Arkansas Assault

3

“I’m afraid I can’t help you, sir.”

This, or words like it, were spoken by room clerks in three of the hotels neighboring each other. Seems people in all the surrounding small towns came to Tillman for the Fourth. Every available room had already been rented.

At the next place, the clerk said, “This is on the top floor and ordinarily it’s a storage room. But we fixed it up nice as we could ’cause we figured somebody’d probably take it.”

“And that would be me.” He paid the man and yawned again. He’d originally decided to ride straight through. But now he decided he needed some good sleep in a real bed before he started looking for the best place to cast his line.

Fargo carried his saddlebags up to the top floor, on the way pausing a couple of times to appreciate the loveliness of the women who were coming down the stairs. He remembered the livery man’s remark about Tillman having a “higher class of women.” Apparently the man hadn’t been kidding.

Just before he entered his room, he saw a Mexican chambermaid, slight but fetching, watching him from down the hall. They exchanged smiles. He liked Mexicans, and while every group had its bad apples, he especially liked Mexican women.

The room was small but the bed was firm and the bedclothes clean. They’d fixed up a table with a wash basin, pitcher, and a couple of fresh towels. There was a spittoon, two ashtrays, a pile of magazines, and a pint of rye whiskey, this being some kind of reward for taking the room. There was also a window filled with blue sky—and somebody hiding in the closet.

The hider wasn’t an experienced burglar. Made too much noise. Moved around way too much. But that, Fargo figured, didn’t preclude the hider from having a gun and taking everything in Fargo’s saddlebags. He felt sure that the hotel hadn’t included the hider as the same sort of surprise the pint of rye had been.

“If you don’t come out, I’m going to start pumping that door full of bullets,” Fargo said. “All I want is some sleep. You come out with your hands above your head, I’ll let you walk out of here and we’ll call it square. If you don’t come out right away, I’ll start shooting. I get pretty ornery when I’m tired.”

No response.

All of a sudden the hider was completely quiet. If he’d been like this when Fargo came in, Fargo never would’ve heard him.

Fargo raised his Colt, pointed it at the middle of the closet door. “I’ll count back from five and then start shooting. Five, four—”

“No, wait, please don’t.”

Though the voice was muffled because of the door, there was no mistaking its gender nor—as the door was now flung open—the good looks of the buxom young woman who’d been crouching inside.

She was a burst of blondness and bosom, a tall, full-bodied woman of twenty or so in a gingham dress with a scoop neckline that displayed her charms to eye-popping effect. “Would you have really shot me?”

“I’m afraid I would’ve.”

“But I’m a woman.”

“I didn’t know that at the time,” Fargo said.

“And I’m unarmed.”

“Afraid I didn’t know that, either.”

“Oh, I forgot.” And with that, she raised her arms above her head, only emphasizing the ample fullness of those ripe young breasts that seemed eager to pop free of their dress.

“You make a pretty picture,” Fargo said.

“Thanks,” the girl said. “I’m Daisy by the way.” Then, her brow furrowing, “Are you one of them?”

“One of who?”

“One of the kidnappers.”

Fargo laughed. “Miss, I’m real tired right now. And I don’t know what you’re talking about. What kidnappers?”

“They took Clem.”

“And Clem is—?”

“My brother. We run off from the farm because our folks wouldn’t let us come to the celebration here. And now he’s been kidnapped.” She yawned. “And I’m every bit as tired as you are, believe me. All I’ve done for the past twenty-four hours is look for my baby brother. I need a bed just as bad as you do.” She nodded to it. “We could both fit in there, actually.”

“Yeah, I suppose we could.”

“And it’d be nice to get some shut-eye before it gets terrible hot.”

“I guess you’ve got a point there.”

She glared at him. “So are you going to invite me or not?”

He laughed. “Well, I always do try and be neighborly.”

They actually slept for a short time, but Fargo—every inch of him—came awake when he felt long, silken fingers start to stroke his manhood into stiff attention. They must teach them well in the backwoods where he suspected this young woman came from. Because after her fingers were through teasing him, making him buck up and down like a wild bronc, she then applied an equally silken, moist mouth to his lance, teasing it with even more skill than her fingers had applied.

She paused only long enough to pull her light undergarment off and then she straddled him, pulling her legs far enough apart that he could penetrate her warm, wet depths as fully as possible. She was a stern mistress, her hips demanding his best thrusts again and again, favoring him from time to time with the rose-colored tips of her bountiful, farm girl breasts.

When she tumbled over to her back, Fargo began slower, longer strokes that made her breath come in tiny explosive gasps. He had his hands tight on her buttocks and every time he’d clench them tight she’d slam upwards against him, bringing him so far up inside her that she started smiling out of pure joy.

He held back so that he could roll her on her side and take her so that his hips slammed hard into the creamy magnificence of her young buttocks and he continued to pulse and pound his shaft deep into her womanhood. She gasped, groaned, and then let out a scream that would have been chilling under any other circumstances. Then he rode himself home, ravaging her mouth with his tongue while he propped himself up with one hand, and filled his other with her firm, sumptuous breast.

He was just pulling away from her when the door slammed inward.

Two of them. One white, one Mexican. Both with enough facial scars to qualify them as sideshow attractions. Both with double-barreled, sawed-off shotguns and Colts strapped gunny-style around their hips. The Mex kicked the door closed with his boot heel. They smelled of heat, sweat, beer. Their clothes showed no trail dust, meaning they were either local or had changed clothes recently. Fargo suspected the former. The Mex wore a red checkered shirt, Whitey a fancier blue one.

“They’re the same men who were following me and my brother yesterday.”

Fargo glanced at his Colt, on the floor within arm’s reach.

“You don’t look stupid, mister,” Mex said, “don’t act stupid. Time you got to your gun I’d have pumped both these barrels in you.”

“What the hell do you want?” Fargo said, as Daisy started getting dressed.

Whitey walked deeper into the room, within a few steps of the bed. “Stand up, mister.”

“You want a better look at me naked?” Fargo said, grinning.

“I’d rather have a better look at you dead,” Whitey said. “And that’s just what you’ll be unless you do what I tell you.”

Fargo took a last, long look at his Colt. He was still tired enough that he felt a dream-like quality around the edges. He finally got a room; a beautiful bountiful farm girl made herself wondrously available to him; and now two gunnys who look, smell, and talk like they mean business decide to bust everything up.

Whitey nodded to Mex. Mex obviously knew what the nod meant. He went right for Daisy, grabbing her with one free hand and slamming her up against the wall. “You be a good girl and this won’t hurt. If I have to slap you around, I’ll do it real hard.” He smiled. “But that’s how you like it isn’t it, Blondie? Real hard?”

“What’re you going to do to me? Where’s my brother Clem?”

Mex wasn’t much for conversation. He set the sawed-off on the table and went to work. He had a tiny, brown glass bottle. He uncapped it and drained its contents into his handkerchief. “Now you just hold still and this’ll go nice and easy for you.”

“What is it?” Daisy said, clearly terrified. “It smells bad.”

“This won’t hurt you. Just hold still.”

Fargo figured it was some variant of nitrous oxide. The stuff wasn’t intended for surgical procedures. Some people actually liked the woozy experience of it and used it socially.

The Mex clamped the handkerchief over Daisy’s nose and mouth. The effect wasn’t quite immediate but close. Within a few minutes, she slumped forward into his waiting arms. He threw her over her shoulder with the ease of a farmer hoisting a fifty pound bag of potatoes.

“I’ll take her down to the buckboard in the alley.”

“The back way.”

The Mex sneered. “You think I’m stupid? You think I’d take her down the front way, kinda show her off to everybody in the lobby?”

“Just get her the hell out of here.”

The Mex left.

Fargo watched as the door closed—the rage of helplessness making a frenzy of his senses—so he wasn’t fully aware of what Whitey was up to.

Whitey slid a long blackjack from the back pocket of his butternuts and applied it with fury to the side of Fargo’s head. He was damned good with it, and Fargo rewarded his skills by collapsing into a naked, vulnerable heap on the floor.