West Of The War

by L. J. Martin

  “I’d be obliged more than I can say should you manage a tin of Arbuckle’s. I got some furs to trade—"

  “It’ll be my pleasure to gift you a tin or more can I come by it. You said other tribes?”

  “Yep, the Cheyenne, what’s left of the Mandan, a band of Snakes once in a while, some Arapahoe wander up to raid us when they get their courage up but don’t often come this side of the Big Muddy. They do a dance before they cross. A get ready to die dance, so they don’t come often. You want to be careful who you palaver with. The buffalo are moving south and you want to ride shy of them. Should they stampede you don’t want to be in the way.”

  “I saw three dozen Indian riders across the river. Those Arapahoe?”

  “Odds are.”

  “Glad there’s a river twixt them and us.”

  “Won’t be for long. That river freezes solid and becomes a road come January or February.”

  “That’s a hell of a note,” I say. “Let’s hope there’s plenty of warm spells to keep the ice thin.”

  “Let’s hope they had a good hunting moon and have lodges full and fat warm women to lay with. The ice will get thick.”

  “They good eatin’?” I ask. “The buffalo, I mean.”

  He chuckles. “The hump and the tongue is fine as any Chicago fancy restaurant.” He eyes my rifle closely. “I don’t imagine you’d like to trade for that Sharps?”

  “I don’t imagine.”

  He rises and stretches. “Well, my woman will be worried about me, going to palaver with some crazy white man who kills wolves as far as most can see, so I got to get to breaking brush on the trail home. I’ll put the word out to the Lakota to ride shy of Wolf-Long-Shot.”

  I give him a nod. “I’d be obliged. That said, if I kill anything, I’ll share with any man comes calling.” I stick my hand out and we shake, then offer a hand to Many-Dogs. He nods, ignoring my hand, but places a hand on his chest, then turns and mounts up.

  Then it dawns on me. “How the hell do I tell them apart…tribes I mean.”

  He laughs. “They shoot at you, they lift your hair, they ain’t Lakota. Or at least they ain’t any I done spoke with. I’d hate to have you skinned by the tribe’s women as I wouldn’t get my Arbuckle’s.”

  “Well, I guess that’s one way…they shoot at me, they ain’t friendly Lakota.” I laugh, but a little tightly. “Tell Many-Dogs I’m proud to meet him.”

  “He likes you, even if he don’t like salted cod,” Shamus says, and he too mounts.

  Many-Dogs says something to Shamus, who nods enthusiastically, then turns to me. “He says next herd of buff he sees coming our way, he’ll fetch you and that big gun of your’n. You think you can manage that?”

  “I’d be proud to ride with y’all.”

  He touches the skunk he wears, like he's tipping his top hat then gives me a wave, and they spin their mounts and gig them into a lope.

  “So,” Ian says as we watch them disappear over the hill, “you gonna give up grubbing for gold and go to buffalo huntin’?”

  “No, sir. You and I are going into the wood business.”

  “The hell you say. We got plenty of wood.”

  “That’s just the point, Ian my friend. We done got us twenty-five or more cords at five bucks each, and there’s hundreds more to be felled.”

  He thinks for a moment and I can see he’s counting on his fingers. “Five times twenty-five is enough to get a start in Benton City.”

  “And five times five hundred is a damn sight more.”

  “With eight more to split it with it ain’t so much.”

  “That’s why you keep this idea to yourself. They’ll jump aboard the first boat coming up river…probably the Emilie in short order. You and I can stay behind and build up the wood supply for when the river clears come Spring. Rumor is there will be a half dozen boats making this trip. We can head up river come Summer time with four, maybe five hundred each.”

  Ian laughs. “Hard cuttin’ wood in the snow.”

  “It cuts the same as it does in the summer, and slides back to camp a damn sight easier. Particularly when we got the stock to pull the weight.”

  Ian sticks out a big rawboned hand and we shake. “Howdy, pard,” he says, and we both laugh.

  It’s getting dark earlier and earlier, and when we’ve finished a fine skewer of elk heart and liver, I walk up to our makeshift privy then on up to where we have a picket line set up for the horses. And it’s good I do. Two of our mules have pulled free and their tracks lead up the ravine. They must not have gotten their fill during the day.

  I’ve got to get them back before some savages see them wandering the hills above.

  Chapter 18

  Returning to the round house I see that Ian has already bedded down, however Pearl is outside, a wool blanket over her legs, stitching away on some pannier bags to make our life easier. I bend low and tell her I’m off to track the animals, afoot.

  “I want to come along,” she says. “I been elbowing my way between all these men for too long. I got to get some air and stretch some.”

  “It may be a long hike,” I caution her. “And I can’t slow down and it’ll be damn cold and dead dark before I get back.”

  “Braden, I done…” she begins, then corrects herself, “I’ve already ridden you down when you were trying to leave me behind. What makes you think I can’t keep up?”

  “It’s cold.”

  “I got a fine coat and I’m wrapping myself in this wool blanket.”

  I have to laugh at that. Not only did she ride me down but she shot down the damn sheriff who had ridden me down.

  “Okay, let’s go.” She sets her work aside.

  We set out up the ravine, but I’m a little taken back by the cold and the fact the wind has picked up. This is no weather for a woman. We only go a couple of hundred yards before I turn back to her. “Still time for you to turn back and get curled up beside that fire.”

  “Let’s find those mules, then we can curl up by the fire.” She waves me on and I pick up the pace and we go another quarter mile without speaking. I’m hoping the mules are just at the top of the ravine, where the snow’s blown thin. The sun is about to touch the mountain tops to the west, so we don’t have much time. I want to top a hill just a half mile or so ahead so I can see, but know damn well it will be too dark to see anything by the time we get there.

  Then the sleet begins to pepper us.

  “Damn it, Pearl,” I yell over my shoulder. “You shoulda gone back.”

  “Shoulda, woulda, coulda, don’t get anything done, Braden. Let’s find someplace to get out of this until it quits.”

  I’m madly thinking about “someplace” when I remember a cut in the hillside not a hundred yards from where we now are. Some pines line the top of the cut and roots are exposed below. I remember it’s dark behind those roots, and probably dry and out of the wind and rain.

  “Come on,” I wave. She hooks a hand in my belt and I charge forward, the rain and sleet beating at me as we’re going straight into the west, where it’s coming from.

  It takes me the better part of a half hour in the growing darkness and heavy rain and sleet obscuring what little light is left, but I find the deep depression and have to pry my way between roots as big as my arm to get behind them and into the cut. I’m happy to see that it’s dry…dark, but dry, and larger than I’d figured.

  Pearl’s damn wool blanket is soaked through so I hang it over the root covering, blocking the wind and what little rain and sleet that’s managed to get through. And we settle back into the soft earth. Only then do I realize how cold I really am. I’m wondering if we shouldn’t run for the camp.

  But my teeth are already chattering.

  “I’m cold too,” she says, and snuggles up to me.

  “We got to get a fire going,” I manage while shivering.

  “How we gonna do that. You got a tinder box?”

  “No, but I got a flint and steel. I don’t go anywhere w
ithout one. And I got my possibles bag and some gunpowder.”

  “So, wood?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She moves away one way and I the other. This cut has to be thirty or forty paces long and a half dozen steps deep and high enough to stand in most spots, and I find some dry grass in a few steps and manage to break away some roots that seem dry and snap easily. In moments I have an armful and find that she, too, has plenty of dry material. I arrange the grass and even while shivering and chattering manage to get some twigs splintered with my skinning knife. I pour a generous amount of powder onto the grass, then dig out my flint and steel and with the second whack it sparks and the powder flares. We feed it some twigs, then larger twigs as big as my finger, then a few as big as my forearm, and in minutes we’re able to get whatever side we have facing the fire warm. But the other side is freezing.

  Pearl sighs deeply, then comes to the obvious conclusion. “We got to get these clothes to dry or we’re going to freeze solid.”

  She has on an ankle length dress and some cotton petticoats under that, and as cold as I am I get a shot of warmth to my loins as she begins unbuttoning her dress. In less than a minute she has it and her petticoats spread across the limbs only three feet from the fire. Her breasts are wrapped in a wide band of cloth and her bottom is in pantaloons that stretch to just above the knee. But six inches of her belly and back is exposed between the two garments.

  “Well,” she says. “You gonna freeze to death or are you gonna get outta them clothes?”

  Never admitted to my blessed ma or even my pa, I have visited some pleasure ladies when I went alone to deliver some mares downriver all the way to St. Louie, although I was hardly able to get a glance at them before they scrambled under the covers. The whole affair didn’t take long and each of the two ladies I joined in their cribs on that trip were well paid. A dollar was a day’s wages for most who labored as I did, and the dollar they earned sure as hell’s hot didn’t take hardly any part of a day, or an hour for that matter, from howdy to pull back on your trousers.

  I do have on long-johns under my linsey woolsey shirt and canvas trousers, but I know if I get shed of them, my appreciation for what I can see of her will show like a tent pole. I don’t believe I’ve ever had such an experience when others were present and watching every move I make. The pleasure ladies I visited in St. Louis, and a couple of times while serving Colonel Mosby, paid little attention to me as I shed my duds and seemed to take little pleasure in the act, although one of them put on a good show of enjoyment.

  But Pearl is watching closely.

  “Well,” she demands again.

  “Turn away.”

  “Braden, that son of a bitch you shot dead done beat me down and showed me what a man carries so you are not going to frighten me.”

  “Then I’m glad I shot the son of a whore. But that was him and this is me. Turn away.”

  She does and I peel out of my wet shirt and trousers and hang them on the roots next to her dress.

  “Better,” she says, over her shoulder.

  “Better, but I’m still freezing.”

  “Lay on down and you turn away. We got to get warm,” she says, and says it with authority.

  So I do, giving her my bare back. In moments she’s spooned up to me. I can feel the hardness of her breasts pushing into my back. She lays a thigh over mine and I catch my breath.

  “I got to turn over,” I say, and feel her turning, and follow suit, now I’m pressed up against her back, and I know she feels a hardness that I can’t hide.

  I wrap my arm over her, my wrist sweeps across her breast, and I realize her nipples are as hard as my manhood. I can’t help myself, and cup one full breast in my hand. She catches a breath, and I’m hoping it’s not merely from my cold hand, then rolls over to face me.

  “Lay on your back,” she commands, “and close your eyes,” and I do.

  I can feel her sloughing away what little she still wears and in moments she’s astraddle me with a hand between her legs and has fumbled away the buttons of my long johns and clasped my arousal in a soft hand. It’s my turn to gasp as my erection is wrapped in wet heat and she moans quietly then begins moving, up and down, her palms pressed into my chest.

  It’s all I can do not to scream as my body wracks with a shot of heat like I’ve never felt before. She collapses down on me, her mouth nibbling at my neck.

  “My God,” I manage to mumble and start to push her away.

  “Stop,” she commands. “You just stay there and I’ll keep you warm.”

  I do, laying quiet, still inside her. Just about the time my heart stops racing and I’m beginning to feel the cold again, she twitches, then begins to move slowly, but not so much I slip out of her.

  Then I feel my interest returning. In moments I’m the one beginning to move, and she rolls over pulling me on top of her.

  “Go slow,” she commands, and I do, but even moving slowly I’m beginning to feel the heat flood over me again, and again I’m racked.

  “That’s a fine thing,” I manage to mumble, collapsing down on her, and I hear her giggle a little.

  “It sure does keep the cold away,” she says, and I smile although she can’t see it in the dark

  “Do we do this all night to stay warm?” I whisper in her ear.

  “Long as you can, Braden, you a young bull…long as you can.”

  “Better I stoke the fire, just in case,” I say, and without moving off her, add a few branches to the fire.

  And then with my eyes wide open, taking every inch of her bronze body into my wondrous eyes, I return to the business of staying warm her way. And I like it much better than the fire.

  We manage to get some sleep and our clothes dry and back on by morning, when I realize the sun is shining through the tangle of roots. Then I hear Ian in the distance, yelling our names. I fight my way through the branches seeing a crimson sky to the east with the sun shining up onto the bottom of the cloud cover, and stumble out into snow that’s now knee deep. I yell for him. In moments he appears, riding Sadie. He slips from the pad we now use as a saddle.

  “Where’s Pearl?” he asks and she sticks her head through the roots.

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  Ian shakes his head. “Damn if I bet you’re not. Y’all are only two miles from camp. You couldn’t get back last night?”

  “We couldn’t see two feet in that damn sleet and rain and snow. We holed up to stay dry and not freeze to death.”

  He’s struck silent, merely shaking his head. “Mules came back on their own,” he finally manages.

  “I’m hungry enough to eat one of them,” I say. “Let’s get back to camp.”

  Pearl works her way out of the roots and into the deep snow. As soon as she’s even with the big mare, Ian reaches down and wraps his hands around her thin waist, and hoists her up on the horse.

  “You ride, we’ll walk,” he says, and sets out leading the mare.

  “Thank you, Ian,” she says.

  “My goddamn fiddle-fucking pleasure,” he says, giving her a wave over his shoulder.

  “Ian!” she manages, having never heard him curse.

  “Sorry…my pleasure, I should have said.”

  I follow at a distance, as Ian’s given me a heated glance that would bubble the varnish off one of the Eagle’s railings, were it not buried in mud.

  He’s not too happy about Pearl and I getting stuck out in the cold.

  But that’s not my reaction.

  I’m damn pleased about the whole affair.

  Chapter 19

  Had the great Taj Mahal of India been standing on the riverside rather than our round shelter, I couldn't have been more surprised. The Emilie is tied up alongside the shore. Alex and Sam are on either end of a stretcher walking Lucas Eckland aboard. I'm glad to see my former boss and the night engineer of the Eagle, Dag Eriksen, is following. I thank God he survived.

  Madam Allenthorpe stands alongside the rail near the
head of the gangplank and waves Pearl to join her. Pearly dismounts with a squeal and without looking back, runs up the gangplank to follow the stretcher aboard.

  The women hug and we don't get so much as a thank you or go to hell as they turn and walk toward the door to the main salon.

  I would be a liar if I didn't admit getting a catch in my throat watching her go.

  "Without a goodbye or go to hell," Ian says, echoing my thought. Then he turns to me, "We going aboard?"

  "Not me,” I say, clearing the catch from my throat, “I got a plan, and it doesn't include landing in Benson City with what little I got left."

  "You got the stock, they'll bring a fancy sum."

  "They got work to do right here. Don't let me hold you back if you got the gold fever."

  He laughs. "My share will wait. It's been laying in that creek bottom or under a ledge long as the stars have been in the sky. Let's sell some wood and get a decent stake so we got more’n a mule and a pan."

  I glance up to see a dozen men starting down the gangplank, and with Sharps in hand, I hustle over to block their way, fairly sure of their intent.

  "Hold on," I say, blocking the foot of the gangplank. A big burly black headed fellow, bigger than Ian, with a beard to mid-chest and half the width of his wide shoulders is in the lead.

  "Move aside there, sonny. We got wood to load."

  "All you want is up on the hillsides, lots of standing dead waiting for your ax, but you’re not touching that stacked and cut boiler wood."

  He stops four feet from me as I've edged the muzzle of the Sharps down where only another foot will bring it to the middle of his ample belly.

  "Sonny, I don't suppose you'd be too comfortable with that barrel shoved up your backside."

  It's dead silent except for the quiet chugging of the Emilie's steam engine in the background. My cocking of the Sharps is clearly heard by all of those lined up behind old black beard. Then to add even more insult the ratchet of the Spencer's loading lever somewhere behind me makes him cut his eyes.

  "I guess you need to talk with the captain," he says, seeming to lose a little steam of his own.