by Jake Logan
“Curly here’s got a lead on three of them, but nobody in town knows squat about a new message.”
“The race ends here?”
“You gotta be kiddin’,” Calhoun said, looking at Swain. The sun would rise in a few minutes, but it looked as if the white streak through Swain’s coal black hair glowed with a light all its own. When he had been a kid, Calhoun had enjoyed shooting at skunks. He’d lure them into houses of people he didn’t like; then he’d take a few shots at them and get their stink working hard. When he was sure they couldn’t get any meaner or smellier, he’d kill them. The people he hated had to remove the skunk and carried their mark—Sid Calhoun’s mark—for days.
Killing Swain wouldn’t likely leave that kind of stench, but it might. He’d have to find out.
“Why are we always a couple days behind? We ought to be a couple days ahead if we want to win the gold.”
“You’re right, Swain,” Calhoun said. “We oughta be in the lead. Why are you screwin’ everything up so bad that we’re not?”
“It ain’t me!”
Curly rode a little faster to put distance between the two men, but Calhoun wasn’t going to have any part of it. He wanted Curly to learn a lesson. Nobody crossed Sid Calhoun.
“I think you’re anglin’ to keep the gold for yourself,” Calhoun said. “You know more than you’re tellin’.”
“No, honest, Sid, I don’t!”
The argument went on with Swain finally lapsing into sullen silence. Calhoun felt a sense of triumph at putting the back-shooting son of a bitch on the defensive. He settled down and rode, eyes fixed on Swain’s back until they reached the edge of town. Then Calhoun began looking around for any sign that Curly had failed, but no sign bannered over the street advertising Colonel J. Patterson Turner’s Transcontinental Race as it had in Jubilee Junction. There had been a more muted presence in Benedict—and nothing here.
The sunlight on Calhoun’s back made him sit a little straighter as he rode through the town. Clarkesville was larger than he expected, but nowhere did he find evidence of the race.
“There it is, Sid. There,” Curly said, pointing to an empty building. Gold letters on the plate-glass window revealed this was the Turner Haulage Company office, but a cursory look inside showed it had never opened.
“Where’s the stage depot?”
“Over yonder,” Swain said. He sounded ornery, putting Calhoun on guard.
“Thanks,” Calhoun said. “Let’s me and you ride on over there, Swain, while Curly finds out more about the cowboy who broke that bronco.” He tipped his head in the direction of the livery until Curly got the idea. Curly grunted and hurried off to find out what he could.
“Why do you put up with him?” Swain asked.
Calhoun saw it was time to smooth some ruffled feathers.
“He’ll be useful until we get close to the gold. You got any problem with just me and you splittin’ the prize?”
Swain looked sharply at him, started to speak, then simply shook his head.
“Good. Curly can scout and do simple things, but he isn’t too swift on the uptake, not like you, Skunk.”
“You want me to kill him?”
“No, nothing of the sort.” Calhoun saw the disappointment, and knew then how to keep Swain loyal—to a point. “Not yet,” he said more softly. “Then you can do it.”
Swain nodded once, and looked happier than he had in a week.
They dismounted at the side of the depot, and Calhoun motioned for Swain to remain with the horses. What he learned inside might determine when he took a different trail from his two henchmen.
“Morning,” the stage agent said in greeting. He was a young man, hardly out of his teens, but he wore small rectangular glasses and squinted a little at Calhoun. “You wantin’ a ticket outta Clarkesville? We got a stage leaving for Benedict tomorrow.”
“What’s to the west?”
“Denver.”
“Do tell,” Calhoun said. “How many stops along the way before Denver?”
The young man pursed his lips, then began counting. Calhoun watched the process as the agent ticked off each stop, and knew the answer before the man spoke.
“Eight.”
The thought flashed through Calhoun’s mind that this was the number of keys he had in his vest pocket.
“Show me on the map,” he asked, seeing a large map of the United States and its territories on the back wall.
“Well, sir, the stage goes from here to here and then . . .” The agent dragged his finger along, leaving a tiny black trail as the ink smeared.
“The last stop’s called Dry Water,” Calhoun said. “If they split, they’d want to get back together before going into Denver.”
“Who you mean?” The agent peered at Calhoun. “You the law?”
“Something like that. The woman on the stagecoach,” Calhoun prodded.
“Oh, she was a looker. Seldom seen a woman that lovely, and certainly not here in Clarkesville. Made me want to buy a ticket and go wherever she was headed. Real polite, too. The sort of lady you want to do things for. She smelled nice, too, considerin’ how she musta been out on the trail.”
“The man with her? What do you remember about him?”
“Didn’t see much of him. Weaselly-looking fella. Couldn’t see why she was travelin’ with him. Not that he went on the stage with her, mind you.”
“Oh?”
“He rode off with their horses.”
Calhoun swung around when the door was flung open and Curly burst inside.
“His name’s John Slocum, and he lit out yesterday.”
“Slocum? No, I heard her call him Harry. Never caught the last name,” the agent said.
“We’re talkin’ ’bout different folks,” Calhoun said.
“The one what rode into town with him’s still workin’ at the newspaper,” Curly said. “He left her behind.”
“Heard tell we had a new female reporter. Who’d have thought a thing like that,” the agent said, shaking his head. “Next thing you know, women’ll be doin’ all kinds of jobs and puttin’ us out of work.”
Calhoun took one last look at the map and fixed the terrain in his head.
“Come on, Curly. Let’s get Swain. We’re ridin’ for Dry Water.”
17
Slocum rode slowly to be certain his horse’s leg had healed properly. The going was easier because he followed the tracks left by the stagecoach and the mud was turning to firmer soil, giving better footing. From the way the weeds grew over the twin ruts, only one or two stages rattled along this road every week. He couldn’t tell which direction they ran, but he guessed it was west for the first part of the week and back to Clarkesville from Denver at the end.
He appreciated the lonesome territory stretching as far as he could see. More than once, he considered veering off the trail and heading north—or south—or any way other than following the golden lure offered by Colonel Turner and his race. The keys in his pocket were an incentive, but he’d felt strangely uneasy at how he left Zoe Murchison back in town. He should have told her he was moving on.
Then he knew there was no point. She had found herself a job and one that suited her better than trying to send telegraphed stories back to some St. Louis newspaper. She could cover the important goings-on in a town like Clarkesville and become an outstanding citizen before she knew it. There was scant chance her big-city editor would do anything more than steal her stories. Slocum had never asked if she had seen her byline on a published article, or if she knew for certain that the editor wasn’t putting his own name on the series she was risking her neck to write.
Zoe was better off in Clarkesville.
Slocum still felt a pang of guilt about not telling her he was riding on, though. The race meant more to her than it did to him, as witnessed by the times he’d considered chucking it all and finding his way elsewhere. The lure of so much gold made his heart pound a little faster, but then the same could be said about Zoe also.<
br />
“Better to leave her behind,” he said. Slocum laughed without humor. “Zoe would only get in the way when I track down Molly.” The notion of two lovely women sharing his bed did more than make his heart beat faster. Riding became downright uncomfortable, but his thoughts turned to other things and soon he rode more comfortably.
He crested a hill and scanned the prairie ahead of him. He fancied he could see the Front Range in the distance, but that came from his imagination. He was several days’ ride away from even a hint of the towering peaks, some of which never lost their snowy caps even on the hottest summer days. Before he saw them ahead, he would be in Dry Water.
He kept a steady pace, but began to worry a mite when his mare missed a step now and then. He was in a hurry to find Molly Ibbotson and get what he could from her, which wasn’t likely to be more than a golden key or two. He was worried that her brother had ridden away in a different direction, as if they had information Slocum wasn’t privy to. Slocum decided, for the hundredth time, that it didn’t matter what messages they had gotten in Benedict as long as he followed Molly. She would not quit the race. Finding her would keep him on the course better than any cryptic instructions the colonel might have left for the racers.
“But it’s pretty devious to steal the instructions and leave nothing but empty envelopes,” he said as he dismounted and patted his mare’s neck. The horse moved easily, but Slocum still was worried.
Did he worry as much about the mare’s leg as he did about Zoe Murchison?
“Time to camp. We’ve got an hour or so until sundown. The rabbits ought to be leaving their burrows. You munch some of that grass while I hunt.”
The horse whinnied, and let Slocum go about his hunting without further protest.
It was sometime after finishing his meal that he grew increasingly edgy. His horse swayed back and forth, asleep. If a wolf or coyote approached, the mare would have come awake instantly. Someone was doing his best to sneak closer. Thoughts of the Sioux flashed through Slocum’s mind as he drew his six-shooter and rolled away, moving as silently as a cloud floating across the sky.
He had camped in a hollow protected from the wind and the sight of any traveler along the road by moderately sized hills. Moving into a shallow ravine, he made his way toward the road and looked around. He caught his breath when he saw a horse tethered to a low bush. He couldn’t make out the details without going closer, but thought the rifle was missing from the saddle scabbard. Six-gun gripped firmly in his hand, he found the spot where the rider had chosen to attack.
Within ten yards, Slocum saw a figure huddled near a stunted tree. From there, it was an easy shot at anyone in the camp. He didn’t see a rifle in the hands moving about fitfully, almost nervously, but he didn’t have to. Slocum cocked his six-shooter and aimed it at the middle of the darkness.
“Move a muscle and you’re a dead man!” Slocum almost squeezed off a shot when the figure suddenly exploded upward, half turned as if to fire, then tumbled backward down the hill toward his camp. He followed fast, not wanting to let the man get away.
“I said to freeze!”
“John!”
Slocum jerked his pistol off line so he wouldn’t accidentally shoot Zoe.
“What are you doing here? I could have killed you.”
“Why?”
“I thought you were getting a bead on me from up on the hill,” he said.
“No, not that. Why’d you leave me in Clarkesville the way you did? You could have at least said good-bye. I deserved that much.”
“I didn’t see any point in making a long good-bye out of it,” Slocum said. He shoved his six-gun back into his cross-draw holster and slid down the hill to stand beside Zoe. She had gotten up, and futilely worked to brush off the stickers and other debris that clung tenaciously to her skirt. She stamped her foot in anger, and then broke out in tears.
Slocum found himself with an armful of quaking woman. She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed until he felt his shirt turning damp from her tears.
“I didn’t do anything to make you treat me that way, John. I thought we were a team, you and I. We could have stayed in Clarkesville for a week or two, gotten money, and then gone on together to win the gold. I mean, you could have gotten the gold and I would have had my story. Not that I wouldn’t have liked the gold, but that wouldn’t be professional since I’m a reporter and Mr. Zelnicoff would never have let me keep the money and—”
“Hush up,” Slocum said. “You’re half hysterical.”
She shoved him away. The tears were replaced by anger.
“Why’d you go like that? You thought you’d go on by yourself and keep the prize? Was that it?”
“You were as happy as a pig in a wallow getting the job as reporter,” Slocum started.
“A pig? You think I’m nothing more than a pig! How dare you!”
“I didn’t mean that—”
He found himself with an armful of clawing, struggling woman.
As suddenly as she had begun fighting him, she yielded. Zoe turned her tear-stained face up to him and her lips parted slightly. For a moment, Slocum did nothing. Then she said in a voice hardly audible, “Kiss me.”
He did. Her response was immediate. She clung to him fiercely and her lips crushed hard against his until he thought she would bruise them. Her body began rubbing against his like a cat rubbing up against a piece of furniture, and then she was frantically skinning him out of his coat and vest, worrying at the buttons and then, fumbling so much, moving down to the buttons on his fly. She had better luck there.
He sprang out as soon as the last button was released. She dropped to her knees in front of him and took him into her mouth. Slocum’s knees went a little weak in reaction. He stroked through her hair, and then laced his fingers through the strands to guide her in a motion that did the impossible—it excited him even more.
The feel of her mouth against his hardness sent tiny earthquakes throughout his body. He jerked harder in the warmth of her mouth as she used her tongue and lightly scored the sides of his manhood with her teeth.
“Enough,” he said. “I want more than your mouth.”
“What more do you want?” Zoe’s eyes burned like coals as she looked up at him.
He answered through action. His hands stroked her cheeks, moved down her throat, and then insinuated themselves under her lacy collar. As he forced his hands lower, the buttons on her blouse popped open one by more. Soon enough, her blouse gaped open and both of his hands cupped her breasts. He felt the warmth and the vitality there as her heart hammered wildly. He caught one rubbery nip and tweaked it. Zoe closed her eyes and moaned softly. The moan came louder when he duplicated the effort on her other breast. She lifted her hands and pressed his into her soft flesh.
“More, John. Don’t tease me. Give me what we both want.”
He dropped to his knees and kissed her lips. His mouth moved lower to the hollow of her throat, and then to the deep valley between her luscious breasts. She sank backward to the ground, and he followed. His hands lifted her skirt and found warm, willing flesh underneath. Pushing up the useless cloth took only a moment until he had exposed her privates.
“You’re not wearing your bloomers,” he said.
“I don’t need a fashion lecture,” she said in a rasping voice. Her eyes were closed and a look of desire was etched on her features.
He wasn’t going to give her a lecture. He moved into the vee of her legs, his thickness probing outward until he found her nether lips. Juices leaked out, and made his entry easier. Slick, quick, and deep, he sank into her heated interior. The entry took both their breaths away.
Zoe began thrashing about and lifting herself off the ground to drive her groin down into his with insistent need. She clutched at his upper arms and half sat up.
“Take me, John. Hard. Fast. That’s the way I want it.”
That was the way he gave it to her. He pulled back, hesitated, and then rammed down hard until he once
more felt the woman’s intimate flesh surrounding him completely. This time he did not pause, but withdrew as quickly as he had entered. Faster and faster he moved, until he felt like a piston on a steam locomotive. Every thrust drove him deeper into her until it felt as if he might split her in two all the way to her throat. But she clenched down tightly on his hidden length before that happened, and threatened to mash him flat.
Slocum kept moving but their fates were sealed. They both gasped in unison, and then he felt the hot rush until he was spent. Zoe continued moving beneath him for a few seconds more, and then she, too, sank down to the ground.
Slocum stared at her in wonder. It was as good as it had ever been for him, and he wondered why she had left Clarkesville to follow him. She’d had a life back in town that she could never have with him out on the trail.
“They’re following,” she said.
“What? Who?” His brain was muzzy, and it took him a few seconds to concentrate enough on what she was saying to understand. “Calhoun?”
“Him and two of his thugs,” she said. “They came into town about sunrise and asked after you.” She took a deep breath, which caused her breasts to jiggle about delightfully. Seeing how distracted Slocum was, she pulled her blouse over her chest, but made no move to button up. “They were inquiring about me, too, but were less interested in me than in Molly Ibbotson.”
Zoe’s eyes left Slocum’s and stared out into the darkness. “They think she somehow stole the instructions that were supposed to be in Clarkesville and pressed on.”
“So they’re after her.”
“And after you. Sid Calhoun was also interested in you.”
“He’d probably shoot me out of hand if he finds me before I see him.”
“You’d kill him?”
“I’d cut him down like a rabid dog,” Slocum said.
Zoe laughed nervously. “You’re such a kidder, John.”
He didn’t correct her. He’d meant it. Too many men like Calhoun roamed the West. Killing them before they could kill anyone else was a public service. Not only would Slocum be protecting his own life, but also the lives of countless others that Sid Calhoun might gun down for the hell of it.
