by Jake Logan
As she licked and teased her way down the long, muscled plane of his chest and stomach, her nimble fingers, as hot to the touch as was her searching, busy mouth, all but ripped off his gun belt and denims. She slid his trousers down over his backside and he heard her utter a soft grunt of surprise and satisfaction as she bumped her face against his lust-thickened member.
Slocum’s hands found their way blind and groping, his fingers tangling in her thick, dark hair. But she needed no urging, for she trailed her tongue up from the thatch of hair at its root, sliding her hot tongue up its long, stiff length, not neglecting a spot as she laved him, grunting and making small, hoarse sounds deep in the back of her throat.
When her mouth reached the pulsing tip, pearling with anticipation, she teased, with her perfect white teeth, dragging them forward along the sensitive head.
Even in the near dark, he knew she was enjoying this torture she was putting him through. He felt her strong hands on either side of his buttocks, and without warning, she pulled him hard toward her, driving her face forward once, twice, three times, descending the full length of his shaft before gently raking him with her teeth back to the tip. She never quite let go nor broke the pressure with her lips, hot and formed to him as if made for the task.
All too soon he had to force her back from him, knowing what would happen if she had her full way down there. He would be spent and unable to indulge himself in other ways, nor please her as much as she was doing for him. As he eased her mouth from him, she uttered a small growl of what he suspected, coming from her, to be anger.
He pulled her to her feet and rolled her nipples until they jutted like underripe raspberries. She gasped and bit into his shoulder with each tender squeeze he gave. She slid one leg up and down his, teasingly close. With each pass, he could feel her heat as he kissed then sucked at her breasts.
The girl began trembling then and reached down between his legs, her breath stuttering as if she’d run a great distance. She was ready for him and he slid into her as if it was the one task he had always been meant to do. She exhaled, a long, tremulous sound, and a breeze flickered the gauzy cobwebs in the bare window. Far off in the night, a coyote yipped his long, plaintive sound.
Slocum eased out, and the girl’s inner muscles kneaded his member as it slid, as if begging him to reconsider. And he did, for just as quickly he plunged in again, deeper and quicker this time, and the girl’s breathing mimicked the action. In and out he drove with increasing rapidity until there was no way she could keep up, and her hips bucked and swayed with the man’s hard-driving power.
Just when Slocum thought he was nearly finished, the girl had a peculiar way of slowing the motion, of easing him back from the brink, all without touching him with her hands.
“What are you doing to me?” he said, half kidding, and half exhausted, but not wanting it to end just yet. He had a hunch she wasn’t through.
“Shut up. Do not talk to me—I am still not sure I trust you.”
“And this is the way you judge such things?”
Her response was to grip him harder down there, nearly pinching off his breathing before plunging him deep inside her once again. The result made them both exhale, then they were off to the races again, both plunging and bucking wildly. He spun her over so that she was on her back and he took full and final command of the situation, making her bite down on the cloth of her wadded-up dress and howl into it, lest her grandfather hear their heated, animal sounds.
Just as they finished, each locked in a trembling last spasm, she did a curious thing—she gripped him even tighter and wrapped her legs around his back. For a moment she hugged him as if her life depended on it. And then she let go.
In a moment, she had rolled over, her back tight to his front. They fit together like two spoons, and holding his arm across her belly, she fell asleep. Slocum lay awake a long time, thinking of the strange turn of events the day had taken, of the woman he was now with.
She meant little more to him than he did to her—they were both there to satisfy a mutual instant need for companionship, nothing more. Unlike the woman who owned this place, Marybeth Meecher, this girl was to him like the flare of a match instead of the bone-soaking heat of a winter fire.
Where was Marybeth now? Why hadn’t she come back home to her beloved roadhouse? She was a determined woman with nothing but the kindness of others behind all her actions. So it didn’t surprise him that she would have lit out for parts unknown in search of stray souls in need of help.
But the fact that she hadn’t returned did trouble Slocum greatly. Marybeth was a resourceful woman, yes, but not the type to go off on a fool’s errand without adequate planning. Had the old man and his granddaughter told him the truth? Had they done something to her and taken over her establishment for themselves?
The old man seemed to know Marybeth and seemed genuinely fond of her, and Slocum had remembered him from his time here three years before. Then, though, the man had seemed guarded and wary of nearly everyone. But that was the way often with people who had little themselves and who were trying to maintain a tenuous connection to something, anything that they felt would ensure them some form of security in life.
Surely Slocum had lived much of his life that way, too. He couldn’t fault the old man for that. And he did seem like a decent sort. Not lying, just adequately guarded. And then once he had realized Slocum was willing to help, it seemed to open up a whole new level of trust within the old man.
But the girl, she was a conundrum. Full of spite and anger, hate even. That she cared for her grandfather was evident, though not in any traditional sense. She seemed a damaged soul, one who had perhaps been through much that others might never know about—at least not from her. But beyond that, Slocum wasn’t sure about her except that she seemed to be hiding something.
And in the morning, vowed Slocum, he’d find out just what it was. He bet it had something to do with the whereabouts of Marybeth Meecher.
4
It was a boot on gravel that woke Slocum. He sat up, heard another boot step, then two more right after. That meant two people, probably men, and one of them wasn’t the old Mexican, who would be barefoot.
He felt the girl tense beside him. “Grandfather!” she hissed, struggling to her feet. He held on to her and she thrashed at his grip.
“Stay here, dammit,” he whispered. “We don’t know who they are, but if what you told me is true, they’re probably looking for you and him. I can help him better if I’m not worrying about you, too.”
“Then you’ll just have to worry.” And with that, she was gone, hadn’t even bothered to pull on her nightgown.
He tugged on his second boot and strapped on his gun belt, then he, too, slipped through the door. How had anyone ridden in here without him hearing? He cursed himself, but he knew why—she had worked him hard, riding him like someone who wants to win a race at all costs, no matter the health of the mount.
He had to put the girl out of his mind for now. She was a tough number and too headstrong for her own good, but she was on her own at least for the next few minutes.
“We seen a girl!”
Groans rose into the otherwise still, chill night air.
“I said we seen a girl! Now where is she?”
“No, no, there is no girl here. You are mistaken, sir. It is only me. I’m here alone. An old man with no—”
More sounds of hard beatings followed, then silence.
“Rollins, dammit. I think you killed him.” One of the men toed the still form on the floor before them. He flopped, lay still. “Yep, I’d say so. You killed a perfectly good slave, you dumb bastard. Boss ain’t gonna like this. He will have our hide for this, sure as Sundays are for prayin’.”
“Nah, he’s just knocked out.”
Then another voice mumbled something, too low for Slocum to hear. He eased out the barn door and bolted i
n a low run through the inky night, the cool mountain air chilling his bare chest and arms. He ran as fast as he could across the yard, a pistol drawn, a grim set to his mouth. Save the old man and the girl; that was all he had room for in his mind. But damn, he’d have been happier if she’d stayed put.
“And a girl. We seen a man and a girl. You hear me, you bean eater?” Something stiff and hard rammed into something softer with a thud, raising a gasp and more groans.
Someone’s getting a mighty beating, thought Slocum as he eased the trigger back on his pistol and cat-footed around the barn, the girl’s scent still on the air before him.
Slocum felt his way around the far end of the house, vaguely recalling that there was a long, low wooden box, painted red, that Marybeth had used to store firewood, extra Dutch ovens, all manner of gear. His knee struck it sooner than he’d expected and it was all he could do to keep from crying out.
“Rupe, you hear that?”
“What?”
“From outside, out back yonder. Some sort of noise.”
“Well, check on it, numb nuts. I got to do everything here?”
Their voices slumped down to a whisper, still loud enough for Slocum to hear.
“All right, all right. Keep your clothes on. First thing’s first. I’m going to finish off this here Mexican while you go—Well! What have we here? Hey, Rollins, we got ourselves a pretty little chica—and nekkid as the day is long, too!”
Slocum heard raw, braying laughter along with the continued groans of the old man.
“You leave my grandfather alone. Now!” The girl spat the words at them. Slocum had to give it to her—she was a handful of hot coals.
He stepped once, twice more then drove a boot hard against the wood-and-twine lift-latch. Planks cracked and split lengthwise and Slocum slammed his way through, the door swinging inward, rattling hard against a sideboard. He heard something topple, fall to the wood floor. Dim light from a low-burning oil lamp wavered with the gust of fresh air.
“What the—” The man speaking spun toward the door. He was a broad-shouldered fat man with a massive shaggy heard and a too-small shapeless felt hat stuck on top. He reminded Slocum of a man with a bull bison’s head attached. The man had a repeating rifle poised at waist height, but he never got the chance to pull the trigger intentionally.
Slocum sent two rounds straight into the man, one in the center of his massive coat-covered chest, just under the shaggy beard. The other a little higher. It split the bridge of the brute’s nose and punched straight into his brain. But the man kept on coming.
Slocum had enough time to see the naked girl launch herself at the turned back of the other man, a thinner fellow, just as tall, and with a lean, muscled look about him. She’d screamed and locked her wildcat arms about the man’s neck. He turned from Slocum, the girl’s naked body swinging behind him like an angry living garment. Her flailing legs and bucking body did their best to keep from his swatting grasp and inflict some sort of pain at the same time. Slocum saw that the brute would slam the girl into a wall or the mantel any second, and no matter how game she was, a few hard slams and she’d crumple.
Slocum cranked three more rounds into the advancing bison man and with the last was relieved to see the big beast stop short, lurch as if pushed from behind. He dropped the rifle and a great rush of air and blood geysered upward from his mouth. He dove forward like a great falling redwood.
Slocum didn’t wait to see the man drop, but drove himself at the dervishing pair of combatants. True to Slocum’s suspicions, the man began to work backward toward the fireplace mantel even while it looked to Slocum as if the girl was biting his ear. She tightened her grip on his neck, doing her damnedest to choke the fiend.
The mantel was just the height he’d need to disrupt her once and for all. But Slocum intervened just before they staggered into the projecting hewn shelf. He wished the girl would just drop off so he could deal with the man. He wanted him alive so he might force information out of him. He had a strong suspicion these two were out on a gathering mission for the slavery outfit.
He found his opening, and grabbing the man by the shirtfront, he was able to slam him in the temple with the butt of his Colt. The man stopped growling and swatting at the girl on his back and stared at Slocum with a look of glazing surprise. One nostril fluttered, working like a bellows with his ragged breathing.
He looked like he was chewing on something and then gagging as he wavered in Slocum’s grasp.
“Gaah . . .”
Slocum realized it was probably the girl’s fingers, but she didn’t utter a scream, just a long string of Mexican lingo, half of which Slocum could pick out, the other half whipped by too fast for him to comprehend. But the meaning was clear: This woman was still very much brimming with anger.
Just before the man dropped to the floor, the girl, lithe as a cougar in the high rocks, leapt from the man’s back, and stood to the side, one hand shaking off the chewing the man had given her fingers, the other already reaching for the cooled-off frying pan. She brought it up high. It clunked off a beam, then Slocum stiff-armed her and snatched the pan from her grasp.
“You bastardo! You dare! He hurt my grandfather!” And with that reminder, she ran to the old man. Miguel, Slocum saw, hadn’t moved, and a spreading pool of blood beneath his head foretold the worst.
He moved to the old man, bent low over him, but the girl’s sagged features and silent tears told him even before he verified for himself that the man’s heart had stopped. They had beaten him to death, and he and the girl had been in the barn not far away. Why in God’s name hadn’t he heard them?
He walked to the door and leaned into the battered frame. Nothing moved outside. It would be light in another hour or so. With any luck he would be able to get some sort of information out of the man he’d coldcocked.
As he turned back to the room, he saw girl looking across the room toward the prone man, saw the same man, pistol drawn, temple bloodied, thumbing back the hammer. The son of a bitch was aiming to shoot an unarmed naked girl. And she didn’t seem afraid in the least. Just angry.
“Get down!” Slocum shouted and dropped to one knee. All in one smooth, oft-repeated motion, once more he clawed free his Colt, palmed it, peeled back the hammer, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet caught the prone man in the neck. A gagging sound bubbled out of him, his eyes rolled back, then his forehead hit the floor with a thunk. Only then did his pistol drop.
As life slipped from the man, his finger convulsed, tightened on the trigger. The bullet caromed into the stone fireplace, spanged off blackened rock within, and whizzed like a bee past Slocum’s head before lodging in a corner beam.
• • •
By the time dawn broke, the girl had prepared her grandfather’s body for burial. Slocum had regretted killing the two men, though only because they possessed information he would need. Now his trip north to the Triple T was more a mission than a journey for a job. Bad things were happening there, and the emissaries of that place had nearly gotten him killed. Worse, they had killed a decent old man looking for nothing more than to provide for his only relative left alive, his granddaughter.
And now she was angrier than before—and alone in the world. He toed the last of the two killers into the hole he’d dug for them, beyond a low rise well away from the buildings.
By the time he came back to the kitchen, the girl had a pot of coffee on the stove to boil, and had cleaned herself up at the trough where Slocum had first encountered the old man.
“I would like your help with the winding sheet, and then we can bury him. I will dig the hole.”
“No, I will dig the hole. Just tell me where. It’s the least I can do for him.” Slocum stared at the dead man. She’d done an admirable job. He looked peaceful and kind, almost as he had when he’d offered Slocum a rare smile at dinner the night before.
Slocum l
ooked at the girl. To his surprise, she looked calm and simply nodded. “Okay then. Follow me. But have a cup of coffee first.” She poured him one, then one for herself. They sipped them in silence.
When they were done, she set the tin cups in the dry sink and walked outdoors. He retrieved the shovel from where he’d leaned it earlier by the door, and followed her to a slight rise just to the east of the house. Short, scrubby pines wreathed the spot. From it, the view of the surrounding landscape was serene and restful.
As if reading his thoughts, the girl said, “Grandfather liked to sit here. He even cleared it of sage so his chair fit the ground better.” One side of her mouth rose and she almost smiled. Then it faded. “So here is where he shall be buried. I will dig first.” She looked at Slocum. “I must help with some of it.”
It was a simple statement that he understood held a deeper meaning. It would be important for her to share in this final task of burying her grandfather. He nodded and handed her the shovel.
5
Several hours later, with aching muscles and an empty belly, Slocum thought of “slaves” and “Boss,” words that echoed in his mind from the talk of the men he’d killed. Slocum stood holding the Appaloosa’s reins in one hand, the reins of a well-tended chestnut mare in the other. He’d taken the liberty of saddling it for Tita.
“What are you doing?” she said, eyeing the second horse.
“You’re going with me. You won’t be safe here alone. I think we’ve discovered that much. There’s to be no arguments, no more of this scowling, angry person you seem to enjoy playing at.”
She stood in the doorway of the little roadhouse. The door, repaired to the best of Slocum’s ability, moved in an unfelt breeze, a faint squeak the only sound. The distress and lack of sleep of the night before had taken their toll on the girl’s still unblemished features.
Dark smudges had blossomed beneath her coffee-colored eyes, and her scowl had lessened in intensity, now replaced with something more akin to a weariness that Slocum suspected would be there for some time to come. The girl, it seemed, had not had an easy row to hoe in her young life. And recent events didn’t promise anything easier for some time to come.
