by Jake Logan
Later, he rolled off her body and pulled her close to nestle in his arms.
He could see a small portion of sky beyond the overhang of the lean-to’s spruce roof and only the showering glow of moon as it passed overhead.
She grabbed his hand with hers.
“Thank you, John,” she whispered, and squeezed his hand.
He squeezed back.
“Thank you, Madge,” he said. “It was wonderful, truly.”
“Yes, it was. I just never imagined anything so thrilling and beautiful. I feel like a new woman. A whole woman.”
He squeezed her hand again and reached out for his shirt. He pulled it from the bed and fished out a cheroot and a box of wooden matches.
“Mind if I smoke?” he asked.
“No, no, of course not. John, you are my master. I am your slave.”
He laughed and bit off the end of the slender cigar. He put it in his mouth and struck a match. He held it a second or two before touching it to the tip of his cheroot and saw her naked body glisten golden in the light. She was damp with sweat, her face etched in a rapturous glow for the briefest of moments. She smiled just before he shook the match to quench the flame and puffed smoke into his mouth and lungs.
“Umm,” she murmured, “it smells good.”
She patted his solid belly with a tiny hand.
“You are some man,” she said. “And part of you is inside me, warm as broth.”
“And you are some woman, Madge.”
“I’ll pull a blanket over us,” she said. “It can get quite cold at night. But right now, I’m warm, inside and out.”
“No need for clothes,” he said. “Later we can do it again.”
“We can?”
“We will,” he said. “Once I spring back to life.”
She laughed softly then, and rubbed his belly as if she were touching something precious and familiar.
“If you want me again, that is,” he said.
She grabbed him and held him tight.
“You know I do,” she said. “More than anything. I’m glad Pa is not here, is all.”
“Yes, that was a benefit to us.”
“So, we have all night together, John. Just the two of us.”
“Naked and close,” he said with a smile.
They lay there, looking up at the stars until their eyes grew heavy. Madge pulled a light blanket over them and nestled against him, her head resting on the bulging muscle of his arm. He put his arm around her neck and they fell asleep, peaceful and contented as bear cubs in a winter den.
Later they awoke and made love again.
This time, it was better than before, and the stars seemed to smile down on them like wise old friends.
8
Paul Welch was surprised to see Jessie Nolan walk up on him as he was dousing his small campfire.
“Jessie, what you got?” Paul said. He noticed that Nolan was lugging his blanket and bedroll, and had his gun belt slung over his shoulder.
“I’m bunkin’ with you, if that’s okay,” Jessie said.
“Sure, but . . .”
Jessie dropped his bedroll inside Welch’s lean-to and slipped his gun belt from his shoulder. He let the rig drop slowly to his feet.
“Madge has company,” Jessie said as he watched the last of the coals in the firepit lose its glow under a thin blanket of dirt.
“Oh, who?” Paul said.
“John Slocum, the man who saved my life.”
“Ah, well, there’s still hot coffee in the pot. Maybe this is somethin’ we ought to talk about, Jessie.”
“Only bad thing about bein’ up here is we can’t go to the Sawtooth Saloon and get a whiskey,” Jessie said.
“Hell, I got whiskey in my little pup tent,” Paul said. “You want a taste?”
Jessie’s mood brightened. His face flushed slightly and he mouthed a wide grin.
“Paul, you’re a dadgummed godsend,” Jessie said. “Maybe a slug or two would let me get some sleep. This damned arm hurts like fire.”
“Sure. I could use a taste or two myself,” Paul said.
He walked to a small tent off to the side of his shelter. Jessie heard the bang of pots and pans, the rustle of butcher paper, and the clank of tools. He licked his lips, his throat suddenly dry.
Paul came back carrying a bottle of cheap whiskey. Jessie couldn’t read the label, but he knew that they sold it at the bar in Sawtooth. He had drunk his share of it when he and Madge had lived in town.
“I got a couple of tin cups in the lean-to,” Paul said. He handed the bottle to Jessie, who took it with the hand attached to his good arm.
Jessie heard the tink of tin from inside the lean-to as he held the bottle to his lips and bit on the cork. He pulled it with his teeth and spit the cork onto his lap. Paul sat down and set the cups on the ground. He reached for the bottle.
“I’ll pour,” Paul said. “Two fingers, or four?”
“Five,” Jessie said and handed his friend the bottle of whiskey.
Paul poured whiskey into the two cups.
“Probably the fifth mashin’ of corn, but it’s sweet to the taste,” Paul said as he handed a cup to Jessie. “It’ll sure put lead in your pencil.”
“Yeah, and if we were at the saloon, I’d have somebody to write to,” Jessie said.
“You miss the glitter gals, do ye?” Paul said. He retrieved the cork from Jessie’s lap and screwed it into the neck of the bottle. He set the bottle down a foot away from him on a flat spot between two small stones. He had done this before, Jessie surmised.
“Just one, Paul,” Jessie said. “And I never got to the garden patch with her.”
“Who? Deborah Foley?” Paul asked. “Alice Easterbrook?”
Jessie laughed a dry laugh. He drank a swallow of whiskey.
“Nope, none of them,” Jessie said.
“Then who? Ain’t but one or two others.”
“Ronnie,” Jessie said.
“Veronica Sweet?”
“Yep. She strikes me as a high-toned woman, a cut or two above them gals what work for her.”
Paul shook his head and grinned.
“Ronnie’s as cold as a spring trout, Jessie. Ain’t nobody man enough to chop off all that ice that blankets her body.”
“Maybe that’s why I’d like to get her under the blankets. I dunno. She’s easy to talk to. Pretty as a speckled pup. And she’s got spunk. I’ve seen her handle men like they was toys. Pick ’em up, play with ’em a little, and then toss ’em back in the toy box.”
Paul chuckled.
“Yep, that’s Ronnie all right. I offered her a week’s poke of my gold once and she just patted me on the top of my head and pointed me towards one of the other glitter gals. Didn’t hurt my feelin’s none. She was smooth as a snake-oil drummer.”
“I think maybe she’s packin’ a broken heart, Paul.”
“Any hearts what was broke, she broke ’em, I figger.”
Jessie took another swallow of whiskey and belched. He winced when the movement jerked his wounded shoulder.
Neither man knew that someone was watching them from a small knoll some sixty or seventy yards away. The knoll rose in a copse of juniper and blue spruce that blocked its crown from view.
They drank and talked about women, prospecting, and gold mining until they both reeked with whiskey fumes and cigarette smoke.
The watcher continued to scan them with his binoculars, their voices drifting to him on the still mountain air.
“I’m going to turn in, Jess,” Paul said. He arose from the ground and walked his whiskey bottle back to the pup tent.
“Yeah, me, too,” Jessie said. “We done solved all the problems in this tired old world and my eyelids feel like they been turned to lead.”
Paul returned.
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“I’ll spread out your bedroll and help you up, Jess. You just sit tight for another minute.”
Paul spread out Jessie’s bedroll inside the lean-to and then helped his friend to his feet. Jessie staggered into the lean-to.
“I sleep with my head toward the opening,” Paul said. “But you can lie down either way, head front or back.”
“I like to look up at the stars when I go to sleep,” Jessie said. “I’ll sleep with my head to the front.”
Paul helped Jessie lie down and pulled off his boots. He placed Jessie’s gun belt near him and dropped his own from around his waist and slid the folded rig under the edge of his pillow. He lay down and turned over on his side.
“G’night, Jessie,” Paul said.
“Night, Paul. Sleep tight,” Jessie replied.
Minutes later, Jessie heard raspy snores from Paul’s bed and he smiled as he looked up at the stars.
His eyes opened and closed until the stars began to blur and they stayed shut when he closed them.
Soon, Jessie was snoring, too. In perfect counterpoint to Paul’s nasal vibrato.
The man atop the knoll, hidden in the copse of trees, pulled the binoculars from around his neck and packed them in a leather case. He left the case, with its strap, under a small rock next to a juniper and got to his knees.
He crawled on hands and feet from his natural hiding place and stood up next to a tall pine.
He listened there for several moments.
He heard only the ragged snores from the lean-to and the far-off howl of a timber wolf.
Still, he waited.
Then, he adjusted his gun belt with its two pistols bracing both hips. Then, he slid a long skinning knife from a scabbard on his gun belt. It flashed a silvery sheen in the moonlight, like a fish jumping in a night pond.
He walked toward Paul’s lean-to with steady careful steps. He put one foot down and then let it take his weight before he moved his back foot to the fore.
It was the walk of a patient stalker and the man made no sound as he approached the two men sleeping with their heads at the opening of the lean-to.
Snore, snore, step, step.
Then, the man stood over the two sleeping men.
He looked down at them.
He waited several seconds, his eyes peering through the darkness to identify Paul and then Jessie.
Next, the man squatted down near Jessie.
He gently touched Jessie’s hair. Then, he ran the fingers of his left hand through the thickest part until his fingers were buried and spread out.
He leaned over, grasped the hair between his fingers, and pulled Jessie’s head back. His right hand, the one with the knife, streaked downward to Jessie’s neck.
He made a quick deep swipe of the blade across Jessie’s throat, then pulled his hand from Jessie’s head and clamped it over his mouth.
Blood gushed from the gash in Jessie’s neck. He gurgled softly for a second or two, then let out a soft gasp that was muffled by the hand over his mouth.
His snoring stopped.
The man waited until Jessie’s heart stopped beating and no more blood gushed from his severed throat.
He wiped the blade of his knife on Jessie’s shirt. The blade made a whispering sound as he cleaned both sides of the blade.
Then the assassin stood up and slid his knife back into its scabbard. He stepped away from the lean-to as silently as he had approached it. He walked backward until he was well away from the lean-to. Then he turned and slunk away like some killer mountain lion to his own lean-to on the side of one of the small hills that ran away from the massive boulders like the muscles of an enormous beast.
The man crawled into his lean-to and onto his bedroll. He sat there for a time, his breathing even and steady. He felt no remorse for what he had done.
As far as he was concerned, he had taken the life of a traitor. It was one less man that Bledsoe would have to deal with in the coming days.
And if the miners and prospectors came to town with those new rifles, they would be cut down like a field of wheat.
For now, he had taken care of the man who had delivered the rifles. There would be a bonus from Bledsoe when it came time to settle up for his services.
In the meantime, the night was dark, the moon nesting behind a cloud, and nobody knew who he was.
He smiled and then took off his hat and unbuckled his gun belt. He felt the energy he always felt from killing another man. His muscles were tingling, his veins ran hot with the oxygen he drank from the thin mountain air.
He went to sleep with a feeling of deep contentment.
His pistols were, as always, close at hand.
Far away, there was a chorus of coyote yelps and trills.
They soon died away into a profound silence that seemed to grip the mountains in the Sawtooth Range.
9
Slocum awoke before cockcrow. His mouth tasted of copper and stale tobacco. His throat was raw and coarse as sandpaper. He slid the blanket from his naked body and sat up. Madge was a sleeping lump next to him, only her face visible beyond the edge of the blanket. Her tousled hair lay strung out like strands of dark wool. It was still dark outside and the stars were still out. The moon had set and Venus, the morning star, shone brighter than any others.
He dressed quickly, found his wooden canteen, uncorked it, and drank until the rawness in his throat evaporated. He found his belly gun and tucked that inside his waistband before he stepped outside with his gun belt and strapped it on. He walked away from the lean-to and fished out a cheroot from his shirt pocket. There was a brisk chill in the air, and he shivered as he struck a match to the tip of the cigar.
The sky began to pale in the east, the light wiping away the first stars as if they were specks on a blue-black mirror.
Slocum smoked and thought about Madge.
She had turned into a wildcat, as if she were trying to cram years of deprivation into a single night of lust and pleasure. The more he gave her, the more she wanted, and he was glad to give her lessons with the full force of his body.
Sweet, shy, innocent Madge, he thought. She had turned into a tigress, savage with lust. And it had been a grand experience, one that he would remember for a long, long time.
The smoke in his lungs seemed to warm him, and he exulted in those quiet moments before dawn when the whole world seemed fast asleep and he was alone in the wild country he loved.
He began to hear the chirp of birds, the squeal of a chipmunk as it emerged from its den to stand sentry duty. The sky continued to pale. One by one, and in groups, the stars vanished as soft light invaded the dark sky.
As Slocum smoked his cheroot, the sky became a pale shade of blue and the last bright star, Venus, vanished as the sun rose in the east.
It was then, as he was about to drop the butt of his cigar and grind it out with the heel of his boot, that Slocum heard a distant cry of anguish. The sound, muffled and distant though it was, sent a ripple of ice up his spine.
Someone, he surmised, was in trouble.
Then he heard the distinctive plea for “Help!” It was followed by another anguished cry that sounded like a man who was alarmed by something.
Slocum dropped the butt of his cigar and dug his heel in to mash and extinguish it. Taking long strides, he hurried toward the source of the distressed sounds.
A little over a quarter of a mile up the slope, Slocum saw a man standing in front of a lean-to. He had both hands entangled in his hair and he was muttering to himself the same phrase: “Oh my God.”
Other men came running from several different directions. The first one he recognized was Rod, who reached the lean-to first. The man in front pointed downward to a man lying just inside the shelter. Rod knelt down and touched a hand to the neck of the prostrate man. Then he stood up and saw Slocum.
&
nbsp; “What’s going on?” Slocum asked.
The anguished man began to moan and weep.
“It’s Jessie Nolan, Slocum. He’s plumb dead. Throat’s cut.”
Slocum came up close and looked at the dead man. He recognized Jessie, whose lifeless face was turned upward, his eyes frosted over with the glaze of death. There was a clean wide slash across his throat from ear to ear.
“He was bunkin’ with Paul Welch here and . . .” Rod said.
Rod turned to Paul and grabbed him by both shoulders. He shook him, then demanded, “What happened here, Paul?”
“I dunno,” Paul said. “When I woke up, I looked over and saw blood and that cut in Jessie’s throat. Jesus, I didn’t hear a thing.”
“You mean somebody just come up here and cut Jessie’s throat while you was asleep?” Rod asked.
Other men, most still groggy from sleep, some rubbing the sandman’s dust from their eyes, approached from several different directions.
“Rod, keep everybody away from here,” Slocum said. “Don’t let anybody trample out those boot prints I see in front of the lean-to.”
“Huh?” Rod said.
“Maybe I can track whoever sneaked up here and cut Jessie’s throat. There’s dew on the grass and ground. Boots leave prints.”
“Oh, I never thought of that,” Rod said. “I’ll keep folks away for the time being.”
Rod turned and waved his arms at all the men running and walking toward Paul’s lean-to.
“Stay back,” Rod yelled. “Everybody. Don’t come over here.”
All the men stopped, their faces contorted in confusion. Some grumbled and kept coming, but others held them back.
“We got some tracking to do,” Rod said. “So just stay the hell away. All of you.”
“Who put you in charge, Rodney?” one of the men called out.
A chorus of yeah’s floated through the sparse timber and bounced off the boulders in minor echoes.