Slocum and the Dirty Dozen

by Jake Logan

  “That’s what they did with the plates,” Sara Beth said, getting into her clothing. She misbuttoned her blouse and her skirt was askew, but Slocum wasn’t going to mention it. There were more important things to tend to first. He carried the case outside into the bright sun.

  “Light ruins the image,” he said, opening the latches and pulling away the black cloth coverings inside. He laid out all of the plates so the full rays of the sun struck them. He stepped back and looked at the glass plates, then began stomping on them. One by one he crushed the plates until the glass blended in with the sandy soil. “That ought to take care of the problem,” he said.

  “You didn’t save just one plate?” Sara Beth asked.

  “None. Why?”

  “Oh, it might have looked good hanging on the wall of the restaurant.”

  He saw that her sense of humor was coming back.

  “You wouldn’t have dared,” he said. Before she could protest, he went on. “You’d have too many customers to feed. Every meal, the men in Clabber Crossing would be lined up waiting to get inside just to look at the pretty picture of the pretty owner.”

  “Well, the business would have been nice,” she said, as if thinking it over, “but I suppose I’ll have to depend on good cooking instead.”

  She mounted and was ready to go, but Slocum wanted to finish the job he had started. The photographic plates were destroyed, leaving all the equipment in the shack untouched. He fumbled in his vest pocket and pulled out the tin holding his lucifers. He fished one out, struck it on his left cuff, and then tossed the flaming match into the ramshackle building. A couple seconds later a gout of flame erupted from the door, then the roof collapsed. With the extra fuel, the fire turned the shack into a fiery furnace that would burn itself out when the camera equipment had long since turned to cinders and melted glass.

  Slocum stepped up into the saddle and looked across the prairie in the direction taken by the two owlhoots as they escaped. Tracking them down would be a pleasure, but Slocum had Sara Beth to think about.

  “Back to town?” she asked.

  “Not directly, in case they cut back at an angle and get between us and Clabber Crossing along the road.” He pointed due north and they set off riding at a canter. In the hot sun Slocum didn’t want to tire their horses but had to get the hell away from this spot if Molinari’s men returned.

  “Where are we headed?”

  “Someplace they won’t find us,” Slocum said. He doubled back on the trail a couple times, then started getting inventive about hiding their tracks. Dragging a wad of weeds behind wasn’t much use since the prairie was deathly still. The drag marks would stand out more than the hoofprints in the hard ground. If the wind had been kicking up, he would have tried that since the drag marks might have been mistaken for wind ridges. Even better, the loosened dirt would have been blown all over their tracks.

  As it was, the best way of getting away from pursuit was to make good time away, and by sundown he knew they had escaped. A cabin ahead looked promising and he rode up to it.

  “Hello? Anybody home?”

  “Deserted,” Sara Beth said. “From the look of the land around here, a sodbuster tried to grow wheat or corn and didn’t make it. Ranching is a better way of making a living out here, and for that you need a lot of rangeland, not a dinky little plot like this.”

  The cabin had the air of being long deserted. Slocum dismounted and warily poked his head inside, then signaled to Sara Beth to join him. It was mostly empty, though a crude bed remained, its rope supports rotted through by time and weather. The wind would have whipped through the chinks in the walls and turned this into an icy coffin in winter.

  “We’re not sleeping on that,” she said, running her fingers over a strand. The rope turned to dust at her light touch.

  “Won’t matter,” Slocum said, scraping away debris to clear a spot on the dirt floor. “That’s too small for two.”

  “Oh? And what did you have in mind? Something horribly salacious,” Sara Beth said, turning to him.

  “You’ll have to show me what that means.”

  “All right!” And she fell into his arms. “You saved me, John,” she said in a husky voice. “You saved me from a life of slavery to that horrid man.”

  He silenced her with a kiss. Or did she keep him from answering? It didn’t matter. They moved slowly around and around, exploring with their mouths, letting their hands tug and pull and open to get rid of unwanted clothing.

  He finally pulled her blouse back and buried his face between her breasts. She shivered in delight at the feel of his tongue moving in the deep valley, up the slopes, and across the sensitive nubs. Then it was her turn. Sara Beth kissed his bare chest, tangled wetly in the hair she found with her tongue, and worked lower until she pulled his manhood from his battered jeans. She engulfed the knobby end and sucked hard.

  Slocum caught his breath as sensation built within him. Her tongue played about the underside, all over the tip, until tingles grew within and lightning threatened to flash. He pushed her away. The blonde rocked back on her heels, a motion that caused her breasts to gently bob in the most beguiling manner possible.

  He sank down in front of her on the blanket he had spread on the floor. He moved forward—she moved backward. He followed as she sank slowly to the blanket and made wiggling motions with her hips.

  “Floor’s uneven,” she said.

  She cried out as he reached around her, lifted her bodily, and shifted around before lowering her gently again.

  “That better?”

  “No,” she said. She reached down and caught at his rigid length, tugging it toward her. She pulled up her skirt and guided him directly to her nether lips. “Now. This is better.” She arched her back and crammed herself down around him.

  Slocum shoved forward at the same instant and buried himself balls deep within her. For a moment they clung to one another like that, merged and more. Then he began moving, slowly at first and with increasing need, increasing speed until friction burned away at him. Sara Beth writhed beneath him and clutched hard at his arms. She threw her arms around his neck and pulled him down.

  He had wanted to look into her lovely face and watch the passion grow but she wanted more. He kissed her lips. Moving about, he nibbled at her ear and then worked down to kiss the arch of her throat. All the while he continued to thrust forward at a steady pace that soon became impossible to maintain.

  Urgency grew in him. White-hot fire burned and then exploded outward as he made love to her. And then she cried out, dug her fingernails into his bare back, and sagged to the floor. She was sweating but the glow on her face came from within, not from the sunlight slanting in through a crack in the wall and turning her perspiration to tiny, shining diamonds.

  Pressed together in the afternoon heat, they said nothing because there was no need. Finally, Slocum rolled away and stood.

  “You’re quite a sight from this angle,” Sara Beth said, looking up at him. She licked her lips and looked feral and wild.

  “Hungry?”

  “For me?”

  “Later,” Slocum said. “You wore me out.”

  “You need more practice,” she said. “Not that I’m complaining, but a girl’s got to make sure her man can keep up with her.”

  Slocum laughed, knelt, and kissed her.

  “I’m hungry for food. I’m surprised you’re not, too.”

  “Well, I am. I miss being in the kitchen. I love fixing all that food, even if I’m not the one going to eat it. I sample everything, though,” she said. She lounged back, put her hands behind her head, and stretched. The way she arched her back presented her bare bosom to him again.

  But Slocum wasn’t going to be enticed again, not yet. He dressed and stepped out to look around the prairie. To the west lay Clabber Crossing and farther beyond the town rose the majestic, purple-swathed Grand Tetons. This was beautiful country, and Sara Beth was a beautiful woman. He half turned when she came up behind him
and wrapped her arms around his waist. She laid her cheek against his back.

  “We have to return to town, don’t we?”

  “Eventually. In the morning,” he said.

  “I wish this could last forever, just the two of us out here, alone.”

  Slocum didn’t answer. He had been thinking the same thing until he saw the mountains rising in the distance and had wondered, fleetingly, what lay beyond them. That tug was even stronger on him than any invisible bonds Sara Beth might use to hog-tie him.

  They ate, went back into the cabin, and spent a night together filled with passion and a sense of distance. By midday they rode back into Clabber Crossing.

  Sara Beth waved and smiled brightly at the people along the street. Some turned to whisper to friends but most returned the greeting.

  “Your reputation is going to be dragged through the mud, riding into town with me like this.”

  “What do I care what they think?”

  “You have to live with them.”

  “So do you,” she said, her eyes going straight forward. Her shoulders slumped.

  “I work as a bouncer in a whorehouse because I lost a poker hand to the town’s founder. That’s all they’ll ever think of me.”

  “But you’re doing the marshal’s work for him. You—you saved me from kidnappers. From Molinari.”

  “I intend to save the reputations of other women, but I need to destroy everything in that strongbox that was in Molinari’s office.” Slocum kicked himself for not destroying it when he had the chance. Now the photographer would have hidden it where no one would ever find it.

  “He must have the box where the contents can be passed out if anything happens to him. He’d think of it as a life insurance policy. Kill him, and the photographs are made public.”

  “He might have told his partners, but I don’t think so. They aren’t any more than hired gunmen.” Slocum laughed harshly as the thought came to him that Molinari might have put the box into Bray’s bank. The banker might be safeguarding the very evidence that was causing his wife to steal from him.

  “A lawyer?” Sara Beth suggested. “We’ve got a couple in town, but they are pretty much in the hip pockets of Clabber and Bray. Either one of them would turn over anything put in his custody if their real bosses asked.”

  “He might be working the same blackmail racket with other photographers. Who knows? He might have copied it from somebody he worked for back in Kansas City.”

  “You’re saying he hid the photographs and somebody else will know where to find them if Molinari is killed?”

  “It makes sense. He could send a letter to another photographer, who would retrieve the strongbox and pick up where Molinari left off. Why let such good blackmail evidence go to waste?”

  Sara Beth shivered in spite of the heat. She turned and looked at Slocum for a moment before saying, “You’re going to have to kill him. No matter what, John. If you don’t, I will!”

  “It’s not your reputation at stake since he doesn’t have pictures of you.”

  “You stopped those two in time. But even if it means the reason for Emily’s death is revealed, it has to be done. Secrecy is what makes his hold so powerful.”

  “You’ll ruin others along the way,” Slocum said. He thought of Philomena Bray and Catherine, out west of town getting ready to marry her ranch foreman. And whatever Molinari had said to Missy kept her from marrying her rancher. That was likely to cause an explosion nobody liked. If Slocum read Hans Lehrer right, the man wasn’t inclined to take no for an answer and had left Texas because of it.

  “What are you going to do? Can you force Molinari to tell you where he hid the photographs?”

  “I don’t think so.” Slocum sized up men well and didn’t think Molinari would break, no matter what he did. The man would take too much delight knowing that, once dead, his vile legacy would continue to poison the lives of countless women. Slocum knew that only those women who had somehow come to Clabber Crossing had fallen under the photographer’s thumb.

  Before Slocum could say more, he saw sudden movement from the corner of his eye. His hand went to his six-shooter, but he stopped when he saw the preacher’s boy dash away. Edgar Dawson had watched as they rode past, hidden behind a rain barrel.

  “I have an idea. Nothing may come of it, but it’s worth following up.” He left Sara Beth shouting at him to explain. Putting his head down, he urged his horse to a full gallop after Edgar. He rode down an alley to a secondary street. Whoever had laid out the town had done it along the main road with only a few parallel streets. He rapidly passed those and found himself going south of town where the terrain made building more difficult. A few houses perched on the hill-sides but mostly the area was undeveloped. Slowing, he strained every sense to find the boy.

  A rustle of leaves to his right brought him around. He didn’t see Edgar, but the way the bushes shuddered didn’t match the slight breeze blowing. Trotting over, he saw a scrap of cloth caught on an inch-long thorn. Although he had gotten only a quick look at the boy, he thought this matched his shirt. Slocum dismounted and began tracking on foot. A half hour later he had circled most of the town and had come back to a spot between the church and the Dawson house.

  The ground was too hard for decent tracking, but Slocum thought he knew where Edgar had gone to ground. Approaching the shack where Emily Dawson had taken her own life, Slocum saw signs someone had been inside recently. He tethered his horse and looked around inside the shack, then smiled. The boy wouldn’t have his secret hideout here. Outside, Slocum looked around the area for a tall enough tree with leaves hiding the trunk high up. He walked to a battered tree where lightning had knocked down a huge limb, affording a way up to the trunk that was better than any ladder. He saw fresh smears in the sap.

  Digging his toes into the wood, he made his way to the trunk, caught another limb, and pulled himself up so he could block Edgar’s escape unless the boy wanted to risk a fifteen-foot drop to the ground.

  “Go away.”

  Slocum shook his head and settled down.

  “I want it.”

  “No.”

  From the boy’s frightened expression Slocum knew he had hit pay dirt. He settled back, leaning against the trunk, and waited Edgar out.

  “You won’t tell?”

  “I won’t tell anyone. But I need the photographs.”

  “You’ll let me keep one or two?”

  “Nope,” Slocum said. “They aren’t yours, and Molinari is using them to hurt people.”

  “People? There’s only one lady in the pictures, and she’s mighty pretty. Kinda blurred, but ...”

  Slocum caught his breath. How could he have been wrong about the contents of the strongbox? He knew Philomena’s photograph was in there since he had seen it. He couldn’t understand why Molinari would keep only hers in the strongbox.

  “Show me,” Slocum said.

  “There. Behind you. Up higher.” Edgar pointed. Slocum craned his neck around and saw a hollow in the tree trunk. Aware that this might be a ploy to escape, Slocum carefully stood and reached around in the nook. His fingers closed on a book. Pulling it out, he frowned. This was a slender album, similar to the one Molinari had given Severigne with the photographs of all her girls.

  He dropped back down to the limb and opened the book. Slocum looked up when he saw the half-naked woman in the pictures.

  “There are eleven there,” Edgar said. “One was missing when I, uh, borrowed the book. I don’t know what happened to the photograph but the ones left are ...” The boy’s voice trailed off.

  Slocum leafed through the album quickly and saw all were of one woman—Edgar’s mother.

  “Who is she? The woman in the pictures?” Slocum asked.

  Edgar shrugged. He fumbled in his pocket and took out a piece of peppermint candy, looked at it as if thinking about offering it to Slocum, then popped it into his mouth. Only after he had it settled between cheek and teeth did he say anything more.


  “I couldn’t make out her face so much but, well, that wasn’t what I looked at. You didn’t lie, did you? You’re not gonna get me in trouble, are you?”

  “You’re sure you don’t know who this is?”

  “No. Who is it? Somebody you know?”

  Slocum stared at Edgar Dawson for any sign the boy was lying. There wasn’t any sign that he knew this was his mother in the photographs. Slocum thought that Molinari had taken one photograph from the album and used that to set Emily on the road to suicide. Edgar had stolen the photo album after Molinari had begun blackmailing his mother.

  “Was this the only album?” Slocum asked.

  The boy looked away, as if considering how hard he’d land if he jumped to the ground. He squirmed for a minute, then shook his head.

  “Did you take the others?”

  “I’m gonna get into trouble,” Edgar said.

  “Not if I get the rest.”

  “I shouldn’t peek in windows, but I like it. I like seeing the ladies’ bare skin. My pa says that’s a sin and I’ll burn in hell.”

  “That’s between you and God. This is here and now,” Slocum said. “Might be you could erase some of that spying if you help me.”

  “That’s all I got. I didn’t take any others.”

  “You stop looking through windows or you’ll be sure to get into big trouble.”

  “You gonna tell my pa?”

  “I said I wouldn’t, but you might tell him yourself. He might tan your hide good, but knowing your pa, he might not.”

  “I don’t like it when he shuns me. That ain’t what he calls it, but he won’t talk to me and—”

  “That’s up to you. He and your ma taught you good enough to know what’s right and what’s wrong.” Slocum tucked the album into his belt, swung around, and shinnied down the tree, dropping the last five feet. He took the impact by bending his knees, then looked up at Edgar. The boy sat staring at him, tears running down his cheeks. Edgar started to say something, then looked away.