Balum's Harem

by Orrin Russell

  27

  In the morning he ripped two planks from a rotting cabin door and drove them into the ground three hundred yards outside town, then marked black X’s over them with stove ash and walked back up the stairs to the corner room of the Independent.

  ‘What are those for?’ said Kiki. She knelt by the window ledge with the barrel of the Sharps winking in the morning sun.

  ‘Dial in your aim.’

  ‘You doubt me?’

  Balum took a knee beside her and lifted the Winchester from where it leaned against the wall. He laid the barrel on the ledge and bent his head against the stock and looked down the black barrel and out onto the desert. ‘I don’t doubt you,’ he said. ‘But it’s a fool who doesn’t prepare himself when the opportunity comes along.’

  The gun barked suddenly and the barrel lurched in the window. Three hundred yards out, a piece of wood splintered off the tip of a plank and soared straight up in a tight spin. When it hit the ground, Balum turned to Kiki.

  ‘I missed that mark by eight inches. If I aim for a man’s heart and miss by that much, all I’ll do his wing him.’ He levered another round into the chamber. He steadied the barrel over the ledge again, set his finger on the trigger. The gun boomed and the plank jerked in the distance.

  ‘There we go,’ he said. ‘Closer. Let’s see what that Sharps can do.’

  Kiki’s movements ticked out in near re-enactment of Balum’s. Stock to the shoulder, barrel on the ledge, eye narrowed, the finger squeezing gently, and then the massive buffalo gun cracked and the plank on the right exploded in a burst of screaming shards.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Balum.

  Chloe burst through the door behind them. She’d run up the stairs and her breath came hard, and Balum held up a hand to calm her. ‘We’re just sighting in the guns is all,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing out there.’

  She put a hand over her eyes and looked out to where the two planks stood alone on the barren plain. ‘There’s nothing out there at all,’ she said. ‘Are you sure about this?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘This town? How do you know they’ll come here?’

  ‘Because there’s nowhere else.’

  She sat on the edge of the bed and leaned back on her hands. ‘What are we to do in the meantime?’

  He propped the Winchester back against the wall. ‘Actually, there’s something you could do. I’m wondering how this wound is healing. Feels funny. The scarring looks strange.’ He pressed his fingers to his hip.

  ‘What does Josephine say?’

  ‘She doesn’t say anything. I don’t know what’s wrong with that woman. Bent out of shape about something, I don’t know.’

  Chloe and Kiki shared a look. Kiki smiled, then turned away and covered her mouth but the laugh escaped anyway.

  ‘That’s funny?’ said Balum. He looked from her to Chloe, but Chloe was smirking as well. ‘You two know something I don’t?’ he said.

  ‘Balum,’ said Kiki. ‘We figured you for a man who could read a woman.’

  ‘Ain’t no man alive can read a woman.’

  ‘Apparently not,’ said Chloe.

  ‘Well then? Out with it.’

  ‘Don’t you realize what that poor girl wants?’

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘She’s so hungry for a man she can hardly walk straight.’

  Balum looked from Chloe to Kiki and back again. He wiped a knuckle over his nose. ‘You’re out of your minds,’ he said. ‘Both of you. That’s the most prudish woman I’ve met in my whole damned life, and I’ve met some real cases.’

  They laughed, both of them.

  ‘You’re saying she…’ he stopped, shook his head. He stood up and plucked the Winchester off the wall and gave it to Chloe. ‘See if you can hit that mark out there,’ he said. ‘Sight in those two Hawken rifles while you’re at it. I’m gonna rustle up something to eat.’

  When he reached the door, Chloe called after him. ‘She was in the tub taking a bath, last I saw her.’

  Balum almost turned, but didn’t. He made a motion behind him like swatting a fly from the air, and left the two girls in the window.

  At the bottom of the stairs he stopped and rested his hands on his hips and swallowed. Those two girls were having a laugh was all. The idea that Josephine…

  The memory of her standing naked in the stream came back. He thought about that. Why had she chosen to bathe such a short walk from where she knew he was sleeping? Why had she not dunked herself under water? He shrugged his shoulders but then he remembered lying beneath the oxcart with her. How she’d bumped him. An accident was all that was. An accident. He thought back to how she kept bringing up the fact that he’d seen her like that, again and again, constantly reminding him. I’m going to go behind that rock right there… would you like to watch?

  ‘No,’ he said out loud. ‘No way.’

  Then his mind went to what he’d kept himself from remembering. Laid out on the examination table. Naked beneath the sheet. Josephine’s touch…

  A long slow breath came out of his lungs. He looked back up the stairs the way he’d come. He felt his throat tighten, his blood pump.

  ‘I’ll be goddamned,’ he muttered.

  He looked beyond the bar to where the kitchen door stood shut. Then he turned the other way and walked past the fourteen horses standing about like otherworldly gamblers among the craps tables, and to the washrooms in back. The one that still had a tub inside was empty. The tub was full, soap suds still lingered, but no Josephine.

  He turned and crossed the gambling hall, and when he hit the stairs he felt a burning in him that pushed him up two at a time and down the hall and to the room she’d chosen for her own.

  She’d left it unlocked. He swung it open and shut it closed behind him.

  At the opposite end of the room Josephine froze behind a five-foot tall changing screen on which were painted images of birds and flowers. Only her head and neck were visible above it, the rest of her body a shadowed silhouette against the screen. Her towel was draped over the top.

  ‘Balum!’ she grabbed the towel. ‘How did you get in here?’

  He stood on the hardwood floor and removed his hat and tossed it sailing to the floor. ‘It was unlocked,’ he said.

  ‘I must have forgotten to lock it.’

  ‘I don’t think you did.’

  She gave no response to that. She looked at the hat on the floor, then tilted her head when he unbuckled his gunbelt.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  The gunbelt dropped.

  ‘Balum.’

  He crossed his arms and took hold of his shirt tails.

  ‘I’m completely naked behind here.’

  ‘I’m well aware,’ he said, and peeled his shirt up and over his head in a smooth easy motion.

  Josephine’s jaw dropped. Her eyes raced over his chest, his shoulders, down to his navel. ‘Just what… what are you doing?’

  ‘Stripping these clothes off.’

  ‘Balum!’

  He unbuttoned his trousers.

  ‘Stop that. You best leave here this instant.’

  He put the toe of one boot against the heel of the other and pried them off. First one, then the other.

  ‘Balum, this is totally inappropriate. Just what kind of a lady do you think I am?’

  His socks came off. ‘One that knows what she wants but doesn’t know how to get it.’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  He let his trousers drop. He kicked them off. He was nearly naked, only his underwear left to go.

  ‘You…’ she said, but when he snagged his fingers in the waistline of his drawers and pulled them down, her eyes grew wide and she ran out of commentary.

  He stepped out of them, fully naked. His cock hung thick between his legs. He stood there a moment in the light coming through the window, fifteen feet from the changing screen and Josephine staring open-mouthed like an artist struck dumb by the sight of her first nud
e model. She hardly breathed. When he started across the hardwood, she clutched the towel in a ball against her breasts and leaned slightly over the screen and locked her eyes on his cock.

  He crossed the distance at an easy pace. An arm’s length from the screen he reached a hand out and grabbed the top and flung the whole thing aside in a crash of birds and flowers. Josephine yelped. She half-jumped, balled the towel tighter. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her against him with his other hand at her waist.

  Her fists still clutched the towel. They pressed against his chest. Her chin tilted up. Her lips parted.

  He kissed her. Softly.

  The towel dropped.

  Her skin was warm from the bath, fresh and slightly wet, and when he pulled her against his body, her warmth melted into him.

  Her lips quivered. When he pulled away he saw that her eyes were closed and her mouth still parted. He leaned in again and this time her hands reached around his back and held him, suddenly tight, hurried. Her lips came to life and she pressed them against his own. A moan left her throat.

  He kept one hand around her back and dropped the other to her thigh and picked her clean off the floor — which brought a surprised yelp out of her — and carried her a few feet over to the bed where he laid her down and stretched out beside her.

  ‘Balum,’ was all she could muster. She took his face in her hands and pulled him close for another kiss.

  He ran his fingers down her cheek, along her neck, across her chest. The backs of his hands were dark from the sun, the palms calloused and rough. He cupped her breasts and ran his thumb over a nipple. It was pert, hard, and he pulled away from her kiss and sank down and took it in his mouth while his hand continued down along her ribs and over her stomach, around the curve of her bottom and to the plushness of her thigh that he squeezed in long-awaited passion.

  She moaned, she ran her fingers through his hair. When his own fingers swept up her inner thigh between her legs, she gasped and clamped her legs together, pinning his hand in the hot wet fold and shuddering when he rubbed her clit. She took a breath, took another, then lifted a knee and allowed him in.

  At the feel of his fingers over her slit, his cock stiffened further, throbbing and intense, the head burning hot where it pressed against her hip. She reached out for it and took it in her fingertips and stroked it while he sank one finger inside her. She cried out. She clutched his shaft and pulled his face to hers and let her lips melt into his mouth while he slid a finger deep into her pussy and back out again, the sound of it loud in the room; a sluicing like water being drawn up from a well.

  She could hardly kiss him. Her eyes rolled back and her mouth opened and she took in quick hard breaths. She stopped stroking his cock, only held it tight.

  His rhythm quickened. Each time his finger entered her, his palm would clap against her cunt, softly at first, then louder, until the sluicing and the clapping and the moaning was all the two could hear, the smell of sex thick in their nostrils.

  She opened her eyes suddenly. ‘I want you inside of me,’ she said. ‘Please…’

  He rolled on his hip and mounted her. Oblivious to the pain where the bullet had caught him. His cock rigid above her cunt. She’d not let go of it. He pressed the tip against her wetness, and finally she released her fingers and let him sink the full length of it inside her.

  She grunted and dug her nails into his shoulders. He drew out partly and slid back inside, and her nails bit hard enough to nearly draw blood.

  Balum watched her face while he rocked his hips back and forth over her. Her lips quivered. Her eyes opened but they’d lost their focus. She brought her knees up and let them fall aside, inviting him deeper, pulling him into her. The sound his cock made as he drove in and out of her was no different than the sound his fingers had created. She made no effort to change positions. She only rolled her head to one side and held him by the shoulders while he slammed into her, her breasts heaving with each impact, the clapping like gunshots between them, and when she came it was with a shudder and a long wail that brought him along with her, his shaft like a steel rod exploding inside her, bursting, a heat beyond the desert’s own limits and the two of them soaked in sweat and clutched hot, one against the other.

  28

  The water revived him. Enough to string together a series of complete thoughts, the order of which was to drink until it hurt, make sure the horses were watered, fill the canteens, then empty out the pool. That last part essential.

  The first two were done, Valeria worked on the third. He watched her dunk the canteens under. The shade covered him, but still he felt hot enough to throw up. Too weak to move.

  When she’d filled them she carried them up the grade to where he was lying. She set them together in a pile and knelt beside him and fussed over the gash in his side that refused to close.

  ‘It’s still bleeding,’ she said without her eyes meeting his.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You need a doctor.’

  ‘Hm.’

  They sat in silence. The horses had just drank, but they moved again to the pool and dipped their muzzles in for more.

  ‘Joe…’ she started. She wouldn’t look at him. Her head began to shake. ‘You need…’

  ‘Later,’ he said. ‘We’ll deal with it later.’

  She would have cried if she’d had the strength.

  ‘Right now there’s other things.’

  She met his eyes finally.

  ‘Two more hours,’ he said. ‘The sun’ll be sitting lower. We’ll take one last drink and empty out the pool.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Keep riding.’

  She looked out to where the sun baked the desert. Nothing moved. She wiped the sweat from under her eyes, a gesture no different than wiping a tear away, then said, ‘You lost consciousness back there.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What if it happens again?’

  ‘I’ll stay on.’

  ‘But how will I find Bette’s Creek? What should I look for?’

  He looked at her hands. Her fingers were slender and there was sand caked around the nails.

  ‘We’ll keep on the same line we’ve been riding. The ground is rising, looks like it keeps up for another ten miles or so. We get on that high ground,’ he nodded his head in direction of it, ‘we’ll take a look around. Bette’s Creek is the only man-made thing out here. It’ll stand out. If we don't see it we’ll tack back to the southwest. We can’t be far.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘We can’t be far.’

  She had to help him onto the horse. He could hardly walk. He watched her scoop the last few inches of water from the pool and fling it over the sand, then the two walked their horses over a stretch of rocks and out into nothing.

  They rode through the night. When morning came it lit up not only Big Tom’s dust cloud, but the gang themselves; ten men on spent horses, their remuda carrying their wares, the shapes nothing but blurred specks trudging closer.

  The afternoon heat made them stop. Joe and Valeria, but also Big Tom. The dust settled. Joe slept. Valeria climbed a pear-shaped boulder and put a hand to her eyes and turned in a slow circle and saw nothing but red clay and rock. Several hours later Big Tom’s dust rose again. Valeria shook Joe awake and laid his arm over her back and helped him to the horse and up again over its back where he veered and sagged and finally slumped over the animal’s neck.

  Again into the night. A southwesterly turn. Not a word between them. A few stops to water the horses, then on again.

  Come morning, Big Tom had gained enough ground that Valeria could see the colors of their beards. Joe woke. Even in the state he was in he could see like few men could.

  ‘What are they doing?’ she asked.

  The men were grouped together around a shape on the ground.

  He told her.

  She took another look in disbelief. She shook her head.

  ‘They need to stay alive,’ he said. ‘We’ll do the same if it comes
to that.’

  She looked at the horses and back at Joe.

  ‘Let’s ride,’ he said. ‘We’re close — we must be.’

  They weren’t. They rode all that day and when night came the water was gone and the horses were stumbling and their eyes were rimmed with a layer of crusted sweat.

  Joe made no response to Valeria’s touch, nor to her voice beside him. He’d fallen face forward again, and his arms hung on either side of the animal. She slid the reins from his hands and tugged his horse in line with hers.

  Morning found her on her feet slumped against her horse. One arm flung over the saddle supported her weight, the other hand pressed a canteen to her mouth. She’d forgotten it was empty and she shook it, and when nothing touched her throat but dry desert air, she coughed and fell to her knees and dry-heaved on all fours beside the wasted horse that stared dead-eyed into nothing. She wiped a hand across her mouth and shivered. The apparitions shimmering along their backtrail confused her when she sighted them. She could make out their hats, could count the horses in their remuda. She was no judge of distance, but she didn’t need to be to know that they’d be caught before nightfall. She clawed her way back into the saddle and slammed her heels into its flanks. It stuttered and tripped, and she shouted at it and it lurched ahead in a daze, and through it all Joe remained splayed over his horse with his long hair hanging down over his face and his hands limp and gently bumping against the horse’s ribs.

  Her vision came and went. The red clay turned grey. It flashed in a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors, became red again. Behind her the men were drawing rifles from scabbards. Sunlight off barrels.

  She spun forward again and pleaded with the horse to move faster. It wove a crooked path through an anticline. Up an embankment. She searched out the terrain ahead for someplace to make a stand. Somewhere they could put their backs against a wall, where they could make a fight of it, but all there was were rocks and clay and two rotten wooden planks sticking up from the ground with their ends splintered away by rifle shot.

  She blinked sweat out of her eye and looked again. Two planks. A mere three-hundred yards beyond them, the windblown ruins of Bette’s Creek.