Slocum 428 Read online

  She was also bossy. And appeared to have command of the situation, because Jigger couldn’t get a word in edgewise. The rest of the gathered people, loggers and townsfolk alike, all stood close by, listening to her. “And another thing. I intend to marry Jordan Whitaker, with or without your blessing. I love him, Daddy, and that’s all there is to it. I don’t know a person in this town who could say he’s at all like his father.”

  “But it’s Whitaker’s son!” said Jigger in a desperate quick plea.

  “And that makes no never mind to me. He’s a good man. A bit . . . soft, I will admit. But he’s not at all like his daddy.”

  Jigger let his bottle drop to the hard-packed snow of the street, seemingly defeated. “My Tamarack . . . ” he muttered.

  “Your Tamarack will be just fine, I promise. Why do you think I have been all nicey-nice with Daddy Whitaker? He is in a good situation right now, but he’s not as smart as he thinks. Jordan and I, we both got educated back East and we will be running his affairs soon, and yours, too, if you’ll listen to reason and let us. This whole town will be happier and richer than ever, and you won’t have all the headaches that have dogged you for years. Don’t you see, Daddy? I have strung Whitaker along for you, done all this for you!”

  Before Jigger could quite lift his battered head and stare at his daughter with watery, twitchy eyes, the assemblage all threw up their hands and cheered. And then a gunshot, muffled, but distinct in the dead-cold air, erupted from what sounded like the Bluebird Saloon.

  “Whitaker!” someone shouted.

  But Slocum was already on his way there, with one person in mind, and it wasn’t Torrance Whitaker. “Hella,” he whispered, thundering toward the Bluebird Saloon.

  31

  Moments before the crowd erupted in cheers, Hella rapped hard on Torrance Whitaker’s office door at the back of the Bluebird Saloon.

  “First one through that door I’ll shoot, I swear it!”

  Hella sneered at Torrance Whitaker’s fat shout—even his voice sounded fat to her. “Whitaker, it’s Hella Bridger. Let me in so I can explain this thing. You need to keep your head down just now, stay put, and let me help protect you. It’s just a matter of time before that mob of drunken loggers makes its way over here and tries to pull you out the keyhole.”

  She heard no response. “I’m coming in.” She hefted her own revolver in one hand, kept her rifle cradled in the crook of the other arm, and tried the knob. It turned and in she walked, hugging the door frame.

  The office was dark, but she knew he was in there, heard his fat man breaths, quick and shallow. He even breathes fat, she thought. “Whitaker? Light a lamp, will you? We need to make plans to barricade this door, just in case Slocum doesn’t have any luck in making those lunkheaded loggers listen to him.”

  “Don’t come any closer!”

  The shout came straight from the back of the room. She heard a squawk—had to be his chair—and then there was a flash of fire and she felt a pain like she’d never felt before drive into her left shoulder, high up. It spun her half out the door frame, and she dropped the rifle and revolver.

  It took Hella a few moments to come around to the full realization of the situation. “Whitaker,” she said in a voice much softer than she meant it to sound. “You bastard—you shot me . . . ” She felt cold, then warm all over, and a pulsing pain that kept growing worse. The stink of gun smoke hung heavy in the air.

  Then he was standing over her. “Damn, you are a fat one,” she said, then felt herself losing consciousness.

  From the street, Whitaker heard shouts closing in, drawing closer to the Bluebird. “They’re coming,” he wheezed. “Oh no, what have I done? What do I do now?” He wrung his fat, sweaty hands together, then saw Hella’s revolver. He grunted, snatched it off the floor, and saw her, still breathing. Good, just unconscious.

  He grabbed the back of her collar, couldn’t help noticing how pretty she was, even in the darkly lit, smoky office, and dragged her toward the back door. It led to the alley the businesses on that side of the street all used for deliveries. The alley itself backed right up to the near hill that the town was built up against.

  Had to get out, use her somehow as a shield. Block them with her, keep them away from him until he could explain it all. That’s the plan, he thought—have to get out of here, hole up. Maybe Jordan will have an idea. Have to get out of here, can’t be caught inside.

  He fought with the doorknob, realized it was locked, and fidgeted with the deadbolt. Finally it sprang open and he dragged the flopped woman on out into the snowy alley. It took a whole lot of doing, dragging that woman backward up the hill. He switchbacked, grunting and letting out low squeals, cursing the town, his son, McGee, everybody.

  What was happening? Everything seemed to be falling apart, just like all the other towns. But this time it felt final, like he might not have another shot at money if he didn’t make this work out somehow.

  He heard the crowd thundering through his beloved Bluebird Saloon, figured he could make it over the top of the little hill, not once thinking that his tracks as well as those of the dragging feet of the trapper woman would be seen all the way up. He didn’t care; he just had to get her away from there.

  Maybe he could say he found her that way; maybe it was self-defense. Everyone knew she was a crazy, wild woman; maybe he could convince them that she had attacked him! Yes, that was just the story he’d use.

  At the top of the hill he paused, flopped backward in the snow, the woman falling across his legs. He’d just wait here, let the crazy woman bleed. He didn’t care a whit about her. He’d tell them all she attacked him and chased him up here, so he shot her. That was the plan, a good one. As good as he was likely to come up with anyway.

  Whitaker closed his eyes as he lay in the snow, the bleeding woman still draped across his legs, and he worked to catch his breath before the crowd barreled through the Bluebird, past his office, out the back door, then on up the hill toward him.

  • • •

  A shadow fell across his face. He opened his eyes and looked up to see a face he’d never seen. And one he didn’t believe was real. And then Torrance Whitaker realized in the flash of an instant that he would never have to worry about amassing a fortune ever again.

  As the huge, freakish, hairy face descended on him, he screamed, screamed so loud for mere seconds that his throat shredded, began to blow out. And then the huge hairy thing lifted him high, high, high . . . and even though his voice had left him, Whitaker felt himself being ripped apart, limb from limb and limb from torso. And he kept on screaming, no sound coming from his bloody mouth. But he watched as his agony erupted in a spray of red against the high, blue mountain sky, as it colored the tops of the tall, tall trees at the very edge of his vision.

  32

  “I’ll tell you just one more time, Hella. Then you have to get some rest.” Slocum tucked the quilt up under her chin and set the cup of tea down beside her bed.

  “By the time I got up there at the top of the hill just behind the buildings in Timber Hills, there you were, flopped in the snow, but breathing.”

  “Obviously,” she said, rolling her eyes, but smirking, too.

  “And,” he continued, “there was a whole lot of blood everywhere, and not a few parts and pieces of what had once been Torrance Whitaker. And leading away from the mess, straight up into these hills . . .”

  “Yes?” she said, like a little kid hearing the same ghost story every night.

  “Tracks. Maybe a bear? Maybe . . . something else? What do you think?”

  Hella smiled and closed her eyes, sinking back into her pillow. “I never said anything about skoocooms . . . ”

  Slocum stood quietly and went to the fireplace, stirred a bubbling pot of stew. It looked like he’d be stuck in this warm mountain cabin with this Crazy Trapper Lady for the rest of the winter. Once again, John Sl
ocum shook his head, wondering how it was that he’d come to end up here, safe and sound in big timber country—surrounded by wild beasts of all sizes and shapes.

  As if in response to his thoughts, from the woods all about the little cozy cabin a ragged chorus of growls and shrieks filled the chill night air.

  Watch for

  SLOCUM AND THE WANTON WIDOWS OF WOLF CREEK

  429th novel in the exciting SLOCUM series from Jove

  Coming in November!