Page 33 of Sure as Shooting

Chapter Fourteen

Without thinking, Huntley automatically drew his revolver.

He instantly damned himself for not having heard anyone creeping up on them. In nearly the same instant, he exhaled with relief to see it was only that annoying cretin Bud Pennington, although blown up to the proportions of a cyclops. Indeed, as Huntley holstered his revolver, he thought the private did resemble some mythical monster all puffed up as he was, with a curtain of his straw-like hair hiding one eye.

“Private Pennington,” he drawled with unconcern as Whit emerged from behind a slab of granite.

“In the first place,” Bud roared, coming forward like a whirlwind. “Why am I the one forced to trek up this to this godless plateau to track down every last soul who is allegedly in charge of this campaign, when the campaign is happening down there?” He pointed with the enraged arm of Zeus into the valley.

Huntley glanced at Miss Belle, who rolled her eyes.

However, Bud didn’t give anyone a chance to respond. “In the second place. When I finally do track down anyone who is supposed to be in charge, I discover everyone up here in a state of undress as though they’ve just been committing coitus! And I see this red man”—he pointed a rigid arm at Whit, who Huntley had imagined was Bud’s closest buddy—“come crawling out of the bushes like a guilty, lowly snake!”

Huntley did laugh aloud then, Belle’s pretty girlish laughter joining in. Whit seemed to be the only one taking the shrimp seriously. He strode right up to Bud with hands on hips and said sternly, “Listen here. In the first place. How dare you question a single thing your superiors do, or talk to them in that tone of voice. No, shut up, I don’t want to hear it! In the second place. What sent you up this cliff, anyway?”

Bud appeared about to bust with a hundred different sentiments, all the features in his face going every which way. “I came up here to deliver the message she was supposed to give.”

Everyone looked to Belle. Her hand covered her mouth as she appeared to recall a mission.

It was Huntley’s duty to ask, “Belle? What is this message?”

Her eyes brimmed with shame as she pivoted to face Huntley. “Oh, I am so sorry. I completely forgot—”

Bud took two aggressive steps forward and roared, “To tell you that Chief Tenaya has surrendered and is presently down at the camp about to escape any moment if he has no one to surrender to!”

There was a moment of silence, Bud tossing his straw hair curtain aside in triumph and glaring at his own sister with a jutting jaw. This angered Huntley more than the idea that Belle had failed to give him a message of such importance, and he drew his pistol to point it at Bud. “All right, Private. Take us down to Tenaya now.”

There was an instant scrambling of bodies, each disappearing over the rock ledge as they bounded eagerly back to the valley floor, Huntley bringing up the rear to ensure no one disobeyed again. God’s holy trousers. After a good fucking such as he’d just enjoyed, Huntley usually liked to lounge about and savor the moment. Not race off into a confrontation with the most eminent Indian chief in the Sierra.

And it had been a good fucking. Had it not? It was sublime, entering the body of a woman so lithe and sensitive to his every slight twitch. And the way her pussy had clutched at his cock, egad! Huntley had never felt that before. Was it some medical mystery? Was Belle an abomination to womankind—was this part of the hysteria Whit had treated her for? A female orgasm, Whit had claimed, and perfectly natural. Desirable, if one was to believe Whit. Huntley was starting to believe Whit.

How her inner channel walls had milked him to orgasm! Huntley would be in a bad way if he could not experience that singular sensation again—and soon. And her essence that wafted up at him, like the lilies Whit was always going on and on about.

As he bounded down the cliff face, he saw Tenaya as more of an irritant. He spotted some Diggers—Grizzlies?—peering at them from behind trees and dodging behind rocks, as if fearful their friendly surrendering would be mistaken for hostility. Huntley would deal with Tenaya so he could couple with Belle again. Then it struck him clean to the heart as he veered around a small thicket of pines. What about Whit? He didn’t want to give up his pleasurable couplings with Whit, either. How did one go about such a thing, coupling with two people under the same roof? He had already planned on continuing to teach Whit the Grizzly dialect.

All of this pointless tramping about in the freezing snow! Huntley was getting too old for this. Every time his moccasins slipped on an icy outcropping, he cursed and thought of his comfortable drawing room with its rock fireplace. This expedition may have been the apex of all husking frolics when he was in his twenties, but lately these japes had begun to pale for him. He was more of a mind to find a woman to share his lodge with. Surely Belle would choose him. One could not escape the fact that poor Whit was forever doomed to be a half-breed, doctor or not.

They were near the base camp when Belle finally spoke to Huntley. “Fifty-six more Indians have surrendered along with Tenaya.”

Chief Tenaya sullenly sat on a rock before a campfire, clad in some mangy rabbit and squirrel skins. His robe was stitched together like a patchwork that had probably once been grand, but now it only looked as though it crawled with fleas, his bony elbow sticking through a bald patch. Belle instantly took off her bear robe and placed it over the old sachem’s shoulders. In turn, Whit took off his own greatcoat and placed it over Belle’s shoulders.

Bud leveled his rifle at the chief, but ten men already lounged around armed at the ready. And Huntley was irritated with Bud, so he ordered the shrimp, “Stand down.”

Huntley ceremoniously knocked the ashes from his pipe on a rock, but Tenaya spoke first. “What is the point to taking everyone to the plains of the San Joaquin Valley? My people don’t want anything from this ‘Great Father’ you’re always telling us about. The Great Spirit is our father, and he has always supplied us with all we need. Our women are able to do our work. Go, then. Let us remain in the mountains where we were born, where the ashes of our fathers have been given to the winds.”

Belle and Boling were the only two others present who could understand Tenaya’s words, and they looked to Huntley for a response. He told Tenaya, “If you have all you desire, why do you steal our horses? Why do you rob the gold digger’s camps? Why do your people murder white men, and plunder and burn their homes?”

“My young men believed the white gold diggers were our enemies. We now know they are not. We will stay here and be friends. My people don’t want to go to the plains. The tribes there are bad and will make war on my people. Here we can defend ourselves against them.”

Huntley said, “You must go to the commissioners and make terms with them. If you don’t, your people will again steal our horses, and kill and plunder whites. It was your people who robbed my stores, burned my houses, and murdered my men. If you don’t make a treaty, your whole tribe will be destroyed.”

Tenaya’s eyes watered with some conflict. “I’m old and you can kill me if you will, but it’s useless to lie to you who can beat us in your big hunts of deer and bear.” He sighed. “If I’m allowed to return to my people, I will try to bring them in.”

“To the Deep Grassy Valley?” Belle prompted, and everyone down to a man stared at her.

Tenaya nodded. “Yes. I have talked with my people and told them I was going to see the white chiefs sent to make peace. I was told that I am growing old, and it was well that I should go, but that young strong men can find plenty in the mountains, therefore why should they go? To be penned like cattle? My heart has been sore since that talk.”

Huntley, knowing the voluble capacity of Indians, concluded the talk by telling Tenaya he could take a few of his braves and go back to his people to give them his message. Huntley then called his company together for volunteers to go into the Deep Grassy Valley. They were drawn into line, and he asked for all who wished to go to the village of the Grizzlies to step three paces to the front. To Huntley’s pleasant surprise, each man stepped forward.