Chapter 7

It was the arrival of the Pinkertons that got Sam Chisholm’s hackles up. Up to that point, he was fairly satisfied that he would be able to calm things down and turn the scales in favor of his female boss.

He had tangled with the Pinkertons before on a couple of occasions.

Sam had always felt it was their interference that caused the outbreak of funeral processions up to boot hill in San Antonio during the range wars that even pulled the Mexicans in just because they were generally handy with a firearm and didn’t have much to lose all things considered.

The hard-case investigators were all mean back-shooting rattlers woken up from a siesta by some dang fool not paying attention to where he was walking. They all sported their much-favored wax polished moustaches like it was a costume requirement to hold down their job. It made look like they were all related in some way like the close-knit families up in the hills on the other side of the Mississippi. He had no love of the merciless enforcers sent into chaos and conflict for one side or the other and with no objective except to decimate the other side.

It was beginning to look like Miss Sally was fitting in comfortably in her new role as the schoolmarm and the youngsters were a lot more focused now that they had a firm guiding hand to show them the way. Of course, in a lot of cases, the need for the children to help out with chores and the like caused them to be late for school or beg to be let out earlier than usual but Sally was flexible in that way and often gave them extra work to do at home to make up the difference. Sometimes, crops just had to be taken in or animals had to be tended and there was no option to put it off to another day in the frontier environment where survival was still the key ingredient of everyday life.

Sam was overjoyed to have exclusive poking rights with the pretty young schoolteacher from the East but he was still a bit cautious about getting too entangled with petticoats and skirts on a permanent basis. His only hope was that it would at least last out the duration of his term of employment in the valley feud and that she would not change her sights to a more stable partner for long-term dalliance.

Things were starting to get a little nasty with the bushwhacking and the night riders swooping down on the settlers and the small campfires of the sheepherders interested only in their flocks and not inclined to get involved in a shooting scrape with hired gunslingers.

The morning after those night time shootings, Sam was thinking about the increasing pressure on the Texas Cattle Consortium and the growing discontent on his female boss’s mind about the swelling opposition and mounting losses. He knew that Belinda was a multi-faceted female and that the responsibility of the overall project management rested on her shoulders but she had her own needs and her own agenda that had nothing at all to do with the success of using the free government grass in the valley to fatten up her steers before moving to markets back east.

Even now, he was climbing the stairs to her private office to discuss their options of responding to the latest violence swirling around them like a tornado of trouble rising up when one least expected it.

Belinda was standing on a chair working on the tricky kerosene lamp that had a tendency to stop working at the most inopportune times. The sight of her bare ankles was enough to arouse his manly juices but he pretended like he was bored with the need to report to the “Boss” like some lackey with his tail between his legs. He much preferred the balky female in the bent over position than up high above him like that acting like she was in control of his every action. It wasn’t that he minded working for a pesky female, it was just the way she expected him to follow her every order like he was some mindless fool.

“Come on in, Sam, this silly lamp is acting up again. I think the kerosene is not as good as the Saint Louis mixtures despite being a whole lot cheaper and not as smelly.”

Sam had never considered that comparison before but he had to agree with her thoughts about the fuel being the problem and not the lamps.

“I suspect you might be right, Miss Belinda, that jackass over at the livery stable needs to find something better than the dirty burlap bags to filter out the muck from the kerosene before he sells the stuff to cash-paying customers.”

He knew that most of the thrift minded westerners still used the multi-candle lights that chased the darkness for reasons of cutting costs. The rumors of the new-fangled lights that ran on some mysterious power inside a wire was on the horizon but he didn’t give it much mind because being in the dark didn’t bother him much at all. At least in the dark, he didn’t have to worry about the element of beauty in his bed partner. All she had to do was to be in the right place and the right mood for loving and it didn’t make any difference at all.

In Miss Belinda’s case that was not the problem because she was, without a doubt, one of the prettiest women he had ever had the good fortune to poke both hard and often.

She looked down at him and flicked her skirt at him like she was some hussy on the stage doing tricks for the paying customers looking a flash of female flesh. Belinda knew exactly what she was doing and which buttons were the right ones to get him all hot and bothered. Just as he expected, only moments later he was mounting her from the rear with her bent over the huge wooden desk transported all the way from the other side of the Mississippi to the frontier town.