by Jake Logan
And where in hell was John Slocum?
Hutch turned to meet two men who came up to him. Caleb recognized them as gunslingers who worked for Cordwainer—Pat Morris and Lou Jessup. They both had reputations as killers and the gossip in town was that they had spent years in a Southern penitentiary. All Caleb knew was that they never did any honest work and they always had money to spend.
He saw them talking to Hutch and Joe Creek, but not loud enough for their voices to carry. Hutch kept nodding as Pat whispered into his ear and then an odd expression transformed his facial features. His look went from blank to a scowl and then to a snarling countenance. His eyes narrowed. Joe Creek got up and grabbed Hutch’s arm. Joe pulled Hutch away from the two other men and they walked quickly across the room, wending their way between tables and staring straight ahead. In moments they were out the door.
Lou and Pat stayed where they had been. Both looked in Caleb’s direction, but their faces were impassive. They ordered drinks from one of the scantily clad glitter gals and sat down. Pat kept looking at him every now and then, but Lou did not glance his way.
Caleb stared at the batwing doors of the saloon but nobody came in. He began to feel very uncomfortable when he noticed that Pat was still glancing at him every few minutes.
He finished his beer and decided not to order another.
“Leavin’ so soon, Caleb?” the bartender said as Caleb pushed his empty glass across the bar, picked up his lard can of pinyon nuts, and got off the barstool.
“Yeah, Harry.”
“Was you waitin’ for someone?”
“Sort of,” Caleb said as he tucked the can under his left arm.
“’Night Caleb,” Harry said as he lifted the empty glass with its streaks of foam and amber residue.
Caleb walked briskly out of the saloon and into the night. He strode along the hitch rail to his mule and put the can of nuts in his saddlebag. He unwrapped the reins and climbed onto the mule’s back.
He rode toward the hanging tree, its bare arms scratching the starry sky. Now every shape in the shadows was menacing. It was as if he had a premonition that something bad was going to happen. As he rode past the tree, toward his own digs, he looked back toward the saloon.
No one was following him.
He began to relax and wondered if he should go into town and stop in at The Excelsior and ask about Slocum. No, he decided. It had been a long day. He was tired and wanted to do some panning the next day, perhaps in the creek or the pond, where there was always some color to be found. He didn’t need money right away, and if he found ten dollars’ worth of dust clinging to the black dolomite in his pan, he would be satisfied with that day’s work.
He heard the faint whicker of a horse and it seemed to Caleb that his blood jumped from his heart and shot into every nerve along his spine.
“Who’s there?” he called in a quavery voice.
There was no answer.
Had he imagined it? He turned his head and listened, but heard nothing more. He was well past the hanging tree and turned on the dim road to his cabin.
That was when he saw a shadow move. No, he saw two shadows detach from the deeper shadows of the pines just ahead of him.
Caleb’s heart jumped in his chest and throbbed in his eardrums. He pulled on the reins to turn his mule away from the menacing shadows.
“Hold on there, Caleb,” called a voice.
He halted the mule. The voice sounded familiar.
“Who are ye?” he said.
Hutch stepped toward him. Beside him was Joe Creek. Both men carried scatterguns. He saw the moonlight glint off the twin barrels of both weapons.
“I’m the Reaper, Caleb,” Hutch said in a casual, disarming tone of voice.
“Huh?”
“The Grim Reaper,” Creek said, and both he and Hutch laughed.
They walked closer and Caleb heard two unmistakable metallic sounds. Then he heard two more as both approaching men pulled the hammers back on their shotguns.
“I got no quarrel with either of you two fellers,” Caleb said, his voice reduced to a thin squeak. “Just leave me be.”
But he knew it was too late to stop what was surely coming.
Hutch and Creek were close. They raised their shotguns to their shoulders and took aim.
Caleb kicked the mule in the flanks and ducked.
Both shotguns exploded and belched orange fire, smoke, and heavy lead pellets.
As the first balls struck him, Caleb felt a dozen pains, as if he had been attacked by hornets. Then there were two more explosions, and more double-ought buckshot ripped into his body. The mule’s forelegs crumpled and it fell to its side, mortally wounded.
Caleb gasped for air, but blood in his throat blocked the passage. He wheezed and vomited blood as he struck the ground.
He saw the stars spin in the dark sky and his mouth filled with blood. The agony drifted away as his brain shut down and the darkness dropped on him like a leaden sash weight.
Hutch and Creek reloaded their shotguns and stepped over the mule’s neck to look down at Caleb. Dark blood made a half-dozen puddles in the road. Caleb’s heart was no longer pumping and he was not breathing.
“No need to waste another shot shell on this piece of meat,” Creek said.
“Nope. Old Caleb’s as dead as dead can be.”
“And his blamed mule, too. You done blowed one of its eyes clean out, Hutch.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here, Joe, before we draw a crowd.”
“Yeah. We got one more to go, Hutch. I hope Lou and Pat know we done our job.”
“Part of it anyway,” Hutch said.
“The next part should be real easy.”
“Yeah, it should,” Hutch said.
The two men returned to where their horses were tied and mounted up. They shoved their shotguns into scabbards and rode toward town, past the hanging tree and over the flat, avoiding any of the roads.
They rode up slowly behind The Excelsior Hotel and dismounted some fifty yards away from the back entrance. They pulled their shotguns from their sheaths and stalked toward the rear of the hotel.
As they approached, Hutch looked at the window to Slocum’s room.
He held out a hand and stopped Creek from taking his next step.
“Bastard even left a light on for us,” he whispered to Creek. “That’s his room.”
Creek looked and saw the pale orange glow of a lamp shining like mist outside a window on the first floor.
“Mighty nice of him,” he breathed.
The two men went through the rail fence and into the hotel compound. They crept up to the window. Creek stood on tiptoe and looked into the room.
Hutch did the same.
They both saw the bed with its lumps under the coverlet.
Both nodded to each other and ducked back down beneath the windowsill.
They squeezed the triggers of their shotguns slowly and partially as they pulled four hammers back.
“On three,” Hutch said.
Creek nodded.
Hutch counted.
“One, two, three.”
Both men stood up and poked their shotguns at the bed, their barrels touching the glass. They pulled the triggers. Hammers fell. Percussion caps exploded. Both guns spewed fire and buckshot through the window, shattering the glass. The bedding jumped as it was ripped by dozens of lead pellets. Some of the wood splintered on the wall and bed.
Both men ran toward the fence, satisfied that they had done their job.
They mounted their horses and put distance between them and the hotel. They rode to the Polygon House and hitched their horses to the rail.
“I ain’t tired,” Joe said.
“Me neither.”
“Let it quiet down some and we’ll go on back to the Hoot Owl.”
“Yeah, Jess ought to be there by now. He’ll want to know he don’t have to worry none over Butterbean or Slocum.”
The two men waited a good fifteen minut
es. They rolled quirlies and smoked.
When they were finished, they rode down a back street toward the Hoot Owl.
“That’s what I like about Halcyon Valley,” Hutch said.
“What’s that?” Joe asked.
“It’s a right quiet place.”
Both men laughed. They ejected the empty shot shells and reloaded, stuffing the empty hulls in their pockets.
There was a bunch of people outside the saloon when they rode up.
“What’s up?” Creek asked one of those standing outside.
“Somebody got shot up past the hangin’ tree,” a man said.
“Who?” Hutch asked.
The man shrugged.
“Hell if I know. Probably some prospector who couldn’t hold his likker.”
Hutch and Creek dismounted and walked inside the saloon. They spotted Cordwainer. He was talking to the constable, Herb Mayfair. Herb looked ashen and half drunk.
When they approached their boss, Cordwainer looked at them and smiled.
It was, Hutch thought, just like a pat on the back.
11
As the moon rose over the mountains, it beamed into the window of Abby’s room. It seemed to dust the drapes with a pewter sheen and they glowed like the gowns of fashion mannequins in a darkened store window. The room breathed and panted with the voices of the two lovers on the bed. They made love slowly, with Slocum pumping in and out of Abby’s wet and steamy sheath in long smooth strokes.
“So nice,” she breathed. “So, so good.” She drawled the words in a languid sighing voice that seemed to match his rhythm.
His hands gripped her thighs and he pulled upward on them as he dipped downward, the pleasure in him radiating from his swollen organ through every fiber of his body as if there was some electrical connection between them, a force that could not be calculated or measured, but was all pervasive, like the universe itself.
“So good,” he repeated as the seconds slowed to nearly a standstill in that moment when he reached the very mouth of her womb and her body trembled and quivered like some skewered creature caught in a trap.
What is this wonder? he asked himself. What is this force between a man and a woman that blots out all reason and just whips the senses into a frenzy like wild horses galloping over a hill in some unknown region of earth? How can a pigtailed girl grow into a voluptuous woman and compress time so that the leap goes unnoticed and the change seems so abrupt? How is it that she and I are here in this magical darkness when all the world is in some kind of mindless stupor? This, he thought, is life, the very essence of life, and nothing matters but our arms stretching toward heaven to touch the hands of a god for one fleeting, but imperishable moment.
“Johnnie,” she cooed, and her voice jarred him from his fleeting reveries even as the pleasure of their coupling seeped through him like warm wine.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No,” she said, her voice soft and silken as a summer rain on sodden leaves. “I want to get on top. Please.”
“Sure,” he said.
“I want to feel more of you, make you touch different places inside me.”
He rolled from atop her and lay on his back. She climbed over him and grasped his cock as she lifted her hips. She held him fast as she descended, sheathing his cock inside the folds of her sex as if it were an oiled dagger.
“Ah, ah,” she breathed, and rose and fell while two of her fingers clasped the base of his prick as if to hold his shaft in place. Slocum lay there, letting Abby take command, letting her find more pleasure from her dominant position. And she nearly swooned as she shuddered with still another orgasm when he was deep within her. She cried out and the cries were full of joy and pleasure, almost exultant, as if she had discovered some hidden treasure.
Sweat oiled her neck and breasts. She looked like a mermaid emerging from the sea as she dipped her lithe body up and down in a slow rhythmic motion that was like some physical exercise to tone the body. She was light as a feather, Slocum thought, yet the warm wetness of her pussy was like balm to his exploding senses.
Lightning flashed in his brain. Volcanoes erupted and the earth of the bed shook with temblors as she climaxed again and again, each time more savage and feral than the last. She might have been screaming, he thought, but she was holding it in so that only he could hear the exclamations of her pleasure. And the sound of her voice was thrilling, brought him to a heightened excitement so powerful he had to concentrate on the ceiling’s impersonal drabness to keep from spilling his seed inside her.
Finally, Abby collapsed atop him and he held her in his arms. He was still inside her, but she was exhausted, her body sleek with perspiration.
“Enough?” he whispered as he stroked her hair. Her head was lying on his chest and she felt so small and vulnerable.
“More,” she said. “But you have to do it, Johnnie.”
Then she lifted herself from his anchor and rolled onto her back.
He rubbed her flat and slick tummy and slowly rose above her once again.
Abby spread her legs to receive him and lay there willing and wanton as a woman in season.
Slocum entered her, slid gently into that valley of luxuriant warmth, and stroked her slow and steady while her breathing subsided and became more regular.
“Oh,” she said, “that’s what I need, that feeling inside me, that slow sweet stroking that makes me feel warm and wanted all over. You’re so good, Johnnie. I’ve never felt anything like this before.”
He said nothing, but looked down at her face. It was a face suffused with rapture. Her mouth was partially open and her hair like a fan on the pillow, a study in beauty that would linger in his mind long after they uncoupled and fell back to earth.
She moaned and he increased his rhythm.
“Yes, yes,” she said, her voice a crackling croak in her throat. “I want you to come. I want you to shoot your milk inside me until I scream.”
“Sure?” he asked.
“Do it, Johnnie,” she said in a clear voice. “Do it now.”
He drove into her hard and fast and his rhythm increased until it was a crescendo that made them soar beyond the gravity of earth and sail even higher. She screamed and he shot seeds into her, the warm and milky essence of himself. He spurted and spurted as they both floated down from some incredible altitude.
“Ah, ah,” she sighed, and wriggled her hips back and forth. She squeezed him until there was no more spurting, no more seed to issue from his loins.
“El poco muerte,” he said. “The little death, the Spanish call it.”
“It’s not like death,” she said. “It’s like being born in fire and ice.”
“It only lasts a second, but it seems so eternal, Abby.”
He went limp inside her and rolled from her sated body. He was both drained of energy and filled with it. It felt as if he had been through a little death and then reborn, resurrected in a twinkling by some mystical force beyond all comprehension.
“The little death,” she mused, her eyelashes fluttering as she blinked in search of words to describe her complex and tangled feelings. “Yes, I can see that, in some mysterious way.”
She reached out a hand and he took it and kissed it.
“Thank you, Johnnie,” she said. “You made me so happy. Happier than I’ve ever been.”
“You’re some woman, Abby. My pleasure.”
“Our pleasure,” she said.
Just then, they heard four rapid explosions from downstairs and outside.
Slocum rose up.
“Shotguns,” he said to himself.
Four blasts and the sound of glass shattering and wood splintering.
“Do you have a window that looks out over the back of the hotel?” he asked as he slid out of bed.
“No, my rooms are in front. What’s going on, Johnnie?”
“I don’t know, but those were shotguns going off, two of them.”
She sat up and her eyes rolled wildly in
their sockets.
“What could it be?”
“I’m damned sure going to find out,” he said. “You stay here.”
“Will you be back?” she asked.
“Unless I run into something that I can’t get out of,” he said.
He dressed quickly, strapped on his gun belt, and left through the door. Abby stood there, watching him.
“Lock it,” he said.
She nodded numbly and then closed the door behind him.
Slocum took the stairs two steps at a time and reached the lobby.
The night clerk was standing in the center of the lobby, a bewildered look on his face.
“What’s going on?” Donald Fenway asked when he saw Slocum.
“Didn’t you hear those shots?”
“Yes, yes, I heard them. I think they came from…”
Slocum didn’t let him finish. He dashed down the hall to his room.
He did not go in, but he could smell the burnt powder seeping from under the door, the acrid smell of cordite.
He ducked low and pushed open the back door. He stopped in the shadows and listened. Far off, he heard the faint sound of hoofbeats.
Then he walked to his window and saw the shattered glass. Shards lay on the ground and white smoke hung in the air like shimmering gauze in the white glare of the moonlight.
He looked at the ground around the window. The men, at least two of them, he reasoned, had not ejected their shot shells. They had just run off like cowards. They probably thought that he was dead, blasted to pieces by four shotgun blasts.
He went back inside the hotel and put the key in his lock. He opened the door. The lamp was still burning. The room stank of black powder and there were wisps of smoke hanging like cobwebs above his bed.
He walked over and looked down at his bedding. The floor was strewn with feathers and striped fabric, the covers shredded into rags. He picked up one of the lead balls.
“Double-ought buck,” he said to himself.
The side of the bed was pocked with raw holes, and splinters lay like broken matchsticks on the floor.
If he had been sleeping in that bed, he would be dead, stone dead.
