Read Slocum and the Hellfire Harem (9781101613382) Online
Authors: Jake Logan
Slocum and the Hellfire Harem (9781101613382)
Driven to the Edge
The big man lunged at him again, and caught a handful of Slocum's shirt. He felt it tighten and the shoulder seams pop from the grip of the big, work-hardened hand.
Try as he might, Slocum was growing weaker, scrabbling for his now-lost foothold . . . And he was two feet from falling off the cliff.
He had one chance. Now or never, Slocum, old boy, he told himself. He reached up at the growling, chuffing face, got a handful of jowly cheek meat, and pressed his thumb into the man's eye socket.
“Gaaah!” the big brute wailed and lessened his grip on Slocum's shirt enough that Slocum rolled out of the hold. He swung his body upward and drove his wounded leg right into the bent brute's shoulder. The man grunted and Slocum did it again. The moaning man lashed out, trying to grab hold of him, groping blindly, wildly for Slocum. Then his hand found Slocum's rifle and he snatched it up, still shaking his head from the eye gouging.
“Oh no, you don't,” said Slocum through gritted teeth. He drove a fist straight at the man's nose and felt something inside it snap twice under his knuckles, then smear sideways into pulp. An immediate gush of blood, warm and foul, burst from the screaming man's face. Slocum followed it up with a boot heel to the middle of the man's mouth, and still he didn't let up. Slocum kept pushing, driving the big man backward. In his dazed condition, the man never noticed the cliff edge until it was far too late.
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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.
SLOCUM AND THE HELLFIRE HAREM
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Jove edition / December 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Cover illustration by Sergio Giovine.
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ISBN: 978-1-101-61338-2
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Contents
Â
1
With a quick poke of a finger, John Slocum tipped his dusty, sweat-stained fawn hat back on his head and eyed the brimming glass of bourbon the barkeep was pouring him. It had been a long time, weeks, in fact, since he'd come to town, and just as long since he'd had a drink. Life on the Rocking D had kept him busy. Back in April, the ranch owner, Dez Monkton, had sent most of his cowboys and a thousand head north on a spring drive, which had left the ranch shorthanded for the summer season. And that was when Slocum had ridden in, ranging for work.
It was now July, and he'd been working at the Rocking D ever since. The pay was fair, the work was hard, most of the hands were decent to spend time with, and the food, cooked and served by Mrs. Monkton, was a cut above most grub shack fare. It was a good outfit, and part of him considered sticking there through the winter. But he was a far-ranging man, in part because he liked the freedom of traveling the wide-open spaces, stopping to gamble and drink, should his whim or his wallet allow. Yet overriding all that was the thought that he was a wanted man with the possibility of bounty hunters forever on his trail. And that was the thing that never allowed him to get too comfortable in any one place. He suspected that was the part that would win out in the endâit always did.
With a grim smile, Slocum raised the brimming glass to his mouth. He was looking forward to the drink about as much as he had been that bath, shave, and barbering he'd gotten when he rode into town a couple of hours before. Then he'd stopped off at Millie's Café for a hot meal of pot roast, potatoes, stewed tomatoes, buttered biscuits . . . and dessert served up the way Millie knew best.
Slocum had still been eating when she hustled on out the front door the only other customer in the place, a broke-down old miner who, from the looks of him, hadn't seen hide nor hair of a lode in a long time. But it hadn't mattered to Millie. She'd propped the C
LOSED
placard in the window and breezed by Slocum toward the back room.
“Dessert, John?” she'd said, eyeing him over her shoulder.
He'd gulped the last bites of spuds, gravy, and biscuit, followed them with a swig of coffee, then trailed her to the kitchen. If this turned out to be anything like the last time she'd served him dessert . . . He found her where he guessed he wouldâin the storeroom, wearing a smile, an apron, and nothing else. Somehow, between his table and the storeroom, she'd managed to shuck her dress and slip her apron back on.
“Ahem, I was told I might find dessert here . . . maybe pie?”
“Right this way, sir,” she'd said with a smile and a beckoning finger.
As good as the pot roast and trimmings had been, that dessert proved to be the most memorable part of the meal, not in least part because of the tasty way Millie had served it up. Turned out that his sweet tooth had been mighty hard to satisfy, so he went ahead and had himself a second helping.
A half hour later, Millie had buttoned herself back into her dress and, with a last squeeze, had ushered Slocum to the back door. “I have to get busy prepping for the supper crowd,” she said.
“But I'm hungry again,” he'd said with what he hoped had been a suitably gaunt face.
She'd pushed him out the door. “You think you're hungry now, you come back later.”
Now standing at the bar down the street, he recalled with a smile what might well have been the best midday dessert ever offered to himâand he had every intention of dropping by the café near closing time. But first, he was about to follow up that fine dessert with a smooth bit of bourbon.
The amber-colored nectar had just touched his lips when a groan and a crash sounded from the doorway to his left. He shifted his gaze, along with everyone else in the place, in time to see the Rocking D foreman, Randolph “Hap” Roderick, crash through the batwing doors and drop in a heap to the barroom floor.
The thin older gent was called “Hap” because he always seemed to be smiling, no matter the difficulty or level of danger of the chore he'd been asked to perform, nor the foulness of the weather in which he had to do it. Yes sir, Hap was known as a happy man. It was a trait that Slocum envied and, in his own way, had tried to emulate as he worked alongside Hap at the Rocking D these past few months.
But Hap wasn't smiling today. Slocum slammed the untouched glass of whiskey on the bartop, spilling it. He dropped to the old cowboy's side, eased him onto his back as the saloon's occupants crowded around. Hap's vest flopped open; his blue-checked go-to-town dress shirt was a mess at the gut, clotted with blood and scorched fabric. It had been a close-in shot.
“Hap!” Slocum leaned close to the man's ashen face. “Hap! What happened? Who did this?”
“Oh, Slocum, good.” The man smiled, though his eyes teared from the pain. “I was hoping to find you.” Then his smile faded. “Tunk . . . Tunk Mueller . . .”
“What about him, Hap?” He looked up at the gawking onlookers. “Somebody get a doctor, for Pete's sake! And the sheriff!”
He heard footsteps and the batwing doors slap open. Slocum turned back to Hap. “What about Tunk, Hap? Did he do this to you?” Slocum already knew the answer. Of course it was Tunk.
Slocum didn't have much say in who Dez had hired, being a new hand himself, but he wished Monkton had not brought on Mueller. The man was a walking sack of trouble from the get-go, shirking his workload onto others, starting arguments and fistfights. But Hap, being the foreman and a decent man, was always trying to find the good in others. He urged Slocum to give Mueller the benefit of the doubt, and since the D had still been shorthanded, Slocum had gone along with it. Now he knew it had been a mistake. He should have trusted his own gut.
“Mueller . . . never thought he'd be a bad seed, John.” Hap licked his lips and Slocum said, “Get him a beer, whiskey, something.”
Hap smiled again, coughed. “I never touch the stuff, John. Water, though, I'd like a drink of cool water, if you could.” The barkeep tended to the request.
Slocum worked to keep the man awake and coherent. “Are the Monktons all right?” Slocum knew the ranch was all but emptied out, being as it was the first proper day off the crew had had in weeks. “Hap, were the Monktons hurt, too?” The wounded man's eyelids flickered wide again.
“Getting myself duded up to come to town, I heard shots . . .” His lip quivered and he swallowed. “Seen Tunk coming out of the house carrying some of Mrs. Monkton's fancy flatware . . . Didn't make any sense.” His eyes turned glassy and he gritted his teeth as some unseen pain wracked him deep inside.
Slocum touched Hap's forehead. “Hap? Stay with me here. Come on, Hap.”
The wounded man's eyes focused again on Slocum. “Tried to stop him, tried to talk sense into him. I told him he wasn't a bad man, but he . . . just laughed at me, John. Told me I was a fool. Can you believe it? Man just gave up on himself. Then he shot me, John. He shot me and rode north. I have never been shot before, John.”
The bartender returned with a short glass of water, but Slocum shook his head. Hap was beyond needing it.
Then Hap's eyes closed and his smile came back. Slocum bent low, and in a whisper, the older man said, “Don't you ever give up on yourself, John Slocum. You're a good man.” Hap's head slumped to the side, and he knew no more. One of the hostesses inhaled in shock and turned away, sobbing. The big bartender stood holding the glass of water, sadness pulling at his thick features. Until the doctor and the sheriff pushed their way in to Hap's side, no one said anything.
And then all hell broke loose.