“You are all right, my love?” she asked, then snapped her head to one side, toward a watching patron. “Eat your enchiladas, Franklin, the floor show is later.”

  Franklin kept his eyes on his plate.

  “Don’t worry, baby,” Slocum said, and gave her a one-armed hug around her shoulders. He gave Jorgé Rodriguez a serious look. “Jorgé, I think we need to have us a beer and a confab.”

  “Agreed, Slocum,” Jorgé said, equally serious. “Diego!” he called. “¡Dos cervezas, por favor!”

  “Well, why the hell’d you let him ride out of here?” MacCorkendale railed.

  Helga held her ground, although her initial instinct was to run from him. As calmly as she could, she said, “What is it you expect I should do, Herr MacCorkendale? Wrestle him to the ground? He is the big, strong man!”

  Just saying those two words—big and strong—out loud made her all wet between her legs. She had never had this reaction to any man before, not even Herr MacCorkendale, and it alternately frightened and thrilled her.

  She crossed her arms over her bosom and said, “If he wishes to go, I can not stop him.”

  And she really wished that she could have. She had pleaded with him that his shoulder was not healed enough for him to travel, that the “Spanish poison,” as she had dubbed the medicine Slocum had told her was put in his coffee, had not worked its way out of him yet, and a dozen other reasons. She had done everything but rip her blouse open to expose herself.

  Now she was wishing that she had done just that.

  What would it feel like to have a man like that—so, well, totally male—touch her on skin that only a husband touched? She shuddered, and her arms broke out in gooseflesh.

  MacCorkendale said, “What the hell’s wrong with you? You look all . . . flushed or somethin’.”

  “Ich weiss nicht,” she said, ducking her head. Hot color was flooding into her cheeks, too. “I go back to kitchen now?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said MacCorkendale, waving a dismissive hand. “I’ll just go after him, that’s all.”

  Helga turned. “Nein, he said you were not to follow him. That no one was to follow him.”

  “Are you joking with me?”

  Joking? Why in God’s name would she be joking? She said, “No, Herr MacCorkendale. Herr Slocum was very serious—very much in earnest—when he said it to me.”

  “And stop callin’ me Herr MacCorkendale!”

  “Ja, Herr MacCorkendale.”

  Suddenly, his arm shot out. He backhanded her, and she tumbled against the wall, then slid down to the floor. She landed with a thump, and it took her a second to realize what had happened.

  MacCorkendale stood above her, shaking his fist. “Next time, remember, goddamn it!”

  Her hand to her cheek, she nodded. “Yes. Ralph.”

  She pulled herself to her feet and faced him. There were finer men than Ralph MacCorkendale out there. There were smarter men, and kinder men. The only reason she had said yes to him, she remembered, was because her mother had always said she was too big and too ugly to ever get a husband.

  “Herr MacCorkendale,” she said softly but clearly, and with complete earnestness, “you will not again hit me. If you do, I will hit you back, and I am very strong. And if you make the same mistake a second time, I will poison your food. Do you understand what I say?”

  He stood there, blinking in silent shock.

  “Good,” she said, and turned on her heel. The beets she was boiling for lunch should be ready to come off the stove.

  “Sometimes I feel like I should just put a slug into him myself,” Jorgé said, between sips of his cerveza.

  “Save everybody a whole lot of trouble,” Slocum agreed. Maria had left them momentarily to check on the kitchen. There was quite a crowd in Cantina Lopez for lunch, although not so big as the one last evening. “Don’t suppose we could just string up a fence all down the border,” Slocum said.

  Jorgé barked out a laugh. “Very funny, amigo! I do not know where we could find the barbed wire!”

  Slocum shrugged. He’d been serious about the fence. He said, “I do.”

  “Do what?”

  “Know where we can get the wire.”

  “¿Que? You are meaning this?”

  Slocum nodded.

  “This I cannot believe!” said Jorgé. “You think you and I together could put up a fence this long?”

  “I’m not opposed to a little manual labor,” Slocum said, allowing his lips to quirk up into a smile. “I’ve done it before, won’t kill me to do it again. And if it’ll keep these two idiots from killin’ each other, it’ll be worth it.” He paused to light the quirley he’d just rolled. “What you think, Jorgé?”

  Jorgé shook his head. “For true? I think you are crazy, Slocum, as crazy as a bedbug in the locoweed, and that is very much crazy. But,” he added, holding his arms out, hands palms up, “if you think there is a chance, I am willing to do some work with my hands.” He leaned across the table. “You will provide the gloves and tools, no?” he asked with a wink.

  Slocum laughed. “Don’t worry, Jorgé. All I’ll need from you is muscle.”

  “And you will never tell another man that Jorgé Rodriguez has helped you do this thing?”

  “Word of honor.”

  Jorgé stuck out his hand. “Then we have a deal, my friend.”

  Slocum shook firmly, then said, “How many miles of fence you reckon we’re talkin’ about?”

  “Eleven, maybe twelve.”

  Shit. Slocum had hoped it would be less. A lot less. But he supposed they wouldn’t have to fence all of it. There would be natural boundaries here and there, places where the terrain prevented the cattle from crossing the border.

  “I’ll send for the wire this afternoon,” he said. He hated the stuff, but there were times when it came in real handy. Like this one, for instance.

  “How you think Valdez’ll take to this idea?” he asked.

  Jorgé rolled his eyes. “He will not take to it at all,” he said with a shake of his head, “but I am past the caring. He is a man who will not listen to reason.”

  “I tell you, Jorgé,” said Slocum, “those two stubborn peckerwoods could be brothers.”

  “True,” replied Jorgé. “Very true.”

  6

  That evening, Slocum was still congratulating himself on the sterling idea of a fence while he waited upstairs for Maria to toss the last lingerers out of Cantina Lopez, and listened to mariachi music coming up through the floorboards. He’d ordered twenty-four miles worth of barbed wire this afternoon—figuring on double-stringing it, and on Jorgé’s estimate of the distance to be only slightly reliable—and it would be coming in on a freight wagon in a day or two.

  Jorgé knew of a good-sized stand of pin oak out on Valdez’s place and volunteered to supply the posts. Slocum figured they’d probably be fairly thin and stringy, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Besides, once he and Jorgé solved the problem and left, it’d be up to somebody else to maintain the fence.

  He was satisfied.

  Actually, he was overjoyed. It sure beat killing Jorgé—something he really didn’t want to do—and God knows how many other men.

  Or maybe getting killed himself.

  As much as he figured MacCorkendale to be in the right, he still thought that MacCorkendale was a lunatic, sometimes. How he’d ever ended up with that pretty Helga of his was beyond Slocum.

  Well, that got him to thinking about Helga, which he did for quite a while—and most happily—until Maria opened the door. He was so engrossed in imagining Helga’s creamy, white breasts that he was almost shocked when the darkly beautiful and exotic Maria cocked a brow at him.

  “Am I interrupting?” she asked.

  “How could you possibly?” he said with a sheepish grin.

  “You looked . . . as if you were meditating. Or in prayer.”

  “If I was,” he said, grinning, “it was only that you’d hurry the hell up, darlin’.”

  She smiled seductively and sashayed closer.

  He held out his arms.

  Helga MacCorkendale couldn’t sleep. She lay beside Herr MacCorkendale, whose snores indicated he was having no such trouble.

  What was to become of this business with Slocum and Valdez? It seemed to her that her husband was intent on starting his own private war. And over something so silly as a few cows! Herr Valdez said they were his, because they had wandered onto Mexican soil, a part of which he happened to control.

  Perhaps he was correct. Perhaps he had every right to take them for his own. Helga was not acquainted with the legalities of their situation, and so far as she knew, her husband had not consulted an attorney. Or even the sheriff. He had just shouted and carried on and grown most evil tempered, and then he had hired Slocum.

  Mostly, it was Slocum for whom she feared.

  Her mother had told her she should feel honored and very lucky that a man such as Herr MacCorkendale was interested in marrying her. Her mother had told her that love came in time, over the years, and not to worry her head about it.

  Her mother had lied to her, she now realized.

  She was, in fact, very unlucky that Herr MacCorkendale had taken a liking to her. And that he’d married her. And love hadn’t come, even though it had been two interminable years.

  All she was to him, she well knew, was a cook and housekeeper, and someone for him to occasionally use to fulfill his husbandly needs. Not that he had many. Once every couple of months, that was it.

  Of course, he had built her the house she wanted, long ago when they were newly wed, but she sometimes wondered if he had a woman in town, someone he went to, to quench his desires. Men had more of those feelings than women, she had heard. And if he had more than she, they must need a great deal of fulfilling, indeed.

  Never in her life had she experienced such a strong and immediate attraction to a man as she had to Slocum. It was completely carnal and physical, and it filled her with a yearning, burning lust. She feared that she would probably burn in hell for it.

  But somehow, she found that she just didn’t care.

  She imagined his narrow hips and broad shoulders, the muscles that belled his arms, and all those scars—how she would like to ask him about those!—that covered his torso. And his voice, so baritone, so smooth, so . . . she didn’t have a word for it, but she felt her own hand slip beneath her nightgown and slide between her legs.

  To the sound of Herr MacCorkendale’s snores, she began to pleasure herself. She did this often, but never before had she done it while thinking of a particular person, a real man that she had actually met.

  Images of Slocum flashed through her mind, memories, real and imagined: the sight of him, the sound of him, how his skin felt, his scent.

  She came so forcefully that she must have cried out, because Herr MacCorkendale sat bolt upright in the middle of a snore, and said, “What? What?”

  She took a moment to gather herself, to get her breathing under control and to try to clear her head. And then, without turning toward him, she said, “You are dreaming, Herr MacCorkendale. Go back to sleep.”

  And then held her breath while he cursed and settled back in.

  She didn’t let herself relax until he started snoring once more.

  When his snores became deep and rhythmic, she finally allowed herself a sly, secret, sleepy smile, and breathed, “Slocum.”

  Maria lay naked and sweating upon the rumpled sheets, on her side, one leg carelessly slung over Slocum’s hip. He was drowsing. She smiled when the thought crossed her mind that she had worn him out. Well, she supposed three times in one night was a great deal to ask of any man, even one such as her Slocum.

  Although she was hoping that he’d wake up and make it four.

  But she did not disturb him. She didn’t fully understand why he was in town this time, other than that Ralph MacCorkendale had hired him. She wasn’t certain exactly what he’d been hired to do, but the fact that he was talking to Jorgé Rodriguez was interesting. MacCorkendale and that man Jorgé was working for, Pablo Valdez, had much bad blood between them.

  Something about cattle.

  She didn’t pay much attention to the local gossip. Mostly, she was concerned with her family, with keeping her mother’s head above water, with keeping her sister’s children healthy and growing up right, and with praying that her ne’er-do-well brother-in-law had gotten himself killed over cards or a woman. Those things, in themselves, made a full enough life for her.

  For anyone, she sometimes thought.

  Slocum stirred a bit, and she held very still, watching him. The second time, he had taken her against the wall, and she had enjoyed that very much. She liked the feeling of being weightless, off the ground, of riding Slocum’s beautiful cock with her legs wrapped tight around his waist and his hands on her backside, controlling her every move, her every nuance.

  He excited her as no other man ever had. Or probably ever would.

  He stirred again, and this time, opened one eye. She smiled at him. He smiled back.

  She whispered, “Again, my love?”

  A grin crawled across his face, and he said, “Some girls . . .”

  She giggled, and he pulled her close and kissed her.

  She felt his erection thumping against her belly, and she said, “This time, the table?”

  He chuckled, and it vibrated through her. “Get across it, gal,” he said.

  She jumped from the bed and slid onto the cool wood. The window was beside her, and it let in a cool breeze that felt good on her skin.

  He was there immediately, standing between her parted legs. She felt him nudging at the portal to her inner core, and smiled. “You don’t have to knock, Slocum,” she purred. “You are welcome to come in whenever you wish.”

  He hooked his elbows around her thighs and rammed into her with such force that it literally took her breath away. The next thing she knew, her knees were over his shoulders, he held her hips, and he drew her to receive his thrusts again and again.

  She could do nothing but hang onto the sides of the table for dear life. Her pleasure rapidly approached its peak, fire raced through her veins in the heady, impossible, tactile joy of it.

  Just as she toppled off the edge of the cliff, exploding like stars, she felt Slocum plunge into her with even more vigor, and her body responded with an unconscious clenching of her inner muscles. This only made her reaction even more rapturous and seemed to increase his pleasure, too.

  He thrust into her, just three more strokes, and left her throbbing and shaking with the intensity of it. Still within her, he eased her legs down from his shoulders, then bent forward at the waist to kiss her, to rest his weight upon her torso while he gently cupped her breasts.

  “Maria,” he whispered, and kissed her again. “Maria.”

  Jorgé Rodriguez woke before the dawn and set out for the northeast part of the rancho with a wagon (with two of Señor Valdez’s horses hitched to and pulling it, and his saddle horse tied behind), two days’ worth of feed and water and food for himself, two saws, a posthole digger—for later—and an ax.

  He arrived at his destination just as the sun was coming up, and he smiled. Many good trees were here, many good trees that he could chop down and turn into fence posts for barbed wire.

  He knew they wouldn’t be the best fence posts, but they would be good enough to get the job done, and this was all he was concerned about. This, and that someone might see him. Señor Valdez would not be very happy about him and Slocum building a fence and using his stand of pin oak to make the posts.

  Not very happy?

  He would be furious.

  And from the stories Jorgé had heard, Señor Valdez’s fury was something he did not wish to witness.

  Sighing, he climbed down off the wagon, unhitched and staked out the horses, reached for the saw, then changed his mind and picked up the ax instead. He’d just chop off some low branches, to start. There was no sense in going all out right away.

  He’d work his way up to it.

  He slung the ax over his shoulder and set off toward the trees, whistling.

  7

  Later that morning, while Jorgé was busy cutting fence posts and Slocum was riding out to the MacCorkendales’ spread to await his wire—and break the news of his plan to MacCorkendale—the biweekly stage rolled into Jaguar Hole. Down from it climbed a single passenger, one Samantha Rollings.

  She had heard that Slocum was headed down this way and had very boldly followed him. He’d spent the previous week with her over at Bisbee—the most pleasant week of her life, as a matter of fact—and she was determined to repeat the experience.

  Samantha had worked for Miss Daisy up at the Regal Saloon, but that didn’t make her a prostitute, no sir! Why, she figured you had to have that kind of, well, mind-set, to be in that sort of business. And even though she slept with men for money, she didn’t have those kinds of sensibilities.

  She couldn’t help it if her daddy had left her and her mama, and then her mama had died, now could she? She’d just fallen into the business temporarily—well, three years ago, to be exact—until things looked up.

  They had looked up considerably when the famous Slocum, his very own self—the one the men talked about in back rooms, the one in the dime novels—walked through the doors of the Regal Saloon and took a shine to her. For a whole week he’d stayed in town, practically living upstairs at Miss Daisy’s—and in Samantha’s room—and then he’d left. Just like that!

  Nerve, that was what he had.

  She’d spent a day being mad and listening to Miss Daisy tell her over and over that: (1) men didn’t stay on, and (2) that men, especially men named Slocum, didn’t stay on.

  The next day Samantha had quit her job and climbed on a stage.