Showdown at Yellowstone River
By Angelia Sparrow and Naomi Brooks
Copyright 2010 by Angelia Sparrow and Naomi Brooks
ISBN# 9780982602355
Smashwords edition published by Pink Petal Books at Smashwords
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El Paso, Autumn 1884
The early sun peered through the narrow windows in the thick adobe walls and fell right into Matt's eyes. He rolled away from the light, his arm coming to rest across the waist of the pretty senorita who was sharing his bed.
He buried his nose in her sweet black hair and cupped her soft breasts in his hands. He didn't have to get up just yet. No sense rushing the day, not with Santa Fe Jack awaiting him at noon.
A soft nuzzle on the back of his shoulder drew his attention. The pretty girl's even prettier brother nibbled his neck and then kissed him with great enthusiasm when he rolled over.
“It's not time to get up,” he mumbled.
The boy laughed softly so as not to disturb his sister. “Mama has been up for a while. Shall I go get breakfast?”
“Let Rosa get it.” He kissed the boy deeply, tasting him. Sweet Miguel, who always said yes, no matter how rough he got. He felt Rosa stir at his back.
Matt rolled out of Miguel's arms and kissed Rosa. She smiled at him in the early light. “Rosa, sweet, bring up some of that breakfast I can smell your mama making?”
She laughed. “Si. Oh, Matt.” She kissed him again and bounced out of bed, her lithe brown body as naked as a rock outcropping. She put on her underthings and dress before hurrying downstairs.
Matt returned his attention to Miguel. The boy was one of the best kissers he'd encountered, and he enjoyed himself a minute before pressing Miguel downward to take care of the morning hardness caused by waking up sandwiched between the lovely Ortegas.
Miguel took his time licking, his clever red tongue flickering over Matt's neck and collarbones, ribs and nipples, making him groan with need. When Miguel closed his lips over Matt's cock, Matt sighed and gave himself over to the youth.
“Quickly, boy, there's food coming,” Matt urged and was rewarded with hard suction and Miguel's busy tongue swirling all over him.
The sound of Rosa's tread as she carried the tray to the door made him shoot off, shoving deep into Miguel's mouth and feeling the young man shudder around him as he gagged. Miguel had told him more than once how much he enjoyed that particular sensation.
Miguel was back in his arms and being kissed before Rosa entered to set a tray of food on the bed for the three of them. Mama had indeed been busy. Fresh tortillas, eggs ranchero, and beans filled the plate. He scooped some of the eggs and beans into a tortilla and started eating. If Jack got him today, he could do no better for his last meal than Mama Ortega's fresh tortillas.
As Rosa started teasing him again, feeding him a bite and then kissing him, he really hoped Jack didn't get him today. The Colts in their custom holsters hung on the post at the foot of the bed, the little tooled tombstones that marked each of his kills seeming to dance mockingly in the early light. He was tired of using them. He could stand to wake up like this every morning, with kisses and good food.
Matt let her tease. Both of the Ortegas were so young and pretty; he felt flattered they'd come to the bed of a middle-aged man like him. Not that he was bad-looking, just a bit beat around and lived-in. Gun slinging hadn't been the easiest life. Losing the War before that had left a few marks, too. But, he knew women still looked at him on the street. The bad ones smiled brazenly and the good ones blushed daintily, but they all still looked.
Miguel moved the tray off and pestered him for more kisses, which Matt gave willingly. Maybe, if Jack didn't get him, he'd stick around, put down some roots. He liked El Paso. He liked the Ortegas.
He heard the church bell at the Mission ring ten o'clock. There were worse ways to spend the last hour and a half of his life than making love to a pretty girl and boy.
Chapter One
Dakota Territory, 1886
The streets of Williston bustled around Matt with the energy that only a trading town in its first growth has, an excitement rivaled only by the boomtowns of silver and gold. Williston had neither. Rather, it sat where the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers met, a crossroads for trade among settlers, trappers, foresters, and the local tribes.
The trading post and a loose collection of houses had sprung up when Fort Union had been built. The town proper had officially been chartered about a year before, and many of the buildings were so new their boards still oozed pine-sap from the haste with which they'd been erected, as Matt had learned at the expense of his shirt.
Matt hated it on sight. It was going to be a prosperous little place, the sort where a man could make a living without half-trying, if he was in the right trade. It also looked incredibly boring. The only excitement other than a low-key saloon was the church picnic announced on signs scattered about town.
He preferred the wild lawlessness of Dodge City or Tombstone, but those cities were long behind him and even a gunslinger got old. Pistols were a young man's game and he was nearing forty. Old men were predictable, and Williston would most certainly be as well. He could get used to it.
A pair of dowdy matrons paused in their clucking to watch him as they stepped out of the general store. He knew he was handsome as ever. His smile, and its attendant dimples, still made men check up on their wives. He tipped his hat and flashed all three dimples at them.
He ran a hand through wavy brown hair that was just showing the first gray. He wondered if they would continue to giggle like schoolgirls if they saw his eyes go lethally cold over a gun. Enough men had, but none of them had lived to tell the tale. He knew that after a shoot-out, most of the women who'd watched him stand in the street wanted nothing more to do with him, no matter how handsome they had found him before.
But today, unlike almost every other man on the street, he wore no pistols.
After Santa Fe Jack had shot him in the leg two years before down El Paso way, he'd quit. He'd got the sly bastard, but during those long nights of healing, he'd decided to hang up his guns and settle down. No more gun fighting. No more trouble.
When he had hung up his guns, it meant all the way. The pearl-handled Colts resided at the bottom of his saddlebag and he had no bullets for them. Getting shot once was enough for him. He'd have the scar and weak leg for the rest of his life.
Since then, he'd drifted. He'd ridden herd on a drive going up to Abilene, got caught in a range war over water rights up near Iowa, and then holed up in Sioux Falls when the weather had turned cold, working as a farmhand on a horse ranch. He'd taken to the work and the horses had taken to him. With the spring, he'd worked west again, laboring on the railroad and then just riding.
Now, autumn found him in Williston, of the Dakota Territories. As he limped into the Land Office, he saw a pretty red-haired girl twirl her pink parasol and wink one big brown eye at him. Maybe he'd stick around.
~* * *~
The Dakota territory winter melted into spring and Matt was quite comfortable in a little sod house on a quarter-section spread about two miles west of town. It wasn't much, just him and the vegetable patch he'd dug and manured, the chicken coop and the milk cow. He had a one-room sod house, a solid barn and a good corral. It felt strange to put down roots and stay in one place more than a season or so.
He'd filed his intent to homestead at the land office and was committed to work the hundred and sixty acres for five years. At the end of that time, he'd need to show what he'd done in order to keep the land.
He worked harder than he'd ever done in his life. His days started early and ended late, and he ached all the time. He'd gotten used to soft beds in hotels or boarding houses, good food in cafes, long days of idleness, and then fifteen minutes of anticipation followed by ten seconds of sheer grinding terror. It had been a soft life and had made him soft, too.
Now, his bed was the ground. His meals were what he could throw together at the end of the day, and he was sick and tired of it. He didn't want to see one more pot of beans. It was high time to get married.
A wife would see to everything. She could cook and make his place a real home instead of a place he slept. He'd tease her and bring her pretty things. She'd keep the vegetable patch and the chickens, so he could have eggs for breakfast instead of cold beans and hoe cake. He'd never make her kill one though. He'd do that for her.
Eventually, there would be strong sons to help him with the horses and pretty daughters for him to cosset like he did their mama. The thought of Rosa Ortega watching him ride away in the dark before dawn, her swelling belly hidden below the narrow window, kept recurring in his memory.
Leaving hadn't troubled him then. He'd ridden away from dozens of women. Mama Ortega had been after him to take the wafer and marry the girl, settle into something respectable. After long consideration, and many talks with Rosa, he'd done the only thing his wanderlust had allowed. He'd run.
Now, he wondered whether he should wire to El Paso. The baby would be a year and a half, big enough to travel. He decided he would, soon. He'd been wrong to go. He knew that now.
He'd send money for Rosa and the baby to join him. Maybe, even enough for Miguel to come along. He could use the help.
To marry, he needed that money and a real house. A one-room sod cabin was fine for him, but he wanted better for his wife and children. He had an idea how to get all he needed.
~* * *~
Spring made Matt restless, like it always had. He asked questions of the farmers in town, and learned how to put his garden in right to take best advantage of the short Dakota growing season. He made sure everything was settled and vanished for a few days.
He returned to the farm with four mustangs on a lead. Through the lengthening days, he worked at gentling them and teaching them. By June, they were saddle and harness broken. He sold three of them down in Deadwood for a hundred dollars each and vanished for two more weeks, only to return with four more horses.
The big buckskin stallion was taking longer than the others. Matt knew it would take more time to get the horse to trust him. So he kept it, called it Brutus for its stubbornness, and worked with the others as well.
~* * *~
The mustang money was the talk of the town and, soon enough, they saw what he was using it for. First, he'd wired to El Paso, said John Hill, the telegraph operator. When the reply had arrived the next day, Matt had still been in town, buying supplies.
He'd crumpled the telegram up and walked out of the office without a word. John had sworn he'd seen tears on Matt's face. Of course, any man would cry learning his son and wife were dead, he said. Someone named Padre Lorenzo had wired Matt back that Rosa Ortega and his son, Mateo Felipe, were buried together after a diphtheria outbreak.
The soft-hearted ladies of the town clucked over this news and resolved to be extra nice to the poor widower.
Matt hired the Smith boy, Luke, to see to his garden, chickens and cow, as well as help in the corral. He paid Parson Johnson's wife, Harriet, a dollar a week to come out every other day, bake and put up some meals and tidy up.
He started putting up a two-story frame house. Harriet, an incurable gossip who had inspired her husband to preach more than one sermon on controlling the tongue, put it about that the house would have running water in the kitchen, running hot water--a luxury unheard of outside of big city hotels--a real bathtub and a water-closet when it was finished. She said that, at the moment, he had a little kitchen table and chair, a nice wood cooking stove with warming ovens, a comfortable easy chair and a big double bed. The downstairs was mostly finished. The bed, however, sat in an empty room, all in pieces, waiting to be taken upstairs. He planned to leave most of the furnishings to his wife.
She also talked about his revolvers. Not the rifle that everyone kept behind the kitchen door to protect his stock, but rather those matched pearl-handled Colts that she'd found in the bottom of a drawer she'd been tidying. The special tooled-leather holsters seemed to tally a dozen deaths, each marked with a little stamped tombstone, for mild-mannered Matt.
Not only did Matt not wear the shooting irons, but he didn't fight at all. One bleak November afternoon not long after Matt's arrival, Ed Tanner, a failed prospector, had tried starting a quarrel with him at the Purple Garter saloon.
Although Ed's accusations of cowardice grew louder, Matt ignored the man. As Matt finished his whiskey, Ed, wobbly from his own beer drinking, threw a roundhouse punch. Matt ducked the punch and walked away.
The Colts were the quiet talk behind fans and in buggies. Their mere existence led to much more interesting gossip being created about Matt. Because of his lack of weaponry and the Tanner incident--which had grown in the telling until Matt had been knocked on his ass and both eyes blacked before crawling out the door--most of the town considered him as yellow as the rocks that gave the river its name.
He'd learned a lot more about the lay of the land since he'd come to town. He'd learned how gossip flew fast and furious among the isolated folks. A woman buying cloth for a new dress was enough to keep the folks gabbing for three days. There weren't too many women in Williston yet. One or two more came every month, but it was still a man's town.
The few women who lived there were mostly already married. Harriet Johnson, Elizabeth Williams, the banker's wife, and Mary Madison, the schoolmistress considered themselves the doyennes of Williston society. They made everyone their business and ruled their households with as much iron as they could manage.
The three prairie doves of the Purple Garter wouldn't be considered marriageable by most men. Catherine, the owner, stood tall and middle-aged, her brown hair going gray and her impressive voice capable of carrying half-way to the church when she called closing time. It was a rare man who would even consider her as a wife. Matt knew he couldn't tangle with her. Ardis and Melanie, although younger, were no less acquisitive than their employer.
The few teenage daughters of established families had more than their share of suitors. The pretty redhead was no well-dressed saloon girl as her forward behavior had led him to believe, but rather Annie Williams, daughter of banker Artemus Williams, who was by all accounts a greedy, grasping man. What was his, he kept, until it could pay him a proper dividend, and that included his only child.
Common talk had it that she was sweet on the Jacksons' hired-boy, Pete Brown. But everyone knew he wouldn't make a suitable match. He was an orphan who'd signed to work in exchange for a trip west. He had no fortune, no land and few prospects. Artemus Williams certainly didn't consider him nearly good enough.
~* * *~
Matt sold the next batch of mustangs in early August and--yellow or not-- was said to be doing very well for himself. Brutus was still not letting him ride, so he was still in the stable.
Of course, some of the money made its way into the hands of Catherine, the saloon keeper, and her girls, Ardis and Melanie. No one said much about that. Matt Court was no drunkard and any man living alone got to hankering for female companionship now and then.
Still, with that reputation, folks were amazed to see Matt in the dry goods store, getting a nice suit, and more amazed when he showed up for Sunday meeting on August twenty-third. The church ladies' fans moved a little faster in the hot air, covering the rustle of gossip.
He sat quietly through the service, seeming a little lost and left with everyone else. It was when he made a habit of showing up that people settled the issue in their minds.
“Tryin' to get right with God. They say he got shot a while back and that took him closer to Hell than he wanted to go.” The old men who sat in the dry goods store all nodded sagely at this statement over their checkerboard.
On the second Sunday of September, Matt asked Mr. Williams for permission to court his pretty daughter Annie, she of the red hair, pink parasol and big brown eyes. Williams grudgingly invited him to dinner.
Matt was on his best behavior all afternoon. He put on his best table manners and still felt like a dancing bear among all the fragile and pretty things from back east in the Williams house. The spindly furniture and delicate china looked like traps to his large frame and thick fingers. He handled it all as gracefully as possible and made a hasty exit for the porch as soon as was decent.
He felt better on the swing, with Annie sitting on the far end. He told her the story of how, last summer, he'd been hiding in a little gully, hoping the bad guys would miss him before the rain drowned him. She listened avidly, gasping in the right places, laughing when he was funny. He left, knowing she was the one for him.
By the fourth Sunday, he asked Annie to go walking with him, and scandalized her, making her blush as pink as the roses on her bonnet, by taking her hand. He was careful to stay well within sight of numerous people at all times. He couldn't be too careful of her reputation.
Well before dark, he walked her back to the front porch of her father's house and kissed her hand, thanking her for a lovely afternoon.
“Why, Mr. Court,” she smiled, “the pleasure was all mine.”
“Thank you, Miss Williams. I shall see you soon.” He strolled the two miles out to his ranch and hammered away half the night on the house.
~* * *~
He saw her every Sunday after that and Annie seemed to like him. He never again imposed on her parents for dinner, but he came calling afterward. He'd take her for a walk or just sit on the porch swing with her, telling her about the places he'd been.
Annie enjoyed his stories. He enjoyed her flirty little ways, the batted eyes, the well-timed blushes, her little fan which seemed to have a language of its own that he couldn't quite decipher. He listened to her ideas about what a properly furnished house should have and let them inform the orders he placed at the general store. He planned to leave most of the fine details until after the wedding, but he ordered in the things that seemed important, including the wash basin and pitcher with yellow roses that she mentioned.
One afternoon, he brought her four rolls of Necco wafers that he'd ordered in special. He'd tied the bundle in a pink hair ribbon. The candy had arrived just the day before.
Annie cooed over the ribbon, protesting that she shouldn't accept it, not even from her fiancé. Matt gave her his most charming smile and asked if she'd like him to become that. She blushed and rapped him with her fan.
She tied the ribbon in her hair and they sat on the porch. She nibbled a piece of candy from time to time. He noticed she had already developed a liking for the white ones. They watched the leaves rustle across the yard, talking of nothing much.
Matt knew it was time. He made sure her parents and the cook were not around. Then he brought Annie's hand to his lips. Boldly, he kissed both the back and the palm, and then her wrist. She flushed and giggled.
He did a second check, and then clasped her round her corseted waist, the tiniest in Williston, drawing her close for a real kiss.
He devoured her soft pink lips, turning them red with the pressure of his own. He parted them with his tongue and slipped in, tasting her like a rare vintage. She didn't struggle, and he kissed her long and deeply, knowing no man had kissed her so before. He stared into her huge brown eyes, listening to her gasp for breath, and said his piece.
“Miss Annie, you're a clever girl. It can't have escaped you that I'm very fond of you. I plan to ask your father for your hand, soon, if you'll have me. I don't plan to spend another winter alone.”
Annie twisted out of his embrace and he let her go. She moved to the far end of the porch swing, pressing her fingertips to her swollen lips. After several false starts, she found the words she wanted. “I'm so flattered, Mr. Court. If Daddy says yes, I'll certainly consent.” She felt her lips again, and he saw her breathing slowing.