by Jake Logan
“Five for the race on Saturday!” she called. “And Slocum’s going to win!” A loud cry went up that almost deafened Slocum. Thirst slaked for the moment, he let men buy him drinks so Jed could perform some sleight of hand pushing the drinks around on the bar, reselling them to others crowding close and trying to catch a moment of glory by being noticed by a man who had qualified for the final race, the big race, the reason Scorpion Bend even existed.
An hour later the tumult died down, and Miss Maggie and Jed worked the crowd more easily, sliding beer and whiskey out and taking bets at the same time. Slocum found himself making the rounds from one table to the next, acting like a hero and wondering why he didn’t charge Miss Maggie for a percentage of all the liquor she sold.
“Slocum,” she said in her gravelly voice. “Come on over and set your bones down here.” She pointed to a chair beside her. The small, round, beer-stained table was her private domain that none intruded upon. Slocum gratefully sat. His feet hurt, his body ached, and he wanted to curl up for an afternoon siesta. But there was something more he wanted.
“I did it,” he said. “I made the cut for the final five racers.”
“Here,” she said, pushing a newspaper-wrapped packet across the table toward him. He took it, ripped open a comer, and saw the greenbacks inside. “A thousand, like I promised.”
“What’s a ticket on me worth now?” he asked. He thought of the five tickets riding high in his shirt pocket that he had paid a total of twenty-five dollars for. Simply making it into the top ten had pushed their value to a hundred dollars. What might he get for them now?
“The pot’s got about ten thousand dollars in it,” she said. “What with the entry fees and the money paid for the tickets tossed in, might be a tad more. Minus my cut to administer such a princely sum, of course.”
“Of course,” Slocum said dryly. Ten thousand dollars was a whale of a lot of money for whoever held a winning ticket. The pot would be divided up among all those holding a ticket on Slocum. If only ten tickets had been sold before the first race, he would walk away with five thousand dollars. If no other tickets had been sold, he would get the entire amount.
If he won.
If he lost, the tickets were worthless.
“You might get upward of a thousand dollars for each ticket right now,” Miss Maggie told him. “I count a total of twenty tickets sold on you, but no one knows who holds them. Might be one fellow, might be twenty different men.” She eyed him shrewdly.
He held five. That meant fifteen others were out there. His share would be only one quarter of the total. Still, twenty-five hundred dollars was nothing to sniff at. Slocum started working through the possibilities in his head. Sell three, get three thousand dollars right away, keep two and maybe make another thousand. If he won. If he won...
If he won, it was better to keep as many of his own tickets as possible. But if he lost, it was better to take the money now.
“Feeling confident?” she asked.
“The race will be rigged, and I’m not sure I know all the different ways I can lose,” he said.
“My men will be out there to guarantee a fair race, as much as they can. I won’t cheat, but I won’t let anyone else cheat—including Quinn.”
“He took a shortcut through the mountains,” Slocum said. “He got in and out before I could follow the main course to the meadow. I reckon the fellow who rode to second place did the same since I didn’t see him for most of the race.”
Miss Maggie looked thoughtful.
Slocum went on. “And that green-ribbon-wearing judge of yours tried to sidetrack me. He sent me down a box canyon.”
“What!” Miss Maggie’s eyes went wide. “Describe the varmint.”
Slocum did.
“That’s Barr, all right. The son of a bitch sold me out! He took money from Quinn or somebody else to waylay you. I’ll feed him his own ears for this!”
Miss Maggie quieted and cocked her head to one side. She studied Slocum and then asked, “How’d you end up in third place with such a detour slowing you down?”
“Pilot,” Slocum said. “This is the second time Pilot saved me from looking like a complete fool. He showed me a rim trail that led right down into the meadow. I’m not sure we made it any faster, but we didn’t lose any time either.”
Miss Maggie chewed on this for a spell, then said, “Pilot’s the long shot in the race. Wish I knew more about him.”
“Jed said Pilot was the horse’s name and nobody knows who the rider is.”
“That’s right,” Miss Maggie said. “We’ve had some winners who refused to give anything more than a registration number. Wouldn’t even mention what they called their horse, much less themselves.” She shrugged. “Here in Scorpion Bend we don’t much care about names and the like. All we care about is a whacking good race.”
“So you don’t know anything about Pilot’s rider?”
“Not a thing, other than he surely can ride. I watched you and the other two crossing the flats outside of town. Pilot was galloping to beat the band, and the rider was hanging on like an expert. You and Pilot are about the best in the race. You thinking he’s the one to beat and not Quinn?”
“Quinn will do whatever it takes to win,” Slocum said. “Tell me about the other two in the race on Saturday.”
“Don’t know them either. Bloomington is the one you bumped and forced to break stride. Zachary finished just a hair behind Quinn. You reckon Zachary and Quinn are in cahoots?”
“Zachary might just be good at following a winner. That won’t do him on Saturday, will it?”
“Different course then. Everyone wants to see more of what’s going on during the race. Saturday, you’ll go from one side of the valley to the far rim of the bowl the town sets in; then you’ll circle around and finish where you started. Course, there’s probably cutoffs I don’t know about. The canyons in these hills likely will provide a whole passel of shortcuts.”
Slocum pictured it in his head. Scorpion Bend sat in a shallow bowl of a valley. Race through to the far side, ride a half circle, and then back into Scorpion Bend. It wasn’t as long a race, but folks with binoculars and spy-glasses could watch more of the race—and bet on every turn along the course. Miss Maggie stood to make a fortune, if the race went her way.
Slocum vowed that it would. He wanted to win so bad he could taste it. The prize money would be good, but beating Cletus Quinn would make it even sweeter. Best of all would be seeing Quinn swinging at the end of a hangman’s rope.
“I don’t think Bloomington will be any trouble,” Slocum said. “I don’t know how he cheated, but if every citizen in Scorpion Bend can see the race, he’s not going to stand a chance. Zachary might be another matter. And Pilot,” he said, thinking about the duster-clad rider. “He’s real competition.”
“Don’t forget Quinn. He’s a vicious sidewinder,” Miss Maggie said. “Won’t stop at anything to trot across that finish line first.” She heaved to her feet and went to greet a new group of revelers and relieve them of the burden of carrying so much money. Slocum sipped at his beer. The taste turned bitter on his tongue now, and he knew he had drunk enough. Outside, the sun slid down over the brim of mountains and the heat faded away like some bad memory.
“Slocum,” said a well-dressed man, sliding quickly into the chair Miss Maggie had just vacated. “I want a word with you.”
“How can I help you?” Slocum asked. He had seen the man around. He thought he might be a gambler, though he didn’t look like one. More of a prosperous rancher than a gambler, Slocum thought.
The next words out of the man’s mouth proved he was no gambler.
“I like to win. The best way of doing that is to make an offer,” the man said softly, barely audible over the hubbub in the saloon. “A thousand dollars now and another two thousand after the race.”
“What?” Slocum sat up straighter.
“I’m offering you three thousand dollars to just ... not ride as fast as you mig
ht want to otherwise,” the man said. “It’s worth it to me, and I can make it worthwhile for you.”
“More than the three thousand?” asked Slocum.
“I’ll let you know before the race who to bet on. You can pull in another pile doing that. I—” The man gasped and twitched, trying to stand but not finding the strength. Miss Maggie stood behind him, her strong fingers digging into the back of his neck. Slocum knew from the way she pinched down that she had found all the right nerves to give the man an excruciating jolt if he tried to struggle. And if he didn’t, she was cutting off the flow of blood to his head.
“I ought to kill you and leave your corpse out in the sun for the ants and buzzards,” Miss Maggie said, furious. “I ought to, but that would be too quick. I want you to suffer. You’re trying to fix the race, aren’t you, Ludwig?”
“Maggie, I—” Ludwig flopped about like a fish out of water as she squeezed down even harder.
“Get on out of here, Slocum. I got some intimate comments to exchange with Mr. Ludwig.” She fixed Slocum with a steely glare. “Don’t let this happen again. We got a deal. You play fair with me, and I’ll make it worth your while. Cross me and you’ll wish you’d been caught by Apaches and staked out in the sun.”
“I don’t go back on my word,” Slocum said, leaving. He felt better getting outside and into the night. Up here in the Wyoming mountains wasn’t like being in the desert, where it cooled off fast and left a man chilled to the bone minutes after sunset. Here the heat lingered, but not for long. Already a wind whipped down from the upper slopes and cooled overheated tempers. All along the main street drunken revelers staggered about, laughing and singing, trading bottles and lies.
Slocum felt out of place. He might be one of Scorpion Bend’s current heroes, but he didn’t fit in. Men thought he could be bribed into throwing the race. Others in the race tried to lead him astray, rope him, shoot him, bash him in the head with rocks. The only rider who had shown him a whit of consideration went by his horse’s name, hiding his identity.
“Who are you, Pilot? On the run from the law? The town marshal’s not likely to know or care who you are.” Slocum had enough wanted posters riding around on his head, and not just from the problems he had run into down south in Colorado.
After the war, he had returned to the family farm in Calhoun County, Georgia. His parents were dead, his brother had died during Pickett’s Charge, and he’d spent a goodly length of time recuperating from his own wounds. One day a carpetbagger judge came out and claimed no taxes had been paid during the war. Slocum knew the man fancied Slocum’s Stand for his own. When the judge and his hired gunman came back to seize the land for nonpayment of the so-called taxes, Slocum rode out soon after—leaving behind a pair of new graves.
Killing a judge, even a crooked one, was a crime that was never forgotten by the law. Slocum had dodged that wanted poster for years, and feared it more than any run-in with the law he might have had in Colorado. Or Texas or Arizona or anywhere else. He had led quite a life so far.
Winning the Scorpion Bend race would be a pleasant addition to all he had done so far.
Slocum hunted around for Quinn, but didn’t find the man. He thought he saw Bloomington, drunker than a lord, in a saloon down the street from Miss Maggie’s, but he couldn’t be sure. Slocum wanted to observe from the shadows and not deal with men trying to bribe him or women fawning over him.
At least, not any of the women in Scorpion Bend. Slocum went to the stable and saw Miss Maggie had posted a full dozen guards around Black Velvet now. The guard from the prior night was gone, replaced by men more alert and presumably more honest—they would stay bought. Slocum checked Black Velvet, saw the stallion got only the best of care, then saddled his sorrel and rode from town.
He tried to convince himself he was simply out riding, going nowhere, but somehow he ended up at the Decker farm.
It was dark except for a single light in the cabin. Cows lowed in the distance, and Slocum thought he heard a horse or two kicking at their stalls in the barn. Or the mule that had stove in the side of the elder Decker’s head. Slocum didn’t try to keep quiet as he rode up, dismounted, and climbed the three steps to the front door. He didn’t have to knock. The door opened, and Rachel Decker was framed in the pale yellow light slipping like melted butter from inside the cabin.
“I hoped you would come, John,” she said.
“I had to see how you were doing, what with your brother gone and all,” he said, struggling for words. These weren’t the words he wanted to say to her, but they would do for the moment. “How’s your pa doing?”
“I don’t see any change. There might never be, not until he ... dies.” She swallowed hard, then stepped back. “Where are my manners? Come in, John. Please.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
She smiled more brightly. “Yes.”
He went inside, tossed his Stetson aside, and turned to speak, only to find the woman in his arms. He didn’t get out a word. Her lips crushed into his. He relished the feel of the warm, willing woman in his arms—the feel of her breasts crushing against his chest, the taste of her lips against his, the scent of her hair—simply being there with Rachel Decker.
She pushed back from him, breathless. A flush had risen and turned her cheeks red. Rachel smiled almost shyly, then proved she was anything but shy by unfastening her blouse and wiggling out of the frilly undergarment she wore so she stood before him, naked to the waist. The pale yellow light from the kerosene lamp cast shadows here and there on her body that excited Slocum with their promise.
He reached out and cupped her breasts, feeling her heart pulsing through the hard nubs capping each snowy cone. Squeezing down gently caused her to sigh and move against him again. She worked frantically now to get out of her skirt and stand entirely naked before him.
“Take me, John. I want you. I know you want me.”
“Yes,” was all he said as he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the simple bed at the side of the room. He was aware of the curtain that separated them from her father. And then he forgot entirely when her lips touched his before working down to his throat. She unbuttoned his shirt and her kisses followed all the way down, even when she unfastened his jeans and he kicked free of them.
Her mouth thrilled him. Her hands roved over his naked body, stroking and tweaking and teasing until he was so hard he could hardly bear it any longer. And then they were side by side in her narrow bed, naked bodies sliding across each other.
“No more, John, no more teasing,” she whispered hotly in his ear. She licked and nibbled at his earlobe and then repeated her demand. “I need you so. Don’t deny me.”
And he did not. His hands moved from the luscious globes of her breasts, lower, over the slight dome of her belly to the furred triangle nestled between her thighs. He encountered a moistness that signaled her readiness for him. His hands parted her legs enough for him to roll over and weigh her down.
He groaned softly when he felt her hands on his manhood, guiding him forward. The tip of his shaft moved along the fleecy mound of her pubes, and then he sank full length into her inner fastness. The intrusion took away both their breaths—and all control.
Slocum began thrusting, moving faster and faster. Rachel strove with him, lifting off the bed to meet his every inward thrust. Her inner muscles clamped on him to try to prevent him from withdrawing. Carnal heat built as they moved together, their passions building.
Then Slocum found it impossible to maintain an easy, smooth rhythm. Pumping furiously, he took her—and she gave as good as she got. Slocum was never sure who enjoyed the lovemaking more. It hardly mattered because neither of them had anything to complain about.
Sweating and tired, they lay in each other’s arms.
“That was so nice, John,” she said dreamily. “I could get used to it.”
Slocum did not answer. He could too, and that bothered him.
10
Slocum returned to Scorpion B
end a little after sunup. Most of the town was sleeping off the drunken celebration of the night before, but a few stalwart citizens went about their jobs. The general store was open, as was a tobacconist next door, along with a bookshop and a bakery down the street. The saloons were eerily quiet after the ruckus in them not so long ago. Slocum’s belly grumbled from lack of good food. He had missed dinner last night in favor of more than a few beers and damned near a half-bottle of whiskey.
Even diluted by Jed, that was a gallon more than Slocum was accustomed to downing, since he’d been on the run for the past few weeks. Then he had gone out to the Decker farm. After that, he hadn’t thought much of food. Not until now.
He dismounted and went to a small cafe at the edge of town. Mouth-watering aromas came from inside. He tethered his sorrel and went into the small building. Unlike most in town, this was built from brick. That was an expensive building material up here in the wilds of Wyoming where timber was more plentiful than fire-baked clay.
Settling down at a table near the door, he leaned back. Slocum had not realized how tired he was. The race had taken it out of him, and he hadn’t gotten much sleep during the night. That was a pleasant enough diversion with Rachel, but running on nothing but piss and vinegar was wearing him out.
If he got too tired, he would make mistakes. Making a mistake during the race in two days would mean losing a mountain of money—or worse. He had been trapped and ambushed and lied to and diverted enough. The rules of the final race were different. With all the riders mostly in plain view of anyone in town willing to put a spyglass to their eye, cheating would be at a minimum.
He hoped. Slocum knew men like Quinn could think of endless ways of cheating. That came more easily to them than simply following the rules and winning.
