Comanche Gold (11 page)

Tucson kissed her slowly and feelingly as his
right hand kneaded her breast. Catherine responded by snaking her
arms around his neck, returning his kiss and finding his tongue
with hers. In spite of the fire running like molten lava through
his veins, Tucson took his time as his lips explored every inch of
her body. Her skin was milk-white and as smooth as silk; and as the
flames of passion ignited deep within her, her white skin began to
glow and throb like snow banking a fiery volcano.

Tucson lowered himself carefully between her
thighs and gently slid himself inside. Catherine gasped and stared
up at him, her eyes as wide as saucers. He moved excruciatingly
slowly while at the same time kissing her neck, her face and her
lips. Matching his rhythm to hers, Tucson felt her body come alive
with arousal; her hips began to throb faster and more
insistently.

They mounted the fiery peak together.
Catherine’s head was thrown back and her nails raked over the
muscles of Tucson’s back; Tucson gazed deeply into her eyes as he
carefully timed his own explosion to coincide with hers. She
brought her head up and clamped her mouth over his, her moans
breaking against his lips. Her hips writhed against his as she
locked her legs around his waist and pulled him in deeper and
deeper.

Like a volcano they erupted together in a
flaming torrent of ecstasy. Losing control, Catherine tore her
mouth away from his and sank her teeth into his shoulder. Tucson
held her tightly, once again moving slowly and rhythmically to help
her wring every last bit of pleasure from her climax.

Finally, Catherine’s head fell back onto the
blanket as her body relaxed and her eyes became clear again. Her
hands were gentle as she reached up and pulled Tucson down and
kissed him, long and deeply. When he pulled away, she smiled up at
him affectionately.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything quite
like that before,” she murmured.

* * * *

Later, after two more bouts of love-making,
Tucson and Catherine lay on the blanket, watching the sun as it
descended toward the crest of the arroyo. She lay with her head
resting on his shoulder and her arm thrown across his stomach.
Totally satisfied, Tucson lay with one hand beneath his head while
the fingers of his other hand ran idly through Catherine’s hair. He
listened to the stream as it splashed over the rocks, the buzzing
of bees as they searched for nectar in a bunch of wildflowers
blossoming nearby, and the steady munching of the two horses as
they grazed on the sweet grass beneath the trees. He couldn’t
remember a time when he had felt so peaceful and relaxed, and – he
had to admit – there was a part of him that wished the moment could
stretch on forever.

“What are thinking about?” Catherine asked,
her fingers caressing his stomach.

“About how beautiful you are,” Tucson
responded lazily.

She propped herself up on an elbow and gazed
down at him. “I already mentioned that you’re different from anyone
I’ve ever met before. And you’re certainly different from any
gunman I’ve ever seen or heard of.”

“You mean you don’t classify me with the
likes of Wolf Cabot?” he asked playfully.

“My god...!” she shuddered. “Wolf Cabot was
an animal.” Then more seriously, she said, “But that’s what I
mean...you can’t be put in the same category as any other gunman
I’ve seen.” Her hand stopped stroking his stomach. “What’s your
secret?”

“There’s no secret.” Tucson smiled up at her.
“I’m just who I am.”

“But you talk differently,” she pursued. “And
you have strange ideas.”

Tucson glanced away and watched the sunlight
play over the water in the pool, then he turned back. Catherine was
peering earnestly down at him, waiting for an answer.

“I met a man once, when I was still a
teenager,” he said, speaking slowly. “I had been tracking a band of
renegade Apaches down into Mexico, and I was lying on a ridge
looking down into their camp through binoculars when he sneaked up
behind me and stuck a gun in my back.”

“Someone was able to sneak up on the Tucson
Kid?” Catherine gasped, poking his side with her finger. “I would
never have believed such a thing if you hadn’t told me
yourself.”

“Well, don’t let it get around,” Tucson
laughed. “It’s not something I’m proud of. Anyway,” he continued,
“he was something of a wise man—at least the Apaches thought so.
Although he was a white man, they respected him and let him stay
with them. Sometimes, during times of trouble, they'd go to him for
advice.” He stopped talking as he thought back. “He told me that he
had been waiting for me to come to him, and that he had some things
he wanted to teach me.”

“Then he
was
a wise man,” Catherine
interposed.

“He belonged to an ancient warrior
tradition,” Tucson went on. “He told me that his tradition went
back thousands of years—into the misty dawn of time, I think was
how he put it—and that he was the last of the line. It was his
responsibility to find a successor before he died, and he had
chosen me.”

“If the Apaches accepted him,” Catherine
queried, “wasn’t his tradition the same as theirs?”

“It wasn’t identical to the Apache way. For
one thing, the Apaches are matriarchal, but the two traditions were
close enough so that they were more or less compatible. So, once I
swore not to reveal the location of the Apache camp, and promised
not to track them until they crossed the border into the States,
they let me come down and stay with him as often as I liked.
Sometimes, I stayed with him for months at a time.”

“Is that where you got some of your unusual
ideas?” she asked.

“After he initiated me into his tradition,”
Tucson answered, “he taught me a complete system of knowledge. I
didn’t understand much of it at the time,” he confessed. “But he
told me that he had embedded the teachings into the deeper layers
of my mind, and they would stay with me. He assured me that over
the years I would understand the things he’d taught me more and
more.”

“Did you find that to be true?”

Tucson nodded. “Certain things have gotten
clearer to me as I’ve spent time chewing on them.”

“That explains a lot,” Catherine commented,
as she lay back down and rested her head on his shoulder. “You were
very lucky to meet such a man.”

“I know,” Tucson agreed. “He set my feet
firmly on the Warrior’s Way. It’s the path I follow, and the path
I’ll go on following until the end.”

Chapter
Seven

Tucson and Catherine got back to Howling Wolf
just before sundown. While she went inside to help Mirah prepare
supper, Tucson led the two horses to the corral behind the boarding
house. He removed the saddles and bridles then pitched plenty of
hay into the trough so that they, and the two buggy horses
Catherine kept on hand, could feed.

After washing his face and hands, it was time
for supper.

The other boarders were just sitting down at
the table when Tucson entered the dining room. They stopped what
they were doing in mid-movement, their bodies frozen in awkward
positions and their faces distorted from vain attempts to seem
natural.

Only Catherine Murry was genuinely natural
and relaxed. She sat in her usual place at the head of the table,
beaming a warm smile up at him. Tom McMannus dropped into the chair
to her right and stared at Tucson in unabashed wonder.

Of the others, George Bentley recovered
first. “Welcome, my boy!” he cried effusively. “Welcome...” He
waved a hand toward the empty chair. “Come in and sit down.”

Bentley’s melodious voice seemed to release
the other diners from their discomfort, and they sat down along
with Tucson. The men watched Tucson with unconcealed interest,
while the two spinsters, who seemed a bit paler than Tucson
remembered, scrutinized him timidly from the corners of their
eyes.

“Have I missed something?” Tucson asked
politely, glancing around the table. “I seem to be the subject of
quite a bit of interest.”

“What do you expect, my boy?” Bentley spoke
up. “What do you expect? The whole town's talking about your
gunfight last night at the Elkhorn Saloon. It's not every evening
that we have the opportunity to sit down with the man who beat both
Ramon Vasquez and Wolf Cabot to the draw—at the same time! By the
way,” he added, pulling a pencil and a notepad from his jacket
pocket, “I was wondering if you would mind giving me an exclusive
interview. Sort of give me your side of the story.”

“Hell's Fire!” McMannus exploded, unable to
contain himself any longer. “I can't believe I wasn't there to
watch your back. And to think...” He slammed his palm angrily down
on the table, “I almost stopped by the Elkhorn last night for a
drink.”

“You must be very brave,” murmured one of the
women, then she blushed furiously at having spoken.

“What's it like, facing up to a situation
like that?” asked one of the men. He was bald, soft and white, and
had the air of a shopkeeper.

“Please!” Catherine's voice halted the
questions. “Maybe Tucson doesn't want to talk about it right now.
We should eat our supper and leave him in peace.”

Tucson, undisturbed by the questions, was
helping himself to the platter of pot roast. He glanced around the
table and smiled good-naturedly. “It's alright. Interest in that
sort of thing is natural.”

He looked across at the newspaperman. “Sorry,
Bentley, but I don't give interviews. There were plenty of
witnesses, though, and they can give you all the information you
need.”

To McMannus, he said, “It's a good thing you
didn't
stop by the saloon last night, Tom. You might've
gotten yourself hurt.”

“Awe, Tucson...!” McMannus got out; but
Tucson had already turned his attention to the spinster.

“I'm not sure 'brave' is the right word to
use, ma'am,” he said pleasantly. “When a gunfight goes down, you
just do what you have to do, and hope like hell it works.”

The poor woman was almost overwhelmed that
Tucson had spoken to her directly. Blushing again, she began
stabbing at her food with her fork.

Then Tucson glanced at the shopkeeper.

“As far as what it's like to face that kind
of a situation...” He paused as he thought about it. “I'd say it's
just plain tough. Just before the action starts you don't know if
you're going to come out of it alive or not. And that's not a very
pleasant feeling. But once you're in it, all of that falls away.”
Tucson’s voice began to throb with excitement, and the others
listened to him with rapt attention. “Your mind clears,” he went
on, gesturing with his hands. “All your senses tune up a notch, a
feeling of exaltation takes over, and it feels sort of like a
dance. And when you're
on
you can sense what your opponent
is going to do almost before he does it. If you get wounded,” he
concluded, “most of the time you don't notice it until it's all
over - unless you're dead, of course.”

The others at the table maintained a
thoughtful silence after he had finished. Bentley was scribbling
furiously in his notepad with his pencil. Tom McMannus sat
disconsolately holding his head in his hands, staring at his plate
as if he were going to cry. Catherine watched Tucson, her hazel
eyes glowing affectionately and a warm smile playing about her
lips.

Tucson returned her look. What they had
shared that afternoon was a pleasant undercurrent between them.

Just then Mirah burst into the room carrying
a plate full of biscuits. When she spotted Tucson, she stopped and
stared then flashed a broad smile at him. Her brown eyes held more
than a hint of suggestiveness.

“Well, look who's come back,” she exclaimed,
placing the biscuits in the middle of the table. “How ya’ll been,
Mistah Fightin’ Man?”

“Just fine, Mirah,” Tucson answered
uncomfortably, wishing she'd take some of the heat out of her eyes.
“How are you?”

“Oh, I'm fine, too.” As she moved back toward
the kitchen she swung her hips a little more than necessary.

Tucson glanced covertly down the table at
Catherine. She was watching the door to the kitchen as it swung
back and forth behind Mirah with a speculative expression on her
face. She looked quickly at Tucson, then dropped her eyes back to
her plate.

Tucson shrugged his shoulders
philosophically. There was nothing he could do now to alter events,
so he might as well let future developments take care of
themselves.

* * * *

Tucson left the table right after supper and
went back out to the corral. The sun had already set, but a pale
afterglow shimmered along the western horizon. He was putting the
saddle back on the stallion when Tom McMannus came outside looking
for him.

The boy’s Stetson was pushed to the back of
his head, revealing curly blonde hair, and he was chewing on a
toothpick. “Where are you headed, Tucson?” he asked, with friendly
curiosity. “Ain't it a little late to be goin' for a ride?”

Without stopping, Tucson pointed with his
chin to the Colt strapped to McMannus’ side. “Have you been working
with that hog-leg the way I told you?”

McMannus did a quick draw and twirled the gun
around on his fore-finger. “I sure have!” he declared proudly. “I
shortened the barrel by an inch and worked over the firing
mechanism. Now it’s better balanced, and the action's smoother'n a
spanked baby's butt.”

“Good job,” Tucson approved, as he slipped
the bit into the stallion's mouth. “Now go on out to your firing
range and get used to the new feel. You've got to know your gun
perfectly—it's your best friend. Your right hand should feel
uncomfortable unless it's wrapped around the grips.” He stopped and
considered for a moment, came to a decision, then said, “Look Tom,”
his face was serious as he stared at the boy, “I need to confide in
you, and you need to keep what I say confidential. Can you do
that?”