Slocum and the Vengeful Widow 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

  Teaser chapter

  A BLOODY BUSINESS

  Slocum holstered his gun and went to the back door.

  Seated on the ground, .32 in her lap, Wink looked up at him with wet eyelashes. On the ground, facedown, was the body of a man with a pistol in his outstretched hand.

  “He came out to kill me.”

  Slocum nodded, went over and sat down beside her. He draped an arm over her shoulder. “I know that. This ain’t an easy business.”

  She holstered the pistol and rose into his arms, burying her face in his shoulder. “I wanted to celebrate every one of them being sent to hell—it isn’t like that, is it?”

  “No, it never is.”

  She blinked her wet lashes at him. “I still want the rest of them . . .”

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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 VENGEFUL WIDOW

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / March 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

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  eISBN : 978-0-515-14264-8

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  Prologue

  “You be careful,” she said to her excited ten-year-old son, Tobias, as he ran out the back door to join his waiting friends. “And don’t get into any trouble today.” Her last words fell like water off a duck’s back—Tobias was already gone, and she had to put down the mop bucket and reclose the back door that failed to catch. For a moment, she looked across the windswept grass in the too brilliant Kansas sun and watched him with two more boys his age hiking over the grassy rise.

  She closed the door and took up the bucket and mop. The store’s floor out front waited on her. Her husband, Walter Trent, was busy working on the books at the high desk behind the counter, no doubt looking over some accounts or planning a new order of goods. A short man, Walter stood five-four—two inches shorter than her and fifteen years older. When he sat on the tall stool, his bald head shone in the lamplight as he toiled behind small gold-frame reading glasses that were necessary for him to read figures. A widower a decade before, in his thirties, he’d taken in the frightened, slender, teenage girl from Iowa, orphaned after a war party of red savages killed her family in a raid on their wagon, and he married her so folks wouldn’t talk.

  “Did Mrs. Carney want red suspenders for her husband or gray ones?” he asked as she plied the mop to the worn pine flooring. “I can’t recall.”

  “Gray. He wouldn’t wear red ones.”

  “That’s right, thanks, Wink.” Walter always called her Wink. He had such fun with it each time he said it—he always smiled, so she never corrected him and said, “My name is Winkle.” His nickname suited her, she decided, wringing out the mop and going for the last stretch. Always good to have this chore finished each morning.

  “Don’t forget Mrs. Grebby wants blue polka-dot gingham.” She carried the half-filled dirty water bucket to the open front door.

  “Got it,” he said from the rear of the store.

  “Morning, Mrs. Trent,” Daisy Eaton said, stepping aside for her to exit the store.

  “Oh, excuse me, Mrs. Eaton.” The straight-backed woman in her forties whom she went past was the wife of the postmaster.

  “No problem, my dear. Has Mr. Helm brought the fresh meat yet?”

  Wink shook her head; the butcher usually made his deliveries around ten A.M. “Too early, but he’ll be along directly.”

  At the edge of the porch she dashed the water at the hitch rack. Might even settle some dust—before she turned back, she s
topped and studied the five riders coming abreast up the dusty ruts called Main Street. There were no other streets.

  The big man in the center wore a suit and an expensive high crown hat, and rode with goatskin gloves. On his left, a pimple-faced kid slouched in the saddle, but he looked a lot tougher than most teens—he dressed simple: a cheap brown derby and wash-worn drover’s clothing. A thin, hunch-shouldered cowboy rode on the right; he appeared to be too skinny to be healthy. Under a straw sombrero, the fourth rider was a Mexican who sat like a sack of flour in a big-horned saddle that showed off some silver work, and his colorful poncho flapped in the gusts. The fifth rider wore an eagle feather in his black felt hat; it danced and twisted in the wind, slapped the hat—he was Injun, part or maybe a breed. A gold earring in his right ear shone in the sunlight.

  Drifters—they came through all the time after making cattle drives and selling them out in Abilene or Hayes. These men were hard cases, but one had to be hard to ever cross all those swollen rivers between the Kansas terminals and the south end of Texas, fight off the rustlers and Indians in the Nation and survive horrific storms and stampedes. She went back inside. Those drovers, like others that had gone past there, would probably stop for a few cigars or candy and ride on. The likes often frequented their establishment passing through, most of them acting anxious to get back to Texas, so they could make the harrowing trip all over again.

  The pail and mop on the back porch, she straightened the apron and her blouse then looked over the backside of the small business district of Weyes Corner that consisted of a bank, harness/saddle shop, blacksmith, wagon yard, doc’s office, their general store and a few small houses surrounded by a million acres of rolling prairie. On the way through their living quarters, she checked on her curly red-tinted brown hair in the mirror. It looked fine.

  She could hear Walter say hello to someone. And give his usual speech about how his business was all cash-and-carry. Must be the drovers she saw riding up.

  “I understand cash,” the big stranger said, and upon entering the store portion, she recognized the same broad shoulders looking over things like he owned them. Only when his cold gaze fell upon her did she want to shiver. She felt vulnerable under his scrutiny; it forced her to bite her lower lip. His harsh look and small greedy smile was like he saw every inch of her stripped naked as Eve.

  “I need a sack of dry beans, a hundred pounds of flour, some lard—”

  “I’ll get him some lard,” she said to Walter, knowing where the green pails were stacked on the far shelf. With a good excuse to exit the man’s hard gaze, she held up her dress hem and went for the shortening.

  The thin cowboy shouldered a sack of flour and the kid hefted the beans to carry them out. On her toes, she reached for the top pail, and realized Mrs. Eaton was still in the store looking at yard goods and waiting for the butcher’s delivery.

  “You do understand I said cash-and-carry—” Walter’s words coming from over her shoulder shocked her as the weight of the lard pail transferred to her arm. Something was wrong. She twisted to see the two of them separated by the counter—the big man’s face exploded, and his gloved hand sprang for the Colt’s grips in a side holster swept clear of his coat. A scream of warning in her throat was cut off by closure. The ear-shattering shots slammed Walter against the high desk; then he vanished in the acrid eye-tearing fog of spent black powder.

  She dropped to the floor, and the lard can went rolling. Crouched in a ball, she heard Mrs. Eaton screaming at the man, then more shots and a long silence. The nice gray-haired postmaster’s wife was dead too. Clenched fists held tight to Wink’s face to silence her sobs of self-pity, her quaking body was balled up against the wooden case piled with work shoes. She huddled in wait, and wondered when this killer would walk over to send her to eternity.

  Then more shooting began outside, and she heard the gritty footfall of the big man as he ran toward the front door. Something shattered the left plate glass window—Walter would hate that. They costed eighty dollars apiece. More shooting. Why, these madmen must be killing everyone in town.

  Then in her trembling fear she recalled the double-barrel shotgun Walter kept loaded under the cash drawer. The thing she hated so and they’d argued over—he had insisted they might need it someday and she’d relented. Wetting her lips, the salty copper taste of blood on her tongue from the lower one she had bitten too hard, she wondered if she could get to the weapon. Crouched, she turned as quietly as possible. Then, moving in a duckwalk, she reached the back fixture. All she could see was poor Walter’s turned-up shoe soles. Her head aching from the pounding blood at her temples, she eased herself closer—no way—no way she’d ever do this—but soon her fingers closed on the smooth wooden stock and she raised the barrel up over the edge and aimed down the flat weld between both humps. The Mexican coming down the aisle looked, wide-eyed, straight into the muzzle, stopped to turn and run, but too late. The hammer cocked, she closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.

  Recoil threw her backward onto the floor, and she hit her head hard on the desk. A barrage of shots riddled cans of peaches and tomatoes on the shelf above her—juices showered down from the punctured tins. Men cursed her. Disregarding everything happening around her, and leaking upon her, she reached over and secured the gun again.

  “You get the bank money?” the big man shouted to someone.

  On her knees, she moved the wet hair from her face and blinked at the large silhouette in the smoky doorway as she armed the left hammer. For the second time she looked down between both barrels and squeezed the trigger; the stock’s butt jammed hard this time against her sore shoulder. Recoil of the second blast still threw her backward onto the floor.

  “Damnit, Boss, you’re hit!”

  “Let’s get the hell out of here before she kills all of us.”

  Her sticky fingers extracted the shells, and she crammed two more fresh ones into the chamber. She could hear them leaving—getting away. She needed to hurry. On her feet, she ran for the front of the store. Tears and peach juice ran down her stained face. Stopped in the doorway, she used the frame to steady herself and the cumbersome gun, then fired again at their fleeing figures. A cloud of black powder smoke veiled her face and burned her eyes, but they were already too far away.

  She walked back, absently dropped the scattergun on the floor and stepped over the bloody, prone body of Mrs. Eaton in her best green dress, whose blank blue eyes stared forever at the tin ceiling squares. Behind the counter she dropped to her knees and gathered Walter’s limp head in her lap. With her hand, she carefully straightened the graying fringe around his bald head and rocked him. Rocked him like that might keep him alive or bring him back from the dead.

  “Walter, oh, Walter, please don’t leave me. What will Tobias and I do without you? I know you wanted him to stay here and work today. See what would have happened to him?” She had to put her finger to her nose to stem the flow. “What will we do without you? Oh, God, why did this have to happen?”

  “Where’s Doc? What’s happened here?”

  She gently set Walter aside and raised up on her knees. It was Helm, the butcher. He must have just driven in from his ranch with the meat order. She struggled to her feet and at last used the edge of the counter to pull herself up.

  The big, burly man carried the body of a young boy in his arms. Had he been shot in the street too? It was Jimmy Sams—he—he was with Tobias—earlier. Then her gaze met Helms and his sad look couldn’t lie to her. He’d brought her even worse news.

  With both hands planted on the counter, she tried to swallow. “Did they shoot them too?”

  The curly blond-headed boy in his arms, Helm walked the last ten feet to her. “They shot all three of them boys—I guess. Don’t know why they shot ’em. I only found ’em—Jimmy’s still alive.”

  “NO!” Her screams were so distant, she could hardly hear them, but she knew from the pain in her throat they were loud enough to be heard for miles.

 
1

  A hot blast of wind swept Slocum’s face. He chewed on the toothpick and studied her from the shade of the porch. She sat a powerful blue roan horse and the big-horn Mexican saddle bore some silver work. Even with her dressed in men’s clothing, it was hard to hide the fact she was a nice-looking woman in her twenties with a bustline.

  “Your name Slocum?” she asked, reining the horse’s head up when he coughed.

  He nodded. “Been called worse.”

  “Mine’s Wink. I want to hire you.”

  “Why?”

  “Too long of a story to tell out here. Jim Bob Gale sent me. Said you were the man I needed.”

  Slocum threw away the toothpick and smiled at her. “Where did you find Jim Bob?”

  “Abilene—two days ago.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “He said you might still be this side of the Nation, if I hurried.”

  He rubbed his calloused palm over his whisker-bristled mouth and considered her. Nice enough looking woman, ’cept for the edge of anger behind her blue eyes, like impatience might boil out of her any moment. She had something big on her mind if she thought she needed him. He’d better give her a little of his time—besides she wasn’t half-bad to look at.

  “Get down.” He glanced back and considered the faded green batwing doors of the Last Chance. No place for them to talk in there. With a swing of his head, he motioned to the empty benches on the general store’s porch down the way and started in that direction.

  She hitched the roan at the rack in front of the store and ducked under it. The rail knocked off her cowboy hat and spilled a wealth of reddish-brown curly hair in her face. She straightened and took it up in her hands, to replace the bounty under the hat from her shoulders, where the string on her throat had captured it. Smiling like someone caught in an embarrassing act, she completed the hair fixing, then slid onto the bench a few feet from him.