Slocum and the Larcenous Lady Read online

  He did, but he arched a brow.

  “You’d best put me down, Slocum,” she said reluctantly. “I can’t stay. Not now, at any rate.”

  He eased her onto her feet again, took a step back, and crossed his arms. “Why? You goin’ for another buggy ride with David Chandler?”

  It was her turn to cross her arms. “You seem to know a great deal for a man who just rode into town.”

  He smiled at her. Oh, God, how she wanted to rush back into his embrace, into his bed, to feel his hands, his lips, on her body once more, feel him inside her once again.

  It had been far too long.

  He said, “Easy enough to find out when the citizens are volunteerin’ information so free and easy. You’re the talk of the town, Lily.”

  She shrugged. Maybe tonight, after her second show . . .

  “Which scam are you pulling this time, honey?”

  Immediately, she stuck her nose in the air. “Why, I’m quite sure I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  He kept smiling that maddening smile. Suddenly, she didn’t know whether to make love to him or slap him.

  He said, “You’re blushing, Lil.”

  “You rat,” she said with a sniff. “You know me too well.”

  Slocum shook his head theatrically. “Only from sad experience, baby.” His hand shot out to cup her shoulder. “Only from sad, sad, experience.”

  Again, she felt torn between telling him where to get off and practically raping him. But she had to keep her senses about her. There was too much at stake.

  Gently, she swept his hand away and took a step back, separating them even farther.

  “Come to my second show tonight, Slocum. After, we can . . . talk.”

  Slocum nodded.

  “But if you see me before, or in anyplace public, I’ll scream for help,” she said. “Count on it.”

  “This Chandler must be some kind of mark,” Slocum said.

  “He is indeed,” she said, then slipped out the door.

  Once she got back to her room, she had to lean against her closed door just to stay on her feet.

  Who would think that a man she hadn’t seen for almost two years could shake her so?

  But he had, hadn’t he?

  Even after she’d treated him so shabbily in Sacramento! She’d almost felt bad about it, running out on him, leaving him with her mess to clean up.

  But it didn’t seem as if he held a grudge. Slocum wouldn’t.

  If he weren’t so itchy-footed, and she weren’t so—all right—larcenous, she might have considered marrying him. She knew he could keep her happy in bed like no other man she’d met.

  Sighing, she at last moved away from the door and lay down on her bed. The clock hanging on the opposite wall told her she had two hours until the first show. That would have been plenty of time to be with Slocum, even though she doubted they could have held it down to just once or twice.

  But she couldn’t go to David smelling of Slocum, smelling of lovemaking, and expect that he wouldn’t notice. It took a good hour to get her bathwater brought up in this backwater dump.

  She sighed again and loosened her bodice. She’d go to Slocum later, once she’d had her usual nap, sung, had dinner with David, sung again, then bade David good night. A chaste good night, she hoped.

  She drifted off with a smile on her lips, thinking about the evening to come.

  4

  Slocum waited until her footsteps faded and he heard the door close behind her, down the hall, and then he nearly put his fist through the wall.

  That helped divert his attention from his fading erection, but it did little good for the wall. He shoved the bureau over a few inches to cover the dent he’d made in the cheap wallpaper—and the plaster behind it.

  Why did she have this effect on him?

  It was like he was loco when he was around her, loco at the mere mention of her name. And now he’d have to wait until probably eleven, maybe midnight, to get her into his bed.

  He’d forgotten to ask when her last show was over, dammit.

  He ought to leave town now.

  He should go straight down to the livery, pack up his horse, and ride as far and as fast as he could until nightfall. He knew this, but he didn’t do it.

  He couldn’t do it.

  All he could do was sink down in the room’s single chair, hoist his boots up on the bed, and mutter, “Well, shit!”

  David Chandler arrived just in time for the first show and settled in at his table, right up next to the stage. He crooked his finger at the bartender, and at just about the time that a mug of beer was deposited in front of him, the curtains opened.

  The whole room—which was packed practically to the rafters—exploded in raucous applause and whistles. No catcalls, though, he noted with a brief grin. The boys in town respected his Lil too much.

  She was a lady.

  He felt a swell of pride as she walked out on the stage and curtsied to the crowd, then held up her hands, calling, “Don’t make me sing over you, fellas!”

  The crowd immediately quieted, and standing there in her red dress, her plump breasts straining at her low-cut bodice, she clasped her hands before her and sang “Amazing Grace” without benefit of accompaniment.

  And she was right on key.

  When she finished, the hushed, almost reverent crowd burst into another round of applause and cheers. And why wouldn’t they? Her voice was as smooth and sweet as clover honey, and as moving and strong as a wild bull. It was an incredible combination in one little woman.

  She held up her hands again, smiling, and once the room quieted again, she nodded to the piano player and laughed into a spirited version of “Three Cheers for Billy,” always a crowd pleaser.

  She kept on singing—and dancing, sometimes—for a full half hour before she closed the performance with another quiet, religious number—“Ave Maria”—for which she put away her bag of tricks and struts and high kicks and resumed a demure, reverent pose.

  The room went wild as she left the stage, only to return three times for extra bows. Men threw flowers and gold pieces at the stage and shouted, “I love you, gal!” but his Lily only smiled.

  And then the curtains closed, and the room grudgingly went back to its normal low rumble of conversation. The roulette wheel began to turn and rattle again, card games resumed, and men regained their senses enough to belly up to the bar once more.

  David heaved a happy sigh, then pushed back from the table, leaving his beer untouched. He’d forgotten it. He always ordered one with the intention of sipping at it and always completely forgot it was there once Lil came onstage.

  She just had that sort of effect on him.

  And he liked it. He didn’t remember ever having liked anything so much: not cutting that big deal—the mother of all deals!—with Tan Thurber up in Ohio, not holding up the First National Bank of Cincinnati, not even locking Thurber and his ratty gang of thugs in that little backwoods shed of theirs and setting fire to it.

  He’d sat outside, listening to the screams. And he’d whistled to their cries of pain and rage and impotence, because the whole hundred thousand and change was nestled safe in the valise strapped to his saddle.

  But even that was nothing compared to the absolute thrill of Tiger Lil.

  He’d die for her.

  He’d kill for her.

  Grinning unconsciously, he made his way through the crowd and out the side door, then down the long double porch to the stage entrance. He went inside and took a few steps down the hall toward a fan of light spreading across the floorboards.

  He stopped at the door from under which it issued, waited a moment, then smiling, he rapped at her dressing room door.

  “Ready, my darling?” he called. “I hope you have a good appetite!”

  Slocum had been outside, sitting on the porch, when David Chandler left the hotel for the saloon. He knew it was David Chandler because a neatly dressed man had come up to him and tipped his hat.
“Evening, Mr. Chandler,” he’d said.

  But Slocum knew David Chandler the moment he saw him. Not as David Chandler, though.

  About seven years back, when he was up in Nebraska, Slocum had gotten into a poker game that included Red Eye O’Neill, a couple of farmers, the town undertaker, and a gent named Felix Hamilton. Nobody won really big at that game, but Slocum remembered it because of what happened right after.

  He remembered Hamilton’s head coming up quick when a new man entered the bar. Hamilton knocked over a drink right away to cover it, but Slocum had seen. Hamilton muttered something about ruining his new pants and stood up. Slocum and old Red Eye eyed each other. Red Eye had been paying attention, too.

  But before Slocum and Red Eye had more than the chance to stare at each other and figure that trouble was coming, Hamilton drew his sidearm and fired three quick shots into the back of the bar’s new patron.

  Slocum had tried to draw his gun, but one of the farmers between him and Hamilton panicked and bowled him over. He’d hit his head, hard, on the way down, and the lights went out, as they say.

  Red Eye hadn’t been so lucky. Slocum was told later that Red Eye had drawn on Hamilton, but Hamilton’s gun was already out, and his bloodlust was up. He’d shot Red Eye through the heart before he’d even had a chance to clear leather, then turned to the undertaker.

  “There,” he’d said. “Two instead of one, maybe three if that tall son of a gun hit his head hard enough. I hope you’re grateful I threw you some extra business.”

  After which, he simply walked out of the saloon, got on his horse, and jogged out of town, pretty as you please.

  Which had been enough to get Slocum up out of bed and on Hamilton’s trail.

  But he’d lost the goddamn horse’s turd. It was as if he had just vanished, like an early morning canyon mist.

  It had bothered Slocum ever since.

  In fact, David Chandler had been luckier than he knew that Slocum hadn’t just fired from the shadows and called it even.

  But Slocum hadn’t.

  He sat out on the porch, listening to Lily sing, while he puzzled it over.

  What was a gunman like Hamilton—or Chandler—doing in a place like this? Why had he settled down, bought property and plenty of it? Shootists and thieves like Chandler usually had itchy feet, or learned to develop them to stay one step ahead of the law.

  Also, they didn’t buy things. They stole them.

  And more importantly, why was he snooping around Lily?

  He already knew why Lil was snooping around Chandler. He also figured she couldn’t possibly be aware of just how dangerous he could be.

  But now wasn’t the time to tell her. Especially now, he thought, when she stopped singing and the final, lingering applause traveled out to him. He knew Chandler was in the bar, part of the crowd, and he didn’t trust the man to have changed his ways.

  Once a killer, always a killer.

  A little while later, he heard voices on the walk. Lil and Chandler were approaching him, and he pulled his hat down to shade his face from the lamp flickering on its hook.

  They walked on past without pausing, although he knew Lil would have known it was him—from his size and build, if nothing else.

  Slocum was bigger than most men.

  He waited in his chair until they went into the restaurant, and then he stood up, casually stretched his arms, and sauntered on over to the saloon. He owed Chandler for old Red Eye’s sake. Red Eye would have wanted it that way.

  He did, too.

  When David and Lil returned from dinner—over which he had been a perfect gentleman, for which she was grateful—he dropped her at her dressing room door, then bowed.

  “I’ll be in my usual place,” he said, all charm. And all money.

  Normally, she liked her men more rugged, Slocum being a prime example. But when a mark had the money, charm, money, looks, money, courtliness, and money—had she mentioned money?—of a David Chandler, there was no question as to which she’d pick.

  To swindle, at least.

  She’d been to the altar five times in her twenty-six years. She’d been close to it a great many more times than that. And with few exceptions, things had turned out in her favor.

  Even on those occasions when they didn’t, she always managed to come out smelling like a rose, although it might have been a rose freshly transplanted to another state or territory.

  Lucky, she thought as she touched up her hair and makeup. I’m just plain lucky.

  But when her clock told her it was time for her second (and last) show of the evening, she put down her brush, stood up from the dressing table, eased a red feather boa from the place where it always hung—over her dressing screen—and squared her shoulders. She thrust out her bosom and sucked in her stomach.

  “Showtime,” she whispered with a smile.

  Tomorrow she was going to cook David Chandler’s goose, and he wouldn’t know that he’d been plucked, stuffed, stuck in the oven, basted, and served up for supper until it was far too late.

  She started down the hall toward the stage.

  And ran right into none other than Slocum.

  Her first instinct was to be angry with him, but her insides were melting like honeycomb suddenly thrust into a fire. She couldn’t help it.

  He leaned against the wall, lighting a smoke, and the flame of his lucifer washed up over his face, bright and golden.

  He spoke, his tone low and intimate. “Sing ‘Lorena’ tonight, Lily. For me.”

  And then he stepped out of her path. She brushed past him without a word, but she knew that the color she felt burning brightly in her cheeks told him everything he wanted to know.

  In fact, as she reached the edge of the stage, its curtains still drawn, she heard him chuckle back there in the darkness.

  Damn his ornery hide anyway! Why did he have to turn up at this particular moment, when she had the prize catch of all time circling so close to her hook?

  And why did he have to have such a mesmerizing effect on her?

  She could feel his patient and practiced hands on her bare, pale skin now, even though he was a good fifteen feet behind her.

  The curtain opened, revealing the light from the stage lanterns. The cheering began.

  She let it go on for a moment while she regained her composure and then stepped out onto the stage. She gave a low curtsy, then waited.

  When the crowd quieted at last, she didn’t sing the tune that she usually sang every night to open the second show. Instead, she opened her mouth and began to warble, with a slow, silky, sultry tone that was full of heartache and loneliness and longing, “The years creep slowly by, Lorena / The snow is on the grass again . . .”

  From the corner of her eye, she saw that Slocum had come out and was standing by the bar. He winked at her, and she immediately turned her attention to David, who sat at her feet, puzzled but rapt.

  “The sun’s low down the sky, Lorena / The frost gleams where the flowers have been . . .”

  An old man began to openly weep as she sang the old Civil War favorite—a favorite of both sides.

  Several others bowed their heads, one genuflected, and she saw more than one handkerchief at work in the back of the room. Slocum gave good advice. He knew how she should work a crowd, all right.

  She continued singing, hands clasped before her, making the song more plaintive and poignant than she believed she’d ever sung it before.

  As is the habit of most ranch hands, whose days start before the sun has risen, Charlie had turned in early.

  He lay in his bunk in the little foreman’s cottage that David Chandler had built for him. Crazy idea that. Waste of money. He’d never built any such thing when he’d owned the Circle C, although he had to admit he didn’t much admire the thought of sharing quarters with men who’d known him as owner before his sudden and humiliating drop in rank.

  But he couldn’t sleep, although the bed was comfortable. Too soft, he always said—at least
to himself—for a working man.

  He tossed and turned, and all he could think about was how Chandler was making a fool of himself with that woman. The way Charlie thought of her, it ought to be in capital letters: That Woman.

  More like That Damned Woman.

  There wasn’t a single thing Charlie held in favor of these current goings-on. He didn’t like women. Noisy, rattlesome things, the lot of them; always dusting where you wanted to put your elbow or harping at you to wipe your boots or take off your spurs in the house, the best of them. He wouldn’t be able to stand a woman on the place—especially her.

  She’d either take over the place entirely, or more likely, rob Chandler blind and run off in the night with some drummer.

  Chandler was an idiot.

  Now, even though David Chandler had been nothing but good to him, Charlie couldn’t help but resent it, and not just a little. It fairly oozed from his pores.

  Charlie had a checkered past, but he was a proud old rooster. He wasn’t about to tolerate some fancy-feathered hen coming in and turning his world upside down, no matter how beautiful or charming or big tit-tied the boys said she was, no sir.

  He’d given serious consideration to just riding out, himself. But that wasn’t enough, somehow. It didn’t make a whatyacall . . . statement.

  He’d also thought of riding straight into town and just shooting That Woman right through her head. It’s what he’d done to his own wife, and he’d do it without a second’s thought.

  He rolled over and tried to get some sleep. Maybe the sixth or seventh time was the charm, he thought with a snort.

  There was nothing he could do tonight, anyhow, except stew in his own juices.

  5

  David walked Lily back to the hotel room and left her at her door. He kissed the palm of her hand before he said good night.

  “Until tomorrow,” he said before he softly closed the door between them.

  Lil plopped down on her mattress and heaved a sigh. Should she? Shouldn’t she?

  Of course, she shouldn’t! She should tell Slocum to meet her next week, next month, whenever her business here was done and tied with a neat ribbon. And she had a good-sized chunk of David Chandler’s money.