Wild to the Bone (23 page)

26

H
askell's lower jaw
must have looked as if it were about to come unhinged from his face and drop to the floor, because the girl squealed a laugh, rose up onto her tiptoes again, kissed him quickly, and then ran over to where he'd laid his bowie knife on the chair.

She showed him the blade, with its upturned, talonlike tip. “With the
handle
!”

Lightning flashed brightly in the window. It was so bright that Haskell was blinded for a second.

When he looked at the girl again, she was walking toward him, extending the handle at him, her soft, pale hand holding the Damascus steel blade by its unsharpened side. The large, sharp knife was nearly as long as Bear's forearm, and it looked especially deadly in the girl's small hand.

Haskell looked at her. Wild, this girl. Wild to the bone. Possibly dangerous, though; whether or not she was one of the two leading up the stage-robbing gang was still to be proven. She was certainly wild and reckless enough to rob a stagecoach or anything else. Maybe wild and reckless enough to kill.

But if she had been among the robbers, what was she still doing here on this little shotgun ranch in the Pumpkin Buttes? She'd have enough money by now to be a long ways from here, where the gang was bound to get run down sooner or later.

She handed Haskell the knife. “Hold on.”

She turned and disappeared through the doorway behind him. He could hear her bare feet slapping on the stairs, which squawked beneath her weight. When she returned a moment later, she was holding a small tin of bear grease.

She took the knife back, dipped the handle in the grease, rubbed it very slowly up and down the handle, and then gave it back to Haskell. She backed up to the table, leaped up onto it, and spread her legs until the pink, petal-like folds of her pussy gleamed in the gray light washing through the window.

Lightning flashed. Thunder clapped loudly, setting a chimney mantel to ringing.

The girl gave a shudder and clapped her hands to her mouth, giggling. Excited.

“Come on,” she said, scooting her lovely ass back from the edge of the table.

She hiked her feet onto the table, resting her heels on the edge and spreading her knees wide with her hands.

“Come on,” she whispered, so softly that he could barely hear her above the storm raging outside. “Stick the knife in me, Bear.”

Haskell looked at her gaping pink pussy. He looked at the knife in his hand, the handle well coated in the grease. He looked up at her. Her eyes were dark, but the pupils glinted at him. Her breasts rose and fell slowly as she breathed. Her honey-blond hair hung down along her cheeks to her shoulders.

She reached out and grabbed his hand and pulled it toward her pussy.

“You're somethin', Miss Dulcy,” he said.

“Ain't I?”

Haskell placed one hand on her left knee. With his right hand on the bowie's blade, he touched the brass-capped handle to the little pink portal sheathed in fur the same shade of blond as her brows.

“Oh!” She gasped. “That's cold.”

Lightning flashed.

Bear chuckled. He was firmly in the grip of Miss Dulcy Stoveville, intoxicated by her, the whiskey she'd spit into his mouth still roiling in his belly. His cock was standing nearly straight up before him, angling back toward his belly button.

Thunder rumbled as the rain continued to lash the cabin, sounding nearly as loud as hail against the windows.

Bear closed his left hand over the girl's knee, slid it a little farther to the left as he shoved the brass cap of the handle into the girl's pussy. She opened her mouth and lifted her chin, drawing air down her throat. Her chest sputtered.

Her eyes bored into his, deep, dreamy, dark, and sparkly at the same time. She held her mouth open as she breathed.

“Deeper,” she said. “Deeper.”

Haskell shoved the handle of his bowie knife deeper. He pulled it out, shoved it into her again.

“Oh, God!” she said huskily, tipping her head straight back. “Oh . . . God.”

Her breasts with their jutting pink nipples rose and fell sharply. She spread her knees farther apart, gripped his wrist with her left hand, and squeezed, encouraging him, then released it and set that hand on her left knee.

“Oh,
fuck
!” she said when he plunged the handle into her again, hilt-deep, and turned it.

“How's that?” he said, barely able to hear his own voice above the storm raging outside the cabin.

“I like that.”

“Do you?”

“Y-yes.”

He pulled the handle out of her. He did not thrust it back into her snatch. She dropped her chin, eyes bright. “What're you doing?”

Haskell grinned. He touched the brass cap to the closed folds of her pussy once more and held it there. She looked down at it resting against her snatch. She looked at him.

“Please.”

“Hold on,” Haskell teased her, holding the brass cap firmly against the pink folds but not yet pressing it into her.

“Bear,” she said gently, sadly, arching her brows, “you're being so cruel.”

He turned the knife one-quarter to the left and then one-quarter to the right. She gulped a breath and removed her hands from her knees to rest them on the bulging muscles of his upper arms. She swallowed, stared up at him, and moved her lips as she urged, “Please.”

He shoved the knife handle three inches deep. She tipped her head back, slid her hands down from his arms. Her fingertips brushed his chest and belly, and then she wrapped her right hand around his cock.

She pumped him gently, slowly, caressing the swollen head with her thumb as he proceeded to slowly, methodically, rhythmically fuck her with the handle of his bowie knife.

In and out.

In, out.

In . . . out . . . in . . . out.

She squeezed his cock by turns soft and hard, pumping him, rolling the foreskin up over the head and then down again.

She purred like a kitten, and then she groaned, turning her head slowly from right to left and back again, squeezing her eyes closed.

Haskell shoved the handle in and out of her more quickly. Sometimes, between thunder bursts and beneath the steady hammering of the rain, he could hear her own juices mixing with the bear grease and crackling. Her knees began to quiver. He knew he was bringing her close to the edge of her fulfillment.

That was when he stopped.

“No!” she groaned.
“Nooooo!”

And then he plunged the handle deep into her again.

Out, then deep in, hard out.

His right arm slid back and forth before him, working like a piston, the girl now leaning back on her elbows and spreading her knees as far as she could. She stared down past her rising and falling breasts and expanding and contracting belly at the knife handle hammering in and out of her pussy, the glinting silver blade clutched tightly in Bear's large brown hand.

Her hot oozings dribbled down the knife handle. They slid over the blade's brass hilt to coat the blade, his fingers, and his knuckles. They smelled at once sweet like honeysuckle and musky like forest duff. He continued to slide the knife handle quickly in and out of her until she lay back on her elbows, chin pointed at the ceiling, shaking her head, writhing, and screeching like a she-lion.

When her screams died, Haskell pulled the knife handle out of her. Instantly, breathing hard, not saying a word, she rose onto her knees and flopped forward onto the table. She took his iron-hard cock in both hands. She slid one hand down to his heavy scrotum, and then, holding his shaft steady with her other hand, she closed her mouth over the head.

She slid her mouth up and down on his cock, slowly at first and then faster and faster, until he was rocking back on his heels, hips thrust forward, his seed jutting down the girl's throat. He was surprised that she could drink so much of him without choking. When she was finished, he stumbled exhausted to the door, fumbled it open, and trudged out onto the stoop and down the porch steps.

He walked into the yard, letting the rain lash him.

The rain and the wind were cold and refreshing, cutting through the fresh sweat and old crud on his body. He tipped his head back and drank, ran his hands through his hair, and shook his head wildly, like a horse. He walked back to the stoop and bathed his muddy feet in the water running over the edge of the roof.

Dulcy came outside with a quilt thrown over her shoulders. That was all she wore. It didn't cover much of her, leaving her breasts and snatch bare. She held two tin cups in her hands and thrust one at Haskell. It was three-quarters full of whiskey.

She canted her head to a stout hide-bottom chair sitting on the stoop between the front window and the door she'd propped open with a stone. The iron triangle was clanging intermittently.

“Sit,” she ordered.

“Don't mind if I do.”

Haskell sagged his big, naked frame into the chair, which squawked beneath his weight. The girl sat down on his lap, clinked her cup against his, grinning and winking, and threw back a healthy-sized swallow. Her cheeks were flushed prettily.

Haskell chuckled and drank down nearly half of his own portion of the busthead.

Dulcy wrapped part of the quilt around his shoulders. She slung her left arm around his neck, kissed his cheek, and rested her head against his chest, letting her feet hang down between his legs, brushing the porch floor with her toes.

“Where you headin', cowboy?”

“Hell if I know. Just a drifter, that's me.”

“When you headin' out?”

“Soon as the rain stops, I reckon.”

“Can you wait till mornin'?”

Haskell narrowed an eye at her. “Why?”

“Because I wanna be fucked good and proper before you leave here, and then I want to fry you up a big steak and a pot of beans for your efforts and give you a proper bed to sleep in and a warm tit to rest your head on.”

She pecked his cheek and tightened her jaws, staring at him hard, aggressively. “And then, first thing in the mornin', I want you to ride on out of here. I don't ever want you to come around here again—you understand?”

Haskell's consternation carved deep lines across his leathery forehead. “Huh?”

“I'm just fine out here without no man. I don't need a man. I got myself and my chickens and my horses, and I hunt and grow my own food. I don't need no goddamn man. You're all worthless. If I invited you to stay, you'd stay for a while. Until you tired of me or you found another gal. Or maybe you already got another gal—in town, say. And then, without a single word, you'd just ride on out of here and leave me pinin'.”

Dulcy shook her head slowly, darkly, keeping her jaws hard, eyes determined.

“Uh-uh,” she said. “Not me. I ain't gonna get attached to the likes of you or any man. Dulcy Stoveville is her own woman, and she don't pine. You men are worthless scoundrels.”

Bear smiled, understanding. “Dulcy Stoveville, I got no intention of stayin' on and breaking your heart.”

“I never asked you to.”

“Who was he?” Haskell asked, hardening his voice. He wasn't just pretending that he was mad, either. He liked this girl, and he couldn't understand any man lying to her, hurting her. “I'd like to know his name. I'd pound his head down flat between his shoulders so you could set a potted palm tree on it.”

Dulcy picked up one of his hands. She held her own against his. It was like setting a coffee saucer against a dinner plate. “You could, too, with these big ol' bear paws of yours.”

“Who was he?”

“Ah, hell,” Dulcy said, grinding her ass against his hips and rolling her head back against his chest. “It don't matter none. I'm not thinking of him today. Today and tonight, I got you, and then you'll be gone and out of my hair, and I'll be too busy just livin' to think about no man.”

“We ain't all bad. You should move to town, marry up with a good man.”

She lifted her head to direct a scowl into his face. “I done told you, God damn it, Bear, there ain't no good men!” Slowly, Dulcy shaped a smile and wrapped her hand around his dong. Instantly, it stirred. “There's just men who are good to fuck now and then, and you did me right nice with your knife.”

Tittering, she gained her feet and pulled on his hand. “Now I want you to do me with this pump handle. Come on, let's go in and climb into bed so you can fuck me long and proper. With all this rain, there's nothin' else to do, anyway. Come on, Bear . . . and then I'll fry you that steak!”

27

T
he wind was sawing
among the log cabins and
adobe
-brick shanties arranged willy-nilly on the north side of Spotted Horse.

Raven ducked, clamping her hat down tight on her head, as a tumbleweed blew over her and bounced on behind her, skipping toward the main street, which she'd left ten minutes ago when she'd taken leave of Penny Shirley and headed off to find the woman's husband.

Raven stopped near a small, sod-roofed, one-room shack with a stable of unpeeled pine poles abutting its side. Leaning against one of the poles to steady herself as a wind gust pelted her with grit, she stared to the north.

The clouds she'd spied earlier were nearly directly north of town. They were a solid, malignant-looking, dark gray mass. A large gray curtain of rain hung down beneath the mass. Inside the clouds, lightning flashed. Muted thunder rumbled ominously.

Raven guessed that the storm's path was only about five miles north of Spotted Horse. That meant Haskell was likely in the midst of it. She resisted the temptation to chuckle at the thought of him holed up under one of the few spindly trees out there, likely soaked to the gills and chilled to the bone.

Just deserts for being such a lecherous and mule-headed bastard.

When the wind relented a little, Raven continued walking due north amid the widely scattered cabins, corrals, and privies. There wasn't much out here, and the enormous sky swallowed it all. The only growth was a few tufts of bunch grass and cactus.

Raven knew that Duke Shirley's stage station was out here somewhere, and a few minutes later, she spied a collection of buildings that she presumed to be it, the main structure being an L-shaped
adobe
-brick cabin with a gray, shake-shingled roof. A windmill stood on its left, and a little farther back from the windmill lay a large, sprawling barn with several corrals attached.

A few horses milled in each corral. Someone was inside the corral nearest the cabin, working with a couple of horses. As Raven approached the place, she saw that the horses were both wearing collars, and the man was walking along behind and between them, holding reins in his hands. The horses were dragging a weighted double tree. The hostler was trying to train a couple of horses to pull.

The wind swirled the dust being kicked up by the horses and the man, who lost his hat just as Raven approached the edge of the barren yard. The wind whipped it toward Raven, who ran a few yards to her left to grab it out of a swirling dust cloud.

She clutched the high-crowned hat to her side as she jogged around the side of the cabin to the corral. The man who'd lost the hat stood against the corral fence, one boot hiked over the bottom rail, staring toward her. His thin sandy hair blew wildly about his sunburned head and face.

“Thanks, miss!” he called as Raven approached. “This dang-blasted wind!”

“No problem,” Raven said, handing the hat to the man. As he put it on, grimacing against the weather in which he was trying to get some work done, Raven said, “I'm looking for Mr. Shirley. Is he in the cabin?”

The hostler glanced at the cabin, hiked a shoulder, and sort of grumbled, “He should be out here helpin' me work these new hosses, since he hasn't hired me any help, but yeah, I reckon that's where is.” He snickered. “Unless he's . . .” He let his voice trail off, lowering his eyes sheepishly and brushing his fist across his nose.

“Unless he's where?”

“Ah, never mind,” the hostler said. “Yeah, he's probably in the cabin . . . helpin' Miss Verlaine with the books.”

The hostler turned away, stuffing his hat down tight on his head, and stooped to pick up the horses' ribbons. Raven glanced at the cabin behind and to her right and then walked back around the side.

She mounted the front porch. An
olla
hung from the ceiling, sliding to and fro in the wind, the tin dipper inside it tapping against the side of the clay pot. Several tumbleweeds had climbed up onto the porch and were shunting around between the rails like trapped animals looking desperately for a way out of their cage.

Raven knocked twice on the door. No response from inside. Then she heard a shuffling sound and the guttural squawk of a chair leg sliding across a rough-hewn floor.

She tripped the latch and opened the door, poking her head inside and blinking against the shadows. “Hello?”

There was what sounded like a foot thud from deeper inside the place.

Again, Raven called, “Hello?”

Silence.

Raven pushed the door open farther and stepped inside.

She was in the communal eating room, with two long tables positioned to her right, a sitting area with a couple of old chairs to the left. Against the rear wall of unpainted, unpapered, vertical pine planks on both sides of a cooking range, were shelves filled with dry and canned food and cooking utensils.

A chalked slate timetable and a calendar hung on the wall. The calendar had several days marked with Xs; those were likely the days the stage was due and food and/or beds had to be prepared.

“Meow.”

Raven jerked with a start, looked around. Then she saw a fat, black-and-white spotted cat lying on a shelf near the dry sink and a water barrel. The cat lay on a quilted cushion on the shelf. Staring at Raven, it blinked slowly, whipped its tail, and gave another meow.

“Hi there, kitty,” Raven said softly, her heart slowing. “Is anyone else here?”

There was a curtained doorway at the back wall, to the left of the range. The curtain was fluttering ever so slightly, probably from a draft, for the building wasn't very tight, but maybe someone had moved it.

Again, Raven called, “Hello,” but was met with the same silence. As she walked toward the curtained doorway, she said, “Mr. Shirley, it's Raven York. I thought I'd wait here for the stage, maybe ask . . .”

She let her voice trail off. Obviously, the man wasn't here. Still, her curiosity compelled her to slide the curtain back and stare down the dark hall before her. The door only a couple of feet down the hall on her left was partway open. She opened it farther and glanced in.

It was a crudely furnished office, just a small desk with an unlit lamp on it, a chair, and a single filing cabinet. On the chair sat a woman's beaded reticule. On the desk lay a long, rectangular book and an ashtray that had been fashioned from a cut-down airtight tin. A couple of cigarettes and a slender black cigar had been stubbed out inside the tin. The cigar was still sending up a thin tendril of gray smoke.

Someone had been here only a few minutes ago.

Raven moved back into the hall. At the end of it, beyond three more curtained doorways on either side, likely a sleeping area for the passengers, maybe a storage area, lay a simple plank door. A gray line of daylight ran along the door's left side.

Raven walked to it. The door hadn't been latched. Whoever had been in the building and smoking the cigar had left in a hurry about the same time Raven had entered the place.

She slid her Colt Lightning from its holster and clicked the hammer back. Slowly, she opened the door, peering cautiously out, wary of an ambush. When she had the door wide, she stepped out and looked all around.

Behind the place was a two-hole privy. The barn and corrals were off to the right. The hostler was no longer inside the corral, and neither were the horses. He must have taken them into the barn, out of the wind.

Ahead and to the right of the privy was a woodshed with three open sides. To the right of that was what appeared to be a stable. It had probably belonged to the small gray cabin just beyond it, though, obviously, no one lived in the cabin now, as the roof had fallen in. Weeds and cactus had grown up around the stable.

Raven kept her eyes on the stable because she had just now heard a sound coming from it. It might have been the wind, which was tossing screens of dirt and trash to the east, but she didn't think so.

She glanced to her left and right, and then, holding the cocked pistol straight out in front of her and drawing her hat down tight by its front brim, she walked ahead and to the right of the stage-station house. She took her time, glancing around, squinting against the blowing dust, wondering who'd been inside the station house and why he'd left in such a hurry after Raven had arrived.

Duke Shirley?

Why would he feel the need to vacate his own station?

The stable's rear wall faced the west, the direction from which Raven was approaching. Beyond, she could see a corral on the other side of it.

As she neared the structure, which was crudely constructed of small cottonwood poles nailed horizontally to a plank frame, she heard what sounded like voices. A girl's laugh was abruptly clipped, and a man's voice rose. There were scuffling sounds, and then the girl laughed once more. Again, the laugh was muffled, as though someone had clamped a hand over the girl's mouth.

Raven knew from her own experience what she was hearing. But curiosity, maybe even voyeurism, drove her to the stable's rear wall. Now she could hear grunting from both the man and the woman, and as she stooped to look between two of the weathered-gray cottonwood branches, Raven's suspicions were confirmed.

Duke Shirley and a girl were inside the stable. Shirley was fully clothed, except that he had the fly of his broadcloth trousers open, and he was driving his fully erect, red cock in and out of the girl, who was bent forward across a steel-banded barrel. The girl's dress was bunched up around her waist. It had been pulled off her shoulders, laying her breasts bare. Her underwear was in a pile around her ankles.

Her arms were stretched forward across the barrel, and she thrust her round, pale, freckled ass toward Shirley as he drove in and out of her from behind so savagely that his hair flopped into his eyes. He gritted his teeth and grunted like an animal. The girl lifted her head, tossed her long, thick, rust-red hair out of her eyes, and groaned deep in her throat.

“Shut up, God damn it, Verlaine, I ain't gonna tell you again!” Shirley said in a loud whisper, continuing to fuck the girl.

“S-sorry, fer chrissakes, Duke!” the girl complained, groaning more softly now as Shirley drove her against the barrel. “It just—oh, God—it just feels so
good
 . . . after workin' in that musty old station house!”

Shirley chuckled between grunts.

Raven backed away from the stable. So Shirley was throwing the wood to the girl who cooked for the stage passengers and provided a clean place for them to sleep on overnight trips. It figured.

Raven had pegged the man as a lecherous coyote the first time he'd ogled her. And then, last night, in his house with his wife and two babies only a few feet away, he'd imagined Raven sitting there in his office, stripped naked and likely bent across his desk, fucking her, too, doggie-style. She'd read such nastiness in the goatish man's eyes and oily smile.

Such behavior in men was nothing knew to Raven. They were all lusty bastards. Haskell was one of them, though at least he was honest about screwing any woman who caught his eye. He'd never promised Raven anything, and she'd returned the favor. And she doubted that Bear ever promised anything to the women he screwed or ever did anything untoward to get them out of their bloomers.

Raven had to admit that finding herself under the big man's spell, she'd shed her own bloomers quite willingly . . .

But Duke Shirley was an unfaithful husband and father. A liar and a cheat. Raven wondered if Penny had any idea. As she headed back to the station house, she felt a hard burn of anger deep in her belly. She no longer felt much sympathy for Duke Shirley. Let the robbers rob him blind. But then, they'd also be robbing the man's wife and children blind.

For that reason and because she'd been instructed to do so by Mr. Pinkerton, Raven had no choice but to do everything she could to stop them.

Men . . .

She was nearly to the rear door of the station house when something moved in the corner of her right eye. She stopped and turned to stare off toward a clump of willows beyond the privy and the woodshed. There were only the willows themselves being thrashed by the wind.

But her eyes hadn't played tricks on her. She'd seen something more significant move out there.

Wariness touched her as she switched direction and walked toward the willows. Slowly, she unsheathed the Colt Lightning and held it out in front of her, caressing the hammer with her thumb as she strode between the privy and the woodshed.

Gaining the willows, she slowed.

The willows lined a shallow ravine that she hadn't seen from the cabin. The ravine paralleled the station yard, but then, twenty yards to Raven's right, it swung sharply northward, carving its way between two low, prickly-pear-studded buttes.

Raven stepped through the willows and into the ravine. She stopped as her eyes scanned the ground. Fresh boot prints appeared in the ravine's chalky soil, here where the wind took longer to obscure them. They were fresh, maybe only a minute or two old.