She’d started to take her first sip, and coughed suddenly and pulled the mug quickly away. ‘I am a lady,’ was all she said, then she turned and marched back to the sliver of sunlight cutting through the rocks.
For the first two hours Balum rode with an even disposition. He didn’t drive the horses too hard, didn’t chew tobacco, didn’t swear under his breath. He even stopped for water instead of ordering the women to drink as they rode.
By the third hour of the day the sun had risen high enough to whip the temperature up to a boil. His shirt soaked through. His hip began to ache.
Four hours later he was spitting tobacco and shouting the horses up a ridgeline and thinking to himself that Joe, in such heat and wounded as he was, might very well be on the edge of death. His jaw had tensed up and he could feel his knuckles throbbing. The yoke again at his neck.
About the time when all the spares had been ridden and their legs had begun to tremble, they rode down into a wilderness of hoodoos — bizarrely-shaped pillars carved thirty feet high by prehistoric erosion. They offered shade, and there the party halted to wait out the most brutal section of day.
They unloaded the horses and spread blankets over the sand. No one was hungry, it was too hot to eat. They drank water, brushed down the remuda. In all of these chores, Balum’s actions were sharp and hurried. He threw the packs to the ground, drank water as if someone were attempting to tear the canteen from his hands. When the horses had been attended to and the miserable waiting began, the yoke over his neck grew heavier. Time wasted. The girls lounged in silence. Josephine by herself in the shade of a separate hoodoo, the other two twirling parasols and dabbing sweat from their necks.
Balum paced. He thought of Joe. He thought of Big Tom. He unholstered the Dragoon and set it on a flat ledge of shale and opened the cylinder and cleaned each chamber, the barrel, every piece of it until it was shining bright, then dropped it back in its holster and walked to the edge of the shade. Not even the lizards could stand the sun at that hour. He turned back to the women and the remuda and saw that Chloe had risen and walked out to the saddlebags. She was bent over, looking for something. The dress clung tightly to the curve of her ass.
The weight over Balum’s neck jackknifed. It drove down through his chest and into his loins. His breath caught. He crossed the ground he’d just trod in long focused strides, and when he reached Chloe the sound of his feet hammering the earth caused her to turn her head. The moment her eyes caught him, they widened. She gasped. When Balum grabbed her by the waist she let out an exclamation similar to the sound one makes after slipping near a cliff edge.
He pulled her rear around just where he wanted it and lifted her dress over her hips. On hands and knees she watched him with her head turned around. Eyes wide. A curious smirk on her face. He unbuckled his gunbelt and let it drop, his trousers next. He didn’t fully undress, only slid his pants down his thighs so that his cock was freed. Chloe gave her ass a jiggle, inviting him in.
He hooked a finger through her panties and pulled them aside and sank his shaft inside her as deep as her pussy would allow. He drew it out and shoved it in further.
‘Ooh,’ she cried, half moan, half shock.
He took her hips in each hand and slammed into her. Each thrust clapped out and echoed through the stone columns. Her ass was plump and round, and the flesh rippled every time he pounded against it. She dropped onto her elbows and arched her back and took the length of him, moaning and gasping all the while, and when he came, he came fiercely, a cry escaping his throat like a water buffalo bellowing in the heat of rut. He drew his cock from her, covered in her juice and his own cum, and stood up.
Chloe turned over. Cum oozed out of her pussy, down her thigh. She raised her hand and bent a finger and beckoned him forward. ‘Come here,’ she said.
He took short steps — his trousers were still caught around his knees. When he reached her she took his cock and slid the length of it into her mouth and tickled his balls, and he felt a shudder rip through him, one last surge of energy, the last of his worries emptied and gone.
He did not notice the look on Josephine’s face when he ambled back to his blanket and stretched out in the shade and slept two hours in a state of mindless peace. He woke fresh. The fog cleared from his head. The worry gone.
It returned here and there, by night and by day, but he knew the solution was to lose himself in vice. He sank into the women’s embrace, sank into their flesh. He lied naked with them beneath the heavens and licked every inch of their bodies. He smothered himself in their breasts, kissed them, humped them, spanked them, fucked them. He would work himself ragged at night, and when the familiar weight of the yoke overtook him by day he would take them in the desert, Kiki or Chloe, sometimes both at once, the three of them like wild naked beasts, humping and moaning under the desert sun.
They paid no mind to Josephine. She would put a hand over her mouth in a show of horror and ride off either alone or with her spares. Sometimes she would look back and watch them grinding against each other in the wide open expanses, but they never seemed to notice.
The sex could well have been medicine. Not one Josephine would approve of, but for Balum, a cure for stress and worry. He realized after some time that it was surely the same for Kiki and Chloe; they too were saddled with their own apprehension. It was their friend also being chased through Hell Country, and there was no certainty that she was not wounded as well.
And so in such a fashion they traveled; by night and by day, short on food but long on pleasure. Uninhibited, carnal pleasure. Moans, gasps, squeals, the sounds of hands spanking bottoms, hips thrusting, breasts jiggling, the smell of sex all over them and over the horses and in the gear and hovering around the fireless camps they made, following them like a cloud of depravity all the way to Bette’s Creek.
They stumbled onto it the morning of the fifth day out of the Scarlands. All of them lathered in sweat and dust, the horses too starved to raise their heads at what lay spread before them.
As when they reached the cliff dwellings, Balum ordered the women to wait. They sat there like castaways a mile outside town, surrounded by horses that, tired of the wait, sank onto their haunches and dropped their heads in the sand.
Nothing stirred, but it didn’t mean nobody was around. Balum yearned for a bed and a bath and a bite of food. Instead he chose to sit in the blistering heat and stare at the string of buildings that faced each other across the main drag of a town long-since given up for dead. His eyes held on the few homes scattered at the outskirts. He peered up into the hills further on where the old claims sat unattended like giant rodent holes bored into the earth. The buckskin under him sputtered a dry cough. It’s tail twitched.
Without taking his eyes away he instructed the women to ready their weapons, then he drew the four pound Dragoon from his holster and prodded the buckskin forward. It was one of the older spares in the remuda, and whether for lack of water or for age, it dragged its hooves down Main Street and didn’t swing its head once right or left.
Balum did. He looked into the darkness behind the windows of the Candelabra, and when the sign over Elsworth’s Gold Buying Shack creaked, he jerked and swung the Dragoon at the storefront. He ran his eyes over the jail, up the alleyway where Charlise’s abandoned hotel stood empty and lonely. He looked behind him once and saw the women no less edgy. They’d folded up their parasols. Chloe held the Smith and Wesson out to her side. The Sharps rested over Kiki’s pommel with the barrel aimed at the false-fronted stores along the boardwalk. For the first time in a long time Josephine rode close to them. She pulled the remuda along by the lead rope. The sounds the horses and saddlery made were amplified by the desolation, enough so that her head twitched side to side as if any second Big Tom would leap from behind an empty watering trough and yank her from her saddle.
The roan plodded along with the other horses. About half-way down Main Street it pricked its ears up. It sniffed, craned its neck. It trotted a few paces ahead and suddenly broke
into a run that jerked the leadrope tight and took the remuda cantering down the street in a drumming of hooves and wild eyes and angry snorting nostrils.
Balum jerked the buckskin clear of the stampede and shouted at the roan, but the horse knew where it was and knew where water and feed should be. The doors of the livery were not fully closed when it careened into them. They flung open on rusted hinges and the string of horses stormed into the empty building, angry and frightened all at once and jerking against the lead rope so that their heads snapped and whipped against their will. When Balum caught up to them they were tugging against it and gnashing their teeth and bumping into stalls and posts. A few buckets were on the ground and these were stomped and kicked and flung against the walls. An empty water trough overturned and crashed and they jumped back from it and whinnied and veered fruitlessly away from a young colt rising up on its hind legs and jabbing its hooves into the air.
Balum unsheathed his knife and dropped from the buckskin. He grabbed the leadrope of a frightened mare and sliced it and turned the mare around and swatted it out of the livery. An old gelding was next. Balum sidestepped a kick and slit the rope again, then waded deeper in and cut them loose one by one. They stormed out of the livery and pranced around in the sun until the panic left them. Only the roan stayed inside. It looked at the stalls and at it looked at the empty troughs and finally it looked at Balum.
Outside in the street, the girls waited. Weapons drawn.
Balum walked out of the livery and into the sun.
‘It’s empty,’ said Kiki. ‘The whole town.’
‘I know it.’
‘The horses need water.’
‘There’s a well up thataways, just past those cabins. We’ll get them watered.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then we get ready for all hell to break loose.’
26
Aside from dust and cobwebs, the shelves in the general store were mostly empty. But in a corner behind the counter was a stack of tinned tomatoes along with several cans of condensed milk and a sack of dried prunes. Balum swept all of it into his arms and walked out.
He carried the goods through the doors of the Independent Saloon and behind the bar and back into the kitchen where he dropped them over the prep table. He looked around at what was at hand and grabbed up a cast iron pot. He heaved it up over the wood stove.
‘What’s all the banging around in here?’ Chloe said. She stood in the kitchen doorway. Behind her the dining area of the Independent glowed orange in the sunlight streaming through the windows.
‘You get those horses watered?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Canteens filled up?
‘Kiki is bringing them.’
Balum spread his hands wide over the prep table and looked at nothing. After a moment he said, ‘Where are the horses?’
‘In the livery. Josephine found some oats. They’re mostly rancid, but it’s better than nothing.’
Balum nodded. ‘When they’ve had their fill bring them in here.’
‘Bring who in where?’ said Chloe.
‘The horses. In here.’
‘In the saloon?’
‘That’s right.’
Chloe stepped through the doorway. She leaned her hip against the table not far from Balum’s hand. ‘Has the heat gotten to you?’
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘When Big Tom gets here he’ll need food and water. We’re going to draw as much water out of that well as we can, then we’ll cut the rope to it. As for food, don’t think he won’t slaughter the horses. He will.’
‘So the Independent? This is where we’ll fort up?’
‘It has the thickest walls in town. Rooms on the second story. Good vantage points. It’s got this kitchen here,’ he waved a hand out, ‘it’s sitting right in the center of town, and there’s enough space in the gambling hall to hold the horses.’
Chloe nodded. ‘We’re going to need a lot of water.’
‘Start hauling then.’
He did the best with what he had on hand, but the stew he left boiling over the wood stove was a questionable thing, even considering the state of hunger in which he found himself. Beyond the gambling hall were the washrooms. Four of them. Each had a tub, and three of these he dragged into the floorspace between the craps tables, then went out and helped the girls carry water from the well to the saloon. Three hours later the tubs were filled, the canteens topped off, and every pot and pan in the kitchen was filled to the brim. The girls made a search of the cabins around town. They came up with a few dried goods. Flour, canned beans. Meat gone bad.
Balum added the flour to the pot and thickened the stew, and this they ate from pewter bowls around a circular table in the dining hall. It didn’t taste quite as bad as Balum feared. At least no one spit it out. They sipped it down and drank warm well water and made plans for evening.
‘We’ll comb through town once more,’ said Balum. ‘Let’s not leave them anything they can use. No food, no water, no weapons. We’ll check the munitions store, the confectionary, the cabins. Whatever we find we bring here.’
Kiki and Chloe rose and took their tableware to the kitchen. When they were gone from sight Josephine said, ‘Was there ever a doctor here?’
Balum looked over his bowl at her. She’d gone days without addressing him. Her voice sounded new and strange in the vacant dining hall. ‘You’ll have to search it out,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember.’
She stood up without a word and made to leave, but paused when he spoke.
‘Josephine,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you’d take a look at my hip. It’s got me worried some, the way it’s scarring over.’
‘Why don’t you get one of them to look at it. They’re certainly down there enough,’ she said, and stomped out the saloon doors and into the street.
The last sweep of town turned up more canned goods, rancid sacks of flour, a bar of soap, among other things. It all made its way to the Independent. The horses also. They wandered among the poker tables and sniffed at the baccarat stand, and finally accepted their new environment by dipping their snouts in the water tubs. Balum emptied one of the few bags of meal that wasn’t rotten onto a faro table and tossed the bag aside. He allowed the horses to fight over it, and left through the front door.
Three storefronts further down the street he stepped onto a crudely built wooden step leading into the munitions shop and pushed open the door. It gave freely on its hinges. What lay inside was mostly darkness. Dust and emptiness. Folks had left precious little in the way of weapons when they’d taken off, but Balum searched anyway, starting in the corner closest him and working his way around the shop’s interior. In a busted cabinet he found two old Hawken rifles that folks must have figured were more trouble than they were worth. He snatched them up. He discovered an ammunition box containing shot of varying caliber, as well as a sack of .44 balls, and he picked all of this up along with the rifles and was about to set out when his eye caught a three-foot wide pine box sitting beneath a shelf. He set the rifles and the sack of shot in the doorway and wedged his boot toe beneath the lid and flung the box open. He bent down. Inside were bundles of blasting dynamite tied up in twine.
He picked out a bundle and stepped outside, down the single wooden step, around to the back of the shop. He walked through the few cabins until well outside of town, then he unknotted the twine and pulled away a stick of dynamite and pinched the wick between his thumb and forefinger and pulled it straight. Some digging around turned up a match. He lit it against his bootheel and touched the flame to the wick. It took. He let it flare a few seconds up the wick, then drew his arm back and whipped it overhead and sent the stick sailing into the desert.
It landed and rolled and stopped. He squatted and watched from his bootheels. Nothing happened. He dug out another match and lit another wick and heaved the stick out toward the other, but several minutes later it was clear they had both expired. He took another look at the remaining sticks. The wicks had fra
yed away from the blasting caps. He picked up what was left and walked out anyway to where the other two had burned down, then placed the remaining sticks side-by-side and lit each wick and flung the match aside and turned and trotted a good ways off with a hand pinched at his hip.
Nothing.
He left it all where it was. Before returning to the Independent he re-entered the munitions shop and picked up the two Hawken rifles and the ammunition and counted himself lucky.
That night he walked the main drag. He stopped at the jail and looked at the cell where he’d once been locked away. He entered Charlise’s place and leaned over the reception counter and for a long time he remained in that position as if he were listening for something he would never hear again.
Out in the street he walked under the growing moon, and when he reached the spot where Lance Cain’s body had fallen he stopped and squatted on his boot heels and put a wad of tobacco in his cheek. He thought about that gunfight. About Henry and Deborah DeLace. How they’d swung by their necks from the gallows.
He spat in the spot where Cain’s blood had once pooled, then stood and returned to the Independent.
The corner rooms offered the best view of town, and from one of these he took first watch. He slid the window pane up and propped the Winchester over the ledge and spat tobacco into a soundless night. Sometime well after midnight he woke Chloe and left her with the Winchester, then went to the room where he’d thrown his saddlebags and stripped down and flopped onto the mattress.
He closed his eyes. A few minutes later he opened them. He turned over, stared in the darkness. Then he got out of bed and opened the door and walked bare-naked two doors down to the room Kiki had chosen. His cock was swollen and standing straight up before him like a divining rod honing in on water. He turned the handle and shut the door behind him and there he spent himself in Kiki’s naked flesh until he was empty and exhausted and devoid of fear or worry.
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