The Rattlesnake Season (28 page)

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Authors: Larry D. Sweazy

BOOK: The Rattlesnake Season
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“I have no money,” he said quickly.
The woman smiled, his hand still in hers. “It’s on the house. It is the least I can do for
el capitán
. He was a friend to many of us here.”
He looked away, felt her warm touch, then looked back to the pleading in her eyes. To his surprise, he could not resist the woman, did not want to, and nodded yes.
She smiled, and let go of his hand. “Follow me.”
Josiah made his way to the end of the bar, weaving through tables, and men standing at the bar, always keeping the woman in his sight. She stopped, grabbed a full bottle of whiskey from underneath the bar, and met him at the bottom of the staircase.
“You don’t mind if we have some quiet, some privacy?” the woman asked.
“No,” Josiah said.
He watched her make her way up the stairs, taking in the full length of her beauty. Before going up, he looked over his shoulder, saw a disappointed look on the face of the girl who had first propositioned him, and almost decided not to follow the woman.
He wasn’t sure what he was getting himself into.
It was like he was outside of himself, being driven by feelings and needs he did not want to understand. He didn’t know where he was or what was going to happen. And after sitting on the bench with Pearl, he didn’t care. Acting precariously was something new to him, or at least it was something that had been asleep, deep inside of him, for a lot of years.
“Señor?” the woman said from the top of the stairs, waiting, looking even more inviting with a sulky glow coming from behind her.
Josiah nodded, and bound up after her, leaving whatever uncertainty may have existed behind him.
They went down a long hall, lit dimly with sconces on the wall, flickering at eye level. There were several doors, all closed. The noise from downstairs muffled whatever activity was going on inside the rooms, but there was not a question that most, if not all of them, were full.
There was another staircase that led up at the end of the hall. The woman made her way steadily up the last set of stairs, looking over her shoulder on occasion with a slight smile, to make sure Josiah was still behind her. He was close enough to smell a light floral fragrance on the back of her neck.
There were only two doors on the third floor. The woman stopped, fished a gold skeleton key out of a hidden pocket in the tight-fitting full-length black skirt she was wearing, and opened the door farthest from the stairs. Standing firmly in the doorway, she motioned for him to enter.
Josiah complied, pushing by the woman, grazing her full body as he did. The woman did not flinch, did not look away or appear to be insulted by the touch.
A large bed sat in the center of the room, with a thick mattress, covered with lacy pillows and a velvet bedcover the color of a field of violets. There was a vacant fireplace on the far wall surrounded by a few fancy chairs and a table. A chest of drawers with a fine China bowl and pitcher on top of it sat on the opposite side of the bed.
The woman set the whiskey bottle on the table in front of the fireplace, poured two glasses full, without asking anything of Josiah, and offered him one. He took it, clinked it to hers when she offered, and downed the drink in one gulp.
He knew what was coming next, and as nervous, uncertain, and out of practice as he was, the one thing he wanted at the moment was to feel alive, to feel the heat of this woman beneath him.
Pearl had set him on fire, brought him back to life with one grazing kiss. Even though he had just met her, he could only wish it were her with him, alone in a room with an inviting bed. But that was impossible, and would never—ever—happen. He needed to forget about Pearl, forget that she was available, favored by Pete Feders, but opposed to all Rangers. And the last thing he needed to think about was why he had been dead to desire in the first place, what dark sleep Pearl had woken him up from.
His need to touch and be touched was so strong that it nearly knocked him from his feet as the whiskey spread through his entire body, joining the other drinks, pushing him as close to a drunken stupor as he’d been in a long time.
The woman steadied him, opened her arms to him, and before he knew it, Josiah was on the bed, his eager hands knowing exactly what to do, parting her naked thighs with a hunger that he did not think could ever be sated.
CHAPTER 24
They sat, eating by candlelight. Josiah had never tasted beef that was so tender, so delicious. Almost magically, a feast had appeared on a series of silver trays set outside the door in the middle of the night.
The bed was a bundle of twisted linen, pillows scattered across the floor, boots and clothes mixed in. The room smelled of flowers and the woman’s musky scent. Hours had passed since they had journeyed up the stairs and into this world of their own making.
The woman sat silently and watched Josiah eat, barely touching her own plate of food. “You must have been starved,” she finally said.
Josiah looked up, enjoying some savory vegetables that seemed to melt on his tongue. “I can’t remember the last time I had a meal like this.”
“Good.”
“Thank you.” Josiah put down his fork, sat back in the high-backed chair, and wiped his face with a soft white cloth napkin. The food, and the expenditure of emotion and physical desire, had nearly sobered him up. “I will never forget this.”
The woman watched every move he made, studying him, almost as if she were trying to anticipate what he was he going to say before he said it.
There was no question that she knew a lot about what made a man happy. Her skills of anticipation and movement were greater than any woman Josiah had ever known.
She was not the first woman of her type that he’d ever been with. It was a long war. But it had been a very, very long time—before he married Lily, never after, and never with a Mexican woman until now. He liked this woman, knew there was something different about her, and wanted to know about her.
“You do not normally do this, do you?” he asked.
“That’s not what I was expecting you to say.” She was wearing a thin floor-length robe, thrown over her shoulders, her body fully and comfortably exposed to him. The woman bit her lip, shook her head no. “I leave the business to my girls these days.”
“The captain was more than a friend to you, wasn’t he?”
“Why do you say that?”
“His horse brought me here. I didn’t come here on my own.”
“I know.”
“How so?”
She shrugged with a wicked smile that meant no harm. “I know everything that comes and goes on this street. I know that you are a Ranger who nearly lost his life in San Antonio, and that you are a loyal friend. A quiet man who doesn’t question what’s asked of him, but would die for the right cause. There are few men who match that description.”
“Juan Carlos has been here.”
“Yes, of course.”
Josiah sighed. “Is he here now?”
“He is close.”
“Good. I will not worry about his well-being.”
“There is no need.”
He nodded, and stared at the woman. “You know more about me than I do you. I don’t even know your name.”
The woman laughed. “But you do.”
“How so?”
He waited for her to answer, but the woman said nothing. Instead, she stood up, walked over to the window, and looked out.
“My name is Suzanne del Toro,” she said, her back to him.
“Fat Susie,” Josiah whispered.
“
Sí
,” the woman said. “Much to my chagrin,
el capitán
called me Fat Susie—and only he could get away with it.”
She walked away from the window, climbed back into bed, and beckoned Josiah to join her. He didn’t hesitate.
Morning came quickly. Soft gray light filtered into the room as Josiah readied himself to leave. The street below was quiet, the rooms below them empty. There was no music, no hint of anything that had occurred the night before, except the regret that was slowly beginning to creep inside Josiah’s aching head.
Suzanne remained in bed, wrapped in a sheet, a sad look on her soft brown face. “I’ll never see you again, will I?”
He buckled his gun belt and adjusted it on his hip. “I have to go home to Tyler. I have a son to care for. After seeing to him, I need to join the rest of the Frontier Battalion at the Red River.”
“Just like Hank. Always off somewhere.”
“Would you really want a man under your feet all of the time?”
“I think you could get under my skin,” she whispered.
Josiah blushed. “I’m going to leave you the captain’s horse. His wife set out orders to have her shot.”
“
Ella es una perra de mal corazón
,” Suzanne spit, her lip instantly curling up in a hateful sneer.
Josiah shrugged. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you said.”
“She is an evil-hearted bitch.”
“She’s something, that’s a certainty.”
“I will gladly keep the horse. My namesake.
El capitán
would be happy that I have her. I had her taken to the livery last night so there is no need to worry about her well-being, either.”
Suzanne stood up out of the bed, letting the sheet fall off her naked body. She wrapped her arms around Josiah’s neck and pressed herself firmly against him. “
Adios
, Josiah Wolfe. You are welcome here anytime. Do not forget me.”
Regardless of the impending regret, he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulled her closer to him, nuzzling his face into her neck, tempting himself even further to kiss her fully on the lips. They had not kissed, had not crossed that forbidden line, which he would not do—unless he knew it was something she was comfortable with; so far she hadn’t shown any sign, either.
It surprised him that leaving her was so hard.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for everything, Suzanne del Toro. Don’t worry, I don’t think I will be able to forget you.”
He pulled away from her, walked to the door, opened it slowly, stopped, thought about going back and kissing her anyway, but knew he couldn’t, then exited with haste.
He hurried down the dark hall and the remaining stairs, the sconces long since extinguished.
Fat Susie—the horse—was nowhere in sight when he stepped outside the saloon. The street was empty, save for another horse, a tired-looking swayback chestnut mare tied to a post several buildings down from the saloon. The sun had barely broken over the horizon, coloring a gathering of tall thunderclouds in the west a deep angry red.
Josiah tried to ignore the sky, and what it might imply about the fortune of the coming day; he was worried less about the warning than about the man who had just stepped out of the alleyway next to the saloon, a six-shooter in his hand, the barrel trained squarely at Josiah’s head.
“Don’t even go thinkin’ about goin’ for your gun,” the man whispered.
Josiah froze, his eyes glued to the man’s gun, a Colt Peacemaker just like his. The man was as tall as him, but probably weighed seventy-five pounds more. It looked like all muscle. His black skin gleamed with perspiration in the morning sunlight, and he looked like he’d been riding for a while. His outfit was dusty from Stetson to boot toe, and his shirt was torn across the shoulder—the Negro looked more than a little frayed, like it’d been a while since he’d had some rest, a good bath, and a decent meal.
Josiah had failed to watch his step, his awareness and mind still lost in Suzanne’s bed. If he got out of this mess, there’d be time to chastise himself later. It did occur to him though, pretty quickly, that if the man was going to shoot him, he’d be dead already.
“I wouldn’t think of such a thing,” Josiah said.
He had very little time to consider his alternatives, but he had to consider that the man might be the Negro who was riding with Patterson, his posse, and the Irish tracker, O’Reilly. He also had to consider that it was possible the Negro was the same man Scrap said he saw riding off after the ambush that took McClure’s life. He had to question why the man had not shot him when he had the chance, instead of just holding him there, a gun to his head on an empty street.

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