High and Wild (18 page)

Bear chuckled. “All right, all right, hold on.”

19

H
askell steadied his cock
with his hand. He slid it up against the crack in Judith's ass, touched the head against the furred mound glistening just beneath it, whose petal-like folds had opened for him. It was blossoming in anticipation of the union.

He slid the swollen head of his organ inside the tufted mound, watching the mouth of her pussy expand while the soft, fleshy rim closed up tight around the veined shaft.

She was as wet and warm as stove-heated honey.

“Ah-
ohh
!” she grunted.

Slowly, Haskell slid his hips toward her ass, sliding his cock inside her. Deeper. Deeper.

“Oh, fuck! Oh, God!”

And then he was all the way inside her, and she was groaning and moaning, her back rigid, her face raised so that she was staring straight ahead at the bed's headboard. Only she wasn't staring, he saw as he leaned slightly to one side. Her eyes were squeezed shut, lips stretched back from her teeth.

He slid back out of her, grinning as he held the head of his massive shaft so that it was just touching the outside of her pussy. Her ass quivered. She shoved it toward him. He pulled a little farther back, holding the throbbing head of his dong against her sweaty ass, taunting.

Judith sucked a sharp breath through clenched teeth and lowered her head so that the rich tresses of her hair dangled down to her pillow.

She chuckled deep in her throat as she raked out, “Oh, you're such a bastard! A real son of a bitch—you know that, Haskell?”

He chuckled and then slid the head of his cock back inside her. He pulled it out, shoved it back in.

Pulled it out. Shoved it in.

Out, in. Out, in . . .

Faster.

And then he slid about half his length inside and pulled it out quickly, replacing it just as quickly and keeping that rhythm up until he felt his own hot blood rise.

He thrust his hips against her, ramming his entire length inside her. She gave a deep, primordial groan and dropped her head to her pillow. Haskell reached forward and massaged her large breasts and pinched her distended nipples while he hammered her savagely, like a battering ram.

The headboard tattooed a hard rhythm against the wall.

Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!

Judith groaned or grunted loudly, shrilly, with each violent thrust. When she was nearing her climax—he could tell from the heat and the grabbing of her snatch at his cock—she wrapped her hands more firmly around the wooden spools in front of her and lifted her head and shoulders so that her freckled back traced a delectable S-curve.

“Fuck!” Haskell bellowed as his seed jetted deep inside her.

He continued hammering until he was spent.

Her screams slowly dwindled to moans and then to long, labored breaths, her head and shoulders rising and falling before him.

Bear pulled out of her, rolled her onto her back, kissed her mouth and then each breast in turn. She made deep, satisfied sounds and raked her hands through his hair and across his shoulders, pinching at his biceps and the corded muscles in his forearms, which were stout and dark as hickory posts.

He lay back against the bed.

She hooked a leg over his, slid a hand across his dwindling member, and touched the tips of her fingers to his scrotum.

“Christ, you're big.”

“You all right?”

“No.” Judith laughed. “No, I'm not all right. I've just been savaged by a grizzly after he awakened from a long hibernation and found himself randy as hell!”

She rolled onto her side, curling her legs and facing him, lowering her hands to her soaked snatch. She pressed her lips to his side. “I'll be walking bull-legged till the next full month of Sundays.”

Haskell rose onto his elbows. “Well, I reckon I best pull my picket pin.”

“Why go?”

“I got places to go and people to see.” Really, he had nowhere to go and no one to see tonight, but he hadn't eaten all day, and he was hungry as hell. Besides, he needed a quiet night's rest, and he doubted he would get that here.

She snuggled against his arm. “But we haven't talked business yet.”

“I'm too tuckered to chin about business tonight, Judith.” Bear dropped his feet to the floor. “Maybe tomorrow.”

He felt the bed move slightly, sort of rise and fall on the opposite side.

Judith said, “Bear?”

There was the tooth-gnashing click of a hammer being drawn back over a firing pin.

Haskell glanced over his shoulder. Judith was on her knees and aiming a .44-caliber Merwin Hulbert pocket pistol with a three-and-a-half-inch barrel straight out from her right shoulder. The barrel was angled toward his head.

Judith narrowed an eye and said with what sounded like genuine sadness, “I'm sorry, Bear, but I have to kill you now.”

“Not again.” He sighed, remembering his Larimer Hotel night with Raven. “Why?”

“Because I've already told you too much.” The lines at the corners of her eyes deepened regretfully. “And after tonight, I'll never be able to control you. I do apologize. This is all my fault, God damn my craven heart!”

He turned his shoulders toward her. “Judith?”

“Don't try to talk me out of it. I'm sorry, Bear.”

“Judith?” he repeated, louder.

She wrinkled the skin above the bridge of her freckled nose. “What is it?”

“The popper's empty.”

She wrinkled more skin above her nose. “When could you have emptied it?”

“When I was fucking you.”

She turned the gun slightly sideways and drew it toward her face, frowning at the cylinder. She gasped as he reached and jerked it out of her hand. With a sigh, he flicked open the loading gate and rolled the wheel.

Each brass-jacketed bullet dropped onto the sweat-damp sheets with a quiet thud.

“You should have gone ahead and risked a dry fire,” Haskell said, standing and turning toward her but keeping the little ivory-gripped gun in his hand. He winked. “That would have been the only dry-firin' that happened in this room tonight, though, wouldn't it?”

He chuckled as he set the gun on a dresser.

“You bastard, Haskell.”

“Been called that and far worse, Judith.”

Keeping his eye on her, he gathered his clothes and his guns and dressed. He'd gotten as much information as he was going to get out of her tonight. He'd look into Goodthunder and the gunman named Kane and the freighter Judith had also mentioned, Pink Cheatum.

Not tonight. Tomorrow was another day.

Judith sat back against the headboard, her bare legs tucked beneath her, arms crossed on her breasts, watching him with a dubious, slightly sheepish look. When he'd strapped on his gun belt and two holsters filled with the Russian and the big LeMat, he donned his hat and pinched the brim to her.

“Good night, Judith.”

He opened the door and turned to leave.

“Bear?”

He glanced back at her.

She stared at him a beat, then quirked her mouth and blinked once, slowly. “Thank you . . . I think. If you're here to raise hell with my freighters, though, I'll have you drawn and quartered.”

Bear winked and stepped out into the hall, drawing the door closed behind him. He walked downstairs and let himself out the front door to find both Samson and Rock on the veranda, smoking. Samson stood with his shotgun hanging down his back by a leather lanyard. He was facing Rock, who had a hip hiked on the porch rail.

Rock's eyes were even more swollen than Samson's, and he had a stout bandage on his nose. The bandage glowed in the darkness. His eyes looked like two seashells buried deep in the sand.

Both men turned to Haskell and hardened their jaws, like two bruins who'd just had their den invaded.

“Fellas, nice evenin',” Haskell said jovially.

Neither bruiser said anything as he dropped down the steps to the ground and untied his black horse from the hitch rack.

“Hey, Mister,” Samson said.

“How can I help you?”

“This ain't over,” Samson said, still lisping.

Rock shook his head slowly. “Ain't over by a long shot.”

Haskell swung up onto the black's back. “When you heal up, send for me, and we'll do it all again. I ain't sure how you think next time is gonna go any better for you, but hell, I'll be a good neighbor.”

Haskell pinched his hat brim to the two bruisers, who merely stared at him blankly, jaws hard. Bear backed the black down the driveway several yards, keeping his shoulders square to the men on the veranda. He wouldn't put back-shooting past either one of the plug-uglies.

He turned the horse and put it into a trot down the gravel drive to the main road.

20

E
ven at midnight, Wendigo
was bustling.

Haskell figured that either a freight train had finished hauling a load down from the mines, or there'd been a shift change at the mines themselves.

Maybe both. So he wouldn't run over anybody, Haskell walked the black through the dense crowd of loud, rambunctious, bearded men in canvas pants, heavy boots, and suspenders. Most were smoking and/or drinking, and at the moment there was no shooting.

There were plenty of women flaunting their wares. In fact, Haskell saw several pairs of bare breasts flashed from open tent flaps or whorehouse balconies. He was glad he'd had his ashes so thoroughly hauled that none of the tender lovelies was overly tempting.

What was tempting—had him downright drooling, in fact—was the smell of roasting meat scenting the billowing wood smoke wafting around him. Sometimes the eye-stinging smoke clouds were so heavy they blocked out the stars.

Haskell had to get his belly padded out before starvation did him in, but he needed to get his horse tended to first. Fortunately, a still-open livery barn revealed itself around the next bend in the road, and ten minutes later, he pushed and sidestepped through the crowd, following a particularly succulent-smelling smoke cloud.

It led him to a large mud-splattered tent in front of which a sign protruded into the street on stout posts, pronouncing in ornate red letters: “Pistol Pete's Chili, Steaks, Taters & Beer.” A secondary sign beneath the first read just a tad more discreetly: “French Lessons 50 Cents.”

As Haskell doffed his hat and ducked through the broad open flap, he thought vaguely that by mining-camp standards, fifty cents was right cheap for a blow job. The whore giving the lessons must have a full set of teeth.

The eight or nine plank tables were about half occupied, with a short line of men at the counter that ran along the tent's rear wall. Behind the bar, a Chinese man was tending bubbling, steaming pots on a black range, while a Chinese woman was flipping steaks in a couple of iron skillets.

The air in the tent was so rich with the delectable smells of spicy stew meat, fried steak, and malty ale that it tempered the stench of sweaty wool and unwashed bodies. The food smelled so good that Haskell's knees nearly buckled under the weight of it. He stopped just inside and looked around and then reached into his back pocket for a kerchief with which to mop the sweat and steam from his brow. It was chilly outside, but the tent was warm, humid, and richly perfumed.

Several lanterns cast spheres of watery light, although the corners of the tent were in darkness.

The Pinkerton made his way to the counter and followed the five-man line of customers to the stocky gent yelling orders back to the Chinese couple, who were now filling plates and setting them on the far end of the bar.

“You must be Pistol Pete,” Haskell told the gent, who had a pipe hanging out one corner of his mouth. The pipe stem had carved its own dark brown groove in the corner of the man's lower lip. He wore a scraggly mustache and goatee, and one cheek boasted a blue pistol tattoo.

“What'll it be, friend?” Pete asked.

Haskell eyed the skillets behind the man.

“How about a steak big as my hand?” Bear held out his right paw, palm up. “And I'll take a big bowl of chili, four eggs sunny-side up on a big helping of potatoes, and a piece of that pie there. What kind is it?”

“Pecan.”

“And I'll have two pieces of pecan pie.” Haskell winked at Pistol Pete. “Pecan's my favorite.”

“How 'bout a French lesson for a second dessert?” Pistol Pete grinned and winked, pipe smoke curling up along a bushy pewter sideburn. “Got me a half-breed out back. Lips smooth as oiled silk!”

Haskell inwardly groaned. His cock was still chafed from his tussle with Judith. “Just a schooner of ale will do me for a second dessert tonight, friend,” he said with a benevolent grin.

Fifteen minutes later, he'd hauled a wooden tray loaded with the steaming platters of his late supper to a vacant table near the cooking area. He kept his back to the counter, facing the open flap and anyone who might be gunning for him.

Not that he thought he'd run into any more trouble tonight, but Haskell, being a man of trouble for most of his life, always did what he thought he could to increase his chances of remaining at least for a few more hours on the north side of the sod.

A cup of hot coffee came with the meal. It was so strong that Haskell thought he could float a bullet in it, and that's just the way he liked it, although it would have been even better spiced with a couple of fingers of Sam Clay.

But the virgin mud served him fine, washing down as it did the pound and a half of steak, the chili that was spiced just hot enough to make his toes burn, and the platter of well-browned, buttery potatoes with the four eggs bleeding scrumptiously into it.

He devoured the main course in less than ten minutes—and he'd been trying to take his time and savor it—and followed it up with the pie adorned with a liberal plop of buttery cream. The Chinese woman came around with a black coffee pot that was nearly as big as she and refilled his cup.

Haskell thanked the woman by slipping a nickel tip into the pouch hanging off her greasy smock, and when he'd finished the coffee, he dug a Cleopatra out of his inside coat pocket. As he got the cheroot going, blowing smoke around his head, he got to wondering about how Raven's night was going. He'd been so busy being in jail and then in the sultry clutches of Judith that he'd nearly forgotten about his comely partner.

He wondered what she'd learned from Sheriff Goodthunder. He also couldn't help wondering, with a ridiculous jealous pang, what she'd had to do to acquire the information. He hoped she hadn't gone quite as low as Haskell himself had, he thought with a raspy chuckle as he blew another plume of thick, blue smoke straight out in front of him.

The smoke sort of fluttered back toward him. It had blown against the man Haskell hadn't noticed standing there. Haskell looked up with a slight start and blinked through his smoke to see the big, bearded, one-eyed German he'd shared Goodthunder's cell block with staring down at him, the tabby cat hunkered down on his right shoulder, half-asleep.

Schwartz had a bowl of chili in one hand, a mug of beer in the other. He grinned beneath the broad brim of his canvas hat.

“Mind if I sit down?”

“No, no, go ahead,” Haskell said, indicating the bench on the other side of him.

The German stepped over the bench and sank into it. The cat remained on his shoulder, blinking slowly, indifferently, at Haskell.

“I see you still got your friend,” Haskell said.

“Like I always say,” Schwartz said, adjusting his position on the wooden bench and lifting his beer mug to his bearded mouth, “a man can't go wrong by keeping a pussy near!” He chuckled and closed his upper lip and mustache over the rim of the glass.

The long, jagged scar on his right cheek, just beneath the patch over his left eye, twitched slightly as he gulped a good half of his beer.

Haskell took a first sip of his own ale, which was surprisingly good, although it was probably brewed in a shed out back, and he blew a smoke plume over the other man's head. “Out tryin' to drum up a job, are ya, Schwartz?”

“Call me Emil,” Schwartz said. Then he added, with a sour expression, staring down at his chili, “The last ramrod I had fired me. He said I was a useless drunk who did more fighting than working, and I'm sorta startin' to believe it.”

“Ah, hell.”

“Yeah, well, to tell you the truth, I've always enjoyed fighting more than working anyways. I spent several years in Chicago”—he raised his knobby fists—“fighting with my knuckles. It brings in a stake, now an' then.”

“Ah, a bare-knuckler.”

“Done some fightin' yourself, have you?” Schwartz hunkered down over his bowl, shoveling chili into his mouth and talking between bites. The cat had climbed down off his shoulder and was standing on the table, sniffing at Schwartz's food. The big German didn't seem to mind.

“I did all right during the war. Usually during long encampments over the winter.”

“You ever fight Cleveland Howe?”

“From Cincinnati?” Bear grinned. “Beat him twice.”

Schwartz looked up at Haskell from beneath his bushy right brow, chili staining the thick beard tufting his chin. “You must be good.”

“Cleveland beat me three times.”

Schwartz grinned and continued shoveling the well-spiced chili into his mouth, making a big mess of his mustache and beard. The big tabby came across the table to stand in front of Bear, humping its back and lifting its head, inviting attention.

“Hello, Gustav,” Bear said, running his hand down the cat's back and pressing its tail down. “How you doin' this evenin'?”

The cat blinked slowly, enjoying the attention, and Haskell could hear its purring even above the noise inside the tent and out on the street. Bear sipped his beer and waited until Schwartz had finished his chili to say, “Emil, I'm feelin' a little colicky tonight myself.”

Schwartz flipped his spoon into his empty bowl and said, “Your dead friend?”

Haskell nodded and rested his cheek dolefully against his fist. “I came here expectin' ol' Malcolm would give me a job runnin' a mule team. Now . . .” He let his voice trail off forlornly.

As Gustav, apparently having spied something of feline importance under another table, leaped to the earthen floor, Schwartz said, “That is bad luck. Very bad. He was a good man, Malcolm Briar.”

Haskell lifted his eyes to the big German's lone one. “You know who killed him, Emil? I'd really like to settle up with his killer. Gravels me, him gettin' killed in this freightin' skirmish I heard about.”

“I don't know who killed him. I know when he was killed, and I know where he and his wagon and load of ore are. But whoever's doing the killing on the Ute Field, my friend, uh . . . ”

“Bear.”

“My friend, Bear, these killers are like ghosts. Who hires them is anyone's guess. I guess we'll know when most of the freight companies are out of business except for one, huh?” Schwartz winked and raised his beer schooner to the Chinese woman who was passing with the coffee pot. He held up two fingers beside the glass and then said, “My guess is it's Benjamin Geist and Miss O'Brien.”

“What about Pink Cheatum?”

“Sure, it could be Cheatum, too. Why not? His business is not as big as Geist's and Miss O'Brien's, but sure, why not? He has the money to hire a gunman. There is a lot of money to be made in the freighting.”

This seemed to amuse the German, who chuckled and shook his head.

The Chinese woman brought the beers, and while Schwartz made a halfhearted play at paying for them, Haskell said, “I got 'em, Emil. I'm as down on my luck as you are, but I'll get this round, since you're havin' such a bad night an' all.”

When the Chinese woman had left, Haskell sucked some foam off the top and said, “This Kane fella, he one of Geist's and Judith's henchmen?”

“I don't know. I been working and fighting and drinking and haven't kept up with all the gunmen who ride through town. I know only what I pick up here and there. I do know this, though.” Schwartz winked and then took a couple of deep swallows from his beer glass, his eyes betraying his catlike appreciation for the thick, malty brew.

He lowered the glass, smacked his lips together, and sucked the foam from his mustache, savoring every drop.

Haskell waited, very interested in what the man had to say.

Schwartz belched and leaned forward a little. “This little camp is a keg full of black powder. And you know what's attached to that keg of black powder? A fuse only about this long.” He held his hands about a foot apart. “And every time another freighter is killed and another load of ore and a team of mules is lost to a canyon”—he moved his hands a few inches closer together—“it gets shorter.”

“Yeah, well, I don't care about that,” Haskell lied. “All I care about is finding out who killed the man who brought me here and make him pay hard. I feel like I owe him that much.”

Schwartz laughed as though the task were insurmountable for one man. “Good luck!”

“How many men did Malcolm have working for him?”

Schwartz doffed his hat and scratched the back of his head before replacing the hat atop his bald, pink pate. “Two, maybe three.”

“They still around?”

Schwartz shook his head. “What I heard is after Briar was killed, they got scared and pulled out of Wendigo. They weren't much, anyway. You know how mule skinners are. It's easier running freight down on the plains.”

“Where will I find Malcolm's wreck?”

“Bobcat Gorge. Just below the King Henry mine on the east shoulder of Bobcat Mountain.”

“Hard to find?”