The Copper City - Chris Scott Wilson [19]
He didn’t realize how ragged his breathing had become until he tried to speak. His throat was dry. “White-Wing, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
His words pleased her. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. The lamplight caught her eyes, dancing briefly, then she turned and tiptoed to one of the cots that stood against the wall.
His gaze followed the swing of her buttocks, smooth and fully rounded, narrowing to a tiny waist and the ripple of her backbone that crawled upwards until it was hidden by the thick curtain of her raven hair.
He came to his feet, one hand already unbuckling his gunbelt. From the cot, where she lay one leg raised coyly to preserve the mystery, her eyes smoldered a welcome.
He was hungry.
And so was she.
***
The moon was a pale eye that peered in through the window like a ghost on the night wing, casting its silvery glow over her face, relaxed as she slept, cradled warm and secure in Quantro’s arms. His eyes were open. The strenuous activity that had taken place earlier had taken its toll on his bruised ribs. Now they ached as though an iron fist repeatedly squeezed, making the breath catch in his windpipe.
He needed a smoke.
Carefully, he slid his arm from beneath her head and swung his feet slowly to the floor. Naked, he sat for a moment, but she didn’t stir. The night was a little chilly so he slipped into his shirt and pulled on his jeans before he padded to the door. Outside, he fished in his breast pocket for his makings, then built a cigarette. The rasp of the match was loud in the night.
“Can’t you sleep?”
“No, but I thought you could,” Quantro replied as Pete materialized out of the darkness. He shrugged. “I was thinking about tomorrow.”
Pete took the offered makings to occupy his fingers. “What’s bothering you?”
Quantro blew smoke at the moon. “Harley. I can’t figure what he’s up to, but as sure as the sun comes up every day, he’s working on something.”
“I figure he’s short of good guards.”
“We ain’t that special. And even if we were, well he’s just too damn neighborly to be normal. First night we’re in town he offers to stand us drinks because we took care of a loud-mouth. Then I get hauled through the dirt and he steps in and gives us a company house and a company doctor to fix me up when neither of us works for the company any longer. Then, when I kill two men and end up in jail, guess who comes calling to fix everything just dandy.”
“You bellyachin’?”
Quantro shrugged. “Who knows? It doesn’t set right, that’s all. He’s up to something.”
“We won’t find out until we start working for him.”
“Yeah.” Quantro flicked the stub of his cigarette out into the night where it landed with a scatter of sparks on the hard packed earth of the street.
“When we got to show up?”
“Nine o’clock at the Copper Queen. With our horses ready to ride. My buckskin’ll be as frisky as a yearling so I’d better ride the bedsprings out of him before then.”
“We’d better get some sleep.”
“Sure.” Quantro turned back into the house. He shrugged out of his clothes at the side of the cot, and just as he was about to crawl in, a small hand sneaked out from under the blanket and gently stroked his thigh.
White-Wing was still hungry.
CHAPTER 5
The job was exactly what Harley had said it would be. They shadowed him as he moved about town and out to the surrounding company smelting plants, conducting his business. As Green’s right-hand man there was a lot of it. Their days were spent waiting around, trying to look alert and menacing, which wasn’t easy under the broiling Mexican sun, or cleaning their guns that didn’t need cleaning because they hadn’t been used.
For the first weeks Quantro had kept a careful eye on Harley, searching for a clue as to why he had employed them. There seemed no obvious explanation. If Quantro had noticed that Harley was as neighborly in his dealings with people as he had been with him and Pete, then