Slocum and the Town Killers

by Jake Logan

  She looked up at him. Slocum tried to read what was in her face but could not. There was no eagerness or fear or revulsion. There was nothing, and that was more troubling than if she had pushed him away and curled up and cried all night long.

  “So nice,” she said, stroking along the rigid length. Bending over, she gave the tip a quick kiss that sent tremors all the way down into Slocum’s loins. “So big.” She started stroking up and down with enough friction to make him groan. “And so lonely.”

  She engulfed the purpled tip with her lips, then slid down a bit more until she took the entire end into her mouth. Her lips caressed and her tongue teased. Slocum groaned even louder when her tongue began stroking along the sensitive underside. Then she clamped down and scored the sides with her teeth. He forced himself to keep from rising off the hay and thrusting into her mouth. She wanted to be in control, but it was hard for Slocum not to react.

  Her tongue whirled about the end and slipped back and forth until he was fighting to keep control. Then she began to suck. Her blond head worked up and down as she took him as far into her mouth as possible and then backed away so that her lips danced on the very tip.

  “You’re really making it hard on me,” Slocum said.

  “I know. I can feel it.” She gobbled a bit and then said, “And I can taste it. You’re doing just fine, John.”

  “Not so good. Can’t hold back too long.”

  “Let yourself go whenever you want. That’s what I want. I want to know what it is that’s exciting you.”

  “You are,” Slocum said. He gasped and leaned back as she went down on him again. He wanted to lace his fingers through her blond locks, but instead contented himself with grabbing a double handful of hay. Her head flew up and down faster as she took ever more of him into her mouth. And then there was no way of holding himself back. Slocum shoved upward uncontrollably and spilled his seed. She rode out the rush and kept her mouth around him until he went entirely limp.

  “That was tasty,” she said. The tip of her pink tongue sneaked out and made a slow circuit of her lips.

  “I don’t know if you got what you needed, but I surely did,” Slocum said.

  “There’s some more,” she said. “Hold me, John. Hold me.”

  She snuggled into the circle of his arms. Slocum didn’t mind that, nor did he mind when she put her hand down on his crotch as if to check to be sure it didn’t rise up unexpectedly. It would come back to life eventually, but not at the moment. She had treated it too well for that, leaving Slocum drained.

  Catherine Duggan went to sleep while Slocum stayed awake, listening and waiting and worrying that Magee would take it into his head to finish destroying the town of Charity.

  Hours later, Catherine stirred and murmured something he did not catch. He took her hand away from his privates and buttoned up. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the loft for a while before speaking.

  “It’ll never go away, what they did to me, but I feel better now. Not completely whole, but better. Thanks, John.”

  “You did everything,” he said, strapping on his six-gun.

  “You let me. You let me do what I wanted at my own pace. That gives me some feeling of control over my own life.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She laughed. “Men.” Catherine sobered and looked hard at him. Then her gaze softened. “You men are not all alike.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Slocum got to his feet and brushed off hay before going to peer outside. It was getting late in the day. From where he stood, he didn’t see any of Magee’s men, but they must still be lying low outside Charity.

  “I don’t know if we should go on into town and do what we can to get them ready if Magee attacks again, or if we ought to see if Langmuir got away. If they caught him, Kimbrell will torture him for days.”

  “He’s terrible. I swear, that man makes most Apaches look like Little Goody Two-Shoes.” Catherine hesitated, then said, “The captain is resourceful enough to escape.”

  “He’s got his standing orders to protect the people in the territory and is trying to carry them out,” Slocum said.

  “John,” Catherine asked. “He has orders, but what are we doing? I mean, what is the plan? We can’t run around like chickens with our heads cut off all the time. If we do that too much, Major Magee will oblige.”

  Slocum rubbed his neck. He had felt a hangman’s noose there on occasion, and had been stabbed there and strangled. The thought of letting someone like Magee hack off his head only strengthened his resolve to stop the mad major.

  “I was escorting the Magee women and Marshal Vannover back here when things went wrong,” he said.

  “Sarah Beth? Louisa? You were with them? Are they all right?”

  “They’re just fine,” Slocum said. “The marshal’s got some injuries, but it looked like he was getting over them. By the time I find them again, he’ll probably be the one driving the wagon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Louisa’s been doing a right fine job of being a freighter.”

  “Louisa Magee?”

  “Reckon you know her as a hothouse flower, always being watched over by the major. She’s blossomed. Don’t think Sarah Beth is the same as she was when you knew her either.”

  “I’ve got to get to them!”

  Slocum considered the different courses of action. They had risked their lives getting past the cordon Magee had around Charity. To simply ride back through the cordon accomplished nothing.

  “You wait here,” Slocum said. “I’ll see to spreading the alert about another attack. The folks left in Charity are likely to be the toughest. Nothing’s scared them off so far, and they’re more likely to fight if Magee tries to finish what he started here.”

  “He must think Sarah Beth is coming here. How would he know that?”

  “Guessing,” Slocum said. “He and Louisa share the same thoughts, or so it seems. We were coming here because the marshal wanted to die at home, but Louisa veered away because she knew Magee would be here waiting for her. How Magee knew she would come to Charity, or how Louisa knew he was already here, isn’t something I want to think on too much.”

  “They won’t come here if Magee’s waiting for them?”

  “That’d be a right stupid thing to do, wouldn’t it?”

  “Where did you leave them?”

  “We’ll head there straightaway after I warn the town.”

  “Draw me a map. Here in the dirt.” Catherine kicked away straw from the floor and handed Slocum a twig.

  “I need to get things right in my head.” He thought a few seconds, then began sketching. “Magee’s gang is likely to be stretched out in an arc from here to over there. I left the marshal and the women about here. There was a stream.” His voice caught when he thought of the stream and how he and Louisa had indulged one another’s fancy near it.

  “You go on, John. Don’t be long now, you hear?”

  “Only as long as it takes.” He thought of kissing her, but drew back when she made no move toward him. Catherine had been through a hellish torture, and Slocum did not want to do anything to stir up unwanted memories this soon. Given time, they might fade and be less painful—but she would never forget.

  Slocum backed his paint from the stall and led it to the rear door. He spent a couple minutes looking for any sign of Magee and his men. When he saw none, he swung into the saddle and rode fast for the middle of Charity. What buildings remained intact were there. He also discovered that it was where the residents of Charity were determined to make their stand. More than one rifle poked through a doorway to follow him.

  “You have a mayor? I need to talk to somebody in charge.”

  “I’m as close to bein’ in charge as there is,” said a portly man carrying a sawed-off shotgun. He came out onto the boardwalk from the saloon. Slocum saw how he kept the scattergun pointed in his general direction.

  “Marshal Vannover’s been wounded, but I think he’s on the mend. I
’m trying to get him back into town, but Magee’s got the whole town ringed in.”

  “Magee? That the varmint the cavalry warned us about bein’ responsible fer burnin’ us out?”

  “None other than,” Slocum said. “He’s waiting for the women traveling along with your marshal to come into town—then he’ll attack again.”

  “Let him. This time he’ll ride into a wall of gunfire.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Slocum said. “Just don’t get too trigger-happy and shoot up the marshal.”

  “Never cottoned much to old Les Vannover, but compared to the others, he’s a prince among men. Won’t shoot him, not if his gun will join ours defending the town.”

  “Count on it,” Slocum said. “I’ve got to get back to where I left the marshal. Can I get some ammo and enough food for a couple days? I can fill my canteen from a watering trough.”

  “Go on. Get your water, and I’ll fetch you some ammunition. Not sure what we’ve got in the way of food we can let you have. Town’s supply is mighty scarce right now.”

  “Some jerky or dried beans will do me just fine. I’ve lived on worse.”

  “We can spare that much,” the man said. He ducked back into the saloon while Slocum got his water and let his horse drink. By the time he and the horse had their fill, the man returned.

  “Here you are. Use those cartridges wisely.”

  “On Magee and his men,” Slocum said, tucking the box into his saddlebags. “Much obliged.”

  “Get that varmint Vannover back here, and we’ll call it even.”

  Slocum touched the brim of his hat, mounted, and rode quickly back to the partially burned-out barn where he had left Catherine. As he neared, his sixth sense began to act up. He always listened to it. Since the war, it had saved his hide more than once.

  He left his horse twenty yards away from the barn and advanced quietly on foot, Colt Navy drawn and ready. With a sudden move, he swung around the rear door and leveled his six-shooter at . . . nothing. The barn was empty. Catherine was nowhere to be seen and her horse was gone.

  23

  Slocum followed Catherine’s horse for several hundred yards, then lost the trail in a gravelly stretch. He rode around, wary of being seen by any of Magee’s scouts. Knowing the major’s entire gang of murderers was somewhere just out of sight made Slocum increasingly uneasy about hunting for Catherine’s trail. She had not been forced to leave. The solitary set of hoofprints proved that. Whatever had caused her to run had put her in great danger.

  The longer Slocum hunted for her, the more likely he was to draw attention to himself—and to her. Wherever she had gotten off to.

  The sun was setting, giving him a chance of sneaking back through Magee’s sentries and once more riding with Marshal Vannover—and the Magee women. Slocum kept thinking about how the pair of them looked. Sarah Beth was beautiful, but her mother had something the younger girl lacked. There was a steely determination to Louisa that appealed to Slocum. She knew what she wanted, what needed to be done for the good of her child, and she did it. Slocum doubted Sarah Beth would ever have run away from her pa’s dictatorial ways, no matter how brutal he became to her, without her mother’s approval.

  That Louisa had led the way only made her the more attractive.

  Slocum shook his head in wonder. How could he be thinking of Louisa when he had just been with Catherine? Something about Catherine Duggan bothered him, but he could not figure out what it was. She was lovely and had shown great courage in the face of torture. More than this, she had sought out his company and seemed sincerely drawn to him.

  There was something amiss. Slocum found himself thinking again of Louisa and worrying that even her courage would not be enough to save her daughter and Marshal Vannover from her husband.

  He considered retracing the route he had taken into Charity, but figured that would be watched closely. The trio of riders that had followed him was enough of a warning that he knew he should heed it. Let them watch that game trail. That meant fewer of them to keep lookout everywhere else.

  Slocum cut across a broad, grassy plain, and then found the hills rising to meet him quickly. He cut this way and that, more to cover his back trail than to find a way through the dense undergrowth. Once, he heard men talking, and sat silently astride his horse, waiting tensely. When the men making all the ruckus faded away in another direction, Slocum started his trip again. This time, he came out of the woods near a road. He closed his eyes and pictured the land lifted onto a map until he got his bearings. The clouds were hugging the sky now and blotting out the stars he might have used to guide him.

  Before the hour was up, he knew where he was and where he had left the wagon with the marshal and the women. He rode faster now, and finally came to the spot. He was not surprised that Louisa had chosen to move on. Staying in one place, especially with her husband’s henchmen all around, might prove dangerous.

  But was hiding out as dangerous as getting on the move? Slocum didn’t know. He circled the area a few times, trying to make sense out of the wagon tracks. The deep ruts showed they had headed toward the northwest. The only thing in that direction that he knew of was Fort Supply, and it had been overrun by Magee’s horde.

  Heaving a sigh, Slocum started on the trail, but had ridden only a mile when he got the feeling of being watched. The hairs rose on the back of his neck, and occasional small sounds that did not—quite—belong to the woods at night put him on edge. It might be nothing, but he dared not make a mistake now.

  Riding through the woods, he began hunting for a branch at about the right height. When he saw it, he heaved hard, grabbed the limb, and pulled himself up. The paint dutifully trotted on, as if it had not lost its rider so suddenly. Slocum flopped out along the branch, and waited only a few minutes until the dark-cloaked rider following him came closer.

  Slocum held his breath and tried not to look away. He had been in situations where he had been alerted because someone was looking hard at him. It was nonsense, but a man learned to live by the little things, superstition or not. He didn’t want to warn the man on his trail by staring, yet he had to if he wanted to make his attack quiet and precise.

  The rider stopped and looked around. For a heart-stopping moment, Slocum was certain the man felt eyes on him and was responding. Then he rode forward, directly under the limb where Slocum waited like a mountain lion ready to pounce.

  Slocum counted slowly, and when he reached five he dropped. Both of his hands gripped the man’s shoulders, controlling his movement in the saddle. With a hard, wrenching jerk, Slocum unseated the man and fell on top of him. Using his six-shooter would be dangerous with Magee’s men everywhere. Slocum whipped out the knife from the top of his boot and prepared to strike.

  He stopped just inches away from Isaiah Langmuir’s throat.

  “Howdy, Captain. Didn’t expect you to be sneaking around behind me like that.”

  “Slocum, get the hell off me.”

  Slocum did as the officer requested.

  “I thought you were one of Magee’s men.” Slocum did not bother apologizing because he saw nothing to apologize for. If he had slit the captain’s throat, he might have felt sorry for a while, but this was dangerous territory, thanks to Clayton Magee.

  “I thought you were, too, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “What happened when you decoyed Kimbrell and his men away?”

  “I shot it out with them. I think I winged one, but they wouldn’t stop coming after me. I finally lost them in the hills south of here. It was night, and Kimbrell wasn’t inclined to make a career out of running me to earth.”

  “You see the women? The marshal and the wagon?”

  “I found the clearing, apparently after you. I followed the tracks until I spotted you.”

  “What’s in that direction?” Slocum pointed toward the northwest.

  “Only the fort. Maybe the women don’t know it was destroyed and think they’ll find shelter there.”

  “Might be t
he only place they can think to go that Magee might not be watching.”

  “There’s no reason for him to leave a guard at the fort. He’s already taken all he can—and killed all the soldiers he’s likely to, unless . . .”

  “Unless what?” Slocum demanded.

  “My squad might have returned to the fort when neither I nor Sergeant Benedict returned. There wasn’t a soldier above the rank of corporal there.” Langmuir looked sharply at Slocum. “I did not abandon my men. We needed a scouting report, and Benedict and I were the only ones capable of doing it.”

  “Not saying you were wrong,” Slocum allowed. He didn’t bother saying he thought that the captain hadn’t been right. Being in command carried responsibilities beyond scouting. Langmuir had made a bad decision that might have cost him all his men. Slocum didn’t know if Magee or Kimbrell had come across the soldiers, but if so, the soldiers would never have put up the kind of defense needed to survive without someone to command them.

  “The wagon is heading for a road that will lead directly to Fort Supply,” Langmuir said. “If we cut across that ridge, we can gain several miles on them.”

  “Let’s go,” Slocum said. In one respect, he was glad to ride with the captain. The man had patrolled this area extensively and knew the shortcuts.

  “You think Magee will keep his men over at Charity?”

  “I think Kimbrell or one of the others will get tired of waiting, and they will finish the job they started. I warned the folks in town of that possibility, but it will be quite a fight.”

  “They know Magee isn’t a tall tale to frighten children. They’ll be waiting for him and his murderous gang.”

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” Slocum asked. Langmuir looked at him hard. “You went up against a crazy man and barely managed to retreat.”

  “That fight cut both ways. Magee barely managed to retreat.”

  Slocum started to say that the major had come out ahead, looting Fort Supply and still being in the field. He might have fewer men, but from all Slocum could tell, he still had the advantage in men, arms, and supplies, too. Something about Langmuir made him want to goad the officer, but no good could come of it.