Page 32 of A Good Prospect

Chapter Twelve

Tamasin raced up the outdoor steps of the hacienda to reach the second floor. “Doña Carmen, Doña Carmen!” she cried.

The rodeo was in full swing, and Doña Carmen no longer could tolerate social events. She had been carrying on about it for three weeks now. Every time a response to an invitation arrived from an outlying rancho, Carmen would stamp around in a huff nearly in tears over these “invaders” infringing upon her solitude. Salvador had explained to Tamasin that she’d been increasingly reclusive since his father had died, to the point where she currently could not bear the friendliest visitor. But this was definitely an exception to the rule!

After pounding down the outside verandah, Tamasin still had to knock at Doña Carmen’s door. “It is very exciting, Doña Carmen! You must come out to see this! A big prize-fighter has arrived from Hornitos”—she didn’t bother explaining the prize-fighter was the same thug who had sat in on the Hornitos meeting with Tyke and Tom Jeff, like some kind of glowering bodyguard—“and Ophir has agreed to fight him! Please open your door!”

The heavy wooden door opened a few inches, and Doña Carmen’s wan, pale face appeared in the crack. “Ophir is fighting? Madre de dios…”

“Yes, yes, you must come right away and see him defeat this…this giant pendejo! He is one of the babosos who are stealing our cattle and collecting all the rents for themselves, so won’t it be exciting to see Ophir best him?”

Behind her, vaqueros, farmers, housemaids, the stable hand Roberto, even Ascención were running like greased lightning for the field where they had formerly been holding horse races. Tamasin had not been able to watch the races as she was stuck in the kitchen preparing puchero stew, but she’d been told that Salvador was neck and neck with Sebastián Nuñez of Rancho Orestimba from down in the San Joaquin Valley. It must have been a very glamorous sight, Salvador’s serape billowing, enormous Californio spurs flashing while the crowd of hundreds shrieked in delight. The winner was undecided, so they would race again later, and Tamasin would not miss that one!

“Madre de dios,”Carmen repeated in an exhausted voice. What had she to be exhausted about? She never did anything. But maybe that was part of her illness, constant exhaustion. “I cannot come. I cannot be around all of those people.”

Oh, don’t be silly!Tamasin wanted to scream. You are being absurd—no one will be paying attention to you, they’ll all be watching the fight. But now she looked for a gracious way out, so she could watch the fight herself. “All right, that’s fine, I’ll report back to you who the winner is. Although we know it’ll be Ophir, right?”

“Tamasin!”

Twirling about, Tamasin looked below and saw Sal standing there, hands on hips, sombrero hanging down his back by its string. Was he here to yell at her for leaving the food cooking in the kitchen? Or the beef roasting in the outdoor oven? “Yes, Salvador?”

He waved an expansive arm. “Come! Did you not hear Ophir is fighting that brute Abel from Hornitos?”

Salvador wished her to accompany him? Tamasin could not clatter down the stairs fast enough, practically being swept into Sal’s waiting arms as he strode with long-legged steps toward the field.

“Am I to be the umpire?” she asked excitedly. “Or can I be a second?”

His arm around her shoulders hurried her along. “It was decided to have an impartial umpire, so we chose Basil Thompson from the Stanislaus River. I wanted Francisco Rico or José Castro from Rancho Del Rio Estanislao, but Thompson won out, probably because he’s white.”

“And the seconds?”

His dazzling smile was so brilliant it nearly blocked out the outside world, the milling crowd around them. “I am Ophir’s second. Tyke of course is Abel’s.”

It had not been a pleasant event when Tyke had shown up with a group of right-hand men, but since it was a rodeo, fandango, and other social events that were supposed to be full of frivolity, Sal had decided to overlook their bad blood. He had also instructed cooks and barkeeps to withhold liquor from the League men, but now Tamasin asked slyly,

“Should I fill Tyke’s water bottle with whiskey?”

With hands on her shoulders, Sal appeared to have found a satisfactory position for her to watch the fight, and he pressed down on her as though to plant her in the ground. “Ophir doesn’t need such an advantage. Gloria a Ofir!” He bellowed so suddenly and loudly, her ears fairly rang, and then he was off through the crowd, emerging only at the corner of the impromptu ring they had erected in the middle of the field of flattened grass.

Tamasin refused to be embedded, though, and wandered off to stand next to Ascención. They had become friends of sorts, uniting in their giggled jokes about Doña Carmen’s terrible cooking, and Ascención appreciated that Tamasin enjoyed doing laundry, while she herself abhorred it.

“There is no one in the kitchen,” Tamasin acknowledged.

Ascención fluttered a hand at her. “No matter. Oh, look at Señor Ophir! Have they greased up his…his…”

Tamasin dared to utter the words. “His torso? Yes, it does look like it.” Ophir stood in his corner as though reined in by Sal, who roughly massaged his bunched, shiny shoulders. The ridges of his muscular abdomen gleamed in the sun like the hot dunes of sand Tamasin had crossed in Utah Territory. “Señor Ophir is so very…very…”

“Very exquisite!” the housekeeper declared brightly, then seemed to blush.

But Ascención was right. The Californio women, wives and daughters of rancheros who owned similarly vast tracts of land bordering Las Oliveras, these women were obviously enraptured with the sight of Ophir’s gleaming torso as he champed at the bit, punching the air and bouncing in place. Tamasin heard flustered sighs of “que encantado” and “tan viril!” in the air about her, and the housekeeper became so modest she even lowered her veil, while continuing to sneak peeks at Ophir.

Abel was merely a brawler, a brute with plenty of meat to his bones but no discernable muscle. Tamasin recalled the way he’d shouldered aside hapless gamblers in Hornitos, and she knew he could crush Ophir merely by falling on him. That was her main fear as round one was called and the two men sprang like toys from a box. They were immediately upon each other with a flurry of jabs to the gut and upper chest, wherever they could get a fist in. Tamasin had to shove aside the rowdy vaqueros who blocked her view and was elbowed in the gut herself. By that time the round had ended, Ophir back in his corner, bouncing around on tiptoe while Sal slathered more grease on his chest.

It was quite stimulating, actually, knowing what Tamasin knew about their intimacy. To watch Sal’s spread palm applying what was probably manteca, lard which Californios used in lieu of butter, to Ophir’s flexed pectorals—and recalling their first boxing match when they had grappled with erect penises in an apparent effort to rub and hump each other and satisfy their lewd urges—Tamasin felt privy to a profound secret. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with two men touching each other—indeed, thinking about it roused her to greater heights at night when she explored her own unnatural vices. Seeing their two naked erections after bathing near Bear Valley—Ophir’s fist clamped so tightly around Salvador’s jutting proud penis that his knuckles well-nigh turned white—had lost Tamasin for many hours in private thought. Their beautiful, hard, erections were not repellant. She had cringed in horror many a time when approached by Niall’s disgusting appendage. She had even wondered toward the end if she was simply a woman who loathed congress with men, as she suspected most of her fellow pioneers did. Tamasin had seen many a pioneering fellow emerge from a tent or a Conestoga wagon to pee after what was obviously congress, congress so silent the woman uttered nary a peep, so how pleasant could it be? While the men, as always, grunted like squealing swine stuck in a mud hole. That made sense. The women were only doing it so as not to waste seed, to produce children.

No, the penises of her men—her men, she thought with a thrill—they were attractive, beautiful even, and the lovely joyous way they touched, stroked, and held each other had Tamasin’s imagination running wild. Salvador’s long tapered fingers slinking around the back of Ophir’s powerful neck. Ophir’s fingertips tickling the flat athletic plane of Salvador’s abdomen while Sal thrust his hips forward. And their long, drawn-out kiss while boxing had betrayed more pent-up rapture than Tamasin had ever thought possible. If two men wanted to waste seed in such a sensual manner, who was she to stop them? No, Tamasin just wanted to find a way to participate. Why did men get to have all of the fun?

Elbowing aside another vaquero who viciously whipped his sombrero in the air as though looking to decapitate someone, Tamasin clung to Ascención’s sleeve and watched Ophir and Abel pummel each other. Abel seemed of the “brawler” sort, what Ophir had explained was a boxer who lacked finesse and mobility and punched in a predictable pattern. Ophir was able to land many straight rights and left hooks as he hopped around the brutish fellow like a rabbit, dodging the long, swinging wallops, backing off from the punches before bending at the waist to connect a powerful straight left to the thug’s belly.