Slocum and the Meddler Read online

  No Rest for the Weary

  Somebody had told the merchant that Slocum had killed Michael Holman, giving a precise description. Something burning in his gut told him it was the same person who had shot down Macauley after sending him on an enraged mission to kill the man who was ready to run off with his wife.

  “Your face changed,” Angelina said in a small voice. “What does that mean? What are you going to do?”

  “Help you,” he said. “Whoever killed your husband likely has it in for me and is spreading rumors that I’m responsible.”

  “So, find who is saying all those terrible things and that’s who killed Michael?”

  Slocum couldn’t say. Who died after a boulder was pushed down a hill toward a town couldn’t be determined. The boulder did the killing, but it would never have started rolling if someone hadn’t tipped it on its way. Slocum suspected he had to find the man with the lever rather than those with the smoking pistols.

  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.

  JAKE LOGAN

  SLOCUM

  AND THE

  MEDDLER

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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 MEDDLER

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / May 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Cover illustration by Sergio Giovine.

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  ISBN: 978-1-101-58049-3

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  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  Table of Contents

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  Slocum and the Canyon Courtesans

  1

  John Slocum moaned in his sleep, turned on his side, and tried to shut out the noise from down the street by putting his arm over his ear. The hotel was worse than sleeping in the livery stable in a stall next to his horse. He knew the horse’s night sounds and slept through them on the trail. But in Abilene, every drunk cowboy from miles around had come to town this Saturday night intent on whooping it up.

  Uproarious laughter followed a single gunshot. He thought he heard the shouted desire to buy everyone a drink. For two cents, he would leave his nice soft bed and go get the whiskey, then strangle the cowboy who had disturbed him.

  Rolling to his other side, he heard even more noise. This came from the lobby below. Getting a room on the second floor hadn’t dampened any of the noise that he had expected in this Texas cattle town.

  Then the door to his room burst open. The doorjamb flew into splinters and the glass doorknob hit the back wall so hard it exploded like a small bomb.

  “You son of a bitch!” The hoarse voice was accompanied by a sound Slocum only half heard in his sleepy daze—but it was one he reacted to instantly. He jerked hard and rolled off the bed just as the hammer of the cocked six-shooter crashed down. The echo of the metallic click was drowned out by the gunshot’s sharp report and the sound of the pitcher on the night stand blasting apart into a million sharp fragments.

  Slocum kept rolling, groped about, and found the thunder mug. It sloshed as he backhanded it through the air to smash into the cowboy’s chest. A second shot went wild as the gunman stumbled backward to crash into the opposite hall wall.

  Wasting no time, Slocum kept rolling, came up, and grabbed for his six-shooter in the holster hanging at the foot of the bed. He slipped in the slop from the chamber pot and flopped facedown. A third shot rang out, and he was sure he was a goner.

  But no pain drove through him. He skidded around and finally came to his knees, pistol thrust out in front of him, and pointed in the direction of the door. His target
had vanished. Then he lowered his gaze and saw the man lying in a boneless pile in the hall.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on? You drop that iron, mister, you drop it, or I swear, you’re a dead man!”

  Slocum looked away from the corpse and saw another man in the hall, this one with a sawed-off shotgun leveled at him. There wasn’t any way he could get off a shot and not die, blasted into bloody chunks as the man’s finger jerked back on the double triggers.

  “Drop it, you no account! I’m Marshal Wilson and you’re one sorry, dead ass if you don’t drop it!”

  Slocum heard the hysteria in the lawman’s voice. To resist would be to die. Even if he did as he was ordered, he might get shot out of panic and fear. He saw no hope shooting it out, and only a small chance to live if he put down his Colt Navy.

  “I’m laying it on the floor,” Slocum called, loud enough to cut through the marshal’s panic. “No need to get antsy with that scattergun.”

  “Y-You slide on back, away from the gun.”

  Slocum did as he was ordered. The marshal stepped forward, lost his footing in the shit on the floor, and sat down hard. For an instant Slocum thought he was a goner. The marshal discharged one barrel, but his precipitous fall had caused the sawed-off shotgun to point toward the bed. Instead of Slocum’s brains blown everywhere, the feather pillow exploded and sent a cascade of white fluff floating in the air.

  “Stay, you stay put! You f-freeze!”

  Slocum didn’t move a muscle. In spite of the danger that remained—a single barrel at this range would cut him in half—he couldn’t help grinning at the sight of the marshal all covered in brown slop and floundering about as if he were trying to ice-skate for the first time. When the lawman tried to stand and fell back, Slocum burst out laughing.

  “You need a hand, Marshal?”

  Wilson used the wall to steady himself as he got to his feet.

  “Not from the likes of you.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You’re under arrest!”

  “What for?” Slocum’s laughter turned to cold anger. “He kicked in my door and tried to gun me down in my sleep.”

  “You murdered him!”

  Before Slocum could say another word, the marshal grabbed the Colt Navy off the floor and shoved it into its holster, then slung the gun belt over his shoulder. Motioning with the short-barreled shotgun, he indicated that Slocum was to precede him from the room. He bent to put on his boots but the marshal stopped him.

  “J-Just the way you are. To jail! N-Now!”

  The panic was returning, warning Slocum not to push the man any further. Dressed only in his long johns, he went barefoot down the stairs. A dozen men had gathered in the lobby to silently watch the spectacle.

  “Hands in the air!” the marshal barked. He played to the citizens of Abilene now, more sure of himself. And that made Slocum even less sure what was going on.

  Outside they were greeted with jeers, as many directed toward the marshal as at Slocum.

  “Shitty job, ain’t it, Willie? You sorry you left the range fer this?”

  The comment provoked laughter and even more ribald jokes from the cowboys at the marshal’s expense, but Slocum was aware of the undercurrent of whispering as marshal and prisoner paraded through the town. It was as if an invisible telegraph line told everyone what had happened. More cowboys poured from the saloons. Some threw rocks. Others spat. Slocum had the feeling the contempt for the marshal had changed to hatred for his prisoner.

  What had he done? There hadn’t been a chance to even defend himself against a murderous sneak attack.

  He walked down the middle of the street, fights in saloons on either side of the street ignored by the lawman in his single-minded march of his prisoner to the jail down a side street on the east side of town.

  “Get your ass inside,” Wilson said, shoving Slocum. He jerked back and hefted the shotgun when he saw the look on Slocum’s face. Eyes colder and harder than emeralds warned the marshal he had overstepped his bounds. He might hold the shotgun but Slocum wasn’t the sort to push around. “In,” the marshal said in a less assured tone.

  The jail was larger than most Slocum had seen. It made sense that a town like Abilene would require enough cells to load up with drunks. Four of the six cells were already filled. One held a solitary prisoner, and Slocum was put into the remaining cage by himself.

  “You somethin’ special gettin’ yer very own cell while the rest of us gotta bunk together?” called a drunk from the cell across the small corridor. Then he held his nose and turned away. “Reckon Willie’s doin’ us a favor, puttin’ that one all by his lonesome.”

  This caused a new round of jokes.

  The man in the other solitary cell joined in. “You caught robbin’ an outhouse?”

  “Falling into an outhouse’d be an improvement to being in Abilene,” Slocum said. He dropped onto the hard bunk and considered stripping off his long johns. Sitting naked couldn’t cause any more derision than he was getting, but the drunken cowboys and their jokes didn’t mean anything to him compared to figuring out what was going on. He had been sleeping, poorly to be sure, but minding his own business, and he hadn’t even gone to a cathouse to find a female companion. It might have been better if he had.

  “You hush up,” the marshal called. He dropped Slocum’s six-shooter on the desk and then collapsed tiredly into his desk chair. “I got you dead to rights. You shot Macauley in the back.”

  “Mac? This son of a bitch shot Mac?” This caused the other cowboys to come out of their whiskey stupors and rattle the bars, wanting to get at Slocum. Macauley must have been popular.

  Slocum wondered what it would take to kill the lot of them. The way he felt right now, he could take them all with his bare hands, one by one or all at once.

  “I don’t want no more noise out of any of you, Seth. Mac might have been your friend, but this varmint gets a fair trial. That’s what the law says, at any rate.”

  Marshal Wilson ran his fingers over the ebony handle of Slocum’s Colt Navy, then couldn’t help himself. He drew the weapon and held it up, aimed it at Slocum, and mouthed a silent bang!

  Then he frowned, lowered the six-gun, and took a whiff of the muzzle. Frowning harder, he broke it open and looked at the six loaded chambers. Still not satisfied, he swung around and peered down the barrel at a bright flame in the coal oil lamp. Only then did he put the gun onto his desk and speak.

  “I’ll be hornswoggled. This gun ain’t been fired.”

  “Hard to shoot a man when the gun’s not been fired, isn’t it, Marshal?” Slocum tried not to hope the lawman would realize what all this meant about his innocence, but the spark burned nevertheless. Proof was proof.

  “Then who shot Macauley?”

  “You’re the law. Your job’s to find out.”

  “I got to be sure.” Marshal Wilson got to his feet, looked uncertainly at Slocum, then left. The other prisoners kept up their jeers, but Slocum settled down. The lawman was on the right trail. All he had to do was follow it to find who had really shot Macauley.

  Marshal Wilson returned in about an hour, shaking his head.

  “I’m lettin’ you go,” he told Slocum, working the key in the cell lock. The metallic click could hardly be heard over the protests from the others in the jail.

  “You boys shut up and listen. This man’s gun wasn’t fired, but Mac took one in the back. Somebody outside the room shot him. Since this varmint’s gun ain’t been fired and he was in the room, that means he’s not the killer.”

  The door swung open on well-oiled hinges, and Slocum wasted no time leaving. He had been in his share of cells and hated being locked up.

  “Who killed him?” Slocum asked bluntly.

  “Don’t know. Doc Dawes confirmed what I had seen. Macauley was shot in the back, maybe from some distance away. From what I can reckon, the killer was at the far end of the hallway, then ducked down the back stairs.”

  “Maybe it was some
body down in the lobby. That was quite a crowd.”

  “They all came with me.”

  Slocum picked up his six-shooter. Wilson tensed but said nothing as Slocum strapped it around his waist. He knew he looked silly wearing a gun belt over his long johns, but he didn’t care. Any man mouthing off was likely to get filled with lead—and this attitude showed plainly in his demeanor.

  Slocum started to leave, then stopped and asked, “Why’d you go to the hotel at all?”

  “Heard that Mac was on the warpath, goin’ after a man who’d had his way with his wife. Damn, I got to tell Martha her husband’s dead. Everyone figgered he’d die on the range, during a trail drive or maybe bit by a rattler. You know, the usual ways. He was a mellow sort. Dyin’ in a gunfight wasn’t ever thought of as a way of cashin’ in his chips.”

  “Who told you Macauley was after me?”

  “Not after you, not you in particular. Just somebody, like I said.” Wilson looked uneasy to repeat that the cowboy thought his wife was cheating on him. There wasn’t much easy for the marshal in this town.

  “So he wasn’t just drunk and looking to shoot somebody?” Slocum had already gotten that much out of what the man said after he kicked in the door. “Why’d he single out me? Or did he get the wrong room?”

  “Could have, but Mac could read and cipher. His ma taught him as a wee one so he could read Scripture from the age of six. Think she intended for him to be a preacher.”

  “He’s gone to meet his maker,” Slocum said. “I intend to find out why.”

  “Now, don’t you go rilin’ them boys up. They were all friends of his.”

  “Then they’ll be inclined to help me find who gunned him down. It sounds like an ambush to me. Doesn’t it to you, Marshal?”

  “A-Ambush?”

  “Somebody told him his wife’s lover was in that room and didn’t much care who was there because he was waiting at the far end of the hall to cut Macauley down.”

  “Who’d do a thing like that?” Wilson frowned.

  Slocum didn’t bother pointing out that this was the lawman’s job to figure out. He left a quiet jailhouse. The sobering cowboys had heard everything. At least the men in the calaboose knew he wasn’t the man who had killed their friend.