Page 11 of Sure as Shooting

Chapter Five

Agua Fria

“Hey, Doc.”

Whit was glad to see Huntley again. He had not glimpsed him often after the skirmish at the Indian camp. They had built litters for their few wounded men, so Whit had accompanied those patients back to town, while Huntley traveled with Burney and the other heroes of what they were terming the “Mariposa Battalion,” probably discussing future strategies and their glories on the battlefield.

“Hey, Huntley. It’s the talk of the brigade, your rubbing out of that long-winded King Joseph.” Whit gestured to the famous trader to take a seat next to his new desk. For Huntley had ordered a hospital tent to be erected for Whit, placed close by his own house. Three wounded, including poor William Little, who had been pierced through the lung, recovered here on cots. Whit sat behind a desk where he could once again do the paperwork and research he loved so much. He poured Huntley a tumbler of brandy that he’d been giving the patients, but Huntley only slumped in his chair, staring morosely at the amber liquid.

“Yeah. Regarding that. I don’t know why Bud Pennington has been running around telling everyone it was me who wiped out that obnoxious King Joseph. It was him.”

“Bud? Then why would he be telling—”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

Whit wished the trader would get some sleep. It was impossible for a man, even one as hale and hearty as Huntley Ashbury, to go four days without sleep. He would walk him back to his house and tuck him into bed if needs be—as Whit had been ordered to do the night before last. Under those orders, Whit had lain awake sleepless to ensure the trader didn’t sneak out of his sack and wander the hills in some sort of backwoodsman’s restless quest. When it became evident Huntley was finally sleeping, Whit had become bored. Watching the handsome, placid face, the luscious lips curled up at the corners as though he enjoyed a good dream, Whit’s mind meandered into some good dreams of his own.

It seemed as though his prick had just sprung into his hand, for suddenly there he was, frigging his massive appendage, imagining what it would be like to ejaculate on Hunt’s serene, well-sculpted face. The power of his own sexual urges sometimes terrified Whit. In Glasgow, Paris, and more recently in New York, he’d gotten off at the houses of the nan-boys, but there was no such thing in the Far West. In the Far West, a fellow was more likely to get a healthy walloping if his fingers dared stray toward another man’s half-erect cock. Although Whit had seen a few masculine couples going at it, it was always in back rooms with shaded faces, faces that in daylight spat upon the ground in disgust to admit two men groping. And it went without saying that any respectable American woman would rather have a dozen scorpions crawl up her torso before she’d let a man of color touch her.

So yes, Whit had freely frigged his own penis, even though Huntley lay ten feet away. The man was deservedly sound asleep. It was so dark, the trader would never have noticed when he erupted so explosively upon his own chest and throat, much less have known that Whit was imagining fucking his luscious mouth. Maybe he and Huntley could take a trip to the closest town—did Mariposa have a whorehouse?—and recall what it was like to have congress with American women.

Huntley finally took an apathetic sip of the brandy. “People kept coming up to me, congratulating me on murdering that warmongering Chowchilla chief. I told Sheriff Burney straight out that it was Bud Pennington who put a ball into that louse’s skull. All day yesterday people kept congratulating me on such a worthy coup. I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that it was Bud Pennington who should be lauded, but the story seems to keep persisting.”

Whit thought. “Maybe because it’s a much more romantic story. The famous trader of Agua Fria murders the biggest—well, the second biggest—Indian chief in the Sierra.”

Huntley snorted into his glass. “I was standing a foot away from Pennington at the time, that much is true. And it should have been my coup, but to be honest, Doc, I sort of froze up when I took note that the face was familiar to me. If Pennington hadn’t shoved me aside and taken the shot himself, why, I’d be a dead duck right now.”

“It occurs to me,” Whit said thoughtfully, “what’s in it for Bud to be spreading that story. I must know him better than anyone in California. And he doesn’t take a single action without there’s something in it for himself, something he’s gaining. He’s not just a chowderheaded Pike County rustic, although I do believe his family was from Pike County, Missouri, where those clownish miners hail from.”

Huntley smiled. “Yes, those gaunt, sallow-faced fellows who express astonishment at the slightest civilized thing. But they can sure use an axe, build a cabin in one day, and draw a bead on a squirrel. Or,” he said as an afterthought, “the whites of an Indian’s eyes with complete cool.”

“No, Bud’s a sharp fellow.”

“What could he be gaining by not taking credit for the kill?”

“He’s putting you in a position where you feel you owe him a favor.”

Huntley nodded. “I wonder what favor he could possibly be angling for? I haven’t seen him since the battle. Doesn’t he have a room at Boling’s Hotel? Anyway. That’s not why I’m here.” The trader stood, downed the last couple swallows of brandy, and swaggered out the tent flap.

Whit watched the shapely globes of the trader’s ass move under the leather buckskins, his long arms dangling at his sides. He got to his feet when Huntley reappeared, tugging a reluctant Digger girl by the arm.

With evident disgust, Huntley fairly flung the girl in Whit’s direction. “Here. Can you take a look at her arm? Colonel Barbour and the Indian Commission won’t be here for a few more days, and her arm seems to be festering.”

As Whit started for the girl, he noted her flinch, but she seemed to reserve special loathing for Huntley Ashbury, cringing from him so severely Whit felt compelled to ask, “And where did you find this gal?”

Crossing his arms before his belly, Huntley leaned back against a tent pole. “She’s a handful, all right, Whit. You be careful of this one. Fact”—and Huntley made a dive for Whit’s medical instruments that were laid out on his surgery table—“you’d best keep all sharp tools away from this harridan. She’s the one who dropped that young Texan not ten feet from me, and then let an arrow fly at me when I tried to leave her be.”

Whit seated the woman in a chair. She still tensed away from his touch, but she didn’t have the look of one who was attempting escape. “How could you have mistaken this gentle maiden for a warrior?” Whit laughed. For the woman was exceptionally well-made, much taller than any Digger woman he’d ever seen, long of limb, and quite elegant in her entire carriage. Huntley had apparently draped her in some filthy red miner’s shirt, and Whit had to roll the sleeve up to her shoulder to view the wound. He could easily tell under the man’s shirt that she had wonderfully pert, uplifted breasts. Considering she had probably been wearing no shirt at all when Huntley had first viewed her, how could the astute mountain man have been so dunderheaded?

As Whit’s fingers slithered around the pleasantly soft skin of her underarm, his cock stiffened against his thigh. He wondered when he had last touched a woman’s skin. His last patient in New York, no doubt. Who was no doubt not nearly as comely as this maiden could be, if washed. Whit was very glad to think he might possibly still have some attraction to women. All hope was not lost. Perhaps he wouldn’t be destined for the houses of the nan-boys his entire life, after all. And now that she relaxed, her almond-shaped eyes seemed to regard him with a little more trust.

He barely noticed Huntley’s eyes flaring with ire. But he sure heard his angry words. “Well, who wouldn’t mistake her for a Digger warrior, Whit? Look at her! Hair all gnarled, rotting horseflesh stuck in her teeth—”

“Yes, but who shot her in the arm?” Whit asked pointedly.

Huntley paused before answering, “Well. Me.” The girl gave Huntley a narrow-eyed look. “Well, why not? She’d just raised the hair of that poor Texan, took his face clean off!”

“Hand me those tweezers,” said Whit. “I need to get this ball out. So what’s her name?”