Double Mountain Crossing (9 page)

“
You going
to stay? I know you could use the extra.” He put the line in, using
her own
lie against her.

“I thought that was the idea,” she replied, looking up at his rugged frame as he stood over her, swaying slightly.

“Good. I'd like that. Stand up here.”

She rose demurely, still playing the part of the destitute innocent girl, only doing this because she needed the money to go west. Eyes downcast, she stood stock still before him, feeling the wind of his breath grow ragged from her nearness. Her hands fluttered nervously.

You wily bitch, he thought, hanging it out, playing your part until your partner busts my head with a Colt. Well, we'll see about that.

“You'll have to help me with my dress,” she said, glancing up at his motionless face before she turned to present her back. He loosened the row of buttons and the dress slipped from her smooth shoulders. Deftly, she stepped from the cascade of material before it crumpled on the bare boards at her feet. Dressed only in her corset, bloomers and shoes, she crossed to the hanging space and hung the satin dress carefully.

“My stays,” she said simply when she came back to the bed. Morgan sat down to tug off his boots then stood up again, now only in his stocking feet. Looking down at the back of her elaborate hair, he smiled as he pulled her stays loose. As her corset fell forward he slipped his hands beneath her armpits and round to weigh the warmth of her full breasts in the palm of his hands.
Soft, creamy, and very desirable.

“Let me turn up the lamp so's I can see you real good,” he said, releasing his hold and stepping round her to the bedside table. Without staring directly into the lamplight he purposely turned the wick the wrong way and the lamp went out.

“Damn it,” he growled, “I turned it the wrong way. I wanted to look at you.” He stepped lightly round her, slurring as he grabbed the lone chair. “Got some matches over here. I'll light it as soon as I find 'em.” As he lied, he jammed the chair under the door handle and turned the key in the lock for good measure.

“It doesn't matter,” she purred, the bed creaking as she sat down.

“Okay. I'm coming back.
Can't see a doggone thing.
If I trip over you, just holler out, honey.” Light and surefooted he reached the corner and grabbed the loaded shotgun. He headed back for the bed, his night vision showing the woman to be
lying
full length. He circled to the vacant side of the bed and slid the scattergun onto the floor, close at hand. If the sharp eyed gambler poked his head through the window when he found the door blocked, then he would get himself a load of buckshot in his weasly face.

“Hot damn, here I am,” he laughed, nudging the iron frame as though he had banged into it.

“Come here, lover man,” she crooned softly.

“Just get my pants off and I'll be right with you.” The bed shook as he freed himself from his clinging clothes, then he stretched out full length beside her. She had probably not expected it to get this far, he reckoned, laying a hand on warm breast before he traced a line down the centre of her ribcage to the top of her bloomers. She still had them on, delaying tactics to the end. He sighed. Well, there'd be no cavalry tonight. Not unless the sharp eyed
pistolero
had the strength of a lumberjack and could break into the hotel room with his bare hands. He might shoot the lock out but there would still be the chair to contend with. Anyhow, blowing out the lock would wake up the whole hotel and that would be the last thing the gambler would want.

The aroma of her raven hair sweet in his nostrils.
He savoured the gentle scent of her, smiling to think she was merely a taster for all the good living yet to come.

***

Anne Marie was listening to the night.

Shuck should bust in any moment now. Then it would all be over. The prospector would be able to do nothing. She had seen his shotgun propped in the corner and there didn't appear to be any other guns in the room. He would be easy meat for Shuck. One good swift blow would lay him out for a long while. They'd be able to go through his gear to find the money, then goodbye Redrock. Where the hell was he? Why hadn't he come?
the
prospector was closing in, his need growing as he caressed her.

She found it surprising his hands should be so gentle when they were so work worn and callused. The more she came to know of him, the less she seemed to know. He was not at all like the others. Even Shuck was hard and impatient when he was ready to take her, his grip sometimes so fierce she nearly cried out in pain, but she always held her silence. Afterwards, she worried because she had enjoyed it like that, with the pain, like animals, but this man, Morgan, he was so gentle, so patient…

…When it was over, she snuggled closer to Morgan as he slept, strength drained. Shuck hadn't turned up. All that she'd heard, or thought she'd heard, was the door handle turning, but she wasn't even sure of that, the amount of noise the bed had been making.

But by then she hadn't wanted Shuck to come in anyway. It had been a totally new experience for her. No man had ever made her feel like that, not even Shuck who she thought she loved.
No, never like that.
After the urgency of every man she had been with, Morgan had taken his time. She had fought it at first, but it had become so enveloping that she had allowed herself to give way and it had ruled her very being. The feeling had climbed and climbed as Morgan worked at her, coaxing it to expand until her world exploded, spasms wracking her body, jerking her like a puppet, back and forth over the thin threshold between agony and ecstasy. It was so great, so tumultuous that she could have sworn the earth moved. As she rode the crest of delight, Morgan had exploded too, moans escaping his lips as his body tensed, grinding hard against her.

It had been exhausting, but she had not slept, watching the moonlight across Morgan's form, still beside her. It was a good feeling, all warm inside.

As she lay, the tempo of his breathing altered and he turned over on his back, moaning softly in his sleep. She could see his lips clearly in the moonlight, moving soundlessly. His eyelids fluttered and he found his voice. It split the night, loud and clear, making her jump away from his trembling body. The intensity and hatred in his voice both shocked and frightened her. His hands began scrabbling uselessly under the bedclothes and his shoulders heaved as he shouted.

“Come to Double Mountains Kiowa, and I'll kill you. I'll kill you, I swear! Damn shotgun! Don't jam up on me!” As the words ended his eyes opened frantically and he lay shivering, a cold sheen of
sweat coating
his forehead. Anne Marie pretended to wake and placed a small hand on his shaking shoulder.

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing.
Just a dream.”

“Bad one?”

“Bad as you can get.”

“Has it gone now?”

He moved under the covers. “Yes.”

“Have you had it before?”

“Once.
I killed an Indian up in the mountains. Don't know why it should bother me, I've killed plenty of them afore, but this one keeps coming back. When I shoot him he won't die, and then the gun jams.”

“It's only a dream,” she said soothingly.

“Yes,” he sighed.

“Come here.” She drew his head down to the warmth of her breasts. He came willingly, feeling her soft skin against his weathered cheek. She held him as a mother holds her child, rocking him gently. After a while the trembling ceased and he was quiet for a few moments, then she felt him growing hard against her.

He raised his head from her warm embrace and his lips sought hers, eager and demanding. As their mouths crushed together, only one thought rushed into her mind.

Oh God, not again. That feeling inside of her began to grow, and spread. It was too good to be true.

Oh God, not again, I can't stand it…

***

Thunderhawk sat his pony at the canyon rim, facing west, searching fruitlessly for the invisible mountains that stood beyond the horizon many miles away where his brother had fallen to the gun of the white man. Heart heavy with grief, he was scarcely aware the wind had picked up, or that the slate grey sky hung low over him, heavy with snow. It was as if his loss had upset his oneness with the world and his eyes were blind. His thoughts ranged over the days of his youth when he and his brother had hunted together, innocent of the future. He wondered if he would have savored those carefree days a little more sweetly if he had known what the years ahead would yield; the endless struggle to survive and hold their land from the greedy grasp of the white man. Satank had been right when he said the white men were like the coyote. No matter how many of them you killed there were always more.

Thunderhawk's eyes were iron hard as he sat his vigil, his war shield resting on his thigh, his war lance pointed defiantly at the sky. The three white man scalps on it would soon have another for company. The rising wind tore at his braids and he came back to the present, aware of the pony's mane, whipped so that it stood straight out from the animal's bent neck. He wondered how long he had been lost in his memories for the black was restless, his rump moving as he shifted his weight from hoof to hoof. The war chief's mouth widened for the first time since his brother's death. The pony knew. He would soon be following the path he had been trained for. The rangy black was no hunting pony; he was a warhorse.

A dampness
touched the Kiowa's cheek, then his eyelash, the first snowflakes. Thunderhawk looked to the dimming sky as it released its gift to the earth. One after another the flakes fell until the air was a flurry of swirling snow, drawing the curtain even tighter between him and the invisible mountains. He shivered involuntarily beneath his buckskins, a cold hand pressing in the centre of his straight back and a chill settling across his shoulders. He was conscious that his face felt curiously dry in spite of the dabbing flakes. He could discern each line etched into his cheeks by the summer sun, hard cracks now as the wind tasted the planes of his face, laying a shroud like a thin sheet of ice all the way down from his hairline to the neck of his hunting shirt. His scalp prickled, his hands beginning to ache as the cold gnawed subtly into the marrow of his bones.

In front of him the buffalo grass bent in abeyance to the wind, the settling snowflakes giving the appearance that the grass was flecked with jouncing cotton balls. He seemed impossibly alone at the crest, all the directions of the universe cut off by the maelstrom of scurrying snow he squinted into the wind that beat against his face. There was a blizzard coming, and without shelter a
Texas
blizzard could be the most harrowing experience a man could face, and there were many that had not lived to tell the tale of its cruel embrace.

Even with the knowledge, still he sat the restless pony. He had shelter in the canyon behind him, a warm tipi lined with curly buffalo robes and a fire, but he did not allow that sanctuary to encroach on his sense of purpose. His reason for staying was obstinacy, a penance both for his slain brother and himself. Here, it was he, war chief Thunderhawk, a mere man alone against the elements.

He would not run, and neither would he run from the white man.

The snow was settling on the pony, the first dabs of damp quickly covered by a thick coat as he watched, and he knew too that the snow was covering his own head and shoulders. His hair felt icy and his feet were beginning to freeze in the stirrups. Jaw set, angry, he waited until he was shivering convulsively, almost blinded by the snow that was driving hard into his numbed face.

It was madness to die here.

He nudged the black gently with his heels. It was enough. The pony wheeled, anxious to reach the canyon bottom where he could share the warmth of his comrades, sheltering under the windbreak of the grove of mulberry trees and paw through the snow to rich grass underneath. On his back, his master the Kiowa war chief gave him his head, putting his trust in the surefooted pony. Even before man and horse dipped beneath the false horizon of the canyon rim their tracks were obliterated by the falling snow.

It was as if the Kiowa had never roamed that wild land.

“There was no money, I swear it!”

Shuck Alison slapped her face again, her cheek so raw now that the bruised skin displayed the imprints of his fingers. “Don't lie to me you bitch. I saw that gold ore plain as daylight. He must have it somewhere.”

She cowered against the wall, fearful of the anger in his dark eyes. Her makeup was
tear
streaked, giving her the appearance of a circus clown. “It wasn't there, honest to God. When he paid me he pulled the money off a small roll. Maybe $200, that's all.”

Alison considered her face. She'd always told him the truth after a couple of hard slaps, but this time he'd had to hit her plenty and the story still remained the same. “Why'd you let him jam a chair against the door?” he spat, changing to another tack. Although she was a whore by trade he still resented the fact she went to bed with other men, even if it was her money put food on the table in the bad times. This time it had been necessary.