"You all right?" he asked.
Keeping her cheek pressed to his chest, she nodded. She looked up at him, blue eyes glowing in the gray light from the window as she touched a finger to the slight gash along his neck. Her worried, questioning gaze moved to his.
"I've cut myself worse shaving." He turned when he saw the bald gent straighten, lifting Kate's lumpy body in his arms. He grunted as he carried the dead woman toward the back of the room. Halfway to the stairs, he stopped.
He turned and looked at Faith. "You wanted a business, young lady. I reckon you have one."
He ambled into the heavy shadows at the back of the room and started up the stairs.
Yakima went to the bar and grabbed a bottle and two glasses. He strode back toward Faith, who stood staring at the staircase and sat down. He filled each glass to the rim.
"I don't know about you, but I could use a drink."
Epilogue
One month later...
On the second story of the brothel that had once belonged to Crazy Kate Sweney, in the broad four-poster bed he shared with Faith, Yakima opened his eyes and stared up at the dark ceiling.
He hadn't slept much all night. The dawn light pushed through the room's two street-facing windows, vaguely limning the bed and the several chairs, dressers, and fainting couches, the fancy lamps and candle tapers adorning tables.
The room smelled of lavender soap and perfume.
Faith had come a long way in a short time, gotten exactly what she'd wanted. Their journey was over. Thornton wouldn't bother her here. She'd made too many friends, and she'd hired a big Irish bouncer named Marley who would make sure no one laid a hand on her.
Yakima glanced at her, lying curled beneath the quilts and the silk comforter, turned away from him, her blond hair fanned across her pillow. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but he didn't want to wake her. Instead, he slowly peeled the covers back from his chest and began sliding his right leg toward the floor.
As if sensing his movement, she groaned and turned toward him, sliding a hand across his chest, pulling him back down to the sheets and resting her head on his belly, hugging him.
"Don't get up. It's early."
"Sun's on the rise."
He felt her smile against his belly, sliding her hand to his crotch. He grunted. She kept her hand down there, gently squeezing, caressing, pumping, teasing him with her palm. His blood rose, and he awakened fully.
Finally, she turned away from him, thrust her naked bottom against his hip.
He slid her hair back over her right shoulder, snaked his hand around her side, and cupped her right breast. He fingered the nipple until it stood pebbled and erect, and then he cupped both her swelling orbs, squeezing and kneading, until her chest rose and fell sharply with desire.
She groaned and slid her hand over her hip, finding his erect member, and, turning slightly forward and spreading her legs, guided him into her.
Grasping her hips in his hands, he thrust gently in and pulled slowly out. She moaned and sighed, reaching behind and wrapping her arm around his head, caressing his cheek with hers, nibbling his chin. The bedsprings sawed quietly, growing only slightly in pitch and volume as the lovers' passion grew.
When they'd spent themselves, he pulled away from her. She gasped, then sighed and scissored her legs into his, her thighs powdery smooth and warm against his own. Thrusting her slender back against his chest, she snuggled down in the sheets, and in a minute her breathing grew deep and slow.
Asleep.
Yakima lay there a moment until his own breathing slowed and his heart beat regularly again. Finally, he slid away from her. She groaned softly but did not awaken.
He dropped his legs to the floor and rose slowly.
He turned back to her, mounded beneath the covers. His heart felt heavy; his belly raw. He leaned down and kissed her cheek, letting his lips stay pressed to the butter-soft skin for several seconds, savoring her, before he pulled his head back, straightening, letting one finger trail through her silky hair.
His old Shaolin mentor, Ralph, had once said, "Some wolves are not born to the pack."
While Faith slept, Yakima dressed quietly by only the pearl light pushing through the windows' pink curtains. He'd packed his saddlebags and cleaned the Yellowboy the night before, after Faith had gone to sleep. He shrugged into his four-point capote, his gloves stuffed in the pockets, and donned his hat.
He moved slowly to the door, his boot moccasins whispering on the thick carpet, and picked up his rifle from behind a chair. He plucked his saddlebags off the coat hook, slinging them over his left shoulder.
He turned to look back at Faith buried beneath the covers, then opened the door slowly, slipped into the hall, and gently closed the door behind him.
He was halfway down the broad staircase when he saw a pale-robed figure sitting at one of the saloon's tables. He stopped before the table, where the pregnant dove, Emily, sat with her legs propped on a chair, a beer mug half filled with milk on the table before her. Her face was a misty oval in the dusky shadows; her chestnut hair piled loosely atop her head.
"Couldn't sleep?" Yakima asked.
"Got the morning flu again," the girl said, eyes sweeping him curiously. "Goin' hunting?"
"I'm pullin' my picket pins." He headed for the door between the room's two front windows, milky in the first wash of dawn. "Good luck, Emily."
"Does Faith know?"
"She knows."
He went out and looked around from the porch, wisps of woodsmoke touching his nose. The high mountain chill wrapped around him. A dusting of fresh snow glowed softly against the dawn shadows, like sugar in a dark bowl.
Across the street, the bulky woman with stringy black hair was splitting wood, as she did every morning, before her tiny eatery. A red fox crossed the street on Yakima's right, moving at a brisk, stiff-legged trot, glancing at Yakima with vague interest before disappearing into the snow-dusted sage of an empty lot.
Yakima descended the steps and started down the middle of the main street, there being no wagon traffic at this hour. At the end of the street, he opened the livery barn's doors and disappeared inside.
He reappeared a few minutes later, throwing both doors open with a wooden bark and a grating squawk of rusty hinges. He led Wolf outside, the tall black saddled and bridled and arching his neck eagerly, vapor jetting from his nostrils. Dropping Wolf's reins, Yakima went back into the barn and led out a buckskin packhorse—a deep-bottomed gelding that he'd bought two days ago, along with a wood-framed packsaddle and heavy hemp-and-burlap panniers.
The paint mare was probably back with Jeff Ironsides by now. Yakima had paid two freighters he'd deemed trustworthy to lead her back down the mountains.
Yakima scrutinized the packsaddle once more, tugging and shifting the overstuffed pouches. He adjusted the buckskin's bridle before grabbing Wolf's reins, toeing a stirrup, and hauling himself into the saddle.
He gigged the stallion westward down the main street, trailing the buckskin, and pulled up before the spruce and yellow brothel leaning back against the pine-carpeted northern ridge, faith's saloon and pleasure palace, read the letters splashed across the second-story facade.
Yakima looked at the windows on the far right end of the second story.
Some wolves are not born to the pack.
Yakima cursed. He pinched his hat brim at the window, grunted, "Good-bye, Faith."
He gigged Wolf westward along the street, booting the black stallion into a trot, the buckskin keeping pace behind him.
In the bed upstairs, Faith lay curled as Yakima had left her. She stared unseeing at the pillow beneath her cheek.
"Farewell, Yakima."
A Look at Yakima Henry Book Two: The Thunder Riders
By Peter Brandvold
A man with no nation will fight for a woman with no hope...
Yakima Henry left his ranch in the White Mountains for supplies and rode right into a bloody shootout between Saber Creek to
wnsfolk and a gang of banditos who just robbed a stagecoach.
But what really riles Yakima is the banditos making off with his prized stallion, Wolf, and a pretty saloon girl.
The sleepy little desert town will soon become a powder keg of raw emotion and hot-flying lead!
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Peter Brandvold
About the Author
Peter Brandvold grew up in the great state of North Dakota in the 1960’s and ‘70s, when television westerns were as popular as shows about hoarders and shark tanks are now, and western paperbacks were as popular as Game of Thrones.
Brandvold watched every western series on television at the time. He grew up riding horses and herding cows on the farms of his grandfather and many friends who owned livestock.
Brandvold’s imagination has always lived and will always live in the West. He is the author of over a hundred lightning-fast action westerns under his own name and his pen name, Frank Leslie.
READ MORE ABOUT PETER BRANDVOLD HERE.
The Lonely Breed : A Western Fiction Classic (Yakima Henry Book 1) Page 24