Slocum 421

Come On, Baby, Light My Fire . . .

“Damn, you are a loving machine,” Murty whispered. “I am so damn spoiled with you. Get on me. I am ready for you to shovel coal into my furnace.”

“Hell, Murty, you are always ready for loving.” He rose on his knees and laughed. Coming between her raised legs spread wide, he shoved the nose of his erection inside her and she
ooh
ed out loud.

“Damn, you're like Old Faithful at Yellowstone, spouting off about every half hour!”

The next twenty minutes they were lost in each other's rapid response. Swirling around like some great whirlpool, they left the real world for one of passion and hellfire even the Yellowstone geyser could not match.

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SLOCUM AND THE KANSAS SLAUGHTER

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2014 by Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

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PUBLISHING HISTORY

Jove mass-market edition / March 2014

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Cover illustration by Sergio Giovine.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

There was nothing but brown grass waving on the windswept rises. The Kansas sun glared off the swaying stems and seed heads that did their thing like great ocean swells. A dull blue sky held no break of even a small cloud from horizon to horizon, and the air was filled with the squeak of cart axles and the stench of the green buffalo hides that were stacked in the wagons behind him.

Slocum reined up his gray horse and held his hand up to halt the train at the sight of three corpses. Pinned down on the ground side by side were the naked, mutilated bodies of two white men and one white woman. Loose strands of wavy blond hair were blown by the wind across the woman's ashen face.

He dismounted, then quickly turned and caught the thick-set young woman running toward them with her dress's hem barely reaching her knees.

“No, Murty. It's too damn bad for you to look at.” His body, clad in a fringed buckskin jacket, became a shield to keep her from seeing the heinous slaughter.

“Them red bastards killed more white folks? That's it, ain't it?” Wrestling with her trying to get by him was about more than he could stand.

“Yeah, they did more of their bloodletting. Goddamn it! Don't fight with me, woman.” It was like wrestling with a bear. She was strong as any man from all her work cooking, doing chores, staking out hides, and throwing them in the carts and wagon. He could have fought one of the men easier. At last he slipped his arms under her armpits and, with his hands clamped behind her braids, forced her to walk back to her wagon and mules, with her cussing and crying at him the whole time.

When she was at her mule teams, he whispered in her ear, “Stop this goddamn fussing with me or I'll bust your ass.”

Her finger was in his face. “I got my rights!”

“To stay here. Now, build a fire. We're going to give them a civil funeral. You make supper.”

She acted like she'd throw a block at him if she had one, and then went to where she damn well pleased to stomp her foot. Finally, she turned, straightened her breasts under the dress, and acting still mad, went for her kettles and fire makings. “You can't go ordering me around like I'm your slave either, Slocum.”

“I know. I know. Lincoln turned them all out.”

In Spanish, he shouted, “Escatar, Juan, Leo, get some shovels and get up front. We're having a funeral for those less fortunate.”

“
Sí, Patrón
,” they shouted and rushed to the front to join him.

“Dig a deep grave. One the wolves cannot dig up to eat them.” His Spanish words drew nods from the men. They knew what would be required.

He drew his bowie knife and knelt by the first man—he had no name for him. About thirty, he had a row of numbers tattooed on his right arm. Poor son of a bitch had served time in a war prison camp, only to later be gelded in his last hours on the earth by rabid red men. Slocum sliced the buffalo leather ropes on the man's feet and then pulled the first of the stakes driven through his palms. The stakes were like the nails the Roman soldiers drove through Jesus's hands.

That was done while these men were still alive. He fought the victim's hand off the first stake and put his arm by his side. Then did the next limb. In an instant he saw the gray horse looking off to the west. He jumped up to see what the horse saw out there in the distance. In response to the column's approach, he jerked his buffalo gun out of the scabbard.

“What is it?” Escatar asked.

“Riders.”

“Guns,” his Mexican
segundo
shouted to the others. Then he ran fleet-footed to tell the others back with the rigs and animals. “Guns. Guns. Get ready.”

“I've got mine,” Murty shouted at him. “Who in the hell is it?”

“Look west yourself. All I can see are riders.” Slocum bent over to cut the blond woman's legs loose; then, when he stood again, a sour knot came up behind his tongue. What a waste. A beautiful girl maybe eighteen and butchered. They had only tied her wrists to stakes—he cut them loose too.

“I don't think they are Indians,
Patrón
.” His foreman indicated the column, rejoining him.

“Good. Dig some more.”

He used his brass telescope to peer at the column. They were not military either. Though they rode two abreast like a cavalry did. A big man who acted like a general rode beside the bearer of a strange flag. It was neither Mexican nor American.

Slocum freed the other man's hands from the stakes and then cut his legs loose. He rolled the bodies over until they were close together, then he covered them with an old blanket his men had brought him and put dirt on it so the wind did not blow it off them.

The hole's progress deepened.

Murty came with her yellow hammer Winchester. “What do they want?”

And she indicated with her gun barrel the column approaching them. “Kind of spooky. Them ain't nothing I ever seed before.”

“Go cook your food. Be dark soon and you'll be bitching I didn't give you enough notice.”

She looked at the blanket over the dead. “How many?”

“Two men and one pretty blond woman.”

With a shake of her head, she went back, with the rifle ready in her hand.

He heard her tell one of the men she passed when he asked her something, “How in the fuck should I know? He don't.”

The grave was deep enough.

An emissary with a white flag, who rode a fine sorrel horse, came at a gallop. He slid the horse to a stop.

“Colonel Bradford wishes to speak to you.”

Slocum stood with his .50-caliber Sharps in the crook of his arm. His wide-brim beaver hat still shaded his eyes. “Tell him to get his ass up here. We ain't got all night.”

“Were some of your people killed?” The rider indicated the grave.

“No, we just found them. Two dead men and one pretty woman. They were staked out here. Ride around. Escatar will show you the corpses.”

The messenger reined his excited horse over there. At the sight of the bodies his face turned white. Obviously he knew them. About to throw up, he raced back for the column.

“Does he know them?” Murty asked, having snuck up behind Slocum and looking around him.

He nodded.

The colonel and two others rode up. “Good day, sir. My name is Colonel Charles Bradford. My man tells me you have the body of my niece and two other men.”

“We rode up on them about a half hour ago. They were already dead and badly mutilated. We planned to bury them. They were naked, and there is no sign of anything else around here.”

“Bury the men if you will please. I will take my niece's remains to Fort Washington and have her grave closer to me. I am sorry.”

“Where is that?”

“Near Camp Supply on Wolf Creek. We are forming a new nation out here. Washington will be its name. The federals have no use for this country. So we will carve a new nation here. And in the remaining time we plan to kill off all these red infidels. A shame that girl is dead. My wife will mourn her passing. I never caught your name, trader?”

“Slocum.”

“I see.”

No, that dumb stiff shirt didn't see anything. This wild land and his small army would get their asses kicked in by the Plains Indians that abounded out there.

In the morning his own bunch would be swinging southeast to Fort Hayes, where there were some real soldiers, and they'd be delivering their hides to Bart Stowe, the man with his money invested in Slocum's ragtag outfit.

The colonel's men were already heading off. They'd bound the girl's body in a fine expensive wool blanket to carry her back in. Their old one would have done her—she didn't care, that was for damn certain.

He felt Murty bend his knees with hers from behind him. “Let's go eat. I've got it ready.”

He spoke in Spanish, “Food's ready!”

They all nodded. Job completed, shovels on their shoulders, they went to eat.

Slocum sat on a wooden bench they got out for him. The men sat cross-legged on the ground. Murty's buffalo steaks had been cooked on a grill; hot biscuits were from a Dutch oven. Then each man had a can of peaches for desert. Murty soon joined Slocum and sat down with her bare knees exposed below the lace hem on her dress.

Nothing like a whore who wanted to show off her body parts. Murty was a nice mess. Hard worker, great cook, and she really liked to make wild love in a bedroll. The Iowa farm girl was no princess; he'd call her chubby, but on a woman emerging from her teens that could be cute too. Her reddish hair was in braids, and her freckled face, most of the time, was smiling. But she was stout as a bull, and could out-shoot or out-cuss most of his men.

How long she'd plied her trade in a house of ill repute, he had no idea. But she'd confronted him at a fort on the north side of the Platte. Told him she was the best cook he could hire and the wildest piece of ass he could find to sleep with. In twenty-four hours he'd found out she was well versed at both and hired her. After three months of being out there, they were headed back for Fort Hayes, Kansas, to meet Bart Stowe and deliver him their stacks of buffalo hides.

Slocum had figured out that at buffalo hunting, he could glance over his shoulder lots less for anyone looking for him and also make some good money to sustain his being on the run. Stowe had been fair dealing with him the last time, so he expected the same this time around. They had enough hides on board that they needed to go back, unload, and restock on food and ammo. The damn stink of their freight was imbedded in his nose. He'd never ever forget it either.

“That old sumbitch really going make a new country out here?” she asked.

“Hell, no. There have been hundreds like him thought they could mutiny against the U.S., and in the end the forces put them down like a boot stomping a mouse in the corner.”

“He knew those other dead men, didn't he?”

“I think so. One man had been tattooed in a war prison.”

“You know him?”

“No. But I figure he was a soldier of fortune like the rest of Bradford's men.”

“Had they run off with that girl?”

“I suspect, if you want the truth, that the colonel was out looking for her.”

She ate a piece of buff off her fork and chewed on it. “Makes you wonder, don't it?”

“Oh some. She was pretty enough to run off with.”

She grinned and laughed. “You ought to know, you've run off with plenty of them.”

“That's how I got you.”

“Yeah, but I ain't so good-looking, darling.”

“You are to me.”

She blushed, waving the long-bladed jackknife at him she used to eat with. “Keep talking, big man. It will give you all the pussy you can stand.”

They both laughed.

 * * * 

The next morning, she was up before daylight and had her helper building a fire. She cooked them oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar stirred in, and her secret was the vanilla and almond flavoring she added. Slocum's Mexican crew thought she was a chef he'd hired from some fancy restaurant she was so damn good at feeding the men.

Their axle went squeaking off across the prairie with their stinking treasures, making twenty miles a day by him pushing them and their livestock. His men knew full well there would be plenty of Indian squaw whores to fuck and lots of wildcat whiskey at their destination. So they pushed too.

The line of cottonwoods distinguished the Arkansas River that trailed out of what would later be Colorado to join the Mississippi in south Arkansas. But its water source across the plains made the way for so many wagon trains that took that route to the Rockies. The leaves had already been frosted and they looked golden in the distance. Fort Hayes was close by.

Slocum saw the mountains of hides and the cooking fire smoke first. The hide piles looked like hills, and the large Conestoga freight wagons were circled around preparing to load them up and take them to places where the skins could be moved onto a river craft, and then at New Orleans they'd be piled onto boats for Germany, where they'd be made into harness leather by an undisclosed formula. That secret had made the hide business a wild success for men like Stowe.

Slocum chose a place for his men to set up camp. When his wagons were circled, he ordered that two sober men must guard the camp night and day. If anything was lost they would have to pay for it out of their pay. When he was told to unload, they all must be there and work or only get half their pay. He issued each man a two-dollar advance and made Escatar the camp boss. They'd also have to do their own cooking, but Philippe, who helped Murty, could do that. Slocum mounted the gray horse, pulled Murty up behind the cantle on his saddle, and nodded good-bye.

She was giggling like usual. “Don't you boys fuck nothing I won't.”

They all laughed at her words. Slocum decided they knew more English than he'd thought.

“Where will we go?” she asked, leaning forward and shoving a boob into his back.

“Find a bathhouse and then a hotel room and a good bottle of whiskey. We can celebrate all we want, can't we?”

“Yahoo!” she shouted. “A man of my dreams. You are. You are.”

Her arms around his waist, she squeezed him tight from behind, then kissed his ear. “Goddamn you, Slocum. I don't ever want to lose you.”

To be perfectly honest, he didn't want to lose her either. The girl who giggled every time he stuck his dick in her tight cunt. Not once in a while, but every time.