Page 44 of A Good Prospect

Chapter Seventeen

Tamasin smiled, placing on a flat rock what felt like the twentieth pot of stewed beef that day.

She had spent hours in the sun that fried her brain, shoveling beef and tortillas out of the beehive-shaped oven, to feed the Sonorans as well as the Europeans who banded up with them against The League. The talk among the Sonorans was they planned to head to the Colorado River, but about fifty of them would stay around to fight for Salvador. Nobody was ignoring the threat Tyke McCarthy had made to Salvador during the Bear Valley riots. The brute Abel had survived the knife attack due to having a stomach thicker than an oak tree, but Tyke knew the knife had been meant for him.

As Tamasin wandered around the knots of men sitting atop their saddles or blankets, a mournful tune rose from a group of Europeans. She didn’t hear Ophir’s fiddle, but paused to listen to Knut’s overwrought yet affecting serenade.

How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,

When fond recollection presents them to view!

The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wildwood,

And every loved spot which my infancy knew!

There was an underlying tension that this somber dirge could at any moment explode into a battle song, with men sharpening their knives, cleaning their guns, distributing powder and shot, and murmuring things about “The League,” “posse,” and “violence.” Her work serving the voracious prospectors done at last—for the time being—Tamasin was finally able to do what she’d been dreaming of for hours now. Find Salvador and Ophir. They were not in the house and Knut said they were not in the office building with the engineers. So she went to her kitchen and made a fanciful lantern by knocking the bottom off a claret bottle and sticking a candle into it—all of her whale oil lanterns were being used by the men on the hillside.

She took her little lantern, stepping carefully among the squatting men who were threatening to overrun her precious vegetable garden, and checked the carriage house. No one. Next she wended her way toward the stables, relieved to see the outlines of two grand regal caballeros leading their horses into the darkened building.

Placing her candle on the ground, she peeked around the door’s edge and was about to make herself known, but something prevented her from speaking. It was their solemn, dispirited demeanor as they went about unsaddling their mounts. She could barely make out their silhouettes to decipher which man was which, but Salvador clearly said,

“I’d estimate that express rider makes it to Stockton around noon tomorrow.”

“You’d know better than me”—that was Ophir’s lovely, mellifluous voice—“but it’s eighty miles away, a day’s hard riding, right?”

Sal sighed with the weight of all his troubles. “Yes, then a brief delay for the governor’s answer. Of course the best answer is that he gives his support.”

Aha. They were presumably sending a courier to Stockton to ask for help. They probably didn’t want this fact to become common knowledge and panic people, so Tamasin stayed secreted in the dark to find out more of their manly plot. Eavesdropping was a bad vice, she knew, but she could always later pretend she had just arrived, and hadn’t heard a word of their plans.

The two dark outlines moved closer together. It looked like the Sal shadow was putting his hand on the shoulder of the Ophir shadow. “Fresh horses are everywhere, only a matter of money.”

Tamasin’s eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and she now clearly saw Ophir reach up and stroke Sal’s face. “Our entire success depends upon the first messenger getting there and away from the blockading League.”

As the men sloppily kissed, all Tamasin could think was, The blockading League! What does that mean? Have they already cut off the Hell Hollow road to Bear Valley? No wonder they didn’t want anyone knowing. If there was no way out, what was the point of creating hysteria?

Tamasin meandered a few paces from the stables, her mind whirling with thoughts. What about the road to Coulterville, a law-abiding town to the north equipped with a uniformed Home Guard, which would be the first place a rider could change horses on his way to Stockton? Would they allow a woman through? She wasn’t the swiftest rider, not nearly as proficient as the athletic Salvador who seemed to have been born on a horse, but she was lighter—and, more importantly, she could claim some womanly emergency. Men became so abashed at any vague mention of a “womanly emergency,” they would probably let her through just to avoid finding out the details. She could then proceed to Coulterville with her message.

Fortified with this new plan, Tamasin returned to the stables and picked up her makeshift lantern. However, what she saw when she lifted the bottle high stopped her once again in her tracks. The candlelight bathed the two men’s forms as they coupled on the ground atop some strewn hay. Sal hunched over Ophir, the striations of his bare back muscles playing in the candlelight like the twinkling of a rippled lake as he grappled at Ophir’s shirt collar. Ophir, for his part, lay passively fully clothed, slipping his fingertips under the knotted sash at Sal’s waist. Where the expression in Ophir’s eyes looked serene and loving, Sal apparently expressed his nerves in a lusty assault upon his partner.

Laying thick, open-mouthed kisses upon Ophir’s beautiful mahogany throat, Sal licked lower, squashing his tongue into the hollow that was laid bare like an offering, completely trusting in the bestial man. Though the men delighted in touching each other, there wasn’t the shred of anything effete about their demeanor or bodies as they coupled with entwined limbs, Sal crouched resembling a gorging beast, his broad back beautifully displayed to Tamasin.

They had seemed to enjoy it when she had diddled her engorged button—she thought she’d even succeeded in taking Sal’s attention off guzzling the massive meat of Ophir’s penis. So now, in the interest of furthering her sexual education, Tamasin carried her candle to the men’s little bed of hay, setting the candle onto a railing. They paid heed to the flickering candlelight, Ophir grinning lazily up at her, and Sal lifting his shaggy head, his eyes heavy with lust.

Sal rose to his knees, straddling Ophir, without taking his eyes from Tamasin. She could hardly ignore that Ophir had succeeded in not only unknotting the waist sash but unbuttoning his calzoneras, and his cock swayed in the hot stifling air. Not for long, though, as Ophir swiftly grabbed ahold of the admirable appendage and started to pump it, rotating his thumb about the taut shiny glans. Sal lifted his chin to indicate that Tamasin should approach, so she fell to her knees and touched the tip of her nose to his, draping one arm about his hot, solid neck.

In the quiet night air, heavy with the portent of the armed League lying in wait for them, Knut’s wailing drifted over to the stables.

The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it,

The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell,

The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it,

And even the rude bucket that hung in the well

Oh, she would do anything to get back that bucolic memory of what she thought the Hell Hollow Mine would become before the horde of intolerant criminals arrived! Tamasin kissed Sal’s robust jaw, breathing deeply of the musky scent of leather, and rubbed her breasts against his bicep. She ran her hand over the slope of his haunch, delighting in the buoyant feel of his stupendous ass. But Sal apparently had other ideas in mind, as he cupped his balls in his own hand and lunged forward, rubbing the crown of his cock against Ophir’s deliciously bowed lips. Ophir raised himself on one elbow and hefted the penis in his hand, slathering his lips all about the length of it until Tamasin could feel Sal jerk and twitch with the ecstatic teasing.

Cradling Ophir’s skull in his hands, Sal lunged into the suctioning mouth. Ophir devoured it so fully and suddenly with a great choking sound. Sal must have been so overwrought with a rush of bawdiness—if a man felt anything the same as a woman, and Tamasin was starting to assume that they did—that he thrust his hips forward, knocking Ophir off his elbow and flat onto his back.