Chapter 14

Oh, I met her there in a border town
We vowed we’d never part...

There was no place to get a meal and no place to get a room. Following the store owner’s directions for the best place to make camp, we made our way out to Amarillo Crick.

Backed up against the eastern bluffs along Amarillo Crick, we set up camp. Indira was not much help with her feet in such bad shape. I managed to find a safe place where I could hobble Red, Blue and the one horse I’d kept after selling the other one at the store in Adobe Springs. I set up the tent and built a campfire over a stone ringed fireplace, which had been used many times in years past. I put a pot of coffee on to boil and put two cans of beans in a pan to heat. Once I had that done, it was time to tend to Indira’s feet before gangrene set in on her.

They were that bad.

I spread a blanket on the ground near the fire and turned to her, “Indira, you’ve trusted me so far, will you trust me to do what’s needed to make your feet well again?”

“I trust you, Joss. Are you going to bathe my feet? Is that what you were asking?”

“Indira, I am going to bathe your feet, your body, and my body at the same time. I can smell your hair and I can smell your body. A woman needs to bathe often so she’ll smell good for a man. I hope you’ll understand that I can’t bathe you proper if I’m still clothed as we wade into water deep enough to bathe our bodies.”

“I trust you, Joss. In my heart, you are my man and I have already given myself to you. No one else would help me unless I gave them my body, then you were there for me. Tend to my feet, make me well again and I will tend your needs forever if you’ll let me.”

“Let’s get your dress and gown off you so we can bathe you ... We’ll talk about forever, on another day.”

“That is alright, Joss. Now, I too, get to see you naked. I have only seen my fat, ugly uncle naked and it made me sick to see him like that. You are a big, pretty man and I know you will look handsome to me when I see you naked.”

I turned my back and took off my hat, boots, socks, pants and shirt – then I turned quickly to lift Indira, pulling her dress and gown over her head. Indira is very beautiful and there was no way I could keep my cock from rising. When I held her in my arms to carry her into the water, her hand brushed my cock and she looked up at me.

“Joss?”

“Yes.”

“That’s your cock, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I couldn’t help it. When I saw you naked, it started to rise up and get hard.”

“Joss, I like you a lot already and one day soon, I want to be your woman.”

“We’ll talk about that another time too, Indira. Now, you sit here on my knees and let me wash your feet and legs. Your feet will burn in this water at first, as I wash the blood and dirt away, but the hurt will go away. We need to wash the dirt, blood and dead skin from your feet so we can put medicine on them.”

After washing her body all over twice with the soap, her butt three times and her pussy once, I washed her feet for the third time. She cried and jerked her feet back, but she never complained about it hurting. I carried her from the crick and wiped my feet on the blanket. Placing her butt-first on the blanket, I looked down at her. She was wet, her long black hair was dripping and she was smiling up at me with her legs open wide and her pussy barely covered in wet, black hair.

I’d laid out the jar of honey, the apple cider vinegar, and bottle of castor oil before we bathed.

Using a spoon, I mixed equal parts of them in the stone mug and stirred it like the man at the store told me. I knelt in front of her with each foot on one of my upper legs.

“This is going to burn like hell at first, but when the fire goes away, your feet will feel better. When I carry you into the tent, I’ll roll up another blanket to keep your feet propped on.”

I gripped her right leg by her ankle and used the back of the spoon, gently smearing the mixture on the sole of her foot, up the back of her heel and across the bottoms of each toe. She had blisters between her toes and I held them apart as I smeared them. Then I lifted the left foot and it was even worse than the right. I was trying to be as gentle as I could, but she jerked her foot back and cried big tears as I did the best I could for her.

When I was through, I turned to get another blanket so I could fold it and keep her feet raised.

“Joss, you have a pretty butt, even if it is pure and white.”

“Indira, you have a pretty brown butt and I’ll be glad when your feet are healed so I can kiss your butt and your back.”

I took the horses to the crick and watered them again, then hobbled all of them to graze, except for Red. When dark came, I moved Indira inside the tent and folded the blanket again to prop her feet up.

I brought Red up close to the tent and tied him. Putting some more oats out for him, I told him to keep watch for me so I could get some rest.

During the night, Red began to grumble deep in his chest and I slipped out the back of the tent with my rifle and my Colt. With my back against the stone wall, I looked out into the darkness until my eyes could make out the shadows. I saw three men near the crick. They were slipping past the smoldering coals in the fire ring and I could see them plain. I raised my rifle and shot the one in the middle. He fell, and I shot the one in the front when he turned toward me. I knew I’d hit him when he fell backward into the crick with a splash and hollered until his screams ended with a gurgle.

I lost sight of the third one, but I heard him running over the small loose rocks near the crick bed. I stood and saw him against the yellow clay of the high bluff. It was a long shot in the dark, but I heard his scream and knew I had hit him solid.

Indira was calling for me and I crawled back inside to quiet her and let her know I was alright. She calmed down and I slipped back out to stand next to Red. Not long after, I heard Blue begin to grumble and fuss. I eased around the bluff where we were camped, to see the outline of a man trying to lead Blue. He was still hobbled and wasn’t moving fast. The man was pulling on his halter when I took aim at his lower back. I wanted to take his legs from under him. When I shot, I saw him fall forward, yelping like a wounded dog before his sounds quickly became a whimper, then silence.

He was quiet for the rest of the night, but I kept watch beside Red.

At daylight, I put my britches and boots on, then walked out to the crick to where the men lay dead. One was in the shallow water. He was hung up on some rocks and couldn’t drift off. The third man I shot, was still alive, but he was gut shot and I finished him off. He wouldn’t have lived much longer even if I hadn’t shot him again.

When I walked out to where Blue and our other horse was hobbled, I saw the last man. He had a hole through his lower backbone, but his fingers were still wiggling. I raised his head and he looked at me with his eyes wide. He tried to talk but he couldn’t. I stood and put a bullet in the back of his head. He was just like that other man who was wounded, they weren’t going to live much longer and both were better off dead.

I scouted up and down the crick, then out among the boulders, but found no horses. I figured our horses and whatever else they could steal, was what they were after. I loaded two bodies on Blue and two on the other horse, then saddled Red. Picking Indira up, I pulled her dress down over her head. She was laughing and I knew she felt a little better. I lifted her up and put her on Red, behind the saddle, then mounted up with the lead ropes in my hand.

I wasn’t about to take the time to bury these men out here among the rocks and boulders. I hated to just dump them in the deep part of the crick and mess up the water downstream, so I hauled them back to Adobe Springs. There was no law in the small buffalo hunter’s settlement, and there was no undertaker. I tumbled the four men off my horses and was about to ride out when one man stepped in front of me.

“You just hold on there a minute, Boy. You ain’t aiming to dump them dead men here in the street and ride off. Get your ass off that horse and bury ‘em, you’re the one who killed ‘em.”

I nudged Red with my boot and he took a step around the man. The man went for his gun on his hip and I jerked my Colt out so fast, he dropped his gun and stumbled backward with his hands raised.

About that time, the store owner who waited on me yesterday, walked out. Then another store man from across the street walked over. They looked the four men over and the first one told me, “Young man, you have done us a great service. These four men have been stealing from everyone here. They’ve been breaking in our stores and homes for over a month. I reckon they messed with the wrong man last night.”

He turned to the men gathered in the street and on the steps of the store, then told them, “I’ll pay fifty cents apiece for the burying of these four men. I don’t give a shit if you bury them in the same hole, just bury them out back, deep enough so they don’t stink up the place later.”

As a fight broke out over who was going to bury the men ... I turned Red and we left them to their own troubles. We’d done our part and we were through with them.

Back at camp, Indira asked, “Joss, are you going to bathe me again this morning?” as I reached up to catch her when she leaned over and fell from Red’s back into my arms.

“You pull your dress over your head and sit here real pretty and naked for me while I tend to the horses, and we’ll take another bath together.”

A week later, though her feet were still tender, Indira was walking without a limp. I had taken her to Adobe Springs and bought a pair of thick deerskin moccasins for her to wear, and two pairs of deerskin britches. I also bought her two deerskin shirts with leather fringe on the sleeves and she loves wearing them now. I liked the way the deerskin shirts looked on her so much, I bought three that would fit me. Indira told me that I look good with my deerskin shirts and denims, with my gunbelt strapped over my long shirttail. I had never thought of me looking good to someone else, but she made me feel good about myself.

Her feet are still sore but she walks without a lot of pain now. I kept washing her feet and putting the mixture of castor oil, honey and vinegar on her feet each day. During this time, I started teaching her about guns.

We started with the rifle, and after firing many rounds of .44 cartridges, she was able to hit her targets when she took her time. Next, we started on the handgun. This took a lot of practice before she was able to shoot the heavy Colt by using both hands and pointing instead of trying to aim.

Early each day, we’d saddle up and ride for hours through the hills and valleys, up and down the canyons around Amarillo Crick. Then up and down the Canadian River basin. She’s able to mount up by herself and she’s getting good at riding and controlling her horse as we race across the flats. She braids her hair and she looks more like a young Indian girl than a Mexican, dressed in her deerskin clothes. Her new britches fit her butt so good, each time I look at her, it makes me want to fuck her from behind.

She’s begun sleeping naked next to me each night. She told me that her feet were almost healed completely and that she was ready to be my woman. I can’t help from being hard around her during the day. Then at night, she wants my cock between her legs as she backs her butt up against my belly. I’ve made up my mind that when she wants it bad enough, she can get on me and take my cock inside her pussy for the first time. How and when is up to her now, but I didn’t tell her that. I kinda like the thought of waiting for a woman who wants to fuck me so bad, she does it all by herself. This was a new way to love a woman from all the other ways I’ve been taught and learned on my own.

I killed a small deer and she knew more about skinning it than I did. When we had it skinned and gutted, we washed it in the crick, then made an open fire-spit, using a green willow sapling and two heavy forked limbs I’d cut off, for the ends of the sapling to rest on. We gathered more drift wood from along the crick bank and cut a few dead mesquite bushes to keep the fire hot enough to cook our deer.

I had a three pound sack of salt, and as the deer roasted, Indira would sprinkle just a little on the meat now and then. The juices were cooking out and dripping on the fire, causing it flame up and cook the meat faster.

We cooked it over the open fire for most of the day, and the smell was making both of us hungry. Using a skinning knife I’d taken from from one of the men I’d killed, I sliced off a thick slab, handing it to Indira on the end of the knife. I took another skinning knife that I’d scavenged from the saddle-tramps back in Indian Territory, and sliced off a thick slab for myself.

The meat tasted good but there was no way to keep from getting our hands greasy as we ate. When we’d eaten our fill, Indira sliced off more meat and laid it in a pan. She took the one cast iron pot I carry and filled it with water, then she cut the meat up in small pieces and put it in the pot before placing it on the fire.

There were some wild onions growing out back where the horses were hobbled. She took her knife and went back there to get a handful of them. Once she had the roots cut off, she cut the onions up to put in the pot. She used nearly half of the black pepper I had, then salted it just as heavy, while stirring the pot before putting the lid on it.

I had been watching her work on the pot of deer stew and when she was through, she turned to face me smiling. Without a word, she pulled her deerskin clothes off and tossed them through the doorway of the tent.

Right there in broad open daylight, Indira squatted naked beside me and began to loosen my shirt.

“Joss, now is the time.”

“Here?” I asked as I helped her take my clothes off. My cock was already hard at the sight of her naked body.

“Right here. No one can see us unless they come up the creek and we’ll hear them walking on the loose rocks if they do. I am ready to love my man. I have waited long enough and I want your cock inside me.”

“You’ll have to help me when I tell you that I’m about to come. If we’re going to ride horses and join the roundups of wild horses and cattle, you can’t be riding with a baby in your belly.”