23
They filled their canteens and waterskins and led the horses to the pool so that they might have their fill. At Balum’s insistence the women drank until their stomachs ached, then drank more, and in such painful condition they led the remuda down the western edge of the cliffs and struck out through the Scarlands and onto the edge of Hell Country. For a quarter mile they followed the wide swath of hoof prints Big Tom’s gang had left in their wake, before veering sharply west and cutting down into a bajada where the white-washed bones of oxen lay scattered beside the rotten and rusted remains of a farm wagon. The horses fresh with water took long strides past this scene of ruin and tilted their heads against the sun.
That evening they camped at the edge of a butte where a mesquite tree grew among a patch of candelilla. They could have pushed further — the sun had not yet set — but it was the last wood they would find until they reached Bette’s Creek, and better to take advantage than let it go to waste.
They built a fire and cooked slabs of saltpork in a pan and threw in thick slices of cheese to melt. Accompanied by the spring water, it was a meal worthy of any bunkhouse kitchen. Chloe and Kiki chatted in good spirits. They whispered in each other’s ear and snuck looks at Balum and giggled at their private banter. Josephine remained quiet as usual. She made her bed away from the others, though not excessively — the howls of coyotes kept her from straying too far.
After they put the fire out for the night, Balum walked to the edge of camp and stared at the sand dunes that awaited them the next morning. He thought about a lot of things, but mostly he thought about Joe. When he finally turned and came back to where his blanket was spread, Chloe and Kiki were waiting underneath. They watched him kick his boots off, set his hat over them, unbuckle his gunbelt and lay it out at the foot of the blanket.
‘You’d be mighty cold without us here, wouldn’t you, Balum?’ said Kiki. ‘Sleeping alone in the desert at night.’
‘I’ve had it worse,’ he said.
‘But this is better, isn’t it.’
He shimmied in between them and stretched his legs out and rested his head against the ground. He closed his eyes. ‘It’s pretty good,’ he admitted.
‘Well it’s not so good for us’
He opened his eyes. Rolled his head to the side. Her face was a foot away. The small upturned nose, the lips that didn’t quite close all the way.
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘Chloe and I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep since we started out, and it’s your fault.’
‘Mine?’
‘You keep talking in your sleep. You wake up, kick, twist, you pull the covers around. You’re wound up tighter than a top.’
‘You need to relax,’ said Chloe.
‘You’re too worried,’ said Kiki.
They were right, he knew it. He could feel the tension in his jaw, in his knuckles. It rode his shoulders like a bow yoke on a one-ton steer.
Kiki propped herself on her elbow and rested her head in her hand. ‘You’re worried about Joe,’ she said.
‘I am.’
‘Well he’s not dead yet, is he?’
‘He’s wounded,’ said Balum.
‘But still riding.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted.
‘Two of Big Tom’s men are dead.’
‘And he got himself another horse,’ added Chloe behind him.
Balum nodded.
‘He has water,’ said Kiki.
‘And a destination,’ said Chloe.
‘And Valeria is okay,’ Kiki’s mouth was not quite closed, her breath was warm.
‘You’re still stressed though,’ said Chloe. ‘Aren’t you.’
He didn’t answer. He looked at the reddish purple haze covering the sky above.
‘We can’t spend another night awake because you’re too stressed to sleep.’
‘Is that right?’ he said. He felt Chloe’s fingertips gently take his chin and turn his head around so his eyes met hers.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘We’re going to make sure you sleep the whole night through.’
On the other side of him Kiki moved. He felt the blanket come off. Still his eyes were locked on Chloe’s. He heard the rustle of metal when Kiki unbuckled his belt, the tug at his waist when she pulled his pants over his hips. A twinge in his hip where the bullet had caught him.
Chloe’s eyes remained on his, her lips red and moist.
Kiki’s hair brushed lightly across his pelvis, a cool rush of evening air over his cock, already growing, swelling from the smell of the women against him, their soft voices, the closeness of them, and suddenly he felt his cock enveloped in hot wetness, and Chloe pressed her mouth to his.
He grabbed her head with both hands and greedily took her tongue in his mouth, her lips against his, his nose touching her cheek. He took her lip and sucked it, went back for more. He pushed her away, looked down, saw his cock disappear and reappear from Kiki’s lips.
Thoughts ceased to exist. Worries vanished.
When he turned his head, Chloe had slipped the top of her dress away. Her breasts jiggled heavy in their bra. He reached out and ran a hand down her cleavage and felt a sudden hunger overtake him and his mouth water. She reached both hands behind her and the bra fell away, her tits enormous and smooth in color, nipples small against the large areolas. She bent forward and smothered his face between them. The smell of sweat, of cake, the froth of champagne. He took them in his hands and lost himself between them.
When he drew his head away for air, Chloe crawled down his belly with her nipples grazing his skin, then took his cock from Kiki’s mouth and shoved it in her own. Her feet were bare and the soles faced skyward. She lifted one and brought her leg over his chest and laid herself out flat on top of him. Her ass swayed inches from his face. Balum lifted the ends of her dress over her calves and up her thighs and flipped the fabric over her waist to reveal her soaking panties. He pulled them aside, which wet his fingers, and suddenly Kiki was beside him. She smiled, almost giggled.
‘Her pussy looks so good, doesn’t it, Balum,’ she said.
His head was floating. He could hear Chloe slurping on his cock and taking it out and slapping it against her tongue, slapping her cheek, spitting on it and thrusting it back down her throat.
‘Go ahead, Balum. Taste her.’
He tucked his hands in the fold of Chloe’s waist and pulled her back until her pussy met his mouth. He felt cold air again on his cock. Her back arched and she wailed a long low moan into the night.
‘I want to taste her, Balum,’ said Kiki. She hooked a finger around his chin and pulled his head around, and ran her tongue over his lips. ‘Mmm,’ she said. Then she turned her head and sank her tongue deep into Chloe’s cunt.
Balum ran his hands over Kiki’s body. He was surprised to find it naked; he hadn’t realized she’d undressed. Her skin was soft and warm and he reached around and cupped her breasts and squeezed them, first one, then the other.
‘Do you want to taste me too, Balum?’ she whispered.
He answered with a nod of his head.
She turned and lifted a leg and sat back down with her knees on either side of his ears. He devoured her. The taste of her cunt made his head go light. His stomach rumbled. He reached down and ran his hands through Chloe’s hair and raised his hips in rhythm with her mouth.
He grabbed Kiki suddenly like an angered beast and threw her aside, pulled Chloe off him and tossed her on her back as well. He ignored the pain screaming in his hip. He raised up on his knees and looked from one to the other. The sun had gone down, but its afterglow remained. Enough to see the two girls smiling up at him from their backs and jiggling their breasts in their hands. They spread their legs and bit their lips, and Kiki said in a voice as soft as a cat’s purr, ‘Which one of us do you want to fuck first, Balum?’
He slapped a hand to her thigh and pulled her to him. His cock swayed like a great pale cannon above her. He took the base of i
t and pressed its length against her pussy and found it thoroughly wet and inviting.
Then he entered her.
The sensation took the strength from him. He collapsed over her. He buried his face into her neck and drew in long hard breaths and rocked his hips against her until he heard her gasping and squealing in his ear, and when he grabbed a handful of her hair she only squealed louder, harshly, her voice soaring over the three of them and over Josephine where she lay in her blankets only a stone’s throw away. To quiet herself she bit his ear. The pain was a welcome distraction from the bullet wound screaming in his hip. It burned. It stung. But he couldn’t stop. He sank the full length of his cock between Kiki’s legs and took her lips in his, and faintly in his ear he heard Chloe say, ‘Are you going to save some for me, Balum?’
He turned his head, still deep in Kiki, and saw the glow of the sunset reflecting off Chloe’s neck. He reached out and grabbed her throat and her lips parted and she held his eyes in hers.
He pulled out suddenly. With his free hand he rolled Kiki aside and grabbed Chloe’s hip. She let her knees drop aside, waiting for him, inviting him to enter, but the sight of her staring back at him with her soft neck clutched in his hand and her lips parted and her breasts enormous and bathed in the red glow of sundown proved too much. Just as she took his cock in her hands he felt a wave wash over him and he bent his neck back and the wave crashed through him and his body contracted and he came in a hot blast that soaked Chloe’s chest, hit her neck, dribbled into the crevasse between her breasts.
He weaved on his knees above her. He lost focus. His vision blurred. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them on Chloe laughing and wiping cum from her chest. She dabbed it with her fingers and held them out, and Kiki sucked them clean and licked her lips and fell back onto the blankets with her breasts bouncing on her chest.
Balum collapsed beside her. His breath came heavy. A thin film of perspiration covered his body, which made the night air feel like a woman’s fingers tickling his cock that lay exposed to the sky.
Chloe reached down and pulled the covers over the three of them.
‘You go to sleep now,’ she whispered.
And he did. He was asleep before she finished the sentence, and he woke not once throughout the night.
24
Joe checked his backtrail several times without ever stopping his horse to do it. Nothing stirred back there. It should have given him more hope than it did — the fact that they’d gotten at least a twenty-four hour head start on Big Tom. But his problems were many.
For one, he was shot up bad. Valeria kept up a mighty good string of encouraging words, but he’d lost a sight of blood and was still losing it. The bullet holes in his calf and shoulder had mostly run dry, but that gash along his ribs was wide and foul, and the bouncing of the horse didn’t help to staunch the bleeding. His shirt hung wet and heavy against him. It surprised him how heavy blood was. It always did.
And then there was that bajada back there. He wondered again if he should have taken it instead of keeping on to the northwest. He thought back to the times Balum had spoken about Hell Country. About Bette’s Creek. Problem was, those stories were short on landmarks, and heavy on Charlise and Cynthia.
Joe almost laughed. To hear Balum describe the mother and daughter, one would think he was either a liar or a man prone to exaggeration. But Balum was neither. In fact, when Joe had finally run into the two, they measured up in every way to Balum’s descriptions. Every way.
He shook his head. He wondered where Balum was right that minute. What he was doing. Somewhere in Tin City most likely, in the girlie show, at a poker table, a belly full of steak. Hopefully clear of Pat Swinton. Maybe — Joe allowed his imagination a moment of fancy — he was riding like a demon through the desert with his Dragoon loaded and a posse alongside, fast on the trail and closing in.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and glanced back again. There was no Balum and no posse, only a red barren land of clay and rock and haunted hoodoos that rose like callous towers over it all.
When the day ended they continued into the night. The moon had grown to more than a sliver. Scarce as the light was, it was enough to avoid stepping through cacti if they took their time. There wasn’t all that much to avoid anyway. One thing Balum had mentioned about Hell Country was that nothing grew there. Just red clay and red stone and an oppressive heat that could make a man pray for death. Already it was happening; the ground was shifting in color, the cholla had petered out, no mesquite trees poked over the horizon no matter how far he looked.
Up ahead, Valeria whoaed her horse and waited for him to catch up.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Shot up.’
Valeria shook her head. She almost had a smile going, but when Joe looked closer he thought he saw the glow of a tear in her eye.
‘Do you want to stop?’ she asked. ‘You should rest.’
‘We can’t stop. We need to ride at night, let the horses rest during the day. Big Tom will be switching out horses and riding hard. This head start won’t last if we don’t force it.’
Her eyes dropped to his shirt. She unstrapped her canteen and unstoppered it and held it out. ‘Drink this,’ she said.
They stopped twice more before morning, each time to water the horses. Their pace was slow, the horses cautious on the strange terrain. When the sun rose, it found Joe slumped over the horse’s back. Valeria had wrapped a blanket over him. He was still sitting, but with his chin hanging and his shoulders caved inward.
The edge of a butte offered enough shade to shield them from the midday sun. They slept four hours and woke and watered the horses, then mounted up and labored back into the sun.
Three days later their water ran dry. Joe rode with his face smushed sideways against the horse’s mane and his arms hanging loose on either side. How he didn’t fall, riding bareback like he was, Valeria didn’t know. A lifetime on horseback was all she could figure. She kept him warm at night, kept him watered, checked his wounds, though there wasn’t much she could do about them. Joe needed a doctor, a doctor’s equipment, a doctor’s medicine. She wondered if Bette’s Creek would have any of those things. Then she wondered if they would ever make it to Bette’s Creek.
To make things worse, Big Tom and his men had made up time. The dryness of the desert air and the way it hung clear one moment and wavering the next, it was possible to pick out objects at a distance of thirty miles. Big Tom and his men weren’t even half that far. She wondered how they were set with water. Probably better than her and Joe. She told herself not to look back at them anymore, but she did anyway.
They needed shade. The sun was rising fast and the heat was already unbearable. She slowed her horse and reached out and grabbed Joe’s reins and scanned the rock piles and the rises and dips in the land and wondered where there might be some crevice or overhang or anything to give them just a few hour’s respite from the worst of the day. While she searched, a bee buzzed past her ear and settled on Joe’s shoulder.
‘Joe!’ she said automatically.
‘Huh,’ he mumbled.
‘Don’t move. There’s a bee on you.’
But he did move. Alive again. He peeled his face out of the horse’s mane and sat up and looked at one shoulder and then the other, and when he saw the bee sitting there, his face took on color.
‘You want me to kill it?’ she asked.
‘No. I want you to follow it.’
‘Follow it?’
‘This bee is going to take us to water.’
It buzzed up, flew over the horse’s ears. Joe nudged his horse after it. Valeria beside him.
The bee wound a path like a coiled spring down through rocks and back up. It looped and turned and went forward again, and a couple times it landed and sat, and Joe and Valeria stopped their horses and sat there watching and waiting and suddenly loping on whenever the bee decided to depart.
It led them up the eroded face of a hogback where the horses stumbled
unsure of their footing and their tongues half-hanging from their muzzles for the strength of the sun. For a mile they struggled after it. All down the spine of the hogback as it slowly fell away again into a floodplain that had not seen rain for centuries.
When the bee finally swiveled and vanished in a crack of rocks, Joe and Valeria sat sweating and waiting but it would not appear again.
‘It’s in there somewhere,’ Joe said. His voice cracked like old kindling.
‘I’ll look,’ said Valeria.
She left her horse with Joe and climbed down among the boulders. She slipped once and regained her footing and bent into a chamber of rocks all jumbled one atop another, and there she disappeared. Joe wiped his neck. He tried to swallow but his throat wouldn’t allow it. He felt dizzy suddenly. Like he might fall.
‘Joe!’ she appeared like an apparition before his horse. ‘You were right — there’s water. Come, take my hand.’
And he took it.
25
So thoroughly did Balum sleep that he nearly missed the sun lumbering up over the edge of the earth. It cast thin red fingers across the land like claws rising from the planet’s core to rake out what darkness the night had delivered. In one of those shards of sunlight sat Josephine with her knees curled into her chest and a blanket wrapped around her clutched tight at her bosom. She didn’t stir when Balum and the girls woke. She sat and shivered. The chattering of her teeth like music from a bone rattle to serve as backdrop for their morning routine. When the blankets were rolled and the fire stoked, the horses readied and loaded, Chloe called her in for coffee.
She came. Stiff and begrudgingly.
‘How long have you been sitting there?’ Chloe passed her a mug.
Josephine declined to meet Chloe’s eye. She took the mug and held it close so the steam would warm her face.
‘You know,’ said Kiki, ‘you don’t have to sleep all alone. Balum can keep you warm.’
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