“I am.”
“It’s too bad you won’t have a woman for comforting you tonight, John Smith.” She smiled coquettishly. “Jim will be all tuckered out like you from all this hard work, but Lucille knows how to give him some nice refreshments.”
Ben smiled. “They seem a happy couple.”
“A happy man is one with a woman,” Arlena said. She leaned over again to pick up the soap. “It’s a natural way to be, and he gets a lot more’n just good food, John Smith.”
“I reckon he does.”
“It’s a reward God gives married men.”
“And a mighty good ’un too,” Ben remarked.
“Well,” Arlena said. “Let’s go up to the house. I’ll give you the onliest thing I can—something good to eat”
“That’ll be fine,” Ben said.
When they arrived at the kitchen, Jim Baldwin was making an exasperated gesture. “You called me in here special to tell me what we’re having for supper?” Lucille smiled at Arlena as she spoke to her husband. “I just thought you might be inter’sted.”
“O’ course I am,” Baldwin said. “But I didn’t have to cut my washing up short to come in here and find out now. You coulda told me while we was eating dinner.”
“I guess I’m just a silly woman,” Lucille said. She looked over at Ben and Arlena. “Well! Let’s sit down to dinner.”
They all bowed their heads while Jim Baldwin prayed, “We thank you, Lord, for this bounty and ask you to bless them that eats it. We also thank you for the wheat you give us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
“Amen.”
The work was immediately resumed after the meal, and went on until nearly dark that evening. Baldwin’s wheat crop was typical for a homestead of that size, and produced a half dozen bushels: The final chore was to sew the bags shut with heavy twine then carry them up to the second floor of the barn. Baldwin had a special platform constructed there to hold the prize crop. The support poles of the device were heavily greased to prevent field mice and other rodents from reaching the grain.
“That’s done,” Baldwin said when the final bag was lifted into place. “We’ll have a late supper, John, but a most welcome one.”
“You bet,” Ben said.
The meal was a talkative one despite the heavy fatigue that bore down on the men. The next day’s labor would be light now. There was some harness mending, and a bit of fixing up of the barn. Although winter was months away, there was always the chance of an early one in which the white hell of a howling blizzard would descend on them from the north with the same unexpected ferocity of the storm that had wiped out Ben’s belongings.
The two men went out on the porch after supper. They sat on the steps and made small talk for a while. Ben would have practically given his right arm for a good smoke and a bottle of liquor, but he still couldn’t complain much. A bellyful of good food was nothing to take too lightly.
“We ain’t really settled matters on the job here, John,” Baldwin said looking over at him. “Have you give any thought about what you’re gonna be doing?”
“Not really,” Ben answered truthfully. He felt he was in a limbo, but realized that he was going to have to make a move soon.
“This job is permanent if you want it that way,” Baldwin said. “There ain’t much to do in the winter . . .” He laughed. “—O’ course, I don’t pay much either, do I?”
“Things is fine around here,” Ben said.
“Arlena really likes you,” Baldwin said. He let it hang, not pushing it.
“She’s a fine woman,” Ben said. After a few moments, he stood up. “I’m hitting the hay. Today tuckered me.”
Baldwin also got up. “Me too, John. I’ll see you in the morning. G’night.” He went in the house.
Ben walked across the farmyard, then suddenly stopped and walked back. He went up on the front porch and knocked on the door.
Baldwin, his wife, and sister-in-law were still in the kitchen. “What is it, John?” the farmer asked.
“I’ll be leaving in the morning,” Ben said.
Chapter Nine
When young Ben Cullen got out of Leavenworth and joined Harmon Gilray and his boys on the farm near Newton, Kansas, he found he’d arrived at a very good time.
The gang had been taking it easy for a few months. Before that they’d preyed on trains to the north in Nebraska, the Dakotas, and on into Montana. The success they’d enjoyed paid off handsomely, but it also attracted considerable attention to themselves. The railroads had gone all out to catch them. Squads of private detectives and bounty hunters combed the countryside making things so hot that Gilray had led his band back south to friendlier territory.
Serious discussions and planning was under way to leave their sanctuary when Ben showed up at the front door. He’d walked two miles up the road from the place where the farmer named Elliot Frawley had dropped him off.
Ben could see the farmhouse from the road and he cut across a plowed field to get to it. An old woman, smoking a pipe, was shelling peas on the porch. She’d watched the stranger approach without displaying too much interest. If Ben had been on horseback, or with several others, she would have whistled a warning. But the small man approaching seemed relatively harmless. Still, she was suspicious.
Ben stopped at the edge of the porch. He took off his hat. “Howdy, ma’am.”
She said nothing, only waiting for him to speak again.
“I’d like to see Harmon—Harmon Gilray—if he’s to home,” Ben said.
“Harmon don’t live here. He ain’t here.” There was a definite finality in the tone of her voice.
“Yes’m.” Ben took a breath. “He said I should come here.”
“When did he tell you that?” she asked.
“Up to Leavenworth.”
The woman suddenly laughed. “I shoulda knowed when I seen that silly ol’ green hat you got. All the boys was wearing ’em when they got out.”
Ben grinned, embarrassed. “Well, ma’am. That’s what they give us.”
The old woman took her pipe out of her mouth and emitted a piercing whistle that echoed across the distant prairie. Seconds later the front door opened and a man stepped out. He wore a full beard, and his hair was in bad need of trimming. He glanced over at Ben. “Damn my eyes! Ben Cullen!”
Ben could barely recognize the greeter. The last time he’d seen him his hair was clipped short and he was clean-shaven. “Is that you, Hog Turpin?”
“It sure is!” Turpin said. He jumped down off the porch and clapped Ben hard on the shoulder. “C’mon in, you, Ben Cullen. Ol’ Harmon is gonna be plumb tickled to see you.”
Ben nodded to the woman as he crossed the porch. “I thank you kindly, ma’am.”
She laughed again. “Them hats is the silliest looking things!”
The reunion was resplendent with more handclasps, shoulder smacks, and happy whooping. Harmon Gilray looked even leaner and tougher than he had in prison. He sported a large moustache, but his hair was still cropped short—though not in the same style as in Leavenworth. “By God, Ben Cullen, I’m glad you showed up. You’re just in time for another foray.”
A bottle of bourbon was brought out and passed from man to man among the eight there. The last drinking Ben had done with them had been raisin jack, the homemade stuff made on the illicit still they had erected in their shack in the prison yard. Harmon Gilray was curious about one thing. “How many more days of solitary did you pull after we left?” he asked.
“Oh, I took a coupla trips to the hole,” Ben admitted. “But not as many as I would have if I hadn’t listened to you.”
“You need my guiding hand, Ben Cullen,” Gilray said.
“I sure do,” Ben said sincerely.
Besides the old gang, there was one more man. He was about the same age as Ben, and was named Elmer Woods. Elmer had been in jail in Missouri a couple of times, and was cousin to one of the gang members. He and Ben were destined to hit it off right away, and a fast friendship
would be formed between the young outlaws.
“We’re gonna have a night o’ celebrating before we ride out on the owlhoot trail,” Harmon said. “It’s kinda hard to find a place to kick up your heels with the law right on top of you.”
Elmer Woods added, “And it’s hard to find a gal that’ll let you too close after you been living out in the woods and prairie without bathing too reg’larly”
“That’s the worst part,” Hog Turpin said. Ben remembered him as being the one who’d talked the most about women and sex while they were in the penitentiary. “I just can’t stay away from whores for too long a spell.”
Harmon Gilray winked at Ben. “We’re goin’ someplace tonight that oughta really inter’st a feller outta jail, Ben.” He paused. “Unless you done dipped yore wick in some whore.”
Ben shook his head. “I come straight here,” he said. “As a matter o’ fact this here likker is the first I had since I walked out that front gate.”
There were yelps and teasing. “How long has it been since you had a woman, Ben?” somebody asked.
Ben, who was a virgin, didn’t want to lie outright to his friends, so he simply said, “I been in prison for ten years, boys.”
More whooping followed and Gilray motioned toward the door. “Let’s get saddles on them horses and take ol’ Ben on down to big Nell’s. This boy needs him a woman!”
The place Gilray referred to was a whorehouse east of Newton. A former stage station, it had been rebuilt with a second floor added and the saloon area expanded. The rustic pleasure palace was run by a large woman who kept a stable of acceptable women and a bar stocked with fairly good whiskey. The prices weren’t cheap, but that was because she was forced to share her profits with some of the local law.
Ben was issued a roan by the gang. The grayish-yellow horse had been a bonus taken from an unlucky railroad detective who had given his life for the Union Pacific. Ben had never rode much before prison, and the ten years spent there had all but wiped out any equestrian skills he’d possessed in the past. Ben provided some more laughs as he took a couple of falls, but his new friend Elmer Woods kept close-by and urged him back into the saddle with shouts of encouragement.
By the time they reached Big Nell’s, Ben was bruised a bit, but not in too bad a shape. The gang stormed in and received a greeting from Big Nell herself. The madam stood six feet tall and weighed in excess of two hundred pounds. Though well groomed, she was a trifle overdressed, but had a friendliness about her that made her a good operator in the profession she had chosen to follow.
“Nell!” Harmon shouted with his arm around her large waist. “We want some good whiskey, then I want you to get a special gal for my ol’ pard Ben there.”
Nell reached out and grabbed Ben, pulling him violently to her large bosom. “He’s a cute li’l feller, Harmon. But any o’ my gals will do. They all special.”
“No! No!” Gilray insisted with a wag of his finger. “I mean special—special! This boy has just been released from prison. Ask him how long he was in there.”
Nell looked down on Ben with genuine sympathy. “How long was you up there, boy?”
“Ten years, ma’am.”
“Ten years!” she shrieked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Wanda! Wanda!” Big Nell yelled. “C’mon over here.”
A dark-haired, thin young woman with large breasts sauntered over with a whore’s smile on her painted face. She knew she’d been picked out for the small fellow with Nell’s enormous arm around him, so she played it up to the hilt. She swayed her hips and wet her lips, letting him drink it all in. She wore a thin robe, and the outline of her body showed through it even in the weak lantern-light. She spoke to Nell, but her eyes were on Ben. “What can I do for you, Nell?”
“You got to help this feller out,” Nell said, loosing her arm.
“Sure thing, and it’s my pleasure to spend some time with this handsome jasper,” Wanda said. She slipped her own arm around Ben.
Harmon Gilray and the boys yelled and whistled. Elmer Woods leaned toward the whore. “Turn him inside out, Wanda!”
Wanda winked at Elmer. “You know what I can do, big boy.”
More yelling emphasized her boast.
“Wanda, honey,” Big Nell said. “This is special with—what’s your name, honey?”
“Ben, ma’am.”
“Yeah. This is special with Ben. He’s been in jail for ten years, so you take him upstairs and do what you do best.”
Wanda leaned her face close to Ben’s. “I know where you itch, big boy, and I got just what you need to scratch it.” She took his hand and led him to the flight of stairs. They paused and Wanda waved to the crowd before ascending to the second floor with Ben trailing obediently behind her.
They went into the room with Ben’s head spinning. He had never had a woman, but he had some natural desires that were feeding his instincts with the information he needed. The urges he felt when he’d been close to the girl on the train and sitting beside the farmer’s wife on the ride out to the Gilray farm were nothing in comparison with the way his blood pounded in his head at that particular moment.
Wanda was more of a pragmatist than a seducer despite her talk and promises in the bar. She wasted no time in shucking her robe and getting on the bed. Ben numbly stripped down to his longjohns, and stared down at the woman who lay before him with spread legs.
This was sex—and sex was a dirty, humiliating thing that happened when younger, smaller, weaker men were preyed on by those stronger. It was painful and detestful. But the principal thing that bothered him was that she would not be willing to perform the deed if she wasn’t paid for it. The situation was too much like a convict giving something to a gal-boy for a quick coupling.
Although Ben looked at a woman, he remembered Morley Jackson’s prison gang and all the other rapists at Leavenworth.
“What’s the matter, big boy?” Wanda asked. “Can’t get it up?” She smiled and beckoned him to join her on the bed. As he complied, she began applying her whore’s skills. “Something the matter, hon?”
Ben was mortified, but he felt no urges. Things had been fine until it was time to commit the act. But the thought of having sex with the paid woman was downright disgusting. “I don’t know,” was all he could say. “I don’t know.”
But Wanda was sympathetic. “Listen to me, big boy. You been in jail for ten years. Hell! That ol’ john-peter o’ yours can’t remember what to do.”
“Shit,” Ben said miserably.
“Hey, big boy,” Wanda said, getting up and slipping back into her robe. “Don’t you worry none, huh?” She winked at him. “And we’ll tell them pards o’ your’n that you inned me and outed me like a damn stud bull.”
“But when you’re randy again, you spend your money here on me,” she added. “Or I’ll tell ’em you don’t like women, hear?”
Ben nodded.
“Now gimme five dollars extry and I’ll put on a show for your damn friends,” Wanda said.
Ben’s expression was somber. “Sure.”
When they got downstairs, Wanda complained to Big Nell of how tired she was after Ben. She wailed about wanting the next three days off while Harmon Gilray and the boys cheered.
“C’mon, Ben Cullen,” his new friend Elmer Woods said. “I’m gonna buy a drink for a man with a pile-driving ass like yours.”
Ben, his red face interpreted as self-consciousness, was led to the bar to finish out the evening in a long, yelling, shit-kicking drunken binge. The only sober moments were when he would suddenly remember his failure upstairs. He tried to brighten his mood by remembering what Wanda had said about him needing time to get back to normal.
But it was never to be.
Two days later, the gang rode south to a rendezvous with two more men in the Kiowa country of the Indian Territory. This duo, who had also been in prison at Leavenworth, had been on a special scouting expedition to check out a bank in a small town in New Mexico. The i
nstitution was reputed to hold a large amount belonging to the local cattlemen’s association. This money was regularly kept there for a brief period in late summer each year after the end of the season for rounding up and selling the herds.
The entire raid involved nearly two weeks in the saddle, but it was well worth it. The bank was hit on an afternoon, and not a shot had been fired as the gang made a clean getaway back to Indian Territory. It was on this trip, during a stopover in Texas, when Ben was first introduced to Paco Chavez and his wife Florita. Ben was to see the Mexican many times over the ensuing ten years that followed.
His friendship with Elmer Woods was also strengthened. Elmer, surprisingly, was the son of a Baptist minister. He’d taken plenty of teasing as a youngster as a “preacher’s kid.” Anxious to prove he was even wilder than the other boys, he embarked on a series of petty crimes. After a couple of warnings from the local judge, he was packed off to the Missouri State Reformatory for a solid year. He came out of that experience a sworn enemy of society, and spent six months on a rampage that led to five more years behind bars. Elmer went west after his discharge from custody to join his cousin in Kansas who had also just been released from confinement. This was Wes Woods, one of Gilray’s men, and Elmer soon became accepted as a full-fledged member of the organization.
The New Mexico bank job netted Ben two thousand dollars. He spent it with the others over in the Cherokee nation. A couple of more trips to whorehouses proved once and for all that the experience in Leavenworth had left him impotent and unable to perform sexually. It was ironic that Harmon Gilray still railed at him about never getting attached to a single woman.
The gang continued to prosper. Banks and trains fell before their guns, and they even became braggadocios, leaving calling cards and notes daring the law to catch up with them. They lived on a seesaw of financial success, either having plenty to spend or nothing at all. They gave the future no thought, only living the present for all it was worth, and Ben Cullen loved it.
Desperado Run (An Indian Territory Western Book 2) Page 10