Can_t stop the sex

we wanted, that's how pleased they are!'

'I believe I'd settle just for a safe passage to Tombstone,' Gloria said with a big sigh of relief. 'Wouldn't that be the best solution for us.''

'I reckon it would,' Logan agreed. 'Might not do to get caught up in one of their celebrations-they're awful fond of stewed dog and that's a dish I just can't abide.'

'Ugh! I'd sooner eat this jerky and pinole for another week!' Gloria exclaimed, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

Logan began palavering with the braves and Gloria took advantage of the conversation to measure her first Apache braves. They were all short men, not one coming up to five and a half feet tall, but two of them had enormously broad shoulders and deep, powerful chests. Orve man had an ancient army carbine; the others carried bow and arrows.

'They say they'll ride along with us almost all the way,' Logan finally told her. 'I had to do some powerful arguing to keep us from being invited to a dog eating contest but they gave in after a while. They say we can get there late tonight if we ride real hard and don't meet up with any trouble, or we can take it easy and get there tomorrow morning.'

They mounted and rode off, following their Apache escort. Gloria rode beside Lita, who seemed much happier now, and they exchanged coy glances as they jogged along. In late afternoon they came across the tracks of a recent cavalry patrol and that sighting effectively ended their chances of getting to Tombstone that night. They made camp in a deep canyon beside a small spring.

The evening was a chaste one; all the braves were married, Lita said, and to have attempted a sexual episode with any of them would have greatly damaged her chances of being taken back into the tribe. Under those circumstances Gloria felt that it would be unkind of her to avail herself of Logan's magnificent prick. Thus she curled up beside him but resolutely closed her mind to all thoughts of the joys she could have had. It was the most uncomfortable night she had spent since he had rescued her from the Comanche, so many miles away.

By the middle of the following morning they had reached a point where the Apache escort was obviously becoming nervous. They said something to Logan, who answered, and then turned to Gloria.

'This is as far as they go,' he said. 'Tombstone's about ten miles off in that direction.'

'Would you tell Lita something for me, please?' Gloria said, looking over at the girl with affection. 'Tell her that I'll always remember all the things that she showed me. And that if it's ever possible for her to visit me in town I would love to see her some time.'

Logan relayed the message and got a fervent reply.

'She says she doesn't know how she'll arrange it,' he said, 'but she's going to make sure that we all get together again some time!'

'I'll look forward to that,' Gloria said, eyeing the girl fondly and sighing as she remembered the exquisite thrills they had experienced together. 'I really will!'

The Apaches wheeled their horses back, Lita with them, and disappeared into a thick patch of brush to the right. Logan and Gloria kicked their horses forward and began the last leg of their long trek. They arrived in Tombstone at three-twenty that afternoon. One of the first buildings she saw as they rode into the dusty, sunbaked town was a low, rambling adobe carrying a crudely painted sign which proclaimed, 'Empire Mercantile amp; Freight Co., J. Cramer, Prop.'

'That must be Jed's place!' she exclaimed. 'Oh, what luck! Come on, Dick, let's see if it isn't the place we're looking for!'

They dismounted in front of the store, hitching their horses to the rail which ran the length of the building's front, and went inside. Gloria had to squint to pierce the gloom, which was all the darker in contrast to the brilliant sunshine outside, but she easily recognized her brother-in-law behind the counter. She went over to him and introduced himself. For a moment Cramer could not bring himself to believe her; he had received word via Army telegraph that the wagon train which she and her husband had accompanied had been completely wiped out by an Indian attack.

'It was just about wiped out,' she said. 'One of the Indians was left; he was carrying me off to Mexico when Logan here caught up with us and killed him.'

She went on to give a capsule version of their travels from that point on. She omitted all mention of the exciting and gratifying sexual experiences she had shared with Logan, of course, and also glossed over the exact reasons he had not conducted her back through Texas.

'I can't believe it!' Cramer finally exclaimed. 'We'd done given you up for dead and here you are, safe and sound!'

After a moment, though, he had regained his composure enough to invite them back into his living quarters. He and his wife, a thin, mousey little woman who looked to be much older than his thirty years, had an apartment behind the store and they insisted that Logan and Gloria avail themselves of their hospitality.

'What are we going to tell them?' Gloria asked Logan when they had a moment alone together. 'I'm not going to sleep by myself for very long, not after all the things we've had together!'

'Why, I was sort of hoping that you 'n me might get hitched up and make a pair,' he told her, bringing a gasp of happy delight to her lips. 'I've got a little stake socked away in my saddlebags and them horses we brought through, they ought to help a little more. Maybe I could throw in with your brother-in-law; didn't you say once that your husband had been intending to go into the business with him.''

'Yes, Jed had written inviting him to become a partner,' she said. 'He's been having a lot of trouble finding dependable people to boss the freight wagons. It seems that every man with a bit of gumption has decided to go into the hills and become a miner.'

'Thanks, I'd rather stick to horses and mules,' Logan said. 'Seems to me that the chances of making a living are a lot better. I can't see digging in the ground for a living, unless maybe it's to farm. Yeah, maybe old Jed would like to have an experienced hand around. There'll be a fortune to be made here, shipping goods out to them prospectors and miners.'

'And we'll tell them that we're planning to get married.'' she urged.

'Yep, just as soon as it's decent, we'll tie the knot,' Logan confirmed.

Cramer greeted their news with much more equanimity than either of them had dared hope. He mourned his dead brother, naturally, but as he said to Gloria, the times were too tense to allow for the protracted period of mourning which eastern customs would dictate.

'You could wear black dresses and a long face for ten years,' he told them, 'and it wouldn't do a blessed thing toward bringing Henry back. And I know you miss him, so what's the point of all that mourning.'' It's a thing I never held much with anyway. No, I say find you a preacher as soon as you want. And Logan, if you've got even a tenth of the experience you say you have-not that I'm doubting your word for a minute, you understand-then you're just exactly the man I've been looking for. Tell you what: if you throw in them horses of yours with mine and buy one more wagon, then I'll make you a proposition which ought to have us both rolling in money inside of a year. I'm telling you, these hills around here are full of miners and there ain't a one of 'em that won't buy almost anything I can get from the east. Guns, ammunition, tools, food, supplies, clothes, you name it and we can get rid of it. At a handsome price too.'

'That's the way with mining,' Logan observed. 'Every field I ever saw or heard tell of, there was a few that made money prospecting but a lot more that made money by selling things to them that was trying to prospect.'

'That's it exactly,' Cramer said. 'And especially now -everybody's out looking for gold and we'll have the freight and mercantile business all to ourselves!'

The prospects were every bit as good as Cramer had depicted them, Logan soon learned. The miners around Tombstone had an unquenchable desire for manufactured goods and Cramer had all he could do to satisfy those wants. Logan and Gloria found themselves a minister and were married in short order but the pressing demands of the business were such that he had to go from the church straight to the small but comfortable house they had taken and change into his working clothes, then go back to the store and supervise the loading of a wagonload of mining supplies. Cramer had accumulated a massive backload of orders, during the period when he had been shorthanded, and Logan had to work frantically in order to catch up with the work. After the first month, however, they found themselves more in command of the situation.

'Want to take off tomorrow and go up into the hills for a couple or three days?' he said to Gloria one night