Longarm and the Cry of the Wolf (9781101619506)
Read Longarm and the Cry of the Wolf (9781101619506) Online
Authors: Tabor Evans
Once Bitten, Twice Shy . . .
Goldie and the wolf hit the ground with a snarl, a thump, and another shrill, beseeching squeal, the wolf chomping into Goldie's upper right shoulder. Quickly, as the two rolled together down the slope and between two fir trees, Longarm shucked his Winchester from his saddle boot, racked a cartridge into the chamber, aimed, and fired.
His bullet ruffled the charcoal fur on the beast's hindquarters just as it prepared to bury its fangs into the outlaw's neck, which was protected by nothing more substantial than a knotted, dirty blue muffler. The wolf yipped with a jerk, glanced angrily back at Longarm, yellow eyes glowing in the morning's dullness, then leaped into the air, twisted around, and dashed off down the slope through the trees, snarling . . .
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LONGARM AND THE CRY OF THE WOLF
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Jove edition / March 2013
Copyright © 2013 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Cover illustration by Milo Sinovcic.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ISBN: 978-0-515-15306-4
eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61950-6
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Tabor Evans offers his apologies to real wolves, who bear little resemblance to the purely fictional wolves in this story.
Â
A
UTUMN
1860
Katarina Barkova lifted her head from working at her desk near the ticking woodstove. She wrinkled the skin above her fine, long, alabaster nose and cast her frosty, blue-eyed gaze toward an open window at the other end of the little log schoolhouse that sat in the woods near the village of Little Bucharest, in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado Territory.
The young schoolteacher had heard something. It had sounded like a dog's growl. Very low. Menacing.
It had seemed to emanate from just beyond the window that Katarina had opened to allow in a little air when she'd inadvertently over-stoked the woodstove. The school day was over, but she'd decided to spend an extra hour at her desk, catching up on her grading before heading back to the village and the house she shared with her parents.
The growl had sounded so menacing, in fact, that Katarina felt a twinge of uneasiness between her slender shoulders.
She set her pencil down near the composition she'd been grading, slid her chair back, wincing at the grate of the legs against the scarred puncheons, and rose. She stared toward the window, frowning, hearing something elseâa soft snorting sound, barely detectable above the slight wind blowing up the canyon along the creek. A ponderosa pine stood just beyond the window, its needles touched with the honey of the late-autumn sunshine.
One of the branches nudged the wall to the left of the open window.
Could that be what she'd heard?
Katarina moved out from behind her deskâa radiant, slender, high-busted blonde of twenty years, in a plain black wool skirt and frilly shirtwaist that drew taut against her full, womanly breastsâand strode to the front of the school along the aisle between the students' simple, wooden desks. A few feet in front of the square, glassless window, she stopped.
It was warm in the schoolâtoo warmâbut she felt gooseflesh rise along her arms and over her breasts that were trussed up behind her whalebone corset, which unfortunately did nothing to detract her young male students' attention from her ripe bosom.
The low growl came again. It caused Katarina's throat to contract and her mouth to dry.
But then she heard the soft thud of human footsteps beyond the window, and a man appeared in the field of her vision. Herman Walenski, who cut firewood for the school, walked along the trees that lined Crazy Bear Creek. The aspens, cottonwoods, and mountain elms were in full autumn blush, each leaf fairly glowing like its own separate lamp in the afternoon's cool sunshine.
The tall, gaunt man in ragged wool trousers and a wool vest under an even more ragged wool coat, turned his head toward Katarina as he continued walking from her left to her right, along the trees and the stream glittering within them. He wore a black wool watch cap, its leather bill speckled with sawdust, as were the shoulders of his brown coat. His eyes were set deep in dark sockets, mantled by a heavy brow. His cheeks were sunken. He was a sullen, brooding man, but now a rare smile spread his thin lips back from crooked, yellow teeth. It was a customarily odd smile, one that did not reach his dark eyes.
“Afternoon to you, Teacher,” he said in his native Romanian.
To which Katarina replied in the same tongue: “Beautiful afternoon, is it not, Mr. Walenski?”
The woodcutter spread his lips wider, gave a cordial nod as he continued walking, holding a long-handled, silver-bladed axe over his right shoulder, and said, “Lovely, indeed.”
“Is there a dog out here?”
Walenski looked around, shrugged, and lifted a gloved hand palm up. “I see no dogs, Miss Katarina.” He pinched his hat brim. “Good afternoon to you, Teacher.”
He disappeared around a bend in the copse of glowing trees, scarlet and yellow leaves dancing in the air behind him. Katarina leaned forward to look out the window in both directions. She stared into the trees near the creek. No sign of the dog. She glanced up at the pine bough scratching the corner of the schoolhouse. It was barely moving now, but that must have been what Katarina had heard.
There was a scraping, groaning sound, and Katarina wheeled, gasping and slapping a hand to her chest with a start. But it was only the back door opening. Anatol Moldova stepped in, smiling shyly, a spray of autumn wildflowers in his large, brown hands, thickened from his work repairing wagons with his father, the mayor of Little Bucharest.
“I am sorry, Katarina!” he said, his blue eyes nearly popping out of his head when he saw how badly he'd startled her.
“Oh, Anatol!” Katarina said, laughing and leaning back against the windowsill. “You did give me a start, but I am very happy to see you!”
Anatol walked toward herâa deliciously handsome young man, two years younger than Katarina, and built strong and square through his shoulders. His face was like a Transylvanian peak scoured and polished by many winds, snows, and blazing suns, his eyes the blue of a springtime lake. His teeth behind his peach-colored lips were hard and white, as strong as the rest of him. His arms were powerful, like the limbs of sturdy oak.
She walked to him, her fears fading like wood smoke on the morning breeze. Just before she reached him, she threw her hands toward him, palms out, halting in mid-stride. She turned to look out the window behind her and out the one to her right, no longer worried about any rabid dog but afraid that one of her students might still be lurking around the school or, worse, that her father might be taking a stroll through the woods to check on her.
Katarina's chastity was her parents' biggest concern, for they knew what a spell she seemed to cast on all the boys, and even the men, of the village. When she married, she must be as pure as the April rains. What would happen if they and the entire village got wind that their young schoolteacher was cavorting with one of her own studentsâone a whole two years younger than she was!
Relieved to see no one about, she stifled a chagrined laugh at her naughtiness and walked back to close the front window behind her. When she'd closed the window on the schoolhouse's north side, she fairly ran through the desks to Anatol and let the handsome young man sweep her up in his arms.
She kissed him deeply, sucking at his tongue, letting him suck hers.
“Katarina, the flowers I brought you!” Anatol intoned when, releasing her, he saw that he'd squeezed them in his big, brown fist, tearing many of the stems and blossoms.
“That's all right, Anatol.” She stood on her tiptoes to lace her hands behind his neck and press her swollen bosom against her lover's broad chest. “I have another flower for you. I believe it's about to blossom most fully!”
“Katarina!” the boy scolded, shocked and delighted. “It's only four o'clock in the afternoon and the sun is still high. Someone might come along!”
“No one will come, Anatol. And if they do, they won't find us.”
In the past, they'd made love in the woods at dusk, when Anatol had been supposed to be out gleaning wood from the forest or hunting for his parents' supper table. At that time, Katarina's family believed her to be working late at schoolâwhat a conscientious and hardworking teacher their beautiful daughter had turned out to be!
Now she took her lover's big, brawny, work-calloused hand in her pale, delicate one. “Come, Anatol.”
“But where, Katarina? I just saw Walenski strolling through the woods with his axe!”
She smiled up at him foxily, squeezing his hand in hers. “I've found a much better, safer, and quieter place in which to suck your cock, Anatol. Come, quickly!” she hissed, and turned and led him to the schoolhouse's back door.
“Katarina, if we're found out, our fathers will whip each of us bloody! We'll be run out of town and allowed never to return!”
At the door, Katarina turned to him, reached up, and placed two fingers against his warm lips. “Then we'll run away together, Anatol. We'll go to Mexico and live on the Sea of Cortez. Remember how I told you all about the Sea of Cortezâthe sands and the salt water? The warm sun will bake right through us. No more long winters trudging through snow as high as our hips!”
“I like it here,” he whispered, placing his hands on her shoulders. “I want to stay right here in the woods with you forever, Katarina. I want to marry you someday.”
“Shh.” Katarina giggled. “Not so serious. We're young. We're meant to have fun before we're tied down and boxed in like our parents.” She turned to the door, opened it slowly, and looked out.
There was nothing behind the schoolhouse except the woodshed and the privy, to which a well-worn path led. The path branched to the left, leading to the shed. Nothing moved except the long, tan grass blowing in the breeze. Katarina remembered the low growl she'd heard, and she turned to Anatol standing behind her, his arms around her waist.
“Anatol, did you see anything just before you arrived at the school? I mean, did you hear a dog prowling around?”
He frowned, shook his head. “I heard nothing, Katarina. Come on, now.” His broad face broke into a lusty smile. “You've got me all worked up, Katarina. Let's go to this love nest you were talking about!”
Katarina laughed huskily as she took his hand and led him out of the school and down the path, taking the left tine to the woodshed. The building was open on three sides and nearly filled with wood that old Herman Walenski had cut, split, and neatly stacked. There was a narrow aisle leading through the wood at the middle of the shed, and along the aisle Katarina led Anatol.
At the rear of the shed was a gap between the shed wall and the wood that was stacked nearly six-and-a-half feet high. Here, Katarina had arranged wool blankets and a thick quilt on top of a thick pile of straw and wood shavings. There was even a straw pillow covered in striped blue ticking.
“For us?” Anatol asked, chuckling as he stared down at the love nest.
“For us.”
“Won't old Walenski see it?”
“Old Walenski has no reason to wander this far back in the shed.” Katarina turned to the big boy hulking over her and pressed her hand against his crotch. “Now, Anatol, pull your pants down and give me that big staff of yours. Do you know that when we were going over the times tables this afternoon, I kept thinking about what I wanted to do with it.”
Anatol snorted. “Katarina, you are going to go to hell for the way you think!”
“Don't tell me you haven't been dreaming of plundering me with it, Anatol,” she said, looking up at him from beneath her thin, blond brows. “Like last time?”
Snickering, Anatol made fast work of unbuttoning his pants and pulling his already-hard member out of the front slit in his longhandle bottoms. It jutted high, bobbing with each beat of his heart, the head swollen and red. Katarina knelt before him, squeezed the rock-hard organ in her slender hands, pumped him gently until he crooned, and then proceeded to lick the underside of it with excruciating slowness.
She tortured young Anatol with her tongue and then her mouth, sucking the head of his cock for a time, nibbling it gently, before sliding it against the back of her throat and down it until she started to gag. When she could feel him rising toward the crest of his desire, and he was panting and groaning and shifting his weight from one foot to the other, she withdrew her mouth from his cock, kissed the swollen tip of it, and looked up at him, licking her lips with desire.
“Are you ready to punish me for being such a bad girl, Anatol?” she teased.
“Katarina, you're going to make me an old man!” he said, dropping to his knees and rolling onto his back, panting as though he'd sprinted a mile uphill.
Katarina stood and began undressing. She did it slowly because she loved the rapt look that always came over Anatol's face when he watched her take her clothes off. When the whalebone corset came off and her breasts sprang free, his lower jaw loosened and he expelled a raspy breath. Her eyes glittered in the sunlight angling over the wood stacked around them.
Naked, Katarina knelt and sat back on her heels. “Your turn,” she told him.
Quickly, Anatol stripped his own clothes off. His body was magnificent. It always took Katarina's breath awayâhis chest so broad and muscular, his belly flat and corded, arms thick and sinewy. His long, thick cock jutted from a nest of curly, honey-blond hair.
Katarina lay back on the blankets atop the straw and spread her legs for him, causing the rose of flesh beneath her belly button to blossom. Anatol dropped to her knees and mounted her. While she reached between his legs for his cock and, gently nibbling his lips, started to direct it toward her snatch, she glanced up over his shoulder to see two red eyes burning down at her from atop the woodpile.
The eyes were set in a crouching wolf's head. A wolf nearly as large as a bear and as black as midnight. Its lips were stretched back from long, curving, white fangs.
Katarina screamed.
Anatol screamed then, as well, and turned to look up over his shoulder at the snarling wolf that, hackles raised, hurled itself toward him.