Working the Lode (17 page)

The doctor flipped onto his back, his formidable cock bobbing in the air. His keen features frozen in swift response, in a flash he reached down to draw his Colt’s from where he’d tossed his holster. But Joaquin had thrown the holster behind him, and Bowmaker would have to get past him to retrieve it.

“What is it this time…Valenzuela?” the doctor asked pointedly. It was admirable the way he shielded the woman with his body, although she didn’t appear to need the shielding. Her disheveled head peeped out from over his shoulder. They both knew Bowmaker could easily disarm him, since Joaquin had brought only a knife with him. “Where are the rest of your men?”

Joaquin sat back on the pine boughs, dangling the knife carelessly from his knee. “I came alone. Your half-witted assistant is outside guarding the tent from intruders.”

Zelnora gripped Bowmaker’s bicep and said heatedly, “He is
not
half-witted! He is merely…jovial.”

The doctor frowned. Unfortunately, he stuffed his exquisitely beefy prick back into his buckskins. Joaquin did not bother averting his eyes from the luscious sight of the sinewy belly as his hand slid down to pack it beyond sight. “You didn’t arm him, did you?”

Joaquin smiled, an uncustomary motion that felt sincere, for once. “Of course not. He’s just got his sharpened shovels and axes, but it makes him feel like a big gun. You must be more afraid for the squirrels, when he beats them over the head with his mining implements.”

Bowmaker looked squarely at him, also leaning his forearms against his raised knees. “So you’ve come to take our gold with only a bowie knife and no men? With only my man guarding the tent?” Perhaps the doctor realized how feeble the threat of “his man” was, for he quickly added, “I have several Indians camped nearby.”

The white man was understandably suspicious of his motives. It was not Joaquin’s aim to put him on the defensive this time—nobody would achieve their goals that way. No, he had to soothe the Americans. “I have an intriguing proposition, more interesting than merely stealing your gold.”

Bowmaker sat up straight. “And you couldn’t have come to us when we were eating dinner? You sure do have a knack for busting in while I’m having my cock sucked.”

Smiling slyly, Joaquin replied, “It is perhaps a much more pleasing vista than watching filthy men washing gold, or slovenly men pouring beans into their mouths with trowels. I received the message from Miss Sparks.”

Joaquin had finally riled Bowmaker into rising to his knees and grabbing his shirtfront in his fist. “Message from Miss Sparks? How dare you insinuate that—”

Zelnora shook his arm. “Cormack, I did send him a message…in a way.”

Bowmaker released Joaquin. He asked Zelnora evenly, “And just how, and what message did you send to him?”

The woman looked down sheepishly. “I just let him know that we’d welcome any information on Sonoran Camp. That’s all.”

Before the surgeon could become vexed again, Joaquin explained, “She’s right. I did get that message. And I do control many men currently working the diggings near Sonoran Camp. I am constantly bringing more miners up from Hermosillo in Mexico. They’re very knowledgeable, but they would certainly welcome expert mineralogy experience from someone such as Miss Sparks.”

“All right,” Bowmaker conceded, calm despite the fact Joaquin had not sheathed his knife yet. “So you allow us to stake a claim, a choice claim I presume, in return for advice. But I’m not interested in being beholden to a tyrant such as Ward Brannagh—such a heap of fat meat isn’t going to shine in these parts. I’ll not pay a tithe or even a percentage to anyone who isn’t down in the mine with me working it. There’s some other reason you came into our tent and have been tracking us for weeks. The gold câche?”

Slowly and somewhat reluctantly, Joaquin shook his head. “No. Not the gold.” He paused. “You’re a doctor.”

Bowmaker paused also before responding. “What makes you think I’m a doctor?”

Joaquin grinned. He knew it would be difficult getting the doctor to admit he was a doctor. Why else would he be toiling as a miner, the most thankless and brutal job on earth? He had reasons for not wanting to admit he was a doctor. “Who hasn’t heard of your feat saving that man with a quill through his throat?”

Bowmaker was swift to respond this time. “I learned that in the mountains, on the Lewis Fork. Anyone can learn that.”

“Yes? And does just anyone go to Sing Sing for pretending to doctor people?”

This silence was much longer. Zelnora looked quizzically at Bowmaker, while Bowmaker stared unblinking into Joaquin’s eyes.

Finally, Zelnora whispered, “What is Sing Sing?”

This seemed to break the spell, for Bowmaker, without taking his eyes off Joaquin, commanded her from the corner of his mouth, “Go outside and see what Quartus is doing. Check for other bandits. Take my Colt’s that is lying behind this outlaw.”

In a rush of cinnamon and roses, she did as requested. Bowmaker said, “I’ll hunt you down and raise your hair if you so much as mention Sing Sing again.”

Joaquin grinned. “I thought that would break you, to mention that. Or shall I mention your
compañero
Erskine’s imprisonment for questionable financial practices?”

“Talk about that, and I’ll put my knife in your lights.” Bowmaker nodded with confidence. He did still have his knife belt buckled around his hips. It would be a coin toss as to who would be quicker on the draw, the mountain man or the desperado. “You’re going to break or go under, Valenzuela. So you want doctoring skills for…yourself? I’ll see if I can muddle through it. Who can say? My phony doctoring has helped more people than not.”

“No, it is not I who require it. It is someone who resides in Sonoran Camp and cannot move. If you take a journey there, I can give you the best claim and some men to assist you.”

“What is wrong with this person?”

“We do not know. She seems to be consumed from inside. It is hard to explain. She coughs up blood, her skin is white, she is turning into a living skeleton before our very eyes.” Joaquin did not like to think about it, but ignoring it had not made Antonia better.

Bowmaker nodded. “That could be many things. If it’s something an American doctor could treat, we will need to send for the medicine. Or there are many Indian remedies that have proven useful.”

“So then you will do it?” Joaquin held his breath waiting for the response. He had no other option. He could not take Antonia to a medical doctor in San Francisco or Stockton.

Bowmaker’s response was a minute, tiny nod of his head. “If you give us the best, biggest claim. And Zelnora can tell if it’s not the absolutely best right smart claim around.”

Oh, joy in heaven! It had been two years since Antonia’s future had held anything other than doom, and now there was a glimmering of hope. Joy was such a foreign concept to Joaquin that he wasn’t certain what he was feeling at first. Since his only method of expressing any emotion was physical, he rose to his knees, tossed down his knife, and clasped his arms about the white doctor, hugging him tight to his torso.
“Gracias, gracias.”
He held him so firmly about the shoulders it was immediately evident that his own prick, stiffening in his excitement, swelled up against the surgeon’s compact pectoral, and the white man did nothing to push him away, allowing him to press the side of his face against Joaquin’s belly.

Mi dios,
this man was athletic, hard as a boulder of quartz, without doubt the most beautiful man Joaquin had ever beheld. Joaquin even dared rocking his hips just a fraction of an inch into the robust chest, displaying to Bowmaker the length of his erection, and the man sat still as a rock with his hands at his sides, perhaps planning to reach for his knife and gut him.

Joaquin was so washed away with gratitude he nearly didn’t care about this possibility. Sweeping his hand down between them, he cupped the other man’s chin in his hand and lifted his face. He could not decipher his expression, and he did not want to think too much, or his murderous rage might appear again. So he leaned down and kissed the doctor.

Buen dios,
what a soft, pliant, lush mouth, tasting of whiskey and wood smoke. Bowmaker’s full lips parted, his breath snorting hotly against Joaquin’s face, his hands running up the backs of Joaquin’s thighs and stopping to grip his ass to him. Joaquin tickled the tip of his tongue against the other man’s upper lip, and suddenly, they were locked in a potent clutch, tongues lapping together. Bowmaker squeezed his ass in powerfully large hands, and the tip of his prick threatened to burst out the crotch of his
calzoneras
.

Bowmaker suckled him so fervently they made loud smacking sounds. Joaquin cupped the back of his skull as though he were a woman as he humped his strapping chest. He wanted nothing more than to lean the passionate
pelirrojo
man back onto the pine boughs, lock his thighs about his waist, and slide into his tight passage. What would it be like to nibble those erect nipples while the man threw his head back and exposed his powerful throat to Joaquin’s bites?

Suddenly, he was tossed back, landing on his behind with a blinding jolt. Bowmaker had stood as straight as he could inside the low tent, and he was spitting into a handkerchief with what looked like disgust.

Bowmaker tossed the slimy kerchief in Joaquin’s direction. He said thinly, “All right. We have a bargain,” and disappeared out the tent flap.

What had he done wrong? If Bowmaker didn’t enjoy kissing another man, he could have shoved him away before they expanded the kiss. Joaquin’s history of kissing women told him one thing. Bowmaker had savored the embrace. He had returned the kiss with as much ardor as he’d ever kissed Zelnora.

If Joaquin’s men knew what he had just done, clutching another man to his erection and pasting his open mouth to his, he would no longer be respected as their leader.

But he knew he did not want to stop. He could repress and ignore it as he’d done for the past couple of months since he’d first seen Bowmaker stroking himself in the creek. But trapping emotions inside of himself was not a feat that came easily to Joaquin. It was so much easier to act on them.

Chapter Eighteen

August 1848

Sonoran Camp, California

“So what did you diagnose for Valenzuela’s…daughter, is it?”

Zelnora, Cormack, and Quartus wended their way down the main street of Sonoran Camp, weaving between the Spanish tents of canvas and upright interwoven pine boughs. The tents were decorated with gaudy pennants of silk flags, multicolored serapes, and expensive shawls, making for a blinding kaleidoscope that pained Zelnora’s eyes in the stifling heat. Yet the town gave a magical appearance.
 
Gambling tables ranging the street, cool beverages hawked from wooden boxes, merry noise from guitars, fiddles, and most alarmingly, drums. The camp itself was nestled in a giant crater, embowered with redwood trees, festooned with cascades that fell from masses of black basaltic rocks. The scent of honeysuckle wafted on great waves through the air, choked with tortillas and stewed beef with chile seasonings.

Cormack dodged around a drove of mules staggering under barrels of liquor as big as themselves. “Yep, turns out after all it’s his daughter. Looks like she’s riddled with consumption. She’s about as petrified as a tree. Coughing blood, white as snow. Some other quack’s been bleeding her, and that only serves to drain the body of vital essences. Some nurses have abandoned her, since they’re thinking she’s affected by vampirism. Her red eyes and white skin. They think she nightly attends fairy meetings in the guise of a horse, and that’s why she’s so tired.”

Zelnora had seen Cormack’s stethoscope, but she did not want to question him about the doctoring past he seemed to be ticklish about. She estimated him to be the same age as her, thirty and eight or thereabouts, and she knew he’d only been “going over a sight of ground in his peregrinations” about the mountains for ten years. What had he done before that? It evidently had something to do with this Sing Sing place that Valenzuela seemed to know about. It sounded Far Eastern. Maybe soon, one day, if Valenzuela maintained his affable attitude, she could ask him about Sing Sing.