards ran off at the first shots, and they had the herd moving north without a hitch. So easy Slocum looked over his shoulder all day for pursuit, but none came, the three of them driving the horses hard, with boiling telltale dust in the sky.
By the time the moon rose that night, Chako said they were getting close to Clanton’s place. The horses were dropping their heads in the dust, exhausted. A few had even slowed and quit, but most were holding a trot in the bunch.
With the three of them waving their ropes to keep them moving, Slocum rode over to his man. “When we get within a quarter mile, we’ll go to shooting and raising hell so they stream in there.”
“Good idea,” she said, pulling up with them. “Reckon he’ll think God sent him these horses?”
Slocum shook his head. “He knows God ain’t doing anything for him.”
The time grew near. The horses were snorting a lot. He’d caught her horse out so they would not identify it. They switched mounts; he left the saddle from the ranch on the black, and Chako did the same when he caught his own pony out and they put both of in with the herd.
“EEHA!” Slocum screamed and went to shooting. The herd threw up its head and flew toward the dark outline of the old man’s big house. Firing wild gunshots, he and Chako took the wings and she rode drag. The herd was going full-tilt when they reined up to let them go on. Lights came on, and shots flashed in the night.
