“I’d give you two dollars and fifty cents if you throw enough water for a sponge bath into the bargain.”
Ruth smiled, her heart light, a faint excitement tingling like a man’s intimate whisper in her ears. Not to seem overly eager and give this innately suspicious man reason to become suspicious of her intentions, she arranged a serious, businesslike expression as she smoothed her cream apron across her thighs. “Supper’s an extra dollar, however. Breakfast an extra fifty cents.”
He nodded, studying her obliquely. She could see his soft eyes flicking across her body, which she thought even at twenty-eight years was still relatively firm and shapely, not unkind to a man’s gaze. She might have been fooling herself, but she thought she noted a subtle but authentic appreciation in his eyes, a quiet male interest.
“You may stable your horse in the barn, then, Mr. Prophet,” she said, glancing at the mud brick stable standing back in the brush a ways, behind the plank-board, one-hole privy with the obligatory half-moon in its door. “I hope there’s enough hay. Unfortunately, I employ no hostlers, so you’ll have to tend the gelding yourself.”
“Fine as frog hair, Mrs. Rose.”
“Ruth.”
“Well, then, I reckon it’s Lou, Ruth.”
His smile returned that warm, soft, masculine hand to her belly once more. Feeling the warmth of a blush rise in her cheeks, she turned quickly through the saloon’s doorway. “I’ll get that bath . . .”
9
GRISELDA MAY WALKED slowly through the brush behind Soddermeyer’s Dry Goods store, glancing cautiously behind her toward the big purple saloon and hotel looming darkly against the spruce green sky, her hands lightly touching the polished pearl grips of the double-barreled derringers holstered on her waist.
She didn’t think she had anything to worry about. Mordecai Moon had been plenty busy since the bull train of Cap McCormick had rolled into Moon’s Well, and she knew from the deep, crimson flush in the dwarf’s pasty cheeks that he was thoroughly distracted at having been, for all intents and purposes, whipped to a frazzle by the stranger in denim and buckskin and wielding a Peacemaker.
A boy caught peeping through the door of the girls’ schoolhouse privy couldn’t have been feeling any more chagrined than was Mordecai Moon, walking around with that bullet hole in the hat he was so proud of. He might have changed the hat if he’d had a spare, but Griselda had never seen any other hat around the room they shared on the hotel’s third floor. “The King’s Chambers,” Mordecai Moon called the room, appointed with furnishings shipped in from all over Texas.
She had to chuckle a little at that, but there was no mirth in it. The whole thing between her and the ugly, old dwarf was about as disgusting as finding a rattlesnake in the coffee beans.
But somehow she’d managed to rise to the occasion. Somehow, she’d even found herself enjoying playing the little man, giving him pleasure until she thought his bloodshot eyes would shoot out of his skull, setting him up to watch him fall like a stone dropped from a high cliff over the Rio Grande.
It was a game with her, this thing she had with Moon. A deadly game. She liked how it took her breath away and made her chuckle at times with giddiness.
This little outlaw girl, an orphan child raised by half-breeds in the Indian Nations, was going to take down the most formidable little devil riding roughshod over a large chunk of southwestern Texas.
“Rio,” she said now, stopping and shoving a mesquite branch aside, so she could see the little, ancient stone cabin hunched on the dry wash littered with skull-sized, sun-bleached stones before her. “Rio, you in there, hon?”
Only silence issued from the stone hut that had been sitting there along the wash for as long as anyone native to these parts could remember. Some believed an old Apache who’d been exiled from his tribe had lived in it around the time that Chisos La Grange had dug the well, but no one was sure anymore. Others said an old Mexican padre had built the place over a hundred years ago, when he—according to the legend—had been exiled from his church for breaking his vow of celibacy when he’d fallen in love with a young Kiowa girl.
Griselda liked that story the best. It gave her a bittersweet feeling. To think that someone, even a preacher, could feel such love for another person that he’d been willing to sacrifice his soul . . .
Griselda moved past the mesquite tree and crossed the rocky wash. “Come on, Rio, I know you’re in there.”
Just after the big man in buckskins had backed his horse down the street to the east, and when Cap McCormick’s train had been clattering into the town, she’d seen the young man limp away from the jailhouse, cross the street in the dust from the train, and slink off like a wounded dog between the dentist’s office and Green’s Saddlemaker’s though Green had left when he could no longer afford Mordecai’s water contract and hefty monthly tax on profits.
Griselda had waited on the hotel gallery until she was sure that Moon and his men had gone into the hotel with Cap while Cap’s men tended their oxen, and in all that confusion, she’d slipped out away from the hotel, heading for the little cabin hunched here along the wash.
She could hear the bawling of the oxen now as they were fed hay from Mordecai’s barn, which was kept stocked with hay and oats by his Mexican tenants, and watered from his well.
She walked up to the door and stood upon the three flat rocks embedded in the ground for a stoop of sorts, and then lightly rapped on the door. “Rio, I know you’re in there,” she said, holding her lips up to within an inch of the door, speaking in a breathy, sensual tone.
“Go away,” came the Kid’s muffled voice from within.
Griselda smiled. If he’d really wanted her to go away, he wouldn’t have said anything. She knew everything there was to know about the Kid, having grown up with him back in Nebraska, on farms only a few miles apart. That was before he was known as the Kid but merely as gangly young Vernon Cartwright.
Griselda pulled the leather string. The bolt fell from its plate with a clank, and the leather hinges creaked as the door sagged open. Griselda pushed it open halfway and peered into the earthen-floored hovel’s dank shadows.
The Kid lay on his cot on the far side of the low, arched adobe fireplace. He was fully clothed, wearing even his boots and his gun, and he lay facing the stone wall, weak light pressing in where the chinking had crumbled away. His hat was on the floor near his small eating table.
Stepping inside, she said, “You okay, Rio?”
She walked in slowly, hesitatingly, for she’d seen how the big man in buckskins had hauled Rio into town, thrown him over his own horse like a sack of potatoes. Sharing the horse’s back with a dead man, no less!
Rio was a prideful young man, and she knew his temper. He could very likely be in a very bad temper right now, maybe fixing to take out his rage and humiliation on someone, anyone—even her. He’d grown from a gangly boy into a rangy, powerful man. Maybe not as powerful as the big man in buckskins, but powerful in his own right.
Dangerous . . .
The danger gave Griselda one of those thrills she was so addicted to, and she felt her breasts swell slightly behind her cream cotton blouse and thin chemise.
“Rio . . . ?”
“Go ’way.”
“Ah, come on, Rio. How bad you hurt? Want I should fetch the doc?”
“I’ll shoot any goddamn pill roller you bring around here, Griselda!”
Gently, she sat down on the edge of the cot, and placed a hand on Rio’s shoulder. He had his right hand on his gun, and he was squeezing it so hard that his knuckles were white.
“We’ll settle our accounts, Rio,” she said quietly, rubbing his arm. “But you’re the deputy sheriff, now, you know, so you’ll have to do it within the law. You’d best leave that big gunny to the dwarf.”
Rio turned to her now, and she stifled a gasp at the massive, blue bump on his forehead
, right at his hairline. “You don’t think I can do it? I can take him. He just got the jump on me—that’s all!”
“Oh, poor Rio.”
Griselda reached up to caress the lump with her fingers, but Rio shoved her arm down. It was a powerful shove, and she fell back against the wall.
“Don’t! Leave me alone, damnit, Griselda! It hurts like hell. Feel like some jake’s pressin’ a hot iron against my head, and inside I feel like someone’s smashin’ rocks against my brain.”
The Rio Bravo Kid rolled onto his back and pressed his fists to his temples. He chuckled, then drew a deep, painful breath. “Seen what he did to that little pecker, the dwarf.” He laughed again, sucked another painful breath, but continued to laugh and groan at the same time as he said, “Seen it all. Blew Moon’s hat right off his head. Shot Bannon’s gun.”
“Where was Mortimer?” Griselda wanted to know.
“Hell, I don’t know. You know him. Can’t figure him sometimes. Probably off worryin’ over that girl of his.” Rio drew a breath. “Christ, that big feller’s good. I only hope I can get to him before Moon does. Injuns say when they shoot a big ole griz, they acquire his power. Must mean, then, if I were to shoot a man like that, I’d take his power.” He furrowed a brow at her. “You believe that?”
“I guess.” Griselda hiked a shoulder. “Why not?” She was smiling at the Rio Bravo Kid, whom she knew better as Vernon Cartwright, but she was thinking about the big man now, too. About his power. About how maybe it was worth trying to acquire, like the Indians acquired a bear’s power . . .
Rio rolled his pain-racked eyes to Griselda. “You see where he went?”
Griselda’s thoughts were a mile away, and it took Rio to fashion an impatient look before she said, “Who? Oh, the big fella? No, I didn’t see where he went.”
That was a lie. She’d suddenly become very interested in the big jake in the buckskin shirt who could get the drop on the Rio Bravo Kid and suddenly make him look less like the cold-steel artist he fancied himself and more like the scrawny farm boy Griselda had grown up with.
And who’d cut Mordecai Moon down to his real size.
Who’d made Moon look foolish. And scared.
A simpering idiot there for a few seconds—that’s how he’d made Moon look.
The big man had even scared the hard-eyed border toughs who’d once run with the dwarf when Moon was nothing more than a border bandit himself and who now worked for him around the saloon and hotel and helped him tax the entire town and make it pay dearly for his water.
“What are you thinkin’ about?”
Griselda jerked a little with a start, finding Rio’s critical, faintly suspicious eyes on her. “I was . . . I was thinkin’ about how we were gonna get that fella back for what he done to you, Rio.”
Rio continued to study her as he rose up on his elbows. His head looked oddly misshapen by the bruise—so much so, in fact, that if Griselda hadn’t been all too aware of his violent temper, she would have snickered.
Rio said, “You sure that’s all you were thinkin’ about?”
“Of course. What else would I be thinkin’ about?”
“I don’t know, but I seen that look in your eyes before, and it always made me feel a little funny about you, Griselda. Like maybe you were in this whole thing for just yourself.”
Snapping into action, she gave him a slow blink and let her right eye wander slightly, with a foxy prettiness, toward her nose. Men just melted when they saw that, for some reason.
Just as slightly, she slid her shoulders back, feeling her blouse tighten against her small, pert breasts. She smiled to herself when Rio fell for it, as every man she’d ever known always did, dreaming of opening her blouse and nuzzling the tender, youthful orbs.
His eyes flicked downward, and she saw a very faint color rise in his cheeks. The bruise on his forehead even darkened a little.
He swallowed.
Griselda caressed his right cheek with her thumb. “You know I’m in this whole thing for us, Rio. You know that. How long have we known each other? Since we were five years old? I’m in this world for you, Rio, and you’re in it for me. We ride together. Always have, always will.”
There was that thrill again. Like a draw of strong Mexican tobacco. The danger . . .
Rio’s eyes dropped to Griselda’s shirt again, and his lower jaw loosened. She let him get a good look of that lightly tanned valley between the mounds of her supple flesh, and then she said in a soft, intimate voice, “Now, it’s understandable, you bein’ jealous, with the situation bein’ what it is. But you know, don’t you, that nothin’ happens between that little urchin and me? I’ve never let him lay a hand on me, just let him go on thinkin’ I will”—she gave a devilish smile—“when the time is right.
“In the meantime, the time’s gonna get right for you and me, Rio. That’s gonna happen soon, maybe in a few days or next week, when that wagon of fresh meat rolls in, and then he takes it on down to the border and comes back with all that Mexican gold!”
She really let her breasts swell now. It wasn’t just a show, either. Thinking about all that gold made the girl randy, made her feel as though her bosoms would fairly explode . . .
She studied Rio. He was drunk on her again, just like he usually was, just like she wanted him to be. He believed the lie that she’d never actually slept with Mordecai Moon. He had no idea that she, in fact, actually enjoyed sleeping with the dwarf. Oh, not because he brought her pleasure, but because she enjoyed playing the little monster like a violin.
Whenever she did it, and climbed down off the stubby mound of pasty flesh, she couldn’t help giggling to herself as she imagined how he’d look when he realized what she’d been doing all along. Propping him up to watch him fall. Setting him up, learning the ins and outs of his business here in Moon’s Well, to rob him blind and head for the border, never to be seen or heard from again.
She and Rio had come here with that in mind. No, they’d come here on their way to the border, for they’d robbed a bank up in Kansas and believed a posse were after them. They hadn’t made off with much from the little farm town bank, however, so when Griselda May and the Rio Bravo Kid, as he made himself known two days after they’d ridden into Moon’s Well, saw the dwarf’s fancy setup, they just knew they had to learn more about it.
And see what they could get of it for themselves.
It just so happened that Moon’s personally appointed sheriff, the broken-down old gunman, Lee Mortimer, was in need of a cheap deputy to keep the peace around the town when the freight trains rolled through. Also, border toughs like the dwarf’s men themselves often stopped here for whiskey and women, and they needed to be controlled by men who at least called themselves the law.
That way, word wouldn’t get around that there wasn’t any real law anywhere in or around Moon’s Well. The dwarf didn’t want word to get out that the town was wide open, because that would attract the attention of the Texas Rangers, like the two whom the dwarf had killed in a foolish yet typical fit of fury earlier in the day.
So, here Griselda and the Rio Bravo Kid were, sitting on a veritable gold mine of riches—as long as she could keep the lid on the powder keg she knew the Kid to be. Young Vernon Cartwright had, after all, locked his parents in their cabin back in Nebraska, shot them both through a window, doused the roof with kerosene as they lay writhing and screaming, and set the place on fire.
Of course, Griselda had pushed him toward it, because his folks were mean as rabid dogs and would soon as whip Vernon as feed him, but he hadn’t been all that hard to push. Griselda had known even at that young age that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
She smiled now as she looked down to see Rio sticking his nose between her breasts. He wrapped his arms around her, drew her close. She felt his warm breath on her skin, one of his hands on her skirt, the warmth pressing into her thig
h beneath it.
Careful to avoid the ugly bruise on his forehead, she ran her hands through his hair. “Oh, Kid,” she cooed. “It’s gonna be all right. That big bastard who slapped you down will be dead soon, by tomorrow, most likely, and the dwarf—why, he’ll be dancing in hell soon, too!”
She pressed her lips to the top of the Kid’s head, feeling one of his hands kneading her bosoms through her blouse, the other squeezing her thigh. “And you and me, we’re gonna be richer than our wildest dreams!”
“Nasty, ugly rich?” Rio said, his voice muffled by her blouse.
She smiled, remembering how they’d described how rich they were going to be, back in Nebraska.
“Nasty, ugly rich, Rio!” Griselda said.
She thrilled to the danger as she let the Kid slide her skirt farther and farther up her legs. . . .
10
LOU PROPHET SAT back in the warm, sudsy water, hands on the sides of the copper bathtub, a quirley dangling from his mouth as he listened to the whooping and hollering from up the street, in the direction of the dwarf’s giant saloon and whorehouse.
Occasionally, now that he’d scrubbed the filth from his bones, he’d hum a few bars of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” but not for long. He was too distracted by the obvious party rising from Mordecai Moon’s place, and by contrast, the noticeable lack of clientele here in the Rose Hotel and Saloon.
He was in a street-front room in the Rose’s second story, soaking in a tub that Mrs. Rose had insisted on half-filling with warm water, so Prophet could have a proper bath. She assured him she had plenty of water, for everyone in town bought a barrelful each week for a dollar—the price the dwarf allowed the town’s citizens, since he apparently didn’t want to drive everyone away. He saved the outlandishly high prices for the freight trains and other non-citizens passing through, like Prophet himself.
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