“Better you than me.”

  “Where’s Jim and Stu?”

  “Still in there. With the whores.”

  Cal straightened his hat and fixed his belt. “Come on, Ada. I expect you’re itchin’ to get a look at the place.”

  Not really, I thought. I went with him anyway.

  I expected Cal would go look for the farmers straightaway. But instead he led me to an old saloon. I stopped outside the door, nervous.

  “Come in,” he said. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  I wasn’t sure how they felt about colored folks in this part of Kansas. You couldn’t just go striding up to whatever place that took your fancy. But Cal insisted, and I went inside with him.

  To my surprise, the woman polishing tumblers behind the counter was also black. She nearly dropped her dishcloth when she saw me.

  “Cal Sampson,” she said. “Now who the hell is this?”

  “Maureen, this is Miss Ada Bell. She’s headin’ to California.”

  “She’s travelin’ with your men?” said Maureen, already forming a judgement.

  “Well, I reckon Ada can speak for herself.”

  “I’m not a camp follower, Ma’am, if that’s what you mean,” I put in quickly and firmly. “Mister Sampson rescued me from some renegades.”

  I stuck my hand across the counter and met her eyes. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Oh,” said Maureen primly. She took my hand, as if I’d just offered her a poison frog. “I see.”

  “I came to ask about that.” Cal leaned his big elbows on the counter. “You heard anythin’ about a young woman bein’ ransomed? Her name is Mary Harmin. Was travelin’ with her husband, David Harmin. Some comancheros got her a couple weeks ago. She was Miss Ada’s mistress.”

  Maureen’s brow furrowed. “Where’d they pick her up?”

  “Near the Texas border.”

  “Well, Cal, I wouldn’t know anythin’ bout that. I’ll ask around, though. But it’s more’n likely they took her to Texas. Or, you know...”

  She trailed off, looking at me. I swallowed.

  “She’s got family in California and Massachusetts,” I said. “They’d want to see her again.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” said Maureen softly.

  “Anyway,” said Cal, clearing his throat, “I was wonderin’ if you could put up Miss Ada in here for the next couple days. I’ll be around with the herd but I figured she’d want some real lodgings, after all that time with us men.”

  “Of course,” said Maureen sweetly.

  “I don’t have money,” I hissed to Cal.

  “I don’t pay Maureen,” he said. “She owes me too many favors.”

  Maureen led us up the stairs to an empty room. It was the first real bed I’d seen in months.

  “There’s washin’ up station there, and a mirror,” she said. “I even put in a tub. You come down and I’ll heat some water up for you. Don’t open that window too fast- James hasn’t fixed the latch yet. Don’t put your dirty shoes on the bed. Don’t scratch up the furniture. Dinner is at six.”

  “I’ll be down directly, Maureen,” said Cal. “If you see any clear-eyed boys who want to join the cattle-drive, point them my way.”

  “And what way is that, Cal?”

  “Give it your best guess, sugar.”

  She banged out the door and left us alone.

  “What a nice woman.”

  “Maureen’s had this place runnin’ for seven years. You got to be tough to deal with the kinda folks that come through here.”

  “Folks like you.”

  “That’s right.”

  For a moment we stood there, listening to the sounds of the saloon go on as they had. Cal looked dusty and rumpled. To my dismay he immediately turned to open the door.

  “Hang on,” I said grabbing his arm. “Don’t say you got to leave already.”

  “You want me to stay?”

  I bit my lip. Yes, I did. But I didn’t want him to feel like I was making claims to him. Men like Cal were like these wild prairie stallions. They didn’t do good with ropes around their necks.

  “It’s alright,” I murmured.

  He drew me forward and put a gentle kiss on my forehead. Then he turned to go.

  The door clicked behind him. I listened, heart in my mouth, for his footsteps. The door opened again.

  Cal threw down his gunbelt and came striding over to me. He seized my face between his hands. I had no time to think- to breathe- he filled the air around me like a pleasant smell. A smell of leather, of horse, of man and muscle...

  His hands found the buttons of my skirt, and those came loose after a few quick motions. He stepped me forward to the deep bed. Together we plunged into it.

  When my skirt hit the floor, the gold bar in the right pocket made a heavy sound. He frowned, but I grabbed his face and planted a kiss on his lips.

  He seemed made up of many mouths, many hands, touching every part of me with a feverish lust. My skirt went flying. My shirt went over the bed to join it. In no time I was naked before him, except for shoes and stockings. Those he applied himself to, sliding them over my long legs and heels. His green eyes never left mine.

  And then his hands came to my thighs and pulled them apart. He dipped his head between them. With one long, shuddering stroke of his tongue he drew a bead of nectar from me, then another, then another. I gasped. Grabbed fistfuls of his thick gold hair. He grabbed my wrists and held them together with one hand, so tight he left marks, all the while applying his tongue harder and deeper to my sweet spot.

  But I wanted more. I always wanted more. More of him, more of his body. Cal shed his clothes quickly. I’d never seen a man so big- a man that made me feel positively tiny next to him.

  He rolled back into bed and rolled me on top of him. Guiding his cock to the liquid heat at the crown of my legs. A sudden hot thrust- a cry from me- and he had speared me.

  The noises from downstairs went on as usual. But for a moment both of us swore they had stopped, frozen in time. I listened to the mingled sounds of our breathing.

  And then he began to move. Slowly, slowly, irresistibly. His manly scent became my air. He drew me down so the peaks of my nipples brushed against his chest. Cal held me there, suspended, and angled his hips upward to drive into me.

  “Damn.”

  “Don’t swear, girl.”

  “Fucking hell, Cal Sampson.”

  I’d said it to provoke him. He rode me fiercely, with a kind of savage strength I hadn’t known he had. My cries echoed through the room, but only when they raised in pitch did he roll off the bed with me, lift me up in his arms and slam me against the walls.

  “You play tough,” he growled into my ear. “But all it takes is this to shut you up.”

  “You don’t scare me.”

  He had his cock back inside me in seconds, pounding and fucking me again, again, again. I could only hold on and pray. With every thrust he asserted himself over me- I was his, and his alone.

  “God damn it, Ada,” he said. “I got no control when I’m with you.”

  I raked my nails across his back. Gasping, he planted his lips on the soft skin of my throat and bit down. I muffled a shriek against my hand.

  “We can play rough if you want,” he panted. “If that’s how you want it.”

  “That’s how I want it.”

  “I know. I know.”

  He slid his shaft from me and half-dragged, half-carried me to the bed. I bounced into it. Cal was on me in seconds. Back in position; thrusting through my wetness again.

  “You’re mine,” he said.

  I loved him. I know I loved him. I wanted to tell him. I wanted to scream it, whisper it, sob it against his mouth. He must have known. I imagined that he knew. For his expression became tender, soft, full of something that no words could describe. He brought a shaking hand up and traced the shape of my face.

  “Say it, Ada. Say it for me.”

  I love you, I cried out in my mind. But all I said was: “I’m yours. I’m yours.”

  And then it came. That hot, searing rush that painted the insides of my walls and streamed down my thighs. He dug his teeth into my throat, like a lion trying to still his mate to be taken. I said his name over and over until he staggered back to the bed with me. We collapsed there again. He was shaking.

  Whatever it was that unlocked the rough and scruffy cowboy and brought out this new Cal, I somehow held the key. After we made love, we always lay there for a while. He would talk. I would talk. Or sometimes we’d say nothing at all.

  “Ada,” he said.

  “Mmm?”

  “Remember when we talked ‘bout you gettin’ married?”

  My heart skipped. “Don’t start that again.”

  I wanted him to lie back and be with me. I didn’t want to start talking about uncomfortable things. He sat up on his elbow. I rolled deeper into his embrace, burying my nose in his chest.

  “Don’t start that again. I ain’t gettin’ married.”

  “Would you marry a white man?”

  Outside, a ring of little children played a chanting game. A wind came howling through the town and carried their voices away. I heard the clink of glasses downstairs, and the slow wheezing notes of a harmonica. Cal’s heart beat under those symphonies. A steady drumming, like the ebb and flow of a tide. I had to focus on these small things, one at a time. Once I did that I could calm myself. Once I calmed myself, I could figure out just what he had meant by that question.

  “Don’t go silent on me,” he said.

  “I’m not.”

  “So answer.”

  “Are you askin’ me to marry you, Cal?” My voice came out higher than I’d intended.

  “Well, don’t say it like that.”

  “Are you?”

  This time he only moved off me and got to his clothes. I watched him put them on. Then my eyes fell on something on the floor, near my skirts. Something gold and shiny.

  Every vein in my body turned to ice. Had he seen it?

  Yes. Yes, I knew he had.

  He bent slowly to pick up his hat. I felt I should say something. Anything.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said softly. He moved to the door without another word.

  “Where you goin’?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “Cal, look at me,” I said.

  His green eyes met mine, his hand frozen on the door handle. For the first time in a while, I couldn’t read the emotion these eyes held. Something stormy, angry, and cold as the blue northers that froze the endless miles of prairie.

  “Cal,” I said. Begged.

  “I thought you were a different woman.” His voice shook. “But you’re no different than them all out here. Liars and beggars and thieves.”

  “It’s not what you think,” I said. My voice sounded hollow to my ears.

  He turned and went through the door. And this time he let it slam shut. I sat very still on the bed.

  Go after him.

  Chase him down.

  Explain.

  But for once in my life words failed me. I’d look like a liar. I’d proved myself to be a thief. Cal would never trust a word out of my mouth again.

  Sudden tears rushed to my eyes. Frightened, I furiously wiped them away. No, I wouldn’t be weak.

  Losing Cal’s trust was truly the least of my worries. Cal had already told me what he thought of thieves- but that wasn’t as horrible as what he did to them.

  I flung on my clothes. Fastened the skirt with shaking hands. My cold feet might have been stumps. I clunked over to the nightstand and took a good look at my reflection.

  Dark skin. Almond eyes, turning in at the corners. I’d got the high, arching eyebrows from my mother. They made me look intelligent. Yes, I was intelligent. I was Ada Bell. I always found a way out of everything.

  I did up my braids again and smoothed the hair back from my brow with a little water. The gold bar remained on the floor, mocking me.

  I put it in my pocket.

  I would go after Cal. I would tell him the truth.

  ᢇ

  Downstairs, the crowd had mostly disappeared. Drunks lurked about in the corners. An old man had a blunt penknife in hand, filing away at the cedar table. A smell like bourbon, mash and sour sweat filled my nose.

  “Cal is gone,” said Saint happily.

  “Gone? What do you mean?”

  “I mean he’s split. High-tailed it out of here not ten minutes ago.”

  I turned to leave. Maureen still had my strawberry horse, Blossom. If I moved fast enough I could saddle her and take out after him.

  “Not so fast,” said Saint, thrusting an arm in my path. His beer spilled all over the counter, and my shoes. I turned furiously.

  “Slow down, Ada,” he chuckled. “Don’t think I’d let you run out of here with our horse, now.”

  “Our? Our? I won that horse fair and square.”

  “I don’t see it like that.”

  “Cal will tell you.”

  “Cal ain’t here.”

  “So you won’t let me go.”

  “Nope.”

  His other hand snatched out and grabbed my wrist. Good Lord, that man had grip. I clenched my teeth, not wanting him to see how much it hurt.

  He pulled me very close, close enough to smell every drop of beer he’d swallowed.

  “How about you wait right here with me?” he murmured.

  “I’d rather swallow glass,” I spat.

  He slapped me. Not very hard- but it cracked across my cheek, catching Maureen’s attention. Her eyes widened quickly, and darted towards me.

  Then she bent right back to polishing the glass.

  “You know what I don’t like about you, Ada?” said Saint softly. “You got too much sand.”

  I moved to kick him, but he held me fast. His other hand whipped towards his belt. I didn’t need to look down to see a barrel of cold steel pointed at my stomach.

  Around us the regular crawl of the bar went on as usual. Some people looked interested. Most just minded their own business. Just a white man disciplining his serving girl, they must have thought. Nothing special to see.

  “I learned the truth about you,” he said, still speaking in a whisper. “I ain’t like those dirt-grown cowboys. I got my own mind. Soon as we got here I did some askin’ around. Just as I thought. You ain’t what you appear to be.”

  “Well look at you,” I said. My voice trembled just a little. I hadn’t been scared when he grabbed me. I was scared now. “If you so smart, then why ain’t you in Washington, instead of grubbin’ around with us regular folks?”

  “Talk back to me again. I dare you.”

  I said, “You didn’t grow from dirt. I can smell the shit all over you.”

  He could have shot me right there. But he didn’t. I hadn’t even made him angry.

  “Foul-mouthed bitch,” he said. And he rose abruptly, and jerked me towards the stairs.

  Well I wasn’t going to go quiet. I started to scream. I hollered and hollered so loud it got the attention of everyone in the bar. Of course, they all did nothing. Saint pulled me right back to the room and flung me inside.

  A hundred horrors went through my mind. I didn’t have to think too hard about what a white man might do to a girl like me when no one around was gonna hold him to his actions. I looked around for a weapon.

  “Don’t bother,” he snarled. He kicked the door shut and dragged the chair in front of it.

  “I’m waitin’ here with you until Butch gets back.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I sat on the bed. Likely I couldn’t overpower him alone. But if I didn’t try, then I’d be facing Butch Allison and Saint all together. And then I’d definitely be in trouble.

  I had to do something.

  Saint pulled out his gun.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” I said.

  “I would.”

  I moved to the edge of the bed. I had no choice.

  “So tell me about yourself, Ada,” said Saint.