Slocum and the Trail to Tascosa Read online

  He tapped her nose with his index finger. “Your job depends on how you act toward me this afternoon. Do you understand?”

  She swallowed hard. “I-I do.”

  “Unbutton your dress.”

  She hesitated, then her fingers fumbled with the buttons. He pushed the dress off her shoulders, and he could feel her shaking, seated there on his leg.

  “Now take off your chemise.”

  Aghast, she looked at him in shock. “But I’ll be naked.”

  He nodded.

  She closed her eyes and took her chemise off over her head. Gently he fondled her rock-hard tits; she held her breath the entire time. Her nipples began to harden. When she started to speak in protest, his finger on her mouth silenced her. He untied the string at her waist that held up her underwear.

  “Stand up and let’s see what we have here.”

  Hugging her pear-shaped breasts, she stepped out of the underwear, which had fallen around her ankles, and the dress fell to the floor. Bare assed, she didn’t look half bad; her belly made a curve outward, but not as bad as Barr had imagined.

  He led her over to the couch. “Lie down on the Indian rug.”

  With his toe he pushed off his boots, watching her as she sat down on the rug, lifting her brown hair from her neck. His shirt came off and his pants followed, then he slid his underwear down and his great erection stood at attention.

  “Lie on your back,” he said and wondered if she would obey him.

  She did, but on her back she glanced at his hard-on for the first time and screamed. Before she could back out on him, he was already on his knees and had spread her legs apart, ready to nose his stiff dick inside her. His first effort at entry drew a sharp cry of pain from her, but in minutes she was moaning in pleasure’s arms while he pumped into her slow and steady. Thoroughly enjoying himself, he plunged away, gripping her ass and lifting her legs up higher so he could go deeper. Soon their pubic bones were grinding the coarse hair between them.

  Then she cried out and flat fainted. Still with the stone ache plaguing his left nut, he braced himself over her. “Wake up, you silly girl.”

  “Oh,” she moaned, barely opening her eyelids, and he restarted his plunger. Closing his own eyes, he went faster and harder, straining against her until at last his rocket went off and they collapsed in a pile.

  Groggy and spent, he climbed up on his knees and looked down at her shielding her nakedness. “Tonight you will sleep in my bed with me.”

  “Yes,” she said in surrender. “May I dress now?”

  “Don’t wear any underwear from now on.” He grinned at her. “I might want your butt sometime in a hurry. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Dumb bitch. She’d entertain him for a while. When he got tired of her ass, he’d ship her off.

  Nearly two months later, Barr was still enjoying the benefits of a live-in mistress. As directed, Erma never wore underwear anymore, and she knew that when she brought him coffee when he was idle at his desk, they’d most likely end up on the rug with the both of them naked. Today was no exception.

  When he was finished with her, he dressed and went out into the yard. His foreman, Selman Doss, had ridden in and was unsaddling his bay horse at the saddle shed. Barr walked down there in the bright midday sun to talk with his man.

  “We got any problems?” Barr leaned back against the corral rails and hooked his right boot heel on a lower one.

  Doss yawned. “That CT bunch is crowding us some. I seen maybe thirty pairs on this side of Welch Creek.”

  “Push them back west. They don’t stay off, we’ll go find Thomas and tell him either he keeps them home or we send them home, and he won’t like that.”

  “He’s kinda tough.”

  “Shit, all them Texans are tough. But they can’t stop a .45 bullet right between their eyes.” Barr slapped the top rail of the corral to make his point.

  “You’re right, boss, you’re right.”

  Barr looked at the windswept hills to the north. “We’re going to need to bring more pressure on that Farley woman to get the hell off that claim of hers and to sell us her cows.”

  “She’s damn hardheaded.”

  “I been thinking how to get rid of her. Why don’t you hire four guys to go over there wearing masks and have all of them rape her ass raw.”

  “I could do that. There’s some toughs drifting into the country. I can hire them, no questions asked. What’re you willing to pay ’em?”

  “Forty bucks a man. But I want her ass so sore that she gets off that place.”

  Doss nodded. “I’ll get ’em.”

  “Be damn sure it don’t point a finger at us. And I don’t want them killing no one.”

  “I’ll watch that they don’t.”

  “Just you be sure to do that.” Barr stalked off for the house. Sometimes he wished he had a tougher foreman; Doss could be too slow at times to suit him.

  He downed two half glasses of whiskey while standing at the polished cabinet in the living room, and then he paced the floor. What was wrong? Why was he so damn nervous? Things were going good. He was building a great grass empire. And he had a live-in pet—Erma, the onetime virgin.

  What had him so upset? He wasn’t certain, but come nightfall he’d have Erma in his bed and he’d work her ass over good again. The notion gave him half an erection simply thinking about it.

  He set the glass down and refilled it to halfway, then popped the cork back in the bottle. That was enough. That was plenty.

  2

  Slocum found Leta’s tent, bringing two bottles of champagne in his saddlebags, some prairie flowers he’d picked, along with two fresh-baked loaves of French bread and a pound of butter. When he rode in closer to her tent, she stepped into the opening, hands on her hips, wearing some lacy gown he could see through.

  “Where did you get the flowers?” She squinted from the front flap, using the side of her hand as a shield against the bleeding sun going down.

  He stepped off Buck and she ran over, more impressed with the damned flowers than the expensive French champagne he’d bought. He slipped the saddle and bridle off his horse and stood it on the saddle horn. Buck wouldn’t go anywhere. Then they walked back to the tent with her carrying the flowers, bread and butter while he brought the two long-stem crystal glasses wrapped in Turkish towels, plus the bottles of bubbly, one under each arm.

  “This where you’re going to build?” He looked over the countryside.

  “Naw. I’m building it on Main Street in town. This was isolated and a good place to entertain my investors. No nosy neighbors out here, so if our Roman lovemaking spills out of the tent tonight, nobody will notice us.” She threw back her head and laughed. “Where have you been since I saw you in Abilene—or was that Hayes?”

  “You name it, I’ve been there, from Canada to deep in Mexico.”

  “Here, let me put these flowers in a jar with water. Gawdamn you! Bringing me flowers—I could cry.” She kept her back to him.

  “Why?”

  “’Cause that’s neat and reminds me of the first boy I ever kissed. Billy Shanks, a big, lanky farm boy, brought me a mess of fresh flowers that evening he came courting. Oh, I bawled about that too. I was a tomboy, about eighteen or maybe past. A boy never brought me nothing before that, they always expected me to pitch in all their baseball games ’cause I was the best striker-out they had. But none of them ever acted sweet on me until Shanks came by with them flowers. I didn’t know what to expect, so I put the flowers up and told the folks I’d be back.

  “We walked down to the crick where there was a swimming hole. It was a hot night. Billy hemmed and hawed until he finally got out that we ought to go swimming, buck naked. I’d never been swimming with them boys. Oh, I’d been skinny-dipping with my cousin Isabel at night sometimes, but never naked with any boy.

  “We started daring each other and double daring the other to get undressed and be the first in the crick. By damn, no boy was going to
beat me. I wore overalls and he did too, but his hung up on him and he had to sit down to get them off his ankles. Undressed, I charged out in the water in a big splash and swam to the far side. He dove in and we met in the middle of the crick.

  “I never knew how it happened, but I caught hold of his long, limber dick underwater. Felt dumb holding it, but he bent over and kissed me for doing it, I guess. Next thing I knew, he was packing me out of there, dripping wet, and I lost my virginity on the grassy bank that night. No big deal, he was gentle with me, but we did it four times that night. I was pretty heady over enjoying it so much when I snuck back in the house after midnight.”

  “You and him get serious?”

  “Yeah, for a while.” She sliced the bread and he worked on uncorking the first bottle of champagne. “But, you know, there ain’t much for a dumb boy and a dumb girl in Missouri to do but get married, have a baby every year and fuck at night when the kids are finally asleep. I wanted more than that for my life.” Her hand extended, she gave him a bite off the end of the buttered slice.

  “Mmm, that’s good.” Slocum chewed, then gripped the bottle and pulled until the cork flew out. He quickly poured the bubbly into a glass for her and then some into his own.

  “I still can’t get over you bringing me flowers.”

  “Obviously, it impressed you.” He raised this glass to hers. “Here’s to a real party.”

  Sometime later during the night, in all their nakedness and lovemaking on a narrow cot—wide enough for one, deep enough for two—they finished off a healthy coupled event and fell asleep in each other’s arms. When Slocum awoke in the predawn, he stepped outside and emptied his bladder in the cool wind sweeping over his bare skin. Winter wasn’t far away. Looking up at the bright stars, he could almost smell it.

  Maybe he’d go into town that morning and find Charley’s widow, if he wasn’t too distracted. Slocum needed to talk to the law too. Was Charley’s shooting self-defense or murder? He had lots of questions with no answers. Buck raised his head up from grazing and nickered at him. Yeah, he saw him. Good, he hadn’t run off anyway.

  “Bust some short wood. I’ll make us some breakfast.” Leta stood in the open flap wrapped in a blanket.

  “Ugh,” he said like an Indian.

  Her laughter carried as she went back inside to dress. He stood in the open flap and watched her put the dress on over her head and wiggle it down over her shapely body in the flickering candlelight. He put on his pants and his shirt, then he strapped on the gun belt, and the next-to-last item was the vest. Setting his Stetson on his head, he ducked and went outside.

  In a short time, he had lots of stove wood chopped into usable pieces.

  Leta came by and took an armload. “You can stick around. You’re good help.”

  Under a canvas fly, she had a cookstove with a tin tent patch to let the stovepipe stick up from her range. She was busy making bread in a big wash pan on the dry sink when he brought in some more wood.

  “Dump that ground coffee from the grinder’s drawer in the pot. The water’s boiling,” she said over her shoulder.

  “I can do that.”

  “You know, you’re handy as a shirt pocket.”

  “I guess,” he said absently, his mind on other matters.

  It was kind of serious about Charley Farley being dead.... He and Charley had ramrodded some herds to Kansas for the same outfit. Good man, tough as rawhide and friendly as any guy living, unless you double-crossed him or made him mad. He and Charley’d cleaned out a saloon in Wichita that had been skinning their drovers out of their pay—and then they got those boys half their lost dinero back for them. It was kind of serious that Charley went and got himself killed. That notion niggled at him more and more by the hour. There had to be answers to it all. He simply needed to find them.

  Barr never woke up in a good mood, and this morning was no exception. Even sleeping with Erma as he had for the last two months had not changed his bear-emerging-from-hibernation disposition. Maybe the fact that when he threw his hand over to locate her ass in the bed and discovered nothing was there added to his sour mood. He could hear Erma and his housekeeper whispering in the kitchen and the muffled sounds of pots and pans being scraped across the range top. Barefoot, he pulled on his pants and, standing straddle legged, he put on his shirt, tucked the tail in, drew his britches up and buttoned the fly, then slipped the suspenders over his shoulders. Seated on the complaining bed, he shook out his socks, put them in place and then pulled on his high-top boots.

  He could hear his housekeeper ringing the triangle. His crew would be down in a short while to eat breakfast. Thinking about all he needed to do that day, he strapped on his gun belt.

  What would produce fear in the bastards crowding his range? His plans for the multiple rape of that Farley woman would send her ass packing. But there were lots more who needed to be moved out, and quickly. And all them other homesteaders moving in—this was cattle range, not farm-land.

  “Here’s your eggs, ham and biscuits,” his housekeeper, Mozelle, announced, handing him the platter when he came into the room. He took his place at the head of the long table and looked over the sleepy-eyed ranch crew busy filling their faces.

  “You boys ready to give me a full day’s work?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Barr,” came the chorus.

  Scrambled eggs poised on his fork, he looked them over. “See that you do.” Then he fed his mouth and ignored them.

  Two hours later, Barr used his field glasses to search for the source of the campfire smoke he could smell. They were camped on his land. If he let them stay there very long, more settlers would pour into this bottom along Hungry Boy Creek. He could see a man standing talking to a bonneted woman bent over a cooking fire stirring a kettle and some kids going about other camp chores. With care he slipped back to his blood bay horse and eased the Remington sniper rifle out of the scabbard. Like an Injun he stole his way back to the point, set up the two sticks he used for a rest and found the man in the telescopic sight. Rifle loaded, he cocked the set trigger, and then the impact of the heavy caliber’s stock’s butt slammed into Barr’s shoulder.

  Wind swiftly carried the gun smoke away, and in the distance he heard the woman wailing. One less honyocker in Nebraska that morning anyway. Barr mounted up and slipped away, leaving so few tracks that even an Injun would have found him hard to track down. At last, with the rifle securely wrapped in its waxed canvas sheath and hidden back under the line shack’s floor, he rode on into town.

  North Platte bustled with people—if he had his way he’d have shoved every one of them back on trains and shipped them back East. He’d maybe even have used cattle cars for those who didn’t fit on the passenger trains, and he’d have kept patrols set up to hold them all east of Omaha.

  “Barr, you must have been busy. I ain’t seed your ass in over half a week,” the livery swamper said, taking his horse’s reins.

  “And it ain’t none of your gawdamn business what I do.” He reached out, caught the old man’s suspenders in his fists and jerked him in up in his face. “What I do is my own affair and not none of yours, savvy?”

  “I savvy plenty good. But some old man of your outfit has made the mayor of North Platte mad as hell, they tell me.”

  “Sumbitch. What did he do?”

  “Traded off the mayor’s favorite Chinese whore for a sheep.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” Barr let the man go and frowned at him.

  “Aw, hell, ain’t you got any sense of humor in ya?”

  “No. And I don’t need none.” He stomped off down Main Street, which was choked with newcomers and rigs. Why, it would take a thousand rounds of ammo to even make a dent in all these sonsabitches.

  3

  Slocum found the sheriff’s office bustling with the drunks and rabble-rousers arrested the night before, who were going one by one before a justice of the peace to be fined or sentenced. They posed as a sorry, hungover lot.

 
“Keep in that line,” a burly deputy ordered, beating a club in his palm.

  “Who’s the sheriff these days?” Slocum asked the man.

  “Huey Garner. He’s in his office.”

  “Thanks.” Good, he knew the chief lawman. Slocum strode over to the desk officer.

  “Can I help you?” The young man in a white shirt and tie behind the desk barely looked up from his paperwork.

  “Tell Sheriff Garner that Slocum is here to see him.”

  The desk man stood up. “I’ll see what he says.”

  A familiar, mustached lawman in a suit coat soon came to the office doorway and looked at Slocum. “What brings you back to Nebraska, Slocum? Come in here.”

  “Good times, I guess.” Slocum looked over Garner’s office, which was lined with racks of long guns. “Man, this place is overrun with people.”

  “The government took all the land south of the Dakota border away from the Sioux and opened it up.” Garner pointed to the large map on the wall. “It’s been a madhouse ever since. What brings you here?”

  “Charley Farley. I understand that he was recently shot.”

  “In the back, of course, with a high-powered rifle. His buckboard came home without him. His wife and three hands went to look for him. They found where he fell off the buckboard, but we never found where the shooter had been waiting for him.”

  “No suspects?”

  “Maybe a million or more. I sent my best men out there, and they found nothing. But that isn’t the first case of these long-range killings in this district. Counting Farley, it makes five in the past nine months. Doc says it was a high-powered rifle and an accurate shooter. Have a chair.”

  Slocum took the one he offered. “Who were the others that got shot?”

  “A real estate man named Johnson, a drifter cowboy, a surveyor, a schoolteacher. Does that make any sense?”

  “Maybe they simply want to scare folks away?”

  “I thought about that too. This killer is a dead shot. Each victim either had a head wound or was chest shot.”

  “The schoolteacher—I wonder why that one.”