Chapter 1

The rain fell. It didn’t go from side to side or in any other direction; it just came straight down. Each drop seemed larger than the one before it and when the lightning lit up the sky the drops seemed bigger. Each one that hit the ground seemed to leave small holes in the dirt that I was riding my horse over. I hadn’t seen rain like this in about a year. It hadn’t rained like this in Arizona.

I named the stallion I rode Smooth when he was a colt. He had a bit of a dual personality. With me, he was a great, gentle friend and he was attentive to the slightest touch of the reins on his neck. I sang while I rode through the hills and across the prairie. When I did he tipped his ears back slightly like he was really interested in what I was singing.

However, with others, he was wild and unrideable. As was discovered in the last town I was in. A kid who was trying to make a name for himself was on the prod. He braced me, looking for a notch on his Colt, like many kids with a gun. I told him that I wanted no trouble and that he could have my horse; he could have him and I would walk out of town. The kid must have thought that he was a pretty salty cowboy. One broken arm, one broken leg, and one stove in side later he wasn’t looking for anything but the doc.

The singing from the saloon we approached got my horses attention; mine too. I knew that voice and knew this was going to be a rough night.

I sang a lot when I was riding. I guess it was from all the time I’d spent in the saddle herding cows. Cattle liked it when I sang. It calmed them when they were getting nervous. Even some of those old mossy horned steers got the edge off when I sang to them.

I got my voice from my Pa. My father was from Wales and we both had strong Welsh baritone voices. We came West when I was a little boy. He got killed when some men rode into our wagon train camp and started kidnapping women. They would just ride in, start to heft women up across their saddle horns and ride off. One of those women was my mother. My father saved her but he got shot in the head in the process.

My mother and I settled in the next town we came to and she took up a job of sewing and repairing the various bits of clothing the cowboys tore up in their daily duties. She also played piano at the church on Sundays and at the occasional box dinner social. I was fourteen when she died of influenza.

At the time I was almost six feet tall and weighed about as much as a half a shief of hay. I took over Ma’s sewing jobs and played the piano for the church, like she’d taught me. To say the men of the town didn’t respect me was no joke. The boys in school called me seamstress and more than once I had to go to the wall with someone over it.

My primary source of misery was Johnny Kash. He was from one of the more well off families in the area. He was a pain in my backside from the first day I walked into that school house. One day he went too far and said something about my Ma. I hit him straight in the face. Broke his nose, blackened both eyes and proceeded to mete out some justice on his body. After that he walked a wide trail around me and never spoke evil of me or my Ma again, at least not to my face or within earshot.

The folks in town treated me as more of a young man as opposed to an older boy, especially after I was paid with a colt stallion. Everyone told me to geld him because he was full of ruckus but I chose to leave him unaltered. I named him Smooth because his coat was sleek. I could afford his feed because the tailor shop made me a good living. Also, I was going to do anything I had to do to keep him. We had bonded.

I lived alone in the house me and Ma had shared. One morning, a tough cow puncher name Bald Curly Phipps came into the shop with a problem. He had a pair of buckskin britches that had a long tear down the seam in the back. He said he needed them because he was going to a dinner box social that night.

“I can’t very well walk in there looking for a woman with my backside hanging out.”

“I’ll do the best I can, but these are a bit worn out from the saddle.”

“Do the best you can. I want to make a good impression on a certain young lady. I’ve saved up my money to be able to get high bid on her dinner box.”

I repaired them up by sewing in a long thin strip of buckskin, a tough job on buckskin and I must have done alright because he married that girl and he said he had me to thank. After that, Bald Curly Phipps became my sort of father. He took me under his wing and taught me all the things that a young man in the West needed to learn.

He taught me to ride and herd cows; how to fall off a horse without breaking my neck. He taught me how to ride sliding over to the side of a horse to hide myself if I had a problem with indians. He taught me how to shoot both rifle and pistol. As it turned out I became a much better shot than a tailor.

When I realized that all men in the West carried a pistol, I began to carry one too. There were snakes, coyotes, and stupid, rough men to deal with. I carried my father’s pistol but I’d never drawn it in anger. Once I’d shot a rattler that I surprised before it could strike. But around town I’d had the reputation of being a quiet, peaceful young man that you just didn’t trifle with; especially after I’d put Johnny Kash down again.

I’m sure that as a tailor many saw me as less of a man than, say, a cow puncher like Bald Curly. So, as I got older, I kept to myself. I didn’t even have any ladies trying to get my attention. On the few occasions where I went to the saloon for a social drink, not even the saloon girls approached me.

Just after my seventeenth birthday, and the next dinner box social came around, I was going to stay home and catch up on some alterations and repairs to pants and shirts. However, the mayor himself, came and asked me to play piano because they wanted to have dancing and some members of the town band were refusing to play. They had some sort of feud going between themselves.

And that is how it came to be that on that Friday night I was playing the piano at a box dinner social. I noticed a really pretty little red-headed girl come in and place her dinner box on the table with all the other boxes. I’d never seen her in the years at school or around town and she was, in my mind, spectacular.

She was a little taller than most of the local girls I’d seen. She had freckles and bright green eyes. It was plain to see that she also had a nice figure and carried herself well. She looked around the hall and took a seat among the several other single ladies at the social. We locked eyes for a moment when she looked around and that flash of a moment inspired me.

I was playing my heart out, feeling that I was playing only for her, while every yahoo in town was trying to get her attention. She danced a few times with different fellas but never the same one twice. More times than not she politely refused. I kept looking at her but our eyes never met again while I was playing.

The whole purpose of the social was to raise money for the local church. They in turn used the money to aid local widows and orphans and those that occasionally needed a hand due to circumstances. The way it worked was that the local girls would make a meal for two, put it in a decorated box, and set that box on a large table near the bandstand. Then at the midpoint of the social, the dancing would stop and the mayor would auction off the boxes. The highest bidder would then sit with the lady who made the box and they hoped something would come of it.

All of the boxes had some sort of decoration on them so that a certain cowboy would know the box belonged to a certain girl that he was maybe dancing with or had feelings for. The surest way to start a fight was to bid against a fella when the girl he felt was his had her box up for bid. Of course some good natured bidding happened just to run up the price, but never to the point where the right guy lost out.

When it came time for the auction, I took the time to run out to my horse. I reached into the saddle bag and pulled out a leather bag with all the money I had in the world. I ran back inside as the auction began. The first box put up for auction opened with a bid of fifty cents. It was raised to seventy-five cents and finally to a dollar. The high bidder came forward, collected the box and the young lady who brought it then stepped out of the crowd and joined him.

I waited and finally the red-headed girls box came up and someone bid a dollar right out of the chute. I bid a dollar and a quarter. I was standing next to the piano and was easy to see. I was also easy to pick out because I had the lowest voice in the room. The fella bid a dollar and a half and I bid two dollars. I looked across the hall at who was bidding and I recognized Johnny Kash. He was one of the fellas that used to get under my skin in school. Well not tonight and certainly not with that girl.

“Two dollars and twenty five cents!” He declared boldly.

“Two fifty,” I rebid quietly but firmly.

“Three dollars,” he said defiantly.

Looking at me his hand dropped near the grip on his pistol.

Now it’s widely accepted that you don’t lay a hand on a gun if you’re dealing with someone who is not a friend. You don’t talk to a stranger and rest your hand on the butt of your Colt. I looked at him as he sneered back and loudly proclaimed, “Five dollars!”

That twisted it for him. Johnny Kash turned and high-tailed it out the door and my last bid stood. I walked up, collected the box and the red-headed girl stepped up to meet me. She had two plates in her hand as well as utensils. She was flushed from either the embarrassment or the thrill of two men fighting over her, as it were, and the price that was paid.

I walked her back to a table next to the piano and set the box down before pulling out her chair and waiting for her to have a seat. I then went and poured two glasses of lemonade and returned to take my place across the diagonal of the table from her and opened the box. Inside were two halves of a baked chicken, a large portion of potato salad and a collection of various greens, snap peas, and bell peppers and cut up and mixed together.

“This looks mighty good. My name is David O’Dell. The folks around here call me Dave.”

“My name is Belinda Sue Bartholomew. Why did you spend so much on this dinner box?”

“Because I saw you bring it in and I wanted to meet you. I couldn’t very well ask you to dance while I was playing the piano so buying the box seemed the best way.”

“But five dollars! That is so much money.”

“Well I can tell you before I take the first bite that just sitting with you is well worth twice the price.”

She blushed again and began to dish out the food onto my plate before filling hers. We talked and ate, the food was wonderful, and then I was approached and asked to begin playing because people wanted to dance. The look on my face must have been one of considerable pain because Belinda Sue patted my hand.

“It’s OK Dave. You go and play and I’ll sit here and watch.”

“I wish I could ask you to dance.”

“That’s alright. I’ve danced enough for one night,” she said sweetly.

I smiled and sat at the piano and began to play a bouncy tune that had many couples on the floor. The men who had bought boxes were dancing with the ladies that brought the box. While I was playing a man came up and asked Belinda Sue to dance and she politely refused, smiling at me as she did so.

A couple of songs later, I played a song that got her interest and Belinda Sue began to sing along. Her voice was clear as a bell and sweet and my feelings for her raced past interested, through cared about, and hit dead center at deeply in love. I sang along with her for the next song and people applauded. She blushed; I bowed and played on.

At the end of the night, I walked Belinda Sue out to her buggy and told her that I wanted to see her and get to know her better, she agreed. I asked her where she lived but instead of telling me, she said that she would come by my shop. I kissed her hand before she drove away.

I walked my horse back to my shop but I’m not sure my boots touched the dirt in the street. As I walked past an opening between two buildings I heard a familiar voice.

“So you think you’re smart bidding up her box?”

“She’s worth it to me, Johnny.”

“Is she worth your life?”

“Johnny, you know me. Is it worth yours?”

“I know you, seamstress! But now I’m gonna know you a bit better.”

With that he took a swing and caught me full on the chin. I staggered back and fell against Smooth. My stallion stood firm and didn’t let me take the fall I was heading for. Johnny followed up with another roundhouse that hit me on the side of my head and had me a bit dizzy. Smooth pushed back against me. It appeared that he wanted me to fight back, so I did,

Johnny Kash was a coyote and a bully. He was hell on wheels when he was bracing someone smaller or weaker. I was neither any more, which he should have remembered but, because I was quiet, I was seen as such. His next swing split empty air and then I loosed a flurry of hits to his face and body. He fell back, sitting in the dirt with blood running from his nose and from cuts above both eyes.

I stood there not pressing my advantage because he was clearly beaten and that was when he went for his gun. He was shaky, slow, and hadn’t yet taken the thong off the hammer of his pistol. I was pretty sure that he couldn’t see well through the blood running into his eyes from above both eyebrows.

“Johnny! Don’t do it!” I shouted.

“No seamstress is gonna beat me,” he mumble with a split lip and swollen face.

“Please don’t,” I begged.

Johnny must have thought that I was begging for my life when I was actually begging for his. He flipped the thong off his pistol as he stood up on shaky legs, and slowly drew out the gun. I slid the thong off of my pistol, hoping he would be too beat to point the gun at me. He wasn’t. I waited until what I felt was the last minute and drew and shot him through the middle button on his shirt.

He looked at me, surprised at the outcome of his evening. He dropped to his knees, fell over on his side, and died.

I put my pistol back in the holster and secured it with the thong. And that was when the world turned sour.

“Hey you!”

I turned towards the voice and saw the sheriff. He was running towards me followed by several men. As they got closer, the sheriff recognized me, and I recognized the men were from the outfit Johnny rode for and I knew this was going to be trouble. I turned my right side away from the approaching men and carefully flipped the thong back off my pistol. When they were close up and gathered around me, the sheriff asked, “Dave! What happened?”

“Johnny Kash started a fight. After I beat him, he drew on me and I had to shoot him.”

“You?” One of the cow punchers asked incredulously.

“Yeah, me. He hit me a couple of times and then I hit him back. We went at it and when he knew he was beat, he went for his gun. I begged him not to do it but he drew. I waited as long as I could but when he raised the gun towards me I didn’t have any choice.”

“You killed Johnny? Boys let’s string him up!” one of the other men said. He sounded drunk.

“Now you boys stop that talk right now,” the sheriff ordered. He looked at me.

“Dave, you better head home. I’ll calm these boys down.”

“Calm us down, hell!” said one of the drunken cowhands who drew a gun and shot the sheriff right through the heart. I immediately drew and killed the shooter. The other men were stunned at the speed of my draw and shot. I took aim on the others and told them to undo their gun belts and drop them.

“He can’t get us all,” one of the men said.

“No but you got the biggest mouth so I kill you first,” I said firmly.

Looking around at the other men, the loudmouth began to undo his gun belt. Then the rest of the men followed and dropped theirs as well.

“Now, head back to the saloon.”

They took off half running, half staggering, and I got on Smooth and quickly got back to my place. Knowing it wouldn’t be too long before a bigger mob returned looking for me, I grabbed a carpet bag and stuffed some pants and shirts into it. I took a piece of paper and for a reason I still don’t understand, I wrote a note to Belinda Sue.

“Belinda Sue, I had a fight with Johnny Kash and had to shoot him. One of the men from his outfit shot the sheriff and I shot the man who did that. I’m leaving town. I’ll be back for you someday. I’d be proud if you’d wait but I understand if you don’t. Dave”

I left the note on the table where anyone could see it and lit a shuck for Arizona.

Northern Arizona was the place where I truly grew up. This is how I got hired on as a hand when it was found that I could handle a gun and shoot.

I was riding up a hillside when I heard gunshots. Riding to the top of the hill and quickly over it to not be skylined, I saw two men pinned down by eight indians. We didn’t have a lot of problems with indians in West Kansas. So I wouldn’t know an Apache from a Sioux but I knew unfriendly ones and I knew when men were in trouble.

The two men were shooting in a small hollow with a dead horse behind them. Just as I came in sight of them I saw that one of the men had run out of ammo and was just trying to keep out of sight. I got off Smooth, pulled out my rifle, and drew a sight on one of the attackers who had stopped and was watching. I squeezed the trigger and he jumped and stiffened before falling off his pony.

No one noticed right away, so I took a shot at another and missed. They were moving so fast that I decided that the rider was too small a target, so I shot the horse of one of them. It stumbled and fell, spilling the rider who landed funny and didn’t get up.

The remaining six attackers now took notice and when their attention was away from the two white men, the man that still had ammo shot another indian. With their numbers down to five and not knowing how many were shooting at them, they cut country. Mounting Smooth, I rode down the hill to the two men. They were exhausted and both were wounded. I got down, rifle in my right hand, and walked to them.

“I don’t know who you are but the only thing that would make you more welcome would be if you were a doc.”

“Name’s Dave. I’m not a doc. How bad y’all hit?”

“I got one in the shoulder and Jim’s got one in the leg. I had three shots left and Jim was empty.”

“Let me look at Jim. You don’t seem to be bleeding too much.”

Jim had a clean wound. The bullet went straight through leaving a bad hole where it came out.

“Do either of you have an old shirt or a rag?”

“I do. My saddle bag is on my horse. They shot him first. Good horse.”

I found a shirt in the saddle bag and used my skinning knife to cut a bandage. I pulled Jim’s pants down because he didn’t want me to cut them off. I could have sewn them back together but I didn’t want to waste time. The wound where the bullet went in was a simple hole but came out really bad. The wound was bleeding but the blood was not shooting out. I went into my own bags and took out some sewing supplies. Once a tailor always one, I guess. I cleaned the exit would with some water and then sewed the wound closed before wrapping the leg.

“You’re not a doc?”

“Nope. I was a tailor.”

“Do all tailors shoot like you That was some mighty fine work from the hillside. I’m Andy Press.”

“Hello Andy, I’m Dave O’Dell.”

“You looking for a job?”

“I could stand one.”

“You’re on. We pay $40 a month and found.”

“I’ll take it. But I gotta tell you I’ve not done a lot of work with cattle since I was a young boy.”

“You’ll learn. Just keep that rifle handy.”

I cleaned up Andy’s shoulder. The bullet went in but didn’t come out. He would need a real doc for that.

“That’s the best I can do. We need to get you two back to your outfit. Will your horse hold two?”

Andy chuckled a little and pointed. I looked and there was Smooth and he had mounted one of the dead indian’s ponies.

“Do you want to risk putting a saddle on that mare?”

“Sure. She shouldn’t have too much of a problem if she was carrying a rider.”

Once Smooth had pulled back from the mare, I put the saddle from the dead horse on it. The pony had no problem with the saddle and I helped Jim onto the pony and the three of us rode southwest to their place. It was a good sized spread and as we rode on I saw it had a lot of cattle spread around. We rode to the house and as we tied up the horses a woman, about the age my Ma would have been, came out of the house. Seeing the two wounded men she went straight to Jim and checked his leg, helping him down from the pony.

“What happened, Jim?”

“Paiute. Eight of ‘em. They killed my horse and we was about done for when this fella cut loose with as nice a rifle shot as I’ve ever seen. He got two of them and when Andy got a third and they took off. That big stallion of his mounted one of the indians ponies and so we were able to ride back. Andy took one in the shoulder and I took one in the leg. This fella sewed me up like a regular doc.”

“Mister, thanks for taking care of my man. I’m Mary Anderson.”

“Andy hired him on, Mary; at $40 a month and found.”

“Good. Let’s get you inside.”

We went into the house and Mary got Jim Anderson’s pants off and looked at the bandage. She nodded at the quality of the work. Then she went to work cleaning Andy’s wound. She actually took out what looked like a long pincer and reached into the wound and pulled out the bullet. Andy complained a lot but when the bullet was out he felt a lot better.

“What is that thing?” I asked.

“It’s called a forceps. Docs use them to pull out bullets and arrowheads and the like. Now I can sew up the wound unless you’d like to?”

“No ma’am, you go right ahead.”

And that was how I came to ride for the Triangle P. Over the next year, I learned about cattle and how to work them. I fought indians a couple of times and rustlers once. I became a known man but for good reasons. I was still the quiet, calm man I was before I left Kansas but now I was known as a man not to trifle with.

Occasionally, I rode way south to the new town of Flagstaff for supplies and I always found myself in the Crystal Palace Saloon while I waited for the wagons to be loaded. While there, I met Ruby. She was a dance hall girl. That is to say, she found men to dance with and then to take her up to her room for a half an hour or so.

She was always after me and I never took her up on her offers of comfort or fun or whatever words she used to describe fucking. After about a year she was sitting at my table making another pitch for me to sample her wares.

“Dave, why won’t you ever spend any time with me?”

Let me describe Ruby. She has a great personality, but the years had made her face rough. She had large teats that shook when she walked and danced. Her hair was brown and she always wore a lot of makeup. The men who took her up on her offers didn’t do it for her personality. They would be looking for pussy and she was selling it. I wasn’t buying it. My heart was still back in Western Kansas with Belinda Sue.

I smiled and answered her question.

“Because Ruby, I have a girl waiting for me back in Kansas and it wouldn’t be right to be with another woman when I’ve got her.”

“Dave, you’ve been here a year. Maybe you can hold out that long without any loving but do you believe that she can? Women have needs.”

Since I’d joined up with the Triangle P outfit, I’d spent the better part of the year in the snow and cold of the mountains trying to keep cattle alive in the harsh weather. The men were as harsh and I soon got a reputation as a man that if trifled with was as likely to shoot you as to kick you. I don’t know why I turned mean ... that’s not true. I knew the reason; I was made to leave Belinda Sue.

Ruby’s words rattled around in my head like a pack rat in a hollow stump. How did I know Belinda Sue was waiting for me? We only spoke that one time at the dance. How did I know that she wasn’t riding some punchers cock?

I sat in the saloon chair with Ruby rubbing my cock through my pants, her hoping that it would fire me up enough to take her to her room. I wasn’t that drunk. Neither Ruby or Danielle or Lisa or Susan or any of the other women at the Red River Saloon were the equal in my memory of Belinda Sue. I’d seen enough of the saloon girls to imagine that the hair between Belinda Sue’s legs was as fiery red as the hair on her head, and her bottom was as soft as anything I could imagine.

Ruby’s words had made tonight different, for some reason. Yes, tonight was different. Tonight not only was I not interested in Ruby; I was actually repulsed. I’d been gone away from the woman I loved for long enough. Yeah, I loved her. I decided that I was going home in the morning. Damn the law and the punchers and the snow and the cattle.

Her voice had haunted me for almost a year. Sitting in the saddle all alone watching cattle it was her voice that made me look up and wonder if she was looking at the same stars as me. I missed everything I remembered about her. I gave Jim and Mary Anderson my notice, got paid and began the ride home with a spare saddle bag full of grub. Smooth sensed something different in my demeanor as I saddled him and began our ride home. His walk was quick and he seemed more alert and alive than he’d been in a year.

The first night out, I’d found a spot under the boughs of some firs. Their branches would scatter any smoke my fire produced. I didn’t want any attention from drifters or indians. I picketed Smooth with a blanket over him and the snow around him cleared away enough to allow him to browse. I cut off several boughs and made my bed from them before I set down my blankets. It was as comfortable as any other bed I’d made out on the prairie.

Laying in the dark, on the hard ground, my hand holding my cock, it was her voice that made me finish. The sock I used over the past year to keep from making a mess was all stained and in need of another proper washing. I fell asleep and dreamed of her. After Ruby’s words, I wondered if Belinda Sue had gotten my note and if she waited for me or if some young cow puncher had taken care of her ‘needs’.

It took me the better part of two weeks to get back to West Kansas. As I mentioned, it was raining, hard when I rode into town. Smooth was walking at a good pace but I knew he was as tired as me. He was going to get a good feeding and a warm place to sleep tonight. The singing as we passed the saloon let me know that Belinda Sue was still in town. She was singing in the saloon. I wondered if she was in the same line of work as Ruby.

I rode Smooth to the livery and got him bedded down. The hosteler offered oats and I bought corn. Smooth was going to have it good even if it turned out that I wasn’t. I walked out of the livery stable and headed towards the voice that had haunted me for a year. The rain ran off the front and back of my hat and fell off the slicker to the muddy street.

I got closer and the singing stopped and a rousing round of applause started up. The folks appreciated her. As I walked I prayed that they didn’t appreciate her thirty minutes at a time. I stepped up on the boardwalk and stopped. It occurred to me that I might not be ready to walk in there and see Belinda Sue in the arms of a man before he took her up to her room. What would I do? Would I shoot another man for her?

I stopped again, just outside the doors. There was a lot of laughter and a general sense of carousing going on as I took a deep breath and pressed the doors in. The bar ran the length of the saloon to my left side and straight ahead was the stage, on which there was a piano player; a not very good piano player, I might add. To my right were several rows of tables full of men drinking and playing poker and a couple of faro tables and behind them, the stairs to the rooms upstairs.

I looked around for Belinda Sue but didn’t see her. I then looked to see if I could see anyone from Johnny’s outfit. I didn’t see anyone who I recognized or who might recognize me. I felt sure that I’d changed enough, with my long blond hair and scruffy blonde beard, that no one would recognize me.

I went to the bar and ordered a rye. The bartender was a man I’d never seen. He poured and I paid and then I slowly took in the people in the room. I was a stranger so I drew some looks but no one took me as familiar to them. I saw many women taking men up the stairs and coming down later to look for another customer. I was about to leave and find a room for the night when a man got up on the stage.

“Heya heya. The Royal Dance Hall proudly presents Belinda Sue.”

The bad piano player began to play and she walked out to a round of applause. She walked to the center of the stage and began to sing. Her voice was still wonderful and strong enough to be heard over the clamor of the saloon. The piano player must have been really drunk because he kept changing keys while he was playing and I could tell that Belinda Sue was not a happy girl.