Page 15 of Sure as Shooting

“When was this?” the King of the Tulareños interrupted.

“A year ago, last winter.”

“Yes,” confirmed Ashbury to his friend. “Last winter was harsher than usual.”

“Yes,” Belle agreed. “So they say. Or, so I now know. We tried to build little huts to protect us from the snow, but…the rest of us died. I was very nearly dead when the band of King Joseph took me away to their encampment.”

“Which is why you trust them,” the doctor suggested gently.

Belle smiled, glad that he seemed to understand. “Yes, exactly. I had no idea where the nearest white settlement was, and after awhile, there didn’t seem to be any reason to try and find one. What would I do in a white settlement with no husband or child?”

Why was Ashbury laughing so incredulously? Did he mean that she could easily find work as a whore? Belle protested, “Back east, I was very cultured! I graduated from a Female Academy and played wonderful piano!”

The doctor said soothingly, “I am sure that you did. Major Ashbury is just laughing because the sight of a…” He looked to Major Ashbury for assistance. “A fair, unattached white woman is a rare sight around these parts. There are plenty of things for you to do.”

“Hell,” said Major Ashbury, with a hint of a smile. “We’ll be fending off all the would-be suitors.”

Belle managed a smile in the direction of the King of the Tulareños. Maybe he had a heart after all. He was quite a striking man. All the stories were true. One of the tallest men she’d ever seen, his beauty brought to her mind those childhood stories of King Arthur and his knights. Yes, he was like a courageous valiant knight, that was it. A man whose daily trials had created a brutal, ruthless, and probably cruel armor. But all of these books lining the walls seemed to say that he had a thoughtful, intelligent side that hopefully tempered his cold-blooded nature. And he had failed to kill her when he had a very good chance to.

He’d also, admirably, refrained from raping her.

Belle had been tormenting herself ever since that incident. She had fought for her life, but the man was simply much stronger than her. She’d had to relent and allow herself to be taken captive. But on the long, dull ride to this place called Agua Fria, a perhaps even more frightening reality had seeped into her consciousness. His brutality had perhaps not been as brutal as it might have been. There had been another element to his domination of her. The way he’d pinioned her between his powerful thighs while reaching for the leather thong to bind her wrists. The hard ridge of his stiff, yearning penis pressed against her tailbone had brought out a wide array of longings that Belle had imagined long repressed.

Back East, she’d been told it was womb hysteria, the same thing, apparently, the doctor had just mentioned in the bathroom. Her husband Ned had always been appalled at her lust for things of a sexual nature. In her mania, she had gotten pregnant before they were even married. Since then, she had tried to tamp it down, or at least pretend it wasn’t happening, and was partially successful with large applications of laudanum. Living with Indians had helped, too, since she viewed them more as children of nature or some poetic nonsense. But the moment the virile mountain man had pinned her, immobilizing her securely to the snow with his penis so stiff she imagined she could feel the bulging head against her ass, these sexual feelings had been flooding back. Maybe it was just the nature of the blood that filled her pelvis, as one doctor had suggested. Her blood was merely hotter than most other women’s. But the cold towels the doctor had told her to place on her womb had never succeeded in calming her down.

She now looked at both men as desirable satyrs. The Indian doctor, too, was exceedingly handsome with his well-trimmed moustache and muscular, capable arms. Belle had been quick to note the sluggish erection tenting his pants when he’d stood up in the bathroom. She was proud to know that it came from gazing at her nude body. That was one of the things she adored about living with Indians—one could run about nearly nude, although there, no one seemed to think it was a prurient thing. As Belle, apparently, still persisted in thinking. So now she thought about laudanum.

“May I have some whiskey?” she inquired. “Now that you don’t think I’m a Digger. White women are allowed whiskey in the Far West, are they not?”

Both men leaped to their feet to fulfill her request. She grinned at the sight of them grappling over the whiskey bottle, both their fists around the neck of it. Apparently the one whose hand clapped atop the bottle’s mouth was the winner, and the doctor was allowed to pour her a tumbler of the stuff.

“As for what you’ll do,” said Major Ashbury, “I don’t advise trying to run and return to that tribe. Or any other tribe, for that matter. There’s a war coming, and the Indians will doubtless come out on the losing side, as I’ve been attempting to explain to people for months now.”

The doctor asked, “Did you have a husband in the tribe?”

Belle shook her head. “No. Luckily they didn’t harass me in that manner. I was seen as more of a…an in-between sort of person, does that make sense? Not a man, and not a woman.”

“Sexless?” the doctor suggested.

“Yes! Thank you, that’s a very good word for it.” She felt herself blush then. “Some words I’m having a hard time recalling, even though it’s only been a year since I’ve spoken English. Sexless. I was seen as a strange…”

Once again the doctor helped her out. “Anomaly?”

“Yes.” It felt good to use such a fancy English word again. “I was allowed to learn to hunt, but I also wove baskets. I skinned animals but also cooked. The women, really, do most of the work. The men just eat, grumble, and sleep. A few times, I wore the full head of a doe to camouflage myself while hunting.”

Major Ashbury’s smile was genuine. “I’ve done that, too. The heads are surprisingly heavy.”

“Yes!” Belle agreed heatedly. Then she remembered. Turning to the doctor, she asked, “What is this I overheard about becoming your maid?”

If the doctor wasn’t such a beautiful coppery shade, Belle might have seen him blush too. “Why, I…”

Already she was regaining her old confidence. “Because if that’s what you want, that sounds agreeable to me.” Major Ashbury appeared amused, as though she were a sideshow spectacle, a two-headed skeleton under glass in a museum. “But apparently there’s some confusion as to where the doctor actually lives.”

Major Ashbury’s face went blank, and the doctor—she’d heard the major call him “Whit”—looked embarrassed. So she continued, in the old brash and passionate way she was infamous for. “I would like to be your housekeeper, but I don’t think a hospital tent is the appropriate place for a white woman, do you? Major. If Dr. Whit here is to be your physician, and the battalion physician as well, wouldn’t it be more appropriate for you to house him—and me—here in this grand place?” She looked around at the lofty walls full of books. “You appear to have enough rooms, unless someone else lives here I haven’t yet met.”

It was all coming back to Belle, how men used to be appalled at that bold aspect of her. So she stood, now feeling more naked than ever wearing only the red shirt and the deerskin skirt, and went to pour herself more whiskey. She felt their eyes boring into her ass, but it pleased her. She had always suspected she could utilize this womb hysteria to some sort of advantage. Perhaps all men were not horrified by it, as her husband Ned had been.

At length the major cleared his throat and said, “Why, yes, I don’t see why not. Lupe has her own house, a husband, and children nearby. She doesn’t sleep here.” Ashbury stood, and Belle turned to admire his long athletic arms dangling at his thighs. She must be a terrible minx. A couple of days ago he had shot her in the arm, and now here she was, admiring his brawn! “I’ll show you to a couple of rooms downstairs here. It was thoughtless of me not to offer it before.” His ardent look when he glanced at the doctor was unmistakable. Belle wondered what their “misunderstanding” had consisted of.

Clutching her whiskey glass, Belle started following Ashbury out of the study, but the doctor stayed her. “I can see where you might dislike him,” he said confidentially. “But he’s just an army man, acting as a soldier. At first, he thought you were a man.”

“How could anyone make that mistake?”

The doctor looked abashed. “Well. It’s very evident to us, now. But it might help you to understand Huntley a bit better if you know that his wife and child were taken away from him while crossing the plains too, in ’45, I believe. Illness, not Indians. But nevertheless, he knows the pain of losing everyone you love. I think that’s why he acts so tough, so gruff.”

Belle nodded. That did help her understand the major. “And what is this treatment laid out by Hippocrates that you wished to experiment with on me?”

Whit’s jaw hung agape. She must learn to control her mouth—or perhaps not drink whiskey!

“Something about womb hysteria…?” Belle prompted.

Regaining his professional demeanor, he said smoothly, “Well, yes! I’ve been practicing a form of medical massage on the large population of women who have hysteria of the womb, and have achieved a great success—”

“Where is everyone?” the major bellowed from the other side of the house.

Belle and Whit giggled at each other. Taking deep breaths, they strode through the foyer to view their new bedrooms.