Working the Lode (5 page)

“Oh, my.” Quartus took one sip and nearly expectorated upon the ground, but he maintained his composure with watery eyes. “What sort of juice is this?”

Taking large “manly” swallows from his own horn, Erskine truly did laugh then. “Juice?”

“Bug juice, more like it,” Cormack said politely into his own horn. Sitting on his square rock, he confronted the silly man respectfully. “Mr. Stringfellow, my old hoss.” Quartus chortled at being called an old horse. “What is this message from Miss Sparks that you bring?”

Pleased at having something important to do, Quartus sobered. “The message is. You are to come immediately to the fort, and to meet Zelnora at her cabin.” Turning to Erskine, he explained, “She shares a cabin with Sister Narrimore, another of our brethren from New York.” He swiveled back to Cormack and continued, “Since Elder Brannagh is out of town and back in San Francisco for the next couple of weeks, Zelnora deems it appropriate that you visit her when Brannagh cannot…”

Cormack filled in. “Cannot rain his wrath down upon me?”

Quartus nodded stiffly. “Something like that, yes.”

Cormack shared a glance with Erskine, angry and intrigued at the same time. “All right here, Stringfellow. Let me get this straight. I’m prepared to strike out at once for the fort, only I’d like a few questions answered. First of all, if you’re her husband, then Brannagh can’t possibly be her husband, am I correct?”

“Hard doings when it comes to that,” Erskine commented helpfully.

Quartus nodded. “Correct. Brannagh is merely her benefactor who agreed to employ her when we reached the Far West.”

Erskine harrumphed. “A slave.”

Ignoring him, Cormack inquired, “Then there should be no reason Brannagh would lift any hair were some fellow to come courting Miss Sparks?”

Losing his professional decorum, Quartus burst into another round of giggles and slapped his knee. “‘Lift hair’! Oh, I do love the colorful way you backwoodsmen speak!”

Cormack frowned in annoyance, swallowed the remainder of his horn, and pointed at Quartus with it. “Now you. Suddenly she has a brand-new husband I’ve never heard of, yet she wants an assignation with me? You can understand my puzzlement. This seems to be quite a fix. I mean, there’s damp powder and no fire to dry it, you take my meaning?”

Apparently the “juice” was affecting poor Quartus, for he began to belt out a queer song. “‘Down the center, hands across! You, Jake Herring, thump it! Now you all go right ahead, every one of you hump it’!”

“Stringfellow!” cried Cormack, gripping him by the shoulder and giving him a little shake. “You. Zelnora’s husband. Why would she want an assignation with me if she’s married to you?”

Quartus’ eyes became large and round. “Oh. Why, that’s ludicrous! Why wouldn’t she want an assignation with you? You’re handsome and muscular, and I’m frivolous and, well, smaller.” He waved a limp hand at Cormack. “I’m not her real husband. I’m what they call a nominal husband, a husband in name only. Another sort of protector, like Brannagh, to ward off the undesirable suitors.” Leaning in confidentially to Cormack, Quartus imparted, “We’ve never even slept in the same bed together!”

Cormack and Erskine both leaned back, exhaling with relief. So Cormack must be a desirable suitor! That explained why Quartus came on this distant adventure of forty miles to deliver that message! Cormack nearly leapt to his feet to grab his possible bag and jump on his horse, but he remembered his
compañero
. “Quartus! Does this mean that Miss Mercy Narrimore is also—”

“Bowmaker! Bowmaker!” A fellow, name of Bigler, streaked it up the hill, cupping in his hand something very fragile like a tiny fish that he didn’t want to maim. “Look at this, will you? Tell me what you think!” Nearly bowling over the pathetically oiled Quartus, Bigler stepped between the three men, bending down to open his palm and reveal his treasure. Some gold bits gleamed warmly in the sun, floating in the crystal water of the American River. “Gold, right? I just found it in the tailrace when Marshall shut the floodgates.”

Cormack stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I can’t say for certain that ain’t fool’s gold, pyrite, do you take my meaning? But you might be on to something there. Those little chunks seem to shine more brightly than pyrite.”

“‘Every one of you, hump it’…” Quartus continued serenading himself. “Gold? I can find gold with my divining rod.”

Bigler glanced at Quartus and guffawed. “Anyway, Bowmaker, what do you make of this? Should I bring it down to Sutter and have him take a look?”

“No, no!” cried Erskine. “Remember, Cormack, what Sutter told us about the bandits? Bigler, don’t say a word about this to anyone. There’s got to be a way to find out if it’s really gold before we go spreading the word all about the camps. Bigler, do you think you can find some more without letting anyone know what you’re doing?”

“Why, sure, Erskine. Me and my boys’ll just—”

“No! No boys!”

Cormack asked, “Then how can we find out for sure we’re not just going over a sight of ground for no reason?”

Quartus cried, “Gold!” and all heads turned to him. “You think that might be gold?” Hugging himself proudly, he trilled, “I know who would know if that’s gold. Zelnora! She’s a mining expert. She worked in the Georgia mines as a youth, before Barton Sparks came along and—”

“That’s right, Zelnora!” Erskine proclaimed. “Brannagh was talking about her expertise in the area of mining.”

This time, Cormack did race into the cabin for his possible bag.

Zelnora Sparks. Once again, the bountiful woman seemed the answer to his dreams.

Chapter Five

Zelnora carried a basket of tortillas, bad Boston wine, and a bowl of frijoles made by Californio women at the fort. She headed back up to Brannagh’s store so she and Mercy could eat dinner. Sutter freely gave them the awful wine—awful because they’d wondered why, when the country abounded in grapes, they had to import such stuff at exorbitant rates—when he knew Brannagh was gone. Sutter had told them the Spanish government had discouraged the planting of grapevines as a protection against the monopoly of their own winemakers.

Zelnora nearly dropped the basket when the three horses came stomping down the muddy road from upriver, Quartus jiggling like a marionette astride the saddle horn of one rider’s horse. Mr. Bowmaker! Quartus, true to his word, had brought the powerful mountain man back to her! How she would kiss and hug Quartus for the kindness of his heart—maybe even give him a new pocket compass. It had been so long since she had tussled with the delectable buckskinned man, she had almost thought the entire thing was a dream. Or that it had just been a temporary absence of sanity on his part and he had moved on to other, more attractive diversions. Frontiersmen, Zelnora knew, were accustomed to moving about the plains with impunity and abandon. On arriving in California, newcomers found themselves enlisted in the ranks of one or two classes, the hopeful or the despondent. Zelnora had been afraid Mr. Bowmaker might be among the despondent.

By the time she reached the store, the men had already tied up their animals and had dismounted. Mr. Bowmaker assisted Quartus, who seemed to have lost all sensation in his limbs, as he nearly slithered into the woodsman’s grasp. With arms uplifted, Bowmaker’s shirt cleared his ass, and she viewed the round, muscular shape of it under the tight leather when he moved. Oh, better than a compass, she would give Quartus one of these Indian drums she had seen about the fort!

Shoving the basket of food at Mercy, Zelnora skipped to Mr. Bowmaker’s horse. She should have greeted Quartus first, as he leaned, wobbly and red-faced, against the flank of the horse, but without thinking, she stepped right up to Mr. Bowmaker. He looked calmly down at her, unperturbed by what was obviously a strenuous and taxing ride, his clear tourmaline eyes flickering with some new kind of mischief. Reaching up, she tucked a loose lock of ginger hair back into his head scarf. His scalp steamed with sweat and exertion, yet he looked as unflappable as a member of Congress.

“Cormack,” she said, presuming to call him by his Christian name, “Quartus gave you my message?”

His eyes roved over her face, a pleased grin lifting one corner of his mouth. “Zelnora. Yes. I was very happy to receive it.”

She grabbed his bicep and tugged. “Then let us go to my cabin. He told you Brannagh was away in San Francisco for awhile?”

He allowed himself to be dragged toward her cabin, though Quartus was slowly sliding onto the ground in a puddle of boneless limbs, and Henry Bigler, a fellow missionary, was suddenly there, tugging at her other arm.

“Sister Sparks!” Bigler cried urgently. “We need your expertise for a matter of—”

“Yes. Can we talk later, Henry?”

The couple fairly jogged up the hill to her cabin, a small twelve-by-twelve canvas room, the sides hung with chintz. The toilet table was a trunk set upon two claret cases, and the women’s looking glass was the sort that came in paper cases for doll’s houses. The washstand was another trunk with a large dish for the bowl, but the two pine beds with their straw mattresses were perfectly serviceable, and here Zelnora gently shoved the man back upon the cotton ticking.

He leaned against the rough boughs of the headboard, one arm slung above his head, the thumb of his other hand hooked under a much-worn belt. Zelnora plunked her rear end down next to him and leaned against his solid chest, toying with the shoulder fringes of his shirt.

“Cormack,” she nearly sobbed, her mouth slack and watering for the taste of him. He seemed perfectly content to wait all day and perhaps even drink some tea, so she moved one hand to his scarf and slid it from his head. “How I’ve missed you. I don’t know how in the short space of time we spent together, but I’ve got such a case on you, not a minute passes I don’t think about your bewitching eyes, sparkling so mischievously…” Placing her mouth against his face, she whispered, “What is it that you think of when you look so bewitching?” He did smell of sweat after his long hard ride from the mill, but he was imbued with his own individual scent of pine, wood smoke, and melted snow, as though the sweat itself had crystallized on his skin.

He chuckled a little as he removed his hand from his belt and brought it round her shoulders to hold her peacefully, as a lover would…if he was capable of love. Was he?

“I think about fucking you, Zelnora. This child is gut-shot. The first second I saw you by the fort, my prick got hard, and all I could think about was fucking you. Plunging my hands into these heavy braids—no, let me—then sliding my cock into you so deeply you’d think you’ve gone under. You’re some now, Miss Sparks, the biggest kind of pumpkin.”

He slithered his fingers between her plaits and unbound them as they panted into each other’s mouths. It was hardly realistic to hope for a proclamation of love from someone she’d only known a few hours, especially from a rough, aloof mountain man, so Zelnora decided to be happy with the proclamation of lust. She kissed him then, his mouth slick and moist and delectable as she wondered what it would feel like to have that tongue elsewhere on her body. His hand glided to untangle her braids into voluptuous curls that bobbed about her shoulders and snaked against his face. She knew that a man of the lonely frontier could not resist a woman’s freshly washed silken curls, especially when she rinsed it with attar of roses.

She leaned into him, slowly removing his cravat as she lifted a leg to straddle him. Now she could finally lick his throat and taste the essence of him, but he had fixed some very convoluted sailor’s type of knot in the cravat. She struggled pleasantly with the black cloth while lazily riding his hips at a very slow canter, her quim squarely planted atop the massive bulk of his penis, purring as she lightly bit his mouth. Oh, dear Lord, he was built so impressively, would she be able to take him? Brannagh had never actually penetrated her, just groped her in back rooms and in the tower of his newspaper’s printing press. More than likely afraid of making her with child, although Zelnora knew that to be impossible, Brannagh merely forced her to jerk his crooked prick up and down, or he would do it for her, and he particularly enjoyed releasing onto her breasts.

This tall, lean, virile man between her thighs was different in every aspect. They said he’d taken the bark off the Arapahoe and fought the Blackfoot, and “raised the hair” of more than one Apache, yet between her thighs, he was nothing more than a vulnerable “beaver kitten” as he called himself, allowing himself to be controlled by his lust for her, and—