Slocum and the Long Ride (11 page)

“Good. I will take a siesta, but don't let me sleep over four hours.”

“Why don't you use the hammock out back in the shade? I'll be here and awake.”

Slocum shook his head. “You know I like things resolved. We damn sure don't have this one done, or at least we don't know if we do.”

“I will get you up if I learn one thing.”

“Good.”

Sleep didn't come easy, but he soon fell off into troubled slumber.

“Better wake up,” Gordon said. “The men are back from San Pedro and they don't have good news.”

Trying to clear the sleep away in the light of sundown, Slocum blinked at Ken and the Kid.

“What went on?”

“We found and talked to his concubine, a woman called Leona,” Ken said. “She said that after sunup today, a man came and got him out of her bed, and he went with him,” Ken said.

“Damn. Kid, you did a good job finding out about her. You two found her and I trust you feel she told the truth.”

Ken and the Kid agreed.

“Then we need to find his trail. We came to destroy him. We need to do our damndest to do that or he will rebuild all we've destroyed and hurt more people doing it. Check our supplies. We need to start down there and begin trailing him at dawn.”

His men nodded somberly.

“Charlie, tomorrow we'll need to pick up whatever dim trail he left us.”

He nodded. “We will find him.”

“Now we know he is alive, I agree he can't hide anywhere we can't find him.”

Slocum now felt they'd wasted two days, but if Gomez still breathed, they had a job now to try and get him again.

•   •   •

Mid-morning they were in San Pedro. While the others got food in a local cantina, Slocum flipped a ten-dollar gold piece in the air, gleaming and polished in the sun, around the women busy washing clothes at the end of the village trough.

One of the women bent over and shook her ass at him. “You want me, hombre?”

They laughed. Some of the women went red-faced at her words.

“Gomez was here two nights ago. Where did he go to hide?”

Some women shrugged. Others made faces that said they did not want to be a part of it. One woman swept her hair back and rose up from scrubbing clothes; her dollar-size nipples showed under the thin, wet dress material. “How much would you pay me to tell you where he went?”

“Twenty pesos.”

“For that much I would service you and all your brothers.”

The women laughed.

“My brothers are fine. Where did he go?” Slocum asked her, getting out the second coin.

“Twenty pesos.”

“I have it right here.”

“He went to his ranch.”

“No, it had been totally destroyed.”

“We heard that. But no, he has a ranch in the Madres.”

“How do you know that?”

“He took me there once.”

The washerwomen all looked hard at her.

She handed her wet clothes to a woman beside her and approached Slocum.

Under his breath, he asked an older woman who knelt beside him, “Does she tell the truth?”

“She may. She was very wild as a girl.”

“What is your name?” he asked the approaching woman.

“Silva, what is yours?”

“Slocum. How much to lead us to this place?”

She folded her arms over her chest. “A hundred pesos and a good horse to ride home.”

She was maybe four feet, three inches tall, with slim hips, and she'd put her long hair in a ponytail. Probably mid-twenties, and she spoke out clear and straight-sounding.

“Can you leave right now?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You have a family and a husband?”

“He can watch the kids. My sister will help him, she is a widow. I can go.”

He turned and mounted his horse. Once in the saddle, he bent over, pulled her up, and swung her behind him like a feather. It wasn't her first time to get on a horse like that. Her bare legs looked shapely when she scooted up to him. With no hesitation she threw her hands around him, clamped them on his belly, and buried her boobs in his back.

“I am ready, hombre.”

He reined the pacing horse around and rode out over to the cantina. He stopped his mount and shouted, “Mount up. We're leaving.”

His men filed out, smiled at Silva, unhitched their horses, and mounted.

Slocum turned his horse. “Silva is going to take us to him.”

The men nodded at her, turned their horses, and together they all left the village.

“Tough men ride with you,” Silva said, peering around at them.

Slocum agreed. “They're tough men.”

“Are you going to kill Gomez?”

“If we can find him. Did you have an affair with him at one time?”

“Yes. I was young and foolish. I thought he would shed his wife and put me in the hacienda casa.”

“He didn't do that of course?”

She leaned forward beside him to tell her story, “No, he used me, and when he was through his boy used me. So when I was six months pregnant and big as a bear, they took me out in the desert and told me to go home.”

“Did you go home?”

“Of course not. I had diseases in my womanhood and was too dumb from being on dope they gave me so that I did not scream when they touched me. A good
bruja
took me in, and her medicine cured the diseases I had down there. Then she cured my addiction to the drugs they gave me. But my twins died at birth. I had to get over that myself. But a man twenty years older married me and we have two children. We have no money. He is kind. My sister who is a widow, she will tend my children and her two and him as well.”

“What killed her man?”

“He got sick and died. The doctor said he had a high fever. He had no answer. The
bruja
who saved me could have cured him, but I could not find her. Lucky we all did not get it.”

Slocum agreed. Many diseases that made people sick no one could cure.

•   •   •

They made camp on a small river under some cottonwoods. The men brought Silva wood for a fire. From the pannier supplies, she made bread they cooked on sticks. It was good if you did not burn it, Slocum decided, and he ate several dough balls cooked on the flames. Later, when the beans were well cooked, she fed them. Her coffee was strong, but it cleared Slocum's mind after all his days in the saddle.

She sat beside him on a log, her dress pulled up so her knees were exposed. In the firelight she drew things with a stick in the dirt between her bare feet. Slocum studied her work. The first thing she drew was a mare squatted down. Very real. Then she drew a stallion mounted on her and his dick in her. He could imagine them on canvas—perhaps in charcoal or oils; she could probably sell the picture in certain markets.

“What do you do with your art?”

“Make impressions for people.”

“Impressions of what?”

“What that horse is doing to that mare.”

He noticed they were alone. The other men, obviously tired from the long ride, had slipped away. They'd spend some long days ahead too if they were ever going to reach the mountains and then find Gomez's ranchero.

“What you are going to do to me?” she quietly asked him.

He blinked at her. “Why me?”

“I have seen you maybe a half dozen times in Mexico. And I would say, ‘There is a big gringo hombre. I would like to have him one day for myself. What is his name?' No one I asked knew your name. Then last fall you were at the Blanco Springs with a pack train and some more pistoleros.”

“We had some newly minted coins from the Silver City mint to deliver in Guaymas.”

She raised her head a little haughtily. “Then before I could get to you, a blonde rode up on a gray horse and took you away.”

“Donna Logan was her name.”

“I did not care. She was just another
puta
to me. And today I am dressed in a wash-worn dress that my nipples show through and my hair isn't half as nice as hers was. I had not fixed it, and I have no brush to do it with or better clothing to wear. I probably stink like the lye soap I used on his underwear. But I was dressed nice at Blanco. So”—she stretched her hands over her head—“I would still love to fuck you tonight.”

“I bet we've got time. What did you do at Blanco Springs?”

“I am glad you have time. I took a man some wine we made. My husband has grapes and trees. He makes wine. I took some to a rich man who lives up there. My husband thinks the old man likes his wine and pays him a good price for it. But it is because I deliver it to him. What did you do with the blond girl that night?”

He leaned over and whispered in her ear. “What I am going to do to you—later.”

“How much later?”

“This ranchero of his, you can lead us there?”

She frowned in the starlight. “I told you I could. I have been there several times. One of his young men would come get me at the village. Bring me on a fine horse, buy me meals, and be sure I slept alone and no one touched me. At the ranchero, I would wait for Gomez to come. I would get bored. Then he would come and we'd have wild times. He would say he loved me and I should be his wife. Then one night he would be gone and I'd wake up. Then that nice boy told me that I was his and he'd jump in bed and screw me silly. Then he would drug me enough that I could not fight him. After that he'd take me home on a roundabout way and he would screw me all the time we traveled.

“I would live on the money the boy paid me, and then he would come and make me undress. Then when he was satisfied, he took me back and never touched me going up there. Gomez and I partied for two weeks. He was gone the next morning and left me a pouch of money.

“That boy came and he screwed me and said he was taking me home. I let him. It was that or be roughly raped. We started for home. He was standing on the edge of this cliff pissing off on the first day. Before he was done, I reached around to hold his cock.

“‘Let me make it hard,' I said. I began to pull on it and his dick began to harden and him breathing harder. I whispered, ‘Are you ready to go fuck her?'

“He said, ‘Sure. Who?'

“Then with both hands I shoved him off the cliff. ‘Here she is!' I said. ‘You horny bastard.'

“He fell for hundreds of feet and I went home with three horses. His, the packhorse, and mine.”

“Did they do anything to you?”

“Gomez must have figured it out. He sent a new boy to take me up there, one who knew nothing and treated me nice. But Gomez acted mean and different to me. He doped me and demanded to know where his son's body was at. He even beat me with a whip, and in the end of his torture, I still said, ‘He fell off the mountain. I am not lying.'

“I told him he fell off the mountain walking around his horse. I had no way to get him a message. I never knew that was his son. But he gave me to his man when he left, and that bastard chained me to the bed. He left me to four of his men who used me. I had to escape, and I did it by pouring laudanum in their beer when they were drunk, then I took a horse and left.

“That
bruja
found me, hid me from his men looking for me, and she cured me—but the twins died—I told you that.”

“That's terrible.”

She scuffed the drawing out with her sole.

“Why do that?”

“I drew that picture for you. I don't want those others to think I did it for them.”

They went a short distance from the camp. With the side of his boot, he cleared out any rocks on the sandy creek-bank ground. Then he spread out bedrolls for the two of them and they settled down for the evening.

•   •   •

She woke him before dawn with “Hurry, get up. I must make breakfast for the men.”

She ran off to the creek to bathe, then came back and started the fire. Her dress was still not dry and it clung to her. But she worked hard and soon was making flour tortillas between her palms to go with reheated beans and fried bacon.

Her tortillas made, she cooked down some dried apples, brown sugar, and raisins, which she wrapped in the tortillas and gave to the men for desert. They all bragged on her.

“Next town is Bronco Nigra. I want a nice slab of beef, some cilantro, some sweet peppers and onions. We will have a fiesta tonight,” she said.

“I'll love that,” Gordon said. “And ain't even smelled it cooking yet.”

They all laughed.

“How much farther is it to the ranchero?” Ken asked her.

“Two days we will be at the base of the mountains. I told Slocum I have been there several times. From the base it takes a day and a half to get up there.”

He saluted her. “Good. I simply wanted to know.”

•   •   •

They rode to Bronco Nigra, where Slocum saw no black horses like the ones they said Gomez rode. The butcher cut him out a nice chunk of beef, and charged him enough to pay for the hanging steer. The rest of the items Silva bought from the women selling produce.

Slocum stopped her. “Would that woman's dress fit you?”

The woman was close to Silva's size.

“I think it would.” She went over and backed up to the other woman's butt. The dress owner acted shocked when Silva said, “It would fit me.”

“I want to buy your dress for five pesos. Here is the money; take it off. You can wear her dress home.”

“Here?” She looked shocked and embarrassed.

“I won't look,” he said and turned his back to her.

The other market women ran over and told her, “Take it off. Take it off. You can make a half dozen more for that much money.”

He heard her say at last, “All right.” And he turned around in time to see her bare boobs and naked belly as she put on Silva's old dress. Silva had a lot cuter figure, naked just now as she put her new dress on over her head and wiggled it down. He paid the woman for the dress and fended off several offers from others to sell him their dresses. He shook his head thanked them and they rode on.

Silva laughed. “That girl was about too embarrassed to talk even about trading it. She thought you wanted to screw her, I bet. Hell I have been paid less by dirty old men to stay for three days with them.”

“Caught her way off guard.”

“Five pesos for one dress. You really helped her out a lot.”

•   •   •