Middle-aged women had a beauty all their own, far different from that of younger women. Much of it lay in the eyes. And it was Judith’s jade-green eyes staring at him now with that hungry, faintly mocking arrogance and supreme insouciance of a she-cat that made his member throb. That as much as her tits or her full belly and thighs or the tuft of red hair peeking out from between her legs.
Middle-aged women were both a threat and a challenge to male pride, because they’d been through it all, and they knew the male of the species through and through. And they were less likely than younger women to be impressed or to put up with innate bullshit. They were less tolerant of merely giving satisfaction without being fulfilled themselves.
Haskell found himself hungry to dominate this beautiful bitch sprawled before him, mocking him with her eyes even after he’d stripped naked and his big cock was standing nearly straight up before him, nodding its swollen mushroom head with each thud of his heart.
She lay as before, not moving, chin resting on the heel of her hand, as he climbed onto the foot of the bed. He knelt at her feet and leaned forward and pressed his face to her right breast while squeezing the left one. He licked her nipple until it came to life beneath his tongue and slowly grew as hard as a sewing thimble. As he licked the other one the same way, she reached down and ran her fingers through his hair.
She said nothing. Her breasts began to rise and fall more sharply. He could hear each faint, long rasp of her breathing.
Finally, when he’d played with her breasts for nearly five minutes, rubbing his beard and mustache and tongue across them, she allowed him a pleased groan. She started to lie back and spread her legs, but he didn’t allow her to.
Instead, he wrapped his right arm around her belly, at once turning her over onto her tits and pulling her up onto her hands and knees. Then he went down and licked her wonderfully large, round ass, lapping her asshole and her cunt like a dog licking a fresh bone to gain every ounce of flavor before it started gnawing.
“Oh.” She grunted, swallowing. “Oh . . . good . . . Christ!”
Haskell worked like a man interviewing for an especially hard-fought job. The male in him—that dark, mute, atavistic shadow at the core of his being—wanted to rise to her challenge. It wanted to dominate her, to gently hammer her into submission, to make her howl like a wolf bitch who would long remember the alpha who’d taken her and ruined her for every other male in the land.
Bear savored every minute of this well-seasoned woman in his arms, his own senses sparking to life as he knew hers were by her sighs and whispered exclamations and sporadic jerks and shudders. Then she started groaning and pulling at the sheets, and her cunt fairly dripped with her juices.
“All right—Bear, it’s time, for chrissakes! Stick it in me!” She seethed at the headboard, two carved spools of which she squeezed in her clenched fists as she shook her head, her red hair tumbling down from the chignon to spill in thick clumps about her shoulders and back.
She looked like a woman being mercilessly whipped with braided leather. She glanced over her shoulder, and he grinned inwardly at the desperation in her eyes. She owned the harried, horrified countenance of a woman who’d seen a ghost.
“Fuck me!”
Haskell chuckled. “First, I’m gonna need the answers to a few questions.”
“I told you,” she groaned, flopping her head miserably, “I don’t mix—”
“Oh, but I do.” Bear had two fingers in her snatch. He wasn’t fucking her with them but just waggling them enough to keep her mewling and needing more. Much more.
“What is it, God damn it?” she said, her jaw hard.
“Are you sure Goodthunder killed Briar?”
She swallowed, grunted. “Of course I am! Please, Bear!”
“Why would he have killed Briar?”
“Because he’s thrown in with Pink Cheatum. Cheatum owns a freighting business . . . and they’re both . . . they’re both former outlaws . . . still are! Oh, sweet fucking Christ, you are a despicable creature!”
“Have you lost any freight shipments?”
“Two so far. Two wagons. Two men. Twenty mules!” she screeched, panting and glancing over her shoulder at him again desperately. “But . . . but we’re bound to lose more . . . with that madman on the loose! You can’t lose much . . . without the mines . . . pulling out of your contracts. We’ll be run into the ground!” She sucked a sharp breath, swallowed. “Pleeeease, I’ll tell you anything else you want to know after you’ve finished me!”
Bear chuckled. “All right, all right, hold on.”
19
Haskell steadied his cock with his hand. He slid it up against the crack in Judith’s ass, touched the head against the furred mound glistening just beneath it, whose petal-like folds had opened for him. It was blossoming in anticipation of the union.
He slid the swollen head of his organ inside the tufted mound, watching the mouth of her pussy expand while the soft, fleshy rim closed up tight around the veined shaft.
She was as wet and warm as stove-heated honey.
“Ah-ohh!” she grunted.
Slowly, Haskell slid his hips toward her ass, sliding his cock inside her. Deeper. Deeper.
“Oh, fuck! Oh, God!”
And then he was all the way inside her, and she was groaning and moaning, her back rigid, her face raised so that she was staring straight ahead at the bed’s headboard. Only she wasn’t staring, he saw as he leaned slightly to one side. Her eyes were squeezed shut, lips stretched back from her teeth.
He slid back out of her, grinning as he held the head of his massive shaft so that it was just touching the outside of her pussy. Her ass quivered. She shoved it toward him. He pulled a little farther back, holding the throbbing head of his dong against her sweaty ass, taunting.
Judith sucked a sharp breath through clenched teeth and lowered her head so that the rich tresses of her hair dangled down to her pillow.
She chuckled deep in her throat as she raked out, “Oh, you’re such a bastard! A real son of a bitch—you know that, Haskell?”
He chuckled and then slid the head of his cock back inside her. He pulled it out, shoved it back in.
Pulled it out. Shoved it in.
Out, in. Out, in . . .
Faster.
And then he slid about half his length inside and pulled it out quickly, replacing it just as quickly and keeping that rhythm up until he felt his own hot blood rise.
He thrust his hips against her, ramming his entire length inside her. She gave a deep, primordial groan and dropped her head to her pillow. Haskell reached forward and massaged her large breasts and pinched her distended nipples while he hammered her savagely, like a battering ram.
The headboard tattooed a hard rhythm against the wall.
Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!
Judith groaned or grunted loudly, shrilly, with each violent thrust. When she was nearing her climax—he could tell from the heat and the grabbing of her snatch at his cock—she wrapped her hands more firmly around the wooden spools in front of her and lifted her head and shoulders so that her freckled back traced a delectable S-curve.
“Fuck!” Haskell bellowed as his seed jetted deep inside her.
He continued hammering until he was spent.
Her screams slowly dwindled to moans and then to long, labored breaths, her head and shoulders rising and falling before him.
Bear pulled out of her, rolled her onto her back, kissed her mouth and then each breast in turn. She made deep, satisfied sounds and raked her hands through his hair and across his shoulders, pinching at his biceps and the corded muscles in his forearms, which were stout and dark as hickory posts.
He lay back against the bed.
She hooked a leg over his, slid a hand across his dwindling member, and touched the tips of her fingers to his scrotum.
“Christ, you’re big.”
“You all right?”
“No.” Judith laughed. “No, I’m not all right. I’ve just been savaged by a grizzly after he awakened from a long hibernation and found himself randy as hell!”
She rolled onto her side, curling her legs and facing him, lowering her hands to her soaked snatch. She pressed her lips to his side. “I’ll be walking bull-legged till the next full month of Sundays.”
Haskell rose onto his elbows. “Well, I reckon I best pull my picket pin.”
“Why go?”
“I got places to go and people to see.” Really, he had nowhere to go and no one to see tonight, but he hadn’t eaten all day, and he was hungry as hell. Besides, he needed a quiet night’s rest, and he doubted he would get that here.
She snuggled against his arm. “But we haven’t talked business yet.”
“I’m too tuckered to chin about business tonight, Judith.” Bear dropped his feet to the floor. “Maybe tomorrow.”
He felt the bed move slightly, sort of rise and fall on the opposite side.
Judith said, “Bear?”
There was the tooth-gnashing click of a hammer being drawn back over a firing pin.
Haskell glanced over his shoulder. Judith was on her knees and aiming a .44-caliber Merwin Hulbert pocket pistol with a three-and-a-half-inch barrel straight out from her right shoulder. The barrel was angled toward his head.
Judith narrowed an eye and said with what sounded like genuine sadness, “I’m sorry, Bear, but I have to kill you now.”
“Not again.” He sighed, remembering his Larimer Hotel night with Raven. “Why?”
“Because I’ve already told you too much.” The lines at the corners of her eyes deepened regretfully. “And after tonight, I’ll never be able to control you. I do apologize. This is all my fault, God damn my craven heart!”
He turned his shoulders toward her. “Judith?”
“Don’t try to talk me out of it. I’m sorry, Bear.”
“Judith?” he repeated, louder.
She wrinkled the skin above the bridge of her freckled nose. “What is it?”
“The popper’s empty.”
She wrinkled more skin above her nose. “When could you have emptied it?”
“When I was fucking you.”
She turned the gun slightly sideways and drew it toward her face, frowning at the cylinder. She gasped as he reached and jerked it out of her hand. With a sigh, he flicked open the loading gate and rolled the wheel.
Each brass-jacketed bullet dropped onto the sweat-damp sheets with a quiet thud.
“You should have gone ahead and risked a dry fire,” Haskell said, standing and turning toward her but keeping the little ivory-gripped gun in his hand. He winked. “That would have been the only dry-firin’ that happened in this room tonight, though, wouldn’t it?”
He chuckled as he set the gun on a dresser.
“You bastard, Haskell.”
“Been called that and far worse, Judith.”
Keeping his eye on her, he gathered his clothes and his guns and dressed. He’d gotten as much information as he was going to get out of her tonight. He’d look into Goodthunder and the gunman named Kane and the freighter Judith had also mentioned, Pink Cheatum.
Not tonight. Tomorrow was another day.
Judith sat back against the headboard, her bare legs tucked beneath her, arms crossed on her breasts, watching him with a dubious, slightly sheepish look. When he’d strapped on his gun belt and two holsters filled with the Russian and the big LeMat, he donned his hat and pinched the brim to her.
“Good night, Judith.”
He opened the door and turned to leave.
“Bear?”
He glanced back at her.
She stared at him a beat, then quirked her mouth and blinked once, slowly. “Thank you . . . I think. If you’re here to raise hell with my freighters, though, I’ll have you drawn and quartered.”
Bear winked and stepped out into the hall, drawing the door closed behind him. He walked downstairs and let himself out the front door to find both Samson and Rock on the veranda, smoking. Samson stood with his shotgun hanging down his back by a leather lanyard. He was facing Rock, who had a hip hiked on the porch rail.
Rock’s eyes were even more swollen than Samson’s, and he had a stout bandage on his nose. The bandage glowed in the darkness. His eyes looked like two seashells buried deep in the sand.
Both men turned to Haskell and hardened their jaws, like two bruins who’d just had their den invaded.
“Fellas, nice evenin’,” Haskell said jovially.
Neither bruiser said anything as he dropped down the steps to the ground and untied his black horse from the hitch rack.
“Hey, Mister,” Samson said.
“How can I help you?”
“This ain’t over,” Samson said, still lisping.
Rock shook his head slowly. “Ain’t over by a long shot.”
Haskell swung up onto the black’s back. “When you heal up, send for me, and we’ll do it all again. I ain’t sure how you think next time is gonna go any better for you, but hell, I’ll be a good neighbor.”
Haskell pinched his hat brim to the two bruisers, who merely stared at him blankly, jaws hard. Bear backed the black down the driveway several yards, keeping his shoulders square to the men on the veranda. He wouldn’t put back-shooting past either one of the plug-uglies.
He turned the horse and put it into a trot down the gravel drive to the main road.
20
Even at midnight, Wendigo was bustling.
Haskell figured that either a freight train had finished hauling a load down from the mines, or there’d been a shift change at the mines themselves.
Maybe both. So he wouldn’t run over anybody, Haskell walked the black through the dense crowd of loud, rambunctious, bearded men in canvas pants, heavy boots, and suspenders. Most were smoking and/or drinking, and at the moment there was no shooting.
There were plenty of women flaunting their wares. In fact, Haskell saw several pairs of bare breasts flashed from open tent flaps or whorehouse balconies. He was glad he’d had his ashes so thoroughly hauled that none of the tender lovelies was overly tempting.
What was tempting—had him downright drooling, in fact—was the smell of roasting meat scenting the billowing wood smoke wafting around him. Sometimes the eye-stinging smoke clouds were so heavy they blocked out the stars.
Haskell had to get his belly padded out before starvation did him in, but he needed to get his horse tended to first. Fortunately, a still-open livery barn revealed itself around the next bend in the road, and ten minutes later, he pushed and sidestepped through the crowd, following a particularly succulent-smelling smoke cloud.
It led him to a large mud-splattered tent in front of which a sign protruded into the street on stout posts, pronouncing in ornate red letters: “Pistol Pete’s Chili, Steaks, Taters & Beer.” A secondary sign beneath the first read just a tad more discreetly: “French Lessons 50 Cents.”
As Haskell doffed his hat and ducked through the broad open flap, he thought vaguely that by mining-camp standards, fifty cents was right cheap for a blow job. The whore giving the lessons must have a full set of teeth.
The eight or nine plank tables were about half occupied, with a short line of men at the counter that ran along the tent’s rear wall. Behind the bar, a Chinese man was tending bubbling, steaming pots on a black range, while a Chinese woman was flipping steaks in a couple of iron skillets.
The air in the tent was so rich with the delectable smells of spicy stew meat, fried steak, and malty ale that it tempered the stench of sweaty wool and unwashed bodies. The food smelled so good that Haskell’s knees nearly buckled under the weight of it. He stopped just inside and looked around and then reached into his bac
k pocket for a kerchief with which to mop the sweat and steam from his brow. It was chilly outside, but the tent was warm, humid, and richly perfumed.
Several lanterns cast spheres of watery light, although the corners of the tent were in darkness.
The Pinkerton made his way to the counter and followed the five-man line of customers to the stocky gent yelling orders back to the Chinese couple, who were now filling plates and setting them on the far end of the bar.
“You must be Pistol Pete,” Haskell told the gent, who had a pipe hanging out one corner of his mouth. The pipe stem had carved its own dark brown groove in the corner of the man’s lower lip. He wore a scraggly mustache and goatee, and one cheek boasted a blue pistol tattoo.
“What’ll it be, friend?” Pete asked.
Haskell eyed the skillets behind the man.
“How about a steak big as my hand?” Bear held out his right paw, palm up. “And I’ll take a big bowl of chili, four eggs sunny-side up on a big helping of potatoes, and a piece of that pie there. What kind is it?”
“Pecan.”
“And I’ll have two pieces of pecan pie.” Haskell winked at Pistol Pete. “Pecan’s my favorite.”
“How ’bout a French lesson for a second dessert?” Pistol Pete grinned and winked, pipe smoke curling up along a bushy pewter sideburn. “Got me a half-breed out back. Lips smooth as oiled silk!”
Haskell inwardly groaned. His cock was still chafed from his tussle with Judith. “Just a schooner of ale will do me for a second dessert tonight, friend,” he said with a benevolent grin.
Fifteen minutes later, he’d hauled a wooden tray loaded with the steaming platters of his late supper to a vacant table near the cooking area. He kept his back to the counter, facing the open flap and anyone who might be gunning for him.
Not that he thought he’d run into any more trouble tonight, but Haskell, being a man of trouble for most of his life, always did what he thought he could to increase his chances of remaining at least for a few more hours on the north side of the sod.
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