Slocum and the Hanging Horse Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  CATCH OF THE DAY

  “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

  “I’ll cut your liver out and eat it for lunch,” Jeter snarled. He had never been caught like this before and it didn’t set well with him. Straining against the ropes holding his wrists only produced a sluggish flow of blood.

  “More likely, I’ll cut out yours and feed it to you.”

  “Who are you?” Jeter had to ask, and found it hard to keep a hint of admiration from his voice. He had met his match after all these years. It was hard to believe it was some West Texas drifter. The man rode straight as a ramrod in the saddle, strands of lank black hair poking out from under the dusty Stetson pulled down to the top of his ears. There wasn’t a trace of fat on his body—only whipcord muscle. But he was like a hundred other cowboys Jeter had seen—and killed.

  He was like them all except for the cold green eyes. Jeter had seen eyes like that before, every time he looked in a mirror.

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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 HANGING HORSE

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / December 2006

  Copyright © 2006 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

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  eISBN : 978-1-440-67826-4

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  1

  John Slocum tried to sneeze, but got a mouthful of dirt. He reached up to brush away the filth clogging his mouth and nose, and found his arms pinned to his sides. He struggled, then began thrashing about in growing panic when he realized his arms were held down at his sides by the wooden sides of a coffin. He blinked and tried to see that he was only having a bad dream.

  The sound of dirt falling on the coffin lid mocked him.

  “Help! Let me out!” His shout deafened him, but did nothing to stop the methodical dropping of more dirt on top of the coffin. Slocum worked his hands up past his sides and pressed his palms flat on the lid and heaved with all his strength.

  The lid refused to budge.

  His panic soared, and he felt energy surge through his muscles. He could have lifted a horse off the ground with the huge effort he put into pushing open the coffin lid. He heard a mournful creaking as wood began yielding, but the weight of the dirt was too great. Distant sounds as the grave digger continued to fill the grave filtered down to him and added to his growing fear of being interred alive.

  “You can’t bury me like this! I’m not dead!”

  The echoes that had deafened him before were gone. The increasing burden of the sweet-smelling earth above the coffin effectively muffled his outcry. Slocum pushed harder, with growing need. The air within the coffin wouldn’t last long. He had to escape. He had to!

  Panting, he strained until the muscles on his shoulders cracked with the effort. In such an awkward position he couldn’t bring enough pressure to bear—and even if he had the proper leverage, he wasn’t sure he could have moved the hundreds of pounds of dirt and the still-secured coffin lid.

  Sweat drenching him and causing his shirt to plaster itself to his body, Slocum kept up the pressure on the lid until he sagged back, momentarily exhausted. It took a great deal to frighten him. He had gone through the war and had seen friends get their heads blown off by cannonballs and bodies turned to bloody shreds from exploding artillery pieces. Men dying in vicious ways had only momentarily slowed him. What an angry Apache could
do to a captured enemy was beyond description, but Slocum had seen the result and been unmoved by it. More than one friend had been trampled by a herd of cattle in full, frightened stampede. He might have seen every way of dying there was and had not feared such a fate would be his.

  He was scared shitless now.

  Slocum collapsed and rubbed his arms the best he could to get blood flowing through them again. If he flagged now, he was a goner. Wiping sweat off his forehead carried away a small mud slide. Dirt from the grave being filled had somehow filtered onto his face, and was now caking ominously on his cheeks and across his trembling lips.

  Slocum sucked in a deep breath, and let it out slowly to force away the terror that nipped at him like a pack of wild dogs.

  “How’d I get here?” he wondered aloud. He couldn’t remember. His head hurt like a son of a bitch, and moving it from side to side made him wonder if something important had broken loose inside. Somehow, he had been struck on the top of the head. Rolling from side to side pressed a lump the size of a goose egg into the top of the coffin. But he couldn’t remember how he had acquired that aching bump.

  “Don’t get all spooked,” he said, trying to convince himself he wasn’t in about the worst situation a man could find himself in. Buried alive. Waiting to suffocate. Waiting to die of thirst. Waiting for the maggots to begin eating his flesh. Would that happen before he was dead?

  Slocum scratched at a sudden itch on his chest and panicked again, sure that the worms were already feeding on his flesh in the darkness of the grave.

  He screamed and screamed until he was hoarse. Then he got control again. The air was still breathable. It might last for hours if he didn’t do anything to burn it up. Slocum had been trapped in mine cave-ins and had survived because he had kept a cool head. More than once in those situations, however, other miners had been there to help, to dig him out, to get help that saved him. But there had been a time or two he had dug himself out. It was possible. He had to do that now, if he could figure out a way to do it while lying flat on his back, staring up into utter blackness, the rough pine coffin lid only inches above his face.

  How had he gotten in this pickle? His head throbbed even worse now that he had discovered the lump, making it difficult to concentrate. He had been hit on the top of the head. Hard. Who had done it? Slocum couldn’t remember.

  “What do you remember?” he asked himself in a voice that was hardly a whisper because he had screamed until his voice cracked and his throat throbbed. The questions kept him from thinking too much of his fate. If he could figure out how he had been thrust into the coffin, sealed up, and then buried alive, he might find a way out. Who could have done this to him? Why? He had enemies. Plenty of them. As many as there were grains of sand in the Chihuahua Desert. But he couldn’t remember any of them being close enough to do this.

  He couldn’t remember anything of the past few hours.

  Snippets of names and faces fluttered tantalizingly close, but fear kept them from becoming solid memories. He reached down to his left hip and felt for his trusty six-shooter. The Peacemaker was still in its cross-draw holster. Fumbling, he pulled it out and rested it on his chest. Slocum started to fire it as a warning to the grave digger that someone was still alive in the coffin, then stopped. The smoke from the discharge might suffocate him. Worse, there might be too much dirt now for the report to be heard. Pressing his ear against the side of the coffin, Slocum heard distant sounds. Try as he might, he couldn’t make out what he was hearing. Horses? Wagons? Something rhythmical and rattling like a carriage or a prancing horse pulling a buckboard. Firing the six-gun wouldn’t draw any attention if people were in the wagons.

  He collapsed and lay with his head pressing into the rough board making up the side of the coffin. With the Peacemaker, he could shoot holes in the lid or side. What would that accomplish? Slocum knew it wouldn’t do anything for him.

  “I’d choke on the gunsmoke,” he said in his throaty rumble. He moved the six-shooter back so he could tuck it away in its holster where he would be able to find it again.

  The thought flashed through his mind that a .45 slug in the head was a quicker death than suffocating. But Slocum wasn’t the kind to kill himself. He had faced too much in his life and had never given up. Ever. He wouldn’t succumb to his own hand now. He would get out of the grave and find whoever had put him here.

  Then the tables would be turned. But Slocum wouldn’t bury his foe alive. He’d make sure six slugs were in that bastard’s foul heart. He would enjoy firing every single round, relish the sound of the man dying, thrill to the lifeblood trickling from one hole after another in his chest.

  His?

  “Ruth?” The name came unbidden, but he couldn’t place it or put a face to it. Another crowded close. “Amy?”

  He couldn’t remember who they were, but the names were fresh and carried a brightness like a new penny.

  Frustrated, Slocum banged away at the lid, and accomplished nothing but tiring himself. More sweat ran into his eyes, forcing him to work his hand up to wipe it away.

  “Can’t do that. Need to conserve my strength. Don’t burn up the air.”

  He hardly listened to his own advice. His thoughts wandered back to the two women. Ruth. Amy. They meant something to him, but the memory was elusive and flittered just beyond his remembrance. And there were other names. Jeter and Killian and a lawman. More than a single lawman. A mob. A noose and a horse.

  Slocum felt as if his head would split like a rotten melon struck with an ax handle if he tried to put everything together. He wiped away more sweat, and then ran his hand over his neck. All he felt was the usual grit that accumulated under his bandanna. The noose was a faint memory, but there weren’t rope burns around his neck. Somebody else had been hanged. Or was that a memory intruding from some other time and place?

  “Place. Where am I? What town is this?” He forced himself not to answer with words like “cemetery” and “potter’s field.”

  He settled down and concentrated. The importance of figuring out how he had come to this sorry state was at the top of his mind. If he worked it all out, he wouldn’t panic again and burn up more air and maybe think about using the six-shooter on himself.

  “What time is it? Day or night?” He fumbled around to find his watch pocket. In spite of his vow not to panic again, Slocum did. His watch was gone. The watch that was his only legacy from his brother Robert. Gone! He patted every pocket on his vest, and then worked around to the bottom of the coffin as he searched for the timepiece. The watch might have fallen from his pocket.

  He didn’t find it. Whoever had put him into the coffin had stolen his watch but left him with his six-shooter. That didn’t make any sense. Or did it?

  Slocum closed his eyes, then opened them slowly. Not a speck of light showed anywhere, so it didn’t matter if he kept his eyelids open or not.

  “Time. I was robbed of my watch,” he said. “And buried. Buried in San Esteban.”

  The name of the West Texas town triggered more memories. Slocum tried not to rush them. He might scare those precious recollections away like a greenhorn would frighten away a deer that might feed him for a week. Coax the memories. Tease them closer. Like a timid rabbit, they approached him, and he tried not to appear too eager, fearing they would race away to a hidden burrow.

  “San Esteban,” he whispered. “I was on the stagecoach from San Antonio and . . .”

  2

  Slocum tried to sleep in the Butterfield stagecoach, but was tossed about due to the rough road. Every time the stage hit a rock, the entire Concord was tossed into the air and landed with bone-jarring force. He coughed, then sneezed as a fresh cloud of gritty brown dust blew through the open window. Slocum pulled his sweaty bandanna around and wiped the dust from his eyes and nose, then tied the blue cloth so it made him look like a road agent ready for action.

  “Do you have to do that?” The man sitting across from him glared. His dark eyes were twin, glassy marbles
that didn’t seem to have pupils and peered at Slocum without blinking.

  Slocum tried to figure the man out. He went from being friendly to nasty and back again every other minute. He was dressed like a banker, but the shabbiness of the coat—the threadbare lapels and the worn-out elbows—showed the man had fallen on hard times. There had been an attempt to shine the boots, but not recently. From the bulge in the man’s dirty coat, he wore a pistol in a shoulder rig. Slocum considered how likely the man was to use his gun, based on his cold look and steady hand. He wasn’t a gunfighter, but he wasn’t a banker either.

  “Scare you?” Slocum asked.

  “You look like a damn road agent. Out in these parts, they hang the road agents they don’t shoot outright.”

  “I’m not going to hold you up, and the driver has no worry either. I just want to get to El Paso.” Slocum tried to settle back into the corner of the compartment, only to jerk around when a sharp splinter poked into his shoulder. His sudden movement prompted the not-a-banker to reach for his six-shooter.

  “Settle down,” mumbled the other man in the compartment. This one was sleepy and had been dozing in spite of the West Texas heat and jarring movement of the stage rumbling along the rocky road. He was better dressed than the man on the seat beside him, but hardly a gunman or banker. Slocum pegged him as a proprietor of some kind. It took no imagination to see this man wearing an apron as he swept out a general store or worked to sell yard goods to eager frontier wives.

  “Who’re you to tell me what to do?”

  “I paid my money same as you,” the sleepy storekeeper said. “Let him travel in peace. Let me travel in peace. We all got to endure this damn heat for another hour or two until we get to San Esteban and change teams.”