Slocum and the Diamond City Affair (9781101612118) (8 page)

10

They reached Los Nigra under the cover of night. Rosa found them food at her grandmother's jacal. When everyone else was bedded down in hammocks, she led Slocum to a side room and they undressed. Stolen kisses encouraged their growing needs. His boots were toed off. Skirt strings were untied, revealing a flash of her slender brown legs in the starlight that spilled in through the open window. The cooler night mountain air sought their exposed skin as they snuggled together, deeply involved in the foreplay growing between them. Mouth to mouth, their needs flared like fireworks. Swept up in flames, he sought her most intimate organ and penetrated her with a fiery sword that took her breath away. Her contractions soon swallowed his sword to the depths. Lightning struck his genitals and they cramped, squeezing out lavalike eruptions into her belly.

Their breath gone, their energy depleted, they lay connected as the liquids of their lovemaking oozed out. Like precious gold, drop by drop the fluids escaped. They went to sleep in each other's arms.

Rosa was up before sunrise. Slocum awoke in the darkness, felt around for her, and discovered only the warm spot under the covers. In a few moments, wearing his pants, he found a dark corner in the yard and emptied his bladder. Walking back on bare feet, he grabbed his shirt off the chair and went to find her in the kitchen.

She was busy scrambling eggs and making flour tortillas. Her mixture of pork and peppers sizzled on the black grill.

“Stir my meat,” she said when he came in the room.

He moved over and used a flipper to turn it over with a sizzle. The rich aroma of food filled the air and her coffee perked. “Thanks, we need to get riding.”

“Get the others up,” she said, taking up another large tortilla. Then she started another on the grill.

He agreed and went to wake Davis and O'Riley. In the cool mountain air, he rocked each hammock, and the occupants awoke with moans. The mood of his helpers was strained. Amused, Slocum smiled and went back to get some of the fresh coffee. No sympathy for his men.

“What if the mare isn't up here?” Rosa asked when he came over and squeezed her shoulder.

“We look other places. Someone knows where she is and we'll find her.”

“'Cause you always win?”

He smiled. “Not always, but I really try.”

“At about anything you do.” She elbowed him and laughed like she knew the facts.

“That too.” He began to fill the cups set out on the counter.

Davis came in and took one of the steaming cups with a nod. “By God, you're a lucky man to have her.”

“I am.”

“So you know it.”

O'Riley yawned, entering the room. “Smells good. I can't believe you don't have a husband, Rosa.”

“Maybe she did have one,” Slocum said, amused. “And she poisoned him.”

Davis about broke up at the scowl that she cast at Slocum. The rancher had to turn to hide his snickering amusement.

Slocum stood before her and winked. She dismissed his words with a head shake and gave him two plates full of food. “I'll bring the rest.”

After the meal, they saddled the horses to start for the mountains. Slocum asked Rosa where her cousin and grandmother were.

“They went to see Grandmama's oldest daughter. She may be dying, they fear.”

He nodded and booted the gelding on up the steep grade. By midday they approached Pico's ranch. He had wondered during the entire trip over the mountain whether the man's sassy wife would be there and what she would do. It made no matter; it just made him uncomfortable to have to handle a sorry bitch like her in the first place.

“How are we going to do this?” Davis asked.

“They may shoot at us this time, especially if they have the mare. Rosa, you stay up here.”

She shook her head. “You are going, so am I.”

He shook his head at her decision, but had no way to enforce his wishes. He turned back to O'Riley and Jim. “It comes to them shooting at us, be prepared to duck or shoot back.”

“I don't have a gun,” O'Riley said.

Slocum nodded that he heard him. What use would O'Riley have for one? He didn't know how to use one. Besides, he might shoot one of them by mistake.

“Jim and I will handle the shooting part.”

The man agreed.

At the ranch gate, they rode four abreast toward the house. Those at the ranch headquarters wouldn't discover that half of Slocum's group were unarmed until they were close enough to see them, and then it should be too late to do much.

Tight lipped, Slocum nodded at Rosa and whispered, “Be prepared to get out of the way if hell breaks loose.”

Pico's wife busted out of the log cabin and screeched, “What the hell do you want this time?”

“A horse you're concealing.”

“I don't have your gawdamn horse.”

“Then you have no worries.”

She went to pointing for them to get out, but Slocum never let his horse halt. “O'Riley, you go around and look in her corrals.”

Pale under his freckles, he swallowed hard, then set his horse out to do as he was ordered.

“Is your husband here?” Slocum asked, believing that if Pico were there, he'd have come out to meet them.

“That's none of your damn business either.” Her hands were set defiantly on her hips, and her dark eyes glared like knives ready to cut them down.

O'Riley rode back around and shook his head, still looking unsure of himself.

Slocum said over his shoulder. “Jim, go ride the pasture and look some more. I think she's concealing that mare somewhere.”

“I'll go with him,” Rosa said after riding up close to Slocum.

He agreed and asked their hostess, “When's Ike been up here last?”

She shook her head. “Ike's never been here.”

“That's a lie.”

“Well, he may want to kill you when he hears you have been bothering me.”

“That's nice. Ike is too big a coward to even threaten me.” He shook his head in disgust.

She stamped her foot. “His men aren't.”

“Thanks for the warning.” When he heard the returning hoofbeats, he turned to O'Riley. “They're bringing a horse. Be sure that it's yours.”

His green eyes flew open wide when Jim loped around the house with a lariat encircling the neck of a tall mare. Rosa herded her.

“That's my mare.” O'Riley looked at the bay in shocked disbelief. “That's her.”

Slocum glared at Pico's wife. “They hang horse thieves, lady.”

She glared back at him. “You won't get away with this.”

“Hanging you? Oh, yes, we can.” He had no intention of lynching her, but he should have.

Standing in the saddle, Jim reached over and fashioned a halter on the mare's nose. Rosa nodded in approval.

“Oh, thank God,” O'Riley said and crossed himself.

“Let's go,” Slocum said, wanting to head west in case they had someone on their back trail.

“Where are we going?” O'Riley asked when they started to leave.

Slocum waved away his question. He rode closer to Pico's woman. “Next time, I will hang you.”

Arms folded, she spat at him defiantly.

He considered whipping her with the reata on his saddle. No way she was worth that, so he reined the horse around to take the lead. They rode out and headed westward.

Once they were out of hearing range, Slocum said, “There may be someone following us. We'll go off the west slopes and head for Nogales with the mare.”

Jim agreed, looking around. “I wonder where the hell her husband was today.”

“He don't stay home much,” Slocum teased.

“I wouldn't either.” The rancher shook his head at him.

“How far are we from Nogales?” O'Riley asked.

“We can't go the shortest, easy route. Clanton's men will be ready for us there. So we'll have to go through the Madres. It'll take a lot longer than the shortest route, but it's our best bet to get the horse there without trouble. Five or six hard days. When we get off the far side of the Madres, we'll have some tough desert to cover.”

“Isn't that dangerous?” O'Riley asked.

“We don't have much choice. If Ike figured we were headed up here, he might have sent several pistoleros this way to stop us and recover the mare.”

“I never figured it would be this damn hard to get two horses to the man who purchased them.”

“Your ignorance of the West is why.”

Slocum pushed his horse to the lead. Riding up through the pines, he heard a harpy eagle souring overhead. His screams threatened them for their trespassing in his kingdom.

“He don't like us being here,” Slocum said.

“That's easy to tell.” Rosa laughed.

The high elevation soon began to tell on horses and riders. They rested on a small shelf. Having no food or supplies with them might prove to be the biggest challenge for his team, and having to hunt would slow them down too.

“Jim, if you see a deer, we need to shoot it.”

The rancher agreed, sitting on his butt, hugging his knees. “I'll watch for one.”

“Right,” Slocum said. “We should spook up one today.”

Then Slocum turned to O'Riley. “What are you going to do, O'Riley, when you get this mare to Nogales?”

“Get the hell out of this spiny country and back where I belong.” He had his straw hat off and ran his fingers through his uncombed hair. “I sure don't belong out here.”

Slocum nodded he'd heard him. He'd known O'Riley didn't belong in the West when he'd met him in Diamond City. “You going to go look for your wife?”

“No. That bitch can earn her own living in a whorehouse.”

“Don't her folks have money?”

“Yeah, but when I tell them what she did to me they'll disown her.”

“Blood's thicker than you think. She may have already made up a story about you abandoning her.”

O'Riley shook his shoulders in revulsion. “That bitch may have. She lied to me that she was pregnant, then she had a period on our honeymoon. She's worthless.”

Rosa winked at Slocum and said, “He has had such a bad life out here.”

Slocum rose slowly. “Time to move on. We should reach the pass and be on the western slopes by sundown.”

They mounted with effort and moved out. Hard to be more than wishful that this trying trip would finally be over when they reached Nogales. Slocum knew they had many miles to cover to even get there.

Slocum downed a yearling black-tailed deer, and they cut its throat and slung it over Jim's lap until they found water to dress it. They crossed the pass over the high point and dropped down the other side. The distant scene showed the desert far to the west a hazy view.

In a few hours, they found a good spring and stopped for the night. The deer carcass was hung on some low limbs of a pine and they quickly skinned it, then removed the intestines. The liver set aside for eating, they cleaned out the deer and washed it down with water.

Jim and O'Riley gathered the dry wood for a fire. When Slocum and Rosa had the dressing completed, she started the fire to cook supper as the sun slipped off into the faraway Gulf of California.

They ate hearty since they had no way to keep the rest of the uneaten meat from spoiling after a couple of days. That would be days short of their destination. In the morning they ate lots more of the cooked deer's haunches and rode on.

The trail proved steep and in many places they were forced to dismount and walk their animals past some challenging precipices. Crossing flats of pine forest, their tense muscles relaxed and they laughed, though still with a twang of anxiousness in the sounds.

“Have you been over this route before?” O'Riley asked Slocum at a stop to rest the animals.

“I have been over several trails in these mountains. Not necessarily this particular trail, but this one will lead us to the way down.”

O'Riley nodded that he'd heard him.

They traveled hard all day. In late afternoon, they found water and grass for the horses in an open meadow locked in the mountain vastness. Numb from the long excursion, they ate more cooked meat and sat in silence. With enough venison left for their morning meal, they dropped off to sleep early and woke before sunrise in the chill of the high elevation.

Saddled and ready, they went on after finding a more heavily used trail in midmorning. Slocum felt relieved and knew the way off the Madres from this position.

He looked over the train and nodded. “We're on a good way down.”

The nods of his companions followed.

Midafternoon, the rumble of thunder spread overhead as an afternoon monsoon shower began to grow. Soon icy drops pelted them. They huddled in their saddles, moving on with little problem but lots of discomfort for everyone and the horses.

The clouds broke up near sundown and the sparkling look of water droplets shone on the pine needles like diamonds. Cold to the bone, they shivered and pushed their horses on. They'd be out of the Madres in another day, then they'd face the desert. That would be hot going after shedding the coolness of the heights.

At sundown he told them this would be a dry stopover. The next water was several hours away and in the darkness he didn't want to continue any farther. “Everyone needs to wipe their horse's muzzle with a wet rag, and you can chew on some jerky Jim found in his saddle bags.”

Santa Maria was less then thirty miles away. There they could buy supplies and a pack animal or two. He'd be glad when they reached the small settlement. The risk he'd taken over going west had worked so far. But the desert would nonetheless be a real challenge too.

He enjoyed Rosa's willingness to share her womanhood with him in the bedroll. The last draining moments sent him into deep sleep to arise from in the morning's coolest hours. When everyone was awake and saddled up, they moved on to the next wet spot.