The world swung by faster and faster as Slocum rolled down the hillside. He came to a sudden stop when he crashed into a boulder. He gasped, tried to stand and sank back down to regain his strength. Pain lanced through him, but he fought it and got to his feet.
“Angela!” He looked around for the woman but didn’t see her. He called again. This time he heard a faint moan. He hobbled a few feet down the ravine, turned and looked up it. The dry bed was empty save for a lizard scurrying away as fast as its thin legs could carry it.
Slocum looked up the slope and saw the woman halfway up. From the way she struggled, her skirts had caught on a cactus or rock. Whatever it was supporting her, if she succeeded in getting free, she’d come tumbling down after him.
“Don’t move. Don’t try to get free. I’ll get to you.” Saying it was easier than doing it. The loose rock on the slope made the footing treacherous. Slocum scraped his knees and hands as he fought every inch of the way back up to where he could see what had halted Angela’s slide down the hill.
“You’re caught on a rock. If your skirt starts to tear, you’re in for quite a fall.”
“Down to where you already were,” she said. She groaned, then lay on her back staring up at the cloudless blue sky. “It’s not my skirt that’s caught. It’s my bustle.”
Slocum almost laughed. Angela was more embarrassed about how she was caught than the fact that she was trapped. He edged closer, keeping his footing. One slip and he would tumble back down the slope. As banged up as he was, Slocum was not sure he could muster the strength to get up the hill again. He grasped the woman’s hand and tugged, trying to get her to stand. She was too firmly caught. Working his fingers under the cloth, he traced the intricate wire frame of her bustle.
“It’s jammed between two rocks,” Slocum said. “I can’t tug hard enough to get it free without sending both of us into the arroyo.”
“Very well,” Angela said with a sigh of resignation. “Let me extricate myself.”
“What?”
“I will get out of this damned bustle!”
“Oh, sorry,” Slocum said. “Do you need any help?”
“I…no, thank you, John. Not this time.” Their eyes locked. If Angela’s position hadn’t been so precarious, Slocum would have kissed her. As it was, he only turned and balanced the best he could.
Listening to her grunt and strain and finally break free required all his control not to turn and watch. When he heard something sliding downhill, he cast a quick look. The wire frame of the bustle tumbled over and over into the ravine.
“There,” Angela said. “Free.”
He turned back. Except for the removal of the delightful posterior feminine implement, she looked no different. He held out his hand. She took it for balance and began digging the toes of her shoes into the hard ground to gain traction. Together they finally got back to the road.
Angela wiped sweat and grime from her face, using a handkerchief. Slocum had no idea where she had hidden it. He used his filthy bandanna to perform the same act of aggressive sweat removal on his own face. He wrung out the bandanna and tied it back around his neck. By the time he was finished, she had made her lacy hanky disappear again.
“What do we do now?”
“We won’t be going anywhere in the buggy, that’s for sure,” Slocum said. He examined the buggy and saw how the wheel had popped free of its axle and gone rolling downhill just before he had followed. Even if he was so inclined, retrieving the wheel would do no good. The axle had broken when the wheel came off.
“It might be a good thing my trunk was not to be found on the train,” Angela said. “Carrying it without use of the buggy would be quite difficult.”
Slocum looked up into the sun and squinted. Lugging a woman’s trunk would be impossible. He said nothing to her about that, though. Let her keep her fine Eastern ways. Soon enough she would discover that life on the frontier was more difficult than she imagined.
“We’re about the same distance from Pemberton and Dry Water,” Slocum said. “The way back to Pemberton is rockier and there are more hills.”
“So pressing on to Dry Water will be an easier hike?” she asked.
Slocum nodded. It hardly mattered which direction they went, except that going forward would get them where they wanted to go. If he returned to Pemberton, he would have to wire Grierson and let the man know what had happened. Angela would have to be put up in a hotel until someone else rode out to fetch her back to Dry Water. He figured they saved a whole passel of people trouble by completing their trip.
“Should we wait for the sun to go down and walk in the dark? You are looking a mite peaked,” she said. Angela put a hand on his forehead. Slocum drew back.
“What are you doing?”
“I wanted to be sure you were not running a fever. That is a sign of heatstroke.”
“It is hot,” Slocum said, “but we might find that luck is with us if we can stop anyone riding this road and send word to Grierson.”
“Who?”
“The mayor of Dry Water.”
“Oh, I…misheard you. Of course I know Mayor Grierson.”
“He hired you, didn’t he?”
“Why, look, John. Birds.” Angela pointed to the sky where buzzards circled in lazy downward spirals. Slocum wasn’t sure if they were the birds’ obvious dinner or if something else had already died out in the desert.
“Let me hike to the top of that rise and see,” he said. “Stay here. If you can find some shade, sit in it.”
“There are other things I would rather sit on,” Angela said.
Slocum hesitated, wondering at her meaning. The way she looked at him was much like the way those circling buzzards looked at something about to die. He shrugged it off and began making his way up a low rise. It took longer than he expected, but when he got to the ridge he was able to look down along the road all the way to the fork leading off to Dry Water.
“Hey, here! Can you give us some help?” Slocum waved to a rider approaching the fork from the opposite direction. He worried that he was too far away to be heard. Then he worried that he was not out of rifle range. The rider drew a Winchester from a saddle scabbard and fired several times at Slocum. The distance was too great for there to be much chance of Slocum being hit, but the man’s intent was obvious. When the gunman realized he was not going to hit Slocum, he wheeled his horse about and galloped away in a thick cloud of dust. By the time it had settled and Slocum was able to get an unobstructed view of the road, the rider had disappeared.
In the same direction taken by the bank robber when he had fled Dry Water.
Slocum went back down the hill to where Angela sat in the dubious shade of the overturned buggy.
“John, I thought I heard shots. Are you all right?”
“A rider mistook me for a coyote,” he said. “Doesn’t look as if we’ll get much help from him.”
“He shot at you? How could he ever mistake you for an animal?” She stared wide-eyed at him when realization hit her. “He wanted to shoot you.”
“Lucky he was a poor shot,” Slocum said. He considered all that they could do. Hiking along the road to the fork and then into Dry Water looked a tad more dangerous than it had a few minutes earlier. Heat and dehydration presented dangers. A man with blood in his eye and a decent rifle was another matter.
“What are we going to do?”
Slocum put his finger to his lips to silence her. Angela started to ask why, then turned her head and caught the same sound Slocum already had.
“A horse?”
“Ours,” Slocum said. “Stay here. I’ll be back in a few minutes with our ride to town.”
“But—”
Slocum ignored her protests as he set off to capture the horse that had pulled the buggy all the way to Pemberton and halfway back to Dry Water. Whatever had spooked it and caused it to rear was long gone. Slocum rounded the hill where he had spied the rider, and at the base stood his horse. Rather than walk up to it, Slocum sat on a hot rock and waited for the animal to notice him. The horse was still frightened. If it took off at a gallop, it might kill itself from exhaustion, long before Slocum could grab it.
After a few minutes, the horse decided Slocum was no real threat. It moved toward him. He still sat motionless. Only when it was within arm’s reach did Slocum stand. The horse tried to shy away, but it was too late. Slocum grabbed the dangling, torn reins and hung on, keeping the horse from rearing. It took a few more minutes to gentle the horse, and then it allowed itself to be led as docile as a lamb back to where Angela was still sitting in the shade of the buggy.
“Riding sure beats walking in this sun,” Slocum said.
“What am I to do? I cannot ride that. I don’t know how.”
“There’s nothing to it,” Slocum said. “I reckon it’s about time for the schoolmarm to do some learning.”
He swung up onto the horse. Riding bareback wasn’t that much more difficult for him. Slocum reached down. Angela looked skeptically at his extended hand, then took it and let him pull her up behind him. It took some doing for her to get her skirts settled, but once she did, Slocum felt she was securely seated.
“Good seat,” he said.
“Why, thank you.”
She put her arms around his waist and clung tightly, making him wonder if they each meant the same thing. At the moment, he did not much care if she thought he complimented her fine ass or how she was riding. They trotted along the road until Slocum saw a way off the road.
He veered sharply from the twin ruts that marked the road to the fork and cut across country.
“Why have you left the road, John? Is this a shortcut?”
“Might be shorter,” Slocum said.
“But it’s something else. What are you not telling me about the man who shot at you?”
“Could be a robber wanted by the law,” Slocum said. He had not been able to get a good enough look to even see the man’s shirt. “By getting off the road, we can avoid him.”
“Did he want to rob you? Why didn’t he pursue the matter and finish you off?”
A million answers raced through Slocum’s mind but none of them were likely to put Angela’s fears to rest.
“You don’t have to put sugar on it for me,” she said, as if his thoughts were being shouted from the tops of every mountain in California. “There’s trouble brewing. I want to know. I deserve to know what I’m getting myself into.”
“There was a bank robbery a week or so back,” Slocum said. “Two robbers were killed and a third got away with a pile of money. The man who shot at me is likely the third robber.”
“Why would a robber stay where he committed such a robbery?” she asked. Slocum felt her arms around him begin to tremble.
“That’s been worrying me something fierce,” Slocum said. “There’s no doubt somebody’s out for blood.” He told her how he had lost two horses to gunfire and had to walk back to Dry Water.
Her reaction surprised him. She laughed out loud.
“You have the worst luck, John. Two horses, a long walk, now the buggy loses a wheel and you’re having to ride double to Dry Water.”
“I don’t see that as being such bad luck,” Slocum said. He was rewarded with Angela tightening her arms around his waist. It might have been the uneven gait of the horse or it might have been something else, but Angela’s hands moved downward from his waist until they pressed in just above his groin. He felt stirrings there that became downright uncomfortable.
“We should camp, John,” she said after they had ridden a spell.
“We can get to Dry Water in another hour or two.”
“I…I’m not used to riding a horse like this. I really need to rest. My legs feel like they are going to fall off if I don’t get to just stand on solid ground.”
“We can take a rest,” he said. “Then—”
“Camp,” Angela insisted. “I have had a very taxing day.”
“Don’t have the equipment to camp.” He had left his saddle somewhere up in the hills to the east, and Mayor Grierson had not seen fit to include much in the way of gear in the buggy. There had been no reason.
“We can build a fire. We can make do for one night.”
“No blankets,” he pointed out.
“You’re not opposed to sharing body heat, are you?”
There was a boldness in her words that he responded to—in more than one way.
“Not with you,” Slocum said. He looked around and saw a sandy spit sheltered from the wind. The rocks would release their heat slowly during the cold desert night, keeping them warm. A small fire would make it cozy.
“I do want something to drink, though. Is there any water around?”
Slocum relaxed his control of the horse and saw how it turned, heading for the spot he had already decided would be adequate for the night. Slocum’s luck was running high again. There was a small spring nearby. He let the horse drink its fill while he gathered firewood. When he brought an armload back, Angela had dug a small fire pit and stacked rocks around it. She stood, brushed back a strand of her reddish brown hair, then put her hands on her hips.
“Did I do well?”
“Perfectly,” Slocum said, dropping the wood. He started to stack some of the kindling to start a fire, then looked up at the woman.
Angela had unfastened her blouse and let the shirttails flap free in the gentle breeze blowing through the sheltering rocks. She took a deep breath. From where he knelt Slocum saw her breasts rise and fall heavily. He would have said nothing except for the hard little nubs pressing against the thin undergarment she wore. She was as excited as he was.
Slocum forgot the fire and turned toward the woman. He ran his hands up under her skirts and found a warm, firm leg. Her green eyes fixed on him, hot and hungry. She licked her lips and widened her stance in obvious invitation.
His hand stroked over her calf and upward until he caressed the backs of her knees. She let out a small sigh. Slocum moved closer and ran his hands up her inner thighs. The smooth, warm flesh trembled at his touch all the way up to her crotch. He found that she did not wear any underwear. His fingers brushed through the tangled forest he found there. Her inner oils already leaked out, dousing his hands.
She gasped in pleasure when he thrust his finger into her heated slit.
“Oh, John, yes,” Angela sighed. She twisted from side to side, grinding herself down into his hand and around his impaling finger.
Slocum pushed up her skirts and exposed her bare legs to his gaze. His heart raced now. He thrust his head up under and turned to kiss the insides of her thighs. The woman quivered and shook as he worked his way up higher. His lips kissed and his tongue licked as his finger stroked in and out of her slickened interior.
By the time his mouth fastened over her nether lips, she was sagging down, unable to support herself. He followed her to the ground, his tongue lapping like a dog over the length of her gash. Her legs rose up on either side of his head. Her knees parted to more fully expose herself. Slocum heard nothing but tiny gasps as he began thrusting his tongue between her pinkly scalloped sex lips and into her heated interior.
“Oh, John, I’m on fire. You’re setting me on fire.”
He reached around under her and grasped her fleshy buttocks. Squeezing as he tongued her caused a quake to pass through her entire body. She hunched up off the sandy ground and shoved her crotch hard into his face. Slocum did not flinch away. He sucked and licked and kept tonguing until the earthquake of sensation had passed from her.
“You know how to treat a girl,” Angela said, eyes half-closed and her voice husky.
“Do you know how to treat a man?” Slocum pushed back and stood. He had her full attention as he unbuckled his gun belt and tossed it aside. He reached down and began unbuttoning his jeans. When his erection popped out, long and hard and hot, Angela scrambled around to get onto hands and knees. She came to him, looking up past his trembling shaft.
“I know what you want,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Do you now?”
“Let me show you.” Rather than doing for him what he had done for her already, she pulled up her skirts even more until they were bunched around her waist. Lithely turning, she stayed on all fours and waggled her perky ass cheeks in his direction.
“Reckon you do,” Slocum said, dropping behind her. He laid his hand on her curving flesh. It rippled under his fingers smooth as marble. But no cold stone had ever been this vibrantly alive. He reached around her waist and pulled her in to his groin. His hardened length slid past those half moons and went lower, parting her sex lips. She groaned in pleasure. Slocum stroked back and forth in the lust-slick channel. Then he found the exact spot where his mouth had been such a short time ago.
He pressed the thick head of his manhood against her and levered his hips forward. He sank balls-deep into her. For a moment Slocum was entirely engulfed in her tight, wet heat.
She bucked like a bronco, and Slocum had to slide his arm around her waist to hold her close. He felt her clamping down all around him, crushing him in the most pleasurable way possible. He lifted her up and got her onto her feet. Still together, Angela bent over and Slocum behind, they turned around and around. Then she reached out and braced herself against a rock.
“Do it, John, do it hard. I want it hard!”
Both hands around her hips now to give him more leverage, he began pistoning back and forth until he felt as if his cock had turned into a white-hot poker. She threw her head back and cried out again in total release. Slocum came only seconds later. He felt the rising tide within him that suddenly exploded into her grasping core.
Panting, Slocum stepped away. Angela presented such a delectable sight. Her skirts were still hiked up around her waist, leaving her naked below—all the way down to her shoes. Slocum wanted to reach out and stroke the milky white curves of her buttocks but he held back.
She looked over her shoulder at him, a satisfied look on her face.
“You don’t need any more schooling,” she said.
“Might be you’ve been a bad girl,” Slocum said. He ran his hands over her now and felt her flesh tense below.
“Then you must punish me—if you’re up to it.” She waggled her ass again and then gasped when Slocum laid his open hand on her behind.
Slocum was up to it.