Sure as Shooting

by Karen Mercury

  “It is not easy to describe in words.”

  Whit’s face was glassy, his lower lip hanging stupidly.

  Belle had never been prouder than at this very moment. Her chest was literally fit to bust with pride, as she alone had led them to this point on Mt. Beatitude. Their company had come on foot to this “devil of a place,” finding the towering cathedral spires that signaled an opening to the valley floor below.

  She was more than repaid now, standing on the lip of Mt. Beatitude’s point, abreast with Huntley, who looked upon the grandeur below stoically. Whit seemed about to faint in awe.

  The battalion had already taken to calling Whit “Yosemity” due to his enthusiasm for its natural wonders, and this seemed to shame Whit into silence. But now his silence was due more to a reverence that threatened to render him catatonic.

  Huntley asked, “What do you want to name the valley? We’ve agreed to let you name it, since you’re by far the most awestruck of any of us.”

  Whit didn’t appear to hear Huntley but stepped even closer to the edge of the precipice. Belle estimated the floor below to be at least a two-thousand-foot sheer drop, so she moved closer to Whit, seeing that his eyes were laden with unshed tears. A gossamer haze filled the valley, and heavy gray rainclouds dimmed the higher peaks of the view, but that only increased the grandeur spread out before them. Shadowed by the setting sun was the most majestic cliff face of all on the opposite side of the valley, a solid granite spire rising vertically from the snowy trees that cradled its base. Indians had named this pinnacle Totaukons after the cranes that made nests in a meadow near the crest. Half a mile across the valley floor from that monolith were the towering cathedral-like spires Belle had mentioned to Huntley so long ago. From the granite lip of these tumbled a lacey waterfall that disappeared a thousand feet below in a torrent of foam wafted by the breeze. It truly was the most wondrous vista Belle had ever beheld.

  “See Yosemite and die,” uttered Whit. “I can’t attempt to describe it. These stupendous walls confuse my mind.”

  Huntley smiled. “You wish to call it Yosemite? I expected to see some terrible abyss, from the descriptions of the Indians.”

  “Yes,” said Belle. “Now you know why they tried to keep us away for so long.”

  “Doc,” Huntley called in a more forceful tone, but the physician didn’t flinch a muscle. “You’d better wake up from your dream there, or you may lose your hair. I have no faith in Tenaya’s opinion there are no Indians about here.”

  Huntley and Belle looked at each other and shrugged. They moved away from the cliff’s edge, Huntley saying, “We’d best hunt up the Grizzlies before we go back to camp for the night. We’ll have plenty of time to look around this hole later.”

  “You’re not impressed by the glory of this view?”

  With his back to the grandest valley on earth, Huntley pursed his lips skeptically. “I’ve spent decades hauling myself across this grand continent. I’m exhausted, Belle. I’m getting of an age where the attractions of a hot fireplace and a warm bed impress me more than anything else.”

  “Yes. After spending an entire year sleeping on blankets of rabbit and squirrel, I must say I see your point of view. We should make a move to the valley floor tomorrow, but be careful not to flush our game before we get within rifle-shot.”

  Huntley nodded. “I’ll caution the guards to be vigilant. The Grizzly scouts may visit us tonight to stampede our horses.”

  Earlier that day they had come upon a deserted Grizzly encampment where the body of José Juarez had been laid out, cold as a wagon tire. It was curious how the body had been left in the open when the usual ceremony was to burn the dead upon a pyre. Huntley posited that the other Grizzlies had become fed up with Juarez’s ways. If they failed to burn the body, the poor spirit would hover about for eternity, to the irritation of friends as well as enemies.

  Suddenly from behind them came Whit’s voice, alert and tickled to death. “If my hair is required, Major, I can depart in peace.” Belle had never seen such a beatific expression on his face. “I’ve seen the power of a supreme being. The majesty of his handiwork is in that ‘testimony of the rocks’ over there.” He gestured at the towering monolith. “That rock is the captain of them all. I’ve entered God’s holiest chapel. The captain illustrates that with more eloquence than any priestly harangue.”

  Belle and Huntley indulgently regarded their addled friend for a few moments. Belle took his arm and laid her head on his shoulder.

  Huntley said, “You’re soaring too high for me, Doc, and for yourself as well. We’d best pay attention to this trail, or we’ll go soaring over these slippery cliffs.”

  * * * *

  Two days later, the company was securely on the valley floor, riding upriver along the shores of the Merced.

  To guard against an unpleasant surprise, Belle and Huntley had agreed to keep scouts in advance and upon their flank. Belle rode abreast of Huntley as several men unintentionally “washed their laundry” in the river. At first this was cause for great hilarity every time a man took a swim, but as icicles formed on the brims of their hats, the boys began to snarl and holler at each other.

  Belle was lost in her own chapel of holiness. She felt as though she could ride forever through this frozen white wonderland like a lost girl wandering in a fairy tale under pine boughs heavy with snow. She focused on her campaign’s goal, but her thoughts kept returning to her most recent images—inhaling Huntley’s beautiful prick while Whit impaled him on that monstrous penis. She had committed that act several times with her French beau before her marriage and it had always stimulated her, but that paled in comparison to the fulfilling sensation of sucking on Huntley’s admirable cock.

  It must have been the depravity of having another man’s penis up his ass, but Huntley had barely been able to contain his seed before erupting in her mouth. And the bulk of his load! Belle giggled to herself as she rode along on her horse. His explosion had been so forceful the semen had spurted from her nose. She looked from side to side, wondering if any of the “boys” were guessing her thoughts.

  She wondered how she would deal with her brother Bud. While he might look favorably upon her gallivanting about with the major, Bud’s recent accusation that Whit was a lowly red man snake didn’t sit well with Belle. She had no intention in the world of ceasing her relationship with Whit. He was an educated, intelligent, worldly, and gracious man, and already her emotions for him ran deeper than her feelings for her dead husband. Was this “being in love”? She had imagined she was in love with Ned, of course. She never would have married for convenience, just to get out of Pike County, Missouri. But her feelings for Whit were more powerful and compelling.

  She reminisced about how domineering he was when he whacked Huntley—his superior!—on the ass. She was thinking about his bullish force when she heard Whit call for the rear guard to follow him across an upper crossing.

  She turned to Huntley. “I don’t think Whit should be crossing there. The opposite bank looks awful green and slippery.”

  Huntley appeared to consider this. “Yes, but this bottom land has become impassable. He may have found the best way across the river.”

  They went to observe while Whit, with his fervent “love of the beautiful” imbuing his every cell, splashed his horse into the water, its hooves kicking up cascades of clear water that sparkled in the morning sun. It was almost charming to watch, Belle and Huntley smiling like proud parents. Sashaying up the opposite slope, Whit started to utter a triumphant whoop when the sod gave way under his horse’s hind feet. They slipped backward into the rushing waters, both dark solid bodies heading steadily toward a thirty-foot waterfall.

  As Belle and Huntley galloped toward the scene, Whit flailed back toward the opposite shore, his reata coil swinging in his hand. She knew that Whit had gotten into the habit of keeping the reata around his horse’s neck. Belle and Huntley plummeted into the stream along with a couple of other boys, and by the time t
hey reached Whit, he had succeeded in turning the reata around a sapling a few times, thus securing the poor horse, her hind legs projecting over the falls.

  Many long minutes of splashing, stomping, and shouting later, Huntley managed to secure another reata around the horse’s hind legs, and they walked the poor stricken creature, drawing the reata, so she could recover her feet. But Whit’s surgical instruments and medical bag had been attached to her saddle, so they had to remove everything to dry.

  Huntley sent the command ahead with Captain Phil Din. The trio examined Whit’s damaged stores and wrung out his blankets while the horse shook herself off, shivering.

  “I’m glad the sun is shining, and there is not much breeze.” Belle had laid her bear fur robe on the rocks to dry next to the men’s greatcoats and gloves.

  “We should continue on in our wet clothes,” Huntley asserted. “It’ll take hours for everything to dry, and we can’t afford that.”

  The surgeon said, “Let me at least air out my medicines, figure out which ones were destroyed. Hey. Terrell told me that at the last abandoned village, they found baskets of burnt, hulled acorns.”

  “Yes,” said Huntley. “Natives like burnt acorns as much as Yankees like burnt beans, so our idea to starve them out must be working if they’re eating those.”

  Belle added, “But they hull the acorns for transportation. They must have been taking them to some distant village.”

  Huntley straddled Whit’s saddle that they’d placed on the rocks, rubbing tinned bear grease into the seat to waterproof it. With only the thin covering of his soaked shirt plastered to his brawny chest, a smattering of silken hair peeking from between the undone buttons, Belle was getting hot again. Huntley said, “When I asked him about the acorns, Vowchester told me that so many questions made his head hurt.”

  Whit rose from where he squatted next to his medical bag and swaggered over to Huntley. With hands on hips, he looked down at his bedfellow. “That’s their usual answer for everything.” Belle, too, paused. She already knew Whit well enough to interpret that keen, assessing look in his face when he had an idea. And this idea was indeed crafty, she surmised. “Rub grease into the saddle horn,” he instructed Huntley.

  Huntley proceeded to do so, with erotic results, his palm pumping the horn as though he milked a cow. Humorously enough, he continued to prattle on, “Vowchester can barely speak English, so he’s not much use as an interpreter. Where’d you get this absurd buckaroo saddle, anyway?”

  “Some fellow in San Francisco,” said Whit.

  “We ought to get you a regular Spanish saddle. Do you really need this saddle horn to hang onto? You’re a good enough rider by now.”

  Whit dropped to his knees so abruptly, Huntley looked up and shied back against the saddle’s cantle. “I need the saddle horn so we can swing under the willow trees,” he said with conviction.

  Belle thrilled with the knowledge something stimulating was about to happen. “Swinging under the willow trees” was a position in her pillow book, her favorite position. She quickly whipped her bear robe so it flapped into place at the saddle’s base, and she curled up between the two men like a circus spectator.

  Huntley looked up. “Under the willows? There are hardly any—”

  Straddling the pommel, Whit snaked a hand behind Huntley’s neck and kissed him fully. Belle always reveled in the sight of the two men twined together, gorging on each other’s mouths. It was fine, because there was no other woman to compete with, no other woman to be jealous of. She didn’t risk losing one man to the other, as they seemed to enjoy feasting on her as well.

  As Whit licked Huntley’s tongue, he brutishly manhandled the erection cradled in Huntley’s buckskins. Huntley let go of the greasy saddle horn and leaned back on his hands submissively as Whit deftly unbuttoned his buckskins, even lifting his ass to enable Whit to slide the pants down.

  Unsure what Whit’s game was, Belle only knew that in “swinging under the willow trees” the man was impaled upon a dildo affixed to the swing’s seat. As she kneeled up behind Whit to unbutton his broadfall, his intent became clear. She swiped a long arm to grab the tin of bear grease, pressing three fingers into it. At these frigid temperatures it was sticky as pine tar, but once her hand warmed it, it liquefied nicely. She had used it to grease wagon axles and as a hair pomade, but never as she was now—coating the buckaroo saddle horn lovingly, as though it was a long, curved prick.

  She fully expected Whit to settle himself down on the horn, so she gasped and fell on her behind when Whit suddenly took hold of Huntley by the upper arms and lifted him. Whit fell back in front of the pommel as well, setting Huntley down upon the saddle horn.

  Huntley settled with a grunt. With half-closed eyes and a remote grin, he muttered, “Now I’m swinging under the pines.”

  “That’s it, Major.” Whit encouraged his friend to bounce up and down on the horn, riding it like the native Californio Spaniards rode, with such short stirrups they were practically kneeling in the saddle. Belle curled herself around Whit’s broad back to watch, breathing steam against his neck. Huntley’s cock bobbed enticingly as he braced himself on the pommel and fucked the horn, his head thrown back in enjoyment. Whit whisked the tin of grease from Belle’s paw, and he greased up Huntley’s pole with two fists from stem to stern. “You like it when everyone admires your big cock. You liked it when I slapped this big tool.” He smacked it now in demonstration, and Huntley flinched with pleasure. “It gets bigger every time I spank it. Look at this big, fat, beautiful prick, just dripping with hunger. You’re riding that shaft like it’s a fat cock sliding up your ass.”

  Belle reached around Whit to unbutton Huntley’s shirt. She wanted to see his nude chest as he lewdly corkscrewed up and down on the saddle horn. Yanking the edges of his shirt apart, she rubbed each tight, beaded nipple with her greasy thumbs then became afraid he’d orgasm right there in Whit’s fists, the way he twitched and hissed like a man possessed.

  Whit applied a dollop of grease to Huntley’s glans, rotating his thumb about. “You liked having a long, thick cock up your ass, didn’t you, Hunt?”

  Huntley grinned lopsided as though he were oiled, eyes barely focusing. “I like being speared by a red man’s long tool.”

  “Well.” Whit grinned with an evil intent. “Then maybe you’d like spearing a red man.”

  Belle was utterly taken aback when Whit rotated like an acrobat so he faced her, gripped the base of Huntley’s cock, and sat right down on him.

  Gyrating his hips lasciviously, Whit sank down in pleasure with heavily lidded eyes. Huntley, however, seemed to wake up, cinching Whit’s hip in his claw and groaning something fierce.

  “Whit,” Belle said in awe.

  Whit grinned at her casually, as though he were merely out on a lark shooting squirrels and not getting fucked up the anus like a deviant sodomite.

  And it roused Belle to untold heights of lust. It was true—Europeans certainly had different and interesting ways of doing things, and this was a trick that could only have been learned in Europe. But how could she participate? She could suck—

  “Climb aboard, Miss Belle.” Whit hitched his chin to indicate she should…what? What was he referring to? What was she supposed to—Grabbing her by the arms, Whit lifted her so she straddled him as well, the wet mush of her pussy mashing up against the underside of his massive cock. Oh, Dear Lord. Did he mean to fuck her with that thing? Belle boldly bucked her hips up and down across the enormous pole.

  “You fill me with awe and envy,” Whit said, his gaze fixated on her face.

  She recognized that as a translation from her pillow book. Whit must have found some willing riceman miner to translate the book for him. That he had the intellectual curiosity to accomplish this sent a rush of pride through Belle, and she grabbed his cock at the base to point it toward her cunt. She struggled to remember other lines from the book. “Even though you know this is wicked of you.” With a grunt and much eye-rolling, she i
mpaled herself on the mammoth penis.

  She had never been filled like this before, and she found she had to relax, to allow the walls of her cunt to expand to accommodate him. Perhaps because she’d once given birth, this occurred swiftly, and she was soon vaulting herself up and down around the giant appendage.

  Whit said, “But I suppose this dream of mine is rather absurd.”

  Belle discovered if she merely hovered with her pussy enclosing Whit’s cock, the jouncing Huntley was giving him from behind set up a rhythm. In tandem the two men fucked her. All she had to do was grip Whit’s shoulders and squat over him in order to be reamed like a salacious prostitute. “Only you can see what feelings hide within my heart.”

  Whit’s eyes sparkled. “Now I can tell what she is really like.”

  “Oh, by Saint Michael!” Huntley growled. “Will you stop it with your asinine poetry and just let me—Ah!”

  Belle knew by his strangled cry that Huntley was coming, one naked arm clutching Whit’s chest. She could feel his pelvis shuddering all the way into her womb, and this set off a reaction in Whit. The sensation of Huntley erupting inside his asshole must have been sublime, for now Belle felt Whit’s cock jerk and twitch inside of her, and she sank down onto the prick with many short and urgent strokes designed to milk him to the utmost.

  Whit came with a great shuddering inside of her, his semen splashing against her womb. Belle didn’t mind not having found a sponge to soak it up. It was enough to feel him surrender inside of her, knowing that Whit trusted both her and Huntley enough to make himself so vulnerable.

  When she felt she had fully expended him, Belle softly kissed his shapely lips.

  Whit said, “I love you, Miss Belle.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Vague forms danced about on the opposite bank, darting from tree to tree.

  They had passed Whit’s beloved monolith they were now calling El Capitan, and the river here was a seething, impassable cascade. The five Indians were outside of rifle range, and when Huntley called a halt to the column and the Grizzlies knew they were discovered, they freely came into the open and displayed themselves, taunting the Yankees with obscene gestures that referred to copulation of a base nature.