Page 37 of Sure as Shooting

Huntley appeared to consider this. “Yes, but this bottom land has become impassable. He may have found the best way across the river.”

They went to observe while Whit, with his fervent “love of the beautiful” imbuing his every cell, splashed his horse into the water, its hooves kicking up cascades of clear water that sparkled in the morning sun. It was almost charming to watch, Belle and Huntley smiling like proud parents. Sashaying up the opposite slope, Whit started to utter a triumphant whoop when the sod gave way under his horse’s hind feet. They slipped backward into the rushing waters, both bodies heading steadily toward a thirty-foot waterfall.

As Belle and Huntley galloped toward the scene, Whit flailed back toward the opposite shore, his reata coil swinging in his hand. She knew that Whit had gotten into the habit of keeping the reata around his horse’s neck. Belle and Huntley plummeted into the stream along with a couple of other boys, and by the time they reached Whit, he had succeeded in turning the reata around a sapling a few times, thus securing the poor horse, her hind legs projecting over the falls.

Many long minutes of splashing, stomping, and shouting later, Huntley managed to secure another reata around the horse’s hind legs, and they walked the poor stricken creature, drawing the reata, so she could recover her feet. But Whit’s surgical instruments and medical bag had been attached to her saddle, so they had to remove everything to dry.

Huntley sent the command ahead with Captain Phil Din. The trio examined Whit’s damaged stores and wrung out his blankets while the horse shook herself off, shivering.

“I’m glad the sun is shining, and there is not much breeze.” Belle had laid her bear fur robe on the rocks to dry next to the men’s greatcoats and gloves.

“We should continue on in our wet clothes,” Huntley asserted. “It’ll take hours for everything to dry, and we can’t afford that.”

The surgeon said, “Let me at least air out my medicines, figure out which ones were destroyed. Hey. Terrell told me that at the last abandoned village, they found baskets of burnt, hulled acorns.”

“Yes,” said Huntley. “Natives like burnt acorns as much as Yankees like burnt beans, so our idea to starve them out must be working if they’re eating those.”

Belle added, “But they hull the acorns for transportation. They must have been taking them to some distant village.”

Huntley straddled Whit’s saddle that they’d placed on the rocks, rubbing tinned bear grease into the seat to waterproof it. With only the thin covering of his soaked shirt plastered to his brawny chest, a smattering of silken hair peeking from between the undone buttons, Belle was getting hot again. Huntley said, “When I asked him about the acorns, Vowchester told me that so many questions made his head hurt.”

Whit rose from where he squatted next to his medical bag and swaggered over to Huntley. With hands on hips, he looked down at his bedfellow. “That’s their usual answer for everything.” Belle, too, paused. She already knew Whit well enough to interpret that keen, assessing look in his face when he had an idea. And this idea was indeed crafty, she surmised. “Rub grease into the saddle horn,” he instructed Huntley.

Huntley proceeded to do so, his palm pumping the horn as though he milked a cow. Humorously enough, he continued to prattle on, “Vowchester can barely speak English, so he’s not much use as an interpreter. Where’d you get this absurd buckaroo saddle, anyway?”

“Some fellow in San Francisco,” said Whit.

“We ought to get you a regular Spanish saddle. Do you really need this saddle horn to hang onto? You’re a good enough rider by now.”

Whit dropped to his knees so abruptly, Huntley looked up and shied back against the saddle’s cantle. “I need the saddle horn so we can swing under the willow trees,” he said with conviction.

Belle thrilled with the knowledge something stimulating was about to happen. “Swinging under the willow trees” was a position in her pillow book, her favorite position. She quickly whipped her bear robe so it flapped into place at the saddle’s base, and she curled up between the two men like a circus spectator.

Huntley said, “Under the willows? There are hardly any—”

Straddling the pommel, Whit snaked a hand behind Huntley’s neck and kissed him fully. Belle always reveled in the sight of the two men twined together, gorging on each other’s mouths. It was fine, because there was no other woman to compete with, no other woman to be jealous of. She didn’t risk losing one man to the other, as they seemed to enjoy feasting on her as well.

As Whit licked Huntley’s tongue, he brutishly manhandled the erection cradled in Huntley’s buckskins. Huntley let go of the greasy saddle horn and leaned back on his hands submissively as Whit deftly unbuttoned his buckskins, even lifting his ass to enable Whit to slide the pants down.

Unsure what Whit’s game was, Belle only knew that in “swinging under the willow trees” the man was impaled upon a dildo affixed to the swing’s seat. As she kneeled up behind Whit to unbutton his broadfall, his intent became clear. She swiped a long arm to grab the tin of bear grease, pressing three fingers into it. At these frigid temperatures it was sticky as pine tar, but once her hand warmed it, it liquefied nicely. She had used it to grease wagon axles and as a hair pomade, but never as she was now—coating the buckaroo saddle horn lovingly, as though it was a long, curved prick.

She fully expected Whit to settle himself down on the horn, so she gasped and fell on her behind when Whit suddenly took hold of Huntley by the upper arms and lifted him. Whit fell back in front of the pommel as well, setting Huntley down upon the saddle horn.

Huntley settled with a grunt. With half-closed eyes and a remote grin, he muttered, “Now I’m swinging under the pines.”

“That’s it, Major.” Whit encouraged his friend to bounce up and down on the horn, riding it like the native Californio Spaniards rode, with such short stirrups they were practically kneeling in the saddle. Belle curled herself around Whit’s broad back to watch, breathing steam against his neck. Huntley’s cock bobbed enticingly as he braced himself on the pommel and fucked the horn, his head thrown back in enjoyment. Whit whisked the tin of grease from Belle’s paw, and he greased up Huntley’s pole with two fists from stem to stern. “You like it when everyone admires your big cock. You liked it when I slapped this big tool.” He smacked it now in demonstration, and Huntley flinched with pleasure. “It gets bigger every time I spank it. Look at this big, fat, beautiful prick, just dripping with hunger. You’re riding that shaft like it’s a fat cock sliding up your ass.”

Belle reached around Whit to unbutton Huntley’s shirt. She wanted to see his chest as he lewdly corkscrewed up and down on the saddle horn. Yanking the edges of his shirt apart, she rubbed each tight, beaded nipple with her greasy thumbs then became afraid he’d orgasm right there in Whit’s fists, the way he twitched and hissed like a man possessed.

Whit applied a dollop of grease to Huntley’s glans, rotating his thumb about. “You liked having a long, thick cock up your ass, didn’t you, Hunt?”

Huntley grinned lopsided as though he were oiled, eyes barely focusing. “I like being speared by a red man’s long tool.”

“Well.” Whit grinned with an evil intent. “Then maybe you’d like spearing a red man.”

Belle was utterly taken aback when Whit rotated like an acrobat so he faced her, gripped the base of Huntley’s cock, and sat right down on him.

Gyrating his hips lasciviously, Whit sank down in pleasure with heavily lidded eyes. Huntley, however, seemed to wake up, cinching Whit’s hip in his claw and groaning something fierce.