by Jake Logan
Slocum had seen men kicked in the head go fast—and others linger for years. He remembered one who became Virginia City’s town idiot. And he had been a banker before the accident.
“How much do you need to keep the banker from foreclosing on your farm?” Slocum asked. He had five hundred dollars riding in his pocket. More. He could cash in the tickets he had bought on himself. Each of them might be worth a hundred dollars now. That would mean a full thousand Rachel could use.
“No,” she said sharply. “I will not be beholden to anyone, especially a man I just met.”
“Sorry,” Slocum said. He knew pride and what it meant to lose it. Rachel was a prideful woman, and he wouldn’t do anything to rob her of her spirit.
“You aren’t at all like the others in Scorpion Bend,” she said. “You have a gentlemanly streak in you.”
“You’re not the only one accusing me of that,” Slocum said. He stared down into her brown eyes. They seemed to go wider and swim about. Rachel moved closer. Her breasts crushed against his chest, and she tipped her head back, red lips parted slightly.
“Not too much of a gentleman, I hope,” she said.
He kissed her.
For a moment, he wondered if he was doing the right thing. Then there was no question about it. Rachel returned the kiss fervently. Her arms went around his neck and pulled his face down so he wouldn’t pull away—as if Slocum wanted to. It had been a spell since he had seen a woman as beautiful or beguiling as Rachel Decker. He ran his hands through her hair and then let them roam down her back.
He came to the full roundness of her buttocks, and pulled her body in even harder against his. She began moving her hips in slow, grinding, deliberate movements that left nothing to his imagination. They both wanted the same thing.
“Are you sure?” he asked, breaking off the kiss for a moment. “Like you said, you just met me.”
She answered with another kiss, more passionate than the first. This was all the answer he needed. His lips parted and her tongue began dancing in and out, teasing his tongue, slipping sensuously along his lips, teasing and tormenting and giving him reason to expect even more from her.
Somehow she managed to get his gunbelt off, and he hadn’t noticed she was even trying. His belt came undone and so did his trousers, button by button, until his manhood leaped out.
“I thought so,” she said in a husky voice. Rachel dropped to her knees and began kissing and licking. Slocum found himself shifting weight from one foot to the other as his own desires mounted to the breaking point. He ran his hands over her hair and guided her back and forth a few times until he knew he couldn’t let her continue.
They both wanted more than he was going to deliver. Slocum dropped to his knees in front of her and worked to get her dress unfastened. Some hidden buttons got the better of him. He let her unfasten them rather than ripping them open. And he was glad he did. Her snowy breasts tumbled out, warm and inviting.
He bent over and licked and kissed her tender flesh as she had done to him. Slowly they shifted positions, and ended up lying side by side in the hay, hands roving endlessly, pulling and tugging and unfastening until they lay naked on their discarded clothing.
“You’re so lovely,” he said.
“I want you, John,” she said in a husky whisper. “It’s been so long, too long.”
He kissed the tips of her breasts, and moved into the vee formed by her alabaster thighs. She parted her knees willingly, and he moved forward. Then he was caught between surprisingly strong legs, legs used to gripping down on a galloping horse’s back. With her long legs wrapped around him, he wasn’t going anywhere until they were both satisfied.
He jerked his hips forward, found the precise spot they both desired, then sank slowly into her warm, moist interior. Fully in her tightness, he paused a moment and relished the feelings moving throughout his loins. Then he started a slow back-and-forth, teasing and tormenting her with his manhood as she had done earlier to him with her mouth.
“Oh, oh,” she said, making tiny trapped animal sounds. “I need this, John, I do, I—ohhh!”
He gasped as she tensed around him, clutching down with her most intimate flesh. As she relaxed the grip a little, he started moving faster and faster. Friction mounted and lit a fuse deep within his loins. Rachel gasped and moaned and thrashed about beneath him. He pushed himself up on straightened elbows and looked down into her face.
Never had he seen a woman so lovely.
He thrust harder, faster, deeper. Her legs crushed down around his waist and pulled him in with redoubled strength. Slocum tried to keep a steady movement, but desire burned too brightly within him. The age-old rhythm of a man loving a woman turned ragged as he shoved powerfully, trying to split her apart all the way to the chin with his meaty shaft.
Rachel gasped and cried out in passion. Slocum kept pumping, and then spilled his seed into her yearning interior. When he began to turn limp, he sank down and lay with the woman in his arms. For some time neither said anything.
“I promised you dinner,” she said.
“I think we’ve already had dessert.”
Rachel laughed, then pushed away from him. “You can clean up over there. The water in the barrel’s clean. I’ll fix some vittles.” She dressed quickly. Slocum watched, a catch in his throat. It had been a long time since he had seen a filly this alluring. When Rachel Decker left, she paused at the barn door and looked back over her shoulder. A smile split her face.
“I’m glad you are such a gentleman offering to help unload the supplies,” she said. “Otherwise we’d never have had this chance.” Then Rachel was gone. Slocum dressed quickly, went and washed his face, and left the barn.
The instant he stepped outside he felt something was wrong. He rushed to the small cabin and opened the door. Rachel stood with a flour can in her hand and a look of pain on her face.
“Rachel, what’s wrong?” Slocum asked, thinking her father might have taken a turn for the worse.
“It’s Frank. He . . . he took all our money. John, I’m sure he’s gone into town to get drunk. And he’s taken all our money!” she cried.
Slocum didn’t want to get involved in this—but he knew he would.
5
“Has Frank done this before?” Slocum asked, leery of getting involved in a family matter. Rachel Decker glanced over her shoulder in the direction of a thin muslin curtain pulled back a few inches. From the other side came a low moan.
“Papa,” she said. “Let me tend him.” The brunette hurried over and pushed aside the curtain. On the bed lay a wasted, bone-thin man whiter than a potato before it’s fried. He stirred, waving a hand about weakly in front of his face.
“It’s all right, Pa,” Rachel said, soothing him. She got a cloth and dipped it in water, wrung it out, and then put it across his head.
“Does he have a fever?” asked Slocum.
“No, but this calms him, for some reason.”
And it did. The man moaned a few more times and seemed to drift off into deep sleep. Slocum felt his ire rising. How could any man go off and leave his own father in such a condition—and steal the pitiful few dollars his sister had saved, just to go on a drunk?
“I’m sorry, John. I’m sorry I asked you to get involved in this. It’s so . . . sordid.” Rachel didn’t cry, but Slocum saw the tears welling at the comers of her chocolate-colored eyes.
“I don’t promise anything, but if I find him I’ll bring him back,” he said.
Rachel smiled wanly. “You make it sound as if you’ll bring him back at the end of a rope, dragging him the whole way from Scorpion Bend.”
“Might, if he’s drunk up even one red cent of your money. How much was it?”
“I don’t know for sure. Maybe thirty dollars. I’d spent a lot lately getting supplies, and some tack needed mending, and—”
“I’ll fetch him back,” Slocum said. He kissed her lightly on the forehead and left before she saw how really mad he was. Frank Dec
ker had bought himself a world of hurt taking the money the way he had.
Slocum swung up on the sorrel and headed back to town, taking it easy in the darkness. Overhead he picked out the summer constellations, and was startled to see Scorpio so high in the sky. He pulled out the watch left him by his brother Robert, opened the case, and peered at the face under the glow from the Milky Way. It was much later than he had thought.
He nodded to himself. A good deal of the time had been taken up pleasurably with Rachel in the barn. But his belly began to complain, and he realized he had never gotten the meal she’d promised. Somehow, that was the least of his concerns at the moment. Going hungry was nothing new for him, though doing it with five hundred dollars in his pocket certainly was.
It seemed to take forever to get back to Scorpion Bend. The town was still kicking up its heels, drunks spilling out of the saloons and into the main street. Slocum saw a man wearing a marshal’s badge hammered out of what might have been a silver Mexican peso dragging two men along by their collars. As they passed him, Slocum heard the marshal say, “No more room in the jail, boys. You got to sleep it off out back. You move your scrawny butts more ’n a yard from where I plunk you down and I swear you’ll be doing time over in the Laramie prison.”
Slocum heard a mumbled reply, but didn’t care too much about it. He considered checking with the lawman to see if he had already arrested Frank Decker on disorderly charges. Decker struck him as the kind of man who turned into a mean drunk.
Slocum snorted as this thought crossed his mind. “Hell, the man’s meaner than a cornered weasel when he’s sober,” he said aloud.
Dismounting, Slocum went into Miss Maggie’s tent saloon and looked over the crowd. If anything, it was even more crowded inside than when he’d left after the impromptu scorpion shooting. He forced his way to the bar and motioned to Jed.
“You seen Frank Decker in here recently?” Slocum asked.
“Why you lookin’ for that no-account?” asked Jed.
“You see him or not?”
“I throw him out about once a week tryin’ to cadge drinks. Last time I kicked him out was the day ’fore yesterday. Ain’t been around tonight, not at all. You want a beer, Slocum?”
“Thanks, no,” Slocum said. He made his way to the street and started hunting through one saloon after another for Frank Decker. He had finished checking the drunks passed out in the fourth one, and was thinking Decker had not come to town, when he froze. His hand moved in the direction of his six-shooter as Cletus Quinn swaggered into the saloon. The gunman looked around, then went to the bar, missing Slocum in the crowd.
The barkeep pointed to a small door to one side. Slocum thought it probably led to the cribs where women sold themselves for two bits. Quinn opened the door and ducked through, giving Slocum just a hint of what might be back there. He saw crates stacked up and rows of small whiskey kegs—or kegs of grain alcohol waiting to have gunpowder, nitric acid, and other floor sweepings added to produce the house brand of whiskey.
More than this, Slocum saw Frank Decker sitting at a low table, a man on either side of him.
Slocum went to the door and opened it a crack so he could see and hear some of what went on in the back room.
“Go on, beat him to a bloody pulp,” Quinn said.
The men flanking Decker stood, knocking over their chairs. The one on Decker’s right caught him with an uppercut that brought Decker up and out of his chair. The other started pounding the man’s ribs, taking care to avoid the arm in the sling, as if this might cushion some of the blows.
Slocum damned himself for getting involved in this. For two cents and a bucket of warm spit he would have let Quinn and his henchmen beat up Decker. But there was Rachel and his promise to get her brother back out to their farm.
He kicked open the door and whirled into the room, ready for anything. Cletus Quinn jumped at the sudden intrusion, his hand going for the big .44 holstered at his side.
“Any time you want, Quinn,” Slocum said. “Any time you want to die, go for that hogleg.”
Quinn’s hand started shaking. He shook his head and held his hands out in front of him as if he meant to pray.
“Not now, not here, Slocum. What do you want, busting in on us like that?”
“Decker, get on out of here,” Slocum said, ignoring Quinn and his two men. “You’re in no condition to take them all on by yourself.”
“Let me alone, Slocum. This is none of your concern.”
“Your sister’s worried about you. Get on back now. Now!” Slocum barked. He had been a captain in the Confederate Army, and knew how to give an order so men moved. Frank Decker jerked as if Slocum had him on a string and pulled him away from the two men intent on beating the living daylights out of him.
“No!” Quinn said.
“As I said, you think you’re man enough, then go for your six-shooter,” Slocum said. “Otherwise, shut your mouth.” His steely gaze backed Quinn down again. The other two looked at each other, then at their leader.
They showed no sign of wanting to tangle with Slocum either.
“You’re not my keeper, Slocum. I don’t have to do—” That was as far as Decker got before Slocum shoved him out the small door and into the noisy saloon. Slocum backed out, then kicked the door shut. He swung around and grabbed Decker’s shirt, lifting the man up and slamming him into the wall so hard that bottles stacked along it rattled.
“Listen, you get on back home or I’ll cut your heart out myself, if you even have a heart,” Slocum said.
“And you’d better have every last nickel you took from that flour canister.”
“What are you? The family priest? Is Rachel telling you everything? I don’t like it, Slocum, and I want—”
Slocum slammed him back into the wall again.
“I told you what to do. If you don’t do it, I might just do like your sister suggested. I’ll hogtie you, put a rope around your feet, and drag you back to the farm. I saw some mighty prickly-looking plants along the way too. Be a damn shame if I didn’t happen to avoid them as I was pulling you along.”
“I got a . . . a broke arm. You can’t—”
For a third time Slocum shoved Frank Decker into the wall. This time his cold green eyes spoke more than any words ever could. Decker turned white and gobbled like a turkey. Slocum let him slide down, kicked the door to the back room shut as Quinn tried to come out, then turned and stalked from the saloon himself.
In the cold Wyoming night he stood under the diamond-tipped stars and wanted to kill something. Then he cooled down and headed for Miss Maggie’s saloon. A drink would settle his nerves.
Miss Maggie greeted him. “Mr. Slocum, Jed said you were in a while back. Glad you decided to spend some of that money of yours on my fine whiskey.” She shoved a shot glass brimming with amber liquor into his hand. He knocked it back and didn’t taste it at all as it burned its way down to settle in his belly.
“Oh, my, my,” she said. “I think you are plumb mad at something. Care to talk about it?”
It seemed to Slocum as if he and Miss Maggie stood in the middle of a tornado. All around whirled the wild party celebrating the day’s race and the winners, but the two of them stood in a bubble of calm and quiet.
“What can you tell me about Frank Decker?” he asked. Slocum figured the woman heard everything that happened in Scorpion Bend, good and bad.
“He’s a loser, Slocum. Steer clear of him. He was supposed to ride in the race, but he broke his arm in some damnfool stunt when he was drunk last week. Someone bet him he could walk along the edge of the roof on the Emporia Hotel. Frank made it—halfway.”
Something about the way she spoke made Slocum curious. “How much did you win?” he asked her. The small, almost guilty smile was his answer.
“Sometimes, you’re too smart for your own good, Slocum. Save it for the race. We got a good chance to go all the way, you and that mighty fine stallion.” Miss Maggie pursed her lips. “Enough of this talk
about the likes of Frank Decker. We haven’t properly acknowledged the real champion in the race.”
“Black Velvet?” Slocum asked.
“To Black Velvet!” she cried. “A drink in honor of the best damn horse in Scorpion Bend!”
Somehow, the bubble of quiet around them popped and the party rushed in. But before the crowd carried him away to buy drink after drink and to hobnob with one of the top ten racers in Scorpion Bend, Miss Maggie grabbed his arm and pulled him back so she could whisper in his ear.
“Frank hangs around with Quinn. Stay away from Frank and don’t go within a country mile of Quinn. He’s bad medicine.”
Then Slocum found himself in a drinking contest, downing shot after shot. He saw the others around him getting drunker with every shot, but his head remained clear. A glance in the direction of the barkeep told him the reason. Jed smiled and held up the bottle he had been using for Slocum’s drinks—tea with just a hint of alcohol thrown in. Jed didn’t want his prize attraction getting so drunk that he passed out.
The longer Slocum was sober and appeared to drink heavily, the more drinks the crowd would buy.
By ones and twos the crowd vanished. Some passed out, and others went hunting for dance halls and female company for the night. But Jed and Miss Maggie kept working those remaining, betting and buying drinks and getting them to respond in kind. More than one reveler decided to buy the entire bar a drink, much to Jed and Miss Maggie’s glee.
“Lemme buy you a drink, Slocum,” mumbled one drunk. “You’re Miss Maggie’s favorite. Haven’t seen her cotton to any fella for a year or more. Anyone who’s her friend is a friend of mine,” the man slurred.
Slocum let him buy an overpriced, watered-down drink, and then moved on fast. Celebrity wasn’t setting well with him. It wasn’t as if he had done anything.
Remembering how the rider in the tan duster had saved him, Slocum looked around, hunting for the man. He didn’t see anyone who might be the rider. Asking around, he found no one really knew who the rider was. But then some riders didn’t use their real names. Scanning a list posted behind the bar showing the top ten riders, Slocum realized that the only one without a full name was called Pilot. Slocum figured this might be his mysterious savior, the only racer who had stuck his neck out to save Slocum’s.
