Slocum and the Hellfire Harem (9781101613382) (4 page)

Then he turned to leave, but leaned back in. “One more thing: What did that other man look like? The one who stopped and laughed at you . . . you know, the one who
didn't
stop to help you.”

The old man stared at him through puffy, red-rimmed eyes. “Don't know. Couldn't see so well. Sun”—he closed his eyes and swallowed—“sun was bright.” His eyes snapped open. “He carried the taint of a bad man about him. A bad, bad man. A devil man. The Lord will strike him down, rest assured. The Lord will have His way.”

“You'll pardon me for asking, sir, but if you didn't see him, how do you know he wasn't one of the ones who did this to you and stole the women and children?”

The old man looked up at him, his brow creased and hooded, a scowl on his mouth. “It wasn't—I know what I know. We was robbed by devil-bandits, I tell you. Godless creatures.” By the time he'd finished speaking, his hands were clenched atop the Bible, his head shook, and spittle flecked from his mouth.

Slocum regarded the sad family, then nodded once and left the house. He'd made up his mind that they didn't need any more tending by him, and he no longer wished to be around them. They were, as Orton had said, odd, especially the old man. He had crazy, angry eyes and a dangerous sway over his sons. It also occurred to Slocum that if they had no beast to ride, they might think his horse was ripe for the taking.

He had just about gotten the Appaloosa saddled when he heard a small cough behind him. He turned to see Luke, the youngest of the men, dressed in a white shirt, loose black trousers, and holding the wooden water pail.

“You headed to church, boy?” Slocum smiled, tried to show the lad it was meant as a joke, but it was obvious it wasn't taken that way.

“No, sir. I . . .” He looked back toward the house. “I should be fetching water.”

“Hey, Luke,” said Slocum. “What really happened here?”

The kid looked back to the house, then down at his bare red feet. “The . . . the womenfolk—”

The door slammed and the old man shuffled out onto the porch, wincing as he stepped. “Luke! The Lord God doesn't look with favor on those who can't control their own wagging tongues!”

The boy looked briefly at Slocum, “I'm sorry,” he whispered. “The man who didn't help us . . . I think he was wearing a red shirt.” Luke limped to the well and hauled up a bucket of water with his blistered hands, the effort paining him. He didn't look at Slocum again.

Slocum locked eyes with the old man, whose face was red with rage, the Bible clutched tight to his chest in his clawlike hands.

As he trotted out of the yard on the Appaloosa, Slocum passed the house, the father and his sons standing arrayed on the porch, in much the same configuration as when Slocum had found them strapped to the fence hours before. Then the old man stepped forward, shook the Bible in Slocum's direction, and said, “If you should see our womenfolks, you tell them the Lord is on our side!” He gestured to himself with the Bible, then to each side, indicating his boys. “You tell them we are coming for them. Mark my words, we are coming for them!”

How in the heck are you going to do that? thought Slocum. You have one broke-down old mule and no weapons, and are so sunburned you can't even move normally. He didn't say anything, just nodded his head, touched his hat brim, and rode on out, thinking that the old man didn't sound so much like someone who'd lost loved ones to bandits as a man bent on revenge.

He was a half mile down the road before he allowed himself to breathe a long, loud sigh of relief. The Appaloosa's ears twitched. “Boy, I have no idea what that was all about. But I am glad to be out of that den of serpents.”

As if in response, the Appaloosa nickered, bobbed his head, and picked up an extra kick of speed. Slocum smiled, agreeing silently with the horse's urge to put distance between them and the crazy farm. Then his thoughts turned to his quarry. He knew for certain then that the man who had passed them by had to be Tunk Mueller. He was the only man in Nevada who could be that heartless.

“At least I know for certain that I'm still on the right trail,” said Slocum, slipping the leather thong off the hammer of his Colt Navy, and resting his right hand loosely on the saddle horn, ready to snatch the pistol free.

Fat lot of good being on the right trail will do me when, no matter what I try, it seems I keep getting slowed down. First in Slaterville, then losing hours with the sunburnt Bible-thumpers. What next?

5

Rufus Tinker and his four sons watched the tall, wide-shouldered stranger ride out atop his handsome dappled horse. Soon enough, the loping pair rounded the rocky knob to the west and slipped from sight.

With the speed of a striking rattler, Tinker's raw red hand lashed outward and connected with the tender-skinned face of the thin youth beside him. The boy's head snapped to the side, his lanky body—more boy than man—followed suit, and he stumbled, sprawling in the dirt at the base of the house's broad front steps. His gasp resulted less from the shock of his father's blow than from the pain his sunburned skin felt on scraping against the boards and gravel.

“Get up and get your sorry self in the house, fix us food. God's work cannot be done on air and promises. The rest of you, to the barn and fields, right things around and make ready for our journey. We will leave tomorrow morning.”

“Where are we going, Papa?” the oldest of the sons asked. Though he stood taller and broader than his father, he looked toward his feet when the old bearded man turned his red-rimmed, steely gaze on the man.

“We are going to hunt down those foul witches, those demon-spawned fiends who robbed our growing congregation of its future! We will track them down and drag them back.” The old man warmed to his subject, and with outstretched arms, his Bible clutched in one red hand, he turned his face skyward.

“I have been through fire and flame, and I have lived to hear the words of the Lord whispered in my ears, though they be burned things, and my very heart festered and bubbled and boiled in my chest from the heat of this devil's playground on which we dwell, I heard His voice! And He said to me, ‘Rufus Tinker, as My sole instrument of goodness and righteousness on Earth, I command you to track down them evildoing spawn, though they may be fruited of your loins, and though you may travel the earth in your quest, this I command you . . . and your minions.'”

The old man glanced to either side at his sons, then again looked skyward. “You will bring the thieving witches back under your control. You will make them see the errors of their ways, even though it will most assuredly mean all manner of beatings and lashings and privations such as their pampered bodies and minds ain't never known!'”

He stopped speaking with an abruptness that forced the four sons to glance at him. For a long minute there was only silence. The old man's eyes were closed and his raised arms began to quiver, then shake with the effort of being held aloft.

Finally, Peter cleared his throat and, in a quiet voice, said, “How will we get there, Papa?”

The old man lowered his arms. “I will ride the mule, our only remaining beast of burden, and you four will walk alongside.”

“Where will we get—”

“The Lord will provide! I have said all I aim to say. Shut your foul mouths and get to work, lest I become convinced you are in secret league with those devils from hell.”

The three older sons winced with the sting of his words and scurried off to their respective tasks in the fields and barn as fast as their burnt bodies allowed.

Luke crouched low and walked around the old man. The boy faced downward but his eyes skittered as he tried to keep his glaring father in sight. But he didn't see the old man's boot. It connected with the boy's backside and sent him sprawling into the front room of the house.

As he picked himself up, the old man's broad, lanky form filled the doorway. “You will don that creature's apron and fix us men good food, and fast, or you will feel the full weight of the wrath of the Lord's Right Hand on Earth!”

The boy nodded and backed toward the kitchen.

“What do you say to that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That is not what I expected to hear!” The old man advanced, his spadelike hands held before him like great red weapons, the Bible clutched in one.

Luke bent behind the broad knife-scarred worktable and said, “Yes, Papa. Anything you want. I'll make the food now. Please don't hit me!” He voice quivered as he begged, but it was no use. The old man was lathered, and set the Good Book down with reverence before advancing on the boy once again.

From out in the barn, the three older brothers exchanged quick, darting glances when they heard Luke's howls. None dared say a thing to one another, knowing that any one of them might tattle to their papa about the others, then all would feel the sting of his hands, his switch, his belts, his hardwood paddle. They all bore knotted scars on their heads, roped welts on their shoulders, on their backs, marks that would never heal—all from their father's anger.

But brought on, so they were told and so they came to believe, because they were in league with the devil—they were slothful and ignorant and useless. And they knew they were. They tried not to be, but they must be, because their father was the Lord's Right Hand and how could they doubt the will of God? Even if that Right Hand hurt like hell sometimes.

6

Tunk Mueller figured he was being followed by someone. Or would be at some point—if not for that El Paso mess, then surely for dispatching that cheap old Dez Monkton and his scrimy wife, not to mention that do-gooder foreman, Hap. What sort of a name was that for a man? Mueller chuckled to himself and booted the dun mare into a trot.

Damn horse was handsome, but a laggard. Should have known better than to steal a beast from the Rocking D. Everything there was too prissy for his taste. Take that Slocum, always butting in, making fights his business, making sure Mueller'd been working when he needed a rest.

“Best thing I ever done was leave that mess behind. Why, I—” Mueller cut short his latest speech to the horse. He'd heard something from up ahead. Sounded like . . . children shouting? “What in the world?” He slowed the horse and soon stopped it altogether. They stood like that for several minutes, facing forward and listening, the horse and its rider, ears perked toward the unmistakable sounds of kids playing and having a grand old time somewhere up ahead. Mueller had assumed that since the road had been all but empty of signs of human settlement—other than those boiled farmers strapped to the fence—his path wouldn't cross anyone else's.

“Hmm,” he grunted, and urged the horse into a slow walk. Must be the tracks he'd been spotting now and again in the lane, from a wagon and other footprints. Could be they're camping up ahead. Or could be they live there. Either way, they might have food and, more important, desirables such as money and jewelry and liquor. Mueller guided the horse off-trail, up to the right.

He dismounted, tied his horse off to a sapling, and crept forward. As he approached the top of a slight rise, the sunken roofline of an old house, looking long abandoned, rose up into his view. He slipped off his sweaty, flop-brim hat, and crawled on his belly and peeked farther over the edge of the rocky outcropping. He saw a wagon parked behind the house, and nearby an old stable. And then he couldn't believe his eyes.

Must have been four or five women, most of them handsome, at least from a distance, and a whole clot of kids running around, shouting and screaming like piglets. They all looked to be girls, too. Mueller licked his lips. He sure could do with a woman. But it was the sudden thought that these women surely had menfolk somewhere close by that kept him from scrambling down the slope and treating them ladies to the wonders of Tunk Mueller.

And then he saw that all those women appeared to be carrying weapons. He turned around and slid down out of sight. His jaw dropped and his dirt-smeared hand went to the butt of his pistol. Surely it couldn't be as bad as all that? But then he thought he heard a branch snap not far away. What if the menfolk were close by? Maybe hunting up game for their families before moving on. Best cut your losses, Tunk, he told himself. Get while you can and pretend you never even saw them women.

Mueller managed to do half of that in the next few minutes—he got out of there without being seen, he hoped, by angry husbands, sons, brothers. He cut a wide circle around the place, headed northward off the road and toward high country, his destination anyway. He had hoped to find another town, rob a little of this and that to keep body and soul together until he made it to his brother's spread in Northern Cali, but since he was headed in that direction already, he told himself, why not keep on?

But for the next few hours, he could not forget what he had seen. What if they had been all just women, traveling alone with no men to protect them? What if they found they needed a man?

He even reined up once, sat his horse atop a treed ridge, and looked back southward toward the old road, then northward toward where he needed to head. He scratched his chin and made a deal with himself. “Tunk, my man,” he said, one leg out of the stirrup and resting canted over the horse's neck. “You pitch yourself a camp down yonder in that stand of trees on the flat. Settle in there for a night, give this situation some thought. Maybe ride on back and watch them pretty things, see what sort of men they have with them.”

He smiled and nodded to himself. “Ain't many men who can stop a bullet or two. I expect you ladies will have a chance to meet Tunk Mueller yet.” He swung his leg back over the horse's neck and nudged the beast into a zigzagging path to the flat beyond the ridge.

7

Slocum slipped down off the Appaloosa, checked the tracks he'd been following. No easy way to tell if the freshest tracks were Mueller's, but they had to be. Unless the outlaw cut off the old trail and headed cross-country, these topmost tracks, the freshest, were Mueller's. But there were plenty of others, too, and they made tracking a bit confusing. If Slocum could believe what Tinker had said, then the wagon and other hoofprints were from the bandits who had made off with the Tinker women and children. But something about that old loon's story just didn't sound right.

He wanted to let it go, but as he traveled, he had found himself dwelling on the peculiar man, his boys, and the manner in which they'd been strung up against the fence, as if whoever did it intended to kill them, but had wanted to be long gone when the end came.

Now, crouched on the dusty trail, Slocum followed various prints back and forth, intrigued more than he needed to be. What harm could a couple more minutes be, he asked himself as he studied wide-ranging clusters of children's footprints. They were made by kids of different sizes; that was plain enough. But curiously, they were all over the place, not made by kids who were kept as prisoners. He would expect them to be tied in a wagon. And the boot prints that he did see were smaller than a man's—most likely they were made by women.

He mounted up and put in another few hours before he had to knuckle under to the day's dying light. He made a light camp just off the trail, kindled a fire small enough to make coffee and fry bacon. He still had a couple biscuits from his last camp, so when the bacon had cooked through enough to suit his hungry belly—which wasn't very long—he folded them up and sandwiched them between the split halves of the biscuits. He ate them too fast; they tasted so good he wished he had a half-dozen more. He wiped his greasy fingers on his denims and made do with another cup of hot black coffee, then lay back for a few hours of sleep. As he sank into its wide-open arms, he thought again of the curious sunburnt men, of their women and children. The last thing he decided before he gave in fully to slumber was the possibility that those women hadn't been spirited away by bandits—they'd run away. Sensible women, given what they were fleeing from.