King of Spades

by Frederick Manfred

  She quivered under his touch.

  He felt compassion for her; withdrew his hand.

  Her face softened.

  With a fingertip he touched her right brow, then her left brow. He touched her right shoulder tip, and, lifting himself, touched her left shoulder tip. He touched the point of her right hip, then her left. He touched her right ankle, then her left.

  A smile, wondering, opened her lips.

  He kissed her nose tip. He kissed her eyes, first the right, then the left.

  She closed her eyes. The smile grew.

  He traced a fingertip, lightly brushing, over each dark brow. He ran a fingertip down the length of her nose.

  The smile awakened dimples in her rose-brown cheeks.

  He kissed the left pink edge of her lips, then the right edge. He kissed the saucy double-u of her upper lip, then the faint cleft of her full nether lip.

  Her eyes moved under her closed lids like kitties stirring under blankets.

  He kissed her nether lip again, suckled it a little a moment. He let his tongue glide along the wet inner edges of her lips.

  Shock of pleasure tightened and lifted her neck muscles.

  He did it again.

  Her tongue tip emerged fleetingly.

  He waited.

  Her tongue didn’t quite touch his again. Her eyes volved and revolved under their lids.

  He touched her lips with his tongue again.

  She raised a little brown hand against him.

  He hung over her, admiring her. He couldn’t help but make comparisons. When Katherine looked angry, or tired, or sad, wrinkles appeared at the corners of her lips and around her one good eye. Katherine showed age at times. When Wild Girl looked angry, or sad, or tired, there was only youth’s firm skin. No wrinkles. When Katherine smiled, deep, the corners of her mouth sometimes drew back into knotted wrinkles. When Wild Girl smiled, deep, her lips drew back into baby dimples. How old was Katherine, really, if Wild Girl was, say, fourteen? Or was it that Katherine looked old for her age? It hurt him to think of how Katherine’s beauty couldn’t hold a candle to Wild Girl’s beauty. Katherine’s skin was slightly parched no matter how much makeup she put on, even a little stringy. Wild Girl’s skin was welling and full.

  Wild Girl moved under him.

  He caught a whiff of her out of the open neck of her doeskin dress. Again it was of Wild ferns lightly pressed, of silver sage caressed with strong brown fingertips. It made a man think of galloping. Of gathering up mares. The alluring smell of puccoons was as nothing compared to it. The greening scent of the wild fern and the holy aroma of silver sage had it all over the puccoon.

  Wild Girl’s eyes fluttered open.

  He saw the awakening in them. In Katherine the same look was one of plain lust.

  He touched, stroked, brushed Wild Girl’s doeskin dress. So supple did the leather dress make her feel, it was as if she had on two skins, the one over the other.

  Once more, impulsively, with a boy’s groan at being restrained too long, his hand stole under her dress. He touched, brushed, cupped her plum breasts. He moved a peaceful hand between her breasts up to her throat. He played at choking her. He kissed the pink edges of her open mouth.

  She swelled against him.

  He slipped an arm under her. With his free hand he touched her softest hair, where it was barely tufted and cleft. Again the differences. Where Katherine had a love’s entrance as easy as swimming, Wild Girl had a knot as intricate as a new bud on a wild rose.

  Wild Girl quivered.

  The quivering set him off. With a slow boyish surge, he loosened his gunbelt and opened his clothes and rose over her. He divided her. He possessed her. Tightness made the throat and tongue rhue aloud.

  She received him with a maiden child’s cry. The precious vessel of her loving received him.

  A high hot sun broke in on their inner drifting. Both stirred, the one above and the one beneath. Both turned their heads at the same time. They gazed at each other.

  She was the first to smile. It was a smile full of wonderful awakened affection.

  Ransom returned the smile. Wild Girl was the one meant for him all right, the one he’d originally intended to save himself for. He’d been right back then to want to save himself until he’d met the right one. Sam had been wrong.

  Wild Girl’s smile deepened, widened, full of giving.

  While poor Katherine was not for him. She was wrong for him.

  Wild Girl pushed her slim brown fingers into Ransom’s beard, and laughed.

  It was crazy to think the Army might be able to keep the white man out of the Black Hills. Where gold, money, was involved the white man was worse than a hog. As even he himself was. So eventually Katherine was bound to follow him to the Hills. And it was equally crazy to think that Katherine might fall in love with someone else. The fact she had kept all men at arm’s length until he’d come along was proof of that.

  Wild Girl gave his beard a tug, and laughed some more.

  Hope that Katherine would die somehow? Get killed on the way over by Indians? Road agents? Horrible thought. Because he still loved Katherine too. Different. But there. Besides, he was tied to her. He had lived with her, had shared selves with her, had dreamed dreams of a future happy time with her.

  Wild Girl lifted her hips under him. She was surprisingly strong. She was one of those who could bear a man all day. The taut nubile bundle of her in his arms was an Eden delight.

  He withdrew. Modestly he closed his clothes. He stretched out on the grass beside her.

  She sat up. She paused. She moved privately beside him. Then she said with gleeful pride in her voice, “Poge we.”

  After a moment he understood. She’d bled a little. She’d been a virgin all right. “Damn that Sam.”

  She covered herself. She got to her feet. Her brown face was all smiles for him. She held a finger to her mouth, gesturing that she would be back in a moment. She picked up her knife and was gone.

  He lay back in the grass. He smelled again her natural wild perfume of ferns and sage. Mingled in with it was the wonderful scent of fresh girlish flesh.

  She was back. She touched him on the shoulder. There was on her face the look of a woman who’d discreetly arranged things.

  His gullet twisted in him. What would Katherine think?

  “Uwa.”

  He tried to smile. “No savvy.”

  Wild Girl gestured for him to get up and follow her.

  “Uwa.”

  “You’ve got something to show me?”

  She cocked her head a little, smiling; again gestured for him to get up and follow her.

  “All right.” With an agile roll he came to his feet. “Coming.” He buckled on his gunbelt and clapped on his sombrero. He stashed his tools off to one side. “Let’s see what you got in mind. I trust you.”

  She led him back down the gulch, past the several spots where he’d panned for gold. Her slim hips swung bewitchingly girlish ahead of him. He couldn’t get over it that he’d possessed them. He loved her. Exhilaration opened his eyes to a high wide green.

  She turned up a short side gully.

  “Seems to know where she’s going.”

  Some fifty feet into the gully she stopped beside a wall of what looked like crumbling milkstone. She pointed. “Mazaskazi.”

  He looked at the whitish rock wall; looked at her; looked at the wall. The white wall was about as large as a store-front. It was as bare as a tooth.

  “Mazaskazi.” Then, to make it perfectly clear what she meant, she reached down to her right legging and from a little side pocket drew out something. She held it out to him.

  He stared. A locket lay flashing in the palm of her small brown hand.

  “Mazaskazi.”

  He took it dumbly. “A gold locket. She really was white once then.” A tiny lip showed along one edge of the locket. With his thumbnail he pried the locket open.

  He found a twist of brown hair, and under it a curly-lettered
inscription. Gently he lifted the twist of hair, the better to read the inscription.

  Erden Aldridge

  He stared at her. “So that’s your name. Erden Aldridge.”

  She gave him a puzzled look. She had expected him to be very pleased that it was mazaskazi she was showing him.

  “Erden Aldridge. I’ll be goddamned.”

  She continued to look at him puzzled. Finally, frowning, she took the gold locket from him, and first pointing at it, she then pointed at the wall of whitish rock. “Mazaskazi.”

  “She’s trying to tell…. ” He stared first at the locket, then at the wall. “It can’t be.” He went over and broke off a small piece of rock from the crumbling wall about the size of a big potato. “But, that’s just what it is. Float quartz.” A fresh gleaming piece of yellow metal the size of a watermelon seed stuck out of the rock. Yes. He broke off more of the rock wall. More pieces of yellow metal gleamed to view. There were pieces the size of birdshot, pieces the size of watermelon seeds, pieces the size of chicken hearts.

  “Mazaskazi?”

  He took one of the small pieces of the yellow metal and with a stone in hand pounded it flat on a rock. It was too malleable to be copper.

  “Mazaskazi?”

  Gold. Nuggets of gold. He stared and stared. He picked up several more rocks from the foot of the white wall, big and small, broke them on each other. More seeds and more hearts of gold popped to view. By the Lord. His eyes flicked back and forth across the wall of milky quartz. His green eyes glittered. Here was a vein of gold God only knew how deep. Enough gold to run a nation. A true mother lode at last.

  “Mazaskazi? Sha?”

  “Gold? I’ll say.” He stared at her. “Wild Girl, Erden, do you know what? We’re rich. Rich!”

  She folded her hands flat together under her chin.

  “Gold! Gold! Just think.” He leaped up off the ground and cracked his heels together for joy. “I can’t believe it. Just can’t believe it. But, goddammit, it’s true. Boy, wait’ll I show Katherine.”

  “Kazanyan?”

  The sad way she spoke sobered him.

  “Kazanyan?” she repeated.

  Oh yes. Lord. What a picklement he was in now. He could never show this to Katherine. Once Katherine saw this he’d never be able to break away from her. If breaking away was what he wanted.

  Erden, watching his face, frowned with him. What was the trouble?

  He let the raw gold fall to earth. This mother lode belonged to the wild girl Erden. She was giving it to him. They had made love together and now she took him for her man. Also, little Erden was Indian raised, and as such wouldn’t want the white man to know about the gold. Erden would never let him use the gold as white-man wealth. She’d only shown it to him to share a secret with him. It was her thought that the two of them would know about the bonanza together and would go on living in the Hills forever and no man would be the wiser. He sat down on a fallen boulder of milky quartz.

  She stood quietly before him.

  He plucked a solitary spear of grass, bit off the end of it, ran the point of it between his two front teeth. Seeds caught in his mouth. He spat them out.

  She took a step toward him. She quirked her head, trying to understand his mood.

  “Wild Girl, it’s time you and I understood each other. And to do that, you and I’ve got to go back to school. Me to learn your Sioux, you to learn my American.”

  She cocked her head the other way, still trying to understand him.

  He took her by the arm and sat her on his knee. He drew her warmly close, an arm around her bird-slim waist.

  Her gray eyes held intent on his eyes.

  He touched the center of her bosom with the thumb of his right hand and spoke her name. “Erden Aldridge.” He said it again, meaning “you,” by the way he lightly pushed into her a little. “Er-den Ald-ridge.” Then with the same thumb extended he touched his own breastbone. “Earl Ransom.”

  “Anawin?”

  He thought a moment. He picked up a gold nugget and held it up. “Mazaskazi?”

  She nodded brightly at that.

  He pointed to himself. “Ransom?”

  She caught on. She smiled a vivid white smile. Instantly she pointed to herself with her thumb and said, “lea Psin-psin-cadan.”

  “Psin-psin-cadan?”

  She looked around for something to explain the name. She thought to herself a moment. Then she took her two hands and made them flutter about like swallows fleeting by, and imitated perfectly their whistling and crying sound. “Psin. Psin. Weeb. Weeb.”

  “A swallow. Sure. Psin-psin-cadan.”

  “Toya.” Again she looked about for something to explain what she meant. She spotted a blue flower a few steps away. She leaped off his lap, pointed to it, and returned. “Toya.” “Blue. Toya. Sure. Blue Swallow. My pretty little Blue Swallow. Or, like the Indian says it, Swallow Blue.”

  Her brown face flashed a smile of triumph.

  “Blue Swallow. A wonderful name for you. Just right.”

  She sat down on his knee again.

  “Paha Sapa?” he asked. He had to know what she’d meant by that.

  She pointed around at the rocks and the pines and the grass, at everything in sight but the sky.

  “You mean the Black Hills. Now I begin to catch. Sure.” His face flashed a smile of triumph.

  They pointed things out to each other, calling off the names, each in their own language: a pine, a tree, a blade of grass, a rock, a wolfberry bush. They named everything in sight. They laughed together about the way both stumbled over the other’s strange words for things.

  He took the locket and showed her where her name had been engraved upon it. He pointed his thumb at her bosom again and pronounced her white name, slowly.

  At last she tried it. “Err-dann Alt-ritch.”

  He had to laugh. “That’s enough for today.”

  He looked over at where the sun was sinking behind them, falling toward the high ridge where they’d first met. He made the sign for eating, passing the tips of his fingers in a curve downward past his mouth four times, and then for sleeping, inclining his head to the right while holding both hands under it in a line. “Eat. Sleep.”

  She understood instantly.

  “Good. She knows the old-time sign language. All those days Sam spent teaching it to me won’t go to waste after all.”

  She jumped off his knee and signaled she had something else to show him and for him to come along. Her lips were quirked at the corners with the smile of one who had a special secret to tell.

  He followed her, wondering.

  She led the way back to the main gulch; turned down it. Some hundred yards below where his horses were staked out, on the left, she walked toward a pinnacle of granite standing apart from the wall of the gulch. She stepped around it; and vanished.

  “Hey.” He hurried to catch up.

  A cave opened behind the pinnacle.

  “Erden?”

  Then he saw her. She was standing just inside the cave, in shadow, smiling, a modest hand to her mouth. The single pinnacle served as a perfect screen.

  He stepped into the cave beside her. A gentle wind, coming out of the deep back of the cave, breathed over them. The gentle wind felt cool in contrast to the warm air outside.

  His eyes adjusted to the semidarkness. Gradually he made out the articles of an Indian home: a willow backrest facing a circle of hearthstones in the center of the cave, various storage parfleches set in a row to one side, dried beef hanging from icicles of crystalline. The floor was covered with several bearskins. The back of the cave, where it became a natural tunnel, was curtained off with a huge piece of buckskin. Off to one side, out of the draft, opened another and smaller room. Its floor was laid with woven sweetgrass on which were spread buffalo-skin sleeping robes.

  Ransom was amazed at the lovely wonder of it all. “Just enough draft to keep it cool and carry out the smoke. With a cozy little bedroom off to one side. This bea
ts all, this does.”

  Erden gave him the smile of the child who’d successfully come up with a truly great surprise.

  “A real hideout. There ain’t a road agent on earth but what he wouldn’t give a pretty penny to know about this.” He gave the rock wall in the bedroom a closer look. “And all of it probably peppered with gold.” He flashed a big smile. “Need some hard cash, Ransom, old man? All right. Chip a piece of your house and have it weighed at the bank. And, at the same time, give yourself that much the more elbow room in it.” Slowly he shook his head at the wonder of it all.

  She touched him on the arm, again gesturing for him to follow her.

  He laughed. “Lead on, my Swallow. After this I’m ready for anything.”

  She led him back to the horses. She pulled up the picket pin of the docile packhorse and motioned to him to do the same with Prince’s.

  She took them down to a bend in the gulch below her cave. A draw led off from the point of the bend, going up into a dense stand of ponderosa. The draw narrowed into a dark defile, then into an awful redstone chasm some thousand feet deep and only a dozen yards wide. The gloom was suddenly deep and profound. They went a short ways, when of a sudden the red chasm opened onto a small glade. The floor of the glade was carpeted with lush buffalo grass and veils of daisies. In the falling sun the light-green grass and the yellow daisies seemed to grow out of a thick mat of blue shadows. A small trickling stream ran down the center of the glade. The red stone and the dark-green pines and the autumn-touched quaking aspen gave the little glen the aspect of such glory as to make Ransom’s eyes widen high and green.

  “By the Lord,” Ransom whispered. “A perfect little park. All we need to do is build us a little pole fence across the pass here and we’ve got our horses safe. Even a panther’d have to be careful how he went in after a horse here.” He gave Erden a great smile. “Girl, this is just like finding the Garden of Eden. The one Adam and Eve lost.”

  The horses neighed with pleasure when they were freed. The horses cropped a few test bites, then threw up their tails and ran around and around in their new grass heaven.

  Erden laughed with delight at the frolicking horses. She made the sign to show that the horses had sunrise in their hearts. Ransom replied with the sign of yes. And together Ransom and Erden fixed a temporary pole gate across the pass into the pasture.