It was monsoon season, and the storms were spilling down off the mountains and filling the washes out here on the prairie. It was good-tasting water. The best Cuno had ever tasted. Lightning crackled and flashed like witches' fingers poking the lime-green tableland. Thunder sounded like gods tossing boulders.
He and the de Cava gang rode hard for three days after the prison break. Cuno wasn't sure where in the hell they were going; he was beginning to wonder if Mateo even knew. They headed west toward the mountains, and just as they began make the climb into them, heading toward the passes, they swung hard east again and holed up in another isolated badlands.
They headed out before sunrise the next morning, angling northeast.
Cuno didn't much care, as long as he didn't have to push Renegade too hard and ruin him. He didn't care where they were going, because he had nowhere to go now that he was a fugitive. A desperado.
In fact, riding was as good a thing for him to do now as anything. The gang, unheeled as a pack of rabid wolves, provided safety in its numbers. The air and the sun were balms to his battered body, and now, after three days, the swelling around his nose and eyes was going down.
As they rode, Cuno often glanced at Camilla riding beside him. She glanced back at him, her hair flying out behind her shoulders, her blouse billowing forward then pulling back taut against her breasts as she rode.
It was exhilarating, riding hard and looking at her and then stealing off with her alone at night and enjoying the delights of her supple, dusky body. He liked how, just as he brought her to fulfillment, she snarled like a bobcat and sunk her teeth into his shoulder. And she'd said only Mateo was part Yaqui! He'd lain with her before in the Rawhides, but she'd seemed so much quieter then. Demure.
Now there was a wild carnality, a hunger about her that thrilled him. Maybe because it matched his own savagery, which he'd felt growing in him gradually behind the prison walls, then burgeoning suddenly as soon as he rode through those prison gates and knew that he could never go back to the old life he'd had before.
Not after killing that town marshal.
Not that he'd been so damn civilized before. In fact, he'd killed many men. But at least he'd tried to settle down and live the life of a good citizen, until he and Sheriff Dusty Mason had made the deal that had likely saved the lives of Michelle Trent and the Lassiter kids, not to mention Camilla herself. A tough deal, because Cuno hadn't killed those marshals in cold blood. And unlike what Mason had thought, he and his old partner, Serenity Parker, hadn't been running rifles to the Utes.
They had been running rifles, all right. Against their wishes, they'd hauled several crates of Winchesters to the Trent ranch, though Cuno had thought they'd just been hauling supplies, not finding out till they reached the ranch that Trent had double-crossed him and had arranged for rifles and gunpowder to be hidden in their freight wagons, to be used by Trent's ranch hands against the marauding Utes themselves.
That was all past now. All water under a high bridge.
Now he had a gang and a woman and his old horse and the .45 that Charlie Dodge had given him back in Nebraska. He had the damp breeze spiced with sage and cedar in his face.
And he had a good, albeit wild, Mexican filly who reminded him, bittersweetly, of his dead wife, July. And maybe best of all was not knowing or caring where in the hell Mateo de Cava was leading him, because he had no-where to go and he'd come from nowhere . . .
In the late afternoon, the falling sun behind him, Cuno watched a settlement of sorts rise from a broad, shallow bowl in the prairie, surrounded by low bluffs. Shiny silver rails stretched toward the village from the east and ended a little ways south, where graders and drays were parked around large gravel mounds, and fresh rails were stacked, ready to be laid in the bed that twenty or so men were building with picks, shovels, grading pies, and horse-drawn winches.
Coffee fires burned, sending up smoke. Mule teams stood tied to picket lines. There was the hum of the men's raucous working conversation, and the clinks of hammered rail spikes.
North of where the new rails were being laid, the village sproutedâa shabby oasis consisting of both simple and elaborate frame buildings surrounded by tents of all shapes and sizes. One faint wagon trail led there, and Cuno and Camilla followed the rest of the gang onto the trail and into the railroad supply camp.
Judging by its two sturdy saloons, so new that the resin from their whipsawed planks made the whole area smell like a pine forest, and a gaudy, two-story building on the second-story balcony of which several young women milled like willowy birds of plumage, the camp had ambitions toward becoming a town.
Dogs ran out from alley mouths to bark at the large group of dusty newcomers astraddle their sweat-frothy mounts. Chickens scattered. A white horse hitched to a small, black buggy reared and whinnied.
Mateo's men whooped and hollered as they thundered on up to the brothel, which was not yet identified by a sign but which could only be a whorehouse, with all the painted girls dancing and smoking and drinking on the second-floor balcony. The girls answered the men's mating calls in kind, leaning over the wrought-iron rails, shaking out their hair, and letting their wraps and gowns billow out from their bosoms.
“Good lord,” shouted Brouschard. “I do believe we done died and flew to heaven, amigo!”
Mateo covered his chest with his black sombrero as he halted his big, black steed and regarded the fluttering birds on the balcony with a caballero-like grin. He didn't appear at all self-conscious of the ugly scalping scars.
“Good afternoon, lovely ladies,” the gang leader said in his heavily accented Spanish, giving a courtly bow, then raking the women staring down at him with his eager gaze. “Are you open for business or just getting some air?”
Several of the girls looked at each other, vaguely puzzled. A couple were speaking in some foreign tongue Cuno didn't recognizeâFrench? German?âand then a big blonde stepped forward and lowered both straps of her sheer, purple gown, and let her giant breasts adorned with double strings of fake pearls spill forth.
That was answer enough for the outlaws. Mateo and the other gang members gave another volley of jubilant yowls, leapt out of their saddles, dashed across the broad front, wraparound gallery, and bulled through the brothel's open double doors.
Suddenly, Cuno and Camilla were surrounded by over a dozen riderless horses. Inside the brothel, a din rose, echoing, as the men went looking for the women, some of whom remained on the balcony. Others disappeared, heading for their cribs.
A little redhead remained, clad in a pink corset and gauzy black wrap. Her eyes were rimmed in seductive black that nicely complimented the burnished red of her hair. She rested an arm on the rail and arched a brow as she regarded Cuno still sitting Renegade in the middle of the broad street. He let his gaze stray to the twin mounds of creamy, freckled flesh pushing up from the top of her corset, and felt a surge of heat in his loins.
Camilla put her horse up hard against his, leaned toward him, and wrapped a slender, strong arm around his neck. She mashed her mouth against his, held the kiss for a good five seconds, then pulled away and turned to the redhead, who was about her age. Curling her upper lip, she said, “Why would he buy a cow when he gets all the milk he wants for free?”
Lines cut into the whore's forehead.
Camilla hooked a thumb at a hotel up the chaotically laid-out street and winked at Cuno. “Let's go pound the mattress sack,
mi amore
.”
“I got a better idea.”
As they'd ridden in, Cuno had seen the creek angling along the northern outskirts of the town. Now he turned to Renegade, pinched his hat brim to the incredulous whore, and booted the skewbald paint through a broad gap between a hardware tent and a bathhouse and down a slight grade beyond.
Ahead lay the creek in its shallow ravine sheathed in tall, brown grass, alders, and the ubiquitous cottonwood. Clear water shimmered in the late light, chuckled over rocks. Cuno put Renegade up to a deep pool that back-eddied into a break caused when one of the large cottonwoods had blown down, wrenching its roots out of the earth. Only the roots remained; the rest of the tree had likely been used in the building of the unnamed encampment.
Cuno's boots hit the ground. He looked over Renegade's back. Camilla's chestnut bay lunged down the grade, hoofs thudding, the girl's rump bouncing against her saddle. Her cheeks, brushed by her flying hair, were flushed.
Cuno held her cool gaze as he quickly unbuckled Renegade's latigo. She lifted her mouth corners, and a darker color rose in her cheeks as she swung down from her saddle and went to work unrigging her own horse. She had her back to Cuno now, but as she worked she tossed him several luminous glances over her shoulder, coyly tucking her lower lip under her upper front teeth.
Cuno tossed his gear on the ground. As Renegade trotted off, then dropped and rolled, kicking up dust and weeds, Cuno kicked out of his boots and then quickly shucked out of his clothes. Shedding the dead man's duds was like shedding extra layers of heavy, smelly grime, and when he'd tossed his underwear over a sage shrub, he threw his shoulders back and scratched his chest then ran his fingers through his longish, blond, sweat-damp hair.
“Damn, that feels good!”
Camilla turned to him. Her breasts jostled and sloped toward the ground as she leaned forward to slide her pantaloons down her cinnamon-colored legs. Her eyes roved across him, lingering below his belly, where his desire had made itself obvious, and then she turned away to pile her own clothes on her gear. Her rump was round and smooth and the same dark tan as the rest of herâtwo taut mounds of ripe, womanly flesh. Cuno walked to her, placed his hands on her hips as he pressed his chest against her back and nuzzled her neck.
Her buttocks were cool and supple against his thighs.
She drew a sharp breath and wrapped an arm around his neck from behind, turning her head. Squeezing her eyes closed, she kissed him, entangling her tongue with his.
He wrapped his arms around her, cupped her breasts in his hands, felt the soft nipples pebble. Continuing to kiss him, she twisted around to face him, and he lowered his hands down the long, tapering angle of her back to her rump, squeezed her buttocks and felt his heart thud harder. Her rump was heavy and inviting in his callused hands.
He pulled his mouth away from hers. He leaned down, grabbed her around her back and knees, and hoisted her up. She was light, easy in his arms, and she smelled dusty and warm and of horses and sage and of something else that could only be her own special female fragrance and which he'd come to know so well in the past few days and remembered from before, in the Rawhides.
She screamed and wrapped her arms around his neck, laughing and kicking, flattening a tender breast against his chest.
“No!”
He stumbled over to the creek, peeled her hands from his neck, and against her protestations, threw her into the deep, cool, dark pool, then jumped in after her.
“Bastardo!”
she cried, laughing and rubbing water from her eyes.
He grabbed her and held her close and pushed her back against the bank. He looked at her seriously. She returned the gaze. She wrapped her legs around him, pressing her heels hard against the small of his back.
Placing her hands flat against his ears, she closed her hungry mouth over his as he took her. When they finished spasming together, groaning and sighing and clutching, Cuno pulled back away from her but froze when a gun clicked behind him.
Camilla snapped her eyes wide, looking over his shoulder, and gasped.
11
“HOLY SHIT, STEWARTâLOOK at the tits on that little Mex girl!” said one of the two riders sitting at the edge of the bank.
They'd come in so quietly that Cuno hadn't heard the hoof thuds above his and Camilla's love cries and the chuckling of the creek around their naked bodies. He'd whipped around to face the men nowâtwo unshaven hombres in dusters and sweat-stained hats. Both had two pistols on their hips and oiled carbines in their saddle boots. The lather on their horses told they'd been ridden hard.
The man on the right held a pistol on Cuno. He had dark eyes, and the middle of his face bulged out as though pressed by an unseen fist behind his beak-like nose. He squinted one eye now as he centered his sights on Cuno's dripping chest. The other man lounged forward in his saddle, hands on the horn, a smug smile on his face covered in beard stubble the color of iron filings. His eyes were pale blue and seedy.
“This is a private party,” Cuno said, holding Camilla behind him as they both stood belly deep in the creek. “Kindly move along.”
“You ain't the one givin' the orders, feller,” said the man with the cocked and aimed pistol. “Tell your girlfriend to get on up here. We want a better look at her.”
“I told you,” Cuno said, a low whistle starting up in his ears. “It's a private party.” He put some steel in his voiceâmanufactured steel, as he was not only unarmed but without a stitch of clothing. As was his girl, whose fingers pressed into his arms from behind, just above his elbows. “You move on, I'll forget the interruption.”
Both men chuckled.
“You will, will you?” said the man sitting easily in his saddle, atop a rangy sorrel with a bite out of its left ear. “Well, guess what, boy? We don't give a shit if you forget it or not. We want your girl. And if she don't come up here right now, my friend H. D. is gonna blow a hole through your heart. Now, he'd hate to do that. Seein's how you're ridin' with the de Cava gang, you likely have a rather large bounty on your head. But me an' H. D.'s right randy after that long ride, and we're wantin' your girl. We'll be right quick about it, and then you can have her back.”