Chapter 8

I came down with a spell of coughing starting on a Friday evening that extended non-stop until Monday morning in the midst of a bone-chilling day that was dreary and rainy with little squalls of wind that made you shiver if you didn’t have a jacket or coat to take off the edge.

Kate was trying her best to be helpful but everything she did or said sort of set me off and made me irritable for no reason. I figured it was the result of a high fever that had taken hold of me sometime during that weekend in a grip that had me shaking like a schoolgirl with the hots for some romance-minded cowboy with only one thing on his mind.

I did my best to hide a little bag of bloodstained hankies from Kate’s sharp eyes. The last thing I needed was for her to call in some drunken sawbones to screw my body up worse than I felt.

Usually, I would give it to Kate from behind early in the morning with her doing all the work and milking me like I was a cow needing to drained of all my cream before I exploded from the pressure. This weekend was different and we both knew it because I had no interest in matters of a carnal nature and that was totally out of character for me no matter how sick I was at any time of day or night.

She made up some sort of an excuse on that Monday morning and I knew she was up to her eyelids with my bad temper and she was fit to be tied to get something hard inside her and take off her edge of needing cock. I knew it didn’t matter where it came from or how ugly the guy turned out to be because all she was focused on was that it was super hard and that the guy was sober enough to finish what he had started sooner rather than later. I had seen her in that sort of funk and it was not a pretty picture and that’s a fact.

She would use her big mouth to get things on track and not give up until she felt it right down to her pretty painted toes. I figured she would hit on one of the broke cowboys down at the saloon and bribe him with some free booze until he delivered the goods and scratched her itch the old-fashioned way from behind with her face buried in the pillow to muffle her screams.

I have to admit the entire affair made me a bit jealous, but I knew it was all my fault and there was nothing I could do about it, unless I got some miracle cure that stopped my coughing and eliminated the signs of things getting far worse with the damn bloody hankies.

When everything else failed, I used my last proven remedy. The rye whiskey slid down my gullet like the sword of swift justice. I half expected it to cause my last breath to pass my lips. Instead, a sense of smooth well-being swept over me and I had an urge to take another shot for good measure. Of course, I didn’t do it because I was still only desperate and not crazy like some of those renegade Indians jumping the so-called reservation to murder and mutilate the mostly defenseless settlers out on the open range.

I shoved the hankies into the coals of the burning wood fire in the heating stove in the corner and watched them disappear as if by magic from the intense blue heat.

After that, I just sat in the big rocker chair and hauled out my Navy Colts and started cleaning them both from scratch one at a time just in case I had an unwelcome visitor. The scent of “big mouth” Kate was all around me and I didn’t mind except it started me to thinking about what she was doing at that very moment.

I had this picture in my mind that was a punishment of sorts. I mean that the punishment was for me because of my ill treatment of her, when all she was doing was trying to keep me alive a little bit longer, even if it was for her own convenience and lifestyle. I purely didn’t object to her devious little ways and her transparent physical needs that I increasingly was unable to satisfy.

I pictured her half naked.

The naked part was her lower body and her hairy snatch was waving in the breeze like some sort of prize for the longest cock in the room. Some drunken cowboy with dire need for a sharp razor was holding her arms down over the edge of the disarrayed bed and her posterior was raised high into the air by the sloppy pillows tucked under her little pot belly to give the yahoo on her back more leverage in navigating her wide open female business.

The sounds of her pleasure was rubbing on my nerves like a sheet of sandpaper making me tremble with rage and wanting nothing more than to put some holes in all their foreheads and let them slump down to the floor dead as a doornail and unsmiling on their final journey to hell.

I checked my store of ammo and wiped all those gleaming rounds with the clean rag a second time getting a little bit of comfort from knowing they weren’t store bought but created by Kate and my hands up in the foothills with only the prairie dogs watching with their beady little black eyes.

Sometime, I felt like they were laughing at me and Kate and I could only see red and wanted to rid the rolling hills of their impudent presence. Then, I accepted the fact they were only God’s innocent creatures and meant no harm by their curious stares.

I let Kate do the sharpening of my knives.

She always looked so dangerous just sitting there with the stone between her legs and grinding the blade like she wanted it to be sharp enough to cut through flesh and bone without effort.