Slocum and the Rebel Canyon Raiders Read online

  Release of the Wild

  “Nooo!” he heard Julep shout, then screams of rage from the woman echoed at him while he gained his feet. Slocum ran toward the struggling pair, a welter of flailing legs, dust, grunting, and screaming. They were too intertwined for him to shoot safely, so he jammed the Navy into his holster and dove onto what looked like the back of a young Apache.

  Immediately the man bucked like a bronco and his sweaty skin proved tough to hang on to, but Slocum managed to slip an arm around the brute’s neck. Biting teeth and the clawing fingers of one hand lashed at him, stinging and drawing blood. Slocum felt it well on his skin, and it ignited a dormant urge to shake off the binding wraps of infirmity that had tightened about him for weeks since his unexpected drop into the canyon.

  With a mighty bellow of rage, Slocum yanked hard backward, felt things inside the young man’s neck tightening, then slowly giving way to his crushing choke hold.

  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) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  SLOCUM AND THE REBEL CANYON RAIDERS

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2014 by Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for having an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

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

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

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-0-515-15440-5

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-63504-9

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Jove mass-market edition / May 2014

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  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.

  Version_1

  Contents

  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

  1

  Slocum felt the hot breath on his face before he opened his eyes. Even in his half sleep, he knew that while there was potential danger, there was also ample reward. And as he lazily raised his eyelids, like a sun-baked Gila monster disturbed by a redtailed hawk’s shadow, Slocum felt the grip of the savage young thing’s bold, firm hand tightening on him, none too gently, willing him to life.

  Raw, new sunlight squinted Slocum’s eyes and hazed a blazing silhouette around the dark girl’s head, not unlike a halo, though this she-devil, he knew, was anything but holy. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he made out the sharp features of her face—the long, slender nose ending in a near-point, nostrils flared proudly at the base.

  Her eyes were as dark as her hair—inkwell black with a far-off glinting, like the promise of a diamond, in the center of each. The full bottom lip, firm and sensual, was topped with a thin lip curving into a sneer of disdain and temptation all at once. She had worn that same look when she’d gotten the drop on him, bold as brass, the evening before.

  He figured she had to have been watching him, waiting him out. He’d not heard nor felt a thing that might have warned him he was not as alone at the little oasis as he thought he had been. It wasn’t until he’d picketed the Appaloosa and shucked his trail-dusted duds that he’d sunk into the hot spring.

  He’d kept his Colt Navy close at hand, but the bone-deep soaking heat had put him off his guard. He must have dozed—completely unlike him, especially him being a wanted man and all, cursed to ride the trails of the West, always with one long eye cast over his shoulder at his back trail, lest he should spy a law dog drawing close, waving a six-gun in one hand and a paper on him in the other. All for a self-defense shooting. But the man had been a judge, and Slocum had been a young, impetuous ex-soldier, unable to see past the theft of his family’s farm in Calhoun County, Georgia.

  Since then he’d been on the run, hoping that with every passing day he’d be forgotten by the law and left to live on his own, free of their watchful ways. But he didn’t believe for one minute that would ever happen. So he led a cautious life, yet not so much so that he denied himself certain pleasures as they occurred. And there had been a few over the years. Few as zesty, however, as this Apache woman’s bold ways.

  He remembered the savage attack he’d endured the night before at her hands—and mouth. The slender young thing was anything but frail, though. She’d unleashed what seemed to him a lifetime of pent-up desire in a single, hour-long flurry of biting, thrashing, growling, pinching, and slamming that left Slocum nearly as worn out as if he’d spent two months riding drag on a trail drive to hell. Nearly.

  Fortunately he was no stranger to giving as good as he got. And that was just what he did, matching her ministrations growl for growl, buck for buck, until they literally collaps
ed and fell apart, beyond breathless, so slick with a sheen of sweat they’d slid from each other like two halves of a length of seasoned, ax-split firewood.

  And now here she was again, barely light out, and gripping him as if what he knew was about to happen didn’t happen soon, she might just up and die on him. She didn’t speak just yet, merely grunted, and with surprisingly firm hands, she jerked him sideways with one hand while the other, firm but smooth and experienced, worked him harder. That finally cleared away the last of the cobwebs of sleep from his mind. He returned the sneer and grunts, and with a quick movement, he spun her onto her naked back and plunged in for a good-morning gallop.

  They’d begun to build up a long, slow head of steam, apparently just the way the girl liked it, for her sneer turned to a wide, lioness smile. She let her head drop back to the blanket and flop to one side, satisfaction threatening to make her really smile as Slocum tickled her depths. Her eyelids were the ones now to flutter, barely opening, as soft grunts rose up from her mouth.

  Slocum rode her long, slow, and hard, her hips bookending his, her heels bouncing out of time against his lower back. Something about this young woman intrigued him so. He couldn’t keep his eyes closed, couldn’t look away from her face. And as he worked and watched her, those dark eyes snapped open wide. And with them, her slow gyrations and deep-throated purrings ceased.

  He’d heard it, too. Sounded to him like a far-off coyote bark. But not to her.

  The she-lion smile was gone, her gaze alert, yet focused on nothing, her body had stilled and gone rigid. He knew the signs of warning, of imminent danger, had seen them often in wild beasts. He, too, had developed a second skin of sense since taking to the trail years before.

  And Slocum, too, now felt the inexplicable tingling that always began far back in his head and seemed to spread throughout his body within seconds. Something was not right. It bothered him not a little that she had sensed it before him, but he knew that as a full-blood Apache, she was far more in touch with her natural surroundings than he ever could be.

  He knew enough about Apache to know that when in their country, a coyote that was not a coyote was most likely an Apache. Slocum and the woman slid apart once more, this time soundlessly, and as Slocum crawled a hand toward his holster, he saw the woman slip a stag-handled dagger from the small pile of doeskin that was her dress. At that moment, they caught each other’s eye. She raised a finger to her lips in warning, then cut her eyes northward, beyond the rise that shielded their little oasis from approach. As he rose to his knees, she leaned close and whispered in his ear, “Far off still, you go. I will stay.”

  Slocum shook his head. “No, no way, Princess. I’m not about to leave you here alone. Not when I can protect you.”

  “From what?” she said, canting her head to the side. Then she did something that surprised him. She smiled and winked. “The chief is . . . my father.” Again, she smiled a mischievous grin.

  Slocum muttered, “Oh boy.”

  “You should go now. He will not treat you well. But me, he cannot hurt me.”

  The humor and the danger of the situation collided all at once in Slocum’s mind, and he didn’t know for a split second whether to stifle a snort of laughter or bolt for his clothes. He did both. “Daddy’s little girl, eh?” he whispered to her.

  But his comment was met with a mildly confused look. He didn’t think he needed to waste time explaining what he meant. But she was right. He’d seen Mexicans tortured by Apache, and from the sounds of the approaching hoofbeats, there were many Apache, and if they weren’t yet on the warpath, they would be soon enough. He’d be lucky to escape with his life, let alone his horse and gear.

  He’d never saddled the Appaloosa as fast as he had. He hadn’t bothered to button his shirt, nor tie his saddlebags behind the cantle. He’d slung them over his shoulder. Then just before mounting up, he bent back to the sweet little Indian maiden, who had also dressed herself, and said, “Are you sure it’s them? They’ll treat you well? I’ll stay if you aren’t sure.”

  Again she smiled and winked. Then rubbed a hand quickly across his crotch. “They are my people. Believe me.” He looked into her eyes and something there told him she knew of what she spoke, and that it would be wise of him to get while the getting was still marginally good.

  “We will meet again, John Slocum. I know this much.” She winked, and as he grazed a kiss off her lips, she spun him around and patted his ass like a schoolchild being sent away. He swung into the saddle and didn’t have but seconds to wait for the first proof that he was not welcome at the hot spring.

  An arrow sliced the air by his forearm, left a hole in his flapping, unbuttoned red-and-white-checked shirt. Slocum gritted his teeth, crouched low, and looked back over his shoulder. The girl stood defiant, hands on her hips, her knife sheathed at her side, looking from Slocum toward the fast-approaching man on horseback.

  Despite the fact that he was relatively sure she had been telling the truth about this approaching crowd being her people, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she might be wrong. What if she was? She would die soon, that’s what, he told himself. Not pretty, but you’ve made your decision, Slocum, old buddy, no way to change that now.

  One last glance back over his shoulder and he saw the rider gallop into view, cresting the short ridge above the hot spring. It was a man, the most rugged Apache he’d ever seen, broad of chest, and with a stark white shirt open to the belt. The white of the shirt glowed against the leathered cherry skin, glinting with sweat. The man’s wide face was topped with a plum-colored kerchief tied around his head, from under which bounced gleaming hair, straight and black as a crow’s wing. It reached the man’s wide shoulders, but crept no longer than that.

  He rode a pinto barebacked, his long legs encircling the horse’s gut, and tugged hard on the hackamore as he slowed before the girl. But he’d caught her glance backward at Slocum and followed her sightline. The hard, grim face grew even grimmer, and an oath that didn’t sound at all like “welcome to tea” bellowed from him. He raised his right arm high and the rifle clasped in his fist cut the air like a swung ax.

  And then a line of riders topped the rise to either side of the impressive man. Below him the young woman still stood, defiant and straight, only now she faced the man before her—Slocum assumed it was her father—and beyond, the line of warriors, her arms crossed over her chest.

  It seemed she could take care of herself. And he’d better begin to worry about taking care of himself, or he’d not live to dally with another such fine young woman. He doubted there was another such as herself, in fact.

  As Slocum broke from the dwindling line of runty mesquite at the base of the draw, before him stretched a long, barren plain with barely any ripples indicating rises he might use for cover. And the next second told him he wouldn’t be needing them anyway.

  Yips and howls from the human coyotes appearing on horseback to either side of him confirmed his fears. The broad-chested man had not been alone. Not by a long shot. There must have been eight or ten warriors approaching on either of Slocum’s rear flanks. And they were closing in as fast as they could put heel to their mounts, yowling and yipping and loosing volleys of arrows, some of which overshot him, some of which pocked the earth just behind the lashing hooves of his bold Appaloosa.

  He hoped no arrows would dimple his horse’s hide. He liked the beast a whole lot and it would leave him afoot, surrounded by Apache. Unless the fall killed him. He tried to put out of his mind the mutilated, burned, gutted bodies of men, women, children, old Mexicans—it hadn’t mattered to the Apache. They sought revenge for perceived slights not in kind but in blood. In hard, fast retribution that left nothing behind to question.

  Slocum risked a look back, and shock tensed his shoulders, set his jaw, and forced him to heel his mount harder than ever, for the Apache were close enough that he had seen their rock-hewn features, all
angles and fierce glinting stares from those dark eyes. The day before, he suspected he had ventured into the territory occupied by a band of Apache not known for its kindness to strangers, but he hadn’t been sure.

  All Slocum had wanted yesterday was to put a good bit of distance between himself and the overeager young law dog back in Minkville, the Colorado town he’d spent the better part of two months in before the newly elected deputy had decided to engage in a bit of hoeing out of the law offices.

  Slocum had been tending bar in the Dilly Dollar when the young man had come in, talking with two other patrons about how he’d been going through all the old stacked dodgers when a couple had set off alarm bells in his head. They’d pealed warnings that told him for sure he’d seen at least a couple of those wanted men in his town. So he figured he just had to reconnoiter at the bar, have a cool beer, and when he went back to the office, he’d know who it was he’d see on the old posters.

  Slocum had heard enough. And what’s more, he knew the warning signs. Might be nothing would come of it, might just as well be that the lawman would dig a little too much in the dying past and come up with a dodger that told him John Slocum was a wanted man in his midst.

  And so Slocum had reluctantly once more pulled up stakes and headed out. He’d intended to make it across the vast span of desert before another day had passed, but the two days’ hard travel in the saddle had left him tuckered out—it had been many months since he’d had to spend long hours in the saddle. And the hot spring oasis had appeared as if it had sprouted and bubbled up out of the long, dry, cracked plain just for him.

  And that was when he’d met the young Apache woman. It had been a bronc-stomping night of all-out fun. The woman knew what to do, and what she didn’t, she made up for with a curiosity he’d rarely seen in a nubile young creature such as herself. The rambunctious proceedings had laid them both out as if they’d been staked and left to dry on the surrounding sandscape.

  Another angry bee of a bullet buzzed too close by Slocum’s fawn hat, and he slid his Colt Navy from its holster and thumbed it into action. He didn’t really want to kill anyone, just warn them off, let them know that just because he was running from them didn’t mean he didn’t have a set of fangs and would rather strike than die on the run. Somehow despite the fact that he was the one being wrongly pursued, he couldn’t help feeling guilty somehow, as if the Apache knew something he didn’t.