Slocum and the Long Ride by Jake Logan Page B

They went to her adobe casa. A tattered bottom blanket was the door, and the south wind flowed through the place, surprisingly cool.
    She shed her dress over her head. That was all she’d had on. He hung his gun belt rebuckled on a chair’s back where it would be handy.
    â€œYou have no wife or children?” she asked.
    â€œNo.”
    She shook her head at his answer and then hung his vest on the wall. He removed his sombrero to place it on the other side of the chair’s back, then she made him sit on the seat and pulled off his tall rawhide boots. He decided that perhaps she was being slow and deliberate in undressing him to make the evening with him pass more slowly, but he was bone-tired and she did not impress him.
    When at last she had him buck naked, she asked, “Hammock or pallet?”
    â€œListen, I am too tired to make love to you. Let me sleep in the hammock.”
    She waved her finger at him. “If you fall out, don’t be mad at me.”
    â€œI won’t.”
    She acted pissed, but she’d get over it.
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    When he awoke, he gave her money to go buy them supper from a street vendor. She wiggled on her dress and ran off to find food. He went and watered his horse, then stopped to look at the array of stars. He wondered if the Apache business was about over and if Sandy could go back safely to her schoolhouse.
    He and the skinny one ate the rich chunks of browned beef, onions, and sweet peppers, wrapped in large snowy flour tortillas, while seated cross-legged on a blanket on the floor.
    â€œI told her I had a gringo who might not like her hot peppers.”
    He shrugged between bites. “Some are fine, but hot-hot is too much. You did good.”
    â€œWhere will you go next?”
    â€œI look for a bandito named Gomez.”
    Her eyes flew open and she about choked on her food. Huffing for air, she shook the tortilla in her hand at him. “Oh, he is a killer and madman. Don’t go there. He will kill you.” Tears ran down her face. “He is a mean sumbitch and his men are meaner than tigers. Oh, please don’t go down there.”
    â€œWhere does he live?”
    â€œOn a large hacienda south of St. Barnabas. Do you want to go dance or stay here?”
    â€œGood,” he said, watching her slither the dress up, first exposing her bird legs. Then the candlelight twinkled on his sight of her crotch and the patch of black pubic hair. Soon she showed him the deep navel in the brown skin of her stomach and then moved upward to expose her small, proud, pointed boobs, and then the dress was off over her head and short hair. Nice scenery to view.
    â€œGirl, you are very sweet. I don’t dislike you, but I have business down here to tend to, so maybe another time or place.”
    â€œAre you leaving me?” she asked in shocked disbelief.
    â€œYes.”
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    He left the skinny one with some money that she first refused, but he made her take it. Then he rode off on the pacing horse. To go directly to the village near Gomez would be foolish. He needed to make a more casual ride, as if he was lost or wandering.
    He left the main road, stopping to talk to a wood gatherer with a string of heavily laden burros, who told him about some hot springs across a small mountain range. He called the springs a good place to soak and get the pains out of his body. The trail was steep, but Slocum’s horse was sure-footed and carried him over the pass. There he stopped to let the horse breathe, and the cooling wind swept his face.
    The distant green cottonwoods told him the springs were down there. The discomfort of his tight back muscles could hardly wait for a few hours in the springs. He rode off the mountain to a spot under the towering, gnarled trunks of the cottonwoods. Several people were bathing in the obviously warm water—Indios who did not care if he saw them