by Gene Curry
I expected trouble with Kiowa Sam, but it didn’t come just then. All he did was whisper to Cyrus; after that they stayed with the cows. No more strays found their way to the Claggett wagon.
“Well, would you do that to Cyrus?” Hannah asked again, matching her needlework to the jolt of the wagon. She was very good at it.
The man of God hadn’t been paying much attention. Now he glanced over at me. “Do what?” he asked.
“Make Cyrus—Kiowa Sam’s son—ride drag. We’re going to have to do it some time. Not always Cyrus, of course, but the men have to get used to the idea. I know it’s a tough job, but he’s young, and it won’t kill him. Make a better man of him, in fact.”
Hannah was trying to hide a grin.
Claggett’s eyes turned back toward the horizon. “I don’t mind the idea,” he said. “Sam can handle the cows by himself. Sam was the one I hired for the job. He gets wages, food, and a place to sleep, not the son. Sam said he’d look after him on the way. I couldn’t see the harm of it. What good are we, if we don’t show some Christian charity?”
“Amen to that!” I said, and the strangled sound Hannah made turned into a fit of coughing.
When it subsided, she said, “Must be the dust.” She turned her eyes, now calm, on me. “Don’t you think there is a lot of dust—or something—in the air, Mr. Saddler?”
I returned her calm look. “Sometimes a walk in the damp night air helps a sore throat, Miss Claggett.”
“Yes,” she said. “I might do that.”
I knew she would and hoped it would be tonight. Poor old Cyrus! He wasn’t going to be the first after all.
Chapter Seven
That first day, because it was flat, grassy country, we made a good twenty miles. Men, women and animals were rested and eager to get on with it. In the days to come, our pace would slow down to as little as ten miles a day. It was an old story for me. But for now all was well: good country, weather as fine as fine could be. Our pace was about two miles an hour, as we didn’t want to push the animals hard. Mules make better time than oxen, but oxen outlast mules. It still was cool enough to keep moving all day, but there would come a time when it would be best to travel only in the mornings and late afternoons. During the real hot part of the day we would eat, sleep, see to repairs, and make plans—all the things that have to be done during an overland crossing.
That first day we made good time and corralled by a creek with not a tree in sight. This wasn’t dangerous country, so we didn’t corral in a circle. Instead, the two lines of wagons were pulled in to form an oval protection of a sort. It was quiet along the creek as the wagons settled in. The women, silent for most of the day, piled down from the wagons and began to talk as if they had just been given permission to do so. The sight of the clear, running water cheered them. Droves of them went downstream and began to wash off the sweat and dirt of the day. You could hear their laughter and the splashing of the water as darkness gathered. Nothing cheers me more than the sound of a woman’s laughter. I hated to think that some would never make it to California. But there was no getting around the fact that some would die.
I walked the train and counted people and animals. No one had wandered off or ducked out along the way. Some of the women were coming back from their splash in the creek. Maggie O’Hara was with Flaxie. Dr. Ames sat by a cook fire and waited for his daughter to get back. I wondered what he was so nervous about. They don’t have alligators in streams in Missouri. Something was going on between the doctor and his daughter that I couldn’t quite figure out.
After the reverend intoned grace, we went at the grub like the hungry folks we were. Everybody ate in a big circle, and I got to sit close to Hannah Claggett. The preacher man did not seem to notice. I saw Kiowa Sam and his lamebrain son staring at me. Culligan ate and smoked a cigar at the same time. Iversen just sat and ate. It would have been a pleasant moment, if not for the danger in the air. I knew I wasn’t imagining it. It was faint, but it was there, and I wondered if Maggie had changed her mind and decided to kill me after all. You never know what women are going to do. If you did, they wouldn’t be half as exciting.
Sam and Cyrus were a threat and made little effort to hide it. I ruled out Reverend Claggett because he had no immediate cause to kill me. Culligan just wanted to do his work and get drunk in his wagon at night. Iversen? I didn’t know a thing about Iversen except that he was a liar. The talk about rejoining his ship in California was horseshit. But that was his business. Dr. Ames didn’t come into it at all. Now and then his crop-headed daughter glanced over at me, always with plain dislike. It hardly mattered what she thought of me. Maybe she didn’t like Texans.
The women were tired and rightly so. There wasn’t so much enthusiasm now. All they wanted was sleep, and for the moment enough men were there to stand guard so the ladies could get their rest. At that time outlaw gangs still ran in Missouri, but their interests lay in trains that ran on rails. Few bandits bothered wagon trains; it wasn’t worth the bother.
As the women drifted to their blankets, I called out the men who were to stand guard. I was to take the watch with Culligan. After that Iversen and Dr. Ames were to look out for marauders. I didn’t think there would be any. Kiowa Sam and Cyrus were to take the last watch, then catch up on their sleep in a wagon after we started out again at first light. It was a standard plan of guard against night attack. In time, some of the women would have to do guard duty with the men.
It got very dark and quiet. Below the camp the creek bubbled along. Culligan took one end of the train, and I took the other. Nothing happened until a woman screamed in her sleep and I ran to her wagon with the Winchester in my hand. Culligan came fast from the far end of the train. But it was just a nightmare, and after the woman spoke to me in some foreign language, I patted her on the head and she went back to sleep.
Fifteen minutes later we were relieved by Iversen and Ames. Iversen handled his rifle as if he knew how it worked. I wasn’t too sure about the nervous doctor. He held his rifle like it was hot to the touch. What surprised me was that his daughter went to stand guard with him. Nothing in the rules said she couldn’t do that, so I didn’t say anything. Culligan climbed into his wagon, and I heard the pop of a cork.
So far, so good.
I was tired but not sleepy enough to sleep. I manage to get along on short rations of shut-eye. A light drizzle grew heavier, which was typical weather for Missouri at that time of year. I didn’t want to bunk in with Culligan and his cigar and bottle, so I was making up a place to sleep under the wagon when Hannah Claggett came up silently in the darkness and whispered to me.
I was surprised and said, “Why are you up at this hour?”
She didn’t answer that. “You’re not going to sleep under there are you?”
I pointed toward the floor of the wagon above my head. “The air is better.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” she whispered. “Come and talk in my wagon until the rain stops. You’ll catch your death down here.”
Well, of course I wouldn’t. “What about your father? Won’t he object to midnight callers?”
Hannah knelt down on the wet grass. “He won’t be back for hours. Every night he goes off by himself to pray, usually until the middle of the night. It’s all right. You can come with me. I won’t take no, and I mean it. It isn’t right.”
Hot damn! I’ll take a chance on anything, even a bullet from a killer-preacher’s fast gun. But I did feel kind of peculiar. I crawled out from under the wagon, and there wasn’t a soul in sight except for Hannah. She wore a quilted night coat over a long nightdress, and she smelled good.
Faint light showed from the preacher’s big wagon. Hannah told me to stay in the shadows while she went inside and turned the lamp wick down all the way. After that, hardly a glimmer showed. She leaned down over the swung-down end gate and took my hand, and I went in.
I had been there before and knew what it looked like. The fold-down table had been put up flat against the wall
and hinged. The preacher’s bed hadn’t been made up. Hannah led me into her tiny cubicle at the far end of the wagon. It was big enough for a slim girl; with the two of us in there, it was like being crammed into a packing case.
I expected to have to do some fooling around with this girl. No such thing. She peeled off in the darkness and helped me to unbutton my pants. My she smelled sweet with her clothes off! It was dark in there and at first I couldn’t see an inch of her, not a curve, but as my hands roved over her young body, I knew I had been right all along. This girl was made for poking and wanted it badly.
Her bed was hardly more than a bunk, and not a soft one at that. It couldn’t have mattered less. Nothing was said and nothing needed to be said. Her young mouth was sweet and strained with longing, and when I reached down and touched her, a shudder ran through her body. I wanted to shush her when she whispered, but she said there was no need. Her father did the same thing every night, prayed far into the dark hours.
“We’d hear him coming, the way he walks,” she whispered.
After that, I decided to hell with the reverend. This girl brought out the best in me; wanting her so much made me hard as a rock.
She touched it and rubbed it until it was my turn to shudder. “Gracious! It’s so big.” she said. “I had no idea. Please put that into me.”
I did. It went in smooth and easy, all the way to the hilt. Her back arched like a cat’s and I drove my cock in and out of her like it was a steel rod. I seemed to get bigger and harder as our fucking went on. She knew nothing about men; she wanted to know everything. My balls fascinated her, and she whispered in that school-girlish voice, “To think the whole world starts here. Amazing! Astonishing!”
Fact is, I hadn’t given the idea much thought. I knew men and women fucked, and sometimes there were babies. “That’s how it all started,” I whispered back.
“But it’s all so wonderful,” she said. “So wonderful and beautiful!”
I pushed it in all the way, drew it out to the tip, then drove in again. “It can be,” I said.
“Is it like that with me?”
“What do you think?”
“I think I can’t bear to stop.”
She had come so many times that she was quivering with exhaustion. I came twice and wanted more of her, but men have certain drawbacks. You have to wait for a while. With me—no brag—it doesn’t take that long to get hard again. Truthfully, I just wanted to stay in her, to enjoy the feeling of being m her, with her soft young body under mine. The feel of her and the smell of her was enough for me. Our bodies were damp with clean sweat, the kind that comes from good fucking.
“I don’t want to stop either,” I said, “but what about your father?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “He won’t be back for ages. I ought to know. I’ve lived with him all my life.”
The way she said that had such a sad sound. When he did return, we didn’t hear him until he was climbing up over the end gate of the wagon. Her hand clamped over my mouth, though I wasn’t about to say a word. I didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing.
Reverend Claggett, no longer young, groaned as he made up his bed. The floor of the wagon, creaked as he knelt beside it. Then we heard him say in that doomsday voice, “Oh, God, speed us on our way, I beseech You. The years have passed, and You have redeemed ... and yet... and yet... Please help me, oh Lord, for I am the lowliest of sinners. I am beyond my depth, oh Lord, as if things are happening that I cannot understand.”
Moments later he lay down and began to snore like a woodcutter. The noise filled the big wagon. I felt Hannah shaking under me. I thought she was crying or trembling with fear. Then I realized that she was laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I whispered.
“Gracious! You’ve gone all soft,” she murmured. “I’ll have to help you, won’t I?”
Together we got it rock-hard again.
And the reverend snored on.
I had two problems to think about. The floor of the wagon wasn’t solid but planked, and it creaked when a man’s weight was put on it. I’m a shade over one-ninety, and that’s plenty of pounds. Old Claggett was snoring, but I was ready to bet that he was a light sleeper. You form habits early, and Claggett had been an outlaw and jailbird for about half his life. I was pretty sure he’d get kind of mad if he caught me sneaking out of his daughter’s cubicle in the middle of the night. Saying that I’d come to tuck her in wouldn’t get me far.
Apart from that, it was a cold, rainy night outside, and if I left Hannah’s bed I’d have to spend the rest of the night in Culligan’s wagon, or under it. The idea didn’t appeal to me. Along about now, Culligan would be at the bottom of the bottle or starting on a new one. Liquor was forbidden on the train, but when you’re as big as Culligan you can do a lot of things you’re not supposed to. As far as I knew, he didn’t drink during the day, just at night after the wagons were corralled. Truthfully, I didn’t want to sleep with Culligan, or even close to him. So, I stayed where I was and hoped for the best.
And I got it. There is nothing like being in bed with a soft, warm young woman on a cold, wet night. You can listen to the rain dripping and be glad you’re not out in it. Naturally, Hannah wasn’t wearing her gold-rimmed glasses—I’m not sure she really needed them—and in the dim light that filtered into the cubicle she looked different, younger and somehow full of mischief. She looked like a kid who had gotten away with some prank.
After the reverend climbed into the wagon I was nervous for a while, but Hannah whispered that it was all right. I wasn’t so sure, but then I decided the hell with it. There’s no spice in life without danger. Hannah’s bed was narrow, but it was big enough when I was on top of her. She was a virgin, but she took to sex naturally and without a trace of awkwardness. With Claggett snoring only a few feet away we couldn’t go in for any fancy fucking, much as we both wanted to, but man on top of woman, or the other way around, is fine with me.
Hannah was a virgin and very tight, so I had to push hard. But the friction made it that much more exciting. She had strong muscles down there and she used them to drive me wild. It was a cold night, but sweat still glistened on her face and body. She felt slippery under me. Instead of locking her legs behind me, she spread them as wide as the bed would allow, making it possible for me to plow her deep.
By now I was past caring about the Reverend Claggett.
I didn’t know about the doctor’s daughter, but I was pretty sure Hannah was the only virgin in the train. Now I don’t go looking for virgins, but it can get you bone-hard when you know you’re giving a woman her first fuck; what they lack in experience they make up with lots of energy and an eagerness to please.
Hannah didn’t close her eyes but watched my face as I fucked her, as if she wanted to be sure that her body, her tight cunt, pleased me. I couldn’t have been more pleased. She got wetter and wetter as I fucked her steadily but gently. I knew she wanted this to be a wild fuck, but we didn’t dare. She was wild enough though, raising her ass off the bed and grinding her crotch into mine. Her ass was small and round and firm. I have large hands and they held the twin globes of her ass tightly.
“I like everything you’re doing to me,” she whispered. “I’ve often wondered what it would be like. But it’s better than anything I ever imagined. Do you like it as much as I do? Do you like the way I fuck?”
She said the word shyly. It was funny to hear it coming from her. Just saying fuck seemed to get her even more excited and she whispered a lot of other forbidden words to me. Cunt. Balls. Cock. Hard-on. I don’t know where she had heard them, but they must have been in her head for a long time. I guess that’s what happens to a cock-wanting woman when she’s been kept down too long.
“Shoot your load, Jim,” she whispered. Another bit of naughtiness. I came like a fire hose.
I liked her, everything about her. I didn’t want to settle down with her on some farm, have her call me in for supper, or smile at her across the candied ya
ms, but I liked her.
Claggett snored on. I hoped he wasn’t keeping God awake. Hannah and I didn’t need any of God’s help. Hannah was more excited by the proximity of danger than I was. I get enough danger in the kind of work I do. More than that is like getting too much on your plate. But Hannah kept coming back for extra helpings. Man, that girl was starved for sex.
You never saw a girl with such stamina, such energy. There’s a saying that such and such a woman can go all night. This one could. Her enthusiasm was catching, like speaking in tongues at a revival meeting. Claggett snored on, and I plowed his daughter. I guess we’d be at it still, if first light hadn’t thinned the darkness to gray. Preacher or no preacher, I had to get out of there.
It was the longest sneak I took in my life. I had to go out over the end gate of the wagon. I was closer to the driver’s seat, but that was sprung and would squeak like the devil. If Claggett heard that, he would draw and fire without asking questions. I had no mind to kill the old man; by his rules, I was in the wrong. So I went by way of the end gate.
Not much light showed yet, just gray streaks in the sky. It would be more than half an hour before the first of the sleepers blinked awake. Sam and Cyrus were on the last watch of the night, but I saw no sign of them.
I would have to go the next day without sleep. Fine with me. I was feeling all right, the way you ought to feel after a good night with a woman. Sure, I was tired. No, not tired exactly, just droopy and relaxed, all the tensions gone. I wondered if there would be other nights with Hannah. It was hard to tell. I hoped there would, because it had been one sweet ride.
The light was slightly brighter and I was rolling up the bedroll under the tent when I heard the scream. It was high and terrified and despairing. I knew it was Hannah. I dropped the bedroll and ran. I didn’t give a damn now about her father. If I caught him beating her, I’d kill him.