The Kid

“Of course not,” he said. Weeks ago, he thought, he would have self-consciously lied that he had.

She said, “There’s a line sung to a girl: ‘Journeys end in lovers’ meeting.’ Which I feel has happened here. With us. And then: ‘What is love? Tis not hereafter. Present mirth hath present laughter. What’s to come is still unsure. In delay there lies no plenty, then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty. Youth’s a stuff will not endure.’?”

“You’re the Sweet-and-twenty?”

“Aren’t you the clever one?”

“And I agree with that last part about youth. Ain’t everlasting.”

She hesitated as if second-guessing what she’d say next. She finally got out, “We’re free spirits, we two. Anarchists, even. I’m fairly sure I’d be an outlaw if I were male, and what I’m about to propose is rather illicit.”

The Kid confessed, “I’d tell you I like where this is heading, but I’m afraid I’d spook you off your conclusion.”

She did not smile as she said, “No. You shan’t.” She looked off at nothing at all. “I have to go back to Denton, Texas, soon, and I have decided you should be the one to relieve me of my virginity.”

“Hell yes, Sallie! I feature you in my favorite dreams.”

She seemed far more straitlaced as she inquired, “Are you in possession of a so-called French letter?”

“Weeks ago I got a tin of Merry Widow sheaths at the farmacia just in case. Charlie calls them cum-dumbs.”

The Regulators were then loudly trooping out of the hacienda, with Charlie offering all those in the bunkhouse some of his flask of tonsil paint.

Doc Scu

rlock asked Sallie, “When’s your uncle get back?”

“Tomorrow.”

“We’d sort of like to hire on with his outfit.”

“Like I say: tomorrow.” And when she and the Kid were alone again, she kissed him in a soft, nibbling, playful, pliant way. She said, “I feel like I should thank the girl who taught you how to kiss. You’re far above average.”

“You, too. You got my head reeling.”

She whispered close to his ear, “I’ll go to my room and make preparations. Wait ten minutes and just silently enter.”

* * *

He took off Uncle John’s fine clothing and with nothing at all on tiptoed to a door that swung open with just a tap of his finger. Sallie had kept a lacemaker’s lamp lit so he could see her luxuriantly naked on a wealth of pillows like that fleshy female in the harem painting he’d seen years ago at the Two Galoots Saloon. Billy Antrim had called it an odalisque, but said “don’t ask me to spell it.” Sallie’s face seemed concerned, as if she were evaluating the Kid’s evaluation. She’d shaken her blond hair loose and let it fall. Even the hair of the crotch her thighs tightly clenched was blond. Sallie’s breasts were so often confined in high-necked and corseted gowns that the Kid was surprised at how ample they were, but now flattening sideways over her ribs, the pink nipples as wide as dollar coins.

The Kid was so hard he ached.

She said, “You look nice, Willy. Bring yourself over to me.” Because there were no windows, there was no moonlight, so she merely turned down the lamp wick as he walked over to her. “I haven’t touched one before,” she said as she did so with some childish medical curiosity before furtively licking the head and shaft and then closing her soft mouth around it while nodding.

“You’re pretty good at that for a virgin,” he said.

“I read.” She returned to him and continued voraciously as he slid onto the narrow bed. She quit and said, “You’re getting too excited.”

“Shall I pleasure you instead?”

She smiled. “Are you quoting? Have you been reading, too?”

“Yes’m. The Lustful Turk.”

“And you’ve been with whores?”

“But not lately.”