Jordy stood beneath the bank looking up at them, seemingly not conscious that he was all but naked with his soaked undershorts clinging to his body like a second skin and leaving nearly nothing to imagination. Jack went to his mount and reached in the saddlebags and pulled out a rolled-up shirt. He dropped it down to Jordy. “This is an extra. Make yourself decent.”
“Sun feels good on my back, Jack. Besides, your shirt would be too small,” Jordy protested.
“It’s not for your back. Wrap it around your waist. There’s a lady present, and she happens to be my granddaughter. I don’t want her exposed to such coarseness.”
“Oh. Sure, I can do that.” He unrolled the shirt and made an apron out of it, tying the arms about his waist.
It didn’t matter to Sierra. The image was indelibly painted in her head, never to be erased. It was not as if she had never seen a man naked before. She could claim neither innocence nor virginity. There had been a man when she was seventeen and attending the academy in San Antonio, a handsome artist named Carlos in his late thirties who claimed to be unmarried and had employed her to be the subject of paintings commissioned by customers. The money was good and the paintings, while risqué, were not obscenely so—except for the single nude. She learned later that all her paintings had likely ended up in saloons in Texas and Mexico. Sierra liked to think they were high class venues but conceded it was not probable. She thought it very unlikely any would ever show up in West Texas, or she certainly hoped not.
She had convinced herself she was truly in love with the artist, though, and likely would have posed for a dozen nudes if he had asked. And he was a good lover, or she supposed so, having no basis for comparison. Certainly he had taught her things that had not resided previously in her fertile imagination and had created an appetite that had been previously dormant. It had all ended when the undisclosed Mexican wife showed up at the studio one afternoon and discovered the lovers naked on the studio cot. Carlos had ended up with a derringer slug in his ass, and Sierra had narrowly dodged a bullet on her way out the door. There was not a day that passed she did not thank her lucky stars she had not ended up with child. What a fool she had been. She had led close to a nun’s life since that experience.
“Sierra, did you hear me?”
It was Grandpa Jack. She tended to shut out the world sometimes when she was lost in her thoughts. She was glad he could not read minds. “I’m sorry, Grandpa. What was it you said?”
He looked at her with his head cocked to one side and his eyes squinting. “Your head is someplace it hadn’t ought to be. Been there more than once myself. I need you to help me get Abel up here.”
“Oh, sure. Just tell me what I should do.”
Jack said, “Jordy says he can lift and push Abel up the side of the bank as far as he can. Then Abel will raise his arms, and we will each take a wrist and pull him up.”
“He’s not a big man. We should be able to do it.”
They knelt on the edge of the steep bank and leaned over while Jordy, his muscles rippling, hoisted Abel upward, the ex-soldier helping by digging his feet into rock and dirt bank. Jack and Sierra each grabbed an extended arm and inched backward, as Abel gained leverage and came over the top.
As they caught their breaths, Sierra said, “We can’t get Jordy up that way. There is too much of him for us.”
Jack said, “You hear that, Jordy? Sierra thinks you are too fat for us to haul you up.”
“Yeah, I heard that,” Jordy said.
“That’s not what I said, and you both know what I mean.”
Jordy said, “You get Abel back to the wagons. I can walk back up the channel. A lot of the edges are dry, and I can wade or swim some where it’s not. You can probably move more as the bird flies now but allow for me to do the twists and turns. I’ll meet you at the crossing.”
When they got back to Horsehead Crossing, with Abel astride Pokey behind Jack, Sierra was glad to see that the chuckwagon was on the bank and all the mule teams were hitched and ready to move on. Tige and Roper helped Abel off the horse and half carried him to one of the Studebakers.
Tige said, “I assume Jordy’s okay?”
“Yep,” Jack said, “he’ll be along shortly. He wanted to swim his way back to show off for the young lady.”
“You serious?” Tige asked.
Sierra said, “No, he’s not serious. He’s walking along the channel most of the way. We couldn’t get him up the darn bank.”
“I like Jack’s story better. We’ll razz Jordy some about that.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jordy had shown up at Horsehead Crossing several minutes after the others, and after slipping into his clothes and boots he liked the feel of being on horseback again except for the damp undershorts that the sun had not quite finished drying. It could have been a lot worse than chafing underwear, he figured. Jack was planted on the seat of the front wagon with Thor squeezed between him and Tige, who had taken over the skinning job from Swede. Jordy suspected the two men needed time together to strategize. According to Jack, after two nights on the trail, they should be closing in on Lookout Canyon.
Jordy was riding near the chuckwagon, keeping an eye on the two wounded cooks. Rudy had insisted upon driving the team given that Bram’s stitched
