Slocum 329

“It’ll just take me a minute to dress,” Miranda said. While she pulled her saddlebags out from under the bed and laid them on the coverlet, Slocum took another long swig from his whiskey bottle.

Miranda opened the flaps and peered inside. From one of the pouches, she removed a checkered shirt and pair of britches. Quickly she drew on her shirt and worked the buttons closed.

Running her hands down her breasts and over her waist, she smoothed the wrinkles from the material.

Slocum glued his eyes to the long, muscular legs protruding from the bottom of that shirt. He swore, for such a little bit of a gal, Miranda was half legs. It wasn’t the fashionable figure, but it did a whole heap for Slocum.

“Better hurry and cover up that pretty behind of yours, darlin’,” he said, his voice tinged with regret.

Miranda responded with a deep-throated laugh and twisted her hips provocatively. Then she twirled, stuck out her lower lip, and raised her eyes to him. “You sure you can’t spare one little minute, cowboy?”

Slocum gritted his teeth. Miranda could do things to a man in one of her minutes that took others a whole month of Sundays just to figure out.

After a short search, Slocum retrieved the cork from underneath the bed, pressed it into the bottle, and set it on the night table. On second thought, he stuck the bottle inside one of his saddlebags.

In one fluid motion, Miranda stepped into the pants, yanked them over her hips, and buttoned them up. Then, twisting her hair into a loose knot, she secured it with her tortoiseshell pins.

“Yeah, ready.” Slocum slung the saddlebags over his shoulder, grabbed his pack roll, and followed Miranda down the stairs.

Someone had cleaned up the blood and straightened the tables and chairs. Saloon girls were notorious for sleeping late. They wouldn’t stir for hours.

Miranda and Slocum crossed the barroom, but when they got to the doors, Slocum said, “Better let me go first. No sense in getting ourselves bushwhacked before we even leave town.”

He swung open the doors and stepped onto the board-walk. The street appeared normal, citizens going about their everyday business, except for the undertaker’s wagon kicking up dust clouds just past the livery.

“I’ve been thinking,” Miranda said. “Maybe we ought to take the other trail back to the Bar C.”

“Sun ain’t fried my brain yet.” Yes, he remembered the ruins well. He’d be dead and halfway to hell—or Jesus—before he forgot the natural depression in the stream bed where he and Miranda had spent many lazy afternoons on his last visit to Apache Wells.

At the livery, Toby, on Slocum’s earlier orders, was just cinching the saddle on Miranda’s gelding, one of the famous Cassidy quarter-milers. He was a tall palomino—called Sundancer, Toby had informed him—and a right good-looking piece of horseflesh, if Slocum was any judge. Which he was.

“Gotta knee him, Toby,” Miranda said. “He’s been sucking air when he feels the saddle.”

Toby jabbed his knee into the horse’s gut, and sure enough, they heard him snort out a stream of air. “Watered your horse, like you asked, Mr. Slocum. Sorry ’bout your friend.”

Slocum nodded curtly and threw the saddlebags over Cougar’s rump. Then he laced his fingers. “Leg up?” he asked.

Miranda placed her left knee in his hands. Then grabbing the reins and horn, she sprang upward, throwing her leg over the saddle. Slocum adjusted the stirrups, tossed a coin to Toby, and mounted Cougar.

He and Miranda followed the main road out of town for nearly a mile. But instead on the normal route to the Bar C, they turned onto a less used trail. Few of the locals even knew about it.

“Just been thinkin’,” he admitted. “Nothin’ seems to add up yet. Now Dave Crone’s dead, besides. Who’d want to shoot that old coot? He was annoying as a mosquito, but not enough so’s you’d want to kill him.” Slocum shook his head. “Hope your Uncle Abel don’t mind—I told the undertaker to bring his body out to the Bar C for burial. You still got that cowboy’s graveyard out there, don’t you?”

“What was Vance Jefferson doing in Apache Wells, anyhow?” Slocum opened his canteen, poured a little water on his bandanna, and wiped the back of his neck.

“Uncle Abel hired Vance about a year ago,” she replied. “Vance claimed he was down on his luck. The way he looked, I doubted he’d had any kind of luck but bad for a long spell. But the last few weeks before Vance took off, they were quarrely as a couple of spinster sisters.”

In a moment, she continued, “Well, one morning, Uncle Abel had a mouse under his eye, and Vance was gone. I asked what happened, but he only grumbled something about letting the past stay buried. Most didn’t know it, but those two went back a lot of years.”

“Sorry,” Miranda said. “Forgot you knew them both from the olden times. But I remember my mother saying that Uncle Abel was a real pisser and sowed a lot of wild oats in his younger days. Even had a couple dimers written about him, before he settled down.”

Slocum winced at the mention of the cursed novels, and wondered if Cassidy had grown to hate them half as much as he did. He also wondered if he should tell Miranda just how far back he went with them.

It wasn’t exactly the time or place, he decided, and he asked, “What about the other two?”

“Marcus and Foley?” Miranda went on with a nod. “They’re connected, too, somehow. They just showed up one day, demanding a job, and Uncle Abel gave it to them. Not a week after they started, the bunkhouse caught fire. Lucky that Vance came in right when it happened. Some fool left a pile of oily rags next to the stove. Vance put it out before there was any real damage. I heard him tell Uncle Abel that if those two didn’t start it, they knew somethin’ about it.”

During the dry season, it was a mere trickle—or nothing at all—but there were times when a thunderstorm swelled it to a raging river, capable of sweeping away horses, wagons, and riders.

A flash of metal caught Slocum’s eye. “Hold up a minute, Miranda. I see something.” He slid from his saddle and bent to examine his find.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch if somebody didn’t drop a twenty-dollar gold piece right here.” Slocum walked behind Cougar and held the double eagle up to Miranda. “Here. This belongs to you.”

“Don’t be silly. No telling how long it’s been there, who it belonged to, or where it washed down from.” She flipped the coin into the air.

Slocum caught and pocketed the double eagle, then picked up Cougar’s reins and led him to the other side of the wash. The sound of hooves scrambling on loose rocks brought him to attention.

Slocum crouched beside the bank, put his finger to his lips, and scanned the washout. Slowly he peered over the edge. Then he laughed and stood, shaking his head. “Just a few antelope.”

Miranda’s shoulders relaxed and she dug into her horse’s flanks with her heels. Clicking her tongue, she urged him to climb the bank.

“Guess we’re both a little jumpy, sweetie. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to cool off,” she called over her shoulder.

By the time Slocum caught up, she had doffed her shirt and loosed her hair. With that added bit of scenery, he definitely needed to cool off, too.

Tipping his hat back, he said, “Don’t you know what seein’ you like this does to a man, Miranda? If you weren’t so damned pretty and so damned good at teasing, I’d have half a mind to teach you a few manners.”

She stared at him from flashing blue eyes. “And if you try it, Mr. Slocum, you’ll walk away with half a mind for sure. Besides, if I was one of those hoity-toity girls, you’d be doin’ your best to get me to be just like I am already. And for another thing, if you had your druthers, I know for a fact that you’d have me riding around naked as the day I was born, like that Lady Godiva woman, every chance you got.”

After last night, how could she get him so randy? Miranda was right. A Miss Hoity-Toity would not suit him now. Not with Miranda Cassidy in his sights.

For longer than anyone could remember, the ruins had lain abandoned, their broken walls and crude windows slowly eroding in the wind and blowing sand.

Potsherds and piles of chert mixed with pieces of red rock littered the area. Discarded flint scrapers and the occasional quartz arrowhead poked out of the hardpan. Near an old fire pit, Slocum saw the half-carved bowl of a stone pipe.

Word had it the grounds were sacred, but it seemed the Anasazi held sacred everything they had ever touched. Or at least every blamed tribe that had come after them figured they did.

Miranda dismounted and pulled her saddlebags from her horse. She rummaged around until she found a rag and a bar of soap.

“I don’t know about you, honey, but I’m not going another step till I have a bath—and not one of those horse trough affairs like you had yesterday.”

Millennia of running water had gouged a hollow at the base of the rocks. Higher up, a small waterfall cascaded into it.

As Miranda talked, she slipped out of her pants and stepped into the pool. A gasp, like her pleasure noises from last night, escaped her lips.

“You coming, darlin’?” she purred and dipped under the water, rising again and grinning like she’d just found the sugar bowl full.

Slocum didn’t need a second invitation. Quickly, he unbuckled his guns, stripped off his sweaty clothes, and joined Miranda in the pool. Sunlight sparkled like fresh-struck silver over the surface of the water.

Miranda ducked again and bobbed up a couple feet away from him. Holding up the rag and bar of soap, she taunted, “Ready for that bath, hombre?”

That was another thing he liked about Miranda. She was playful and creative, and right now she reminded him of Marta, the sloe-eyed beauty with nipples the size of dollars, from Santa Tourista. The so-called town was a watering hole for bandits and other unsavory trash, smack on the Mexican border, where the events of Slocum’s visit had been immortalized in another dime saga—another series of brushes with death that fools mistook for adventure.

Slocum’s hearty laughter echoed from the rocks. “Sí, señorita. This hombre’s more than ready.”

While he watched, Miranda first lathered her red tresses and then the washrag. Starting at the roots of her hair, she washed her face and neck and then tantalizingly cupped a breast.

She ran her tongue back and forth across her top lip as she circled the cloth round and round, first over one perfect orb, then the other.

Her nipples stood up like two pink pebbles. Miranda stepped into the shallows and rested a slender foot on a rock. She soaped the rag again and washed her leg, then switched to the other.

Slocum stole up behind her and pinned her arms. Taking the washrag, he said, “Why don’t you let me do that?”

She turned to face him, her body slippery from the water and suds. “Tell you what. I’ll wash yours, if you wash mine . . . My back, of course. Fair, señor?”

Not at all fair. And holding on to her was about as likely as clinging to a greased pig at the county fair. If he’d thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell, he would have taken her right where they stood.

She turned away and pulled her hair to the side. “Gracias, gringo,” she murmured as Slocum applied the cloth to her shoulders.

By the time he finished, she was thoroughly clean, and he was thoroughly hard and pressed tight against her backside. Slocum spun her around and lifted her, plastering a kiss on her mouth.

He momentarily tightened his arms around her, but then let her body slide down his chest. Miranda took him by the hand. Sashaying her hips seductively, she led him to a large, flat rock next to the stream. “I lied.”

“You look surprised. But I know you’ll be more than a mite glad.” Miranda lay on her side and patted the rock. “And I will give you that bath . . . after I’m done with you.”

Slocum stretched out beside her and drew her leg over his hips. “What in the Sam Hill has you so fired up?”

Her eyes half-lidded, Miranda nibbled his shoulder and pulled herself against him. She ground her heel into the small of his back. “I thought Slocum liked a bit of the salsa.”

Her nails traced a scar on his side, souvenir from an Arkansas toothpick belonging to some egg-sucking dog in Wyoming a few years back.

He drove deep, the way she liked it—the way he liked it, too—and he pumped into her like a steam engine piston. She came fast and hard, and then came again before he found his release.

He lay on his back, the hot sun boring through his eyelids. A long, uninterrupted nap would be nice. He felt Miranda stand as he drifted off to sleep.

A sopping cold rag hit him square in the chest. “Wake up, Slocum. No time for daydreaming.”

Miranda scrubbed the trail dust from every inch of his lean body. Lastly, she washed his balls and cock, and then the dark thatch of curls between his legs.

As the sun sank behind the distant ridge of hills to the west, Miranda and Slocum crested a mound overlooking the house and outbuildings of the Bar C.