by Jake Logan
“Whoa!” he shouted over their clamor. “Give a feller a break, ladies!”
Slowly, the gabfest died down and Slocum was able to tell the girls apart. Some he knew, some he didn’t, but there was one he knew very well indeed. Standing back, apart from the crowd, was the house’s redheaded madam, and with a chuckle behind her eyes, she was staring straight at him.
He said, “Hello, Kate.”
And she said, “About time, Slocum.”
He let out a soft chuckle. “Aw, Katie. You missed me. I’m touched.”
Slowly, her arms wrapped around her waist, she moved forward. “You better be. And you wanna know how much,” she said, “c’mon upstairs and I’ll show you.”
A murmur, punctuated by giggles, broke out in the crowd of girls as, about a foot away from Slocum, she came to a stop. He looked down at her. She’d made no attempt to touch him yet—hadn’t thrown her arms around him, hadn’t even ventured to put forth a finger—but behind those green eyes there glowed a fire that he knew could never, would never, be put out.
He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. A hot thickness had suddenly risen in his throat and behind his eyes, and rather than open his mouth and look like a fool, he merely took her elbow in his hand and started toward the stairs.
Behind them, the girls let out a sweet, soft sigh, en masse.
Brother! he thought. Am I gettin’ soft or what?
He had to chuckle to himself on the way up the stairs, though. He wasn’t going soft. In fact, he didn’t believe he’d ever been so hard—and so far away from a bed—in his life.
“Somethin’ strike you funny, Slocum?” Katie asked as they gained the top of the stairs and started down the hall toward her room. They couldn’t get there fast enough to suit him.
“Nothin’ to speak of. At the moment anyhow,” he said.
She put her hand on the latch and opened the door. “Here we are.”
“Not soon enough to suit me!” he said, and sweeping her up in his arms, he carried her inside, kicked the door closed behind him, and deposited her on the bed.
Her eyes traveled down his front—and stopped at his crotch. She smiled a little. “I can see why, you big ol’ eager beaver, you.” She began to unbutton her skirt.
“Hurry,” he said. He was already out of his shirt and pants and boots, and was ripping at the buttons of his long johns.
She barely had a path cleared for him in time. All he knew was that he was inside her, and he was working it for all it was worth. He must have been really engorged, because she gasped when he entered her, and was still wide-eyed as, pounding away, he kissed her neck, then dropped his head to nuzzle at her breasts.
The nuzzling didn’t last long, though. He felt a strong rumbling deep down in his belly—familiar, powerful, and overwhelming—that swiftly traveled lower and lower until—
“Argh . . .” he groaned, and collapsed, flat out, on Katie.
He lay there for almost a minute, panting with the sheer relief of it, the sheer bliss, when Katie said softly, “I take it you’re done?”
Despite himself, a deep chuckle rose up his throat, and without moving, he replied, “Hang on a second, honey. I was as wound up as a nickel-plated watch. Couldn’t hold it back.”
“What’s got you so stirred up?”
“Not sure, except I ain’t had any since Saturday week.”
There was a grin in Katie’s voice. “Surprised you didn’t explode. No, wait. You did.”
Slocum chortled softly. And he felt himself rising to the occasion already!
Katie’s arms went around his neck. She said, “Feels like you’re gearin’ up for some more action, Slocum. Feels like you’re gearin’ up in a hurry, too!”
He was, and he began again, this time slower, this time with his old, steady control back in place. He worked himself like a practiced swordsman; thrusting, parrying, but always coming back to the center, always burying himself deep in her hot and pulsing core, until Katie spasmed and cried out his name. That put him over the edge, too.
They clung to each other for a good long time.
They didn’t come down until the next morning, both with smiles on their sleepy-eyed faces, and the girls hanging around in the kitchen covered their mouths, trying to hide their giggles. They didn’t succeed, though.
“All right,” Slocum said to the group. “Just get it out of your systems.”
Hands went to their sides and a few giggles escaped, but mostly, the girls were all smiles and grins.
“All right, then,” Katie announced. “Off with you. Shoo!”
Slowly, the girls filed out, until Slocum and Katie were left alone in the kitchen. “Finally,” Katie said, and only then did she break out in a smile. “I s’pose they wanted to make certain I lived through it,” she said. “Been a long spell since I went upstairs with a man.”
Slocum, who had pulled out a chair and sat himself down at the table, perked up at that. “Who? When?” Then he caught himself. “Sorry, Kate. None’a my business.”
She had begun to serve them some breakfast, and as she spooned scrambled eggs onto two plates, she said, “Oh, it’s your business, all right. It’s been goin’ on four years, and it was you.”
She slid a plate in front of Slocum—eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast—and added, “You remember?”
He did. He was trackin’ a feller and stopped through town. He also remembered that he’d taken on a stray little gal, right here at Katie’s, and delivered her to her family out in California.
He spoke. “I remember. That was sure a doozy of a deal you got me into that time.” He spoke with a smile on his lips, to let her know there were no hard feelings, because there weren’t. He was a big boy. He could get himself in—and out—of trouble all on his own.
He changed the subject. “Town’s sure different.”
“Phoenix, you mean?”
“Yup.”
“You’re not just whistlin’ Dixie. Got all kinds of new things goin’ up, and old ones comin’ down.” She sat beside him and joined him in breakfast. “Hope they decide to keep the capital here for good this time. Hate to see them stop puttin’ up all them pretty new buildings.” She munched on a strip of bacon. “Tess is gettin’ to be a pretty good cook, don’t’cha think?”
“Not as good as you, Katie, but pretty damn decent.” A huge bite of toast spread with cactus jelly prevented him from further discourse.
That didn’t stop Katie, though. “How long you stayin’ this time, Slocum?”
He swallowed, then smiled at her. “Got no particular plans at the moment. Reckon I’ll stay ’til you get sick’a me and send me packin’.”
She laughed, and swatted him on the arm. “As if I’d ever do that!”
And she didn’t either. Slocum stayed over for about a week, while he waited for his voucher to clear. He wanted to leave, but something—besides Katie’s nightly ministrations, that was—kept him rooted in place.
“Slocum, I swan! You’re as jumpy as a bag full’a bob-cats!” she said to him one evening.
He turned toward her. He’d been pacing her bedroom floor in his long johns, a cigar in one hand and an empty bourbon tumbler in the other.
“I can’t help it, Katie.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I just feel like something’s gonna happen. Hell, I dunno. Something’s in the wind, though.” He took the last drag on his cigar, then stubbed it out in a crystal ashtray. Katie had real pretty things.
A furrow appeared in her forehead. “What d’you mean by ‘something’? A sandstorm? Indians? Outlaws? Jesus gonna come down and snatch us all up to a higher plane? What?”
He snorted out a little laugh. “Nothin’ so dramatic, Katie. Just . . . something . . .” He stopped to stare out the window. He’d be damned if he knew what it was.
He wished like hell that he did, so that he could ignore it and just ride out of town. But he couldn’t ignore it, and not knowing what it was that he couldn’t ignore was driving him crazy.
; “Well, starin’ out the window in your underwear ain’t gonna get you anyplace,” Katie said after a few minutes. The night had gone chilly, and she pulled the sheet more tightly about her shoulders. “Come back to bed, baby. Keep me warm.”
He looked at her, then grinned. “You asked for it, Katie. Remember that.”
“Oh, I won’t forget,” she answered, laughing. “You can just bet I won’t!”
He hit the bed so hard that the breeze from his landing blew out the candle on his bed stand. The only thing left to illuminate the room was the feeling he got when Katie took him in her hands. He stiffened immediately.
She said, “That’s my big ol’ boy. Now, c’mon and do what you do best.” She began to move her hands on him.
Well, there were just some women—and some acts—you couldn’t say “no” to.
He didn’t.
3
The next morning, he found out just what the wind had dredged up.
He took a walk over to the U.S. marshal’s office, and was met by Pete Stanford, the big chief himself. Pete—a tall, slender, sandy-haired man of middle age—ushered him into his office, sat himself and Slocum on opposite sides of his wide walnut desk, and making short work of it, said, “Teddy Cutler escaped. Need the cash back.”
Slocum scowled. Seven grand, down the drain. He said, “How?”
“Sheriff down to Bisbee said he was there when he went to dinner, and gone when he came back. That’s all there is to it. Sheriff said it was like he pulled off the best magic trick ever.” He shrugged.
“Anybody see him?”
Pete shook his head. “Not on the street, not at the stable, not a single soul has spoke up to date. The whole town’s deaf and dumb. I take it he was a likable feller?”
Slocum nodded in the affirmative.
“Sometimes those are the toughest to deal with.” He paused, sighing. “Right sorry about the money, Slocum.”
“Me, too.”
“I’ll bet.”
Slocum left the marshal’s office with mixed feelings. Sure, he was mad about the money, but he couldn’t help giving a silent cheer for Teddy. In the end, he just silently walked up to the bank and arranged to have the $7000 put back in the marshal’s business account.
Now, he wasn’t poor. Over the years, he’d managed to put over twenty-some thousand in his Tombstone account—now his Phoenix account—and roughly the same amount in accounts throughout the Western states and territories. Money had never meant that much to him. It just sort of landed in his lap from riding the range and getting himself into, well, situations. Usually with folks who needed jobs done, or men with paper out on them.
None of it was money he’d stolen. He’d given that up long ago. No, he was strictly on the legalities these days, even though, in a few backwoods localities, there was still paper on him. He supposed he could buy himself a real mansion if he wanted to, get himself a butler and maid to boot. But that’d mean settling down, and his feet still itched too much for him to do that.
He was most of the way to the nearest saloon when he walked right into somebody, somebody with his back turned toward him. The man turned to face him while he was still reeling from the impact and opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Slocum’d be damned if he didn’t know that face.
“Teddy Cutler,” he said, trying to decide in a slap second whether to pound him on the back in congratulations or to skin him alive right there on the spot.
Teddy smiled wide, a smile that went clear up to his light blue eyes. “Sky eyes,” Slocum’s ma had always called them. He grew up with a kid who was nicknamed Sky because of them.
“Howdy, Slocum,” Teddy said, still grinning. “Been at least a week, week and a half, ain’t it?”
“Round about.” Slocum was still thinking about the pounding on the back or the skinning. “You were in a whole different circumstance when I last saw you.”
“That I was, that I was. Oh, I near forgot!” he said, stepping to the side to expose a pretty young lady in a pale green dress. “Want to introduce you to Miss Alice Swan. Alice, meet John Slocum.”
She curtsied, and Slocum kissed her gloved hand, in the Southern manner. He hadn’t been raised in a barn. He said, “Charmed, Miss Swan.”
“Honored, Mister Slocum, sir,” she replied.
“It’s just Slocum, if you please, miss.” She was certainly pretty enough, but he was having trouble reading just what was going on behind those warm brown eyes.
She curtsied again, just halfway, and smiled. “As you wish, Slocum.” She turned toward Teddy. “Your friends are as polite as you are, sir.”
Teddy was lapping it up, every syllable, every nuance. Not Slocum. He still couldn’t figure her game, but if she “sirred” him one more time . . .
“We was just goin’ for a bite to eat, Slocum. Care to join us?” Teddy was smitten, sure as shooting. By the looks of it, he was too busy thinking about Miss Alice Swan to consider that Slocum had every right to slug him upside the head and haul him on down to the marshal’s office.
Slocum was considering it, though.
Instead of answering Teddy’s invitation, Slocum said, “How’d you do it, Teddy? How’d you get out?”
Teddy turned a curious eye on him. “How’d I get out of what? C’mon, Slocum, let’s go get some lunch!”
Either Teddy had blanked out his incarceration, or he was the best straight-faced liar Slocum had ever met. But he decided to give the kid the benefit of the doubt. For now anyway.
“Let’s eat,” he said to Teddy, and the three of them set off for Joe’s Café.
Slocum was halfway through with his beef sandwich and beer when the marshal and one of his deputies walked into the café, and made straight for his table.
He barely had time to hiss “Teddy” before the deputy was standing behind the boy’s chair, a cocked pistol at his neck.
Teddy, a look of bewilderment on his face, gulped hard and said, “If you fellers are stickin’ me up, you’d be diggin’ a dry well. I got only enough money on me to pay for my lunch!”
Standing to one side, the marshal slowly shook his head, then looked over at Slocum. “Should I haul you in, too?”
“Nope,” Slocum said. “Was trying to make up my mind about takin’ him into custody. Just ran into them, outside on the walk.”
The marshal nodded, then narrowed his gaze. “Tryin’ to make up your mind?”
Slocum tipped his head to the right, toward Miss Alice Swan. “I kinda thought he was already in custody. Bounty hunter.”
Alice ripped her napkin from her lap and threw it on the table. “I certainly am not a bounty hunter. I am a self-employed, self-motivated finder of lost persons.”
“Who just happen to carry a bounty on their heads.”
She sniffed at him. “Slocum, you are most annoying.”
Marshal Pete waved his arms. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Just hold up, you two.” To the deputy, he said, “Dave, let’s get Teddy here into the lockup. Slocum, you and the lady come along so’s I can get this thing at least halfway straight in my head.”
Forty-five minutes later, Marshal Pete was still shaking his sandy-haired head in befuddlement. And Slocum was getting tired of trying to explain something that he, himself, didn’t understand. Finally, Miss Swan, who had so far remained silent on a corner bench, spoke up.
“It’s called amnesia, gentlemen,” she said as she stood up. “Either he was struck just so on the head, or he experienced something extremely traumatic. Traumatic enough to make him switch over to this new version of Teddy.”
Marshal Pete narrowed his eyes. “What you mean, traumatic, Miss Swan?”
Frowning, Slocum echoed, “Speak English, Alice.”
She sniffed at both of them. “An experience leading to trauma. Some soldiers came back from the War Between the States traumatized. Some of them are still taking up space in our madhouses and lunatic asylums.”
The marshal asked her to go on, but Slocum needed no
further explanation. He knew somebody who’d been traumatized by the War—Mr. Wilcox, their nearest neighbor, about four miles down the pike, back home. Something had happened to Mr. Wilcox, his pa had told him. Something bad enough that he came home a changed man. Where he’d always been a fair man, he became niggardly, and three times he showed up at Slocum’s parents’ place, wanting to “untrade” a horse he’d sold them better than ten years back, and which had since died of old age.
He claimed no knowledge of the War—or any war.
It was as if, his father wrote, something had wiped the slate of Mr. Wilcox’s mind clean, excepting the few things that were pleasant to remember: his family and his home, and scattered events in his past.
The last Slocum had heard, Mr. Wilcox was still off his nut after all these years, still wanting his horse back, and still denying that there ever had been a War. He’d likely go to his grave that way, too.
So, Slocum tended to think that Alice was right about Teddy. He didn’t much like her, but she was right. And the minute she shut up, he said so.
“You sure, Slocum?” Marshal Pete asked, brows lifted.
“Pretty much. We had a neighbor back home that had the same thing.”
“He ever get over it?”
Slocum shook his head. “Nope. Far as I know, he’s still denying that he was in the Army, and that he was a major, and that there ever was a War. Thinks everybody else is crazy.”
“What about the time he was away?” the marshal asked. “Must’a been years. How’d he account for that?”
“Accordin’ to him, he’d been downstate, visitin’ his sister. For a week.”
Marshal Pete slowly shook his head. “This’s a new one on me. If a man kills three people, including a U.S. marshal, but he don’t recall doin’ it, can it be fair to take him to trial, then hang him?”
Slocum looked down at his boots. He shook his head.
But Miss Swan spoke up loud and clear. “It doesn’t matter what we think is fair. He did the killings, and now he must pay for them in a court of law. And I hereby claim the reward.”
