Free Stringer and the Deadly Flood by Lou Cameron Page A

my poor brother threw poor Herberto out of their work camp to find his way out of the desert on his own, I felt obliged for to take him in. As you may have noticed, there are two beds inside my carreta. I know you find this hard to believe—pero, I hope you do not think I was sleeping with my own brother before he was killed!”
    Stringer shook his head politely but had to ask, “How far did you have to haul the late Herbert Lockwood from that work camp and how come he was still living with you once you made it back to civilization if he was just... whatever he was to you.”
    She said simply, “He was my friend. He said he had to wait in El Centro for someone who might pay him much money for something. I think he meant you. I told him I did not need his money as long as he helped around camp and bought his own liquor. I was made most sad when Cactus Jack shot him. I liked him, as one may like a friendly old gato with nobody else to take him in. But he was no more than that to me. I am most particular about men I may make love with.”
    Stringer didn’t need to be hit over the head with a ton of bricks and it would have been cruel to make the sweet little gal hint more broadly. So he just hauled her in for a howdy kiss. Then he asked her if he might be the sort of gent she had in mind.
    She held him tightly and murmured, “Es verdad. But not out here in front of the mules. Let us make love inside, no?”
    Stringer had long since learned it was the nature of women to lie to him at least as much as he lied to them. But long before midnight Juanita had convinced him that if her relationship with old Herb Lockwood had been anything but platonic the poor sap hadn’t been treating her right.
    Juanita was a natural enthusiast with simple tastes in good old-fashioned loving. The narrow bottom bunk precluded really wild positions, but happily she didn’t need exotic postures to stay hot. In fact she stayed so hot that Stringer needed little in the way of added inspiration, and they simply kept going at it like healthy hard-up kids who’d just found out why boys and girls were built so different. Juanita’s tawny young body was about as different from Zelda’s as it could get and still be sexually utile. She got a charge out of the way he could cup her firm little buttocks in his palms while she rubbed her nose like an Eskimo in his chest hair. Her turgid nipples felt odd but nice as far down his torso as she kept sliding them back and forth. But since all good things must come to an end, usually sooner than bad things, there came a time when they just had to stop.
    Being as the bunk was so narrow, Stringer had to sit on the edge of it as he groped for his shirt and the makings while she just lay there, crooning Spanish love words and assuring him he was the first man who’d ever made her climax that many times in a row.
    He’d just found his tobacco pouch and matches when they both heard little wet frogs hopping about on the canvas above them. She laughed and said, “Carramba! That sounds like rain!”
    He replied, “I noticed. It has to rain everywhere now and again, and this is the season for such rain as this desert ever gets.”
    He struck a match to have a look at the barometer hanging in the center of the enclosure. She sighed and said, “Madre de Dios you have a most manly body, querido!” To which he replied with a fond chuckle, “I’d never take your sweet shape for a man’s by sun or shadow.”
    Stinger peered at the barometer. “The needle’s at 30.04 now. I don’t see how this cart could have sunk that deep in the dirt since we stopped here. So I reckon the extra pressure is due to the weather outside.” Then he shook out the match to roll a smoke in the dark as he listened to the rain drumming on the canvas. “I’m sure glad we’re inside. It figures to rain harder before it rains lighter. Anyone