She asked if she could count on him staying at least a week or so. He lay back across the bed and hauled her down to nestle her head on his bare chest as he set the tumbler of rum punch aside and replied, “I’d be proud to spend at least a month with anyone half as friendly, you pretty thing. But to tell the truth, my boss, Marshal Billy Vail, would have a fit if he knew I was off saving damsels in distress from dragons. So let’s study on that dragon called Grayson, starting with why he’s so anxious to extend his own range as far as El Rio Chama.”
She began to run the cool bottom of her drink up and down his bare belly as she absently mused, “There are other cattle trails off to the east. Perhaps he just wants more water for his stock, no?”
Longarm said, “No. There’s well-watered mountains to either side of this valley with heaps of cleaner seeps and springs than the muddy main stream. You know I met some of your vaqueros stringing a drift fence on the far side of the Chama up the slope a ways. So might the original Llamas grant extend as far as the Jicarilla line?”
She said, “Pero no. Only out to the Camino del Rey, or what you now call the coach road. But you must have seen my holdings are not fenced, and your own Anglo law allows stray stock for to graze on any federal land not set aside for anything else by the government, eh?”
He nodded and dryly observed, “I’m sure lots of your cows wind up wading such a modest river all by themselves. Keeping them off that Indian land with drift wire makes sense too. Old Cyrus Grayson must have noticed the grass looks greener on the far side of the fence. I suspect he’s after easier access to that ungrazed reservation range.”
She protested, “Is reserved for Los Apaches, no?”
He nodded soberly, but said, “The powers that be are fixing to move the Jicarilla south and free up all that ungrazed grass and uncut timber. Anglo stockmen such as Grayson are in closer touch with the powers that be.”
He set his smoke aside and took her glass from his belly to sip some rum punch before he handed it back. “I wish I knew exactly which powers were behind such an ill-timed move. I just helped the War Department calm some other Indians down, over to the Four Corners. So I know General Sherman ain’t anxious to needlessly upset peaceful Apache types whilst three or more regiments are playing tag with Victorio for Pete’s sake!”
She sounded sort of prim as she observed her own Indian kin had long since learned to get along better with Mexican and Anglo neighbors who were just as tough but far easiergoing than Apache. He got the distinct impression nobody else in northern New Mexico, Anglo, Mexican, Zuni, or Tanoan, would shed one tear for poor little Kinipai and her Jicarilla kin when—not if—they were evicted from their big fat reservation.
He said, “You should have seen the stampede when the Lakota were forced out of the Black Hills. Prospectors and land-grabbers came from all over, along with the male and female parasites and human birds of prey such booms attract. The Dulce Agency could wind up as wild as Deadwood by the time we got things under control again.”
He knew he hadn’t planned on confiding more than he had to. But he figured she was apt to gossip when he’d gone on in any case. In the meantime, there was no saying what other gossip a local gal might have heard. So he confided, “I’ve been trying to learn more about a whole heap of armed and mysterious strangers moving into these parts, honey. They seem to be Anglo and may be hired guns.”
She polished off the last of her rum punch and got rid of the dry tumbler as she casually replied, “We’ve heard such talk, querido. I think that may be why Cyrus Grayson accused you of being just such a rider. He could see you were not one of my regular vaqueros, and there has been much gossip about Regulators up by this end of the territory.”
Longarm whistled softly and said he hoped it was just gossip. For the Lincoln County War to the south was officially over, and that noisy confusion had commenced when one faction bought control of the elected sheriff and another, led by merchants and stockmen with less political pull, had “deputized” their own force of ad hoc “Regulators” under the posse comitatus provisions of common law.
It hadn’t worked, of course. The corrupt lawmen recognized by the Santa Fe Ring had refused to recognize the private-agency badges worn by McSween riders such as Billy the Kid, and so a rooting, tooting, and shooting time had been had by all before Governor Wallace had come west to declare such shit must cease. But the notion that private citizens could recruit and arm their own Regulator forces to enforce the law as it seemed it ought to be enforced had never faded all the way away.
He decided, “Old Cyrus wouldn’t have taken me for a hired gun from other parts if he knew that much about hired guns from other parts. So I suspect you’re only up against a proddy pest your ownself.”
She asked if he’d forgotten that rifle ball through the window down below. He reminded her he’d already said that had likely been an eager whelp. “By now he’s been whopped with a newspaper and warned to behave. For kids don’t act so foolish unless they expect to brag and be praised for their heroism. Old Cyrus is a fool, but not that big a fool. He was trying to bluff a dumb Mexican neighbor, no offense. He’d have never come up with that pathetic bluff if he’d known where to get his hands on a so-called Regulator.”
Consuela rose on one elbow and groped across him for the other half-filled tumbler. It felt swell. She had great tits. She drained the tumbler, then rolled clean over him—that felt even better—to perch on the edge of the mattress and pour them both fresh drinks as she pleaded with him to at least guard her from that cruel gringo neighbor until sundown.
It would have been as cruel to say he meant to be on his way by that time. So he suggested she get on her hands and knees so he could make sure nobody was creeping up on them outside at the moment.
She was willing, and he really could see all around below as he got a good grip on her heroic hips to take her from behind, tall in his socks. By this time they’d gotten to where it just felt swell instead of desperately thrilling. So he got to wondering, as he stood there calmly banging away, how many other gents had stood watch up here the same way over so many years of off-and-on Indian troubles. He doubted he was the first who’d discovered standing guard all by oneself could get tedious as hell. It was surprising how easy it was to just stand and stare with one’s old organ-grinder up inside a pal.
CHAPTER 9
He rode off in that tricky light near sundown when any rider a snoop might spot at a distance would be tough to describe. He’d put on that green satin shirt and started out aboard the palomino, leading the cream this time. Not wanting to ride back to the trail town of Vado Seguro, he’d asked anyone answering those wires sent from there to reply care of Western Union at Loma Blanca, to the south and hence closer to where Billy Vail had ordered him to go in the first damned place.
There were others on the road that early in the evening, although they were widely spaced as he howdied those he met going the other way. He set a fair pace for anyone going the same way to overtake. So nobody seemed to. He rode at a trot for an hour, and let both ponies water in the shallows of the Chama and browse some cottonwood leaves as he changed mounts by moving the shaken-out saddle blanket, and then, of course, the saddle, back aboard the cream mare. He took his time to rest them more than to water and browse them. They’d been watered and fed cracked corn before leaving El Rancho Llamas. But it seldom hurt to give a horse more water, and they couldn’t bloat their fool selves on leathery cottonwood leaves. Swamp maple was about the only really dangerous browse a pony would willingly eat too much of, and you hardly ever saw swamp maple in these parts.