by Zack Wyatt
There was hesitation in her eyes when she looked upon his nakedness, but her hands and mouth displayed no indication of uncertainty when he cupped the shimmering domes of her firm, uptilted breasts with his palms and lovingly kneaded the mounds of summery flesh with his fingertips. Beneath the taunting brush of his thumbs, her coral-hued nipples grew to thick desire-laden buds—just right for his mouth.
His lips eased from her mouth, and languidly worked their way down the arch of her neck into the broad valley between her breasts—from there to their waiting peaks.
An endless stream of purr like moans and sighs came from deep within the lovely blonde’s throat by the time his mouth again inched downward, past the sensuous well of her navel to the most intimate cleft of her body. There he lavished tongue and lips to prepare her body for him.
When her moans were transformed to sharp gasps of need, he lifted himself on elbows and eased between her waiting thighs in one slow but firm thrust of his hips. There was a slight moment of natural resistance, then she was his.
Sheathed in liquid warmth, he lay atop her, bathing in the marvelous luxury of her body. When he at last moved, it was only at the invitation of her eyes, hands, and lips—and then slowly, allowing her body to accustom itself to his presence.
Gently, her pelvis gradually undulating in rhythm with the motion of his hips, he fed the fire of desire he had awakened within his swamp angel’s core. Ever so slowly, he guided her toward the pleasure that had been locked within her young body for far too long. And when she had fully savored that ecstasy, he allowed himself the same.
As the last trembly quiver of desire subsided, Sands rolled to the side and lay on his back; his outstretched arm formed a pillow for Ann’s head. Above them a full moon reigned with a court of diamond-bright stars in a sea of blackest velvet. The sweet perfume of spring blossoms wafted in the air.
“How far is it to Corpus Christi?” Ann murmured sleepily.
“Several days’ ride,” he answered, his lips lightly brushing her forehead.
“Good.” With a sigh, she snuggled warmly against his side and within mere moments breathed the soft, even rhythm of contented sleep.
Chapter Nine
Jess Mavis’s eyes shifted back and forth in his narrow head as he stared at the letter from Captain Matthew Caldwell. Stroking a long, stringy mustache that dipped well below the corners of his mouth, the ranger glanced up at Josh Sands and shrugged.
“Wish I could help you. This is writing all right and that’s Matt Caldwell’s signature, but that’s all I can make of this,” Mavis said sheepishly. “’Fraid I can’t read. You’re gonna have to take this letter ... and that other pouch ... you’re carrying to Ike himself. Captain Burton can read, write, and cipher!”
Mavis handed Caldwell’s letter back to Sands, who neatly refolded it and slipped it back into the pouch beside his report on Professor Jonathan Peoples and the Mexican rifles. Sands had feared this would be the result when he entered the Texas Rangers headquarters here in Corpus Christi and found only one man on duty. Less than a quarter of the republic’s citizens were literate, according to a politician Sands had heard in San Antonio.
Sands stuffed the courier pouch inside his buckskin shirt. “Where can I find Captain Burton?”
“With the rest of the patrol, along the coast,” Mavis replied. “I’ll be heading out to rejoin him as soon as Willie Cleve rides in tomorrow morning. Reckon you’re welcome to come along if you want.”
Jess Mavis explained that Captain Burton kept communications open between his patrol and the rest of Texas via four riders who constantly traversed the coast between Burton’s position and Corpus Christi.
Sands silently nodded his approval. With only twenty men in his command, Burton could do damn little against a Mexican invasion, if and when it came, except run harassing forays. He could warn the republic of impending danger and give it time to gather an army similar to the one that had been raised in mere days and defeated the Comanches at Plum Creek.
“I’ll be going with you,” Sands answered the mustachioed ranger. “What time will you be heading out?”
“Sunup most likely. Willie will be getting in as soon as possible. Since we were put to patrolling the coast, we don’t get any time off except when our turn comes up on Ike’s courier roster.” Mavis grinned widely and chuckled. “A man wants to take full advantage of what Corpus has to offer in the day and night given to him.”
A smile answered Mavis. Sands understood the dryness of throat and the achy loneliness that plagued a man too long from the pleasures of liquor and women.
“I guess I’m wasting you precious time. I’ll let you get about your business if you’ll just point the way to that boardinghouse you mentioned earlier,” Sands said. “I’ll be spending the night here at headquarters if you don’t mind, but I need to get the lady outside settled in.”
Mavis pushed from his chair and waved Sands to the door of the stucco room. With a tip of his hat to Ann, who sat waiting on her horse, he pointed to the south.
“See them palm trees?” He glanced at Sands, who nodded. “You just follow them for about a quarter of a mile, and you’ll come upon a big, white Baptist church. Next to it is a white house with green trim. Belongs to the Reverend Anse Davis and his missus. Preaching don’t pay much so they take in boarders. Couldn’t ask for cleaner rooms or finer people.”
Thanking Mavis, Sands swung back into the saddle and clucked the buckskin gelding forward. Ann reined in beside him, mischief agleam in her eyes.
“Josh Sands, I heard what you said about staying the night back there,” she said with a laugh when they were out of Mavis’s hearing distance. “Don’t tell me that after stealing my virtue, you’re now worrying about cleansing the sins of my flesh? A preacher and his wife? Surely I haven’t fallen that far!”
“Maybe the reverend and his missus can take some of that swamp orneriness out of your hide.” Sands grinned broadly. “As to your sins of the flesh—leave them to me. I like them just the way they are. And plan to see that they are properly cared for as soon as I get back from delivering this message to Captain Isaac Burton.”
Ann fell silent for a long moment. She glanced down and bit her lower lip. “Then you go after Cotton Blue.”
“I don’t know.” Sands replied with more bite to his words than he intended, or than Ann deserved.
He really wasn’t certain what he would do after delivering Caldwell’s courier pouch. If he were on his own, he would head back to Bastrop and see what he could pick up on the man who had killed Dub Ferris, then hunt the man down like the animal he was. Dub deserved at least that.
Sands caught himself. He was lying. He deserved that, needed that. Whatever had twisted itself within him when he had stared into Cotton Blue’s cold eyes wouldn’t unknot itself until he faced the man again.
Sands glanced about at the frondy palms that grew here almost at water’s edge. But he couldn’t go after Cotton Blue. He wasn’t on his own; he was a Texas Ranger assigned to Captain Jack Hays’s command in San Antonio. He was long overdue in returning to his duties there.
He cringed inwardly as he sensed relief suffuse him. Was it relief or worse—he wasn’t sure. That was what sickened him. He would have to face Cotton Blue before he knew the truth, and he dreaded that more than anything in his life.
“There’s the church—and the house.” Ann pointed ahead of them. “Josh, I know you’ve got to do what you think is right. I won’t stand in your way. But ...” Her voice faded away for a moment as though she searched for the correct words. “But I want to be there when you go looking for Cotton. I think I can help. What he did was wrong; I don’t want you to do the same thing. Bring him in for trial, but don’t murder him. It’d make you the same thing he is. And you’re not that, Josh. You’re not like him.”
Sands didn’t answer, but drew to a halt outside the clean, white house with tidy green trim. Climbing from the saddle, he tied the buckskin to a hitching post, then hel
ped Ann untie her things from behind her own saddle. Ten minutes later, he had secured a room within the preacher’s home and walked from the house back toward his mount.
“Josh!” Ann trotted from the house after him. “Will you think about what I said? Will you promise me that?” Unlooping his reins from an iron ring embedded in the hitching post, Sands slipped the braided leather over the buckskin’s head, then stepped into the stirrup. “Ann,” he said as he pulled himself up into the saddle, “I can’t promise anything. But I will think about what you’ve said. I will think about it.”
Reining his horse northward, he left her standing there in front of the boardinghouse. How could he tell her what he was going to do? He didn’t know himself. How could he explain the cold sweat that broke out on his body every time he remembered the death he had seen dwelling in Cotton Blue’s eyes and the image of Dub’s pistol sight snagged on his belt.
Sands’ heels nudged his mount’s flanks, urging the buckskin into an easy lope. He wasn’t ready for Cotton Blue—not now. But he could do something about that vision of Dub’s pistol.
He glanced at the rifle slung on his saddle. There was a man right here in Corpus Christi who could make certain the same thing never happened to him. If and when he ever met Cotton Blue again, he wouldn’t die because his Colt snagged itself under his belt.
If and when I ever meet Cotton Blue again!
Eduardo Cruz sat on a split log bench outside the low-slung limestone building that was his home and his shop. In his hands, weathered and brown from a lifetime at the forge, he held Sands’ rifle. Methodically he examined the firing mechanism, then the barrel, and uh-hmmed to himself. Next his attention turned to the delicate silver inlay on the stock: a scene depicting three mustangs at a full run on the open plains. He flipped the gun over to examine the scene on the opposite side: three deer bounding over a tangle of thorned underbrush.
“For a man who lives his life among the elements, you have treated this with exceptional care, Pico Burro.” Eduardo looked at Sands, who sat beside him, then handed the rifle back. “Such care warms the heart of an old man who will soon dwell in the heavens with his God. There are many who do not understand that a man places a piece of himself into his work when he shapes a rifle such as this.”
“I’d forget about those angel’s wings, old friend.” Sands grinned as he rose, walked to his horse and slipped the rifle back into its holster. “The way I see it, you’ll probably outlive another four wives!”
“Only four?” Eduardo chuckled. “Which reminds me. Where is Maria? Surely an hour has passed since I sent her for refreshments, Pico Burro! The woman gives me no rest. It’s a lazy one I have chosen for my fourth wife! Maria! Maria where are your manners? Our guest is thirsty!”
Sands smiled as Eduardo ran a worried hand through a shaggy shock of white hair while he called for his wife again. That hair had been snow white when Sands had been but seven years old and the small, lean-built Mexican had worked for Sands’ father. There was a timelessness about Eduardo. In all the years Sands had known him, he had not changed; he had always been old—and the best gunsmith in Texas.
“Maria!” The leathery lines on the old man’s face deepened as he stared at the door to his home, then at his young visitor. “See, Burro! The woman will be the death of me! She is so lazy!”
Sands started to explain that less than ten minutes had passed since his old friend had sent his wife inside when Maria scurried from the house carrying a heavily laden tray.
“It’s about time, woman!” Eduardo waved Sands back to the bench. “A man could die of thirst if he had to depend on you!”
“I thought my husband and his guest might be hungry,” Maria answered softly, her long, black eyelashes batting shyly over deep nut-brown, almond-shaped eyes. “I brought beans and cornbread, as well as tequila.”
Sands returned to his seat just in time for Maria to dip low to serve him and give him a glimpse of two of the most bountiful, melon-sized breasts he had ever had the pleasure to glimpse. Without her eyes lifting to meet Sands’, she turned and served her husband. After placing a fresh bottle of tequila and two glasses between them on the bench, she demurely walked into the house without another word.
Sands’ gaze followed her. Maria could not have been over eighteen years old. And Eduardo was—Sands had no idea of his old friend’s age. The gunsmith looked at least eighty.
Eduardo laughed beside him. “I saw your eye travel that pleasant valley, Burro. While she is a constant worry during the day, an old man can take comfort resting his head on such soft pillows at night. Between each other, when she and I are alone, I call her Sandia.”
Sandia! Sands grinned widely as he watched Eduardo shovel a spoonful of beans into his mouth. Sandia meant watermelon in Spanish—Sands was certain the reference was to the size of those swollen-looking breasts his young wife sported, rather than to any redness of her cinnamon-hued skin.
“Maybe I was wrong,” Sands said with a shake of his head. “With a woman like that in your bed, old man, you just might not be that long for this world!”
Eduardo laughed loudly and poured a healthy round of golden tequila. Three such rounds, a bowl of pinto beans, and bellyful of fresh hot cornbread later the gunsmith looked at Sands and raised an eyebrow.
“Burro, my son, while we love one another as though we were born of the same blood, it has been years since we last laughed and talked. I feel more than old times has brought you to my house this day.”
Sands nodded and eased his Colt from his belt with forefinger and thumb and placed it between them on the bench. Eduardo’s eyes went wide and a soft “ahhh” escaped his weathered lips.
“I’ve heard of these six-shot revolving pistols made by a man named Colt.” He lifted the pistol and quickly disassembled it. “Genius! There are changes that could be made, but it is genius! What is the problem?”
Sands recounted Dub Ferris’s death. When he concluded, Eduardo’s eyes shifted from his old friend to Sands’ horse.
“You require a holster for this pistola such as the one I made for the rifle,” he said as a statement rather than a question.
“One that will hang from my belt,” Sands said. “And will assure that the pistol will slide free without hanging when I need it.”
“But will not fall from the holster when you ride.” Eduardo looked at the ground, searching for something. “Do you require fine stitching or will coarse rawhide thongs, like on the saddle holster, be enough?”
The rifle holster was a single piece of leather, cut to shape, then folded and sown together with rawhide in a wraparound stitch. The design was simple and rugged. “The rifle holster has served me well.”
“When do you need this?” Eduardo found a twig on the ground and began drawing in the sand at his feet.
“Right now,” Sands answered, watching the old man as he sketched his design in the dirt. “I think there’s a bit of the genius in Eduardo Cruz.”
Eduardo only chuckled. “I have a fine piece of stiff tanned bull hide that should do nicely. Look, here I will loop this strap so that it will slide onto your belt. And here I will place a piece of rawhide to tie across the pistol when you ride. And the bottom of the holster will be closed. Nothing for the sight to hang on. What do you think of this? Is it what you wanted?”
“Perfect,” Sands answered. It was; which is why he had come to Eduardo. “How long will it take you to make it?”
“If you leave Mr. Colt’s pistol with me for size, I can have your holster ready by this evening.” Eduardo sat straight and stared down at his design like an artist admiring a completed canvas. “The construction is simple; I must merely cut the leather and punch out the lacing holes. If you want conchos or a design cut into the leather, I will need at least another day. My eyes are—”
“Nothing fancy,” Sands said with a shake of his head. “What you have drawn will be just right.”
“Then I think I should go to work, Burro.” Eduardo rose and start
ed toward the door to his house. “You return at sundown for your holster. If you’re late, come in the morning. Maria and I go to bed early—husbandly duties to perform, you understand.”
Sands smiled as watched the old man move into his house, then mounted his horse.
“Burro,” Eduardo called from his threshold. “You will be careful when you go after this man who killed your friend. Something in your eyes says he is no ordinary man.”
“I said nothing about going after anyone,” Sands answered.
“But you will,” the old man replied. “I did not give you the name Burro when you were a child because of the work you did. It was because you were stubborn as a little jackass! You will go after the man. This I know. I ask only that you be careful when you do. I would hate to think you would be waiting for me when I do get my angel wings.”
Before Sands could answer, Eduardo disappeared into his house to begin his work.
Chapter Ten
Fingers of pink and gold crept into the sky, transforming the blackness of night into the inky blue of a predawn morning. Sands glanced back over a shoulder at the awaking dawn. Something was wrong. If Jess Mavis intended to join Captain Isaac Burton’s patrol in the south, the sun should be rising directly to the left.
“We’re heading due west? Why?” Sands turned to the ranger beside him on a bay mare.
“Thought you wanted to give Captain Ike them papers?” Mavis’s grin was visible in the dim light.
“But Burton’s in the south,” Sands answered.
“I don’t know who told you that, friend, but whoever they were, they need to get themself a compass,” Mavis answered. “If everything’s running to schedule, we’ll join up with the patrol early tomorrow morning at Copano Bay. Take us most of the day to circle Corpus Christi Bay. We’ll rest our horses for a few hours this eve ... maybe get a little shuteye ... before riding north to Copano.”
