Dennis Barnett had not heard his own name for a decade.  He was called simply Tree.

 

A towering youth with prodigious strength, he had been his dad’s apprentice stone mason.

The tiny town of Rudyard in the Canadian province of Ontario could hardly support one stone mason, much less two.  Tree had tried carving pipes of horn, animals of wood, nude women in any material.  He got pretty damn good but no one around Rudyard had money to spend on art.

 

After the Civil War his dad took him to New Orleans to carve grave monuments to the dead scions of fine families.  Tree had mastered the bust of a soldier in deep relief.  He changed the fallen son’s features to match tintypes, sketches, even mere descriptions.  For Tree, stone came alive.   In New Orleans he had tasted fine food and had his first girl, a pretty black-eyed baby on the ole bayou.  But labor was hard and depressing in the tomb trade. 

 

Then he had met Byron Starr.  From a good family, Byron could talk,  but he couldn’t finish the fights he started.  Tree could finish a fight just by standing up.  He was six foot seven inches of muscle and sinew, and Byron had opened a new world to him; in time, he had taken the position of Byron’s lieutenant. 

 

Lately, a lieutenant contemplating mutiny.  Tree could not condone the kidnap of Katie.  It made no sense to him.  What good was a woman who feared and hated you?  Byron had convinced himself that Katie would soon warm to him.  Tree doubted that.  Maybe if Byron was the only man available.  But the girl had been halfway to the altar with another man.

 

And now all she did was cry.  To Tree that was a terrible thing. 

 

So he had parted company with Byron and his stolen girl bound upon a stolen horse, volunteering to play sentinel on a mountainside.  The vista was mesmerizing.  Flat, steep buttes, one with a pueblo atop it, the rock in colorful layers, and volcanic cones with dark lava skirts. Beneath and above him, craggy upthrust mountains.  Storm-chiseled chutes, deep clefts moist and green with collected rain and plants, Mother Nature’s myriad pussies.  Several summits rose so high that clouds often draped their shoulders.  On the high, sloping valley along the snaking river bed, the plants grew in forms wildly different from those he’d grown up with in Ontario.  The sun rose much higher in a porcelain-blue sky here.  Days were hours longer. 

 

From his chosen promontory Tree watched for a posse.  Byron had headed south and east.  He’d felt safer on this rugged, forested route than on the more traveled road north of these mountains, which passed near Fort Wingate on its way to San Rafael. Fort Wingate was something of a local joke.  Founded in 1860 as Fort Fauntleroy, it had been renamed Fort Lyon after its namesake General Thomas Fauntleroy had joined the Confederates.  Then the fort was abandoned when Texans invaded.  After the Navajo War in ‘68, it was re-occupied by the Army contingent assigned to move the Navajos to new reservations – and re-renamed Wingate after another fort near San Rafael that had also been abandoned.  It was called Fort Confusion by local wits.

 

Tree spied the five horses late in the afternoon. Two days late. Seemed that little town and its lawman-preacher couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery.  Still, Tree gave the Marshall credit for guessing the right route.

 

But the carriage trailing the five riders was unexpected.   Driving that carriage was a woman.  Tree peered through his stolen spyglass.  Spanish looking with a broad coil of black hair.

Turning into a short stream-gouged canyon, where they apparently intended to camp, the riders dismounted and walked their horses further in, disappearing.  The carriage parked and its driver unhitched her team.  Two other females stepped out of the carriage and unloaded big carpetbags.

 

Was this the posse or an escort for those ladies?  Intrigued, Tree postponed his trip to tell the gang.  He continued to spy.  This necessitated scrambling to a better vantage point once the girls passed out of sight.  He guessed correctly:  they went to the waterfall pool.  To watch them there he had to flatten out  precariously on a narrow rock buttress, his feet bracing him like he was lying along the back of a horse.  But the show was well worth it.  Sure enough, the three wenches stripped naked and waded into the pool.  Bathing nymphs.  Out here, women seldom bothered with corsets, or even proper petticoats.  The nymphs knelt and sloshed water over their arms and breasts.  The  sun sinking to the westward mesa made the water gold and shone on the bathers’ hair.  A tall, slim redhead became an animated white torch, hair aflame.  The voluptuous carriage driver with her dark hair coiled atop her head, deep of  bosom and round of hip, had soap and a cloth with which she scrubbed the others’ backs.  Thrilled to his bones, Tree lingered, forgetting his duty.  His imagination galloped away with him.  A smooth knob of weathered rock by his shoulder became a breast, warm and slippery with soap; stroking it, he could smell its floral scent.  The stone’s roundness grew and reshaped into buttocks, as the redhead took the soapy cloth and washed hers and then her slender legs.  Now the third girl whose loose, straight hair was a sort of peanut color took the soapy cloth and scrubbed her shoulders, her arms and down her firm flat belly.  She had broad shoulders and a strong back.  Tree was enchanted.  Drawing uneven breaths Tree followed her hand under the water’s surface to her mound, tucked between shapely thighs.  From there his mind’s eye journeyed to her cleft.  And took his swelling member with it.  Nudging aside the delicate rosy lips and prodding, patient, waiting for her wriggling response before charging in...  She would wrap her legs around his waist as he lifted her, coupled to him, and carried her to a soft patch of grass.  He would plunge into her, gaining speed, then roll on his back and let her bounce on him, filling her with fire and making her his very own when finally they came together.  They’d ride off to a new life, she on the bedroll behind his saddle, clinging to him.  He’d settle down and make an honest living.  He’d fashion fine fireplaces, fancy  fountains and headstones.  It was hard sweaty work, but for a lady like her he’d do it.  And when he could afford the marble, he’d replicate her head to toe.

 

The temperature was falling with the sun. Soon the nymphs were shivering.  In quick succession they posed under the waterfall, rinsing.  Then they left the pool. 

 

Tree sighed as the ladies pulled on modest nightgowns and made their way back to the party’s camp.  “That girl would never want me,”  he told a curious blue jay perched on a scraggy shrub nearby.   “She’s a respectable lady, most likely from back East.  And I’m an outlaw from Rudyard.  I’m from nowhere.”  The blue jay sympathized with a squawk.

 

He further discussed with the jay whether he ought to go tell Byron straight away.  This odd group might not be the inevitable posse.  And if Byron’s men got wind of the women, Tree might have three more bound and crying on his conscience.  The blue jay cawed at that thought and ruffled his plumage.  On that concurrence, Tree decided to find out exactly what this bunch was up to.  If the riders below him were lawmen, Tree could give them a false report of  Starr heading northwest out of the Territory.  The posse would reverse course if they believed him.  

Byron with Katie had gone east through a pass a few miles south of Tree’s position.  The rest of Starr’s men had  waited there. On the other side of this mountain ridge, terrain was much rougher and travel slower than by the valley trail, which turned east at the valley’s southern end where the ground smoothed out. Straight south, the high plain supported a denser population, particularly of Indians. There, the Starr gang would find scant cover, and Byron would be hard put to hide a struggling, weeping Katie. Southwest was Navajo and Zuni land.  Heading southeast you hit lava fields.  Water got scarce there but in huts built of  lava chunks on rugged stretches of more black lava, you disappeared.  The gang needed to stay holed up there waiting for the chance to turn around and return to the woods, once the posse gave up and went home. 

 

It was too late to ride down tonight.  His horse was grazing in one of those verdant vaginas.  First light, he’d descend and trail the party south.

 

****

 

As Cort’s men made camp their female followers fussed with bedding and modesty curtains draped from tree limbs. They objected to the lack of a fire until Ellen reminded them that fire made smoke and smoke rose.  Two oil lanterns would suffice.

 

Dean pensively considered the contrasts in the nature of women.  His wife Cathy was a soft-spoken woman who seemed acquiescent, yet effortlessly commanded obedience from him and their children.  He teasingly called her “Tsarina Catherine.”  Mattie Silk, with her angelic looks and scandalous past, her expensive tastes and pursuit of security, were sadly at odds with her devotion to the wild, doomed Kid she had married.  Jennie, timid and virginal, yet willing to risk what scant safety a girl had out here to help rescue her friend Katie – and be near a certain deputy.  Selma, an upright, impeccably groomed lady of good breeding, and a renowned cook, but as capable as most men of handling horses, chopping firewood, repairing adobe, or skinning her main course.  And Ellen – what the hell kind of woman was she?

 

Queen of contrasts, Cort could have told him, her strong appetites battling her need for total control.  Competing with everyone.  With herself most of all.

 

Mattie Silk did not like Ellen.  That wasn’t Ellen’s fault.  She just reminded Mattie of bad times.  And Ellen was unpredictable.  While Mattie was sure she knew what went on in other women’s minds, Ellen’s mind was a cipher.

 

Jennie wondered how many men Ellen had bedded.  Rumors put her with Cort during the legendary shootout contest.  But in that town up there, people talked a lot more than people knew.  Did Ellen have plans for Cort now?  If so, what would become of Carmen’s plans – and her mother Sarina Soldana’s plans?  Jennie and likely everyone else except Cort had noticed that Carmen sat in the front pew every Sunday, and frequently submitted sewn and baked goods to the church charity.  Everyone was backing Carmen.  So, Jennie told Mattie, “If Ellen gets hungry for the Marshall, I hope she’ll glut herself fast, and go back where she came from.”

 

****

 

Paul prepared food.  He had been an army cook in his youth.  He could materialize a meal from a pika and a pinecone.  Cort, assuming they were under surveillance, rapidly finished the simple cold fare that Paul had produced, and took first watch at the mouth of the canyon.  From deep shadow Cort scanned the cliffs for movements, fire,  glints of metal, and listened for distant horse sounds.  In six hours he would awaken Dean for second watch. And he’d make sure they got a dawn start.  Breakfast would be cornbread soaked in molasses. The next full meal and coffee could wait for noon. Folks would never say of Cort, “That chaplain had the kindest ways, but he could have been a whole lot smarter.”

 

The night passed without incident.  However, the men slept fitfully, thoughts stirred by the women bedded down so near, and in Dean’s case, having his wife and children so far away.  Howling coyotes didn’t help.  The moon was just past full.  Around midnight the wind picked up.

With roughly barked orders Cort got the girls packed and their carriage underway while the sun was still shy of the peaks above them.  Ellen smirked as she watched him marshaling those grumpy geese. 

 

The road improved as it approached the valley’s mouth. Where the road branched to access the pass, Cort and Ellen looked for recent tracks.  There were some but in both directions, and the brisk wind had blown dust and plant debris over them.

 

A few miles farther, large dogs barked from a hillside dotted with sheep.  From the doorway of the rancher’s house two children waved, surrounded by hungry chickens.  Cort and Alan were familiar to that family.  The sight made Dean miss his kids more, and the other men long for some.  Ellen suppressed the feelings kids evoked in her.  That coach, she believed, had left without her.  The camp followers perked up and waved back.

 

A dozen times this day, Cort and Ellen detoured off the road to higher ground and surveyed every horizon.  “They have to be headed east,” Cort surmised.  “We’d see them riding up the mesa trails.”  Only scrubby vegetation grew on those steep slopes. 

 

Nodding, Ellen agreed.  “They took the pass, I’d bet on that. Don’t you think that shepherd family would have flagged us down if they’d seen Starr with a woman in tow?  Especially if the rest of his boys were with him.”

 

“Shit, that gang would’ve robbed and killed them and taken some sheep.  Either they rode over the pass, or they fooled me and headed up north.  What I’ve got my eye out for now is their lookout.”

 

But it was Ellen who discovered Tree.  Leaving the party at another side canyon, hoping to catch crayfish in its waterfall pools, she took canteens to fill.  

 

Tree was a man of practiced stealth but Ellen was a woman of heightened suspicion.  Hence she assumed that the shift of shadows in the grove beside the stream was not a deer or fox or puma.  She carried a gun under her coat.  Slipping her hand in to grasp it, she pretended to trip and fell with a loud grunt.  “Damn!  My foot!  God damn it, it’s stuck!  Jeeeesus, that hurts!”  And waited.

 

Twigs snapped, not loud snaps but her ears were pricked.  She kept her face down but her eyes turned to her right where the trees stood. 

 

Tree hesitated.  This wasn’t one of the carriage girls, this one had on trousers.  Groaning in pain, she worked with one hand to loosen her foot from its boot which was apparently jammed between stones.  A long braid of pale hair hung down her back.. He couldn’t help her and then just vanish.  Suddenly alarmed, he stepped backwards to denser cover.  But the woman in one swift motion stood and pointed a gun in his direction.

 

“Freeze or I fire!  Hands on your head!”

 

Tree, vertically an easy target, hunkered down and tried to duck behind a fallen trunk thickly sprouting ferns.  But it was too late.  She fired once and that convinced him:  the slug hit the trunk scarcely an arm’s length away.  “Okay, okay!  I was just gonna help you, lady, I heard you holler.”  He stood, spread his hands.  “I saw your party ride down the valley, and thought I’d come say howdy.”

 

“Sure you did.” Ellen’s voice was a skeptical growl.  She approached cautiously, he kept his hands on his head.  He had a gun in a holster.  A good one, a pre-war Smith and Wesson, one of their first cartridge revolvers. Loaded fast from the rear, rim-fire copper cartridges.  She divested him of it. Then she searched under his jacket for a knife, finding two big ones.

 

The revolver was well-tended.  And someone had replaced the factory grip plates with carved horn.  Ellen peered closer and shook her head.  “Good Lord!  You do this?”  Curvaceous nudes reclined on both sides of the grip.

“Yep. I’m a stone mason by trade.  Carve whatever falls in to my hands.”

 

“This is quite a piece.”

 

“If you don’t mind my sayin’ it, Ma’am, so are you.”  Bracing for a hard kick, he was surprised when it wasn’t delivered.            

 

“What are you doing here?”

 

“A little hunting, a little prospecting.  Garnets, opals, sapphires, they tell me these mountains are loaded.  Rubies, even.”

 

“Where are your pals?”

 

“What pals?  Just my horse.”

 

Ellen was impressed by the look of him, very tall and well built.  “You come on with me.  Walk ahead of me with your hands on your head.”

 

“Sure, lady.  No problem.”  Well, he thought, unless I’m on a ‘Wanted’ poster I don’t know about, I won’t be recognized.  Just keep talking innocent and when they ask about Byron Starr, look stupid.  That won’t be hard. They’ll probably tie me up and take me along, just in case.  Would be nice if they’d stick me in that carriage...  Not likely. 

 

“So how did you ladies wind up on the wrong side of the mountains?  If you’re headed to San Rafael or the road to Albuquerque, you’re way off course.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, keep your hands on your head.”        

 

“Can I whistle up my horse?  You can’t put me on yours.”

 

“No, but I can drag you behind it.”

 

“Hey!  I ain’t been tried and convicted of a damn thing!  Take it easy, Lady.”  Tree whistled musically and a whinny replied.  “Peanut!  Come to papa!”

 

Ellen’s laughter sputtered out uninvited.  “‘Peanut?’”

 

The horse’s name was explained by his golden-brown coat.  His mane and tail were dark.

And like his “papa” he was a giant.  Ellen checked the bedroll for a rifle, saddlebag for more handguns or knives.  Two small blades she found looked suitable for whittling, not fighting, but she confiscated them.  She led Peanut by his reins.  He seemed unperturbed by his papa’s plight and when they got to her mare, pricked his ears and nuzzled the pretty paint with obvious interest. 

 

“He’s not gelded, is he,” Ellen observed dryly.

 

“Hell, no!”                                                                               

 

“Well, mount up, and remember I’m aiming at you.  When we catch up I’ll let the Marshall figure you out.”

 

***

 

Tree told Cort that he came from New Orleans to beat the summer heat and hunt for crystals and nuggets.  Smiling at the attentive women, especially the one with the glossy gold-brown hair, he again declared himself a stone mason by trade.  “I can carve just about anything, been doin’ it since I was a little kid,” he boasted.

 

Dave elbowed Cort.  “Put him to work rebuilding your bell-steeple.  Put a stone one up there, it won’t come down so easy next time.”

 

“What happened to your steeple?”  Tree inquired innocently.  “Lightning set it on fire?”

 

“No.  Some asshole blew it up.”

 

“What?  Why’d he do that?”  Tree tried to look shocked.

 

“Diversionary tactic.  So he could run off with something doesn’t belong to him,” Dean replied.