Slocum 428 Page 10

  18

  True to her word, within an hour’s hard march, Hella led them straight to her cabin. Slocum had kept up with her, and the trek felt good, kept his already sore limbs from seizing up, as they surely would have in the cold by that boulder. He thought of Ned, a good man laid low for what reason, Slocum had little idea. It involved some fool named Whitaker, of that much he was certain, and Jigger was the target of sorts.

  Short of a justified revenge killing, Slocum could see little reason for those men shooting Ned in the head and trying to kill Slocum, as well. He’d find them tomorrow, and force the explanation out of them, one snapping bone at a time, if he had to. It hadn’t been his fight, but now that they had shot a friend and tried to do the same to him, by God, they’d made it his fight. And John Slocum wouldn’t take that from anyone.

  A high-pitched growling scream rose from the darkness off to their immediate right. And close, too damn close. Slocum’s neck hairs shot straight out like quills. He knew exactly what it was—the skoocoom—and he hated it, mostly because here he was, a grown man, and it had become all too real, too close, and too personal for him not to believe in.

  It was something, after all. Something in the dark made those noises and owned those damnable glowing eyes and left those mammoth footprints and tore the piss out of that storage shed. Something, and it might as well have the name of skoocoom.

  “Is that what I think it is?” he said, leaning close to her.

  “Skoocoom, yep,” she said, not even breaking stride. “Leave ’em be and they’ll leave us be.”

  Another, deeper growl, sudden in its attack and snapping intensity, burst from the dark just to the other side of the trail. Slocum could swear it was close enough for him to touch. And that meant the thing was close enough to touch him. But from what he’d seen, these brutes wouldn’t just touch something. Their idea of touching meant tearing it apart. He had no doubts it could rip the limbs from his body, kick him, and stomp him to death. Hell, maybe even try to eat him.

  He cranked the hammer back on his Colt. The sound brought Hella to a sudden stop. She wheeled around, so close he felt her breath on his face.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed.

  “They start something, I intend to finish it. Or die trying.”

  “They’re not going to do anything. As long as you’re with me anyway.”

  “How does that work? You friendly with them?”

  She turned around, began marching again. Off to either side of them, Slocum heard heavy breaths, thought he could detect swinging movements in the dark, heard random grunts and the snapping of branches.

  “In a manner of speaking, I guess we’re on friendly terms, yeah. Just calm down about it and it’ll all be fine. Okay? Otherwise, we die here and now and never get the chance to save Jigger.”

  Slocum sighed, kept on walking. “Okay, okay,” he said, but didn’t ease off the hammer on the Colt. He kept the revolver in his hand, and nothing would convince him to holster it.

  “John Slocum!”

  The voice came from ahead and he realized she had stopped. How much time had passed? He knew the skoocoom sounds had stopped sometime back, as if the things had become bored with them. He almost bumped into her. He straddled the backs of her snowshoes with his and stepped in close behind her. “Are we at your place?”

  He could barely see a yard in front of them, so thickly was the snow now falling.

  “Yep. Home sweet home,” she said, bending down before him and unstrapping her snowshoes.

  He backed up and did the same. The only way he could tell where the cabin sat was by the sound of her snowshoes clunking against the logs.

  “Up here,” she said. “Hang them on the hooks so they don’t get buried under a drift.”

  He felt his way along the wall, felt her snowshoes hanging, then a free hook—a length of branch forming a holder protruding from a log. He groped along the wall and found she was waiting for him a couple of feet away. “Come on in,” she said in a shout.

  As soon as she opened the door, Slocum felt immediate relief. Where moments before there had been pitch blackness stitched with the pelting whiteness of snow, now there was the low glow of a warming fire cradled in a beautifully built stone hearth. The tang of wood smoke was dappled with something at once comforting and calming—cinnamon and clove perhaps? It reminded him of long-ago winter evenings at the family hearth, good winter nights when even in the South, where he was raised, the temperatures would dip down and they would all crowd close, talking of the day’s work, thankful to be close and warm on frigid dark nights.

  “Make yourself at home, Mr. John Slocum.”

  “You don’t have to call me that, you know.”

  “Isn’t that your name?” she said, smiling and shrugging out of her coat.

  “Yeah,” he said, sinking down to his knees before the fire and prodding it back into life with an old wooden cane, the curved handle worn smooth as a ram’s horn, the end a charred nub from fire poking. He laid a length of wood on and blew on the coals. It crackled and he turned to see Hella approaching with a Dutch oven. She set it on an iron arm that swung out over the flames.

  “That should help take the edge off the cold. It’ll take a while to warm up, I’m afraid. Same with the coffee.”

  “That’s fine. I appreciate your hospitality. I have nowhere else to go. Not until tomorrow anyway.”

  “Or until the storm lets up.”

  “Yep,” he said, standing and wincing from the thrashing he’d taken in the long downslope tumble. “As long as it lets up tomorrow.”

  “You are a stubborn one, aren’t you? Threatening nature to bend to your will. That’s mighty bold, Mr. Slocum.”

  “Call me John. And yes, I’m bold. But only when it comes to tracking down mankillers and kidnappers.”

  “Well, we’re well situated to head on out after them. That line cabin they’re holed up in is to the east by two ravines. But if you’re going to be of any use in a fight, you had better shuck out of those sodden clothes and dry them by the fire. You have any dry clothes in that pack basket?”

  “Nah, my longhandles will be dry, I expect.”

  “Fine, hand me those wet things, I’ll get them drying.”

  Slocum looked around for a place to perch so he could tug off his boots, but there was only one chair, and it was already stacked with other gear.

  “Sit on the bed there and I’ll help you with your boots.”

  “Oh, no need for that, Hella. I can . . .” But as he bent to pull off the boots, he felt as if he were a century old, and stiff as a stick.

  She leaned over him, pushing him back to a sitting position, and that was when he noticed that she’d pared down her own clothing to baggy wool trousers and a button-down wool shirt, green-and-black-checked, which was unbuttoned low enough that the V of the shirt parted to reveal the soft, smooth curves of what looked to Slocum to be perfect breasts. He let his weary eyes linger there, taking in the pretty sight just a smidge too long. He cut his gaze up to hers, and she smiled down at him, shaking her head as if she’d just caught him sneaking pennies from a church basket.

  She backed away as he sank to his elbows, still watching her. She turned around, straddled his right leg, her backside facing him. Grasping his boot, she tugged and tugged and finally it came sliding off. Without looking at him, she did the same with the left. Then tugged the bottoms of his pant legs. This was his cue to unbuckle his belt and unbutton his denims, which he did. She tugged and slid them off, one leg at a time, did the same with his socks, then carried all his gear to the fire. He peeled off his own shirt and lay back on his elbows on the bed, sleepily watching her arrange his clothes before the fire.

  When she came back, she once again turned her back to him, straddled both his legs this time, and began slowly, gently, but with a firmness that only comes from strong hands, ma
ssaging his tired legs. She worked her way up his legs, backward, from his calves to his knees, then thighs, still with her backside facing him.

  It was only then that he noticed that somewhere she’d lost the shapeless wool trousers. As she bent to her task of massaging his legs, her wool shirt rode up enough to reveal her bare backside, smooth cheeks with a touch of red from the cold. He longed to reach out and touch her there.

  She worked his legs, fervently and with a whole-body effort, inching ever closer to his waist. As she dipped down again, leaning low, he was treated to a clear view from between her rosy cheeks straight through a lovely thatch of golden hair, and to her jostling breasts hanging and swinging with each renewed effort of massage she gave him.

  By this time, his longhandles, a faded pink instead of the bright red as when new, had begun to rise in the middle, pushing the fabric upward. The only thing he knew to do was unbutton them from the top down to where the buttons ended, just before her still-bobbing backside. Once freed, his member sprang upright, unencumbered.

  Hella must have sensed this because she began to back ever higher up his legs. Soon he was bumped tight to her back. She lifted the shirt, which had somehow become unbuttoned in the process, and let it slide down her shoulders, and halfway down her back. Then she rose up and in one smooth movement lowered herself onto him, plunging herself downward slowly, a long breath, like quiet steam, escaping through her mouth.

  The shirt slid down farther and she slipped one arm out, then the other, and tossed the shirt aside. Still straddling him, but on her knees on the bed, and facing the room and the fireplace at the far end, she rose up and down with slow, sure ease. They both shuddered at the full and immense pleasure this simple act offered.

  She leaned back slightly and Slocum reached around under her arms and covered her breasts with his hands, gently massaging them with his callused palms. She groaned and reached down, playing with him at the same time. Their momentum increased with their increasing warmth, and though she was still facing away from him, she bucked and rode him as though he were trying to throw her. Soon her back arched and tensed, the skin glowing with a thin sheen of sweat.

  Slocum saw the defined hard muscles of her back, her shoulders, her arms and neck, whenever her long gold hair swayed side to side. Finally she stopped altogether, every one of those muscles tight with anticipation of the hot relief that was due to them any second.

  And they didn’t have long to wait. The feisty trapper’s back worked up and down, side to side, making it a lovely thing to watch, nearly as nice as the vigor with which she grasped him without touching him with her hands. It seemed to him that she wasn’t done, and sure enough, she began riding him again. But first, she raised a leg and spun clear around on him, so that she faced him.

  She bent low and ran her hands all over his hairy chest, gently massaging him, just as he did to her backside. And they rode on like that for quite a while.

  Just at the point when they were both breathing hard and ready for a break, she raised her face up off his chest and said, “Stew’s ready.” She slid off him slowly, as if hating to do so, slipped on the wool shirt, still unbuttoned, and padded over to the fireplace.

  Slocum lay there for a few moments more, then she said, “You better get up, because while I will do a whole lot of things in life, one of them ain’t serving a man food in bed.”

  She winked and he smiled and he buttoned up his longhandles and made his way to the fireplace, where they had hot stew, and hotter coffee. Then when they’d finished there, they crawled back into bed, this time under the covers, and rode like hell for a good while longer.

  19

  Morning came for Slocum far earlier than daylight. He heard only a slight wind, low but insistent, but not the persistent pelting of snow. As if reading his mind, Hella spoke in the dark beside him. “Sounds like the snow stopped, but the wind didn’t.”

  “Still,” said Slocum, “it’s a lot quieter sounding than last night.”

  He wanted to be up and ready, and out tracking the culprits of all this misery, as early as possible. To his relief, Hella roused him through quick, deft ministrations with her warm, strong hands, convincing him without words that they had plenty of time before they had to depart.

  Later, satisfied that they each had performed a fair amount of pre-rising activity, they greeted the chill morning air with hurried steps to the fireplace, used the thunderpot, and tugged on their day’s clothes in a hurry, lest they somehow lose the heat they had worked up within their bodies.

  And thus, in short order, Slocum and Hella found themselves on the trail, or what she told him was the trail. It proved to be nothing more than a line that wound its way through the trees much like any other potential course that Slocum could pick out. But he trusted she knew where to go. She had practically been born in these mountains, after all.

  They didn’t talk much on the way upward, deeper, and at times higher. Sometimes they angled downward, though always heading in a switchback fashion higher into the hills. And as they trekked, the wind increased. Into their second hour, a dark, cloudy mass became visible. As it rolled over the top of the ridge far above them, Hella held up her rifle in a doeskin-mittened hand, then half turned to Slocum, who was right on her tail.

  “That”—she jerked her head toward the looming dark mass—“doesn’t look good. It looks to be carrying with it a whole new batch of snow. We don’t have much further to go to get to the cabin, but it’s going to be tricky getting back out of there.”

  Slocum squinted up at it. “How much further?”

  “See that fold there?”

  He nodded.

  “Just the other side of it sits the cabin. Tucked in just above a wash, backed by pines and protected by boulders. It’s a good halfway point to decent hunting and trapping grounds.”

  Slocum nodded again. “I have an idea.”

  “Uh-oh,” she said. “When a man says that, someone somewhere—usually a woman—gets the short end of the stick.”

  He grinned. “Nothing like that. But I do think you should let me go on alone.” He held up a quieting hand when she began to protest. “Hear me out now. I need you to go back to the Tamarack. I expect you can cut across country faster than me. I’m going to need help hauling those two on out of there, plus we don’t know what sort of shape Jigger’s going to be in. Not to mention we’ll have to haul Ned’s body on out of the hills, too.”

  She stared hard at him. Finally she said, “I understand what you’re saying, Slocum. But it’s bull and you know it. You’re like all the other men who think they’re doing a girl a favor by protecting her from trouble. Well, I’m not like any of those other girls, you understand me?”

  “I know you’re not. And you’re probably right. I guess there was some part of me that wanted to keep you from getting shot at. But only because I’ve spent the better part of my life tracking lowdown dogs like these men, and I know that when they’re cornered, they’re as likely to shoot as a snake is to strike.”

  “I hear that. Don’t forget I earn my keep, such as it is, by trapping critters and making meat of others. Only taking what I need, mind you.”

  “Outlaws are a whole lot different than trapped beavers, though.” Slocum was getting the sense that all his arguing wasn’t about to change her mind. She stared at him and he felt his resolve peter out. She was probably handy with that rifle anyway. He just hoped she stayed well hidden and was savvy enough not to try anything stupid. Unlike what he knew he would have to do . . .

  As if to say, “Then it’s settled,” she plunged on ahead. “We need to get there before that snow cloud dumps down.”

  It didn’t take too long before Slocum found himself once again bumping into her, but this time she held her other mitten to her mufflered face and in a low voice said, “There she is.”

  Slocum followed her gaze and had to squint at the jumble of snow-c
overed boulders and the tapering mass of spiking trees for a few moments before he made out the snake of sooty smoke threading up from behind a nearby rise before whipping away once the breeze reached it.

  “I see it now,” he said. “Where’s the door?”

  “The west side. It’s a half soddy, sort of built into the hillside.”

  Slocum looked at her, then at the house, then back at her.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” she said with a wink.

  “If you’re thinking that we might be able to block the chimney, smoke them out, then yep, we’re thinking the same thing.”

  “I weigh less, might not be noticed,” she said.

  Slocum wasn’t sure how he felt about sending her up there, but time was running short and he had no alternatives. And then a creaking sounded, followed by a loud clunking noise. The cabin door had slammed open. Then a gunshot echoed down the valley and that made the decision for him. They both dropped to the snow, rifles held poised before them. Presently they heard shouts, one voice rising above the other.

  “You sumbitch! I ain’t never cheated in all my days and you claiming I done that? No sir! No sir, I say!” The voice rose to a reedy pitch and sounded familiar to Slocum. He poked his head up out of the snow and saw a tall, thin man waving a revolver.

  The man was clad only in longhandles, flopping untied boots, and a stocking cap perched at a lopsided angle on his head. Behind the man, the cabin door lolled open, hanging sideways like a crooked tooth in the smile that was the cabin front. The tall man weaved on his feet, his head looking as if it were held up by a tugged string.

  From the dim interior of the cabin, a deeper bellow of a voice shouted, “Shut that damn door or you’ll have a whole lot more to worry about than me calling you a cheat!”

  The thin man weaved in a circle, his revolver seeming to weigh his arm down, before bouncing back up again. He cranked back on the hammer and fired a second shot, this time back at the cabin front. “You shut your mouth! You called me a cheat, but you got no right! No right!”