The Night of New Beginnings


        Traitor! Filho bastardo de um whore protestante!

        James West considered the outraged bellow that had floated after his hasty departure from the Generalissimo's fortress.

        So far as he knew, his mother had been a decent Christian woman. His parents had married far enough in advance of his birth to make the charge of "bastard" untrue, and "traitor," he was reasonably certain, applied only if one had ever held any allegiance to the government in question. He had no idea what his mother's religious beliefs might have been, but in light of his father's fervent Methodism, she was unlikely to have been a Papist.

        "All right, then, you old scoundrel," he muttered irritably. "'Protestante' I'll own up to, but that's all."

        Dusty whickered softly at the sound of his voice.

        "Don't mind me," he said to his horse. "I'm talking to myself."

        And now, he thought in the next moment, I'm talking to my horse. Swell.

        The ground fell away under Dusty's easy lope, reined in now from the full gallop with which they'd begun, and Jim relaxed a little and tugged at the false mustache that adorned his upper lip. He'd been itching dreadfully ever since he had applied it, and had wondered, with a certain morbid preoccupation, what disgusting vermin he might have inherited from the original owner of the hair. The gum arabic resisted until he gave it a hearty yank, and then pulled away suddenly with a fair amount of skin now attached to it, rather than to himself. He yelled at the unexpected pain, and Dusty's stride faltered momentarily, and the next thing he knew, he was on his face on the scrubby earth with his mouth full of sand and the breath knocked completely out of him.

        He pushed himself up slowly, too winded even to swear, and spat to clear his mouth. He couldn't remember the last time he'd fallen off a horse--surely not since he was five or six. Riding was as second-nature to him as walking, his body so accustomed to the rhythm and motion that it made the same automatic adjustments on horseback as on foot. He must be getting old if he could be dismounted that easily. Old, or just bone-deep weary.

        Dusty nosed at him anxiously and he put out his hand to pat the horse's neck, satiny and warm in the late afternoon sun. "Not your fault, old boy," he wheezed.

        He heaved himself to his feet, clutching at the stirrup like a damnéd tenderfoot, and stood with his head against the saddle until he felt as though he could breathe properly again, thinking that he did not want to do this job any more, not another day. He was tired of it all--tired of living on the trail, tired of working without backup, tired of people who saw him only as a tool to achieve their ends. He'd come so close lately to telegraphing his resignation back to Washington that he had actually walked into a train station and stood in front of the telegrapher's window until the man looked up impatiently and asked whether he wanted something. He'd said "No," and walked away, unable yet to take that final step. But it wasn't going to be long now before he did.

        It wasn't that he didn't appreciate the importance of what he'd been asked to do, or the value of what he'd accomplished. He was just weary of being no more than the instrument of someone else's machinations. Trouble along the Mexican border? Send West--he'll sort it out. Cozzens mounting a private army? Assign West to go in as a disgruntled ex-Confederate. He couldn't manage a convincing Southern accent to save himself? No matter--he can say he's from Maryland. Never been to Maryland in his life? Oh, just make up a town, no one will know any different--none of Cozzens' people have ever been there either. Except--one of them had, and his suspicious probing questions had made the assignment a long month of tense and unprofitable observation. Eventually, he'd gotten word to his superiors that he was in too much danger of being discovered to be any further use, and they had agreed to pull him out. He learned later that he'd been within hours of being executed as a spy, Cozzens having decided to check out his dubious origins. Oh yes, it was past time for a change.

        But he didn't want to return to Washington either. Here, at least, he worked on his own, free of the constant intrigue and back-stabbing of a political town. He needed to find an occupation that would allow him the same freedom he currently had, and provide the same salary he had come to enjoy. Good luck! he said sardonically to himself, knowing how unlikely he was to find either. He didn't have the ambition of a railroad magnate or mine owner, just a fast gun hand and a nose for problem solving--not attributes that tended to earn large incomes.

        Dusty was unaccountably skittish, lifting his off forefoot and setting it back down, turning his head, sub-vocalizing with the little whuffing noises he made when something important was happening, and Jim didn't seem to be paying attention to it. Jim became aware of that, and of a certain presence, all at once, and cursed himself for his witlessness. But when he raised his head to look across Dusty's saddle, it was not a line of soldiers from the fortress that he saw, but a lone rider sitting silently on a low hillock overlooking the path. The man clucked to his horse when he saw Jim's eyes on him, and rode slowly down.

        "Took a flying leap there, didn't you?" he asked, though there was no mockery in his voice, just concern. "Doesn't look as though you broke anything, though."

        Jim shook his head ruefully. "Nothing damaged but my reputation," he said. "I don't think I've fallen off a horse since I started wearing long pants."

        The man chuckled, a low easy sound of commiseration. "Wish I could say the same. Doesn't happen often, just enough to remind me that a horse is not my native platform."

        He had a cheerful open face--not a handsome one, particularly, but Jim suspected that women found him attractive all the same. Wide mouth, piercing brown eyes, dark hair--what he could see of it under the man's black dakota--slightly sunburned skin, as though he didn't spend all his time outdoors, and though well-dressed, as trail worn as Jim felt. He might be ten or twelve years older than himself, Jim thought. He sat his mount easily, but Jim could see what he meant about it not being his natural place--an indefinable tension in the set of the shoulders and a certain subtle wariness on the part of the horse. One noticed those things, though he would probably not have paid any attention if the man hadn't brought it up himself.

        He swung up into his saddle and nudged Dusty over to where the other man sat. "Jim West," he said, sticking out a paw. The man took it gravely and squeezed it with his own--a soft-skinned hand, but one with as much muscle, unexpectedly, as Jim's. A city man, then, but not a fancy-dressed high-talker. Someone who worked for a living, or at least kept himself in good fettle.

        "Gordon," the man said, and then with a twitch of his lips, added, "Artemus Gordon."

        Jim nodded. "Mr. Gordon. You're a bit out of the way here, aren't you, if you don't mind my saying so?"

        That earned him a flick of the man's eyes, just enough that he suspected Gordon did mind, but was going to be too polite to say so. "I'm bound for Nester Springs," Gordon said finally. "Someone told me I could pick up the trail along here."

        "It's another day's ride," Jim said. "Unless you really push your mount, and some of it is rugged enough that you'd be risking a fall, or injury to your horse." He paused, and then decided suddenly that he could trust Gordon, at least sufficiently not to be knocked on the head while he slept. "I'm headed for Nester Springs too. You're welcome to share the trail."

        Gordon inclined his head with old-fashioned courtesy. "I'm pleased to accept," he said. "Sounds as though you know the way better than I."

        "New to the country?" Jim asked, as they turned their horses eastward.

        "This part of it, yes," Gordon nodded. "I'm familiar with Nester, but I've been there only by train. I was supposed to catch the train back in Verity, but I was held up--" He took in Jim's sharp glance. "No, sorry, I just meant that I was delayed, and the train left without me. I asked about and was told I could make it on horseback by a closer route than the train would have to take, so . . . here I am."

        He didn't ask, "And you?" but Jim heard it in the faint upward inflection of his voice and the man's engaging smile at him. He considered what he might say, or more accurately, what he wanted to say. I'm a secret agent of the new President, and I've just prevented an attempted takeover of this region by a Portugese madman with misplaced aspirations to royalty, and now I'm on the way to be given another assignment, which I'll undoubtedly like even less than the last one. No, that wouldn't do at all.

        "I've, uh, been on business hereabouts," he said finally, and if that wasn't a comprehensive answer it was at least a truthful one. "I'm meeting an associate in Nester Springs."

        "Mm." Gordon did him the favor of acknowledging his answer, without pushing for more. "Another day, you say? And will we be getting into the rugged part of it today?"

        "Not unless you're willing to ride on a bit faster," Jim said dryly. "I'd have done, if I hadn't taken that header. But I had some reason for haste."

        He felt Gordon's eyes on him, but the man didn't ask for an explanation. Jim inexplicably felt like giving him one anyway. Something in the pleasant, cultured voice and the friendly smile touched him in a place he'd locked away a long time ago, a no-man's land that he slammed a door on whenever it threatened to peek out again. He'd not had to discipline himself that way for a good while, and he was sure he was a fool to give way to temptation now, but he was weary of it all, dammit! So tired of being something he wasn't, both in personal matters and in his work. This was someone he was unlikely ever to see again, someone he could relax with for the time they would be together without concern for what the man might think of him. So he said a mental To Hell with everything! and smiled back at Gordon.

        "I'm not a highwayman, nor a robber," he said, and saw in the tilt of Gordon's head that the thought had occurred to him. "My business dealings turned out badly, and the other fellow thought he'd keep me from being a problem to him--permanently, if you take my meaning. So I left in a bit of a hurry and if I'd been paying better attention, I'd be farther down the trail now."

        He realized as he said the words that they could be mistaken. "Not that I'm sorry to have met you, Mr. Gordon."

        Gordon inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement. "I came upon you just before your horse stumbled," he said after a moment. "You appeared to be in pain--" He hesitated. "And your upper lip is raw. I have some knowledge of salves and unguents, if I might be of assistance."

        "Surely, if you've got something that would ease this stinging, I'd be glad of it. Not beaver grease, I hope?"

        Gordon chuckled. "No, it's a preparation I made up myself--lanolin and herbs and paraffin, that's all."

        He pulled up his horse and reached behind him into his saddlebag. Jim swung around next to him and watched as he extracted a bulky leather bag, and took from that a lidded glass pot. Gordon opened it and began to poke a finger into the contents, and then hesitated and held the pot out to Jim. Something in his glance said he'd be glad to apply it personally, and Jim took a ragged breath and nodded at him.

        "You've got it on your finger already," he said, his voice sounding like someone else, the much younger person he'd left behind long ago. "Might as well put it on."

        He was pinned in the man's eyes, seen and known and accepted, but before he could even begin to figure out what that meant, or how he'd known it so intimately, Gordon dropped his glance and reached over to smooth the salve over his lip.

        Seen so close, the man's fingers were well-groomed, the nails short and clean; they bore the faint scent of saddle leather. The salve itself was cool and soothing, with the odor of mint and the silky texture of an expensive lady's emollient, not at all what Jim had expected.

        He resisted the urge to reach out, to cup Gordon's hand in his own as it touched him, astonished that the thought had even come to him. Gordon withdrew and concentrated for a moment on securing the pot and putting it all back into the saddlebag. "Better?" he asked finally, with a swift glance at Jim's face, as though having revealed too much in his earlier gaze.

        "Yes, much."

        "Perhaps we should go on, then. More quickly than before, if you think that's wise." The smile was back, amused and companionable, as if they had shared something that didn't need to be spoken of.

        "We can make the divide by dark," Jim said. "Beyond that, it's too risky to travel without light. It's a good place to make camp, though--there's windfall for a fire, and an artesian spring."

        "Lay on, MacDuff," Gordon said, smiling even more widely, and Jim kicked Dusty into a trot with a lighter heart than he'd had in days. He was accustomed to a solitary and unsettled life, but good company was not something he'd ever turn down. They went on up the trail in single-file, passing the remains of the old stockade where a waystation had once stood and then angling more slowly up the mountain between boulders higher than a man on horseback. Jim glanced back now and then to be sure Gordon was keeping up, but the older man was never more than a couple of lengths behind.

        They stopped once to relieve themselves and to let the horses rest. Jim emptied his canteen into a pan for Dusty, knowing there would be fresh water at the top, and passed the pan to Gordon after Dusty had finished, so he could water his own horse--Gordon apparently not having thought to carry a suitable container.

        "I'm not accustomed to making long trips on horseback," Gordon said, by way of apology. "I loaded up what I thought I would need for a day or two on the trail and left the rest to come by the next train, and assumed my mount would find grass and water along the way."

        "Most places you'd have been all right," Jim said. "We're an hour from water here though, and climbing this slope is thirsty work."

        The sun was nearly down when they reached the top, casting long fingers of dark across the flatland they'd left behind and softening the edges of the gullied waste they would traverse on the morrow. Gordon looked down on that dry and lonely landscape and shivered. "You sure you know the way through that?" he asked.

        "It's well marked," Jim assured him. "You'd have been all right by yourself."

        "Just as well we met up," Gordon said. "I'm afraid I might have turned around and gone back and waited for the next train, though that would have inconvenienced a lot of people."

        "Just as well," Jim agreed, thinking that if the Generalissimo had decided after all to do a more thorough job of pursuing him, Gordon might well have ridden into an ambush.

        The horses had scented water and were eager to be turned loose, but Jim checked the little spring first. Other animals were known to favor it as well, some of which were not afraid of man--or his domestic animals. But it burbled up through the rocks in solitary joy and trickled away down the hillside, leaving a swath of greenery to mark its presence. Jim secured the reins on both mounts and left them to enjoy the cold water. He'd unsaddle Dusty later, he decided, when he had cooled down. He unbuckled his saddlebag and swung it over his shoulder, and would have brought Gordon's along as well, except that a strong chain and padlock secured it to an iron bar set into the cantle. Jim looked at that for a long thoughtful moment, because it exactly matched the arrangement on his own saddle. There was nothing particularly unusual about it--couriers' saddles were made that way, and anyone who needed more security than a simple clasp could have a saddle modified. But it added one more facet to the man, another unknown to the question mark that hung over him.

        He went back to the small clearing to find Gordon piling up branches in the blackened area of previous fires. He added some dried grass to the mound of tinder Gordon had laid under the pyramid of larger branches, retrieved his matchbox from the saddlebag, and struck a match against his boot. The tinder blazed up and in a few minutes the fire was crackling comfortably, sending sparks up into the growing dark. Gordon produced a cloth bag of parched hominy, and some sallet herbs he'd found near the spring, and Jim brought out the jerky and trailcake he always carried, and between the two of them they managed to put together enough of a meal that his stomach felt reasonably full afterward. Gordon had some tea as well, and though Jim would rather have had coffee, the heat of the beverage, along with the different heat of the whiskey he offered in turn, pushed away the evening chill.

        They spoke desultorily of many things: the war--Gordon had "worked with munitions" in some capacity, though apparently not as a common soldier; places they had been--Jim was surprised to learn that Gordon was as widely traveled as he; and ladies--it was obvious that Gordon had no problems in that direction.

        "Though one has to be careful," he said, with a rueful laugh. "You may know that many female roles in the theater are still played by young men, who are dressed and powdered and rouged so artfully as to fool even the discerning eye. I've more than once found myself in flagrante delicto with a body I hadn't, shall we say . . . anticipated."

        The statement hung in the air between them, all the unsaid things out in the open finally. Jim could answer as he pleased, he knew. He could say in shocked tones, "I hope you gave the scoundrel a good thrashing!" or he could acknowledge what had been building between them ever since he looked up to see Gordon watching him from the rise above the trail. But he had buried that part of himself too well, it seemed, and found that he couldn't say anything at all. The moment dragged out into a pause, and the pause into a silence that echoed around the clearing until even the rocks reverberated with it.

        Into that silence, Gordon said lightly, "Well, time to turn in, I think. I'll just have a look at the horses."

        Half-panicked with equal proportions of suppressed desire and fear, Jim pushed himself up from the ground. "I'll go with you," he said hoarsely. Gordon turned to him with the same look as earlier, when he had applied the salve to Jim's lip--knowing, sympathetic, accepting.

        "Of course," he said simply, as though in answer to some question, and perhaps it had been, because when they passed from the flickering warmth of the fire into the pale cold moonlight beyond the clearing, he turned back and said very softly, "Just for tonight, that's all."

        In the firelight, his eyes had been warm, twinkling now and then as the light caught them. In the moonlight they disappeared into the flattened planes of his face, holes where the soul should have looked out, and Jim shivered involuntarily with memories of the tales the Gypsies told--blood-drinkers who'd take a man's life and turn him into one of themselves--dead, yet in some obscene way, still alive: un-dead.

        Gordon stepped closer, and the light changed and he was just himself again, a man solid and substantial as Jim, with a man's heat and a man's need. "Jim?" he murmured, and when Jim didn't speak or push him away, he closed that last inch between them, pressing Jim back against the tree behind him, and his mouth was as soft and as strong as his hands.

        Something splintered and broke in Jim, a wall came down, a dam irrevocably breached. He seized Gordon's shoulders, and then his elbows and then his ass, hardly knowing what he was doing, frantic for the feel of the man. Gordon let him take control, let himself be handled, until they broke apart from the kiss, gasping for air.

        Jim was barely coherent. He could hear himself saying, "Oh, God!" over and over, with a desperate intensity he hadn't felt even in the midst of Gettysburg. Gordon felt hard as a spike against him, hard all over like a man, soft like a man, his strong hands inside Jim's jacket, his soft mouth at Jim's ear.

        "Shh," he murmured. "My dear, my dear, it's all right."

        Jim let himself be cossetted and gentled until his breathing eased, but desire only grew stronger, until he was on fire for Gordon's touch. "Please," he could only say, reduced to pleading, and from a stranger at that. "Gordon, please."

        "Shh," Gordon whispered again, "let me . . . where are your confounded buttons! Yes--hold on . . . "

        He held on, digging his fingers into Gordon's shoulders until he felt the man wince, and then into the bark of the tree behind him, as rough as Gordon's mouth when it finally found his sensitized flesh--hot tongue rasping over him, swallowing him up, hot fingers clenched on his thighs. Bark and splinters on his neck as he sank to the ground, too heavy for Gordon to support, and nothing left of himself to hold him up.

        He felt turned inside out--all the soft and weak places, all the unmanliness, all the sin revealed. He felt like a very small child who'd been caught touching himself, with a mother's horror and disgust writ all over her place. He felt all that, and still wanted nothing but to touch Gordon again, to be touched, to be lifted again to that place where his bones melted and his heart stopped and all the stars in the sky came down upon him, and he cursed himself for being unable to find that joy in union with a woman.

        Sensation gradually returned: the root upon which he was lying began to poke him uncomfortably in the behind, and the little noises of the dark resumed. He could hear Gordon's soft inhalation at his side. He opened his eyes to find Gordon on one knee next to him.

        "If you wish," Gordon said softly, "I can think of a more comfortable place to continue this."

        "You want--" Jim began foolishly, and then finally his wits returned and he thought, Of course he wants . . . , and he began to laugh helplessly. Gordon tilted a questioning eyebrow at him. "Forgive me, I'm not myself. Yes--"

        He accepted Gordon's outstretched hand to pull himself up, and brushed ineffectively at the dirt and the bits of things on his clothes. "Don't worry about that," Gordon said, smiling. "We'll be back to civilization in another day, and there's a good laundry at Nester Springs. Come back to the fire."

        "Yes," Jim said again, thinking he would say 'yes' to anything this man wanted, forever. "Yes," and Gordon glanced over his shoulder with another of those knowing looks that pierced straight through to his very gut.

        The fire had burned down to embers, and to the remains of the one large log they had added after the smaller ones were consumed. Gordon shook out his saddle blanket, kicked away a pebble or two, and threw the blanket down on the hard ground next to the fire. He shrugged out of his jacket and folded it for a pillow. Silently, Jim followed suit. Holding his eyes, Gordon began to undress. The night was too cold for that, and Jim forced himself to say, "You needn't--you'll freeze."

        "We can share a blanket, and lay the other over us."

        Yes, Jim thought, how clever he is. "Yes."

        He yanked off his boots and stockings, threw off his clothing and dropped it all into a heap on top of his saddle and gunbelt, thinking what a helpless fool he'd be if Gordon was not what he seemed, but wanting this warm flesh against his so badly that his usual caution deserted him. Gordon had stripped to his stockings, and put a casually possesive hand against Jim's hip to steady himself as he bent down and drew them off. His organ bobbed enticingly in front, heavy with promise, the cleft of his lean and muscular ass beckoned from behind. Yes.

        They sank down together, and though Jim was accustomed to sleeping wherever he found himself, the packed dirt might have been the softest mattress in the most expensive bordello for all he noticed it. Even pressed together, the chill of the night raised goosebumps immediately, though, and Gordon laughingly disentangled himself long enough to pull Jim's blanket over them. "Now--" he said, "Now," and guided Jim's hand to the heart of his manhood, and sighed when Jim touched him, and showed such pleasure on his face that Jim could barely bear to look at him. The firelight was dying away, the moonlight rising; Gordon's mouth fell open and his white teeth glistened as Jim stroked him. Now it was he who said "Yes," and "Please," and "Oh!"

        Jim flung the blanket aside, crying, "I want to see you!" He thrust a stick into the embers to stir up a flame, and in the yellow light, Gordon gleamed and rose up like the drawings of satyrs that the boys in school used to pass around and snicker over. Oddly, he had no foreskin, and the exposed head glistened with moisture from the slit. Gordon said, "James . . . " in such a guttural tone that it was almost another person speaking, and Jim bent to the cock and mouthed it until Gordon writhed under him and cursed him, and when Gordon thrust up helplessly into his mouth, he took it all. Gordon froze, and he swallowed, and Gordon groaned and shook like a dying man and ejaculated so strongly that Jim began to choke and had to let him go. They remained like that for a moment, gasping both of them, Jim curled over this stranger who had borne him out of exile, and then Gordon caught his breath and pulled Jim down beside him again.

        "Come here, you're freezing!"

        He drew the blanket back over them and held Jim tightly. "A long time for you, I think?" he asked softly.

        Jim nodded. The moon had gone behind a cloud; he was grateful for the dark. "Most of ten years."

        "Were you caught with someone? Is that what happened?"

        Jim shuddered with cold and tension, but the warmth of Gordon's body enfolded him, and Gordon's hands carressed his back and gently rubbed his arms. "No, nothing that simple," he said after a moment. "I had a lover. One day we argued over whose horse was faster and I challenged him to a race, and--" The memory still had the power to open the gates of hell. "His horse stumbled and threw him, and . . . he died."

        Gordon said nothing, just continued that soothing rhythm up and down his back. Finally Jim told him the rest of it: "That was bad enough, but my father found me weeping like a baby in the barn, and said it was God's judgment on us. He said he'd known what we were up to and he'd been praying that God would put a stop to it one way or another, and he was only grateful that God had taken Sam and not me, because now I could repent of my sin and not go to hell with Sam."

        "Dear God in Heaven above!" Gordon said to that, and if he hadn't meant it as a prayer, it sounded enough like one for Jim to relax slowly in the dark, and wonder whether one prayer might cancel out the other.

        "Gordon," he said sleepily, and Gordon laughed a little and said, "I think we might be on a first name basis now, James."

        "Art--what did you say it was?"

        Very softly, "My friends call me Artie."

        He wasn't sure whether he'd actually heard Artemus say that, or had dreamed it, but much later, when he woke to find himself alone and a stone digging into his ribs, he called out "Artie!" without even thinking, sure that Gordon had robbed him of everything and disappeared into the night.

        "Good heavens, Jim, you'll frighten the horses."

        He rubbed his eyes and realized he could see, in spite of the dark, and that he wasn't as cold as he ought to be. Artie sat on a rock on the other side of the fire, which was built up again and radiating heat. He'd put on his drawers and vest, but both of their jackets were over Jim.

        "I grew cold," he said simply, and then, with a grin, "You hog the blanket. I'd no choice but to put more wood on the fire."

        "I'll share it well enough if you come back."

        Artie rose, smiling. "Are you always so pliable?"

        "Pliable?" Jim asked, surprised that he might be thought of that way. "Not at all. Anyway, it's almost morning. Maybe we should just . . . get up."

        The eastern sky was still black, but the moon was down and somewhere in the far distance, a wild burro serenaded the coming dawn.

        Artie chuckled softly as he stripped off his underclothes and slipped under the blanket. "I'm not self-sacrificial enough to call your bluff on that."

        Jim readjusted himself on the hard ground. "It's a wonder I slept so long with these rocks digging into me. I'll be ready for the hotel at Nester."

        Artie said, somewhat mysteriously, "I may have slightly better accommodations than that, should everything turn out well."

        "Oh? You're a railroad man with a private car? Or just the silent money behind Madame Etoile?" It was meant to be sarcastic, but Artie just smiled.

        "Madame does well enough on her own, though I wouldn't turn down a night with Sylvie or Hélène. Or both, for all that they probably began life as Sarah and Hattie."

        He glanced at the suddenly rigid set of Jim's jaw. "Don't be possessive, James. No point in it, anyway." He retrieved his jacket and folded it to put under his head. "Listen. I find a man's flesh more compelling, true, but there is much to be said for a woman's. You must know that."

        Jim took a long slow breath and let it out. Yes. Now that he no longer felt he must enjoy only that, he suddenly found that he could. A handful of firm breast, a trusting smile gazing up at him, the curve of a half-revealed leg. Warm and liquid softness in the dark. He was growing hard again, and next to him Artie smiled knowingly at the catch in his breath.

        "That's right. I've something even better for you, though. Time enough for the ladies, another morning, another day."

        "Another day," Jim said firmly, and perhaps it was too firmly, because Artie gave him a long hard stare.

        "I'm not a man to be pinned down. Nor are you, I'll wager."

        "More than a few have tried it," Jim admitted. He shrugged against the blanket, thinking fleetingly that it might not be too dreadful to have some kind of settled life. Problem was, what woman would put up with his other desires? Better not to risk it, lonely as his kind of life could be. "The fancy girls know better," he said, after a moment. "Easier to stick with them."

        "Right you are," Artie said firmly. His lips curled into a feral grin, however, and just for an instant he was the soul-snatcher of the night before. "Pleasure enough for the day, I always say, and if we don't take care of that soon, the day will be upon us." A pre-dawn glow gave faint illumination to the eastern horizon, with Artie's form a black shadow against it and his white teeth gleaming.

        "I'm open to suggestion." Jim stretched enticingly under the blanket. "If you can't think of anything, I'm sure I can come up with an idea or two."

        Artie pushed up on an elbow. "We tried it the French way last night . . . have you ever done it as the Greeks do?"

        "Up the back passage, you mean," Jim said, with not much enthusiasm. It was not something he and Sam had tried, though if Sam had lived, they would probably have gotten around to experimenting with it. Sam had been eager, and inventive.

        "Don't be too quick to put it down, if you haven't tried it," Artie told him. "It's different from anything else you've ever felt."

        Jim thought for a moment. "I'll do it to you, then," he suggested, guessing what Artie's reaction to that was going to be. "Though I've tried it that way with a woman, and I can't say that either of us much enjoyed it."

        Artie surprised him. He gazed down at Jim for a long moment, and then nodded. "I like it well enough both ways," he said. "Perhaps that will show you what pleasure there is in it. All right. Let me get something to ease the way."

        He rolled up on his knees and dug into his saddlebag, coming back with another of his lidded glass pots. Jim had seen three of them now--the minty salve, a lemon-scented compound Artie had used to clean Jim's old tin pot after they ate, and now this. He seemed to have some concoction for every purpose, like a woman with a dressing table full of scents and powders. Jim wondered what this one was going to smell like.

        "Lie back," Artie told him. "You'll like this."

        It turned out to have no odor at all, or not enough to be noticeable. Or perhaps his attention was so captured by the feel of it--smooth as a French silk nightdress, hot as Artie's hand, soft as his lips--that he never noticed a scent. Once he was hard and moaning with pleasure, Artie scooped out another dollop of the cream and transferred it to Jim's palm. "Your turn," he said. "Press it in, as much of it as you can."

        He turned to his side and pulled up one leg. The small puckered bud lay in shadow, beckoning touch. It moved when Jim brushed it tentatively, like tiny soft lips inviting him inside. He pushed a fingertip against the opening, keeping in mind that Artie had said "press" and not "poke," and was rewarded with a soft sigh from Artie. Bolder, he slid one finger inside and did his best to push the cream into the channel. His finger slipped in farther and Artie inhaled suddenly and arched back against him.

        "Like that, hmm?" Jim asked with a smile, guessing what Artie was feeling.

        "It is not your finger I want to feel there, James!" Artie said roughly.

        "All right, then," Jim said, still unconvinced that this could be pleasurable for a man, but certainly willing to try.

        Artie glanced over his shoulder. "On my knees? Or shall we stay like this?"

        "On your knees, I think," Jim said after a moment, testing the thought of that posture of submission, and liking it. "You don't lie on your back then, like a woman."

        "If you were more experienced, perhaps. This way will be easier for you, though, and safer for me." He raised himself to his knees, a muscular calf brushing against Jim's knee as he moved. Morning light washed over his bowed back and raised bronze highlights in the tousled hair on his neck.

        Jim set his palm against the inner curve of Artie's thigh and felt the twitch of the muscle there. He was like a dark-maned stallion, all nervous energy and hot skin and heavy cock, as big around as a woman's wrist. Artie shivered and murmured something, and Jim shifted over to kneel between his legs. He smeared the last of the lotion around the hole and held himself there for a moment, teasing gently at the opening. Occasionally, when he pleasured himself, he would make a tight ring of thumb and forefinger and push himself into it, an exquisite sensation. The opening into Artie's body was clenched even tighter than that, but it pulsed when he touched it, suckling at the tip of his cock, and Artie hissed and pushed back hard against him. He slipped inside, watching in fascination the puckered skin stretch and thin out to accommodate him. He pushed in all the way to his full length, and Artie groaned and balanced himself on one hand so he could fondle himself with the other.

        The sensation was nothing like that of penetrating a woman. Women were soft. They were vulnerable. He wanted to be tender with them. Fucking Artie was something elemental, forces of nature personified, fire in his loins and the wide brown earth under their knees, and the gasping of air as he plunged and withdrew and thrust again. Artie cried out his name, and something else, that might have been Mein Got! and dropped his head like a racehorse at the finish line, his shoulders heaving, his seed spraying the ground. Beads of perspiration sprang out over his back. Jim grasped his hips and impaled him one more time and felt his balls contract almost painfully. The spasms in Artie's ass seemed to pull the climax from him, squeezing him in sweet synchrony with every pulse of his organ.

        They collapsed to the ground, breathing harshly, Jim sprawled over Artie's back in boneless abandonment. He opened his eyes, when he could, to see Artie's head turned toward his, and the brown eyes watching him. "Sorry," he said shakily. "I'm too heavy on you."

        "No, it's all right," Artie said. "Feels good." His eyes drifted shut. Moisture glistened on his lashes.

        "Artie?" Jim said tentatively.

        "Hmm?"

        "You're weeping . . . "

        "Don't be foolish," Artie said shortly, and moved as though he would get up. Jim slid away, and sat next to him as Artie pushed himself up, his face closed off. "I'm going to wash at the spring."

        He turned back though, as Jim stood with him. "It's nothing," he said, and though his face had cleared, there was something lost and sad in his eyes. He touched Jim's cheek gently. "You're a lovely boy, that's all."

        Of all the responses he might have made, that was least expected. "Boy!" Jim said with a disbelieving grin. "In case, you hadn't noticed, I've not been a boy for some years now. I may not be as worldly as you in matters of the flesh, but that hardly makes me an innocent."

        Artie shook his head slightly. "Yes," he said, "still aching for your lost lover."

        Jim reached for his hand, and held it when Artie would have pulled away. "Perhaps," he admitted, "but not so much as before." He felt himself grinning. "Now that you've shown me how it's done, I won't be innocent long."

        "No, I imagine not," Artie said dryly, freeing himself. He scooped up his drawers and shirt, and picked his way gingerly across the clearing on bare feet, leaving Jim in troubled confusion behind him. But the morning was warming second by second as sunlight crept up the hillside, and it was hard to be distressed when his body felt as energetic as a new colt. Some men were moody as women; perhaps Artie just had that kind of temperament.

        Silence drew out between them, though, as they rode through the morning. Jim pointed out the rock cairns that marked the trail, and Artie nodded and said nothing. By mid-day, they were picking their way down from the plateau to the wooded valley below. They reached a wide ledge, and Jim held up his hand for a stop.

        "We'll be in Nester in an hour," he said, gesturing down to the break in the treeline and the faint bright line of the railroad curving away from the river into the distance, the smoke of the ore crusher and smelter downstream. "Will you tell me what's troubling you?"

        Artie swung down from the saddle and stood at the edge of the dropoff, and after a moment, Jim followed him. He'd been thinking all morning as they rode, thinking about things he didn't usually take much time over. His initial flood of emotion for this man had faded; he felt a bit foolish for having allowed it at all. He'd just been starved for touch, he thought. But perhaps Artie had been as well. Worldly or not, he might not often find another man with similar tastes.

        "Are you thinking we're unlikely to meet again?" he asked. "I won't forget you."

        Artie turned to him, and his face relaxed a little from the set expression it had held all morning. "Nor I you," he said. "I can give you the address of a theater company in Chicago, if you'd like. They hold letters for many people in the business."

        "Yes," Jim said simply. "You're an actor, then?"

        "I have been. I'm not currently on the stage, but I've kept my contacts in the theater. When we get to the hotel, I'll beg a piece of paper and write out the address for you."

        "You'll be staying in Nester?" Jim asked, wanting to ask instead whether they would be together another night, and not quite daring to.

        "That depends on my associate," Artie said, not really an answer. Far below them, puffs of smoke floated up from the unseen town, and the whistle of an engine came faintly on the air. "He may well be on that train, as it happens. We should go on."

        Jim nodded glumly. "As well as the man I'm to see, most likely. You're right, though I'm not looking forward to my meeting."

        "You never really said what your business was," Artie said, as they remounted and rode on. "I thought it would be impolite to ask, but I'll admit to curiosity."

        "I'm a--a sort of trouble-shooter, you might say," Jim answered hesitantly. He didn't have the right to be more honest than that, and the statement was more or less true. "My employer sends me to investigate rumors of . . . well, various sorts of problems."

        Artie nodded without pressing him for more, but he was aware of Artie's gaze on him for a while after that, and glanced over once to see a puzzled expression on Artie's face. But they were down into the valley now, with a wide established trail to ride, and he called over his shoulder, "We'll be there soon," and twitched Dusty's reins to shake him up a bit faster. Artie caught up with him and they rode on together along the bank of the Nester in the shade of the tall pines and aspens. In another ten minutes, the town of Nester Springs straggled out before them along the river's edge: perhaps two dozen houses, a bank, a church, the railroad station, hotel and saloon, and the company mercantile, and at the very bottom of the long slope, Madame Etoile's establishment and the shacks and boarding houses whose tenants were her acknowledged customers. The lead mines in the hills beyond Nester had brought instant prosperity to a previously unsettled area, and if lead wasn't as profitable to mine as gold, it still paid better than coal. Madame had the largest and most lavishly decorated home in the valley, and many a man who patronized it came quietly in the back door and was shown to a private room to preserve his standing 'uptown.' It was as much a home to Jim as any had been since the war, even if Madame was the only constant.

        The train had pulled out by the time they reached the platform. Another engine stood on a siding, but with only two cars behind the coal car and tender. Artie turned his horse in that direction. "Perhaps we can meet for dinner," he said. "My associate will be waiting for me now, but if you'd like, I'll look for you in the hotel dining room this evening." He was more formal and distant than at any time since they'd met.

        Jim meant to say that he would be pleased to meet for dinner, but before he could open his mouth, a shout came from the far end of the station platform. "West! Gordon!" He turned to see Colonel Winston, one of the more stuffy of his liaisons with President Grant, walking rapidly toward them and waving his umbrella.

        Artie said, "Well. Well, well," and swung down off his horse, looking up at Jim as he did so with such relief and joy that he was a completely different man than he'd been all morning. But Winston was almost upon them, and there was no opportunity to ask what had changed.

        Winston and Artie exchanged greetings and shook hands as Jim dismounted, wondering how they came to know each other. "Convenient that you've already met," Winston boomed, and Artie's mouth twitched.

        "I beg your pardon, sir?" Jim asked, wondering what undercurrent was flowing here that he wasn't privy to.

        "Our acquaintance is brief," Artie said, so blandly that Jim almost choked. "We've hardly done more than exchange names." His swift glance dared Jim to say more, and Jim held his mouth to keep from laughing aloud.

        What had Winston said though--Convenient? "Excuse me, sir," Jim asked him. "Are Mr. Gordon and I supposed to meet?"

        Winston glanced around, though there was no one within hearing distance. "Let's go up to the hotel," he said. "I've booked a room. We can speak in private."

        Artie looked over at the engine and short train of cars on the siding, and began to say something, but Winston had already turned and was walking away from them toward the hotel. "Ah. Well. I suppose it will all be explained."

        "I wish someone would explain it to me," Jim complained, hurrying to catch up with them.

        "I don't know much more than you, I'm afraid," Artie said, looking exceedingly pleased, "but let's just say you may not need that address in Chicago after all."

        "Will you stop speaking in riddles?" Jim demanded in a stage whisper as they followed Winston into the hotel, but Artie just shook his head and gestured to Winston.

        "Let him explain," he said, and Jim had to be content with that while they climbed the stairs in Winston's wake.

        Winston gestured them to seats at a table in the corner of the room--a room intended for this sort of meeting, evidently. A sideboard stood on one wall, with glasses and a decanter on a tray, and instead of a bed the room was furnished with a handsome settee and two wing chairs. Winston's leather case lay on the sofa, and he picked it up and brought it to the table.

        "Mr. Gordon, will you pour?" he asked, and Artie obediently moved to the sideboard. Jim took a deep impatient breath and prepared to demand some answers, but Winston forestalled him.

        "Mr. West, believe it or not, we have been reading your dispatches."

        It was so much the opposite from what Jim had half expected him to say that he sat there gaping at Winston with his mouth open like a hooked fish.

        "President Grant himself read the reports from your last mission, and he was most distressed that you have been operating in a completely unofficial capacity without even the ability to call on local law enforcement for assistance. He has directed me to institute some changes, and I have done so."

        "And those would be . . . " Jim asked faintly.

        "Firstly--you will no longer be working alone." He peered at Jim. "You are aware, of course, that you are not the only one of the president's agents."

        "You've mentioned others, yes. Working in the southern states, you said."

        "Not just in the south any more. The Indian territories and the former Mexican lands are equally as worrisome, though for different reasons. We have three pairs of agents now in the west. You and Mr. Gordon will be the fourth pair, and will concentrate on the same general region in which you have been working alone."

        He either didn't notice Jim's poleaxed expression or chose to ignore it. "Secondly, the point you have made on several occasions about having no permanent base of operations--'living on the trail,' I believe you said. As a military man, I agreed with you, but I could see no obvious solution. The railroad has created that solution, however, with the recent completion of the Trans-Continental line."

        Jim thought of the engine and passenger car sitting on the siding across the street, and of a cryptic remark Artie had made. 'I might be able to offer somewhat better accommodations,' he had said. He turned to give Artie a slow look with the beginning of anger in it, but Artie shook his head and flicked his eyes at Winston.

        "We have secured the use of a railroad car," Winston went on, exhibiting no awareness of their interchange, "and caused it to be made over for your needs. It has a parlor, a bedroom, and a laboratory for Mr. Gordon, who may not, at your 'brief acquaintance,' have made you aware of his particular skills. A baggage car has been converted to provide stabling for your horses, and by the by, if either of your mounts is too skittish for the train, you will need to see about obtaining something with a calmer temperament."

        Jim held his fraying temper and only said, "Dusty has been transported by train before. He'll be no trouble."

        "Very good. Now--as to your official standing, or lack of it." He peered at Jim. "You have been operating, er--ex-portfolio, as it were, because there is simply no convenient pigeonhole for what we've asked you to do. President Grant has proposed, however, that you be attached to the Secret Service, since you worked with them on occasion in Washington and are familiar with their procedures. This would have the advantage of providing you with official employment and a regularized chain of command"

        Jim said slowly, "I thought the Secret Service only dealt with counterfeiting and such."

        "True. And you may be asked to investigate problems of that nature as well. We simply have no more appropriate department in which to place you. If the country had a bureau of police or some equivalent organization, it might be more suitable, but lacking that, we felt that the Secret Service was the best home for you and Mr. Gordon."

        Jim glanced at Artie, wondering whether he'd known about this as well as about the train. But Artie was looking less than enthusiastic. "I was not made aware of this change of plan, Colonel Winston," he said.

        "I regret that we were not able to inform you of the decision before your departure for the west," Winston said, an edge to his voice. Jim knew that edge; it meant that for whatever reason, Washington was not going to be budged.

        "I suppose it doesn't really matter," Artie said with a shrug. "I'll admit that I prefer the less sructured arrangement we originally discussed, but this should do as well. I would like to know what the, um--local chain of command is to be, if you understand my meaning."

        Winston hesitated, but said, "We are aware that you are older, and in some ways more experienced, than Mr. West, but given his military background and the fact that he has held a field command--"

        He stopped again, but Artie said smoothly, "I quite agree. I am not a leader of men. My skills are different ones, and I shall be happy to serve . . . er--under Mr. West."

        Despite his growing feeling of betrayal, Jim could not restrain a bark of laughter. He managed to turn it into a choking cough. "Sorry--swallowed the wrong way." He snatched up his tumbler of whiskey and downed the whole contents in a gulp, and then did cough and wheeze with no need to pretend.

        Winston gave him a sharp look, and Artie a somewhat worried one, but when he had his breath back, he waved his hand and said, "I'm all right." He needed some distance from their gaze, however, and some space in which to consider the new developments. "Uh--perhaps we could have a look at the train? And I still need to make my report on the mission just completed."

        Winston got ponderously to his feet. "Let us go over to the station then. You can write your report tonight. I'll be in Nester for another day. And of course, I have new instructions for you."

        Jim insisted on checking out the horse car first, partly because of his real concern that it should be fitted up properly, and partly from a perverse desire to delay Artie from what he suspected was of much more interest to him. But the stable on wheels was as well constructed as he could have asked for--two large box stalls, a feed and tack room, and at the back, a compartment filled with loose hay. A large tank held water, and could be refilled from outside the car, Jim noted with approval. A coal-burning potbelly sat on a hearth of firebrick in one corner of the front of the car, and three bunks--for the train crew, he assumed--occupied the other corner. He nodded finally and allowed that it was time to inspect the other car. Winston had been shifting from one foot to the other in growing impatience, and Artie's face had lost its amused expression and was beginning to look merely irritated.

        When they finally stepped up into the other car, he looked around in amazement. The living quarters he had expected to be utilitarian at best looked instead as though Madame might have been the decorator. Even Artie seemed surprised. Persian rugs adorned the floor; dark, polished wood panelling covered the walls and ornate lamps hung at convenient points. A sofa sat at one end, with gentlemen's upholstered chairs arranged about it. It was a man's room, still, but a far more luxurious one than Jim had ever occupied before. He touched the lustrous walnut of a side table and said hesitantly, "This seems . . . excessive, sir, for two mere agents of President Grant."

        Winston said dryly, "You are not the only one to think so, Mr. West. The furniture and fittings came with the car, however, and the former owner is not presently at liberty to reclaim them. It is, in fact, somewhat less, er--sybaritic than when we acquired it."

        He pushed past Jim to the opposite end of the parlor. "Come through here, Mr. Gordon--I wish to show you the laboratory. We followed your specification as closely as possible in its equipment and supplies."

        Jim trailed along behind Artie and Winston into a smaller narrow space roughly a third the length of the car. The near end of it was equipped much as a ship's galley would be: latched cupboards, a tiny railed cookstove, racks of dishes and cups. He opened the largest of the lockers and found, hardly surprised any more, that it was instead an icebox, though it currently held no ice.

        Artie had walked on through the galley as though he didn't even see it, and was examining, with many pleased expressions, the mysterious looking glassware and stoppered bottles and things of vaguely mechanical appearance on the long counter beyond. "Excellent!" he proclaimed, with beaming face. "I see that you have even provided a telegraph." He opened a drawer and with an exclamation lifted out a tray of what looked like small paint pots. "These are top notch, Colonel. Did you consult Monsieur Perrault, then, as I suggested? This is what he would have told you to procure."

        Winston nodded. "He said that you were a master of the art of disguise and would need a master's materials to work with."

        In growing bewilderment, Jim broke in. "Excuse me, Colonel, what is all . . . this--" he waved a hand at the incomprehensible arrangement of equipment. "--this, for, exactly?"

        Winston glanced at Artie. "You haven't discussed anything with him, then?" and when Artie shook his head silently, he said to Jim, "Mr. Gordon is--what is it called these days, Gordon? A 'scientist.' He has also been an actor and is skilled in all the various arts of disguise. You have said repeatedly that you are not adept in this particular area and that you feel your 'feeble attempts'--as I believe you phrased it--were often less than successful. Mr. Gordon, therefore, will undertake any endeavor in which a change of personality is required, while you may concentrate on those aspects of a mission to which you are best suited."

        "But all these--devices and apparatuses and--and gadgets? And the telegraph--are we going to be carrying a telegrapher as well?"

        "I know the code," Artie said. "And the gadgets, as you describe them, are part of the standard equipment of any laboratory. I was an actor, but I was first educated in the natural sciences." He paused and gave Jim a long look. "I did tell you that I worked in munitions development during the war. President Grant believes that my experience with chemicals and mechanical devices will allow us to function more effectively than either of us could alone."

        Winston put in, "There is another element of which you are unaware, Mr. West. A certain Dr. Loveless is known to be operating in southern California, and we fear that he may extend his activities across the southwest. He appears to employ devices which we have not previously encountered, as well as unknown poisons and other chemicals. We have so far been unable to thwart his activities, some of which have resulted in the loss of individuals whose vital work for our government is now at a standstill. He must be stopped, and Mr. Gordon's expertise, we hope, will allow Washington to bring his activities to a halt."

        "Are the other teams of agents going to be outfitted like--this?" Jim asked, still almost agog at the luxury of the surroundings.

        Winston shook his head. "Those in the south are all residents of their respective areas, so nothing of this sort was deemed necessary. Two of the teams in the west are working out of large cities--Chicago and Seattle, to be precise--and already have an established base of operations. The third team consists of a former Texas Ranger and an Indian companion, who are accustomed to--as I believe you phrased it--'living on the trail,' and would not have felt comfortable in these surroundings. In addition, the railroad has not yet penetrated much of the area in which they are active. So to answer your question, you and Mr. Gordon are the only ones at present to enjoy this, er . . . "

        He paused, as those seeking an appropriate word, and from the corner Artie said sotto voce, "Ambience."

        "Ah, yes. Ahem. Let me show you the rest of the accommodation, and then we can repair to the hotel and discuss the just completed mission."

        Jim stepped back into the parlor to allow Winston to pass, and then followed him through the other doorway. A space approximately the same size as the galley and laboratory held two bunks, several tall cupboards and at the far end, another door into what Jim hoped might actually be a bath, unlikely as that seemed on a train. If the former owner had seen fit to include an icebox in the galley, he might have been just as anxious to provide all the comforts of home in the bedroom as well.

        Winston indicated the pair of bunks with a hand. "The owner's fixtures were somewhat more luxurious than this. We removed the rather . . . er--overly large bed, and replaced it with a more suitable sleeping arrangement."

        "Of course," said Artie, in the same dry voice as before. He went down to the end and opened the door there, and said in a much more pleased tone, "Well--I'm very glad you didn't take out the other, um, arrangements."

        A large chamber pot sat enthroned in a wooden cabinet, with a brass bath mounted next to it. The size of the bath would have made Madame Etoile derisive with scorn, but that it was there at all was an unexpected bonus.

        "The train itself may be part of your disguise," Winston said. "Mr. West has shown that he can carry off the role of a wealthy young gentleman, and the train may be a useful, er--adjunct. We thought it appropriate to retain such features as would assist Mr. West in this regard. An excessive attention to, er--cleanliness, appears to be essential to the image."

        Artie didn't say anything at all to that remark, and Jim turned back into the parlor with a sense of events getting away from him. When it looked as though Winston intended to leave the car, expecting, of course, that the others would follow along behind him, Jim said, "Excuse me, sir. I believe that Mr. Gordon and I should have some . . . discussion of our proposed alliance. I'm sure you have considered it very carefully, but we have, after all, just met."

        Winston glanced back and forth between them. "The decision has been made at the very highest levels. However, if you think there may be some problem, feel free to take a few moments to be sure of yourself. I shall be in the hotel."

        He nodded to Artie and swung down from the car. Jim turned to Artie, who was already holding up his hands and beginning to speak. "Jim, I didn't--"

        "Don't deny it! You knew all along who I was!"

        "I do deny it!" Artie shot back, just as vehemently. "I did wonder when I first saw you, but you have to admit that you were not at your most impressive at the time. Face down in the dirt was not how I expected to first encounter you." He groped behind him for the nearest chair and thumped himself back against its upholstered arm. "It wasn't until this afternoon, when you gave me some hint of your occupation, that I began to think I'd been wrong and that you were the one I was to meet after all."

        "Washington never told you my name?"

        "Colonel Richmond has been my only contact up to now, and he told me it hadn't been determined yet who I would be partnered with. One of the other agents has been injured, and I expected to be taking his place until he recovers. I don't know what prompted them to send me here instead, and at the moment, I must wonder myself whether it was a good idea."

        "What is that supposed to mean?"

        "It means that you're acting like a petulant child. I said nothing to you because I had decided you could not be my new partner, nothing more than that."

        "Why did you think that?" Jim asked, more curious than angry now.

        Artie took a deep breath, looking away. "I have no experience in these cloak and dagger affairs. I didn't know what sort of person to expect." His face softened and he gave Jim a rueful half-smile. "Someone more like myself, I suppose. Devious and cunning. It is a weakness of mine to build towers of fancy on the foundation of insufficient data."

        "I can be devious when I need to," Jim protested, distracted against his better judgment from the original subject.

        "I'm sure you can. But it isn't your nature, is it? I was expecting a mature sophisticate, not an open, honest, fresh-faced . . . farm boy."

        Jim said softly, "I'd be insulted, except that you're hardly the first to be taken in by my appearance."

        "Was I?" Artie asked him. "Taken in?" When Jim didn't immediately answer, he said, "You clung to me last night, and blurted out something you've probably told no one else, ever."

        "A moment of weakness," Jim said stiffly, beginning to be angry all over again with Artie's presumptions.

        "Yes, of course it was. I've had my own today, several times." He rose and came across the car to where Jim stood. "Tell me I am not having another. I've agreed to be a secret agent--essentially a spy. You do realize, don't you, that being in the formal employ of the government removes any protections we might have as private citizens. What's more, I've agreed to place myself under the command of a hot-headed youngster whose reports to his superiors--if Winston is not exaggerating--seem to be full mostly of complaints about the circumstances of his work."

        Jim's chin came up; true or not, the accusation stung. "You don't fault a workman for the quality of the tools he's given," he said evenly. "I accomplished the mission I was assigned, every time. And my concerns were valid ones, or the president wouldn't have acted on them."

        He didn't say, "And you would not be here now," though it hung in the air between them.

        "True," Artie acknowledged. He glanced away, and back. "I've already given my word to President Grant. I won't go back on it."

        "Nor will I. But I won't have us begin a partnership with falsehoods between us."

        "I have not lied to you. About anything."

        "Fair enough," Jim said, "All right," but the sadness was back in the brown eyes, more than he could bear. "Artie . . . " He heard the break in his voice. "I--I won't be faithful to you."

        Artie dropped his eyes finally, and shook his head. "Nor I to you," he said bleakly. "It isn't in me." He took a deep breath and looked back. "But I promise to always be near should you need me."

        Jim thought about that for a long moment. It was a big promise, with the ring of permanence, and it didn't frighten him near as much as it ought to have done. He took a deep breath. "I'm not much good at making vows," he said finally, "but I'll try my best to do the same. That much I can promise." He stuck out his hand impulsively. "Shake hands on it?"

        Artie gave him a small smile. "I can think of a better way to seal a bargain," he said.

        Jim smiled back and leaned into the kiss, savoring the scratchiness of Artie's cheek. They had both shaved before saddling up in the morning, a fastidious habit that Jim had been teased about more than once, but which he had been pleased to see Artie shared. Artie was one of those men whose beard grew back by evening, though, and Jim found that he liked the bristly sensation, and the contrast between the smooth lips and the rough cheeks. And the demanding wet tongue. And the hands under his jacket, and the muscular thighs pressing against his own--"Damn!" Artie said, the first time Jim had heard him swear. "I have no defenses against you." He glanced at the open door of the carriage. "We're lucky Winston hasn't come back looking for us--we'd have given him apoplexy for certain."

        "Mm," Jim agreed. "I suppose we'd better go tell him everything is well."

        Artie nodded. "Or he's likely to start thinking about the other reason you might not have wished to work with me."

        Jim gave him a puzzled glance. "What do you mean?"

        Artie shrugged. "My . . . people aren't welcome in every drawing room, you know."

        "Your people?" Jim said, baffled. And then that fleeting impression of the previous night came back to him, vague and confused, and he blurted out, "You are a Gypsy, then!"

      No, it was something the Gypsies had talked about . . . He shook his head. "I'm being foolish, never mind."

        But Artie threw back his head and shouted with laughter. "What? Of course I'm no Gypsy. Whatever put that into your head?"

        "You'll laugh," Jim began, but he tried his best anyway to explain how some trick of the moonlight had conjured up memories of the monster the Gypsies had described.

        Artie nodded. "I know what you're speaking of--a 'vampyre,' they call it. Jim--you may recall that our first meeting took place in the middle of the day with the sun blazing down on us. So I think you can rest your mind in that regard." At Jim's look of incomprehension, he added patiently, "Vampyres are supposed to be unable to bear the light of the sun." He chuckled again and grinned a wide open-mouth leer. "And they have fangs, I seem to recall. No fangs, my dear."

        "All right! You've made your point. But what did you mean about "my people,' then?"

        Artie looked at him a bit strangely. "I'm a . . . you know--one of the 'sons of Abraham?' A Jew, James."

        "Is that all?" Jim asked. "Yes, you're circumcised. I'd forgotten that."

        "That would be enough all by itself to give me away to most people," Artie said, but Jim took his arm and turned Artie to face him.

        "Look--if the other fellow isn't shooting at me, or blowing me up, or bashing me with something, I don't care where he goes to church!"

        Artie shook his head, with a pained smile. "You're a treasure, James."

        "I just have a more sensible set of priorities than a lot of people," Jim said with a grin. "Gordon isn't a Jewish name, though, is it?"

        "It was Guerdain once. And Gurdansky, or something like it, before that. It's curious, in fact, that you should have made that connection with Gypsies, because my people probably come from the same part of the world as the Romany folk, and I've always gotten on well with them. My great-grandfather changed the name to Guerdain, though, and my father changed it again to Gordon when we came here." He glanced at Jim. "A good Presbyterian name, don't you think?"

        Jim snorted. "Not in my father's house. It will have to be a good Methodist name if you ever want to be accepted there."

        Artie acknowledged that with a smile. "Yes. One day." He gestured at the door and the hotel beyond. "We shouldn't keep the Colonel waiting."

        They disposed of Winston, dinner, and Madame--in pretty much that order--and, much later, lay comfortably in the bed they'd constructed of the two bunks, proving Artie's assertion that no one spent years in the theater without learning the rudiments of carpentry, and Jim's that no one grew up on a farm without being able to knock together whatever one needed. The thin straw ticks were still there, but topped now with a feather bed from one of Madame's ample cupboards. The rough army blankets adorned the bunks in the stable car--though the train crew had apparently stabled elsewhere ["At Madame's, no doubt," Artie had said with a snicker]--and had been replaced with what Madame considered suitable bedding. She'd also suggested suitable bedmates, and had given them a sharp-eyed look when they declined, giving as their excuse that their employer would be turning up early on their doorstep.

        "I don't think we fooled Madame," Jim said, lazily stretching.

        "No," Artie agreed. "She knows me well enough. She probably thinks I've seduced and corrupted you."

        They had pulled the curtains in the little bedroom windows and disrobed slowly, savoring each new part of the other as it was revealed. "Soft as a kitten," Artie had said, running a hand over Jim's chest and pausing to tweak a nipple.

        Jim had admired the strong thighs that had so excited him earlier. "Runs in the family," Artie told him. "You should see my great-aunt Maude--limbs like a ship's mast."

        "I don't want to see your great-aunt," Jim said, with heartfelt vehemence. "Unless she is much younger than any great-aunt ought to be."

        "No, positively ancient."

        He'd stripped by then to vest and stockings and stood idly stroking himself while Jim turned back the counterpane and smoothed the sheets. Jim glanced over his shoulder and smiled wickedly. "I see you're taking care of yourself," he said. "Shall I do the same?"

        Unexpectedly, Artie nodded. "Yes, do," he said. "I'd like to watch you. Show me what feels good to you."

        So Jim had leaned back against the bed, feeling unaccountably self-conscious, and taken himself in hand. "I've never done this in front of anyone," he said with an embarrassed grin. "Not even Sam."

        Artie stepped closer. "No?" he asked softly. "What did you do? Tell me. How did you come to be lovers?"

        The memories no longer twisted his gut, he found, but there were so many . . . He recalled how Sam had teased him once to desperate need in the hayloft of the barn, and then put his mouth there and smiled with his eyes when Jim spurted helplessly into him.

        "Oh, Hell!" he said roughly, as tears unexpectedly flooded his eyes and spilled over.

        He turned away, but Artie came to him instantly and pulled him close. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "That was selfish of me. You needn't say anything."

        Jim sighed a little against Artie's shoulder. "No, it's all right. Just took me by surprise." He pulled away and looked up. "I never let myself weep for him again, not after my father caught me."

        Artie nodded sympathetically. "Sometimes I think women have the right of it," he said. "Bawl your eyes out and get it over with, and the grief doesn't linger to haunt you later."

        "I saw enough of that in the war," Jim said soberly. "Men with their guts blown out shrieking and wailing for their mothers. I think I'd rather have lost Sam the way I did than for him to have died like that."

        Artie looked at him and then pushed him gently back. "Bed," he said, and leaned over to blow out the lamp.

        His thoughts in a muddle and unsure what Artie wanted, Jim climbed up and slid over to leave room. The momentary surge of grief for Sam had faded now, though his cheeks were still wet. He still felt some residual guilt over his own part in Sam's death, but not the tearing rage that made him a hero, ironically, on the battlefield. Even the bitterness he'd felt toward his father seemed muted and distant. He didn't know whether to be grateful or bereft.

        In the dim and diffused moonlight, Artie pulled the cover up and turned to him. "Come here," he said, and settled them together comfortably--the touch of a comrade, not a lover. "Tell me about Sam. Were you boys together?"

        "Yes," Jim said slowly. "They had the next property to ours. His father was a lawyer, but he farmed too. He was made judge when Sam was twelve, though, and they moved into town. Up to then, I suppose we spent every moment together that we could." He grinned suddenly in the dark. "Fought like little vixen, too. We'd go home with black eyes and our clothes ripped half off, and be best friends again the next day."

        Artie chuckled softly. "You hadn't discovered each other, surely, by twelve?"

        "No, hardly. Not for years after."

        He took a deep breath and made himself look at the memories again. "Sam went to read law in the next town after we left school. One Saturday night I rode over to see him--he had a room over the law office where he clerked--and we began to talk about one thing and another."

        He could see the room in his mind as clear as if it had been the night before, just a bare four walls and a bedstead, an old deal table for a desk, and a scrap of wilton on the floor. Sam's mother had been scandalized, had wanted to furnish it properly from her own home, but Sam had insisted proudly that he was grown now and would make his own way. They'd been sitting together on the bed because he had no chair. "Somewhere along the way I said I'd learned to kiss as the French do, and he wanted to know what that was. And when I told him, he screwed up his face and said it didn't sound like anything he'd want to do."

        "Does seem a bit unsanitaire, I suppose," Artie remarked sardonically, "if you've never tried it."

        "Well--he had to try it, I said. And he kept putting me off when I suggested this girl or that one, until finally I just leaned over and kissed him myself, to show him." He chuckled at the memory of that impulsive kiss, and the thunderstruck expression on Sam's face.

        "I'd stopped to visit the tavern on the way," he added, "and I guess I was more than a little tipsy. My father wouldn't have strong drink in the house, so I'd never had any until I started going about by myself, but I'd drunk a glass before I got to Sam's."

        "Strong drink has led many a lad astray," Artie intoned so ponderously that Jim couldn't help but laugh.

        "It may have prompted what I did, but Sam was sober as a preacher on the Sabbath. When I let him go, he stared at me so flummoxed I didn't know whether he was going to punch me or bust out laughing."

        "Mm." Artie turned a little toward him and slid one hand along his flank. "What did he do?"

        Jim swallowed, half-aroused with the memory and with the feel of Artie's warm hand on him. "He said, 'Jimmie,' all reproachful--the way his mother used to do when she was put out with me--and then . . . Jimmie, again, so low I could barely hear him. And then he just took hold of me and kissed me like I'd done to him, but it wasn't fooling when he did it."

        Artie was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Some people know all along where their hearts lie, but for some--it takes them sudden, like that."

        In the dim light, Jim could just see his face. Artie grinned suddenly. "You didn't fight him off, I suppose."

        Jim snorted softly. "I might have been surprised, and half drunken too, but I'm not witless. Though it took us a while to get beyond kissing, I'll admit."

        "What children you were," Artie said, but affectionately, and Jim nodded.

        "We were, that's true. A couple of innocent little puppies rolling around together, just as we'd always done."

        "Tell me what happened after he died," Artie said, and the little room grew very quiet again.

        "I ran off," Jim said finally. "I couldn't stay at home after what my father said to me, and I couldn't bear to face Sam's parents. They didn't knew why he died--I was too much a coward to tell them. I walked until I came to the canal and I begged passage, in exchange for work, on one of the tows going down to the Mississippi. And then I just stayed on as a boat-hand most of that year."

        "Huh!" Artie said, in the tone of one suddenly enlightened. "I thought you might have been around ships or boats at some time. You called my things 'gadgets,' remember? That's sailor cant. You don't often hear it anywhere else."

        "That's right," Jim acknowledged. "I didn't think I'd carried anything away with me from that year, but I guess a couple of things stuck." He gave a mock shudder. "I'm not a waterman. I can stay on the roughest bronco, but let a boat give a little shake and a shiver, and I'll end up in the water every time."

        "How did you come to leave the river?"

        "A fellow who'd been in my company of militia back home came along one day when we were tied up at Natchez, and when he saw me, he said he'd had word that if war broke out, the whole company was going to join up as a group. He was on the way home and he begged me to come back with him, so I told the master he wouldn't ever have to fish me out again, and off we went."

        "Did you go back home?"

        "No . . . I wasn't ready for that. I went to see Sam's father though, in his chambers. Told him what had happened and begged his forgiveness." Jim was silent for a moment, and then went on with a sigh. "He broke down and wept and asked me to come home with him. But I couldn't face Sam's mother, so I begged off and went along with my friend. And then the next day, South Carolina seceded and we all marched off to Springfield and joined up."

        "And they made you an officer, at that tender age? Winston said you'd held a field command."

        Jim laughed a bit grimly. "I was second oldest of the lot, so they made me a lieutenant. It was a company of militia, remember? But our captain was killed in the first battle, so . . . I got promoted."

        "Why do I have the feeling," Artie asked, "that you're skipping over a lot of important things? People don't just 'get promoted.'"

        "In battle they do," Jim told him flatly. "When there's no one else to lead, and the highest ranking officer tears out in front not caring whether he lives or dies, and has the bad luck to survive." That sounded more bitter than he really felt any more, though, and he added, "The brigade commander pinned my ears back when he was pinning the rank on me, and I didn't do that again."

        "Well--" Artie said, after a moment. "I suppose I'm glad you didn't."

        "Oh . . . just 'glad,' is that all?" Jim teased, feeling the tension drain away finally. The memories were still all there, he found, but they no longer twisted him in knots. The warmth of Artie's hand was doing interesting things to his nearby anatomy, and he was suddenly impatient for what had been cycling around in the back of his head all day.

        Artie chuckled softly. "I admit to a certain degree of relief, considering that I might not be lying here in this comfortable bed in this luxurious private car, with challenging work ahead of me, otherwise." He rolled up on his elbow and peered down at Jim. "Of course, I might still be here, but with some other beautiful young man."

        "Hmpf." Jim pretended to be affronted. "Perhaps I should have taken Madame up on the offer of Suzette, if you'd be just as happy with someone else."

        "But if I'd never met you," Artie said reasonably, "I wouldn't know the difference, would I?"

        "Oh, you'd know you were missing something," Jim said airily. "You just wouldn't know what."

        In the sudden silence, Artie said with a catch to his voice, "Yes." He rose up over Jim, and pressed a finger against Jim's mouth. "Be still. Please."

        Knowing he'd somehow touched that reservoir of melancholy again, he acquiesced, and lay quiet as Artie bent down to him. Artie's lips touched his, compelling and powerful. "Your mouth excites me," Artie said huskily. "I want to touch it all the time--with my fingers, with my mouth, with my cock. I want to feel your mouth stretch around me, like it did last night."

        Speech as a component of sex was something new for Jim. He liked the soft sounds of pleasure that women made, though he knew that for most of the women he bedded, they were no more than a practiced art designed to urge the paying customer on as quickly as possible. Sincere or not, they were nothing like this focused, deliberately erotic recitation of sensuality.

        Jim would have put his mouth anywhere Artie demanded at that moment, but Artie said, "Hush," his finger against Jim's lips. And again, "Be still."

        He knelt over Jim, raising goosebumps along every inch of almost-touched flesh. "If I could dress you," he whispered, "you'd wear nothing but chaps and a vest, and I'd ride behind you and watch your ass in the saddle."

        Jim could feel the leather against his naked skin, the press and ease of the saddle as the horse moved under him. If he hadn't already been aroused, the raw words would have had him hard in a second. He bit the inside of his cheek and clenched his hands into fists at his side, and managed not to move, or speak.

        Artie sat back, looking pleased with himself. "There's more to pleasure," he murmured, "than fellatio and buggery."

        If I'm to have more pleasure than this, Jim thought, in an erotic haze, I may not survive it. Artie straddled him, his bare ass brushing tantalizingly against Jim's knees as he moved. He bent over Jim again; the soft skin of his belly caressed Jim's cock, and Jim shuddered all over.

      Artie chucked softly. "You are responsive, by God!"

      Responsive? He was a damn powder keg. One spark and it would be all over with--a flash of light and a puff of smoke, and he'd be floating around in little pieces in the ether. He said dreamily, "Mm-hm."

      Artie's breath whispered along his collar bone. Moisture touched his breast. A tongue lapped at him and he opened his eyes to see Artie's head bent to his nipple like a suckling at the breast. "No fangs," he murmured ludicrously. Artie bit down hard enough to make him gasp, and at the same time reached between them and squeezed his cock from root to tip, and then swirled the heel of his hand around the head. That was spark and enough. A strangled cry wrenched itself from his throat as the climax swept over him in hard convulsive pulses. Artie milked him, each stroke setting off another explosion of sensation.

      When he could think again, and open his eyes, Artie stood by the bed watching him, his hand smoothing Jim's seed over his own cock. He waited until Jim's breath eased before speaking. "You know what I want."

      Jim nodded.

      "Yes," he said, to make clear his assent.

      "Will you kneel for me, as I did for you?"

      There was no answer but "Yes." He nodded again.

      Artie glanced at the bed, higher than usual because of the unorthodox construction. "Just lean over the edge, I think," he suggested. "That should be comfortable for both of us."

      Jim slid over to the side and let his feet drop to the floor. He felt hot and cold, anxious and anticipatory, all at once. Since fucking Artie the night before, he had wanted this, and now, as it was about to take place, all he could think of was whether it was going to hurt too much to be pleasurable. And there was still no answer but Yes.

      Artie smoothed a hand down his back to his ass, meaning to soothe and relax, no doubt, but Jim could feel the line of gooseflesh it left. The hand left his flank and came to rest in his hair, stroking gently. Artie's weight pressed against the edge of the bed next to him.

      "I know--" Artie hesitated. "I know I'm . . . large. I'll be as easy with you as I can, but there will be some discomfort at first."

      Jim nodded, finding it impossible to put his tumbled thoughts into words.

      "Spread your legs a little, then," Artie whispered, and when he did so, Artie's finger slipped between his cheeks, stroking slowly along the cleft. He wanted to feel it at the hole, at that crinkled flesh where he'd touched Artie, but Artie teased him, swirling the finger around the desired spot without quite touching it.

      Still vibrating with the resonance of his climax, he moaned softly, trying to say without words what he wanted. Artie's finger went away for a moment, and returned with something cool and smooth. He didn't tease this time. The finger pressed in gently, smoothing the cream all around the opening. It pressed in farther, a strange feeling, but not an unpleasant one. It found that special place, the one that felt so good when he climaxed, and even after the strong climax of a moment before, there was a stab of pleasure. He shook with the intensity of it, and whispered something incoherent, hardly aware of what he was saying.

      "Yes," Artie whispered back. "Yes, now."

      The finger slipped out and was replaced with something else, large and blunt. "Breathe deeply," Artie said softly in his ear. "Take deep breaths and relax as much as you can. I'll go slow, but if you tense up, it's going to hurt."

      Jim nodded, and tried to do as Artie had instructed. He felt Artie's cock rubbing gently around the opening, as his finger had done, and then push inside. It seemed huge, and though he tried to relax and let Artie in, his body wasn't cooperating. Artie pulled back, and Jim said shakily, "I'm sorry, I'm trying."

      "It's all right," Artie reassured him. "Move away from the bed a little, so I can touch you."

      Jim complied, and Artie reached around him to grasp his softened cock. He made a ring of his thumb and forefinger and gripped Jim tightly within it. "This is what you feel like to me," he whispered. "So tight . . . remember how I felt to you?"

      So good . . . Oh yes, he had no trouble remembering that. He wanted to give Artie that same pleasure, that fierce hot drive to the blazing peak, and the tremulous melting joy in its passing. He took a deep shaky breath. "Try again," he said in a low voice. "I want to try again."

      He felt Artie's lips on his back. "It'll be all right, I promise," Artie whispered. His finger came back to the tensed opening and stroked around it. "Let me in," he pleaded softly.

      Jim let out the breath he was holding and slowly relaxed back against the bed, and Artie's hand. For that yearning note in Artie's voice, he'd have thrown himself to the lions. "Yes."

      It was easier this time, his body in concert with his mind. He lifted a little on his toes and Artie pressed into him. He took one deep breath and let it out again, and suddenly Artie was there, filling him entirely. His universe narrowed down to that point of contact between them. Everything else floated away. He was dimly aware of the pressure of Artie's balls against his ass, and the almost painful grip of Artie's fingers on his thigh, but every other sensation paled next to the feel of Artie's hard bulk in his ass.

      Artie breathed harshly against his back, immobile except for the fine trembling of his legs. "Yes," Jim breathed again, and pushed back, and Artie said, "Oh!" explosively and pushed forward, and then there was nothing in the world but their bodies together--Jim's little gasps every time Artie touched that place inside and Artie's hitching groans as he plunged and withdrew again and again. His hand closed convulsively on Jim's cock as he came, a grip painfully tight, but it was the last jolt of stimulation that Jim needed to push him over the edge again.

      Spangles of light burst behind his closed eyes and his knees wavered. It was all he could do to hold on to the bedclothes and keep them both from ending up in a heap on the floor. Artie was hanging on to him like a drowning man and gasping his name.

      "Artie," he said hoarsely. His voice cracked and he tried again. "Artie, I can't hold us both up." The counterpane was slipping already; in another moment they'd all be on the floor together.

      Artie groaned and tried to step back, but it was too late. Jim tightened his grip on the covers and the whole construction gave way, and they ended up on the floor with Artie more or less on the bottom, Jim in the middle, and the feather mattress, sheets, pillows and covers on top. Artie sputtered and sneezed, and shoved ineffectively at Jim.

      "Get off, you're heavy as a horse! Quit laughing and clear off!"

      Jim had dissolved into helpless peals of laughter. "I'm trying," he managed, between guffaws. Artie finally succeeded in freeing himself from mattress, bedclothes and naked partner, and lay back against the pile shaking his head and massaging his hip.

      "I suppose it's safe to assume that was a satisfactory experience?" he inquired sardonically, but his mouth was twitching, and in a moment they were both wheezing with laughter.

      "Brought down the house--I mean the bed!" Jim choked out, and set them off again.

      "Hush, you'll have the night watchman banging on the wall in a moment," Artie gasped.

      "You'll have to admit--that's one advantage of living on the wrong side of the tracks. No one thinks anything of how much you're enjoying yourself."

      He lay back and looked up at Artie, and thought with mild incredulity how much his life had changed in the last 24 hours. From an ignominious splat on his face in the dirt to this equally ridiculous, but more amusing, fall on the floor, the course of his life had taken a 180 degree turn, and he still wasn't quite used to the idea. Artie looked back at him with a slow smile.

      "Tuppence for them?" he asked, and Jim laughed a little and rolled over against him.

      "Yesterday," he said, "I was disillusioned with my work to the point of considering resignation. I can hardly believe I'm here now, and you're here, and all this--" he indicated the bedroom with a sweep of his arm--"is here. It's like a dream. I'm afraid I'm going to wake up and I'll be back in someone's dungeon trussed up like Sunday dinner."

      The smile faded from Artie's face. "You know we still face that kind of risk," he said. "You, particularly--you seem to have a penchant for making bad people unhappy with you. I had a chill more than once reading through the agents' reports, and guessing some of what you weren't saying."

      "You read my reports?" Jim asked, surprised.

      "I'm certain that a couple of them were yours. Colonel Richmond wasn't revealing names at that point, but he wanted to be sure that I knew what I was getting involved in. I'll admit I had to give this work some deep consideration after reading what you'd all been through."

      "And now?" Jim asked. "What do you think now?"

      "That it will be easier," Artie said. He rolled away and pushed himself to his feet. "And harder. Much harder than I could have guessed."

      His voice had gone distant again with some sentiment that Jim could only guess at, and the guess took him into areas he wasn't ready to explore. "Perhaps we should start out on the floor next time," he suggested with a grin. "Less dangerous that way."

      Artie stuck out a hand and pulled him up. "Is there to be a next time, then?" he asked. "I was so caught up in it that I couldn't tell whether it was pleasurable for you."

      For the pleasure it gave you, Jim thought, I'd do it any time you wanted, whether I liked it or not. But all he said was, "My ass is raw and my cock is sore, and I thank God we don't have to be in the saddle tomorrow." Artie's face dropped, and he added, "And the next time, I'll have you, I think."

      Artie hooked an arm around his neck and pulled him close. "You may have me whenever you wish," he whispered. They stood like that, forehead to forehead, for a long moment, and then Jim laughed a bit shakily and pushed away.

      "I need to visit the facilities."

      Artie let him go, and came in a moment later to wash himself. "What do you make of this Levantine we're supposed to pay a visit on?" he asked. Richmond's new assignment was to investigate reports of an Egyptian who had allegedly bilked people of large amounts of money on the pretext of building replicas of the Pyramids in the Arizona desert. His activities would have been a matter for local law enforcement alone, had there been any in the area, and had one of the investors not been the niece of someone in Grant's cabinet. After the publicity surrounding her loss, the Egyptian had disappeared. Jim and Artie were to "smoke him out," Richmond hoped, by posing as wealthy gentlemen with more money than common sense.

      "I think if he's got any wits at all," Jim said with a shrug, "he's long since high-tailed it across the Mexican border. Doesn't seem likely we'll turn him up, but it should be fun to try."

      Artie followed him back into the bedroom and helped him put the bed back together. Comfortably settled, and half asleep, Jim responded to Artie's remark about Madame with a snicker. "But you have seduced me," he grinned. "And corrupted. And buggered, and a couple of other things I don't have polite words for. And you may do it again, any time you like."

      "And if one day I want to do it with Suzette, or Claire?" Artie asked carefully. "We have to work together without squabbling over personal affairs."

      "Then I suppose I'll have to make do with Antoinette or Sylvie," Jim said matter-of-factly, putting down the faint stab of jealousy that he knew he couldn't afford to feel. "Or whatever name Madame has given to her newest girl. I told you I wouldn't be faithful--how can I expect it of you?"

      "That's all right, then," Artie said flatly, but he softened the words a moment later with a kiss. "Good night, James. Blow the lamp out, will you?"

      Jim hitched himself over to reach the lamp, and then settled back against Artie's side. In a moment, he could feel Artie's slow even breath against his back, but he lay awake until the moonlight fell through the window onto Artie's face. He turned and studied the sleep-softened features in the pale light--the fine lashes against Artie's cheek, the strong mouth that had given him so much pleasure, the dark wavy hair now lying in tousled curls. Could it only have been twenty-four hours since they met? Thirty hours now, perhaps. It seemed a lifetime. He gazed at Artie's face until sleep overcame him, and in his dreams, the two of them rode into one adventure after another, and pleasured each other joyfully after each victory, and he woke smiling to find Artie's mouth on him once more.

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