Amusing Train Ride Ch. 06

"Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels."— Bertolt Brecht

This chapter is short on sexual escapades, but I have to set up other action to let the sex happen. Please be patient and you will be rewarded my gentle readers.

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I placed the palms of my hands against my eye sockets, fingers over my forehead, thumbs aside my temples and rubbed. She was still standing in front of me in all of her adolescent beauty when I removed them.

"Fear? Foes? Sha-sha-shapeshifter? Is this another "game" that we are to play? I need some breakfast; a substantial breakfast if we are to continue with our sex play at the same intensity as we have been!" I stammered as distracting images of lush, sucking vaginas that talked and creaking leather coats floated through my weary and sleep deprived brain.

"Oh, my love, this is as child's play, which is of course the most serious play of all. You need to know more, but not now and not all at once. I sense the imminent presence of George approaching with hot towels and our notice of the opening of the dinning car. I want fruit and fish, and you?"

"Oh my usual I suppose, eggs, bacon, grits, fried tomatoes, and potatoes washed down with Columbian."

"What! Not tea?"

"Really! What do you take me for, a Limey? I never drink hot tea before three in the afternoon. It just isn't civilized!"

She laughed as George gently tapped on the door, "Mr. Richard? You asked for an early call? It is six now and the dinning car will open in half an hour. Would you want that I call you again at five 'til?"

"No, George, this will be fine, but you may make up the berth and replenish the toiletries."

"Yes sir. I'll have it done before you return from your breakfast." And he handed me four steaming, rolled towels on a platter atop four white fluffy bath towels. "Shave, sir?" he asked as he turned to leave.

"No, George, but when you have a spare moment, you might freshen-press this suit that I was wearing last night and check it for stains first. I had a bit too much of the grape, I'm afraid."

"Of course, sir."

"And George, don't we have a stop for refueling, supplies, and water soon? I think near Ft Riley."

"Yes sir, exactly as you say, sir. Should be in six hours and we are to stay there for one hour, forty-five minutes. Will you be seeing your friend, Col Hamilton?"

"Would you be kind enough to telegraph ahead and give my very best to the Col and my profuse apologies for not keeping him abreast of my travel? If he extends an invitation to visit, accept and prepare to off load the horses and uncouple the car."

"Consider it done, sir." The old soldier replied. "Might you be requiring my service as well on this excursion?"

"Only if The Old Man requests for you, only if he requests," was my answer. "Please see me after you get an answer."

George nodded and left headed up toward the front of the train.

"What was that all about?" Mel wanted to know. "You can't leave the train now! You promised me that you were going to stay and help me! Now you are about to go off for weeks hunting and cavorting over the countryside chasing buffalo up and down arroyos and riding horses fit to brake your damn neck, not that I'd care if you did!""

"You are welcome to accompany me, in fact, I insist, assuming that your schedule allows. We can have a great time! There are some fabulous rides and a large buffalo herd from which to hunt. We can supply the meat to the next train in a week. And the officer's club there is first rate with a first class wine cellar. The chef was trained at the Greenbrier. He oversees his own vegetable and keeps his own spice garden. His pheasant under glass must be tasted to be believed. It is like ambrosia—fit for the gods."

"I doubt that." She pouted. "I can't tell you more, but this is a bad idea, a very bad idea. No good can come of you blithering off the train at this time."

Of the many times that I have taken this trip, I have always met interesting characters on the way to the dinning car. Of those times, it seems like going to breakfast brings out the most interesting of these characters. This morning was to be no different except in the range of strange that I confronted.

I twisted open the door latch for my compartment and stood face to face with the tall, pale man that I had seen in the smoking car from the night before. A chill trickled down my spine. He had shed his long black leather duster in favor of a short embroidered waistcoat and matching vest with at flat brimmed creamed straw hat. Panamanian was my guess.

"Hello there," I said with as much cheerfulness as I could muster. "Are you thinking of sampling the breakfast, too?"

His gaze passed over and through me as if he didn't have strength to focus and certainly not to answer.

Then as if he thought better of not speaking to me, he did reply after clearing his throat with a voice so deep that it seemed to roll up from the soles of his tall boots, "Despite my thin appearance, I often have a substantial breakfast. Would you and your companion care to join me today? I understand the salmon is particularly delicious this trip."

"I can only speak for myself, but..." I began until Mel interrupted me.

"Of course we would love to have a bite of breakfast with you, Mr. ah, Thantos, isn't it?"

A tiny smile flitted at the corners of his pencil thin moustache. "Err, yes. Thantos. Dred Thantos." He extended his hand. His grip was firm, but I had never experienced a more fish-handed greeting. His cool and moist fingers were long and thin and immaculately cared for with trimmed nails and smooth cuticles. I suppressed a shudder at his touch. In his eyes were depths of sorrow that I couldn't imagine and sent a chill through me despite the promise of warmth from the dawning spring day. His grip was so odd that I found myself glancing down despite myself. When I did, I thought that I noticed a slight bulge above his wrist on the inside of his forearm. That would indicate nothing less than a Derringer pistol.

"Beautiful day out, don't you think?" I asked him.

"It has been for the start I'm sure," was his reply.

He motioned for Mel to move past him down the corridor toward the dinning car. I followed her and he stepped into line behind me.

We sat at my accustomed table near the window where I could watch the passing of the high plains that lie west of St. Louis. The tall prairie grass reached nearly to the train windows and stretched to the horizon unbroken save for the occasional copse of cottonwoods that poked out of the washes. Now and again a settler's cabin sat at the bottom of a thin trail of smoke that twisted skyward in the early morning calm. The light haze of the dust of a large herd of bison on the move left a smudge on the skyline. There weren't as many as in the past years when the herds numbered into the millions, now a large heard was a few thousand.

I felt a cool touch through my sleeve and startled. Thantos had laid two long thin fingers on my forearm briefly.

"Sorry, didn't intend to startle you, but are you ready to order now or shall we wait a few more minutes?"

I looked away from the window. There stood one of the two waiters for the dinning car. Aaron, a tall, thin black man with oiled hair straightened and combed smoothed to fit against his skull. He sported a thin mustache. He carried himself lightly, but stood straight, weight on the balls of his feet. He did not write anything down for the kitchen.

I chose Virginia honey cured ham with eggs and hash-browned potatoes, biscuits and gravy all washed down with a cup of hot black coffee. Our tall companion ordered a salmon steak, grits, and a lettuce salad, no dressing and water to drink. Mel asked for hot cereal and cream, and tea with cream and honey.

"Hummm, you are digging your grave with your teeth, you know?"

"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, but it is my business, correct?" I was beginning to become irritated with him and now I saw what George had meant as him "having an attitude."

"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I think that she or he must surely be a very lonely person who believes that no single other life will be made less by their passing."

"Perhaps many other lives would be made better by their passing?" I retorted.

"But that is not truly the choice of anyone, is it?" He replied.

"Of course it is, when one's life ends and for what reasons is the essence of the purpose of life. How could there be a more personal decision?" I was bored with the conversation by now.

"When the continuation of creativity is at stake might be one such moment." He smiled quietly.

"Well my, my, my! I do declare I have never had such a deep conversation so early of a morning. If you gentlemen are finished with this partaking of nourishment of for our bodies, might it not be wise to move on with our plans for the day?" Chimed in our petite feminine firebrand.

"Ah, yes, of course. And I believe that inspection of the horses was the next item on our list?" Thantos intoned as he placed his folded napkin onto the table by his plate.

We trooped again back past my berth and through the passage way between the cars. These platforms were small but gave protection from the wind and weather as one passed through. We were on the second platform when I felt the brakes tighten and the train began to slow to a stop. I turned to my two fellow travelers and raised an eyebrow; both of them shrugged. I freed the door that opened to the steps leading down to the ground and I leaned out to peer toward the engine. I saw what had caused us to stop; over a thousand of the giant furry bison were milling about or streaming across in front of the engine. "Hey, look at this!" I said, pointing.

Mel took one quick look and waved Thantos back to my berth.

"What, what?" I was confused. Did she want to have sex in a buffalo herd?

"Please, just go as quickly as you can, Dick!" We all three slipped into the space and, granted it was designed to accommodate two passengers; we were a mite crowded.

I was surprised to find two of my rifles out of their cases and lying on the berth. There were other armaments on the other berth I started to ask for an explanation and was met with the information that the situation was critical.

Mel gave me silver-jacked bullets for my derringer, pistol, and Drilling all of which were .44 cal. She insisted that I wear riding boots and slip a throwing stiletto into the top of each. I hung my Bowie knife under my coat on my left side and slipped the holster of the pistol onto my belt fastening the buckle under it so that it lies across my stomach within easy reach.

As we went, she turned and reached out to lay a delicate hand to my cheek. Tears well up in her eyes; "Let me touch your face once more before we leave to remember you by. I want the feel of your stubbly beard, the wrinkles of your eyes, the curl of your locks fresh in my mind before we part. This mortal thing called love is so strange to me."

I felt her fingertips brush my lips and smooth the sides of my moustache and float over my eyebrows as fleeting as the wash from a single butterfly wing beat. I opened my lips and she entered with her fingers. I bit down gently on her nails. She opened her eyes wide in mock terror and pulled back her hand to touch her own lips in a kiss, which she then returned to my mouth.

"Let us keep this moment between us like a perfect pearl saved from the sea floor so that we might take it out at some later time and recall our love from now in it's glow."

Going out the compartment door, I tucked a 'hawk under my belt behind my back as an afterthought.

"Would one of you tell me where we are going and what we might find when we get there?"

"Be ready for anything is all that I can be sure of telling you." Whispered Dred.

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(I know that this chapter may disappoint some because of the absence of sexual situations, dear readers, but "things" are about to get interesting very quickly when (or if) this story is posted with a red "H". Your comments help and thank you for your suggestions so far; you are wonderful.)

(To be continued)