Slocum and the Snake-Pit Slavers Read online

  Nice Work If You Can Get It . . .

  “The Pit is the spot where we work. Long time ago some old fool prospector discovered gold down there and now it’s a full-bore mine,” said Eli.

  “Filled with, let me guess, slaves doing the digging,” said Slocum.

  “Yeah, you’re a sharp knife, all right.”

  Knife, thought Slocum. They must have hit me hard, or I would have remembered my boot knife before now. He tried to work his bound hands down closer to his boots, with no such luck in sight. “So they tell me. Why is it called the Pit?”

  “’Cause that’s what it is—a big pit with tunnels shooting off of it. But there’s two problems with it: One, it’s a ravine, a canyon with no way out.”

  “If there’s a way in,” said Slocum, who finally managed to heave himself upright and lean against the wall of the darkened room, “then there’s a way out.”

  “It ain’t that easy,” said Eli. “But you’ll see soon enough.”

  Slocum breathed deeply, trying to gather his fuzzy wits. “You mentioned two problems. What’s the second?”

  “Oh yeah, the Pit? It’s filled with rattlesnakes.”

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  SLOCUM AND THE SNAKE-PIT SLAVERS

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2013 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.

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  ISBN: 978-1-101-62386-2

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Jove mass-market edition / June 2013

  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. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Contents

  MORE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  1

  “Who are you?”

  John Slocum spun at the sound, trough water running off his face, dripping from his hair. He sluiced the water from his eyes with one hand as he snatched his Colt Navy from its holster with the other.

  There before him stood an old scowling Mexican. He wore shapeless peasant trousers and a shirt that had once been white, cinched in the middle by a frayed woven belt of brown hemp, knotted double in the middle, harnessing a too-thin waist. But it was the business end of the double-bore shotgun that got Slocum’s attention.

  “Wasn’t sure anybody was around here. Seemed almost abandoned.”

  The man’s scowl didn’t flinch; neither did the gun. His eyes were shaded by the tatty brim of an old palm sombrero.

  Slocum wasn’t about to lower his Colt, even if he could only see out of one eye, the other still stinging with sweat and running with the tepid water he’d scooped on himself from the trough.

  “I came by this way looking for Marybeth Meecher. She used to run this roadhouse. She around?” He didn’t think she was any longer, judging by the run-down condition of the place, but it had suddenly become important to him to get some sort of answer out of this scowling fellow. Still no response.

  Slocum ground his teeth. Curse me for a fool for letting the heat get the better of my senses. Beside him the Appaloosa kept on drinking. You’d think they’d been a week adrift in the Sonora Desert and not ranging wide and free in the high mountains of Wyoming Territory.

  “You going to shoot me or just try to kill me with that hard stare?”

  “You got no business here.”

  “And you do?” Something about the man, maybe an edge of fear in his voice, told Slocum any danger he thought he might be in was now winking out like a blown candle. He slowly holstered his pistol, not taking his eyes off the Mexican for a second. He wasn’t mistaken when he saw relief play over the dark man’s cragged features.

  “You aren’t supposed to be here.”

  “I could say the same thing to you,” said Slocum, settling his sweat-stained hat back on his head, tugging the brim low. “Except I don’t know just where here is anymore.”

  The Mexican tried to resurrect his scowl, but evidently decided that Slocum looked harmless. “You talk funny, mister.”

  The old man lowered the shotgun, but Slocum noticed that the man kept his callused fingers
cradling tight to the worn butternut stock of the well-tended weapon.

  “Again, I could say the same thing, but what would the point be?” Slocum tugged the bandanna from his back pocket and finished drying his face. “What I meant is . . . what happened to this place? It sure has changed since the last time I was through here a couple of years back.”

  “You been here?” The man squinted, leaned forward, studying Slocum’s face. “Yes, yes, I remember you now.”

  “You remember me?” Slocum cocked his head. “Funny, your face doesn’t look familiar to me.”

  “You were here almost three years ago.”

  “Yeah, could well be three, now that you mention it. But when I was here, this place was in better shape.” Slocum nodded toward the low building before him, its boards popped and gray with weather and age, tumbleweeds choking the corral. “What happened here? This place was run by the nice young woman I mentioned before, Miss Marybeth Meecher.”

  “Sí, she was good to me—like family.” The man let the shotgun slump all the way now, his forearms corded by its heavy weight.

  “What do you mean, ‘was’?”

  The creases of the man’s lined face deepened further. “Some people, local Indians, they come three months ago, and they and Miss Meecher, they talk long into the night.”

  “What were they talking about?”

  “About the men from the ranch. Only they don’t deserve to be talked about with the same mouth as Miss Meecher. She was good to me.”

  “I see, yeah. We’ve been down that path already. Is Miss Meecher safe? What, exactly, are you trying to tell me?”

  The swarthy man sighed. “They are not good men. But Miss Meecher . . . she is away just now. She will be back one day soon.”

  “Great. Now that we’ve established that there are bad men about and Miss Meecher is the salt of the earth and she’s gone missing, I should ask you one thing.”

  “Sí?”

  Slocum mounted his horse and toed his right boot into the stirrup. “What am I still doing talking to you?”

  “Que?”

  “Miss Meecher was, is, a friend of mine. If you can’t tell me what has happened to her, then I’ll find someone who can. Maybe north of here. I have a job waiting for me up in the Absarokas anyway, and if I don’t get there soon, I’m sunk before I float. So if you’ll excuse me, you’re just going to have to tend to things here without a new conversation partner.” He touched his hat brim and angled the Appaloosa between the staring man and the water trough. “Maybe a stage will come along. Who knows? You might find a few eager ears on it.”

  Slocum tapped spur to the Appaloosa’s belly and cantered northward up the dusty lane. He was half tempted to look back, knowing what he’d see—the old Mexican standing there before the ill-kept way station, shotgun drooped, that sagged, hangdog look on his face. The man had seemed as if he’d been playing hard at the game of life for a long, long time and had only recently realized he’d been beat at it years before, just hadn’t known it.

  Slocum almost made it to the near bend in the lane when the man’s voice reached him: “Hey! You headed to the Triple T Ranch, no?”

  Slocum closed his eyes and sighed, then reined up. How in the hell did this man know where he was headed? All he’d told him was that he had a job at a ranch in the Absarokas. The last time he’d been up that way, there were several ranches in that region.

  He sighed again for good measure and guided the horse around, then sat there staring at the man. Yep, looked just about like he’d expected him to. Still sagged. But dammit if the old coot didn’t have a smile on his face. “Just how in the hell did you know that?” shouted Slocum.

  “Ah, Miguel always knows things. Sometimes they are useful things, sometimes not. But this time, I figure this is a useful thing, no?”

  “No.” Slocum shook his head. “I doubt that your guess is much of a useful thing at all.”

  “But you are not looking for work at the Triple T Ranch?”

  “Maybe . . .”

  “Well, you won’t find it there, mister. At least not good work.”

  Slocum sighed again. It seemed like the right thing to do.

  He swung the Appaloosa around and made his way back to the little Mexican. As he did, he swore he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, just inside the curtained window of the front room of the place. “Where did you say Miss Meecher was anyway?”

  “I didn’t say.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know. But she’ll be back soon.”

  “Well now, how do you know that if you don’t know where she went?”

  “I just know, that’s all.”

  “How long ago did she leave?”

  The man shrugged. An exasperated growl came from the dark building behind him. The Mexican’s face tensed and he stared hard at Slocum, but he didn’t turn around.

  “What was that? You keeping pigs in there?”

  “What? No, no. No pigs in the house.”

  “Because it sure sounded like a pig or some sort of rooting beast in there.”

  Before the old man could protest further, the slab-wood door burst open and banged back on its strap-leather hinges. A barefoot young woman stepped out, rage sparking her wide, almond-shaped eyes. Her long, raven hair, blue-black and glinting in the afternoon sun, swung free about her shoulders. Her full red lips were pulled into a hard line, and her delicate nostrils flexed in anger.

  She was dressed in a long flowered skirt, well worn but clean and in good repair. Her once-red shirt wrapped about her lithe form as bark clings to a wiry sapling. Her full breasts bore out the fact that this demure dynamo was closer to a woman than a girl.

  Slocum took in all this with a quick glance, but had time for little more because the old Mexican spun on her, pointing back toward the house and unleashing a flurry of stinging words in the fastest Mexican lingo Slocum had ever heard. The girl was having none of it, however, and stalked around him. As she stomped closer to Slocum, her breasts bounced with each step, and Slocum found himself momentarily transfixed.

  “Ma’am.” He touched his hat.

  “Pig, is it? Pig? You call me a pig?”

  “I did no such thing.” He dismounted and poked his hat brim, tipping the hat back on his head. This day was getting more interesting by the second.

  “But I did happen to notice someone—or some thing in the house. Thought I might try to lure it out.”

  She stopped before him, hands on her hips, her ample chest heaving.

  “And it worked,” he said, smiling. His smile had just reached full width when her right hand lashed upward and caught him full on his left cheek. It stung but not enough to wipe the smile from his face. She gritted her perfect white teeth and lashed upward again. This time he caught her wrist and she growled in renewed anger.

  “I’ll thank you kindly not to strike me, ma’am. Not at least until we’ve hand a chance to become better acquainted.”

  “Tita, please. This is no way to treat a stranger.” The old man looked at Slocum. “Besides, I think”—he looked toward his worn boots—“I think he is a good man, no?” He looked back at Slocum hopefully.

  The girl relaxed in Slocum’s grip.

  “I’d like to think I’m a . . . good man,” he said, his smile leveling out to a serious gaze. “Now, want to tell me what this is all about?”

  The girl still looked as if she wanted to peel Slocum’s head off and stomp it in the dirt like a rotten tomatillo. But there was something else there, too—a hint of a smile, perhaps, around those dark, devilish eyes.

  “Come in,” said the old man. “We can at least prepare a meal for you. We were about to eat, so it is only right that we break bread with a traveler. Especially one who was a friend of Miss Meecher. I recognized you the minute I saw your horse. You are the same m
an who stayed for a long visit several years back. Then when you left, I never saw Miss Meecher so . . . happy and sad all at the same time. Yes, I know you.” The old man turned and led the way into the long, low, sod-roofed building.

  Slocum slung the Appaloosa’s reins around the hitching rail, ignored the horse’s whicker of annoyance, and waited for the girl to precede him. She still glared at him, then turned, sweeping her skirts upward in a bold spin, and strode into the house before him. He couldn’t help watching her as she headed in. And he had to admit, he had suddenly built up a hunger that he hoped would soon be satisfied, one way or another.

  2

  Slocum let his eyes adjust to the cooler, darker interior of the long, low front room of the roadhouse. He couldn’t be sure, but he’d swear that much of the décor, if not all, was nearly the same as when he’d been through nearly three years before.

  He’d been on a high-country manhunt back then, and had managed to track the bleeding fugitive to a cave where he’d holed up in the high rocks above Miss Meecher’s place. Slocum and Marybeth had become acquainted then, both before and after he had managed to disarm and drag the outlaw down from the hills.

  She had obligingly doctored the man’s putrefying flesh wound. Later, Slocum had turned the man over to the nearest authority, a marshal down in Minton, and collected the bounty. Then he’d headed back north to Marybeth Meecher’s roadhouse to try to repay her previous kindness in assisting with the fugitive.

  He’d stayed on for a few months, gathering and chopping wood for the coming winter, repairing the ramshackle corral and sprung boards, and patching the leaking roofing on the house. All the while, she had made hospitality her number one priority. Rarely in his life had he ever been treated so well by a woman, nor so selflessly. Marybeth had wanted nothing from him, had seemed perfectly happy with him and with her lot in life.

  She had an endearing, if a little worrisome, habit, as he recalled. She would drop whatever it was she was doing in order to help anyone who looked as though they required a leg up and over whatever it was they were struggling with. In his time there, she had boarded a couple of Crow Indian women from north of there who’d been abused somehow. And there had been that itinerant snake-oil salesman who had seemed entirely out of his element in the mountainous West. Slocum also remembered there being a quiet old Mexican man who lived in the barn and helped out with the place. Odd that he hadn’t recognized the man right away.