For the next two days the food was the best any line rider ever had on the open prairie. That, and the service work China Lee did for each of them once a day, kept the five cowboys from tearing each other apart from boredom.
THE SAME NIGHT Tony Giardello positioned his five men with pack animals in the grove of trees a mile and a half from Virginia City on the downgrade toward Carson City, Deputy Sergeant Bert Anders left the sheriff's office at his usual time in his usual way. He always stopped by the open door to Sheriff Gilpin and chatted for a minute.
Anders knew he was a favorite of the sheriff. He had been promoted over older men in the department and men with more experience. But the sheriff liked Bert because he was more like the top man than the others. Bert had actually gone to two years of college back East, and was a thinker, more than a loud talking, guns first kind of deputy.
They talked about the upcoming election for a minute. There would be no real opposition running against Clete Gilpin, so he was a shoo-in for reelection. Anders mentioned how arrangements for the Johnson murder trial were coming along. It would be scheduled for the following week. Then he said goodnight and left, the same way he had been doing for three years.
Only this time he walked past the boarding house and went to the end of the street, then up to the back door of the big Rush Sommers mansion. A growling guard let him in. He knew Anders by this time.
Sommers was not pleased to be disturbed. It was a little after eight o'clock and he was contemplating which girl he would honor tonight in his bed. All three candidates sat in his den.
The closest to him was thin as a sapling, with almost no breasts or hips, but she often was Sommer's favorite. The things she could do with her limber body amazed him, and she had a way of surging him to new sexual thrills he had not even considered. She could even read. He had brought home some magazines from Denver and she was devouring them. She looked up and smiled, made a circle with her thumb and finger and pushed a finger from her other hand in and out of the hole.
Sommers laughed.
The second girl had everything the first lacked: a beautifully curved body with tits Sommers could get lost in, a wonderfully built girl with hips that could whack him as hard as he punched at them. She was amazing and loved to get her mouth around his hard cock. He sighed. Maybe her.
The third girl was younger than the other two. She said she was seventeen, but Sommers guessed she was about fourteen, but well developed. Her figure was smaller than the other one, but she had a delightful manner that captivated Sommers. She was so young, that was part of it, but someone had taught her how to make love to please a man in every way. Which one, which one?
Anders walked in.
Sommers shifted his attention with regret to the man. "Yes, Mr. Anders, Sergeant Anders. The most important man in our little operation. I hope you have good news."
"I hope so, Mr. Sommers." He glanced at the three women.
"They are with me. They have never seen you here, and remember nothing that you said since you weren't here. We go through this every time you come, damn it! What do you have?"
"The time is getting short. The sheriff hasn't had his telegram yet about the date, but today we got more instructions. The Federal people will put twenty men on the train. They will all be uniformed U.S.Army regular troops, and will come in from Carson City the day of the shipment. All will be confined to the car they come in and no one will see them."
"At least that's an improvement. Last time they sent them in and they ran around town getting drunk all day before they left on the train."
Anders stood and walked to the window, then came back. He looked at Sommers and rubbed sweat off his forehead.
"Mr. Sommers, I don't think I can keep on doing this. It just don't seem to be as good an idea as it did."
"What's the matter, you don't like money? A million dollars doesn't mean anything to you anymore?"
"A million? You said half a million before."
"So I just gave you a raise. I realize how important a man you are in this go around."
"Jeeze...a whole million. I still don't know. I've built myself a real life here, got promoted. I'm not running from anybody now, and that's a good feeling."
"Anders, you remember about that letter I have? The one from the police department back in St. Louis? The one that says they are still looking for the wild man who tore up a police station, and then attacked the Captain's wife and violated her and her two small daughters? Remember that letter, Anders?"
Anders sat down quickly in a chair.
"You promised me two years ago..." The words stuck in his throat.
"Of course I did. And I'm holding to it. All you have to do is tell me anything I want to know about the sheriff's office. What is happening, what is planned. This certainly comes under our agreement. And the million dollars. After things quiet down, you can quit your job and move to San Francisco where that bank account will be waiting for you. No pain, no problems."
"Damn, it all sounds so good."
"It will be good. Just like it's going to be good tonight. Stay here. I've got a spare bedroom for you. And someone to go with it to keep you warm. Have anyone you want," Sommers said pointing to the girls. "Hell, have two of them. You ever fucked two women at the same time, Anders? Pick out two."
"Oh, I couldn't do that."
Sommers laughed. "Yeah, I guess you couldn't. But I could." Sommers pointed at the two older girls, and they grinned and moved forward. Cecil, the taller of the two with the big breasts opened the tight blouse she wore and let her soft, warm flesh tumble out. She held one nipple to Ander's mouth and he moaned and chewed on it.
"That's good, Sergeant. You're going to do just fine." Sommers waved them away still grinning.
Sergeant Anders walked in a daze with the two women. He was so excited that he climaxed in his pants before they got to the bedroom. Inside the room the girls sat on the bed with him between them, and quickly they undressed him, then slid out of their own clothes.
"I've died and gone to heaven," Anders said. The women laughed and rolled on top of him and started doing all sorts of strange and wonderful sexual activities that Anders had only heard of before.
In the den Sommers stared a moment at the big bear rug on the floor in front of the fireplace.
"Over here, Misty," he said, his voice thick and feeling strange as the desire pounded through him. She was so young, so soft, so unspoiled! Each time he convinced himself that she was twelve and a virgin and he told her to act the part. She cried and squealed in protest as he took off her clothes, and it made his desire mount higher.
Then when the issue was decided and she consented, she became a talented and marvelously efficient lover who knew exactly what to do so Rush Sommers could hold out for an hour of lovemaking before exploding in one tremendous climax that left him in his mini-death for an hour.
This time Sommers roused himself after half an hour. Misty had gone to her room and to bed he guessed. Slowly he dressed. He had one more task before the night was done.
Outside his driver had a closed buggy waiting. It was a little after midnight when he drove up to the Consolidated California Mine and went in the front door. He locked and unlocked two more doors as he moved through the office complex. Then he went down the steps to the company vault.
This was the place where the gold and silver boullion was held until it could be shipped to San Francisco. Even the gold and silver bars produced from ore sent to Carson City were brought back here for storage. It was a tremendous security problem.
On special shift at night, one workman had been altering the inside of the vault. The area was not a bank vault of iron and steel. Rather it was a room, a basement room, dug into solid rock, and protected by the whole office complex. There were three steel doors leading from the bottom of the stairway into the vault. It would take a thousand pounds of dynamite even to scratch the doors. Now all three stood open and inside the small quantity of gold and silver bars was covered
by a tarp.
A man in his sixties stood beside the back wall.
"Evening Edgar."
"Got her done, Mr. Sommers! Not even you can tell where one wall starts and the next one stops!"
The hole dug in the solid rock had been framed in and a room built inside. That was several years ago. Now Sommers looked at the room and he had trouble telling the difference from the last time. He knocked on all four walls. They sounded the same.
"Double wall construction, same all around." Edgar the carpenter said.
"Looks good, Edgar. Where is the pressure lever?"
Edgar moved to a spot beside the door. There were two round black spots on the floor, circles the size of a dime. He stood putting his heels on the black spots.
"Stand here to trip the automatic locking lever, then press the top of the door frame, here. See how this top six inches is a pressure plate."
Edgar pushed the top of the door and a part of the wall at the back swung slowly forward. It was a three-foot wide section extending floor to ceiling.
"Close it," Sommers said, excitement building in his voice. "How do you close it?"
"When you want it shut, all you have to do is be sure not to stand on the spots on the floor and push the pressure plate." He did and the section slid back in place.
Sommers went to see where it closed. There were three vertical panels in each of the walls. The section closed along the vertical edge of one of the panels and was impossible to see that there was a movable part.
Sommers stood on the spots and pushed the top of the door frame. The secret door opened again. He left it open and walked inside. There was a three-foot wide alley between the new wall and the old one. It would be plenty large enough for what he had in mind. You could stack a lot of gold and silver bars in that small, narrow room.
He came out and Edgar grinned at him.
"Sure hope you like it Mr. Sommers! Just like you told me, nobody else knows nothing about this. Done it all at night. Just like you said to."
"That's fine, Edgar. Looks like I owe you some money."
"You said five hundred dollars, because it's so secret and all. And I said that was too much. But if you still think that's the right figure, I ain't gonna argue too much."
"I'll go back upstairs and meet you out in back by the tailings. Nobody will spot us there. Might as well keep this a secret all the way. I'll get some cash from the office. You go up and out the back door and then around. Be sure nobody spots you."
Edgar grinned, went out the door and up the stairs to the main office.
Sommers pressed the pressure plate that swung the weight that closed the door. He never asked how it worked, just so it did work.
He stared at the closed section of wall. Nobody would find it in here, nobody. Very soon now he would be rich, just tremendously rich!
Sommers went up the steps, closed the heavy steel doors and set the locks on them as usual, then slipped out the front door and went through shadows around the edge of the mining works to where the tailings were dumped.
Edgar came out of a shadow beside a small ore car that was pushed along the mine tunnels, then lifted to the surface on the elevator hoists.
"I sure thank you, Mr. Sommers. You just don't know what this extra money is going to mean to me and the missus."
He smiled, and Sommers hesitated. Men were so damn trusting. So stupid and I.Sommers thrust a four-inch blade forward, ramming it up to the hilt in Edgar's belly and jerking it upward as he pulled it out.
Edgar's eyes flared in the soft moonlight, then he gagged and fell to the tailings. Sommers bent and slashed the old man's throat across one of the carotid arteries, and Edgar died in sixty seconds.
Sommers wiped the blade clean on the dead man's pants and walked back through the shadows toward the office. No one had seen him at the office tonight. No one had seen Edgar.
It was amazing how trusting some men became.
He hurried to his rig and the driver took him home. Once in his bedroom he looked down at the small figure that lay there naked and watching him.
Misty scowled in her little girl way.
"Daddy, you better spank me, 'cause I was a bad girl. When you was gone I finger fucked myself. Spank me, Daddy. Spank me until I get all good feeling again and sexy and you want me again!"
Sommers had not been able to explain the hardon he had as he came home in the buggy. Then he knew. The killing. He had enjoyed killing old Edgar, and it had given him a sexual stimulation.
Quickly he pulled off his clothes and lay on the bed, then spanked the child-woman beside him until tears touched her eyes, and she lifted herself over him and guided him deep inside her.
"Oh, yes! Daddy. I love that. On top is the most fun ever, don't you think, Daddy?"
As they made love he asked her who had taught her about sex, about intercourse.
"I thought you knew. It was my real daddy. I was ten when my mommy died and one night he came to my bedroom and said there were some things he wanted to teach me."
"My God, your own father?"
"Sure. Every night he came after that, and showed me his body, and touched me and told me about how I would feel as I grew older. I was already starting to get little titties and he played with them and we talked, and then he let me watch him jerk off. After a while I helped him, and slowly he showed me other things I could do for him. He went real slow. It wasn't until I was eleven that he actually pushed inside my cuntie. Ooooooh it hurt. But then gradually it didn't hurt so much."
"Misty, you aren't seventeen, are you?"
"No, but promise you won't send me away."
"I'll never send you away. Hold old are you?"
"Sixteen, couple of months ago."
"My God! Where is your father?"
"He's dead."
"How did it happen?"
"Oh, one day the preacher came to our house. He always walked in and made himself at home. He didn't hear him and he looked for us and found Daddy humping away at me. The preacher screamed and shot my daddy while he was still in me. Killed him. They didn't do nothing to the preacher when he told the sheriff what my daddy was doing. So I ran away."
Sommers started to push her away, then he swore, rolled over on top of her and slammed into her as hard as he could until he roared with rage as he climaxed. He wished he hadn't promised that he would not send her away.
She was only a child. But such a marvelous whore! He had no thought of turning her loose in a bordello. She would be a sensation but he sensed that she would die young. Somehow she would try to get between two men fighting over her lovely young body and she would be killed.
No, he couldn't let that happen. He would have to protect her, and nurture her... and love her!
THE NEXT MORNING Spur McCoy wore a black coat and soft black hat as he perched on the front of the fancy carriage and drove Tracy Belcher to her mine office. Pulled low, the hat covered most of McCoy's face, and nobody paid any attention to a buggy driver. He helped Mrs. Belcher down from the rig and to the front of the office, then returned to the carriage and drove away.
His first stop was a block from the courthouse. He went in the back way and soon caught the sheriffs eye. They walked back to the buggy.
"Anything happening yet?"
"No word from San Francisco," Sheriff Gilpin said. "They usually give us about six hours notice for a midnight departure. So there is lots of time left for today."
"Hear anything about a railroad engineer named Guy Pritchard?" Spur asked.
The sheriff rubbed his face with a big hand and looked strangely at McCoy.
"Why you ask about him?"
"I scared hell out of him last night. Told him who I was and what I thought he and some other people were planning to do. He threw me out of his house. I waited to see where he would go. He ran straight to Rush Sommers' mansion and went inside. That was late last night."
"Interesting. You'll swear to that?"
"Of course, I just told you. Why?"
"This morning some swampers found Pritchard with three holes in his chest in the alley in back of a saloon. Been dead for five or six hours the doc says."
"Now the robbery team is without an engineer," McCoy said. "Pritchard has been their man. What will they do now?"
"Anyone of fifty men in town can run those engines," the sheriff said. "Company will simply assign another one."
"But the new man won't be in on the robbery conspiracy. It could be a point for our side. Remember, you still have a spy inside your outfit. Would the big miners know when the train is going? Guess they'll have to if they ship any gold or silver out. Is Sommers scheduled to make a shipment?"
The sheriff nodded. "Every mine in the area is shipping."
"Great way to keep a secret," Spur said. "I'll be in touch," Spur said then stopped. "Could you take a note down to the telegraph office for me? Send a brand new deputy and have him pick up any sealed messages for me?"
The sheriff said he would, and Spur pulled the hat down over his eyes and sat in the shade of the cool morning until the deputy came back. The only message was from his St. Louis office asking when he would be returning to town to clear off his desk.
He thanked the deputy and vanished down the block and around the corner. Spur drove back to the Belcher house. He parked the rig in back, unharnessed the horse and put her in a stall and hung up the leather. When he went in the house, Canchuna saw him.
"You have a visitor," she said. "Someone from the office with a message for you from Mrs. Belcher." Spur followed the sleek little Indian girl to the front sitting room where he saw Mary Beth Franklin. He remembered her. She was the slightly chunky young girl who had been handing out leaflets that first day Spur arrived in town.
"Miss Franklin," Spur said, bowing slightly.
"Oh, thank you, Mr. McCoy. Mrs. Belcher had me bring you a message. It's in this." She handed Spur a long white envelope that had been sealed.
"I'm working for Mrs. Belcher in the office now. She heard about my pamphlets and what happened on the street that day when you knocked down that awful man. She said my mother and I deserve the right to earn our living. I'm ever so grateful to you for what you did for us."
Spur: Nevada Hussy Page 12