It surely was ...
Helen gathered her dress up higher, spreading it out beneath her, padding her bottom against the logs.
"Goddamn it," Bardoul said as he lowered his buckskin breeches and balbriggans, "you're one horny wench, aren't ye?"
She laughed wickedly and spread her legs, adjusting her butt again on the split logs as Bardoul shoved toward her.
"Wait a second," Helen said, placing both hands on his chest, holding him back. "You gotta promise me somethin'."
"Shit!"
"You gotta promise on your way back from huntin' that breed, that you'll pick me up and take me to Denver."
When he only stared at her, one eye slitted, she said, "I'm goin' plumb loco, and I can't bear another winter in this cabin with them two. Especially now that Karl's gone."
"You want me take you to Denver? What the hell you gonna do there?”
"Anything I have to." Helen drew Bardoul toward him and kissed him hungrily, then pulled back and regarded him with lustful eyes.
She made her voice small and breathy as she wrapped her naked legs around him, pulling his erect shaft against her crotch. "I don't have any extra money, but I'll fuck you good every night we're on the trail. I will make it worth your while, Wit. You understand?"
"Christ," Bardoul laughed and worked his shaft inside her. "You sure as shit better, you crazy bitch."
She groaned and beat her heels against Bardoul's butt as he plunged against her. Her moaning grew so loud, frightening the horses, that Bardoul finally clamped a hand over her mouth as he finished the job, dislodging several logs in the process, one landing on his right foot and tempering his final pleasure.
When they were finished, they got their clothes in order, silently gathered wood in their arms, and headed back to the cabin's front door. Helen fumbled the door open, and Bardoul followed her inside, kicking the door closed and looking around.
Old Gillespie and Ace Higgins sat at the table playing checkers while Brindley scrubbed a pan with a wire brush in the washtub. "Hey, Wit," he said, jerking his head back to indicate the old man, "Mr. Gillespie says he seen the half-breed and the whore heading northwest not more than two hours before we showed up, just before the snow started fallin' in earnest."
Shifting the wood in his arms, feeling a log slip, Bardoul turned to Gillespie, who puffed his pipe as he double-jumped Higgins.
"King me," the old man said to Higgins. He glanced at Bardoul. "They're probably takin' the old Basque trail into Gold Cache. Only place they could be headin' out here."
"What trail?"
“The trace the old Basques made, herdin' sheep between meadows. One runs along the ridges yonder clear to Gold Cache Gulch."
"You know where they might hole up tonight?"
"There's a coupla sheltered hollows up in the rocks yonder, atop the mountain just behind us. Gonna be deep snow in the mornin', though." Gillespie shook his head. "You can pick up the trail there. Tough goin' to get up there, but once you're up there, the snow won't be as deep where the wind clears it."
Bardoul shuffled over to the fireplace and dropped his unwieldy load atop the other wood stacked on the hearth's right side. He glanced into the shadows at Karl. The man was sitting in the rocker, scratching his cheek, staring at the ceiling, and muttering incoherently, deep in tortured thought.
Bardoul turned to Helen. She returned his glance, the corners of her mouth quirking up as she prodded the log she'd laid in the fire with an iron poker.
Stone-faced, Bardoul looked quickly past her at Gillespie, who was again jumping Higgins's checkers. "Can you draw us a map of that Basque trail?"
"Boy, you're lucky we ain't playin' for money!" Gillespie laughed as Higgins kinged him while cursing under his breath.
The old man turned to Bardoul. "Yeah, I'll draw ye a map. First thing in the mornin'. Say, who is that half-breed, anyways? When I seen 'em hightailin' through the canyon here, the woman looked willing enough to me."
Bardoul had pulled an old, yellowed wanted flyer from his coat pocket. Now he tossed the flyer and a pencil on the table before Gillespie. "Draw that map now," the bounty hunter ordered. "We're pullin' foot first thing in the mornin'."
Gillespie snapped his head up at Bardoul, brows furrowed curiously. He hiked a shoulder, smoothed out the flyer, and picked up the pencil.
When the old man was finished drawing the trail and the main landmarks surrounding it, Bardoul grabbed the paper off the table and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. He grabbed the bottle off the table, ran a sleeve across his beard, and plopped onto one of the three cots in the room.
"That's where Karl sleeps," Helen said.
"I'm taking it," Bardoul said, tipping back the whiskey. When he'd lowered the bottle, he curled his upper lip at Helen standing tensely by the fire. "I had a long day—and a hard night. I'm tired."
Helen glared at him, her nostrils flared. She glanced at Karl, who was still pondering the rafters, then turned and stalked into the kitchen.
The old man turned in his chair to regard her curiously, then swung his gaze back to Bardoul. All three of the men at the table—Higgins, Brindley, and Gillespie—were staring at him. Brindley's eyes were bright from the hooch.
Bardoul grinned devilishly, took another long pull, then corked the bottle and kicked his boots off.
Bardoul woke at the first wash of dawn in the eastern windows. As he blinked the sleep from his eyes, he heard the thuds of a poker punching logs. He looked over at the fireplace and saw Helen squatting, a blanket about her shoulders, blowing and prodding the glowing coals back to life.
Bardoul's cot creaked as he swung his stocking feet to the floor. Helen turned her head to him quickly. She glanced around the room, where the other four men still lay slumped on cots or, in Brindley's and Higgins's case, on the floor, their snores resounding.
She rose and walked over to Bardoul, let the blanket sag off her shoulders, revealing her breasts in the milky light washing through the frosted window behind Bardoul's cot.
"You don't forget me, hear?" she said.
Bardoul turned to look out the window. The lilac sky was clear as a bell, the last stars still twinkling above the snow-mantled ridges looming over the cabin. The yard was white as a bridal gown.
"Did I promise you somethin', Helen?" Bardoul said, reaching into his shirt pocket for his makings sack. He looked up at her, one cheek rising with a lopsided grin. "I'm sorry. I don't remember promisin' you a damn thing."
As she glared down at him, her jaw hardening, Bardoul dug into his makings sack, producing a small wad of papers. He peeled one paper from the wad, shoved the others back into the sack. "Besides, I'll have my hands full when I'm headin' back to Thornton's. No time to fool with a woman."
Bardoul sprinkled tobacco onto the wheat paper troughed between the first two fingers of his left hand. The woman stared down at him. He could hear her breathing—deep, exasperated breaths.
Suddenly she slapped the makings out of his grasp. She cocked her arm to slap him with the back of her hand, but before she could bring the hand forward, old Gillespie called, "Helen?"
She lowered the hand quickly, wheeled to her right. She swallowed, took a short, sharp breath. "I'm just gettin' the fire goin' now," she said, her voice husky with forced calm. "Coffee'll be a couple minutes."
Helen glanced at Bardoul once more, rage in her eyes, then, holding the blanket tightly about her shoulders, stalked back to the fire and picked up the poker. When she'd busied herself with the fire, adding kindling, Bardoul chuckled to himself. Women had to be the most gullible damn creatures on God's green earth. He picked up his makings, shook out fresh tobacco, and rolled a smoke.
He lit his cigarette and stomped into his boots, then gave both Brindley and Higgins a good kick to rouse them from their blanket rolls. Lazily, still chuckling to himself, he shrugged into his coat.
When he and his two compatriots had gone out and saddled their horses, they led the mounts through the knee-high drifts
to the hitchrack before the stoop, tied them, and went back inside, where the fire popped, warming the cabin. Last night's stew was bubbling over the fire while Gillespie dressed and Helen helped Karl back to his rocking chair.
The woman didn't say a single word to anyone all through breakfast. The way she glowered at Bardoul over her stew bowl, he thought for sure she'd try to stick a knife in his back—or maybe she'd poisoned his stew ...
He was relieved, after breakfast, to swing up onto his Appaloosa's back and head off through the new-fallen snow while old Gillespie stared after him and his companions, pensively puffing his pipe.
Bardoul, Brindley, and Higgins followed Gillespie's directions northward through the canyon as the sun climbed, making the snow sparkle like jewels and causing their eyes to ache as though pierced by a million tiny javelins.
Higgins chuckled. "You son of a bitch, Bardoul—you went and got your ashes hauled!"
The bounty hunter glanced cautiously behind. The cabin and corral had disappeared behind a bend in the canyon wall. "Say what?"
"Say what?” Brindley laughed, riding drag. "Don't you think we done heard you and the woman going at it last night in the woodpile?" He laughed louder. "Shit, you're just lucky her husband's loco and her old man's deaf as a fence post!"
"Goddamn it!" Bardoul threw his head back, guffawing. "I had a feelin' you could hear us out there!"
He hipped around in his saddle toward Brindley. "Did you hear how I made that bitch scream?"
"Shit," Brindley said under his railroad cap and muffler. "For a while there, I thought you was carvin' her up with a bowie knife!"
Higgins reached over and slapped Bardoul's shoulder. "We thought you was practicin' up for Thornton's runaway whore!"
Cackling like drunken soldiers, the trio climbed the sloping hills toward the rocky crags and the pine-studded ridge before them.
As the sunlight penetrated the cave's opening and set the fire's smoke to glowing like golden vapor, Yakima slid the blankets and furs down to reveal Faith's soft right breast, then knelt down and kissed the nipple.
Sound asleep since they'd finished making love the night before, Faith stirred, the corners of her full mouth lifting. She groaned and stretched luxuriously, opening her eyes halfway. "Is it morning already?"
"Already?" Yakima stood and looked around. "The sun's full up."
Faith looked beyond the smoking fire, on which the teapot gurgled and beans bubbled in a tin kettle. The sky was blue, the sun bright on the new-fallen snow. The paint mare and the mule stood nearby, eating from the grain sacks Yakima had draped over their ears.
"Pretty out there," Faith said, yawning. "But it looks cold."
"It's not bad. The sun'll warm it up fast."
He turned away from her, and she grabbed his wrist, drew him down toward her. "Stay with me, Yakima."
He leaned down, smoothed the mussed hair back from her cheek, and kissed her gently. "No time. Thornton's men, remember?"
"I bet the storm discouraged them." She entwined her hands behind his neck, kissing him. "They've hightailed it out of the mountains."
"Not likely." Yakima returned another kiss and leaned back on his heels. "Come on. Shake a leg."
"Let me doze a little while longer," Faith said, breathing deeply, turning her head to one side and closing her eyes.
Yakima stared down at her. She was a beautiful woman, especially beautiful in the mornings. Warm and soft, childlike. It used to be that he'd thought women were here only to satisfy men's natural cravings, like food and drink. He no longer felt that way about this beautiful woman lying before him. He'd been looking askance at the notion for some time, but he knew now with certainty that he'd fallen in love with her.
The notion filled him with both tenderness and dread. For what could be the fate of two such disparate lovers as him and Faith?
"Come on," he said, grabbing her left ankle through the blankets and furs and shaking it gently. "Time to pull our picket pins. I've warmed your clothes by the fire. They're good and toasty."
"Yakima, don't be such a drill sergeant," she pouted, keeping her eyes closed.
"Come on," he said, shaking both her ankles this time.
"Oh!" she cried, flinging the blankets back to reveal her long, pale body with the full, pink-tipped orbs. "The tea smells good, anyway, and I could eat a horse!"
"Can't spare a horse, but the beans are ready."
"Yakima?"
She knelt upon the blankets, holding her men's long underwear in one hand out before her, and regarding him with gravity. Her blond hair hung over her left shoulder, curling down the side of her left breast. She seemed to be trying to peer through some screen obscuring her view of him.
"You'll stay with me, won't you? In Gold Cache? We'll be partners?"
He hesitated for only a second, reaching for the teapot. "I reckon I don't have anywhere else to go," he said, splashing the steaming tea into her cup. He wanted to stay with her, but of course it wasn't possible. He couldn't find the words to tell her. Hell, maybe she already knew and was only clinging to the dream for lack of anything else to hold her.
She threw her arms around his neck, pressed her breasts to his sheepskin coat. "It won't matter who we are in Gold Cache. It's a good thing, maybe the only good thing about gold camps. Nobody cares who you are or where you came from—or who you're in love with."
He turned to her, the teapot in his right hand. He smiled and ran his hand through her hair, sifting it through his fingers until his hand reached the small of her back. He splayed his fingers against her warm, smooth skin just above her bottom, and pressed her toward him gently. His heart swelled, but he kept his voice lightly cajoling.
"Drink your tea and eat your beans. If we're gonna get to Gold Cache and start our own business, we best fork leather soon."
She held the balbriggans against her breasts. "What are we going to do about Thornton's men?"
Yakima set the teapot on the fire, dropped the leather pad, and rose. "Kill 'em."
He picked up a saddle and walked out of the cave, heading toward his horse.
Chapter Twenty
In the brothel that she owned and operated in Gold Cache, Crazy Kate Sweney ran a brush through her long black hair and stared at her own pensive expression in the gilt-framed mirror before her.
She was seated in her own inner sanctum tucked away in the brothel's bowels and decorated in the latest French fashions, with reds and purples and so many lighted candles lined up on the imported furniture that her Mexican patrons often mistook the room for a Catholic shrine.
A fire snapped in the hearth. Beyond the curtained windows thick with frost and packed with snow from last night's storm, ore wagons squawked and clattered. Men cursed the weather. Somewhere, a dog barked, and she could hear the regular scrapes of a snow shovel as Max Lerner, Crazy Kate's bartender, cleared the brothel's front porch.
There would likely be a surge in business today, the coldest of the season so far. The prospectors and miners would be attracted to Kate's warm rooms and warm girls, as most were housed in drafty cabins little better appointed than chicken coops.
Crazy Kate stared into her own eyes in the mirror, the dream she'd just awakened from remaining with her like a cloying odor from the Chinese shacks just down the gulch. As if to rid her mind of the dream, she set down the tortoiseshell comb, picked up the long black cheroot smoldering in the ashtray before her, and took a deep drag.
Behind her, a man's groan came from her broad four-poster bed. The springs squawked. She took another deep drag from the cheroot as a figure rose from the bed behind her.
"What the hell—it's morning already?"
Crazy Kate didn't say anything. She picked up her brandy glass in the same hand in which she held the cheroot and sipped the pungent brew. Only in a mining camp would such coffin varnish pass for French brandy.
From the bed, Sebastian Kirk cleared his throat. "Kate?"
"What?" she said, impatient and annoyed, half tur
ning her head toward him.
Kate hated it when he stayed the entire night in her room. She preferred sleeping alone. But what could she do? Sebastian had staked her to this claim, and she still owed money on the note. She either paid with her body or paid with money, and the only thing Crazy Kate hated worse than satisfying men as old as herself was parting with cash.
"I asked you a question," the man said, his voice thick with sleep and bourbon from the night before.
"Yes, it's morning. Can't you see the light in the window?"
"I haven't opened my eyes yet."
"Well, open 'em, for chrissakes! And get dressed and get outta here. I'm gonna have a busy day. I can't sit around here all morning, entertaining your fool questions!"
Kate turned back to her own haggard face in the mirror— a face that, in spite of her own best efforts, showed every seam and wrinkle of her thirty-seven years. She'd been called Crazy Kate since her early twenties, for the simple fact that her bright green eyes set deep in her long, dark face—a witch's face, sure enough—made her look loco and lusty in a devious, compelling sort of way. There was the matter of her clairvoyance and ability to read palms and cipher the tarot cards and read skull bumps, but it was her face first and foremost that had earned her the unflattering though commercially colorful handle. She'd long ago stopped taking offense. The handle was good for business. She was the kind of crazy, exotic-looking woman who could earn a living only by whoring in mining camps, and that was what she'd done for the past twenty years.
Behind her, the bed squawked and jostled, the big bear spread rustling. Kate continued staring into her eyes as, in the periphery of her vision, Sebastian Kirk rose naked from the bed.
A tall, bald man with broad shoulders once muscular but now reminding Kate of an underfed mule's pronounced ribs, and a heavy, sagging gut, he ambled over to her. He bent down behind her, his eyes meeting hers as he ran his hands up her sheer, flesh-colored wrapper and cupped her large, pear-shaped breasts in his hands, hefting them as though testing the ripeness of fruit.
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