'Come far?' Buf asked in a husky voice.
'Yes, ma'am, from Texas,' Newt said.
'Well, skin them pants off, Texas,' she said, and to his astonishment, unbuttoned three buttons on the front of her gown and pitched it on the bed. She stood before him naked and, since he was too startled to move, reached down and unbuckled his pants.
'The problem with cowboys is all the time it takes to get their boots off,' she confided, as she was unbuttoning his pants. 'I don't get paid for watching cowboys wrestle with their dern boots, so I just leave the sheets off the bed. If they can't shuck 'em quick, they have to do it with them on.'
Meanwhile she had unbuttoned his pants and reached for his peter, which, once it was freed, met her halfway at least. Newt couldn't get over how large she was-she would easily make two of him.
'I doubt you've had a chance to get much, but it won't hurt to check,' she said.
She led him to the window and lit the coal-oil lamp. The movement of her large breasts threw strange shadows on the wall. To Newt's surprise she poured a little water on his peter. Then she lathered her hands with a bar of coarse soap and soaped him so vigorously that before he could stop himself he squirted right at her.
He was horrified, sure that what he had done was a dreadful breach of decorum, far worse than not being able to get his boots off quickly. Of course he had seen boys jerk at themselves, and he had done it plenty, but having a woman use soap and warm water on it brought matters to a head much quicker than was usual.
Buf merely chuckled, exposing her black tooth.
'I forgot you tadpoles are so randy you can't tolerate a soaping,' she said, wiping him off on a piece of sacking.
She walked over to the bed and lay back on the cornshuck mattress, which crackled in protest. 'Come on, try it,' she said. 'You might have another load yet.'
'Should I take my boots off first?' Newt said, feeling hopelessly inexperienced and afraid of making another mistake.
'Naw, quick as you are, it ain't worth the effort,' Buf said, scratching herself indelicately. 'You got a pretty good one on, still.'
He knelt between her thighs and she grasped him and tried to pull him in, but he was too far away.
'Flop over here, you ain't gonna do no good down there at the foot of the bed,' she said. 'You spent ten dollars, you oughta at least try. Some girls would charge you ten just to soap you up, but Mary and me, we're fair.'
Newt allowed himself to be directed and made entrance, but then to his embarrassment he slipped out. He tried to reinsert himself but couldn't find the spot. Buf's belly was huge and slippery. Newt got dizzy again and felt himself sliding off it. Again he had the sensation that he might fall off the earth, and he grasped her arms to stop himself.
The Buffalo Heifer was unperturbed by his wigglings.
'You'll have to come back next time you draw your wages,' she said. 'Pull up your pants and send in that other tadpole.'
As Newt got off the bed, he remembered Lorena suddenly. This was what she had done during all those months at the Dry Bean, with any man who had drawn his wages. He felt a terrible regret that he hadn't had the ten dollars then. Though the Buffalo Heifer had not been unfriendly, he would far rather have had Lorena soap him up-though he knew he probably wouldn't have had the nerve to go in, if it had been Lorena.
'Is it just the two of you?' he asked, buttoning his pants. He had built up a certain curiosity about Mary, and despite all his embarrassments decided he might try to visit her if he ever got another ten.
'Me and Mary,' Buf said. 'I get the ones that like 'em fat, and she gets the one's that like 'em skinny. And if it's a feller who likes 'em either way it's just a matter of who ain't busy at the time.'
She was still lying naked on the bed.
'I'll go get Jimmy,' he said. When he opened the door, Jimmy was not more than a foot away. Probably he had been listening, which Newt resented, but in the dim hall Jimmy looked too sick to be mad at.
'Your turn,' Newt said. Jimmy went in, and Newt clumped down the stairs and found Pete Spettle waiting at the bottom.
'Why'd you leave?' Newt asked.
'Told Ma I'd save my money,' Pete said.
'I wish we had some more beer,' Newt said. Though his experience with the Buffalo Heifer had been mostly embarrassing as it was happening, he did not feel disappointed. Only the fact that he was down to a quarter in cash kept him from going back in and trying his luck with Mary. For all the peculiarity of what was happening, it was powerfully interesting. The fact that it cost ten dollars hardly mattered to him, but it turned out that he was the only one who took that attitude. Ben Rainey came down the stairs just behind him, complaining about how overpriced the experience was.
'I doubt it took a minute, once she got me washed,' he said.
Jimmy Rainey soon followed, and was totally silent about his own experience. He was not over his upset stomach and kept falling behind to vomit as they walked around town looking for Lippy.
'Hell, whores make a sight more than cowboys,' Ben kept saying-it seemed to trouble him a good deal. 'We don't make but thirty dollars a month and them two made thirty dollars off us in about three minutes. It would have been forty if Pete hadn't backed out.'
To Newt such an argument seemed wide of the point. What the whores sold was unique. The fact that it exceeded top-hand wages didn't matter. He decided he would probably be as big a whorer as Jake and Mr. Gus when he grew up and had money to spend.
They found Lippy by the sound of the accordion, which he had managed to purchase but had not exactly learned to play. He was sitting on the steps of the saloon with the big rack of elkhorns over it, trying to squeeze out 'Buffalo Gal' to an audience of one mule skinner and Allen O'Brien. The Irishman was wincing at Lippy's f urnbling efforts.
'He'll never get the hang of it,' the mule skinner said. 'It sounds like a dern mule whinnying.'
'I just bought this accordion,' Lippy said. 'I'll learn to play it by the time we hit Montany.'
'Yeah, and if them Sioux catch you you'll be squealing worse than that music box,' the mule skinner said.
Allen O'Brien kindly bought the boys each a beer. Though it was well after dark, people were still milling in the streets of Ogallala. At One point they heard gunshots, but no one cared to go investigate.
One beer was sufficient to make Jimmy Rainey start vomiting all over again. As they were riding back to the herd, Newt felt a little sad-there was no telling when he would get the chance to visit another whorehouse.
He was riding along wishing he had another ten dollars when something spooked their horses-they never knew what, although Pete Spettle thought he might have glimpsed a panther. At any rate, Newt and Ben were thrown before they knew what was happening, and Pete and Jimmy were carried off into the darkness by their frightened mounts.
'What if it was Indians?' Ben suggested, when they picked themselves up.
It was bright moonlight and they could see no Indians, but both drew their pistols anyway, just in case, and crouched down together as they listened to the depressing sound of their horses running away.
There was nothing for it but for them to walk to camp on foot, their pistols ready-too ready, really, for Ben almost shot his brother when Jimmy finally came back to see about them.
'Where's Pete?' Newt asked, but Jimmy didn't know.
Jimmy's horse would ride double, but not triple, so Newt had to walk the last two miles, annoyed with himself for not having kept a grip on the reins. It was the second time he had been put afoot on the drive, and he was sure everyone would comment on it the next day.
But when he arrived, his horse was grazing with the rest of the remuda, and only Po Campo was awake to take notice. Po seemed to sleep little. Whenever anyone came in from a watch he was usually up, slicing beef or freshening his coffee.
'Have you had a good walk?' he asked, offering Newt a piece of cold meat. Newt took it but discovered once he sat down that he was too tired to eat. He went to sleep with a hunk of beef still in his hand.
87.
