Slocum and the Schuylkill Butchers 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

  Grab ’n Stab

  The man rushed Slocum, his butcher knife thrusting straight for the gut. Slocum twisted away at the last possible instant, grabbed the brawny wrist, more to get his own balance than to prevent a second slash, and then used his own blade where it would do the most good. His cut was aimed at the man’s throat. He got him across the eyes.

  “Ya blinded me!” The man lashed out with his knife, flailing wildly. Blood gushed from the wound into the man’s eyes. Slocum might have stepped away and left his foe thrashing about.

  Instead, he judged his distance, and when the opportunity came, he took it. His knife sank up to the hilt in the man’s chest, puncturing his heart. The Butcher died way too easily.

  Slocum stepped away, panting harshly. He wiped his blade off on the man’s leather apron, then went to get his horse.

  “Lookin’ fer this?” Another of the Butchers held the reins of Slocum’s gelding in one hand. In the other he held a six-shooter. “Saw what you done to me friend. Now it’s time fer ya to suffer a mite ’fore I slice you up . . .”

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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 SCHUYLKILL BUTCHERS

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / August 2008

  Copyright © 2008 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

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  1

  The morning sun felt good on John Slocum’s face as he rode slowly across the Montana grasslands. There had been too much trouble behind him back in Idaho to remain there even one day longer. A change of scenery was definitely needed, and South Dakota struck him as a good place to head, especially if he had to cross terrain as lovely as Montana to get there.

  He pulled back on the gelding’s reins and wiped his face with his bandanna. The day had yet to warm up, but he had been feeling poorly for the past week. Bad water might be the cause, or an insect bite he had gotten on his neck a while ago that had never quite healed. Slocum was not sure as to the cause of his discomfort, but all he really knew was that the three brothers he had tangled with back in Idaho over a poker game were a quicker way to die than a bellyache from polluted water or fever from a mosquito bite. Slocum laughed without a trace of humor. Dying of cholera was preferable to dealing with the Driggs boys and their notion of what made for a fair game of chance. He had won and that had violated their single rule: One of the Driggs brothers won. Always. They might have the entire town of Stanley convinced that this was the only way to play draw poker, but Slocum preferred to follow more conventional rules. A pair of aces beat a pair of deuces. Always.

  He shivered uncontrollably and looked ahead at the distant purple-cloaked mountains, wondering if he could find shelter there before the spring thunderstorm coming at him from the north struck. Dying of ague was nothing he fancied. But he knew he was not going to die of cholera. He might be a little woozy and have a low-grade fever, but he wasn’t going to die of anything as terrible as that. He still had places to go and things to do. All Slocum had to do was figure out where they were and what they were.

  Pulling down his hat shielded his eyes from the sun. He found a faint trail leading eastward toward the mountains. From long experience, he knew the rocky slopes looked close but might be more than a day’s ride off. That didn’t matter to him. It didn’t matter if he was a few days late getting to wherever he was going. Not being trapped out in the open mattered more at the moment.

  “Giddyap,” he told his gelding, putting his spurs to stron
g flanks. The horse neighed and trotted off. Slocum guessed the horse was equally unwilling to get soaked by a rain shower, and it was not even suffering from a fever. Riding along at a decent clip, Slocum let his mind wander. His memories skipped over the Driggs boys and lingered on Madeleine LeSur, a dance hall girl in Stanley. He knew that was not her name and that she had never been within a thousand miles of France in spite of her elaborate stories and Continental airs. More likely, she hailed from somewhere south of Montana. Perhaps Texas, since there had been a hint of drawl to her speech that she could not hide.

  He had spent some glorious nights with her before they had grown tired of each other. She was yet another reason he had decided it was high time to move on.

  Slocum rocked in the saddle when his horse came to a sudden halt as it topped a rise in the barely visible road.

  “What’s wrong?” Slocum’s hand strayed for the Colt Navy slung in his cross-draw holster. His horse had shied at more rattlers in the past few hours than he could remember. A quick look around the trail and rocks nearby showed nothing slithering or hissing. But ahead in a grassy meadow, he spotted what must have brought his horse up short. The distance was too great to make out the details, but at least a hundred head of cattle were being driven northward. He pulled down the brim of his hat against the morning sun and counted eight drovers.

  “That what you wanted me to look at? Greenhorns trying to move cattle?” Slocum snorted. The cowboys had no clue how to keep the beeves moving in the desired direction. Twice as he watched, the herd edged either east or west and almost got away from the men. The riders consistently clustered in the wrong spots, allowing the cattle to follow their own lead more than once. Slocum let out a whoop of amusement when the cattle reached an arroyo and doubled back. The best the cowboys could do was trot alongside on the banks of the deep, sandy cut and wait for the cattle to tire themselves out.

  “Think I could get a job as range boss?” Slocum had been a drover more times than he could remember, and trail boss a few times. The last trip from Texas to an Abilene, Kansas, railhead had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Rustlers had reduced the size of the herd, and when he reached Kansas, the authorities had claimed the cows were infected with Texas fever. It had taken more than arguing to get the papers signed and the cattle on trains bound for Chicago. Slocum had bribed the sheriff, the mayor, and the judge. The slim profit he had made for his troubles had won him a tirade from the herd’s owner when he got back to Texas.

  The inept riders finally raced down into the arroyo ahead of the cattle, and caused them to mill about before turning around and heading back northward. This time the cattle were held to their course by the very ravine that had permitted their brief escape.

  “Boys, you’re gonna run off any meat those beeves might have on them if you don’t work harder,” Slocum said. He watched the eight drovers get their herd out of the arroyo and back into the meadow, heading straight into the teeth of the storm surging down from Canada. Slocum shook his head. He wanted no part of keeping those cows from stampeding once they were pelted with rain and hail and faced with lightning and thunder.

  Shivering as he rode, Slocum knew he would never make it to the mountains and the dubious shelter of a cave. Turning from the trail, he angled southward toward a grove of white-barked trees that offered some small shelter against the building storm. Slocum reached the overhanging limbs of the beech trees just as the first raindrops began splatting wetly all around him. Although he knew it was dangerous camping near a tree in a lightning storm, he didn’t much care. His fever had peaked, and maybe getting struck by a solid bolt of lightning would cure what ailed him.

  Slocum dismounted, then led his horse deeper into the woods until he found a spot where the horse would be sheltered from the worst of the wind and rain. Only then did he take his slicker and pull it around him. He knew keeping a fire burning would be a chore he wasn’t up to. He rested with his back against a broad trunk and drew up his knees to pillow his head. Within minutes, in spite of the ominous crackle of thunder above and the steady swatting of rain against his oilskin slicker, he fell asleep.

  Sometime during the night he came awake, not sure what brought him out of his stupor. He rubbed his eyes. The rain had subsided, leaving the ground wet and cool and fresh. The utter darkness of the forest prevented him from seeing anything—but he heard the soft squishing of footsteps coming closer. Slocum shrugged back his slicker and drew his six-shooter. If he had not drawn, he would have been dead.

  His finger squeezed back as he sighted in on the foot-longtongue of orange flame leaping from the muzzle of a rifle. His attacker missed. Slocum did not.

  “Jed, Jed,” came the weak cry, and then nothing.

  “He done shot Jed! Get him!”

  Slocum rolled away as one bullet after another ripped into the tree trunk he had rested against. Splinters flew and sap covered him, but he kept moving. From the sounds in the forest, he faced no fewer than three others.

  “You sure it’s him?” came an aggrieved voice.

  “Who else’d cut down Jed like that but a lawman?”

  Slocum turned slowly, getting a better idea where his ambushers were in the forest. The one protesting was directly ahead. Slocum got off a shot that produced a loud yelp of pain. His shot had winged the man, not killed him. Slocum wasted no time regretting it. Rolling away, he easily avoided three more slugs seeking out his flesh.

  He came to rest a few yards away, flat on his belly. The impenetrable darkness worked against him—and his attackers. They were no better able to see him than he could see them. He waited until he heard movement. He fired three times, once where he thought the man was, then a shot to either side. One of the three slugs found a target. He heard a grunt, followed by a falling body.

  “We gotta get outta here,” cried another. Slocum cursed his bad luck. He had misjudged how many were after him. There might be two more, and his spare ammo was in his saddlebags.

  “He’s out of bullets,” said one. Slocum damned the man for either counting or guessing right that he rode with his hammer resting on an empty chamber.

  “Don’t care.”

  “He’ll fetch a posse now that he knows where we are.”

  “Like hell he will. He can’t raise no posse. If he could, he woulda brung ’em with him.

  Slocum slid his six-gun into his holster and reached down to his boot top. His fingers closed around the hilt of a thick-bladed knife. Again, the darkness was his ally. He got to his feet and slipped out of his slicker, wadded it up, and heaved it as hard he could.

  “There! There he is!”

  He heard bullets ripping through his oilskin, but Slocum knew it was a small price to pay to locate the nearest of the gunmen. Moving like the wind, he slipped between the trees, found his target, and got behind him. Slocum grabbed a handful of long, greasy hair, yanked the head back, and slit the man’s throat before he could cry out.

  Easing the corpse to the ground, Slocum grabbed the man’s six-shooter. He had no idea how many rounds were already spent, but even one more shot would work for him.

  “Cormac, you all right?”

  Only Slocum knew Cormac would have to speak out of a second mouth—one grinning from ear to ear across his throat—if he responded. The steady drip of blood onto the wet leaves soon stopped. Cormac was dead.

  Slocum twisted about, found some thornbushes, and crouched down, waiting. During the war, he had been a sniper and had learned to be patient. If it took all day of waiting in the sun, perched on an uncomfortable tree branch waiting for a Yankee officer to show himself, so be it. A good shot would remove the enemy’s leader and cause more confusion than a full-frontal cavalry assault.

  He waited for what must have been five minutes. Doggedness paid off. He saw a tree limb swing back and forth as someone pushed it out of the way. Slocum fired directly under the branch, and was rewarded with a gasp of pain.

  A second shot failed. Either he had picked up a six-shoo
ter with only one round left, or the rain caused the ammo to misfire. He tried a third shot. Nothing. He tossed the pistol as hard as he could, and began sneaking through the forest in the direction of his horse. He had been lucky so far. Against so many men, his luck would run out eventually.

  He slid down the slippery slope to the draw where he had left his horse. The gelding whinnied and pawed at the ground. Slocum dropped to his belly and slid forward like a snake. He was glad he had been cautious when he saw the faint outline of a sentry nervously fingering a rifle. The man’s silhouette against the clearing night sky provided enough target for Slocum.

  He gathered his feet under him and launched. His toes slid against wet leaves as he lunged forward, his knife blade slashing viciously. He caught the man’s arm and sent blood fountaining into the forest. But he had missed a clean kill.

  The sentry dropped his rifle and ran for dear life. Slocum regained his balance, went to his horse, saddled up, and rode directly southward. He had no idea what direction the ambushers had come from, but going any other direction would take him deeper into the forest. He wanted open space around him to ride hard and fast. Taking on an unknown number of backshooters wasn’t something he wanted to deal with at the moment.

  Staying low, keeping the horse walking at a steady clip, Slocum left the murderous owlhoots far behind. His hands shook, and he felt weaker than a newborn kitten, but he was alive. That was more than a couple of the men back in the forest could claim.

  He patted his gelding’s neck, then dismounted after riding what he estimated to be a couple miles. Slocum fumbled about in his saddlebags, found his spare ammo, and reloaded. Only then did he take the time to swallow a long drink of water from his canteen. His fever had broken during the night, but had left him weak and thirsty.

  “Dangerous country, Montana,” he told his horse. “Better not stand around too long. They might have been road agents looking for an easy robbery, but they didn’t run when I plugged a pair of them. Even said they thought I might be the law.”