Lieutenant Anderson had just gotten his dick buried inside Lieutenant Hendrick's hole in the shuttered bedroom they shared at one end of the barracks in the Fort Bent stockade when they heard the sentries put up an "Open the gates!" cry.
They were supposed to be taking a siesta, along with every other soldier not on guard duty, to avoid the blazing early-afternoon sun in the southeastern quadrant of the New Mexico territory. Instead, George Anderson and Bob Hendrick had, as they often enjoyed doing during siesta and also at night, wrestled heartily on Bob's bed for ascendance, both knowing that it would be George fucking Bob but wrestling for who would be on top when that was happening. George was crouched over Bob, who was on his knees, his chest flat on the rough-textured khaki woolen army blanket, with his arm pulled painfully across his back and George working his cock inside him.
At the cries from the sentries, though, both sprang off the bed instantly and were pulling on their skivvies so as not to raise questions about what they might be doing other than taking a siesta.
"One of us should be in uniform," Lieutenant Hendrick said. "We shouldn't both go out in our skivvies."
"You go ahead. I'll dress," Lieutenant Anderson said, as his lover popped out the door. The barracks already was nearly cleared of men.
It was a momentous occasion for a sentry to be calling for the opening of the gates. The stockade at Fort Bent had been under virtual siege from warpathing Apaches for over a week. The camp was new, put in place shortly after the Apache massacre at the Mescalero mission twenty miles to the east. The fort was being established to assure the settlers coming into what was territory claimed by the Apaches that they would be safe, but the assurances weren't working. Settlers were either getting scalped or were pulling out in panic. And now the new fort itself was invested.
The Apaches weren't sieging the fort within sight of the walls, but they were out there. And the last two supply trains were long overdue.
As Lieutenant Hendrick headed out into the dusty parade ground, he could only hope that the call for the gates to be opened meant a supply train of wagons from Fort Sumner, where Fort Bent's captain had been trapped, unable to get back to his command, had gotten through.
When the gates were opened just long enough for someone to get through, though, it was just one wagon, and it was a civilian tinker, a single peddler in a wagon, whipping four horses, rather than a supply train. The gates slammed shut again immediately to the sound of the sentries firing from the walks at the top of the palisades. The tinker obviously had gotten here just ahead of an Apache war party.
He pulled the horses to a quick stop, the steeds rearing up, foaming at the mouth, all wild eyed, but obviously fully under the control of the big man now standing in the driver's box of the wagon. He was tall and broad chested, dressed more like the Apaches than like the soldiers of the fort. He wore buckskins and had long, black hair, tied off in a ponytail with a leather band studded with turquoise beads. The buckskin trousers were tight across his thighs, a bulging codpiece laced up with leather strips centered at his crotch. The vest he was wearing was of buckskin as well, with turquoise beading descending both sides, which were laced together over his bare chest with leather strips. The vest didn't come anywhere near to closing over his deeply tanned chest covered with curly black hair.
Despite the long, curly black hair, there was nothing feminine about him. He had a strong face, with piercing blue eyes and a curly black mustache and close-cropped beard. The vest was sleeveless and his biceps, encircled with beaded strips of leather, bulged.
"That was a close thing," he boomed out, in English, but with a French accent. "Good thing someone plopped a fort here." He laughed heartily at his own joke. If the man was at all frightened about just how close it had been for him, he didn't show it. His voice was strong and steady.
Bob Hendrick had made it out onto the parade ground in his skivvies, but as soon as he saw the man in the wagon, which was piled high with trading goods, he stopped dead in his tracks and his jaw dropped.
The tinker's eyes scanned the group of young milling soldiers who had been jerked out of their siesta by the most exciting event to occur here in weeks of virtual siege. When his eyes came to rest on Lieutenant Hendrick, his mouth turned up in a grin.
"Why, hello there, Bob," he said. "You look like you've come dressed for a good fuck."
"Jacques. Jacques Trebec," Lieutenant Hendrick muttered. He saw that the tinker's eyes had shifted down a bit, and he looked down and realized that all he was wearing were his underdrawers—and his cock was still hard from what the sentries' shouts had called him away from. It had all happened in less than a couple of minutes.
Lieutenant Anderson came out of the barracks at that point, dressed in his uniform, but still strapping his sword belt on.
The tinker's eyes shifted to the approaching Anderson. "Speaking of . . . who might your special friend be, Bob?"
"Jacques. What are you doing here?"
"Why I came for you, Bob," the tinker answered. "Don't you remember that I said I would? I came to save you."
* * * *
Jacques Trebec joined the two lieutenants in the commandant's office after Bob Hendrick returned to the officer's room and dressed. The other men either resumed their sentry duties or returned to their siestas in the barracks after all had taken the opportunity of sizing up this bigger-than-life character who had dropped in on them.
"Where have you come from?" Anderson asked when the three men had settled down with tin cups of coffee. Hendrick wasn't saying much of anything—and wasn't looking at Trebec too often. Anderson had sized the tinker up, though, and correctly assessed him as competition—even with Hendrick—so he was sticking with business. He had come onto the parade ground early enough to have caught that there must be a history between Trebec and the other lieutenant, and he didn't like it a bit. The man had a sensuality and assurance about him that Anderson, worn down by weeks of worry over the Apaches beyond the gates, didn't feel up to competing with.
"From Fort Sumner," the French Canadian answered.
"Any indication they know what we're facing here?"
"They know two wagon trains didn't come back from supply trips to here or two other small forts. They know there must be trouble with the Apaches. They don't seem to know where exactly the trouble is, though."
"The two wagon trains . . ."
"I saw evidence of both on my way here. Both picked clean. No survivors that I saw."
"But you saw—"
"Yes, I could tell it was Apaches who wiped them out. The arrows were Apache and they had taken scalps. Got them real riled up, you do, bringing in settlers to what was supposed to be open range the army had told them they'd be free on. Their view is that the whole region is theirs."
The three sat there, drinking coffee. Trebec was looking hard at Hendrick. Hendrick knew he was but still wasn't saying anything or looking in Trebec's direction unless he thought the tinker wasn't looking at him. But Trebec's gaze remained on him.
