By then Fargo had all his clothes off. ‘‘In that case,’’ he said, and swung his legs behind hers. Before Myrtle could think to skip aside, he hooked his feet around her ankles and swept her legs out from under her. It brought her down on top of him and he caught her as she fell. Squealing in delight, she sought to push free, but she did not try too hard. In a twinkling he had her on her belly. ‘‘You asked for this,’’ he said, and brought his hand down on her fanny with a loud smack.
Arching her back, Myrtle dug her fingers into his leg. ‘‘Oh, my! Do that again!’’
‘‘Happy to oblige.’’ Fargo smacked her other cheek and she wriggled and opened and closed her legs.
‘‘Again! Please, again!’’
Grinning, Fargo smacked her bottom so many times, he lost count. She gasped and shivered and tossed her head from side to side, and when, after a while, he stopped and rolled her onto her back, she flung herself at him as if she were attacking him.
Her fingernails raked his shoulders and biceps. She bit his lower lip and then his upper and then nibbled from his chin to his ear and back again. She did not nibble lightly, either.
‘‘Oh, yes,’’ she moaned. ‘‘Like that.’’
Making love to her was like wrestling a mountain lion. She was never still, not for a second. Her hands, and her mouth, were everywhere, and at no time was she what could be called gentle. She liked it rough. The rougher, the better.
Fargo felt a drop of wetness trickle down his chin. He touched it and his finger came away deep scarlet at the tip. ‘‘You bit me so hard you drew blood,’’ he declared.
Myrtle did not respond. She was too involved with kissing and licking and biting. A fingernail dug deep into his wrist and he almost yelped. Her teeth raked his neck, virtually scraping him raw.
‘‘Damn, woman,’’ Fargo groused. ‘‘Slow down.’’ But his request fell on deaf ears.
Suddenly Myrtle gripped him down low, and squeezed, and Fargo nearly cried out.
Her fierce antics were working; she had him hard, good and hard, and raring to bury himself in her. But when Fargo rolled her onto her back and went to part her legs, she sank her teeth into his shoulder and gripped his manhood to where he thought it would rupture. Pushing her back, he snapped, ‘‘It isn’t a broom handle!’’
Lust hooding her eyes, Myrtle Frazier chuckled. ‘‘What’s wrong? Don’t tell me the big, tough man can’t take it. Cry if you want. I won’t mind.’’
‘‘Bitch,’’ Fargo said.
Myrtle laughed. ‘‘If you want me, you must work for it.’’ She gave his member a yank that he swore nearly tore it off. ‘‘Some men can’t take it. They are too weak. How about you? I took you for tough but maybe I was mistaken. Maybe you are mush inside.’’
‘‘Here is your mush,’’ Fargo said, and slamming her onto her back, he pressed her legs wide with his knees, quickly aligned the tip of his throbbing lance with her moist slit, and rammed up into her.
‘‘Ohhhhhhh!’’ Myrtle bucked like a mustang, nearly heaving him off. ‘‘This is how I like it!’’
‘‘Good,’’ Fargo said, and gave it to her again. Rarely was he this rough with a woman. Most preferred tamer lovemaking.
Myrtle gripped his shoulders and churned her hips in wild release. ‘‘Yes! Yes! Oh, yes!’’
Fargo glanced toward the wagons. They were far enough away that no one should hear her, or so he hoped. ‘‘Keep it down?’’
Bucking in a frenzy, Myrtle tossed her head from side to side. Her back was a bow, her hips rising into the air with each violent thrust.
Fargo had to hand it to her. He had lain with some wildcats in his travels but seldom one as wholeheartedly lustful as she was about sharing herself. As if to demonstrate, she left bloody furrows in his back from his shoulder blades to his hips.
‘‘Do that one more time,’’ Fargo growled. In his estimation she was getting carried away.
‘‘Do you like it, big man?’’ Myrtle husked. ‘‘Does it make you want to throw back your head and howl?’’
Holding her down, Fargo drove up into her. The night dissolved into a blur, the wind seemed to have died, the ground did not exist. There was him and there was her and that was all there was. For her part, Myrtle flung her arms around his shoulders and clung to him as if she were drowning and he was a log that would keep her afloat.
‘‘Harder!’’ Myrtle enthusiastically urged. ‘‘I want it harder!’’
Fargo did it harder and harder, but she still wasn’t satisfied. Sliding her legs over his shoulders, he bent her in half. On each inward thrust he rose onto the tips of his toes, driving into her with all his weight.
‘‘There! That’s it!’’ Myrtle’s teeth found his jaw. Her nails clawed his ribs. ‘‘What you do, don’t stop!’’
A vague sense of something not being as it should nipped at Fargo’s consciousness. He became aware of the wind on his naked body, of their surroundings, of the dark. Thinking that her outcries had been heard, he shot a quick look toward the freight wagons but saw no one. He was lowering his head to mold his mouth to hers when he happened to glance to the west toward the distant mountains, and the blood in his veins congealed into ice.
Someone was watching them.
Not twenty feet away, motionless as a statue, was the darkling silhouette of a person.
Fargo was so surprised, he almost stopped stroking. But he did not want to let on that he knew they were being watched so he kept driving his member into Myrtle while groping for his gun belt. It had been right next to him. But in the sensual fury of their coupling they had rolled away from it and now he had no idea where it was.
Fargo’s unease mounted. The figure might be from the freight train, except that whoever it was had come up on them from the other direction. It could be a local, but locals did not wander around at night alone and on foot. Not if they were fond of living.
The answer hit him with the force of a physical blow.
If it wasn’t a mule skinner—
And it wasn’t a local—
It must be an Indian.
And if it was an Indian, then it might well be a mortal enemy of the white man; it might well be an Apache.
No sooner did the realization dawn than Fargo heard a sound that confirmed his hunch: the twang of a bow-string.
11
Fargo exploded into the moment the instant the bow twanged. He thought he knew where the Colt was and he flung himself toward it. Myrtle was clinging to him so tightly, her arms and legs clamped fast, that he took her with him, rolling both of them over, not once but several times, and when he did, she cried out. Not from pain or surprise.
She was gushing.
Something pricked Fargo’s side. He thrust his arm toward where he hoped to find his holster and frantically ran his hand back and forth but it was not there.
Keenly aware that the next arrow might hit him dead center, Fargo tried to sit up but Myrtle’s thrashing hindered him. ‘‘Get off!’’ he urged. But he might as well ask her to get up and dance a waltz. She was lost in the sweet oblivion of release. The sensations between her legs eclipsed all else.
Then his questing fingers bumped something, an object that moved when he brushed it. He clawed with his fingers and snagged his gun belt. In a thrice he had the Colt out and cocked and was twisting toward the silhouette with the bow—only the silhouette was no longer there.
The Indian was gone.
Fargo glanced right and left and then over his shoulder. He cocked the Colt and lay there waiting for Myrtle to spend herself. She had no inkling of what had happened and was impaling herself on his pole again and again and again.
‘‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’’
Fargo wished he could quiet her. He might be able to hear the patter of stealthy footfalls or the drum of hooves. But she went on and on until finally she moaned and collapsed, her limbs turning to putty as she oozed into a languid sprawl.