Slocum Buried Alive Read online

  Following the pair with his binoculars confirmed Slocum’s suspicion as to their mission. They went around to the small shack where Kenneth Hawkins lived. A few minutes later, they frog-marched the banker out and back to the barn, where the crowd waited with growing impatience. The banker struggled, but the two held his arms pinned behind him until they were met by Julian.

  Reading lips was a skill Slocum had never learned, but he didn’t have to know what was said to understand how it beat down the banker’s resistance. The two outlaws released his arms; they fell limp to his sides. He refused to look up until Julian grabbed him by the throat, shoved his face within inches of the banker’s, and spoke rapidly. When he finished, he shoved Kenneth Hawkins back and waited.

  Beaten, the banker went into the barn. From his narrow field of vision through the door, Slocum saw Hawkins take his place as best man in front of the dais. Julian came up behind, shoved something into Hawkins’s grip, and backed away.

  Leonard Hawkins joined his brother, pried open the man’s fist to see what Julian had placed there, nodded once briskly, then turned to face the altar set up on the dais. From the single sparkle, a diamond ring of considerable size had been given to the best man in preparation for the ceremony.

  Music came up from inside. Slocum had heard the wedding march enough times to recognize it and how off-key it was being played. The piano player from the saloon must be banging out the tune. No chorus inside sang or other music billowed out from the barn.

  Slocum came upright when he saw a buggy rattle up and stop a few feet from the open double doors. He didn’t recognize the driver, but the man wore a fancy coat and donned a gray top hat before helping Miranda down. Slocum caught his breath when he saw how lovely she was, bathed in warm sunlight, her brilliant white dress such a contrast to her groom’s attire, and the soft haze of pearls around her throat. The man extended his arm, and she took it to enter.

  Whoever this was, he stood in for her father to give away the bride.

  She paused at the double doors, then gracefully walked the length of the barn to stand beside Hawkins in front of the altar. A man came into Slocum’s view, mostly hidden by the barn door’s lintel. He saw a Bible open and fingers flipping through to find the proper page. The marriage was under way.

  Too far to hear what was being said, Slocum only guessed at the process. By now the question of anyone objecting to the marriage had been asked. If anyone had, Slocum knew bullets would have flown. Julian would have no compunction against following Hawkins’s orders to cut down anyone objecting. But who in town could object? No one here knew Miranda.

  No one but the man who had followed her here from Dexter Junction.

  As that crossed his mind, Slocum caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Two men scuffled in the street. Slocum focused the field glasses on them. As they traded blows, he saw that one of them was the mystery man dogging Miranda Madison’s every step. But the other got Slocum moving from his position on the bookstore roof. He grabbed his rifle, rolled over the peak in the roof, and slid down the street side, tearing off shingles as he went.

  Slocum landed hard in the street, recovered his dropped rifle, and ran toward the two fighting. Miranda’s secret admirer had already taken the worst of it. Liam Neville fought with the fury of ten men and had knocked the other man senseless.

  “Neville, don’t!” Slocum shouted. Liam Neville looked around, his eyes wild and crazy. When he saw Slocum, he dragged out a pistol and got off a shot that came uncomfortably close. Slocum kept running. “They’ll kill you. There’re too many of them inside!”

  Liam Neville ignored him and ran for the barn where the wedding was in its final phases. Slocum had too much ground to cover to reach the wild man before he bulled on into the barn.

  “I’m going to kill you for what you done, Leonard Hawkins!”

  Slocum got off a shot that dropped one of Julian’s gang before he could fire on Neville. But too many others were inside. And others came around the barn from the far side. Slocum knelt and began firing as accurately as he could, taking out those outside the barn. From the corner of his eye, he saw Leonard Hawkins grab his brother’s wrist and force open his hand. He snatched the wedding ring and savagely screwed it down onto Miranda’s finger.

  The wedding was official with the final, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”

  No cheers sounded in the barn. The crowd might have been assembled for a funeral rather than a wedding. Gunfire outside might have held down their enthusiasm, but Slocum thought it was more likely lack of fondness for Leonard Hawkins.

  He drove back three more of Julian’s gunmen and saw Liam Neville push aside two women as he made his way into the barn.

  “You have killed the only woman I have ever loved, Hawkins, and I’ll return the favor!”

  Slocum saw the flare of a lucifer and the sputter of a miner’s fuse. Neville held up a bundle of dynamite sticks tied together with rope. From the length of the fuse, it would detonate in less than ten seconds. Not even thinking, Slocum dug in his toes and sprinted for the barn. The crowd poured out, making it hard for him to get inside.

  Neville reared back and threw the dynamite. The resounding explosion a second later knocked Slocum off his feet. He hit, rolled, and returned to fighting his way inside. The dynamite had blown away the back half the barn. Throughout the crowd, men and women moaned, cried in pain, fought to regain their senses.

  Slocum wrapped his arms around Liam Neville and threw him from the barn. The half still standing let out a mournful creak and groan as it began collapsing slowly. Slocum saw so many others around him needing help. All he could do was get himself out from under the thick wooden beams falling downward now that the supports had been wrecked.

  He got away an instant before the barn fell in on itself. Neville stood staring at the havoc he had wrought. One ear had been sheared off by the blast. The eye on that side of his face was missing, speared by a flying splinter. Blood and ichor ran down his cheek. Burns on the rest of his face would soon blister. Slocum spared the man nothing as he grabbed him up again and carried him away. From the feel, ribs had been shattered and the tattered, burned clothing hid similarly ruined flesh.

  Neville began crying out in agony. Slocum tossed him into the buggy Miranda had ridden to her wedding in. Scooping up the reins, he got the horse pulling. The shrieks of pain from the survivors added speed to the frightened horse’s effort. The buggy wheels sang as the horse broke into a wild gallop. Slocum knew something had to break soon. The buggy hadn’t been built to take either the weight or the speed Slocum inflicted on it. He slowed, looked back into town, and realized he was fleeing when no one pursued.

  How long would it take for Julian’s men to come after them? Slocum realized many of the gang had been killed or wounded in the explosion. Hell, most of the town had to be included in that number.

  He slowed but kept the buggy headed out of town. Not knowing where he went caused him to slow even more until he saw a painted sign pointing the way to the Box N Ranch. Slocum turned down the road and kept driving until well after noon. As he approached the ranch house, he grew warier. A single curl of smoke came from the chimney. The walls had been shot up and the barn had been burned to the ground. He had seen farmhouses in Virginia during the war that hadn’t taken this much damage.

  It was too late to turn around, but he looked for a way to get the buggy under cover if those responsible for the destruction were still inside.

  “Where are we?”

  Slocum looked at Neville. The man had moaned in pain most of the way but hadn’t spoken. He pulled the man upright to let him peer out with his one good eye. Slocum wasn’t sure how much he saw, but the sight of the Box N ranch house buoyed Neville’s spirits.

  “Home,” was all he said.

  “Hands up!” came the harsh order from the front porch.

  Polly Neville held up a do
uble-barreled shotgun and looked ready to use it.

  “Hold your horses,” Slocum called. “I got your pa here, and he’s hurt real bad.”

  “John? How’d you get him? I had him hid out in the woods.” She rested the shotgun against the railing and hurried down the steps, stumbling on the bottom one where it had been damaged.

  Polly came to a stop and stared at her father with wide, horrified eyes.

  “Oh, my God,” escaped her lips, barely audible.

  “Help me get him into the house. Step back. I’ll drive him closer. It’s best if we don’t touch him too much.”

  “The burns,” she said, understanding the problem immediately. “Did Hawkins do this to him?”

  “He did it to himself,” Slocum said. He secured the buggy before gingerly lifting Neville and getting him started up the steps.

  The injured man moved slowly, but he went under his own power, showing some life remained in him. His daughter fearfully reached out to him on the other side. He took her hand and let her help him the rest of the way to the top of the steps. Slocum opened the door. The two of them fell through, Polly unable to support her pa’s weight on her own.

  Before Slocum entered, he took a long, hard look at the road leading from the ranch house. Only when he felt certain no one had followed did he go in to help the woman with her father.

  “His room’s there. His and Ma’s.”

  Slocum heard the catch in Polly’s voice and knew what ran through her mind. Her ma was dead. Her pa would be soon enough, too.

  “What happened to him?” she asked. “Did Hawkins do this?”

  Slocum explained how Liam Neville had attacked the wedding using the explosive as he wrestled him through the door and laid him as gently as possible on the bed. Red stained the bedspread as Neville rolled about in pain.

  “He’s bleeding. We have to stop it. Boil some water and soak rags in it,” Slocum said.

  “You know what you’re doing?”

  Slocum did. He had tended wounds during the war, but seldom had he seen any as fierce as these burns. Mostly a man taking shrapnel either lost a limb or died. Somehow, Neville had survived wounds as bad as any sustained on the battlefield facing howitzers and minié balls specifically designed to kill.

  Pulling out his knife, Slocum began slicing off the man’s clothing and casting the bloody strips into a corner. By the time Polly returned with the hot water and clean bandages, Slocum had stripped off the shirt to reveal the worst of the wounds.

  “Oh,” Polly said. She began to wobble. Slocum caught her. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m not usually this frail.”

  “Not that,” Slocum said. “You’ve never seen wounds like this before.”

  “Is he going to make it, John?”

  “He’s a determined man.”

  That was all the answer he could give. If he had money to bet on the matter, no odds, no matter how great, could entice him to believe Liam Neville would be alive when the sun came up in the morning. He set to work, using the tip of his knife to worry out bits of wood from the man’s body. It took some doing to keep the opened wounds from bleeding. Pressure and a bit of hot water sloshed on the wound helped.

  He worked for the better part of an hour before realizing Neville weakened because of his crude doctoring. Slocum patched up what remained. The sight of the left side of his head completely smoothed off by the explosion turned his stomach. Slocum used the last of the bandages to cover the spot where the man’s ear ought to have been, then wrapped a final turn around the head to hide the empty eye socket.

  “He’s asleep,” Polly said in wonder. Slocum shared this astonishment. He knew his medical skills were limited. Neville should have died before now, yet he still drew ragged breaths and stirred feebly on the bed.

  Slocum led her out of the room and pulled the door shut behind.

  “Wait, no, I need to watch over him. I can’t see or hear him if the door’s shut.”

  Slocum let her push the door wide. As worried as she was, she’d jump at the slightest sound from the room, even if there wasn’t anything she could do for him.

  “Did he kill Hawkins?”

  “I don’t know. The dynamite did kill a passel of townspeople. How far he threw the dynamite before it exploded matters.”

  Slocum tried to re-create the scene in his head. The best he could remember, the dynamite hadn’t gone very far from Neville’s hand when it exploded. He had murdered dozens of innocent people but likely hadn’t touched the man whose death he most sought.

  “I didn’t think he had the gumption to get to town. He was so weak after getting out of the coffin. I had him hidden away in the woods where Hawkins’s men could never find him if they came looking.” Polly shivered and hugged herself, in spite of the afternoon being so hot and sticky. “I never thought he would go after Hawkins like this.”

  “He knew where the undertaker would be and realized there might not be a better chance at killing him.”

  “Is that why you were there?” She stared hard at him and read the answer. “I’m glad you didn’t kill Hawkins. If anyone does it, Pa ought to be the one after all that horrible man’s done to this family.”

  “This attempt will drive Hawkins away. He’ll disappear until Julian and his gang find your pa.”

  “I’m not turning my own father over to them. They’d kill him out of hand.”

  “I know,” Slocum said softly. “It won’t matter. A man like Hawkins isn’t going to leave the town he has bought lock, stock, and barrel. Bullying folks pleases him as much as owning the land and herds. He’ll poke his ugly head up eventually. When he does, I’ll be there.”

  “I want Pa to be there beside you, John. He deserves his chance to get even.”

  “There’s no getting even,” Slocum said. “Even killing Hawkins isn’t going to change things.”

  “It’ll keep him from doing what he does to other people. He needs to be brought to heel. Killing him is the only way to do that.”

  Slocum agreed.

  “You watch after him while I hide the buggy, in case anyone comes hunting.”

  It took him fifteen minutes to find a spot in the nearby woods to cover the buggy with fallen tree branches. He hobbled the horse to let it graze only yards away from a running stream. Slocum took his time returning to the house, expecting pursuit but not finding it. When he finally returned to the ranch house, he found Polly sitting upright on the sofa, asleep.

  He settled down beside her. She murmured in her sleep, took his arm, and pulled him close, then lay her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her and held her. Slocum intended to stay alert and watch for Julian and his gang, but he had been too keyed up for too long.

  In a few minutes, his head tipped over and rested on hers. Both slept as if they were dead.

  12

  When Slocum opened his eyes, it was evening and already dark. He felt Polly stir and moved gently to be sure he didn’t wake her. Polly muttered as he lowered her to the sofa, then she drew up her feet and remained asleep as he softly stepped away and went to see how her father fared.

  Liam Neville lay flat on his back, his breathing harsh and labored. Slocum dripped some water on the man’s cracked, burned lips. The sleeping man stirred but otherwise showed no sign of being alive. With a quick move, Slocum’s hand flew to his six-shooter when he heard a noise at the bedroom door.

  Silhouetted there stood Polly.

  “You’re looking after him just fine, John. Thank you.”

  “I wish I had been able to keep him from throwing the bomb. He wouldn’t have killed half the town or ended up like this.”

  “Pa always was headstrong. Once he fixed on something, he was as fierce as any javelina. He’d take on any man twice his weight and strength.”

  “He’d usually win, unless I miss my guess,” Slocum said.

&nb
sp; “I’m the same way,” Polly said.

  “Headstrong?” Slocum had to smile.

  Then the smile faded when he saw her shadow-cloaked figure strip off her blouse and hold it at arm’s length a moment before dropping it. She turned to give him a profile. Her pert breasts were slightly upturned. She ran her hands over her sides and stopped under her boobs to pinch the nipples. Even in the dark, Slocum saw how they hardened. He felt himself responding with more than equal hardness.

  She stepped back into the sitting room, working at her jeans as she moved. They came off like a snake molting. The denim second skin took a second to step free of, but when she turned back to him, she was entirely nude. Faint light from outside highlighted her curves, masked delightful valleys, and made her the most desirable woman he had ever seen.

  “John.” Her voice came low, husky, inviting.

  Slocum stripped off his gun belt and quickly added his coat, vest, and shirt.

  “Do you want help getting out of your jeans?”

  “I can do it. I just want to look at you.”

  As he spoke, distant lightning flashed and illuminated her pale figure, turning her into a goddess carved in marble. As the light faded, Slocum moved faster to kick off his boots and strip off his pants. Another lightning bolt lit the room, giving both of them a new and different look.

  Polly had reached down between her legs and stroked over her private parts. The lightning reflected off tiny drops of her inner oils now caught in the tangled mat of her bush. She caught her breath as the same light showed the erection at his groin.

  They each took a step forward. Slocum reached out to touch her cheek. She turned her face and kissed his hand, but he moved it down to her throat to feel the pulse of her excitement. A soft sob escaped her lips when he stroked lower, down between her breasts. Not content only to appreciate the warmth and throbbing of her heart, he slid up a silky smooth mound to the nip capping it. He caught the rubbery tip and rolled it around between thumb and forefinger. Polly sagged a little and moved closer until he felt the heat from her body.