Blowing Off Steam

by Karen Mercury

  So Rushy propped him up while Field demanded, “Who paid you to ambush us? What does Mark Hopkins have to do with this?”

  “Mark Hopkins paid us!” the ignoramus blubbered as Stan Sitwell came barreling onto the scene. There wasn’t much for Stan to do other than again kick the fallen man in the balls.

  “Oh, yes?” Calliope snarled. “I’d be guessing it’s more likely that Soquel Haight paid you.”

  “Who’s Soquel Haight?” Blood gushed down the thug’s chin, and Calliope was gratified to see Rushy had knocked a tooth loose. “It was Mark Hopkins who paid us. Wanted to scare you into giving back his engine.”

  Out of habit, perhaps, or not having anything else to do, Stan Sitwell punched the fellow now in the face. While the criminal floundered about in the pieces of broken wood and oranges, he cried out, “Soquel Haight is a good fellow!”

  Calliope hissed at Field, “So he does know Haight.”

  Field nodded briskly. “Yes. That’s odd.” He shouted, “What is so great about Soquel Haight?”

  Stan wrenched the jackleg from the pile of rubbish and forced him to stand before Field. “Soquel Haight employs many people!” he wailed.

  “Many people? Like you?”

  “Yes! No! He’s a good businessman! He would never pay anyone to thrash a stranger!”

  “What’s even odder,” said Rushy. “Look at these stains on his elbows and knees.” Yanking an arm to his face, Rushy sniffed at the elbow. “Chicken shit.” He tossed the arm away. “And look at those feathers stuck there. It’s the exact same shade of red as those rare chickens in Haight’s chicken yard. Remember those chickens, Field? Tobias kicked one of them.”

  “You’re right.” Field nodded and jammed his revolver into the thug’s gut. “All right, buster. Spew. Why did Haight send you to whale on us?”

  “It was Mark Hopkins!” the fellow insisted, seemingly on the verge of tears to add to the deluge of snot and blood.

  But unexpectedly, the fallen man squealed, “Oh, just tell them, Bill! It was Mark Hopkins who handed us the gold dust, but we heard some whisperings that Haight was behind it.”

  “Why?” Calliope growled.

  “Something about getting you in line. You’re out of line or something. You need to learn some respect and to value his patronage.”

  “Well,” said Calliope. “I’ll be.”

  Field snarled, “I’ll be, all right.” He jiggled the revolver in the man’s stomach. “Listen here, you half-witted baboon. Go back and tell Haight that he doesn’t own us.”

  Rushy rattled the fellow by the arm. “Repeat it! He doesn’t own us!”

  “He doesn’t own you,” he repeated obediently. “Now can I please go? I heard your reputation as a murderer, and I don’t want to be next.”

  When Rushy shoved him, he hit the dirt like a ripe apple, just a frothing pile of limbs. Stan lingered to kick the prone fellow again for good measure, and the trio moved back toward their boat after Calliope told Stan to fetch the surgeon.

  Calliope told Rushy, “I think he’s going to have to set that arm in a splint.”

  “I don’t care about my arm!” Rushy railed. “What’s got me is that vain bastard Haight paying these thugs to knock us into the middle of next week.”

  “And he sends four, against your two,” Calliope pointed out.

  “He’s trying to warn us,” Field surmised. “He probably heard we were still racing, canoodling in public, and even smoking opium.”

  Calliope said, “Yes, Lord knows what that peewee riceman told him.” She paused at the foot of the landing stage. “Field?” She blotted some blood from his face with her handkerchief. “Would it be possible for this to be your last run for Haight? Especially if you’re starting the People’s Line in competition with his Combination. Tobias is right. It’s a conflict of interest. You can’t keep making these ofuyung corpse runs forever. Now, I know it’s your son who needs—”

  Field wrapped his fingers around her wrist. “It’s all right, Calliope. I know we have to stop. I can’t be of much help to my son if I’m dead, can I?”

  “That’s sure as shooting,” Rushy said fiercely. “That evil old fogy Haight. We’ll show him we won’t be shoved around.”

  Calliope said, “I’ll make you men a nice Swiss cream. And Rushy, I want you in your bunk. I’ll bring you some peaches in brandy, but you have to promise you’ll stay in your bunk.”

  Rushy grinned at her. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Calliope frowned. “Don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ Now get on with you.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Field. Why don’t we make a couple more corpse runs? So your son is able to stay in that asylum. You got him into it, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Field. “I only sent the first gold a week ago. It’ll take a couple months to get a reply. I’m assuming that Cynthia will place him there once she gets the gold.”

  Rushy stripped off his shirt. Indian summer was finally coming to a close, and the sandy banks off Steamboat Slough no longer radiated burning heat. The past month it had been like standing between the steamer boilers, but now it was tolerable. He was able to wiggle his bare toes without scorching them, but it was still hot enough that plunging into the slow-moving waters was an effortless, desirable thing. It would be hard to swim with his arm in that sling, so Rushy bounded into the fresh water up to his chest, where he ducked his head under.

  He surfaced shaking his head, scattering rainbow-hued droplets in the lemony air. He had moored here off Eggnog Settlement on the pretext they needed to take on some crates of figs, but the dried blood covering his neck and chest due to locking horns with those criminals yesterday gave him the idea to swim.

  He floated on his back a bit until Field swam over. He must have been standing on the river’s bottom, for he loomed over Rushy like a giant smiling silhouette. He tweaked Rushy’s nipple, causing him to flinch with pleasure and sputter around like a duck to get a foothold on the rocky bottom. They stood facing each other.

  Rushy said, “I think we should do a few more o-fuyung runs. Even if your sister can get Benjamin into the asylum, she’ll need continuous shipments of shekels, or the jig is up.”

  Field ran his hands down Rushy’s back to grasp the globes of his ass in his palms and gather him to his crotch. They were underwater up to their waists, but Field’s stiff prick jabbed between his thighs, and Rushy brought his feet together to capture the warm, throbbing appendage. If he wiggled his hips his thighs massaged Field’s cock, and his own cock floated up like a dead tree trunk. “You’ve gotten so brown from the sun,” Field chose to say, instead of responding. His head tilted as though he regarded a fine painting, and when he leaned in to kiss Rushy, Rushy pushed firmly on his shoulder.

  “Answer me, Field. I don’t aim to let Haight run over us like fire in dry grass. Having us thrashed like that was the final straw. He ain’t the big dog of the tanyard around here. We are.”

  Field squeezed Rushy’s ass and angled his hips against him. “But making more ofuyung runs is simply playing his game. You don’t need to put yourself at risk for me, Rushy. You’re taking great risks to help out a kid you’ve never even met.”

  “He’s your kid, Field. That’s all that matters. It’s mighty little of this world’s goods I’ve got. I came into this world with nothing, and I’ll leave with nothing.” He wanted to have this conversation with Field, but the gloriously handsome engineer was humping him between the thighs like a determined dog, now moving his hand between his buttocks to finger his anus. Field tickled him there, making Rushy’s cock jump, and he tried to focus on the task at hand. He shook Field by the shoulder with his one good hand. “Field. When this Combination starts up, we’ll make even less money carting passengers about, and have you stopped to think about your beloved Mr. Hopkins’s train idea? Who’ll want to take a steamer anymore if there’s a much faster train?”

  Field had a drugged look in his watery, limpid eyes. Had he been hitting t
he ofuyung pipe? He grasped Rushy’s jaw in his hand and ran his thumb along his lower lip, saying dreamily, “My dear tadpole. The train will take years to build, if not a decade.” Then he kissed Rushy.

  Field’s tongue moved sluggishly, erotically, inside Rushy’s mouth, and he sucked on it. Land’s sake, how wonderful it always felt with this potent, vigorous man in his arms. Well, his one arm, today. Lately Rushy had been daydreaming, wondering what it’d be like to actually fuck his robust partner up his slick asshole. What it would be like to ejaculate inside that heated channel, depositing his load deep inside his beloved friend while sweat dripped onto Field’s subservient back from his chest that cradled him above.

  Rushy craved displaying a show of force over Field. They had reamed him with a dildo and tickled his tool with feathers while he hung helplessly bound, and he wanted to regain the upper hand. How brutish and masculine it would be hunched over his best friend, impaling him on his massive prick. His balls would shiver and jerk as they slapped up against that cushiony ass, and he could spank Field’s fat cock while making him cry out with joy and pain.

  He mumbled against Field’s mouth, “My dear boy. I want to fuck the daylights out of you.”

  Rushy felt Field smile against his mouth. “My tadpole. I was thinking the same thing.”

  The same thing? Rushy’s nostrils flared at those mere words, and he eagerly shoved Field toward the bank, spanking his ass as they waded through the heavy current.

  But Calliope appeared then from some cottonwoods, already stripped down to her drawers and camisole. Naturally this arrested Field in his tracks, and he stood there stupidly staring at the woman, his cock at half-mast, bobbing in the warm feathery air.

  “Possums!” Calliope waved, her usual chipper self. Completely unselfconscious, she peeled off the camisole, revealing her high, pendulously bouncing breasts that framed the elegant emerald necklace Field had given her. When she bent to step out of the drawers, her lovely titties swayed, and Rushy knew he’d lost Field. Naturally Field made a beeline for the woman, leaving Rushy to stand ankle-deep in the river, his hand limply at his side.

  Field swept Calliope into his embrace, and it looked as though they might just spontaneously fuck furiously in the sand—if they hadn’t already committed that act in the engine room while Rushy steered the boat, and simply not mentioned it. Now, Field kissed Calliope deeply and thoroughly while sliding a hand down her nude back to clasp her ample ass in his hand, just as he had done to Rushy. Out of jealousy and more than a bit of arousal, Rushy went to the couple.

  “Calliope. I’m trying to tell Field we’ll continue to make corpse runs. His son ain’t nearly fixed for enough gold to get any help from that asylum.”

  Calliope detached from Field, gazing at Rushy with her round crystalline eyes. “Rushy. I don’t think we should make any more runs. Now you fellows are getting your hides tanned for no good reason. I think we should be on the straight and narrow from now on in.” She caressed Field’s face, and her look was one of adoration. “I just don’t want anything happening to my sweet possum.”

  “And I agree,” said Field, equally as starry-eyed as he sucked the woman’s forefinger into his mouth.

  Rushy nearly smacked his own forehead with frustration. “Field! I’m only thinking of your son. You can have my share of the ofuyung gold. I don’t have a nipper who is hacking up a lung.”

  Alert now, Field allowed Calliope to stand normally as he appeared to give this thought. “Hm. Perhaps just one more run, then.”

  “Bully for you!” Rushy cried, using Calliope’s own pet phrase. “Now, Calliope. Get on with you and bathe. Here’s that bar of tallow soap you gave us. We should be back on the boat in fifteen minutes.”

  Calliope cast Field a low, dark look but scampered off to the water, saying, “I don’t like this one bit, I’ll have you know.”

  The men blankly gazed at Calliope’s jiggling ass until she dove into the current gracefully, her hands forming a point and cleaving the water perfectly. Rushy came to himself and grabbed Field by the back of the neck. Rushy kissed him so amorously his prick knocked against Field’s hip bone. Field wants me to fuck the daylights out of him. He licked Field’s teeth and lapped at his tongue.

  “Let me get up on you, you nasty buck,” Rushy snarled against Field’s jaw. Depositing a gob of spit into his hand, he bent at the knees and rubbed it slowly and lecherously against Field’s tight little virginal anus. Field had taken the wooden wheel’s pin up that lovely ass, screwing it most deliciously, but taking Rushy’s mammoth cock would be another thing. He slipped his longest middle finger inside Field and growled with pleasure to hear Field gasp. He tickled the inside of the smooth channel just as Field had tickled him, gratified when Field submissively threaded his fingers behind his own neck and let his head loll back, exposing the vulnerable throat to Rushy’s voracious mouth.

  As Rushy stroked the slick walls, all the blood, semen, and need in his body flooded his bulging prick, elongating it to equine proportions. He pressed against Field’s shoulder to make him kneel in the sandy silt—on all fours like a brood mare, Rushy thought with evil glee. It would be difficult reaming this sweet boy with one arm strapped to his chest, but—

  Suddenly he was the one bowled over in the sand! Field must have shoved him—of course, Field had two hands to work with!—for suddenly he was flat on his back with outspread thighs, and Field was kneeling between them.

  What in the name of… Gripping each of Rushy’s knees in his talons, Field had a peculiarly avid and hungry look Rushy had never seen before. His cock bobbing in the air, Field reached behind him for what looked like Calliope’s reticule. Rummaging around in it, he withdrew a tin of bear grease. That Calliope. Always prepared.

  Rushy eased himself up onto his one good elbow, horrified and intrigued by Field’s intentions. Field smeared several fingers’ worth of bear grease from the tin and coated his erect penis with it, choking the thick trunk of it until Rushy’s jaw dropped. Field’s other hand cupped the swollen balls as if about to feed Rushy, although that was clearly not the intention, his meat all larded with grease like that.

  This was not a good plan. Rushy had wanted to mount his friend and give him a great masculine pounding, stretch him so thoroughly Field would become addicted to it, would feel empty without a big prick inside his ass. Field would crave it so badly Rushy could fuck him six ways from Sunday at every possible opportunity, earning the jealousy of every merchant and businessman on the river.

  Field pinioned his thighs under Rushy’s, curling at the waist to kiss him. Field moaned with satisfaction as though he savored a particularly chocolaty pudding, the perfect picture of the contented pederasta. Drawing back, Field whispered, “Now. You want me to release my load inside you?”

  Rushy’s fingers scrabbled for Field’s forearm, tense with fear. “Yes. Of course. But I’ve never been used, Field. I’m always the fucker. Your penis is too big. Why don’t you just let me—”

  “Shut up.” Field licked Rushy’s mouth with the tip of his tongue, perhaps to take his mind off the fact that he was positioning the bulbous, greasy mushroom head of his cock against Rushy’s asshole. “Oh, good God. You’re tight.”

  “I’ve never been used,” Rushy continued to protest, lovingly. “Why don’t you just fuck Calliope? She’s dying for your long, fat cock, Field. She’s been teasing you for—”

  “We’ve been teasing each other,” Field murmured raggedly, pushing the tip of his cock inside Rushy’s channel. He hunched over Rushy, using his monumental hip and thigh muscles to hold himself up. Rushy could feel by the shuddering of his back muscles that he was restraining himself from a full-blown assault on his partner.

  Feeling desired helped Rushy to relax, and Field thrust his stiff glans another inch inside Rushy. Rushy clung to Field’s back with a trusting desperation, his own cock twitching and jumping heavily against his hip.

  “You’ve taken a fat dildo up your ass.” Field’s voice now
came brokenly, the tension of restraint seizing up his lungs. “You can take my cock. Take it, Rushy. Let me fuck you. Let me erupt inside you. Let me fill your ass with my seed.”

  “Damn it all,” Rushy gasped. It was the most erotic scene of his life, lying spread-eagle in the sand like a woman, thighs gaping open to accept the prick of this athletic, virile man. He’d mounted plenty of strapping river boys, but he’d never allowed himself to be put in this subservient position that seemed so weak. Rushy now saw that this allegedly weak position actually was plumb full of power—the power to make such a robust man as Field helpless as a kitten with desire. “Mount me, you bastard. Ride me like the goddamn man you are.”

  At that, Field seemed to lose control. His eyelids fluttered as his eyes rolled up in his head. He shoved another few inches of his massive prick up Rushy’s channel. He laid his open, gasping mouth to Rushy’s throat as he humped him, his limp, elegant fingers speared through Rushy’s damp hair.

  A piercing crack resounded nearby then, and Rushy’s eyes popped open to see a naked and dripping Calliope, who had apparently slapped Field’s rump. She had fallen down to the sand next to them and regarded them happily. “Son of a bitch!” she said in awe. “You two fuckers just can’t stay away from each other can you? Can’t say as I blame you. You are two handsome libertines. Wait, Field!” Another crack. That saucy bitch! Field stilled, shuddering and gasping, holding himself above Rushy. “You hold your goddamn giant horses now, Field.” Crack. “Is this your aim, to tease me into frigging myself silly every night while you men have all the fun?”

  “Shove your fingers up his ass,” Rushy suggested hoarsely. “Lick his big, meaty balls.”

  Calliope chirped, “I’ll do no such thing. Doesn’t a girl get any satisfaction around here? I’ll show you men how it’s done.” And the brazen trollop straddled Rushy, placing both knees on either side of his shoulders, planting her cunt squarely down on his face!