9

I said, uncomprehending, “Sister??!! What sister??!!”
Aimee said without further explanation, “Abigail!!” Then she turned to run after the departing raiders. I grabbed her arm and said, “Hold on there. You aren’t going to get far in bare feet and a shift. I’m going with you. But we need to do a little preparing.” I’d finally admitted that I would do anything for this woman; even face a Comanche raiding party.
I had no idea why beautiful golden, exotic Aimee thought that pale, patrician Abigail was her sister. But for the first time ever, I saw the real woman. And she was frightened. I looked her over and added calmly, “Like getting the right clothes, ammunition and some vittles.”
*****
Fifteen minutes later, Aimee was dressed in her buckskins, with a couple of saddlebags of Henry rimfire draped over the back of her mule. I was trying to stay on mine. I’m a sailor, not a cowboy. I had my . 44s in two holsters.
We’d left the ten-gauge with Pat. He promised to get the Conestoga to Denver, and we’d meet him and the rest of the girls there. Aimee had deputized Aphrodite to serve in her stead. That was an excellent choice. She could probably drive better than I could and nobody would get out of line with Aphrodite in charge.
We rode off on the mules to follow the obvious trail that the raiders had left, moving west from the spring toward the broken terrain a couple of miles distant. There were plenty of canyons that they could hide in. But they kept on going toward the mountains.
Aimee said there were originally three of them. They’d come out of the tree line behind where they had been standing, caught Pat unawares and tomahawked him. Apparently Irish skulls are tomahawk-proof, or the edge was dull, because that just knocked him out.
Pat had been talking with Aphrodite at the time, those two constantly chattered. So, Aphrodite grabbed Pat’s ten-gauge and blasted the one with the tomahawk.
Aimee ran to the Henry, which she had propped against a tree and shot at the other two. That convinced them to flee. But they had grabbed Abigail, who, of course, had fled in the wrong direction.
The tracks that we were following joined a much larger band perhaps a mile into our pursuit, which changed the situation entirely. I could probably dispose of the original miscreants by hand. But I wasn’t going to be able to do anything about a whole tribe.
We began to cautiously follow the trail. The tracking was made easier by the travoises moving along with the group. They chewed up the ground as they traveled. It looked like we were chasing an entire band.
We pursued them until nightfall. I was getting used to riding the mule and Aimee rode like she was born on a horse. It seemed that there was nothing in the physical universe she couldn’t do.
The people who we were tracking had encamped on a rise perhaps ten miles north-northwest of where they’d snatched Abigail. It must have been an extended family. There were multiple tepees and several fires.
We waited until full dark, to wriggle our way up to the perimeter of the camp. It was easy because there were a bunch of gullies leading there. Aimee had always carried the Henry. I thought that was just pretense. But she clearly knew how to use it.
She also had no hesitation crawling through rocks and vegetation like an Army scout. Watching her hard, round buns in a tight pair of buckskins as she slithered along in front of me, rifle in hand, was distracting to say the least.
We got to the edge of the encampment, which was a circle of six tepees, big fire in the middle, and began to investigate one tepee at a time. It was pitch black, with just the stars and the dying fire to light the scene. Nobody was actually standing guard. But there were a couple of dogs wandering about. The dogs would provide the alarm if anybody approached.
We stayed down-wind as we went silently from tepee to tepee. We could hear occasional movement inside. But there was no sign of Abigail. I was beginning to wonder what we would do, even IF we found her. We certainly couldn’t walk up to thirty-or-so hostile Indians and politely ask them to return our whore.
That was the exact moment when the cries of a woman being absolutely fucked to death began to emanate from a clearing just to our right. It could’ve been anybody. But Aimee immediately jumped to her feet and ran up the path. Maybe she recognized the moaning. I scattered a handful of pemmican before I followed. I thought, “That should distract the dogs.”
When I got to the clearing, I found the two women loudly arguing. Aimee had one of the two Indian men covered with the Henry, while the other was lodged tightly between Abigail’s legs. The Indian who had been fucking Abigail was looking on baffled as the two women yelled at each other.
Apparently, Abigail had enjoyed her kidnapping immensely and she was in no mood to turn her back on such a delicious supply of well-endowed men. Did I mention that Abigail wasn’t quite right in the head? The essence of Aimee’s argument was along the lines of a loss of business value rather than sisterly concern. I said, stunned, “What’s happening? Isn’t she coming?”
Aimee turned to me exasperated and said, “The little slut likes it here and wants to stay.”
I said, trying to sound reasonable, “Then why don’t we let her?”
Abigail, from her prone position, Indian still inserted, added, “Yeah!!”
Aimee said, “She’s my sister. I can’t just leave her.”
Abigail chimed in with, “They’ve taken good care of me and I like it here.”
The two Indian men began to nod energetically. They obviously didn’t speak English. But they got the gist of what Abigail had said.
I said to Abigail, “There is no turning back if we leave you now. You are totally on your own.”
Abigail said, “These people care for each other. They’re like a big family. I haven’t felt this free and happy since Daddy sold Marie-Aimee.” Now THAT was one more bewildering tidbit. Aimee gave me a look of horror.
I said as firmly as I could, “So it’s your wish to stay here with these people?”
Abigail nodded enthusiastically and said, “It’s my wish. Now leave me alone.” At which point she threw her legs back around the waist of the admittedly muscular brave and went back to what she was doing before she’d been so rudely interrupted.
I took Aimee by the arm and steered her up the trail toward where our mules were tethered. She seemed to be crying. The mystery had endured long enough. I promised myself that I would pry the story out of my beautiful friend once we found a place to bed down.
The terrain we were in was still high plains. But it was close enough to the mountains that there were table rocks and caves. I had no desire to find out what was living at the back of a cave. But there was a nicely eroded area underneath a cliff face that gave us several feet of cover.
If we built a fire at the mouth, we could probably sleep undisturbed by any of the local varmentia. And it appeared that the Indians had been pacified, thanks to Abigail.
We were carrying canteens of water, and pemmican and coffee in our saddle bags. I gathered enough wood to build a roaring fire. Then, while I bedded the mules down for the night; Aimee cooked us up something that was filling, if not exactly gourmet.
She was still her usual enigmatic self. But in one short day she had morphed from a gorgeous New Orleans fancy lady: into Kit Carson.
We had the saddles and blankets to sleep on. Now, it was high time we parted the curtain. So, I said decisively, “You said you’d tell me about it someday. I think now’s the time.” That wasn’t the way Aimee worked. She trusted nobody.
All pretense left her gorgeous face. She turned her incredible violet eyes on me and said with unsettling emotion, “You first.”
So, I told her the whole sad story; from my growing up, to my obsession with the whaling trade, to my inevitable marriage to my childhood sweetheart, to her devastating betrayal. I added, “I got drunk that night and with my luck, I was shanghaied off the docks onto a slaver.”
Aimee looked appalled. I now knew that slavery was part of her background. I hurriedly added, “It took fate and the Federal government to free me from that hell ship.”
I finished with, “I made my way into New Orleans and you were a witness to the rest.” Then I added grimly, “I made a vow that I would settle my grievance with Mr. Briggs someday. That pledge is all that’s keeping me going.”
She gazed intently at me and it was like watching the winter ice melt on the first warm day of spring. Her heretofore impassive expression shifted and the real woman, the person who lay beneath that cat-like demeanor, began to emerge.
We had been sitting on the ground opposite each other, with the fire in between. Aimee got an unfathomable look, rose and walked over to sit next to me. I turned with a questioning glance. She grabbed my face between her two dainty little hands and kissed me with intense hunger.
That broke the dam, and the tidal wave of pent-up feelings inundated our lives. We were sitting on saddle blankets that smelled of mule. But no matter how unromantic the circumstance, we both knew it was going to happen.
Aimee gave a wild, cry and began shucking her buckskins like they were on fire. It isn’t easy getting out of an outfit like that. But she accomplished it in almost the same time it took for me to clear my decks.