Slocum and the Hellfire Harem (9781101613382)

by Logan, Jake

  He looked around himself, at his parents, the grave, the smoking fire, and little else. Finally his gaze rested on Tunk and his voice was quieter. “But when I come back, there wasn’t much left but my family. But that’s what matters, right? That’s what Mammy always says.”

  Tunk didn’t say anything.

  The boy was smiling down at the figures laid along the fire, unmoving as if they were in a deep snooze. His parents were wrapped in holey wool blankets and hides with patchy hair, buffalo or bear, Tunk wasn’t sure. They lay unmoving, not even waking up or looking his way. He had a god-awful bad feeling creeping up the back of his head. Something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

  As the boy stepped over one of them, his bare foot caught an edge of a blanket and peeled it off what appeared to be skinned legs of a person.

  “What you got under there, boy?” Tunk narrowed his eyes, but didn’t step any closer.

  “Oh, that?” The boy bent and lifted free the rest of the blanket. “That’s just Pappy. He don’t say much nowadays. Been a hard trip on him.”

  Tunk Mueller had seen a whole lot of rank things in his life—a good many of them he’d done while others were the leavings of scavengers, both human and animal. But this beat them all to hell.

  The boy’s pappy, or what was left of him, had flopped backward, arms by his sides and a sort-of-smile on his skin-bone face. The rest of him, though, looked about like how a bear carcass would resemble after a week or two of a campful of hungry miners eating off it. Mostly bone and sinew and bits of muscle, all dried a puckery brown. Only this body had been a man and the one doing the eating was his boy. In fact, Tunk could see some resemblance, particularly in the thinness of them both.

  “He’s nearly finished,” said the boy, still smiling, as he pointed to his father. “But Mammy’s still in good shape.” Before Tunk could stop him, the boy whipped back the other blankets and skins. A swarm of agitated blueflies rose up and clouded the air before working their way back down again to their task, feasting on what was left of the dead woman.

  Mueller turned away, his lips puckered while he worked to breathe through his mouth. That would explain the smell, he thought. Raw carcass.

  “I’ll be right back,” said the boy cheerfully from behind him. “Fetch us some tubers.”

  “Yeah,” said Tunk as he caught sight again of the small rocky grave not far away. Must have started with his sister. He had heard of people doing such things, but never thought he’d run into them. The desolate landscape, he had to admit, did not appear to offer much promise in the way of finding food. Tunk heard himself whispering something his mother had said so long ago: “You do with what you got at hand.”

  He looked back, but the boy was walking away, a large skinning knife in his hand, the blade crusted with dried blood and hunks of gristle. Then Tunk saw something curious. A thin bit of sunlight worked through the gloom and he caught sight of a faint gleam in the sagged mouth of the boy’s father.

  Tunk stepped closer, saw the boy was a ways off in the grass, digging at something. Tunk slid out his own sheath knife, used the blade tip to push open the dead man’s mouth even wider. What few teeth the man had left were blackened and full of holes—except for two gold ones in the back, one on either side on the bottom.

  Well, thought Tunk. This old boy is past needing such fine and valuable choppers. I expect he won’t miss them. He slid the knife in there and pried at one of them. It soon popped out and Tunk caught it with the blade tip just before it dribbled down the man’s dried gullet.

  Far behind him, Tunk heard the boy grunt as if from exertion, and turned to see the boy lunging at him. The thin youth had that crusted-blade knife that looked to be half the length of his arm, and it looked to the man as if he was fixing to stick it into Tunk, sure as sugar is sweet. But the boy was weak and slow.

  It seemed to Tunk, just before his boot connected with the boy’s ribs and he heard that cracking sound, like fresh dry twigs make when you toss them on flame, that the boy knew he was in a poor state. Tunk could see it in his eyes. Almost like he was grateful for the kick.

  The blow sent the kid sprawling backward. His strange little rag of a dress had flapped upward and Tunk saw that the boy’s parts were as shriveled as the rest of him. The kid lay there, not moving, except for his slowly rising chest.

  “Get up, boy. We got to have us a talk. What’s been going on here ain’t right, and you know it. Just my bad luck I come upon you when I did. I’d say you need to figure out a better way to live.” He approached the boy with care, one hand on the butt of his pistol, his own long knife still gripped in his hand. “Maybe you could follow me. I’m aiming for California. Could be I’ll shoot a deer now and again, give you a haunch and a place at the campfire. But you got to leave these heathen ways behind, you understand?”

  The boy said nothing. Tunk stood over him. “Boy?” He toed the lad’s leg. Nothing. He noticed the boy’s chest wasn’t rising anymore. Then he saw the thin stream of blood leaking out from under the boy’s chest. He flipped over the thin body with his boot tip and there was the knife, half sunk in the boy’s back.

  “Aw, now how in the hell did you manage that, boy?”

  The kid’s eyes were half open, still glassy, and his mouth was sagged. Tunk regarded him for a moment, then pulled the knife out of the boy’s back, tossed the knife onto the grass, and rolled him once again onto his back. He walked to the nearly dead fire, retrieved the empty bottle from where the boy had stood it upright, and laid it on the boy’s chest. It rolled off and caught in his arm, like you’d hold a puppy or a baby.

  “You keep that pretty bottle,” said Tunk.

  Then he went back to the boy’s father’s corpse and resumed his work on the man’s last gold tooth. But he kept an eye on the dead boy, lest he was playing possum.

  A few minutes later, Tunk Mueller looked about the shabby little camp, at the two dead adults, the one child’s grave, and the boy he had had to kick, dead but bleeding out his last into the rough grass of the flat. He mounted the dun and reined the horse back toward where he’d come from.

  He felt sure if he was to stay on this trail much longer, he was going to end up like these sad fools. No sir, this was a sign, as sure as the sun burned a man’s brains and the moon chilled them, this was a sign. He had to head on back and track down whoever it was who’d been dogging him, make sure they were good and dead. It was the only way he felt sure he could prevent himself from ending up like this sad kid and his family. Had to be. After all, he’d been given a sign, plain as day.

  20

  From the barn, Slocum peered through the window in the south wall. He tugged his hat low and scanned the dark; barely a moonlit scene was visible. It appeared nobody needed shooting, thankfully. And as he mused on what to do next, his normally razor-sharp reflexes let him down: He never heard the footsteps behind him.

  He winced as a series of quick slaps lashed at his face. A voice close by trembled with whispered rage. “You kilt my baby. I won’t let you do it again.”

  It was the old lady, understandably still fretting about whoever it was he’d shot earlier. “I reckon you’d rather have lost Judith or one of the other girls to a bullet then?”

  “That ain’t fair and you know it. Here,” she said, “I brung you a cup of coffee. Getting cooler out here. Got to keep you alert.”

  “Thank you.” He took the tin cup, hot to the touch, and blew and sipped. It was scalding—and good. “Have a seat,” he said, and sat down on the straw. She slumped down next to him, leaned her shotgun against the wall.

  “So . . . how’s Ruth’s arm?”

  “Oh, she’ll be fine. Just grazed. The blood stopped before it started.”

  He nodded, sipped.

  She resumed talking, as if to herself, not seeming to care whether he heard her or not. It see
med to Slocum she just needed someone to listen to her, and who wasn’t anyone in her family. “I had hoped that at least my youngest boy, Luke, might have come around, had not wanted to hurt his own mama.” She dragged a hand across her eyes, used the hanky in her cuff to clear her tears. “I did a disservice to my offspring. I’ve been a fool. Once upon a time, I believed in that man. Then for far too long after that, I believed I could still trust him, that the man I once loved was still in there somewhere. But God got in the way.”

  She faced him. “He didn’t used to be this way, Mr. Slocum. Used to be a good man. We was headed west years ago, Ruth was just a shaver, and her brother, Peter, was little more than that. We were headed to California to join up with my sister, Violet, and her husband and kids. They’d opened a mercantile, said there was plenty of opportunity for us out there. We only had but the two young’uns ourselves, so travel wasn’t so much work as it is now. Also, we were young and full of ourselves, full of promise that thinking of the future holds.”

  “What changed your plans? Lots of folks make it to California every year.”

  “We broke down, just about like we are here.” She shook her head at the irony of it all. “Only then, a gang of religious nuts, Bible-thumpers all, they come onto us, wormed their way into our heads—mine, too, I will admit. But you got to understand, Mr. Slocum, we was poor, and they were offering us a helping hand. Well, we figured, if this kindliness come bundled in a bit of the old Bible, how bad could it be? We figured we’d stay long enough to fix up the wagon, then we’d move on.”

  “But . . .” said Slocum, sipping the piping hot coffee. It was bitter, had a funny little bite to it, but it warmed him inside and for that he was thankful.

  “Wasn’t long before the whole Godly community was doing this and that for us, making us feel beholden to them more and more all the time. Before long, we were paying them for land, settin’ up the farm.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Slocum.

  She nodded. “That ain’t the half of it. They told us we were going to have the first house because we were the last ones to join up with them. I told Rufus that didn’t make no sense no how, and that I wanted to get to California.”

  “But . . .” said Slocum again. This woman was surely a talker once she warmed to her subject.

  “But my husband, Rufus, he was always a bit of a soft touch, soft in the head when it come to such matters. Easily persuaded, if you know what I mean. He said it all made sense to him and that I shouldn’t be so selfish. Said I was shaming him in front of the congregation.” She looked at him and Slocum could see the twinkle in her eyes of the woman she used to be. Young, vivacious, pretty, and ready for a full life in California, the land of promise to so many.

  “Hell,” she continued. “The only shameful thing about those thumpers was that they up and left in the night, took most everything of value we had. Left us with land that thankfully nobody has come along and said they own, a Bible that has caused my family more harm than good, and a husband who never did figure out how to take in the true meaning of the words in that book. I’m not even sure he knows how to read all that well, truth be told. Just kept making up meanings to suit his whims.”

  “I know what you mean, ma’am. Some folks are born to lead, some to follow, some just can’t seem to figure out which direction they should head in and end up dithering away their days.”

  She nodded. “So all through the years, I kept up a correspondence with my sister in California. But whenever he could, Rufus would take the letters and burn them, make me watch. Wasn’t but a letter a year, sometimes two, if we was lucky. But he claimed it was devil’s work and that California was a sinkpit of sin and degradation. Those are his words, not mine.”

  “So you’d still like to go there?”

  “I would, yessir. And I got that last letter from my sister in San Francisco, invited me like she always done through the years to join her. Around that time, things got bad betwixt the boys and Rufus and me and the girls. I don’t need to tell you what will happen betwixt boys and girls of a certain age. I’m to blame, bad things had happened among the older children, living alone like this out in the hills, no strangers in months and months at a time, nowhere to run off to, a father like as not to kill you, bullwhip you for talking askance at the dinner table . . . I just couldn’t bear knowing that my two youngest might end up tainted in some way, too. Little Judith and young Luke. He’s a good boy, Mr. Slocum, I wish you could meet him.”

  “I believe I did,” said Slocum, sipping more coffee. “And you’re right, he is still a good lad. Just needs to get off on his own in the world before—”

  “Yes,” she said. “Before Rufus taints him like all the rest, mostly with his talk of God and the Bible, all good in their own place, but not in the way he preaches it.”

  “What about your sister’s husband? What sort of a man will he be to you?”

  She laughed. “Not much of one—he died not long after we got sidetracked out in this hellish place. I can’t call what we did settling, ’cause that never set right with me, all these years I knew I’d be moving on one day, with or without him. As the years went by, it became obvious that it would be without him. Now I’m glad of it. His religion is so twisted in his mind that it made him value men, his own sons, over anything else. Said he wanted only grandsons. Daughters and granddaughters, he said, were cattle, only good for making more men. No, I don’t call them my sons no more. Can’t think of them that way. They’re lost to me. Just like him. They’re adults who make up their own minds.”

  “But under his influence,” said Slocum, “they’ll never get a chance to make up their own minds.”

  She was silent for a long minute, brooding, he knew, on a past largely wasted and on a life that could have been. And this reminded him why he was what he’d heard once called a “freebooter,” someone who roamed, living a life that, to the best of his ability, harmed few others and mostly was not a life full of regret. Though he figured that at the end of his days, a little regret might not be a bad thing. It meant that there were more things he wanted to do that he just hadn’t gotten to yet.

  “My sister runs a boardinghouse in San Francisco, says she’s very successful, mostly rents rooms to traveling businessmen. Says she’s got nice velvet drapes in the drawing room, lovely bedrooms, enough for all the girls.” The old woman looked at him, an odd smile on her mouth. “Says she rents rooms to men who don’t expect to be around for long-term visits.”

  Slocum wrinkled his brow. He caught himself just short of saying that it sounded to him like her sister was a madam, but she beat him to it.

  She let out a low, whispered cackle. “I know exactly what she’s up to, Mr. Slocum. And I’ll be glad to take her up on the offer of expanding the business, keep it in the family.” She winked. “After all, we might as well get paid to do what they been doing all these years. And that way, I can make sure no one harms my girls.” She hefted her shotgun. “I reckon I can do that all right. I don’t mind saying that I am a crack shot. And if it’s something they don’t wanna do, they don’t have to. But at least they’ll have a home. I can help set them up, maybe even get them educated. They could all be ladies of the world.”

  “Well,” said Slocum. “The world will literally be right at your feet, with the docks. But beware of the Barbary Coast. It’s a rough section you’d all do well to avoid.”

  “You sound like you been there, Mr. Slocum.” She winked.

  “Yes, ma’am, a time or two.” He winked back.

  She laughed and stood slowly, joints popping in protest, and used the shotgun as a prop. “Time to get back in there.” Then she patted his shoulder and left the barn. He heard her footsteps receding, and despite how he felt, he wished she would keep quieter, sure that she was not heeding his earlier advice of staying low and staying put, keeping watchful. As if she no longer cared what happened to her. As
if she’d given up.

  21

  Minutes after the old woman left him, already weak from a long day filled with leg pain, hardship, and hard exercise, Slocum slipped like a sack of wet sand to the straw. Try as he might to fight it, the day wore on him and he fell into a deep doze.

  Hours later, how many he had no idea, Slocum awoke slowly, groggy and fuzzy headed, as if he’d been on a three-day drunk. It was still dark. He tried to sit up, but found he was hog-tied, his knees drawn up to his chest, his hands lashed around his shins, all tied tight, and his leg throbbed like cannon fire.

  Beside him sat Judith.

  “What in the hell is going on here? Who tied me up?”

  “Shhh!” she hissed. “You wanna get us kilt?”

  “Frankly, I don’t really care what happens to you or yours. You’ve all cost me time and flesh. And I’m sick of it. Untie me now!”

  Judith lay low, leaned out of the door frame, in the same position he’d been in hours before. “They’re doing it!” she gasped.

  “Doing what?” he said, louder than he intended.

  “Quiet, Mr. Slocum, you want them to find us?”

  “Yes. I have no desire to be trussed up. Now what are they doing?” He noticed a flickering light through the gaps in the barn boards to his right and scooted sideways. He peered through the gappy boards and saw a flaming torch making its way down the rock face across the road.

  “They’re going to torch the house, dammit. Judith, cut me loose!”

  “No, you’ll shoot whoever’s bringing the torch.”

  “Yeah, unless we can find some other way to stop them before they get close enough to throw it.”

  She looked at him. “But that’s what Mama doesn’t want. She doesn’t like your plan of shooting them. She has her own plan.”

  “Oh, great. What has she come up with?” He struggled with the wraps, but he was bound fast, and his hands throbbed as the ropes cut into them from his struggling.