The South Fork Showdown Read online

  “I thought you might need some help,” Frick said.

  “With the money?”

  Frick nodded.

  “Would you like me to put it in the safe for you?”

  “Who has the combination to the safe?”

  “The club treasurer.”

  “And who’s that?”

  “Me.”

  “In that case . . .”

  Clint walked to the bed, opened the bag. Frick approached and Clint transferred the money to the bag he was holding.

  “You taught Fred Upton a lesson in poker,” Frick said. “I wouldn’t put it past him to try and get his money back.”

  “Is that how members treat each other in this club?” Clint asked.

  “You’re not a member yet,” Frick said. “Not until this morning’s meeting.”

  “Okay.”

  “You want to come with me while I put this in the safe?” Frick asked. “Then we can go and have breakfast.”

  “Sure,” Clint said. “Lead the way.”

  When they stepped out into the hall, Clint saw that Jason was there.

  “Just to be safe,” Frick said.

  “Morning, Jason.”

  “Good morning, sir.”

  Frick and Jason led Clint downstairs to an office, where Frick put the money bag into a Mosler Safe.

  “Now let’s have that breakfast,” Frick said.

  “Jason, too?”

  “I’ll eat in the kitchen, Mr. Adams,” Jason said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Clint looked at Frick, who shrugged.

  “You can’t cure all the snobbery in one day.”

  * * *

  Jason went to the kitchen while Frick took Clint to the main dining room.

  “There’s the big winner!” Frederick Upton called out. “Come on, sit down and enjoy a hearty breakfast.”

  Clint looked around the table. All the poker players were there, as well as Cole Foster. No one else. He wondered where all the other rich club members were.

  “Is this everybody?” he asked Frick.

  “At the moment,” Frick said. “Come on, sit down.”

  Clint and Frick took the empty chairs at the table, sitting next to each other. The table was covered with platters of food—eggs, bacon, ham, potatoes, biscuits, flapjacks. Everything a man could want—well, almost.

  “No steak?” Clint asked.

  “We can get you some,” Frick said.

  “No,” Clint said. “This will do.”

  “Then dig in.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  The meeting to consider Clint’s membership was to take place after breakfast. During breakfast the talk was about politics and business. Clint just sat back and listened. He didn’t hear anything he thought Jeremy Pike would be interested in. More and more he was thinking that Pike’s concern was going to end up being the dam.

  After breakfast, Frick put his hand on Clint’s shoulder.

  “Take a walk around the grounds,” he said. “When the meeting is over, I’ll come and find you.”

  “Okay.”

  The members got up and filed out, laughing, slapping each other on the back. Apparently, at breakfast, they had solved the county’s financial problems.

  The cook, a black woman named Pandora, came out of the kitchen and asked Clint, “More coffee?”

  “That would be nice.”

  She collected a bunch of plates, carried them into the kitchen, and came back with a coffeepot. She filled his cup, left the pot, and carried some more dishes back to the kitchen.

  When she came back out, Clint asked, “Need some help?”

  She looked him up and down. In her thirties, she was what most people would call a handsome woman.

  “This ain’t men’s work.”

  “I don’t mind giving you a hand.”

  She looked him up and down again and said, “I don’t mind if I let you.”

  Together they finished cleaning off the table and carrying everything to the kitchen.

  “Just put ’em on the table,” she said, “less’n you wanna help me wash ’em.”

  “That ain’t men’s work,” he said, grinning.

  She grinned back, revealing even, white teeth. The smile changed her from handsome to pretty. She was a sturdily built woman wearing a simple cotton dress. Her hair was cut short. Take her out of the kitchen, put her in a better dress, and she’d become beautiful. Her skin was like chocolate, and smooth as silk.

  She turned to the sink and started washing dishes. Clint went and got his coffee cup, then came back into the kitchen.

  “How do you like working here, Pandora?”

  “I like it fine.”

  “Seems to me somebody who cooks as well as you could run her own restaurant.”

  “You got some money you wanna invest?”

  “I might.”

  She turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder.

  “You serious?”

  “Would it be a problem for you to leave here?”

  “No problem.”

  “Would it be a problem for you to talk about what you’ve seen and heard up here?”

  “What you think I seen and heard?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “What goes on up here?”

  “Nothin’ much,” she said. “Men playin’ boys’ games.”

  “High finance?”

  “Don’t know nuthin’ ’bout that,” she said.

  “What do you know about?”

  “My kitchen.”

  “What happens in the kitchen?”

  She looked at him over her shoulder again.

  “I cooks, and I cleans,” she said.

  “And?”

  “Usually that’s it. But not last night.”

  “What happened last night?”

  “I cooked, but the food disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “At night.”

  “Somebody with a late-night appetite?”

  “Gotta be a couple o’ somebodies,” she said.

  “Did it ever happen before?”

  She shook her head.

  “Just last night.”

  “So it’s odd.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, it’s odd.”

  “What went missing?”

  “A mess of fried chicken,” she said, “and a bottle of whiskey.”

  “Only last night.”

  “Yep.”

  “How many strangers are in the house?”

  “Two,” she said.

  “Me.”

  “You, and that engineer fella.”

  “Maybe he got hungry during the night.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but there was one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Back door was unlocked.”

  “That unusual?”

  “Real unusual,” she said. “I makes sure it’s locked every night ’fore I go to bed.”

  “You have a room in the house?”

  “I do,” she said. She looked over her shoulder again, gave him a mischievous look full of promise. “You wanna know where it is?”

  He smiled.

  “Desperately.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  After his conversation with Pandora—a very promising conversation—he went out the back door and did what Frick suggested. Took a walk around the grounds. About a hundred yards from the house he found a bunch of chicken bones. They had been picked clean, first by men, then by animals. He didn’t find a whiskey bottle, but he did find the cap of one.

  Looked to him like the engineer, Dash Charles, had had some help.

  He went back into the house.

  * * *

  He found a room
with a pool table, picked out a cue, and started to shoot balls. No game, just random balls. After about fifteen minutes the engineer appeared at the door.

  “You shoot?” Clint asked.

  “Some.”

  “Grab a cue.”

  Charles entered the room and picked a pool cue off the wall. Clint racked the balls.

  “You break,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  Both men were wearing their guns, but that certain tension was not in the air. Clint could always feel it when a man was close to drawing his gun, and Charles wasn’t.

  Not yet.

  They started shooting a simple game of pool, not much in the way of conversation going on. Charles was the first to talk while Clint was shooting.

  “Heard you had an interesting night.”

  “It was all right.”

  “Upton always did fancy himself a poker shark,” Charles said. “I guess you proved he wasn’t.”

  “Maybe I just got lucky.”

  “Not when you took him and his boys.”

  “Well now,” Clint said, “they weren’t very good players.”

  Clint shot five balls in a row before he missed. He stepped aside.

  “How are you doing on your problem?” he asked as Charles bent over the table.

  “What problem is that?”

  “The dam,” Clint said. “It’s in need of repairs, isn’t it?”

  Charles stood up straight without shooting a ball and looked at Clint.

  “You an engineer?”

  “No,” Clint said, “just somebody who can tell when a wall is going to fall down.”

  “You’re wrong.” Charles bent over the table and took a shot. “It just needs some shorin’ up in places.”

  “Is that what’s in your report?”

  The man stood up again. Suddenly there was tension in the air after all.

  “Look, Adams,” Charles said, “you’d be smart to stay out of my business.”

  “This is my business,” Clint said, “or it will be once they make me a member of the club.”

  That made Charles laugh.

  “You think that’s what they’re talkin’ about in their meeting?” he asked. “Makin’ you a member?”

  “Among other things.”

  Charles shook his head, leaned over, and took a shot, then stood up again.

  “You’re in for a surprise, my friend,” he said. He went over to the wall rack and returned the pool cue, then walked to the doorway. He turned and looked at Clint and said, before leaving, “A great big surprise.”

  Clint frowned.

  He didn’t like surprises.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Clint found his way to Pandora’s room and knocked on the door. When she answered and saw it was him, she leaned against the door and said, “Already?”

  “Didn’t you say you’d be coming back here after you finished the dishes?”

  “Well, yeah, darlin’,” she said, “but I thought I’d have time to take a bath.”

  “I couldn’t wait,” he said, pushing into the room, “and you don’t need a bath.”

  She backed up and he closed the door behind him. She put her fingers inside the collar of her dress and ran them back and forth over her skin.

  “Was we talkin’ ’bout the same thing in the kitchen?” she asked.

  “I thought we were,” he said.

  She stared at him and started working on the buttons on the front of her dress. As she peeled it off her shoulders, large, bottom-heavy breasts came into view, with big, very dark nipples.

  She had wide hips, had to lean over to shove the dress down and shimmy out of it. When she straightened up, he caught his breath. If ever a woman was built for bed, and sex, Pandora was the one.

  He moved closer to her, softly cupped her full breasts in his palms, lifting them. He touched the nipples with his thumbs, and she closed her eyes and moaned.

  “When I saw you,” she said, “I thought we was just gonna use the kitchen floor.”

  “Too much chance of being interrupted,” he said.

  “Ain’t they’s gonna be lookin’ for you?”

  “Let them look,” he said.

  He lifted her breasts higher, leaned over, and touched the nipples with his tongue, and then his lips, tugging on them until they were fully distended.

  She wasn’t very tall, but certainly not short, about five four or so. He slid his hands behind her and cupped her smooth ass cheeks, lifting her. She came up into his arms, wrapped her powerful legs around him. He could feel the muscles in her ass beneath his hands as he carried her to the bed, his face buried in her neck. Her skin was smooth and fragrant with her natural musk, as well as the smell from the kitchen. Clint had been with women before who spent a lot of time in kitchens, and never minded the mix of scents. That was why he told Pandora she didn’t need a bath. He loved the way a woman smelled naturally.

  He deposited her on the bed, which was barely large enough for the two of them. She immediately got to her knees and began pulling at his clothes. While she unbuttoned his shirt, he unbuckled his gun belt and hung it on her bedpost. His gun had hung on many bedposts over the years, always within easy reach whenever he was sleeping or entertaining a woman.

  She pulled his shirt off and went to work on his belt. Before long he was sitting on the bed, trying to pull his boots off while she was groping for his hard cock.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to be cooped up all day wit’ deez ol’ geezers,” she told him. “A gal ain’t got no choice but ta play wit’ her own self.”

  He was kind of curious as to what that would have been like to watch, but she was so close, and so warm and so naked, that he couldn’t keep his hands off her.

  He pulled her to him and kissed her while she grasped his cock with one hand and began to stroke it.

  “Oh yeah,” she said huskily as he grew harder in her hand, “dat’s de way.”

  Suddenly, she fell onto his lap, engulfing his hard penis with her hot, wet mouth. As she sucked him, she moaned and he sat back on the bed, leaning his weight on his hands and giving himself up to the suction of her mouth . . .

  * * *

  Meanwhile, down in the meeting of the members, Henry Frick was arguing.

  “I’m against it,” he said.

  “Now, wait a minute, Henry,” Evan Lawrence said. “You’re the one who brought him up here in the first place.”

  “I know, but—”

  “You knew what we were looking for,” Lawrence said.

  “Yes, but—”

  “You can’t change your mind on us now, Henry,” Fred Upton said. “The matter has been settled.”

  “Look,” Frick said, “this was all before I got to know the man—”

  “Yes,” Upton said, “and I got to know him last night, too. And it was an expensive lesson—one I’m looking to return.”

  “Come on, Henry,” Old Man Foster said, “you know this is called a hunting club.”

  Frick looked at Foster. The man could barely walk, yet somehow he still managed to hunt. Many of the heads mounted on the club walls had been brought in by him.

  “Gentlemen,” Frick said, “I implore you—”

  “Henry,” William Bledsoe said, “the vote has been taken.”

  “The die has been cast,” Foster said.

  “There’s no going back now,” Lawrence said.

  “For any of us,” Fred Upton said.

  The other members of his inner circle stared at Henry Frick until he subsided, no longer offering his objections.

  “There,” said the chairman of the group, Evan Lawrence, “it’s settled.” He banged his gavel. “The meeting is adjourned. Henry, let’s find Mr. Adams.”

  * * *

  When Clint couldn’t take
it anymore, he wrangled the voracious woman off his cock and pushed her down onto her back. He held her arms down as he attacked her breasts with his mouth, then kissed and licked his way down until his face was nestled in that fragrant, if somewhat scratchy, pubic patch. But the hair softened as he wet it with his tongue, and before long the fragrant nectar from her pussy was running over his face, sweet as honey and almost as sticky.

  “Ooh, God, you got a tongue on you . . .” she said, cupping his head in her hands. “Oh Lord, you gon’ make me scream.”

  “Don’t do that,” he said, lifting his head for a moment, “you’ll bring the whole house down on us.”

  She laughed and turned her head into the pillow, so that when she did finally scream—her body wracked by spasms of pleasure she couldn’t believe—her screams were muffled . . .

  THIRTY-NINE

  Afterward, Pandora made her way back to the kitchen, and Clint once again took a walk around the grounds. That was what he was doing when Henry Frick found him.

  “There you are,” Frick said.

  “The meeting over?” Clint asked.

  “It is, indeed,” Frick said.

  “Am I a member?”

  Oddly, Frick hesitated a moment, then said, “You are, indeed. Congratulations.”

  The two men shook hands.

  “Is there some sort of induction ceremony?” Clint asked.

  “There will be a dinner tonight in your honor,” Frick said. “All of the members who are on the grounds will be in attendance.”

  “Good,” Clint said, “I like your cook’s, uh, food.”

  “Yes, Pandora is a wonderful cook,” Frick said. “I will instruct her to go all out on your behalf this evening.”

  “I’m sure it’s very special,” Clint said, “when she goes all out.”

  * * *

  Inside the house Evan Lawrence found Dash Charles and took him into one of the lounges. When they were each seated with brandy snifters in their hands, he spoke.

  “The vote went through this afternoon.”

  “On Adams?”

  “That’s right.”

  Charles frowned.

  “I’m not sure I’m happy with that.”