Slocum and the Town Killers

by Jake Logan

  “That’s what I need, John. Don’t stop, don’t stop.”

  “You keep moving, too,” he said. He was pinned under her weight and could not lift up to meet her downward motion. Although he felt the urge to thrust, he remained still to allow her to set the pace. She was the one who had been denied good loving. He wanted her to satisfy herself—and he was certainly enjoying every instant of their lovemaking.

  “More, more, oh, yes, more,” Louisa cried out. She began grinding her hips downward and twisting from side to side with him hidden deep within.

  When she crushed down so hard that Slocum thought she would mash him flat, he was unable to restrain himself any longer. Deep in his balls he felt the boiling start and then expand upward faster and faster until he erupted within her. She clung fiercely to him, her hips shoved down to take as much of him into her center as possible.

  Then she sagged forward and laid her face against his chest.

  “Your heartbeat’s so strong,” she said. He felt her breath against his skin. She moved up and clung to him, sobbing softly. He held her, not knowing what to do.

  “It’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ll make sure it is.”

  “I know, John, I know,” she said.

  After a while, they disengaged and straightened their clothing. Slocum buckled his six-gun back on, and then they hunted for wild onions and greens to boil down for dinner. A handful of black walnuts would give a bit more to eat, paltry though they were. By the time they got back to the wagon, Sarah Beth had a small fire burning. Slocum was glad to see that she had carefully selected only dry twigs to keep smoke from rising.

  Louisa fixed the vegetables, and they ate in silence. Slocum found himself looking from mother to daughter and back. He wondered what the hell he was getting himself into.

  20

  “Now ain’t this a purty sight?” Albert Kimbrell walked around Catherine Duggan, eyeing her like a wolf might a rabbit. “Where was you goin’ in such a hurry, little lady?”

  “Go to hell,” she spat. Catherine struggled to get her leg pulled out from under the dead horse. She was securely pinned to the ground and could not get away from Kimbrell, no matter how she tried.

  “Oh, I’ve been there and I kinda like it. It’s my sort of place. But you, now, you don’t look like you’ve seen enough of Hell to appreciate what you have.” He reached out and put his grimy, calloused hand on her cheek. She tried to flinch away, but he pressed down hard until the imprint of his fingers remained on her skin.

  “Was anybody else riding with her?” Kimbrell looked up at the two men astride their horses watching what he did. They exchanged guilty looks, giving Kimbrell his answer. “Get on after ’im then. There’s no tellin’ who might have been with her.”

  “Might be one of them soldiers,” opined one outlaw.

  “If it is, kill him. You know what the major wants done. Do it!”

  Both men yanked on their reins and headed out into the night after their quarry, leaving Kimbrell with Catherine.

  “It’s not gonna be nice for you ’less you tell me what I want to know. It’ll be plenty nice for me, though, no matter what you say.”

  “You’re going to kill me. Why should I say a word?”

  “I’m not gonna kill you. You’ll just wish you were dead.” Kimbrell’s matter-of-fact declaration caused the woman to recoil. She renewed her efforts to get free from under the horse. Her leg was beginning to go numb.

  “Two of you out there. You and maybe one of them horse soldiers?” Kimbrell grinned when he saw her expression. “Yep, sure was. You were spyin’ on the major. Find out where his men are positioned, ride on back to the soldiers, and let them know. Are there enough of them left to matter?”

  Catherine turned away. She realized he asked questions to get her to react. She might as well be telling him everything he wanted to know with her words because he was getting the right information from her face.

  “Don’t matter. My boys’ll stop that soldier ridin’ with you. Kill him. Won’t be a gentle way of dyin’ either.”

  “Why? Because you taught them?”

  Kimbrell laughed, beginning to enjoy this. The woman showed fire.

  “They watched me, and they learned real good.” Kimbrell sat on the dead horse’s rump so he was just out of Catherine’s reach. She struggled and finally settled down. He wondered if she’d tired herself out, or if she thought to lure him closer so she could rake him with her nails. The brief touch of her cheek had made Kimbrell powerful horny, but there was no need to rush matters. If anything, this made it all the more exciting for him.

  “You look like one of the women the major’s hunting. You wouldn’t be family, would you?”

  Catherine looked sharply at him, then shook her head. “My name’s Catherine Duggan.”

  “That’s good, ’cuz what I’m gonna do to you I couldn’t do to one of his family and live to tell about it.” Kimbrell unbuckled his gun belt and put it aside. Then he took out his knife. He enjoyed watching her flinch away, but he only used it to cut off a piece of harness.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Gettin’ ready to free you from under that dead horse,” he said. “First, I got to tie you up so you don’t run off.”

  “I can’t run,” she said before she realized how she was helping him.

  “Leg’s all numb and tingly, huh?” Kimbrell took the long piece of leather, cautiously approached Catherine, and then caught one slender wrist. As she tried to hit him with her other hand, he snared it, too. A couple of quick turns and he had her hog-tied. “Now I can git down to freein’ you.”

  Kimbrell dug a little in the dirt, then saw an easier way to get the woman out from under the horse. Using his knife again, he cut the saddle cinch.

  “Git ready,” he warned, then he yanked hard on the saddle. Her foot was still in the stirrup under the dead horse. Catherine screeched in pain as he pulled her out from under, then disengaged her foot from the stirrup. “You got real purty legs. You’re gonna love wrappin’ ’em around my waist while I have my way with you.”

  He felt her shiver as he ran his hands up under her skirt, going higher and higher. She tried to fight, but he had secured her hands too well with the leather cut from the bridle. When she tried to scoot away, he followed her until he could clamp his hand down firmly on her upper thigh. This froze her in place.

  “You might as well quit strugglin’,” Kimbrell said. He wanted her to do just the opposite. He loved it when they thrashed around and cried out and begged for mercy. His hand moved to the vest pocket holding the ring and severed finger. He wondered if he ought to show her. That would scare her plenty.

  Catherine kicked out and caught him in the belly. Momentarily off balance, Kimbrell fell back and sat down hard.

  “You’re gonna pay for that, honey pie.”

  “You . . . you foul thing!”

  Kimbrell laughed heartily. She had more spunk than he had thought when he first saw her trapped under the dead horse. He was going to have fun all night long with her. Getting to his feet, he walked to where she kicked feebly, trying to get away.

  “Can’t stand? Leg still numb? Let me rub it till you feel somethin’.” He pounced on her and pinned her to the ground. With her hands bound, she was unable to fend him off as he pinched and stroked along her leg. There was no response. He wondered if she had broken it, but there wasn’t that kind of pain. He got his hand back under her skirt and ran it up the leg, and felt the limb begin to twitch and jerk with returning blood. “See? Old Doc Kimbrell knows what ails you and how to remedy it.”

  His hand touched the juncture of her legs. He thrust his finger upward into her. She closed her eyes and lay still.

  “Go on, move around. You’re allowed.”

  When Catherine did nothing, Kimbrell stood and began unbuttoning his jeans. He was getting tired of her. Best to get it over with so he could kill her and then see what to do about the major.

  “Hey, Al, we lost him.
We followed him fer a mile and then he just upped and disappeared like some kind of Injun.”

  Kimbrell stopped unbuttoning his pants and stepped away from the woman. He was angry at being interrupted, but he was even madder that the men had not found the spy.

  “If he gets back where he can tell the army, the major’ll have your balls for it. How’d you lose him?”

  “It’s night, Al. Fer Chrissakes. Trackin’ in the dark of night’s a fool’s errand.”

  “I sent the right men, and you weren’t fools enough from the sound of it.”

  “Look, Al, we was on his trail. He rode through a stream. We thought we found his tracks on the other side, like he rode straight across. Only the tracks weren’t his.”

  “Deer tracks,” murmured the second outlaw. “We followed a damn deer.”

  “By the time we got back, there was no way to keep after him. He might have gone in either direction.”

  “He’s an army scout. He went downstream,” Kimbrell said. “Like you’d hunt from downwind, he’d go downstream to keep from givin’ himself away.”

  Catherine tried wiggling away like a worm, but Kimbrell saw her. He took two quick steps and stomped down hard on her skirt. If she tried to go any farther, she would tear off her skirt and leave herself naked from the waist down. She sank back to the ground, glaring at him. Kimbrell paid her no heed.

  “You sure he was an army scout?” Kimbrell asked.

  The men shrugged. They didn’t have any idea who they had been after. Kimbrell looked down at Catherine and smiled.

  “He was an army scout, wasn’t he?”

  “No!”

  “Might have even been an officer out to find what he was up against. Wouldn’t trust any of his men. He’d let them rest up while he played hero. Might even have been thinkin’ on gettin’ himself a medal for bravery.” Kimbrell watched her reaction and knew he was right.

  “Boys,” he said, “the gent you lost was an officer. Probably it’s that captain we almost shot up at Charity. He might have adopted the town as his own since we took everything worth takin’ out of Fort Supply. I reckon that was his post.” Kimbrell glanced at his prisoner again, but she didn’t react now. She had no idea about the officer’s command.

  “What are you gonna tell Major Magee?”

  “Nothing,” Kimbrell said. His heart beat a little faster as he looked from his captive out into the dark night. “I figure we can lay a trap for him that’s sure to bring him runnin’.”

  “What you fixin’ to do, Al?”

  “What I was gettin’ down to doin’ when you cayuses interrupted me.” Kimbrell turned back and finished unbuttoning his jeans. “Let me get in to it.”

  Catherine began screaming and did not stop as Kimbrell raped her. But over her cries for mercy, he listened hard for another sound. It wasn’t long in coming. Kimbrell had not figured it would be.

  “Get off her, you animal,” came the cold order. “Stop this instant or I’ll kill you.”

  Kimbrell looked up from the now-sobbing woman into Isaiah Langmuir’s grim face. The captain held his pistol at arm’s length, sighting in on Kimbrell’s head. His finger was white against the trigger.

  “Now aren’t you the knight in shinin’ armor?” Kimbrell laughed as he backed away. He was in no particular hurry as he tucked himself back into his jeans and started buttoning up. Then he reached for his six-shooter, which he had laid a few feet away before he had begun raping Catherine Duggan.

  “Touch it and you’re a dead man.”

  “Really, Captain? You know why I think you’re bluffin’? You would have shot me the instant you had me in your sights if that gun of yours had even a single round left. You’re out of ammo, aren’t you?” Kimbrell reached for his six-gun slowly. His fingers curled around the butt as he drew it. The six-shooter came halfway out of the holster when Langmuir launched himself in a low dive.

  His shoulder collided with Kimbrell’s belly and knocked the outlaw backward. They went tumbling over and over together, arms flailing and fists hammering at one another. For a moment, Kimbrell came out on top and landed a heavy punch to Langmuir’s torso. Then the cavalry officer kicked Kimbrell and ended up straddling his chest, knees pinning Kimbrell’s shoulders to the ground.

  “You’re worse than an animal, and I’m going to beat you within an inch of your life.” Langmuir landed one blow on Kimbrell’s cheek, and had cocked his fist back for another when he felt something cold and hard pressed into the back of his head.

  “I ain’t the only one who’s got a bead on you, Captain,” said one of Kimbrell’s henchmen.

  “Don’t blow his brains out!” Kimbrell heaved and upended the captain, sending him tumbling to the ground. “You’d have got blood all over me.” Kimbrell brushed himself off, then lightly touched the cut that Langmuir had opened on his cheek. “Took you two long enough to stop him.”

  “Figured you’d want a piece of him, Al. Like you got a piece of her.” The outlaw laughed.

  When Langmuir got his feet under him and prepared to lunge forward, he heard the metallic click of a six-shooter cocking. He glanced over his shoulder.

  “Yup, I said there were two of ’em. You want to die or you want to live—a little longer?” Kimbrell went to Langmuir, judged distances, then unloaded a haymaker to the man’s belly. Langmuir gasped and doubled over. “What I thought. You can dish it out but you can’t take it.”

  “We take both of them back to the major?”

  “Why would we want to do that?” Kimbrell asked. He rubbed his knuckles. “We’re just gettin’ started with them, and we got all night.”

  “Uh, we got all night with her, too?” Both of Kimbrell’s henchmen stared at Catherine, who cowered and began to sob softly as her fate became more apparent.

  “Sure. And he can watch. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Captain? You’d like watchin’ my boys here have her?”

  “You—” Langmuir lunged forward. Kimbrell was waiting. He stepped to the side, thrust out his boot, and tripped the officer. Langmuir landed facedown in the dirt. Before he could get back to his feet, Kimbrell clipped him above the ear with the barrel of his six-gun.

  “Yeah, we got all night. Help me tie this one up, and then you can take turns with her.”

  Kimbrell laughed at the reaction he got from Catherine Duggan. He laughed even more when he saw the horror on Langmuir’s face when he regained consciousness. It was going to be a long, fun night.

  21

  “There, all done,” Sarah Beth Magee said, putting the last of their cleaned tin plates onto a stack. “What do we do now, John?”

  “Yeah, John, what are you gonna do? Screw her, too?”

  “Shut up,” Slocum said to the prisoner tied to the wagon wheel. The gibe hit close to home. Slocum had not thought it was that apparent what he and Louisa had done while out in the woods gathering tidbits for dinner, but it must have been for the outlaw to pick up on it.

  “What’s he mean, John?” Sarah Beth asked. She looked curiously at him.

  “He wants us to argue. That’s about all he has left to do. I could gag him if he’s bothering you,” Slocum said.

  “Yeah, go on, big man. Gag me. Shut me up. I don’t blame you and her ma for f—”

  Slocum drew his pistol and pointed it directly at the man’s face. The bore was considerably smaller than a .44, but had to look big enough to stick a hand down.

  “How bad you want to live? You’ll swing whenever they get you to trial, so killing you here and now isn’t robbing the law of a damned thing.”

  “You’d kill me in cold blood, wouldn’t you?” There was a hint of admiration in the outlaw’s words.

  “Might not be in cold blood,” Slocum said. “Might be I’d like it, just to watch you die.”

  “John!” Sarah Beth was outraged.

  “Hush, dear,” cautioned her mother. Louisa put her hand on Sarah Beth’s and squeezed it tightly. “We’re in a terrible position, with your pa’s men all around an
d the marshal laid up the way he is.”

  “Was it a terrible position?” called the prisoner. He groaned when Slocum buffaloed him. The barrel of the Colt Navy caught the outlaw just above the right eyebrow and opened a deep gash that spewed blood and blinded him in that eye.

  “There’s no call to do something like that,” Sarah Beth said primly. “Let me stitch it up before he bleeds to death.”

  “He won’t bleed to death,” Slocum said. “Not unless I decide to put a bullet in his gut. That’s a real slow way to die, isn’t it? Painful?”

  “You can’t scare me,” the outlaw said, but he was obviously lying. A wild, animal look came into his eyes. He looked around as if he could take flight. All he succeeded in doing was tugging on his bonds and tightening the knots around his wrists.

  “John, don’t. You’re scaring me.”

  Slocum slid his six-shooter back into its holster, but kept a steely gaze on the prisoner, ignoring whatever Sarah Beth was doing to try to distract him.

  “How’s the marshal doing?” Slocum finally asked.

  “Better. He’s weak, but I don’t think he’s in any danger now,” Sarah Beth said, obviously relieved to have something other than their prisoner’s imminent demise to occupy Slocum. “We should head for Charity, I think.”

  “No!” Louisa Magee shot to her feet and looked around wildly. “That’s going to do us in if we do. Your pa’s there. I feel it in my bones.”

  “She’s right,” Slocum said. “Take a gander at our prisoner and tell me she’s not right.”

  After studying the man’s expression for a moment, Sarah Beth nodded.

  “He would make a terrible poker player, wouldn’t he?” the young woman said. “You were right, Mama. We should go somewhere else. But where?”

  “Wanna go home,” came Marshal Vannover’s weak protest.

  “I’ll get you there when it’s safe,” Slocum said. “Let’s sleep on where to head and see if the morning doesn’t suggest something better than we’re likely to decide right now when we’re so tired.” He shot a look at the prisoner that stifled another of the man’s outbursts.