Chapter 3

Sometime during the night, Corporal Harris managed to get his throat cut and his hair lifted without letting out a warning or making a single sound.

Caleb shook his head in disgust because he went to sleep with a premonition about the danger in the darkness. Now, the patrol was short a man and worse of all, they were missing no less than a half dozen fine cavalry mounts as well. The middle of the night theft was an impressive coup for the Indian renegades.

He didn’t begrudge the military officers their nocturnal pleasures with the three widow ladies knowing that they faced the rigors of frontier survival without the comfort of male companionship for many years to come. Lord knows, he had done his best to comfort them in their grief of loss the best he could under the circumstances.

That did nothing to change the fact that they were all on edge due to the clever raid into the middle of their nighttime camp.

They buried poor Corporal Harris with full honors but he was wrapped in a canvas tarp so none of the men could see the terrible sight of his missing hair.

Caleb knew the raiding party was not being vindictive in their actions.

It was an instinctive reaction to the struggle for survival in the shadows of the moonless night.

The patrol from the fort headed out the next morning in hot pursuit of the raiding party. Caleb did his best to change their mind because he knew from experience the haste of seeking vengeance generally resulted in more casualties and no sense of justice even if they did manage to catch the bastards that did their dirty work under cover of dark.

One of Caleb’s greatest fears was to get killed in the same way.

The thought of going to sleep and never waking up again because some buck had gotten lucky in sneaking up on him was enough to make him gulp down a second cup of coffee before he even had a chance to collect his thoughts.

He saw Eliza standing in the doorway of the tent with her nightdress all blown up and her naked legs reflecting the glow of the morning sun like twin peaks to be conquered with no thought to fear of heights or worry about her rejection of passionate ardor.

Before the patrol moved down the arroyo after the escaping reservation jumpers, The Captain had given Caleb a sealed envelope addressed to the next of kin of the recently departed young Corporal Harris.

“Make certain this gets into the postal bag on the next stage going back east, Caleb. Corporal Harris deserves to have his parents given all the facts of his service and his sacrifice for his country.”

Caleb took two Indian scouts and an older former lawman called Mister Hardin with him to the railhead. He wanted to deliver the letter to the Wells Fargo agent personally and watch it get shoved inside the leather pouch headed back to Saint Louis. It would also give him the opportunity to pass along the warning that a band of renegades were loose in the area and that all those folks on isolated farms and ranches should be on the alert for a sneak attack.

The station crossroads next to the railroad bed was rutted deeply from the pouring rains that had been fierce the past week or two and some small children were playing in the puddles the way that bored little ones entertain themselves when adults are too busy to pay them much mind.

It looked like the Wells Fargo crew was a bit under the weather with slow, measured movements and eyes still blurred with lack of sleep.

Caleb figured right away that they were probably getting a taste of the elephant down to Miss Maggie’s place on the other side of the tracks. It was notorious for late night card games and imported females that were only interested in making money without getting out of bed.

He had sampled some of the newly arrived Chinese gals the previous month and found that they had impressive skills in pleasuring a man in ways that most American gals never considered seriously.

The Chinese females were mostly working over at the combination bathhouse and laundry making a lot more money and losing a lot less dignity than flat on their backs in Maggie’s den of iniquity. He exchanged his bag of dirty clothes for a nice paper wrapped package of fresh washed clothes and recognized the young Chinese girl as the one that had offered him her flanks with a smile over her shoulder that almost broke his heart. In a way, he was glad she had managed to find a position of employment that fit into the more civilized way of things. If nothing else, it was a lot safer than working in a place where gunslingers and evil men bullied all those weaker than them and less likely to complain to the appointed authorities.

He knew she remembered him because after she handed him his laundry, she reached down and cupped his business with her tiny gentle hand and smiled up at him with that inscrutable look the Asian girls all possessed like it was stamped into them at an early age. She looked back in the corner at the older “mama-san” and whispered in his ear,

“Chan Ling like too much the big man boom-boom tool. Mama-san no let us do boom-boom with customers and Chan Ling is so lonely in that place between her legs.”

Caleb had to smile.

The English was not perfect, but he got the gist of what the girl wanted just by looking into her coal-black eyes. She was desperate for human contact of the carnal variety and she saw him as her best chance to reach that plateau of pleasure that she wanted like a cat wants her cream and will lick it up with a long pink tongue until the plate is absolutely clean and dry.

We all headed over to the steak emporium and chowed down on some prime steaks served up with the outsides nice and brown and the insides still as pink as Miss Chan Ling’s tongue.

The boys headed to the card game and he headed to the hotel with Chan Ling trailing behind like she was delivering some package ordered by him from the laundry. In a sense, Caleb did order a package, but it was Miss Chan Ling herself all naked and sweaty with his sustained pounding in all sorts of positions on the noisy old bed. He hoped the guest or guests in the next room didn’t mind the way he was banging the big old bed into the motel room wall non-stop for the better part of an hour.

The little Chinese girl had a pussy a whole lot tighter than he remembered and Caleb wondered if it was due to her period of abstinence while working at the laundry. He considered turning her over and seeing the stretching ability of her nether regions but he was having so much fun inside her feminine folds that Caleb decided to leave that for another day.