Message on the Wind

by J. R. Roberts

  “Yes, but . . . I mean after tonight,” she said. “The men in this town . . . Well, there don’t seem to be many real men in this town.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said, going to his knees in front of her. He pressed his mouth to her belly. “A woman like you deserves a real man.”

  “Ooh,” she said, grabbing his head as he tongued her deep belly button. And then she said, “Oh,” as he cupped her pubic mound with his right hand. She had a lot of hair there, which he liked. He probed it gently until the end of his middle finger found her very wet.

  “Oh . . . my . . . God . . .” she said, as he dipped his finger into her gently.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Andy Crawford closed the restaurant door, locked it, and walked to the sheriff’s office. As he entered, Sheriff Patterson looked up from his desk.

  “You don’t look happy, Andy,” he said.

  “I ain’t,” Andy said. “There was a stranger sniffing around Rachel today.”

  “So?”

  “He was askin’ about the old Organ Pipe burnin’ down,” the cook said.

  “That must be Clint Adams,” Patterson said.

  “You know about him?”

  “Sure. I sent him over to you. Thought you could use the business.”

  “You sent him—Wait a minute,” Andy said, suddenly. “Did you say Clint Adams?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The Gunsmith.”

  “Still right, Andy.”

  “What the hell is he doin’ in town?” Andy asked. “And how did he find us?”

  “It appears Joe Hickey drew him a map.”

  “Hickey!”

  “Sit down before you explode, Andy,” Harry Patterson said. “Yeah, it seems Hickey’s in Yuma Prison.”

  “That’s where he belongs, if you ask me,” Andy said. “I hope they’re plannin’ on hangin’ him.”

  “Did he spend money in your place?”

  “Huh?”

  “Adams, did he spend money in your place?”

  “Oh, yeah, he ate. Beef stew.”

  “So you got any other problems?”

  “I tol’ you, he was sniffing around Rachel.”

  “Andy, all men sniff around Rachel,” Patterson said. “She never gives any of ‘em a tumble, including me.”

  “She better not.”

  “Andy, you act like she belongs to you,” Patterson said. “She doesn’t give you a tumble, either.”

  “Don’t you worry,” the big man said. “She’ll marry me. I’ll wear ‘er down eventually.”

  “Well, I hope you do, Andy,” Patterson said. “Anything else?”

  “You gonna let Adams find out what really happened?” the cook asked.

  “I don’t know if that’s up to me, Andy,” Patterson said. “Why don’t we wait and see?”

  Andy stood up. “I was you, I’d run him outta town.”

  “Well, I guess that’s why I’m the sheriff and you’re the cook, Andy.”

  “I own my place!” Andy reminded him.

  “Right, right,” Patterson said. “Sorry, Andy. No offense meant.”

  “Hmph,” Andy said, and huffed out of the office.

  Patterson wondered if Rachel would ever give the man a tumble while he smelled of onions.

  Clint moved his hands around to cup Rachel’s chunky buttocks and pressed his face to her fragrant mound. She smelled a little bit of sweat, and a bath would have taken care of that, but she also smelled like a woman in heat. He wouldn’t have traded that for the smell of any soap in the world.

  He breathed on her mound, then probed through the hair with his tongue until he tasted her. She jumped, and her knees almost buckled as he licked her.

  “Oooh, God, I gotta lie down!” she said, anxiously. “Or I’ll fall down.”

  “Well,” he said, “we wouldn’t want you to fall down, and I plan on doing this for a while, so . . .”

  He stood up, took her hand, and led her to the bed. He’d been lying on top of the sheet and blanket, so he pulled them down and then laid her gently on her back. He undressed slowly, while she watched, and as his rigid, straining cock came into view, her eyes widened and she reached for it.

  She wrapped her hand around it, stroked it, leaned over and rubbed the smooth skin of it over her face. She did it so lovingly that he said, “Wow, it has been a while for you.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter,” she said. “You are the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. This thing is just . . . well, beautiful.”

  She stroked it with both hands, then put her lips to it. Slowly, she opened her lips to let him slide inside. The interior of her mouth was wet and incredibly hot.

  “Now I’m the one who has to lie down,” he said as she sucked him.

  She let him bob free of her mouth, laughed, then scooted over and said, “Get into this bed with me, you beautiful man!”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Sheriff Harry Patterson swiveled his desk chair around, looked up at the gun rack, and reminded himself what he had been doing when Clint Adams first entered his office.

  He took the carbine down, picked up his rag, located his gun oil, and continued to clean the weapon. Idly, he thought about Clint Adams’s arrival in Organ Pipe and what it could mean to the town. He decided that early in the morning he’d go over and talk to the owner and editor of the Register, Paul Harris. Just as Patterson had not been the sheriff of Organ Pipe before the burning, Harris had not been the owner-editor of the Register. But they were here now, and between them they were the caretakers of the town. He had to warn—or, at least, advise—Harris that Clint Adams might be coming in to talk with him. After all, Patterson doubted that Adams had gotten all the answers he was looking for, and he doubted the man would ride back to Yuma without them.

  Mike Callum rode into Organ Pipe in the dark, so no one could see him. He’d followed Clint Adams’s trail there, but hadn’t expected to find a town—not here, anyway. The Organ Pipe he had known was farther east.

  This town was strange to him, but it was a town, and Clint Adams was here. He confirmed that when he stopped at the livery to put up his horse for the night. Had to wake the liveryman up, paid him double to open the doors, but there in a stall was Adams’s big black.

  “You know the man belongs to that horse?” he asked.

  “Sure thing. Mr. Adams.”

  “Know where he’s stayin’?”

  “Hotel over on Main Street.”

  “Hotel got a name?”

  “Nope,” the man said, “just the hotel. Only one in town.”

  “Anyplace else to stay?”

  “Yeah, a rooming house the other side of town. Run by a widder woman named Hastings.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You gonna leave yer horse here long?”

  “I’ll have to let you know,” Callum said, and left to go and find that rooming house.

  Andy left the sheriff’s office and went over to the small house Rachel lived in, over near Mrs. Hastings’s rooming house. There were no lights inside, and when he looked in the windows he couldn’t see anything.

  Goddamn woman.

  Goddamn whore!

  Clint had to wrestle with Rachel for who would be on top, and his superior strength prevailed.

  “Isn’t there some way we can do this together?” she complained.

  “Not unless we invent one,” he said.

  “Oooh,” she growled, “why do you like it so much down there?”

  “I think,” he said, and paused, “it might be because you taste a little like the daily special.”

  She started to laugh then, unable to stop even when tears began to roll down her face. Then, as he slid his hands beneath her to cup her buttocks and lift her, she suddenly stopped, because he had new and better access to her. He licked and sucked on her avidly until she was growling again, but for a different reason. She was bucking beneath him, reaching for something she’d never expected because she’d never experienced it before.

>   He ran his hands over her big breasts, meaty thighs, soft belly, continuing to work on her with his mouth until her body went taut and she screamed . . .

  She was curled up on the bed, trying to catch her breath, holding her hand out as if to hold him at bay.

  “W-what was t-that?” she asked, breathlessly.

  “You’ve never felt that before?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, “never. Does that happen . . . all the time with you?”

  “Well, not with me, but with a lot of the women I’m with,” he said.

  “Jesus!” she said. “I guess I’ve just never been with the right man before.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “I thought I was gonna die,” she said. “It was so damn good I thought I was gonna die.”

  “Well,” Clint said, “you’re not going to die, and we’re not done.”

  “God,” she said, fervently, “I hope not!”

  THIRTY-SIX

  By morning Rachel was determined that Clint was never going to leave Organ Pipe.

  “The first time it happened, I thought it was a fluke,” she admitted, “but every time? Jesus, now all you have to do is touch me and I explode. That’s what it feels like, you know. An explosion. What will I do after you leave? You have ruined me for every other man I’ll ever meet.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find another man you can feel the same way with,” he said.

  “No,” she said, “huh-uh, I don’t think so. I’m thirty-eight years old, Clint, and you’re the first man I’ve ever met who can do that to me. My God, I’ve had sex hundreds of times! Never . . . never . . . no,” she said, starting to stammer, “I don’t think—I mean, this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

  “Rachel, you don’t have to—”

  “Can we do it again?”

  It was morning; he was hungry, and he wanted to go and see the editor of the newspaper.

  “Now?” he asked.

  “Right now,” she said, reaching for his cock. “Look, you’re getting hard already—again. That’s another thing. All the other men I’ve ever been with grunt over me and then roll over and go to sleep. I’ve never been with a man who can do it so many times.”

  “It’s not me,” he said, “it’s you, Rachel. You’re so beautiful, and you have a wonderful body, and you’re so damn—”

  “Stop!” she said, putting her hands over her ears.

  “Why?”

  “Nobody’s ever talked to me that way before,” she said. “Maybe I’ve just been living in little towns too long. Men like you don’t come along every day, Clint, do you know that?”

  “Come here,” he said, reaching for her.

  She went into his arms willingly, anxiously. They rolled over on the bed and she climbed on top of him. She reached between them to find him fully hard already. She lifted her hips, held him, and sat down on him, taking him inside.

  “Oh my God,” she said, as she rode him up and down, “oh my God, oh my God, oh . . . my . . . God!”

  Paul Harris, owner and editor of the Organ Pipe Register , looked up from his printing press as Sheriff Harry Patterson walked in. The press wasn’t running, which was why Harris happened to be bent over it at the moment.

  “Can’t get the damned thing to run,” Harris said, straightening up. “What can I do for you, Harry?”

  “We gotta talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Fella in town askin’ questions about the old town.”

  “So?”

  “Fella’s name is Clint Adams.”

  Harris picked up a rag and wiped his hands on it, stepped away from the press.

  “Well, that sounds more interesting than what I’m doing,” he said. “Come on, have a cup of coffee and tell me all about it.”

  Clint went to breakfast alone. Rachel had finally succumbed to exhaustion and remained in his bed. He told her to stay there as long as she wanted, and she asked if forever would be too long.

  Since Rachel was in his bed, he didn’t go to her restaurant for breakfast. He found another place, smaller, not crowded, where the man who was the cook was also the waiter—and probably the owner. But the food was pretty good.

  “Why was I told that the other restaurant was the best one in town?” Clint asked the man. “The place across from the hotel?”

  “I don’t know,” the man said, frowning. He was the opposite of Andy, the other cook. This man was about five and a half feet tall, with slate gray hair but with a black mustache. “Who told you that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Clint said. “I just heard it . . . around.”

  “Well, what do you think?” the man asked. “Now that you ate in both places?”

  “Well,” Clint said, “I had beef stew there and eggs here. Kind of hard to compare those. But I can tell you one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your coffee’s better.”

  The man stuck out his hand.

  “Carl Crews.”

  “Cruz?” Clint asked, shaking his hand. “You don’t look Mexican.”

  “Not,” Carl said. “It’s Crews.” And he spelled it out for Clint.

  “Oh, I see. Well, my name’s Clint Adams.”

  “The Gunsmith,” Crews said. “In my place? More coffee?”

  “Yeah,” Clint said, “definitely.”

  Crews poured him another cup. By this time the other two diners had left.

  “What brings you to town?” Crews asked.

  “I was looking for Organ Pipe,” Clint said. “The, uh, other one.”

  “Oh,” Crews said.

  “Did you live there?”

  “No,” Crews said. “I came here later.”

  “Did Andy live there?”

  “Oh, yeah, he did.”

  “Maybe that explains it,” Clint said. “Why folks eat there more than here?”

  “I never looked at it that way, but you’re probably right.”

  “Is there that kind of separation here?” Clint asked. “Folks from the old Organ Pipe and folks from the new one?”

  “Oh yeah,” Crews said. “In fact, I think that may be what’s keepin’ us from growin’ as fast as we could.”

  “You mind talking to me about that, Mr. Crews?” Clint asked.

  “Hell, I don’t mind at all,” Crews said. “Ain’t every day I get to talk to the Gunsmith.” Crews sat down. “What’s on your mind?”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Paul Harris listened to Sheriff Patterson, then sat back in his chair and stared at the man.

  “What the hell?” he said. “Where did this story of a plague come from?”

  “Joe Hickey.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “I know.”

  “Hickey’s been in Yuma all this time?” Harris asked.

  “ ’Pears like.”

  “And who else is in Yuma?”

  “Don’t know,” Patterson said.

  “Well,” Harris said, “somebody should ask Adams, don’t you think?”

  “He’s comin’ to see you next, probably,” Patterson said.

  “So I should ask him?”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not the sheriff.”

  “Come on, Paul,” Patterson said. “You and me, we’re equal in this.”

  “Except you got to wear the badge, and I got to run the newspaper.”

  “You wanted to run the newspaper.”

  “Yeah, well . . . Okay, when he comes, I’ll feel him out, talk to him,” Harris said. “See what I can find out.”

  “Maybe get him on our side,” Patterson said.

  “I tell you what,” Harris said. “I’ll feel him out, find out what he knows . . . You get him on our side.”

  “Paul—”

  “That feels more equal to me, Harry.”

  Patterson sighed. “Fine.”

  Because Crews felt like an outsider in the new Organ Pipe, Clint had the feeling he could trust him. He laid out his thoughts for the man, who list
ened carefully and waited until Clint was done before asking questions.

  “And who told you about a plague?”

  “Joe Hickey.”

  “Well, I don’t know this Hickey,” Crews said, “but that don’t mean he wasn’t part of the old Organ Pipe.”

  “And the plague?”

  “I never heard nothin’ about no plague,” Crews said. “I heard a gang had Organ Pipe under their thumb, and when the town decided to fight back, the gang burned it down.”

  “That’d be Joe Hickey’s gang.”

  “You better talk to the sheriff about that.”

  “I did,” Clint said, “but I get the feeling I’m not getting the whole story.”

  “So what’s your next move?”

  “The newspaper.”

  “Paul Harris,” Crews said.

  “He the editor?”

  “Editor, owner, reporter—he does it all,” Crews said. “Usually up to his elbows in printing press ink, trying to get the thing to keep workin’.”

  “So you know him?”

  “He’s old Organ Pipe, but yeah, I know ‘im. Don’t think you’re gonna need me for an introduction, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Once you tell him who you are, he’ll smell a story.”

  “Or an interview,” Clint said, sourly.

  “Probably.”

  “I’ve done enough interviews for one week,” Clint said.

  “Yuma?”

  Clint nodded.

  “Newspapermen,” Crews said. “They think alike. You could probably trade him an interview for some information, though.”

  “That’s what I did in Yuma.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  “Got me to Joe Hickey.”

  “And that got you here,” Crews said. “Seems like you’ve come as far as you can on that bargain. Might be time to make another one.”

  “Might be.”

  A young couple walked in the front door, and Crews said, “Glory be, I got more customers.”