Sure as Shooting

by Karen Mercury

  “You’ll do no such thing!” Huntley erupted, surprising even himself. “Move out of Agua Fria? I’ll not hear of it. There’s no reason in the world my partner, a physician, can’t continue living in my house. With his wife, my maid. No one will say a thing against that.”

  Belle and Whit glanced at each other as though embarrassed. Belle said, “Well, you see. It’s like this. I enjoy helping Whit with his doctoring, and he needs a new assistant, a nurse, if you will, since Bud…”

  “Will be working in the mill breaking rocks!” Whit said heatedly.

  “Yes,” Belle agreed. “So we think it would be helpful if you could find a new maid. Maybe some Spanish or Chilean gal, to help Lupe.”

  Huntley said, “You wish to become a nurse?”

  Belle exhaled with relief. “Yes, a nurse, exactly!”

  Huntley shuddered. “If that’s what you want. I can’t fathom looking at the insides of people’s bodies, but if that’s what tickles you to death, so be it. I can find another maid.” He added, “I only gave you that job because I wanted to keep you around. Lupe can clean just fine. Doesn’t take much to cook for one man.”

  Whit said, “One man who barely ever eats! No, that’ll change, Hunt. Now with three hard-working, starving mouths to feed, you’ll need a new maid. Agua Fria’s getting bigger by the day, so there’ll be more work than ever. These miners are never going back home to the east.”

  Belle clambered into Huntley’s lap, nuzzling her lips against the side of his face. He embraced the furry brown figure, rubbing his grizzled face against her satiny, smooth cheek. “I love you, Huntley Ashbury.”

  Huntley squeezed his eyes shut, so painful was the outpouring of emotion in his heart. “I love you too, Belle.”

  They sat embracing in silence, a hawk wheeling soundlessly overhead. Then a strange, plaintive wavering voice floated over from their silent camp. That old orator Tenaya was calling to his people far off. It was so windless in the Yosemite Valley his voice was the only sound, aside from the fluffy rustling of Belle’s fur as she strained to listen.

  “He’s calling,” she said.

  Whit frowned. “Well, we can call, too.”

  Huntley was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  Whit graced him with his dazzling white smile. Standing, he put his hands on his hips and bellowed out so unexpectedly that Belle jumped in Huntley’s arms.

  “All redskin tongues, sign language too

  Huntley used ’em far and wide.

  He was a frontier Clamper man

  Pioneer, trapper, guide.”

  Huntley burst out in laughter. That plumb sap! He was blaring that absurd song some miners had made up about Huntley.

  “Warwhooped Yosemite’s Grizzly braves

  In havoc across the land

  Came Mariposa’s boys to save

  The law and order stand.”

  “All right! Enough!” Standing, Huntley placed Belle on her feet and clapped a hand on Whit’s shoulder. “We won’t be able to sing that song much longer, either. It’s about as ancient a chestnut as poor Tenaya’s song.”

  “Sure as shooting,” Whit agreed amiably.

  They stood on the eminence that jutted out over the valley. Although eager for his fireplace and his turtle soup, Huntley would be sad to leave the Deep Grassy Valley. Once word got out—and with Whit’s voluble writing skills, that would be soon—about the splendors of this place, all manner of naturalists and adventurers would be piling in. With no Grizzlies to scare anyone off, when the snow melted, folks would be racing to view these majestic vistas for themselves.

  Belle stood between them, clutching their hands to her furry breast. “Yes, you’re not King of the Tulareños anymore.”

  Huntley said, “I feel that I’m king of much more.”

  It would never be as silent as it was now, in this moment.

  Epilogue

  July 1851

  “Stormy, come! Come, come, come!”

  Lordy, trying to teach this critter to obey was like…well, like trying to get Whit and Huntley to behave!

  The fluffy Newfoundland puppy had a mind of her own, that was definite. She never strayed far from home, and she sat on her fleecy haunches when commanded, but she would only come when called if she was being fed her bowl of chile verde.

  “Come, come, come!” Belle called from the flap of the hospital tent. “Ooh!” With mild annoyance she took a stool next to Captain Boling to fashion him an arm sling. They still called him “Captain,” although once again he was merely a hotelkeeper. Last night there had been a fracas in his saloon, but it was refreshing that it only involved a pickled miner betting he could race his horse through Boling’s front glass window. It was comforting there had been no incidents involving Indians since their Mariposa Battalion campaign.

  Boling asked, “When are you and the Doc taking a honeymoon?”

  “We’re not,” Belle admitted. “We can’t leave Agua Fria for any amount of time. Especially when folks insist on pulling blockheaded stunts like riding a horse through a window.”

  Stormy appeared at the tent flap, her ears puffed up, listening. She barked once, then again, punctuating her sentence with importance.

  “I see,” Belle told her.

  “You see what?” Boling asked.

  “Oh, she knows it’s lunchtime. Maybe she didn’t catch enough salmon in the creek today and wants more of Lupe’s chile verde.”

  She sent Boling back to his hotel with a bottle of good Scotch whiskey for pain, not to be sold to patrons. Stormy followed at her side as they walked the short way up the rise to their house. Belle was thoroughly satisfied at her decision not to have another child. Stormy was certainly a handful and took up what little time she would have devoted to a baby. Now that Stormy had learned the house was not a privy, Huntley seemed to love her and spent much time chucking her under the chin and making cooing infant sounds. That was good enough for Belle.

  After feeding Stormy on the back porch, Belle followed the sound of men’s laughter to the study Huntley now shared with Whit. They spent a great deal of time with their boots on their desks, lounging in chairs smoking cigars, like two captains of industry.

  They were not doing so now.

  Whit stood, leaning his behind against his desk, completely nude aside from the trousers wrinkled up at his ankles. Kneeling before him in supplication, a fully clad Huntley devoured that enormous cock voraciously—as though he had not had biscuits and gravy for breakfast! A warm, lusty feeling expanded between Belle’s labia as she leaned against the desk, too.

  She ran her hand down Whit’s coppery bicep, smooth as cream. Huntley did not stop in his voracious sucking of the large appendage, but Whit looked up at her with a devilish grin.

  “Lordy,” Belle said. “You’re going to get us all in trouble if you persist in doing this in the middle of the day. What if someone came to the door needing medical assistance?”

  “The curtains are closed,” Whit said hoarsely. A muscle in his cheek twitched with arousal as Huntley plastered his lips to the tight ball sac. “They can knock with the door knocker.”

  Belle didn’t want to distract them. But hoping she might be in luck, she returned to the foyer to retrieve her possible bag. Rooting around in it, she pulled out one of the tiny bits of sea sponge Whit had procured for her. Striding back to the study, she placed it in her palm and turned a bottle of brandy onto it. Hitching one booted foot onto the sideboard leg, she expertly inserted the dripping sponge into her quim, shoving it up against her womb with her forefinger. It was always difficult to retrieve it later when it was slick with sperm, and once Whit had to use forceps to pull out a sponge.

  Whit must have seen her do this, for he cried, “Ah, stop!” to Huntley, who fell onto his heels and looked up in wonder.

  “Stop? Why?”

  Whit held his naked arms out in the shape of an embrace, and Belle readily came to him, kissing his achingly beautiful jawbone. “Because I want to teach you a
nother way to please our beautiful wife. Stay right where you are.”

  As his deft fingers worked the buttons at her skirt’s waist, Whit kissed her with a mouth that already tasted of jism. Belle licked his slimy tongue and wiggled out of her skirt, tossing it aside. Whit did the same with her drawers, disposing of them with a fling of the arm.

  “Now, my angel,” said Whit. “Turn around.”

  Placing her palms on the edge of the desk, Belle waggled her behind back and forth, knowing she looked salacious wearing only a shirt and boots. From his seat on the floor, Huntley must have had a physician’s view of her cunt, now dribbling a mixture of her inner juices and brandy, a tasty mixture for a man.

  Whit positioned himself behind her, gripping her hips. The gigantic glans of his shiny, stiff penis nudged against her cunt opening, and she spread her booted feet farther apart on the carpet, lifting her hips to him. “Now, Hunt,” Whit said in his most proper surgeon’s voice. “You’re getting to be an expert at making Belle come with your fingers. Let’s try your tongue.”

  Huntley’s words came hot against her inner thigh, and the tickling of his glorious glossy mane sent shivers up her back. “It’ll work with just a tongue?” She had only ever had Whit’s face between her thighs, with his extremely short cap of well-trimmed hair like a soft, little cactus. Now she reached down and speared her fingers through Hunt’s silken curls, sliding off the leather thong he used to cinch it into a pigtail at the back of his neck.

  Belle said, “Yes, my dough-head. You must keep your tongue very stiff and flick it up and down like a finger. Ah!” Whit had taken her unawares, gliding his thick cock into her cunt, and Belle squirmed to accommodate him. She’d been taking his enormous member inside of her for months, but she still had to relax to give him access.

  She hissed in a lungful of air when Huntley’s tongue flicked across her swollen clitoris. She grabbed a handful of his thick hair, pressing his face into her cunt. Rocking her hips and smashing her pussy against Huntley’s face, Belle’s other hand flat on the desk slipped on a paper of some sort. Glancing down, she saw the San Francisco newspaper, the Alta California, turned to an article about someone walking out of a store carrying a safe. Whit now pumped her eagerly, his cock swelling to untold proportions inside of her. He claimed to like the feeling of the drenched sponge at the opening of her womb, as it scraped tantalizingly against the tip of his cock, and the brandy burned pleasantly.

  Oh, yes. This is going to work just fine. By rocking her hips against Huntley’s flicking tongue, Belle felt the tension build in her pelvis. Her breasts swayed erotically, the nipples chafing against her chemise, and when Whit clamped a hand around a breast and pinched her nipple, she went off.

  Bucking against Huntley’s face, Belle snorted like a lathered gelding, her head lolling weakly on a rubbery neck over the Alta article about the safe thief. Her entire pussy canal clenched and unclenched in spasm after spasm, frenzied waves of orgasm rolling through her entire torso and squeezing the breath from her lungs.

  “That’s good, my little angel,” Whit said against her neck. Hunched over her, his prick exploded in a series of mighty spurts so powerful the jets of semen splashed her inner walls. His ball sac slapped noisily against Huntley’s chin as he lapped furiously at her clitoris, sounding much like Stormy eating a bowl of grilled salmon. Lap, lap, lap, snarl, snarl, snarl.

  The contractions finally eased enough for Belle to breathe fully, and she shoved herself backward off the desk and Huntley’s mouth. “Oh, ah, oh!” She staggered toward the sideboard. Weakly, she poured herself a glass of the brandy—to drink, this time. It was difficult stepping into her drawers, and buttoning her skirt was next to impossible. Panting, she turned to view the men.

  Huntley sat like a bundle of weak limbs at the foot of the desk. Whit had returned his butt to its perch near the newspaper, his long throbbing prick pulsating in the air.

  Whit said, “Huntley’s capable, wouldn’t you agree? He has a very large mouth.”

  Huntley slapped Whit’s leg with the back of his hand. “Large mouth, my ass! You don’t mind when my large mouth is sucking the jism from your cock.” He seemed to get an idea then, for he shoved Whit off the desk and glued his face between the globes of his ass.

  Belle giggled, as Huntley seemed to be tonguing Whit so assiduously that Whit’s eyes closed, and he wobbled uncertainly with nothing to clutch on to. But after gnarling into the upturned, saucy ass for a few long moments, Huntley shoved him away and struggled to his feet, his own erection tenting out the crotch of his buckskins.

  “You boys are full of such fun. What’s new in this newspaper?” Belle stood between them and rattled the sheet. Why were the two men looking at each other so strangely? “San Francisco has suffered many fires lately. Oh!” A thought struck her, and she turned to face Huntley. “Did any of your investments burn up?”

  Huntley looked relieved that she had brought up such an easy subject. “Oh, no, no. Not at all. Fact, I was just venturing to Whit here that he should become my partner in my trading business.” Whit walked to the sideboard while cinching up his pants at his waist, and Huntley continued. “Doc studies books, and I study men. Doc would make me a profitable partner.”

  “Yes,” said Whit, pouring his own brandy. “Since I excel so much at naming things, I’ve named our new partnership ‘Ashbury & Whitney.’ Brilliant, isn’t it? That lake past where Tenaya was captured? It’s now being written as ‘Lake Tenaya’ on maps, thanks to me.”

  Belle added, “And your El Capitan monolith, don’t forget.”

  Huntley said, “Not to mention the entire Yosemite Valley. Anyway, it’d behoove us to take a trip to San Francisco—a honeymoon, if you will. My friend Tom Larkin has agreed to let us use his empty house. Three stories of a grand brick mansion.” He stroked Belle’s face with the back of his hand. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Miss Belle?”

  “Oh, yes! I’ve never been to San Francisco! I want to see the Plaza Hotel where you two first met—when Bud tried to accuse José Juarez of stealing.” As soon as she uttered her brother’s name, Belle knew she’d made a mistake and tried to cover it up by sipping brandy and smiling coquettishly.

  But she had let the cat out of the bag, and Huntley now took the newspaper from her hand. “Yes. About that.” He pointed to the article about the safe-stealing fellow. Belle read more, with concentration this time.

  On June 9, 1851, at Sydney Cove, Bud Pennington walked deliberately into a merchant’s store, picked up the small safe, carried it to a boat, and calmly rowed out into the bay. The alarm was given, and a number of merchants pursued and overtook Pennington. He threw the safe overboard. Pennington was brought back and taken to a building at the corner of Sansome and Pine streets. The prisoner was duly tried by a jury and condemned to be hanged.

  Pennington was a rough and vicious-looking man, well-known as a desperate character who had frequently evaded justice. His bearing through the trial was defiant and insulting, and he continuously shouted that his friends would come rescue him any moment. Commendations go to the Vigilance Committee for their swift justice…

  “Hush, hush,” Huntley said soothingly, although Belle was not crying.

  She merely stared at the article with burning eyes. It had been obvious since he’d been run out of town that Bud would turn to nefarious tactics to survive. His dream had been to open a trading post such as Huntley had a number of, but Huntley wasn’t about to give him a piece of the pie, not after Bud’s bloodthirsty murder of Tenaya’s son. He should have been hanged for that murder, but no white man had ever been hanged for murdering an Indian.

  This article wasn’t such a surprise, really. But naturally Belle felt a loss, especially so since Bud was the last surviving member of her family. “Now all I have is…” The realization shocked her. She looked from Whit to Huntley. “Well, you two, really.” Clearer, she injected force into her shaky voice. “You two are my only family!”

  The two men hemmed her
in, placing their arms about her protectively and nuzzling her throat with their hot mouths. It was curious that just as she was mentioning “family,” there came a clicking of toenails against the floorboards in the outer hallway, and the study door swung open. In came the fluffy black beast known as Stormy, the tip of her wide pink tongue peeking out from between her canines. She sat before them on her haunches, her chest all puffed with happiness, looking from one person to the next, as though wondering who had the jerked beef.

  Belle could never resist such a cunning creature, and she fell to her knees to embrace the solid, giant dog, burying her nose behind her ear that was soft as a jackrabbit’s.

  Whit said, “We’re the only family you’ll ever need, Belle. We’ll always be there for you.”

  The front door knocker banged. Belle peered past Stormy’s ear and saw William Little through the window that flanked the door. His face was pressed comically against the glass, skewing his nose to one side as he shouted, “Dr. Whitney, come quick! There’s another set-to in the saloon—some potatoheads from Hell’s Delight took the ivory walking stick away from a dandy, and he whacked them over the heads with it. Now everyone’s joining in!”

  Sighing, Belle stood, smoothing down her skirt front. “However will they cope without us when we go to San Francisco?”

  Whit was already at the study door. “Yes, Huntley. Is it really wise for us to leave the people of Agua Fria alone while we seek pleasure in the big city?”

  Huntley was ahead of Whit. “How do you think we did it before you arrived here?”

  Belle rushed to follow them out the front door, grabbing up Whit’s medicine bag from the foyer floor. “Not very well?” she suggested.

  Huntley froze with his hand on the porch banister. He swiveled his head to cast her an amused look. “No.” He shook his head. “Not very well at all.” And then plunged off into the dirt road that led to Boling’s Hotel.

  Belle liked that. “Not very well at all,” she echoed to Stormy as they brought up the rear.

  It was nice to be needed.