Page 41 of Blowing Off Steam

“Help her up,” Field commanded, wiggling his hips to rid his ass of the wooden pin. He was now much too sensitive to have anything touching him. “Let me down.”

Rushy put his hands on his hips. “Well, which one is it, then? Help her up, or let you down?”

“Let him down,” Calliope gasped, struggling to her feet as she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. As Rushy reached behind Field to unknot the line, Calliope whipped his handkerchief from his pocket and blew her nose. “Whew.” She smiled at Field with watery eyes. “Your semen tastes delicious, my love. You must have an excellent chef, to eat so well your semen tastes so good. Except it’s coming out my nose.” She blew again.

Field stretched his arms this way and that to get the blood back into them. “That’s the biggest compliment I’ve ever received.” My love. She had called him my love!

Rushy shoved Calliope toward Field. “Kiss her, Field. Lick your jism from her tongue.”

Field did so, finally able to gather the woman in his arms instead of dangling helplessly from a pulley. His seed was not distasteful, Calliope was right about that. But it wasn’t nearly as delicious as Rushy’s own semen that he’d savored with delight.

A commotion outside on the texas roof grabbed their attention.

“Hold your horses, Ludwig!” Tobias’s loud grating voice was yelling at the hapless Herr Bloch. Field looked just in time to see Tobias toss the rubbery lumber merchant off the roof. “And you, Stan! I’m ashamed of you!” The giant Stan held his hands out innocently, although it was apparent his tool jutted from his broadfall. The tool that was, surprisingly, not of the correct mammoth proportions to its owner. “I thank you for your information, but you simply can’t be lurking on rooftops watching…” Tobias fluttered an impotent hand. “Watching this!” He yanked Stan by the arm. “Get back below to the firebox, you thug. We’re nearing Sacramento.”

Tobias entered the wheelhouse with a great bang of the door. “All right, now that I’ve gotten rid of your admirers.” He looked from person to person with disapproval. Rushy had untied the wheel and was now steering, but Field’s pants were still down around his ankles and his prick still throbbed, purplish, in midair. “Tut, tut. Didn’t Mr. Haight warn you about this exact thing? Put that giant hose away, Captain Trueworthy—nobody’s impressed!”

“We are.” Calliope giggled, helping Field button his pants.

Tobias continued ranting. “What were you thinking? What is this, the Sex Boat? The Jack Hayes is known as the Gold Boat, and what do we have here but the Fornication Boat?”

“Soquel Haight doesn’t own this boat!” Rushy shouted as he examined the river with his keen eye.

The dazzling autumn sun silhouetted the intricate lace of the smokestacks like cameos against the gauzy sky. Field would have been content to lounge here in blissful happiness, but now the lawyer was yelling, “Hey. You’re lucky I waited until this bumsucker was done siphoning the life out of you.”

Field instantly sprang toward Tobias. In one leap he had unsheathed his bowie knife and had it pressed above the cravat at Tobias’s throat. “Listen here, you swine,” he snarled. “Make one more gag about the woman I love and I’ll cut you, no questions asked.”

Tobias giggled in an odd, high voice. “Fine!” he trilled. “We’re just cool as a cucumber here. No problems, Hercules. Right, amigo?”

“Right,” Field said uncertainly, slowly withdrawing the knife. He was continually shocking himself. In one swift action he’d professed love for Calliope and threatened to kill their solicitor! All this murder and mayhem must be turning him into a different man, although it was quite a valiant thing to protect one’s beloved. Calliope helped him ease his knife back into its sheath, ensuring his gun belt was buckled at his waist.

“But listen.” Tobias chuckled nervously. “You’ve got to admit—you’ve got to knock off this display of animal passion! People are going to start taking notice, and you want to blend into the background.”

“You’ll notice we’re not racing,” Rushy pointed out.

“Yes,” Field agreed. “Because some as-yet-unknown individual jammed one of our wheels.”

Calliope added, “Causing that murderous highwayman to get chopped to death in the buckets.”

Field and Rushy had told Calliope and Tobias the story about the pirates. There was no other excuse for why they had steamed away from the San Francisco anchorage without a word. Tobias had concocted a story to give everyone else—something cracked about picking up a herd of cattle on Alcatraz Island. Tobias had agreed the pair of stone-dead thugs were probably just lone pirates operating on their own, but he would not question Soquel Haight about the paddlewheel because that would be to admit culpability in their demise, and knowledge of the thugs’ existence.

“Yes, about that wheel,” said Tobias, picking up the long ceramic opium pipe and fingering it. He bent over the flame of the spirit lamp, which was still lit, and held over it a needle packed with a pea-size ball of the sticky substance. “Stanley Sitwell has been looking into that shrimpy riceman you thought you scared off your boat. I have to admit, it does look like he works for Mr. Haight.”

Now that the ball had liquefied, Tobias could stretch the mass into a long string between the needle and the pipe bowl. Field now knew this as “cooking” the o-fuyung, as Tobias would repeat it several times with the spirit lamp. “Not in a direct capacity, mind you. He’s probably paid by one of Haight’s subsidiaries, of which there is a dazzling array. But Sitwell’s partner, Sharwood Lish, saw that sneaky riceman tip-toeing off the El Dorado when you finally anchored last night. It’s likely that he jury-rigged the wheel. And we can always say he’s the one who threw the tar into the furnace, if it comes down to that.” Satisfied with his cooking, Tobias held the pipe bowl directly over the flame and inhaled deeply.

Field and Rushy looked at each other, frowning.

“Last night?” Calliope said. “That would mean that spy was aboard the entire time those pirates were holding guns to our men. And saw the whole thing.”

Straightening, the blood drained from Tobias’s face, as though he hadn’t thought of that. Or maybe the opium was steaming his brain. “It might behoove us,” he croaked, smoke issuing from between his thin lips, “to find that riceman. Pronto.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Calliope dared to enter the Fremont House.

Sure, Field, Rushy, and Tobias backed her up. But she really wanted to find out if Haight had “taken care of” Brannan. She sported a glorious emerald necklace fashioned by hand in a setting of California gold. Field had given her the necklace “as a token of his esteem” and she wore it proudly, perched between her uplifted breasts as she entered the Fremont House. She swished in a new concoction, a frilly lilac organdy day dress edged with pink stripes, and the most cunning little bonnet. A tiny thing of purple satin, it was trimmed with artificial roses and tied under her jaw with a broad pink bow.

She knew she wanted her former coworkers to turn to her with jealousy and envy, and it worked. They did.