Slocum and the High-Rails Heiress Read online

  “I’m going to lend Ling a hand. Your damned sister’s a menace!”

  25

  Ling dove for the crazed redhead, his nimble feet outstretched before him, and as his airborne body reached her, he delivered a blurred flurry of snapping kicks to her gut, chest, and finally, her pretty face. She took it for a few seconds, until she seemed to snap out of a daze. With a deep-throated growl, her swelling face contorted in rage, she ducked and weaved, and did a pretty good job, Slocum had to admit, of dodging the lithe Chinaman’s volley of torturous blows.

  Ling backed her toward the end of the car with each spin and snap of his hand, and with each time the hand or foot connected, she grunted and growled and renewed her attack. And each time she tried to raise her pistol, Ling renewed his flurry of flying feet, fists, and fingers. Still, she retained her grip on it.

  With her free hand she reached behind and yanked open the door. The wind whipped away the last of the black silk ribbon securing her mane, and long red hair swirled about her head, blown from every direction at once. Her torn black dress exposed her breasts and they heaved and swung with the effort of her competition with Ling.

  “Mr. Slocum!” cried Augusta Barr. “Stop them, they’ll—”

  Staggering with the motion of the train, Slocum bolted toward the little man and the shrieking, howling woman, his own damaged knee and ankle pulsing with pain. A splotch of red blossomed low on Ling’s shirt and Slocum knew the Chinaman had opened his knife wound. But it didn’t seem to slow the man down a lick. He kept right on spinning and kicking and yelping his little confident grunts and snarls, landing one tight blow after another, backing up the angry woman, inch by inch, toward the open door at the back of the car.

  “Oh my God!” Miss Barr pointed out the window. He turned to the window, and for a moment, Slocum felt his stomach drop clean out of his body. The train was in midair, nothing to either side, no snow, no mountains, no boulders, no stunty alpine trees, nothing but sky, then he shot a look back toward the fighting pair at the end of the car and saw the track right were it should be, as if it were a huge, wide serpent following along behind them, gobbling up the miles, always there but never quite catching up with them.

  The sight gave him confidence, until he realized the reason he’d thought, seconds before, that they’d been airborne—they were in the midst of the huge trestle, one of the biggest he’d ever seen, and knew that it must be impressive as hell from a distance. The very one Augusta had mentioned that spanned Devil’s Drop Gorge.

  “Aw hell,” he said, lurching toward the fighting pair. As he drew closer, already figuring out how he was going to enter the fray, for it was obvious to him that the woman wouldn’t be stopped by the threat of a Colt or even a bullet.

  He wasn’t sure he’d ever come across anyone like Arlene McFadden. Growing up with those big redheaded giants, it was no wonder she’d become a scrapper. She fought Ling like a cornered she-lion. And incredibly, it looked to Slocum as if Ling was losing the battle. The little man staggered more, took a few more blows to the noggin from the fiendish hellcat. All she needed was to get that gun hand free and she’d squeeze her last shot into Ling and that would be that.

  They moved through the door and onto the platform at the rear of the car as Slocum grabbed at the woman’s dress. He had to get that pistol out of her hand. His grasping fingers closed on air as Ling landed another kick to her ribs. He thought he heard something snap, saw the woman’s face lose all color, and before Slocum could make his move, Ling dove again at her, with renewed vigor.

  The train was in the middle of the trestle now, and had slowed to what felt like half-speed. Slocum smelled traces of smoke from the engine curling about them before swirling off into the frigid canyon air. The fighting pair were always just out of Slocum’s reach. He held on to one railing while grabbing at them with his other hand.

  He shouted to Ling to break off his attack, but if he heard, it didn’t seem to matter to the frenzied older man. It was as if the sight of the hellcat’s blanched face had given Ling a new reserve of strength.

  A sharp crack split the air, and Slocum saw Ling stop short, surprise spreading across his face to match the crimson stain seeping across the middle of his white tunic. She’d gut-shot him. For a brief moment, the redhead looked stunned, as she stood there holding the gun, inches from him.

  Ling looked at Augusta, who stood but a few feet away, surprise giving way to terror, and Slocum knew that a scream welled in her. Ling then looked at Slocum, offered him a slight, tight bow, looked back to Augusta, and smiled. Then a hard, cold stare fixed itself on his face as he stared at the brutal, murderous half-sister of his beloved charge.

  A howl like Slocum had heard once, made by a cornered, mortally wounded lynx, rose from Ling’s very soul, pushed up and out of him by a thick gout of blood that fountained from his mouth. He pulled his blood-slick hands from his ruined gut and Slocum watched, as if time had slowed, as Ling performed the Triple Tiger twice on the cruelest bitch Slocum had ever met. The little man’s blood-slick hands danced through the torrent of blood that coughed from his mouth, spraying the air. The red-haired devil never stood a chance.

  I am watching a dead man deal out killing blows, he thought. And there’s nothing I can do. Nothing I should do.

  The train had reached the center of the massive trestle when Ling completed the second of the flurried Triple Tigers. It ended with the little man hurling himself at her one last time, dealing out one last crippling blow. Embraced in a mutual death clutch, the two combatants pinwheeled off the platform and out into empty space. The woman’s long, lean body was clutched about the neck by Ling’s steel-grip hands, as he performed the last of the Triple Tiger maneuvers. Her long red hair whipped outward, matched in intensity by Ling’s spraying blood as the bodies spiraled downward toward the ice-encrusted river hundreds of feet below at the bottom of the gorge.

  And all the way down, Slocum heard the screams of the red-haired woman, more angry than scared. Long after he should have stopped hearing it, the screaming continued in his ears, and he realized it was coming from the trembling blond woman beside him. It, too, was a scream of anger.

  26

  He took Miss Barr into his arms and slowly turned her from the open door. He reached behind them with his boot to shut the door when a grunting sound made him look up. Looming before him was the huge, blood-covered giant, Bubba. He had staggered to his feet and appeared to be shaking his head, trying to focus on the people who stood before him.

  In Slocum’s arms, Augusta sobbed, then rested her head on his shoulder, her whole body shaking.

  “Augusta,” he whispered. “I have one more thing to do. You sit over here.”

  He guided her to the corner, where he righted an overturned chair. She sat, weary, and looked up at him. Then her eye caught the bloody giant, and she screamed, this time in fear and shock. And the big brute was, indeed, a shocking mess. His face had taken such a series of beatings that it was pulpy; his hair was a clownish, blood-wet sopping mass that hung in his face. His throat, a pocked, puckered, and gaping raw wound oozing blood that had saturated the front of him. Bubba looked as if he’d been dipped in a gut pile.

  Big Red finally focused, it seemed, on something in front of him, and that something was Slocum. He grunted and his nostrils flexed open, closed, open, closed, like a gored bull in a ring.

  “Now there, Bubba. No need to continue this thing. I’m sure Miss Barr here would be happy to pay your way out of it all. Am I right, Miss Barr?” Slocum looked to Augusta, who nodded.

  “Yes, yes indeed, Bubba. Anything you want. Say the word. Only please, no more violence.” She began to sob.

  But it appeared Bubba had understood none of what was offered. “Killed ’em all.” His voice was a ragged shadow of itself. “All dead. I got no one left.”

  “You could have me for a sister, Bubba…” She stood, offered a trembling hand toward him.

  His eyebrows slowly came together. “You?
You ain’t my sister. Arlene is my sister!” He reached up and touched his hair. “See? We got the same hair and all. You ain’t, though. You got gold hair. Naw, it’d never work.” Then he saw Slocum and his breathing bulled again. “You killed ’em! Killed ’em all! Now I’ll kill you!” He rushed at Slocum with all the strength and speed his huge, battered body was capable of.

  Slocum’s eyes shot wide. He only had a second or two—he spun, looking for something to hit the giant with, and grabbed the first thing at hand—the doorknob to the end of the car. He pulled it hard toward him, stepped aside, and the big man barreled right past him, hit the black steel railing, waist-high on a normal-size man, but it caught Bubba just above the knees.

  He whipped forward, and let loose a ragged, high-pitched shriek before slamming his head into the steel railing on the front end of the caboose. His huge body hung there between the cars for a second, then sagged. He flopped straight down, and was chewed and swallowed in less than a second by the churning underpinning of the caboose.

  “How the mighty have fallen,” muttered Slocum, not feeling good at all about anything that had happened this day, or indeed any day for the past few weeks.

  27

  Slocum still had questions, but it had taken all the willpower he could muster to keep from quizzing Augusta further while they were still on the train. Instead, he held his tongue and tended the gunshot wound on her arm.

  Turned out it that the small-caliber shot had burned a shallow three-inch furrow along her upper arm. He cleaned it well, drizzled medicinal whiskey over it, then smeared salve into it before wrapping it well with a clean bandage. And not once did she utter a cry. In fact, the only sound she made was a sharp intake of breath through her gritted teeth when the whiskey soaked the wound. Slocum found himself increasingly impressed with her.

  He settled for cleaning the rail car as best as he could, and ended up rolling a couple of what he assumed were expensive carpets—now sodden with blood, mostly from Bubba. He stashed the rugs out on the catwalk at the end of the car, thinking how it wouldn’t bother him if the bloody things jostled off before the train reached California.

  Repairing the smashed window had proven a more difficult matter, but in the end, Slocum wedged a couple of folded blankets in the space, then secured them by lashing closed the interior shutters. By the time he got around to picking up slivers of glass from the carpets, Augusta had joined him. She was still distraught, but together they were able to right the car around until it was somewhat presentable.

  “We have one more night on the train, then according to the schedule, we should be in Sacramento by tomorrow before noon,” she said.

  “And that’s where we part ways, if I recall the letter from your father correctly. Or rather, the letter that was made to look like it was from your father.”

  She winced, shook her head. “I apologize, Mr. Slocum. I, that is to say, we, never intended to deceive you. The fact is, my father did know of you. He knew someone who had had dealings with you in the past, and the man had come away from the affair very impressed. He told me that this acquaintance of his recommended you highly for work that required both brawn, savviness with a firearm, and your discretion.”

  Slocum rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Just who was this ‘acquaintance’ anyway? I’ll have to thank him. I think…”

  “My father never said who it was, but he told me your name, and mentioned a few places you’d been reported to be in the past year. From there, our people triangulated on a map, found a list of likely locations, and then set out to find you.”

  Slocum’s eyebrows rose. Lucky for him she wasn’t a bounty hunter. Despite her glowing reports of him, he had broken a law a time or two, enough so there was paper on him in various towns throughout the West. “Sounds like an awful lot of trouble to go through just for a warm body with a gun to guard some gems, doesn’t it? I mean, I’m flattered and all, but really, Ling was every bit capable of all that and more.”

  At the mention of the Chinese cook’s name, her lip quivered and tears formed in her eyes.

  “Well,” said Slocum. “The letter from the lawyer mentioned that my commitment would end when the train stopped.” He looked at her over the table she was straightening. “You have someone meeting you there?”

  She said nothing, and as she straightened the silver tea set, he watched her face collapse into a frown.

  “Ling? He was all set to protect you from there?”

  She nodded, but didn’t look at him.

  “You were kind of hoping that by then that witch would have come to her senses and accepted some sort of peace offering from you?”

  “That was my hope, yes.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I see now that I was a fool, a deluded fool. I had no idea she’d be on the train.”

  He went to her, gathered her into his arms, and held her. It seemed the most natural and right thing to do at that moment. And she rested her head quietly on his shoulder. He couldn’t tell if she was crying.

  “You weren’t a fool. You were being you, and from what I’ve seen, Miss Barr, you’re one of the kindest, most charitable folks I’ve met in a long time. You’ve helped restore my faith in a few—not all, mind you—but a few of my fellow men.”

  He felt her body stiffen, and she backed away from him. “That’s very kind of you to say, Mr. Slocum. Very kind. I’m not sure I could agree, but you’ve made me feel much better already.”

  “Well, good.” He smiled. “I aim to please.” He chucked another couple of pieces of wood in the stove and said, “So where do we head once the train arrives in Sacramento? I assume you have a home in Frisco?”

  “You mean you’ll…That is to say, you’ll accompany me the rest of the way?”

  “Of course, Miss Barr. Never let it be said that John Slocum would forsake his post—or a pretty lady—at this most critical juncture.”

  “Why, Mr. Slocum, such highfalutin talk, I’d swear you were mocking me.”

  He stopped in the kitchen doorway. “Highfalutin? Ma’am, I could say the same thing about you.” He smiled and disappeared into the kitchen. A few seconds later, he said, “I hope you’re in the mood for stew and biscuits, because that’s what’s on the menu.” He poked his head around the doorframe. “Dinner will be served…whenever it’s ready, m’lady.”

  She suppressed a giggle and faced the mess that had been her desk.

  In the kitchen, Slocum busied himself with cooking, and thought about the third big redheaded man he’d shot. If he wasn’t mistaken, that body was still in the boxcar, along with Slocum’s hat. He’d deal with both before they got off the train. Though he imagined the Barr family name would go a long way toward smoothing any spiky details that might arise concerning a dead body on board.

  Plenty of time for that later. Then his thoughts turned to Augusta as he worked. It seemed to him that, as little as he knew about her, she was alone now in the world. From the loss of her father, T. Augustus Barr, to Clarence Mulford, the trusted confidante who had tracked him down and then was killed in Pearlton for his troubles, to the loss of Mr. Ling, her most devoted servant—all gone. Now, Miss Augusta Barr was one of the wealthiest, and loneliest, and saddest, and prettiest young heiresses in the world. And as far as he knew, he was her only confidante right now. And the fact that she didn’t wholly trust him actually made him feel good, he realized.

  It was as it should be, for that meant that she was less likely to be hoodwinked by someone who would be attracted to all those qualities about the woman that would make her an easy target for scammers and thieves. But there was that other part, too, that worried him. She was a good person, a genuine, trusting person, and on their own, those traits were fine things. But you pair them with all that money and youth and beauty, and you had a recipe for a life of misery—or worse.

  Slocum had an idea of what his life, at least for the immediate future, was going to entail. He had a feeling her father, old T. Augustus, had had that in mind, too.
Wish I knew who in the hell told him about me, thought Slocum. But it hardly mattered now. He guessed this was the way Ling felt, too.

  This woman was special, and though she was tough, there was a world of wolves out there, slavering and prowling just out of the ring of campfire light, and he knew he had to protect her from them. For how long, he didn’t know. But he’d trust his gut, stick with it until it made sense to leave.

  28

  The barouche clattered along the well-worn road from Sacramento. Slocum and Augusta Barr were each lost in their own thoughts, musing on the strange events of the preceding week, the Appaloosa trailing behind, connected by a lead rope. He’d seemed as glad as the rest of them for the chance to stretch his legs and breathe fresh air again.

  “How far out did you say your ranch was?” Slocum glanced at her.

  She sat upright and a little forward on the tufted leather seat. She looked expectant, as she always seemed to look to him—as if she was sure that whatever lay ahead, just beyond her sight, was bound to hold great promise and excitement.

  He also couldn’t help seeing the trim waist that blossomed upward into a generous curve beneath the rich blue of the lightweight wool dress. Another frock he hadn’t seen in the previous week’s worth of train travel. He was about to ask how big her trousseau was, which, she’d told him, would follow, along with the rest of her things, the next week. He realized she’d not answered his first question.

  He sighed to himself, not bothered by being ignored by someone so beautiful. Odd, but beautiful. He was about to ask the question again, when she looked at him.

  “Technically, we’re there,” she said. She laughed at his puzzled look. “All this, we’ve been on Barr range for hours now.”

  He’d been on big spreads before, so the fact didn’t startle him. He was more impressed that she wasn’t set on flaunting the fact that her daddy owned half the known world. From her, it sounded as if she were just stating a fact.