Slocum Along Corpse River 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

  Teaser chapter

  Over His Head

  “Everybody got their bets laid?” Galligan asked. A roar of approval and agreement went up. “Then throw the son of a bitch into the pit! By your emperor’s order, throw him in!”

  Slocum was swept off his feet and carried along on upstretched arms. And then he was sailing through the air to land on his back in a seven-foot-deep pit. As he crashed down, a hideous squeaking sounded. Slocum felt wet spots on his back where he had crushed something small and hard. Then he jerked away as a rat bit his arm. Another and another fastened their teeth into him and began gnawing off his flesh. He swung around and sent the rodents flying, but the pit was ankle deep in them.

  DON’T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts

  Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him . . . the Gunsmith.

  LONGARM by Tabor Evans

  The popular long-running series about Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.

  SLOCUM by Jake Logan

  Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.

  BUSHWHACKERS by B. J. Lanagan

  An action-packed series by the creators of Longarm! The rousing adventures of the most brutal gang of cutthroats ever assembled—Quantrill’s Raiders.

  DIAMONDBACK by Guy Brewer

  Dex Yancey is Diamondback, a Southern gentleman turned con man when his brother cheats him out of the family fortune. Ladies love him. Gamblers hate him. But nobody pulls one over on Dex . . .

  WILDGUN by Jack Hanson

  The blazing adventures of mountain man Will Barlow—from the creators of Longarm!

  TEXAS TRACKER by Tom Calhoun

  J.T. Law: the most relentless—and dangerous—manhunter in all Texas. Where sheriffs and posses fail, he’s the best man to bring in the most vicious outlaws—for a price.

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  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 ALONG CORPSE RIVER

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY Jove edition / September 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54366-5

  JOVE®

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “J” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  1

  John Slocum knelt beside the raging river gushing down from higher in the Grand Tetons, holding his canteen so that it would fill with the cold, clear water. He jerked back when something heavy smashed against the rocks not a foot away.

  He dropped his canteen and went for the Colt Navy slung in his cross-draw holster and had it half out before he realized the body in the river was dead. Standing, he slid his six-shooter back into the holster, reached over, and grabbed the corpse’s collar. With a yank, he heaved the body out of the small pool where it had caught, stopping its downstream progress. Slocum rolled the body over. His nose wrinkled at the stench. He had seen worse during the War, but bloated bodies got that way not because they soaked up water but from the noxious gases that formed the longer the body was dead.

  Slipping out the thick-bladed knife he carried in a boot sheath, Slocum stabbed out and cut open the belly. He reeled back as the gases billowed up. He had a strong gut, but the smell almost made him lose what little he had eaten at breakfast. It took several thrusts into the mud to clean off his knife before returning it to the sheath. Nose twitching and eyes watering, he bent and searched the body for some way of identifying it.

  And truth to tell, a few dollars slipped into a pocket would go a ways toward making his life a mite easier. He had been over in Cheyenne and had a run of bad luck at five-card stud. Although it might have been a couple cowboys working in tandem to cheat him, he thought it more likely that Lady Luck had simply turned her back on him. Slocum had long since learned to walk away while he had a few dollars left, but he hadn’t gotten far. The pretty faro dealer whose dress barely restrained her ample charms had beguiled him right out of every nickel he had.

  That had been a week earlier. He had ridden due west into the Grand Tetons, staring at the rising mountains and remembering the swell of that faro dealer’s breasts with every mile. The early explorers had a wicked sense of humor when they had named these mountains.

  He had skirted a dozen ranches, not wanting to remain in Wyoming longer than necessary by running afoul of overly protective cowboys. Years earlier he had spent a winter holed up on the Wyoming plains, one blizzard hardly dying when another came. Trying to escape the fierce weather had entered his mind, but the small cabin where he huddled afforded some protection against the fourteen-foot drifts.

  How he had greeted the spring that year was something of a blur, but Slocum vowed never to spend another winter in Wyoming. If he could get across the Grand Tetons and then the Sierra Nevadas, he might reach California before the first real snowfall. He brushed off water from his arms, aware of how cold it felt. He would have to hurry.
That first snow might only be weeks away.

  Staring at the grotesque, bloated body, he considered what he ought to do. Kicking the body back into the river was the easiest thing. But burial was what he ought to do. He rubbed his hands against his jeans as he considered what might have happened. The dead man might have been shot. His flesh was in such a bad way that such a wound would never be found—and Slocum wasn’t about to look too closely.

  The churning river had battered the face and arms to the point where any other cause of death was similarly impossible to determine. For all he knew, the man had died of cholera and had fallen into the water. That thought recommended simply kicking the corpse back to its watery grave and riding on.

  Then he saw the second body, turning and rolling in the river. This one was farther out and didn’t wash up close to him. From his quick glimpse, that body didn’t have a gun belt strapped around its middle either. Slocum put his toe under the body and kicked hard, getting the corpse back into the river. For a moment it hung up on a rock, then part of a sleeve tore off along with gobbets of flesh and the body was caught by the strong current and joined its companion.

  He scooped up his canteen and finished filling it. Slocum stared at the canteen a moment, then turned it upside down and let the water drain out. Waiting a few seconds so the water would run clean and free of the detritus from the bodies, he filled the canteen again and slung it over his shoulder by the leather strap. He paused as he looked downstream, thinking he might catch sight of the bodies. The river had swallowed them totally.

  Slocum looked up into the pass. Whatever had happened to those men had occurred uphill. He was riding straight into a plague or a gunfight that had sent two men to their fate. From what he remembered, this was the only pass through the Grand Tetons for miles in either direction and another way across to the west would take him a precious week to find.

  He touched the ebony handle of his six-shooter, then turned and mounted the paint gelding he had won in a poker game down in Denver. The horse had been his constant companion for better than three weeks now and they got along together well enough.

  “Ready to start up the trail? It’s mighty steep,” Slocum said. The horse turned a big brown eye in his direction, accusing him of vile acts yet to be committed in the name of getting to California. Slocum swung into the saddle and snapped the reins. The paint reluctantly found its way up the steep rocky trail. Slocum patted its neck and settled into the uneven pace, drifting off into a half-dozing state in the warm sunlight. The rushing water to his right was soothing—until a loud thud brought him fully awake. His hand flew to his six-shooter, then he drew rein and stared.

  Another body was being smashed against the rocks by the churning river. Then it vanished downstream, disappearing as suddenly as it had appeared. Slocum frowned. One or even two bodies were curious, but a third one? Something was seriously wrong upstream.

  Before he could decide whether to turn around and find that other pass through the Grand Tetons, he caught a flash of sunlight off silver ahead. The way the trail meandered about, going away from the river and into rocky areas, sometimes into small stands of trees, and then back out into open straits, he wasn’t sure how far ahead the rider was.

  He cocked his head to one side and tried to hear the creak of a leather harness or the neighing of a horse. The river drowned out any such noise. Three bodies and one pilgrim not that far ahead on the trail. Slocum’s curiosity got the better of him, and he urged the paint upward along the trail. It occurred to him that the rider higher up on the slope would draw any trouble down on his head like lightning, giving Slocum the chance to figure out what was going on.

  Three bodies? There could well be more he hadn’t seen.

  He wanted to make sure his own wasn’t added to the flotilla bounding down the river.

  Again he caught the reflection of sunlight off what must be a silver concha decorating a hat. Slocum pushed a little harder to close the distance, aware of the weight of iron at his left hip and the Winchester rubbing against his right knee. Coming out of a small stand of oak mixed with birch and the occasional aspen, he halted again, this time in surprise. Stretching for a quarter mile was an impeccably maintained road that led to a large wooden gate. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to erect both the gate and the rock wall on either side of it, stretching from one canyon wall to the other.

  The rider wearing the fancy silver pieces on his hat trotted up to the gate and shouted to a guard stationed inside a tower. Slocum reached back into his saddlebags and drew out his field glasses. The structure was well built and might withstand the attack of an entire company of cavalry. The guard on the tower had loopholes on either side, both with rifles poking out. Whether they had men’s shoulders behind the stocks and fingers on the triggers wasn’t something Slocum wanted to discover.

  The guard stuck his head out of a wider window and called down to the rider.

  “You Lasker?”

  Slocum couldn’t hear the muffled reply, but the guard’s head disappeared and less than a minute later a grinding sound of a heavy wooden bar being withdrawn echoed down the canyon and the gate swung open. The rider—Lasker?—trotted through. Putting away his field glasses, Slocum considered the procedure. Pretending to be someone he wasn’t seemed a good prescription for getting filled full of holes.

  The thought of the bodies going downstream kept coming back to haunt him. The prudent thing to do was turn around and to hell with the time it’d take finding another pass.

  “You ride on over to the gate,” came the cold command. Slocum glanced over his shoulder at a man on foot with a rifle trained on him. “You got three seconds to start ridin’. One, two, three.”

  “All right,” Slocum said, holding his hands out. “No need to get all itchy in the trigger finger.” He used his knees to get his paint pony started toward the gate, once more securely fastened.

  He glanced behind him for the gunman, but there was no trace of him. He had faded back into the countryside, telling Slocum more than the gate and wall protected this road. For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what was so valuable that a small army guarded the pass like this.

  “Hold up, mister,” came the cry from the tower. The rifles in the loopholes swiveled about in a manner that caused Slocum to sit a little straighter. A sharpshooter lurked behind each of the weapons; they weren’t just propped up for show.

  “What’s all this about?” Slocum called.

  “Toll road,” came the immediate answer. “You got ten dollars, you can pass on through.”

  “Ten dollars is mighty steep just to ride through a pass nature carved out for nothing.” Slocum looked around to see what his chances might be. They didn’t look good. There was another guard tower, this one plated in what might be iron originally intended for a locomotive boiler. To shoot through that would take a mountain howitzer. More than a toll road, this was a fortress.

  “That’s the cost of passage. Take it or leave it.”

  “How far through the pass?”

  “To Thompson.”

  “That the nearest town?” Slocum shouted. He was getting tired of the long-distance parley.

  “Nearest town on the far side of the pass. The ten dollars entitles you to ride on through, spend some time in Top of the World, and get a free drink at the saloon.”

  “Which saloon?” Slocum asked, stalling for time. He thought he saw a weakness in the wall. Critters had burrowed at the base and others had gnawed the wood. Pulling away three or four of the logs in the palisade would let his horse squeeze through. If hungry animals had begun the job for him, so much the better. From what he could tell, that part of the fence was hidden from both towers because of the way it curved back toward the distant canyon wall.

  “Only one. Look, mister, I ain’t got all day. You gonna pay or you gonna ride on back down the hill?”

  “Ten dollars is mighty steep,” Slocum said. “’Less you loaned me that much, there’s no way in hell I’m pa
ying the entry price.”

  “You got that right. There’s no way in hell you’re gettin’ through without payin’. Turn on around and skedaddle.”

  Slocum started to ask about the bodies caught on the river current, then realized how vulnerable he was. Each rifle barrel had trained on him. One sneeze, one vicious thought, one man bored out of his mind and wanting to see something die, and he would be filled with slugs. It was bad enough knowing he had to expose his back when he rode away.

  “See you in hell,” he called.

  “Not me,” laughed the sentry. “I’m on the side of the angels and the emperor!”

  Slocum had no idea what that meant but knew he had overstayed his welcome, such as it was.

  It felt as if a million bugs crawled up and down his spine as he rode off. He held his breath waiting for a bullet to come sailing his way, but he reached the edge of the improved section of road without mishap. He looked around for the gunman who had gotten the drop on him but saw no trace. Slocum wondered if he had imagined the man until he saw fresh tracks leading away from the road. A quick look in that direction revealed where the guard squatted down, clutching his rifle, partially hidden by scrubby bushes.

  Slocum rode on, as if he hadn’t spotted the guard. Whatever lay behind the gate—the guard had called it Top of the World—had to be powerful important for this kind of protecting.

  A mile down the road, he turned off and went to the raging river. At this point it tumbled in a quick succession of rapids. He almost expected to see another body, but the sight of fish jumping, trying to get up the river, the spray catching the last light of day and forming rainbows—it all seemed so tranquil, so normal.