Slocum 419 Read online

  He rolled onto the bed beside her and ran a hand over her flat tummy. He slid it over the dark wiry hairs of her cunt, and her body seemed to quiver at his touch.

  He leaned over and took one of her nipples into his mouth. He rubbed the tip of his tongue over the rough nubbin and Amy squirmed. His left hand probed the portals of her sex. She was wet inside. He touched the tip of her clitoris and she cried out. Her body vibrated as he continued to stroke the little tongue of her pleasure.

  “Oh, John, that’s so good,” she said.

  One of her hands reached over and grabbed his shaft.

  It was still flaccid, but she kneaded it as if she had a ball of dough in her palm. His cock began to fill with engorged blood as he stroked her clit with his index finger. Soon, his cock began to harden.

  Amy cooed with delight.

  “Oooh, he’s getting ready again,” she said. “You are quick, aren’t you, John?”

  He smiled.

  “It’s like what the boy rabbit said to the girl rabbit,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “This won’t take long, did it?”

  Amy laughed and he rolled over on top of her as he slid his finger from her pussy and released the nipple in his mouth.

  She reached down and grabbed his member.

  “My, you are ready again, aren’t you?” she said.

  “Are you?”

  “I can take all you’ve got, John.”

  He eased down, lowering his hips. She guided his cock through the thicket of her pubic hairs until the crown touched the soft, pliable seam of her cunt. The head slid past her lubricated lips and into the steamy cavern of her pussy. Amy sighed deeply and took her hand away as his cock disappeared into her tunnel.

  “Ahhh,” she breathed.

  Slocum felt his veins throb along the length of his prick as he slid deeper into her.

  He slid across the sensitive clitoris and Amy shivered with a rush of pleasurable sensations. When he reached the mouth of her womb, he began to stroke in and out of the moist hot depths and her arms clasped his back. Fingernails dug into his flesh and her legs rose in the air. Back and forth he plunged, with slow even thrusts of his hips and strokes of his cudgel.

  “Oh, oh, oh,” she whispered and her eyes opened to look up at his craggy face, his dark wavy hair, the smile of satisfaction curling his lips.

  “Sweet,” he said.

  She bucked beneath him as an orgasm rippled through her pussy and shivered through the muscles of her legs.

  “I’m coming,” she said.

  “You’re just flying, Amy. Like a bird.”

  “Yes, yes. It just keeps on happening.”

  “Let it happen,” he said, and quickened his strokes.

  They made love for several more minutes. Amy had to stifle her screams. She thrashed on the bed and dug her fingernails into Slocum’s back. He lessened the speed of his strokes and he saw madness flare in her eyes when he went in and out of her with slow even probes. Then, when she relaxed, he screwed her very fast until her body was drenched with sweat and her hair sodden from perspiration.

  When it was over, they lay at each other’s side, breathing hard. Both of them were oiled with sweat, and the musk of their lovemaking was strong in the room.

  “Oh, John, to think that I waited all this time. If I had known, I would have followed you anywhere.”

  “That would have been a lot of places,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t have cared. You’re such a beautiful man in bed. I never had so many climaxes in my life. How do you do it?”

  “It’s an art,” he said. “But it takes two. You’re a real woman, Amy. It’s your own passion that inspires me.”

  “That’s sweet of you to say that,” she said.

  “It’s the truth. You get what you put into it. And you put in a lot.”

  She turned over and stroked his damp hair.

  “Mmmm,” she murmured. “I could want you forever.”

  “That’s a long time, Amy.”

  “Not long enough for what you give me.”

  They talked that way for a few more minutes. Then he got up and fished out a cheroot from his shirt pocket, bit off one end, and lit it.

  “When I was riding in here this morning,” he said, “I saw a man blown out of his mine.”

  “Oh, no,” she exclaimed. “Was he killed?”

  “Plumb,” he said.

  “Do you know who he was? Was it an accident?”

  “His name was Wilbur Nichols. And no, it wasn’t an accident. It was murder.”

  “Wilbur, yes. I know him.” She paused. “Knew him, I mean. And his brother, Jasper. Nice kid. He’ll be lost without Wilbur. Who could have done such a terrible thing?”

  “I’d like to find out,” Slocum said.

  He drew smoke into his mouth and spewed it out in a thin, pale blue stream.

  “A woman worked the plunger that blew Nichols to Kingdom Come,” he said.

  “A woman?”

  “Just saw her for a minute. Less than that. She ran off, and then I heard her talking to another woman before they both rode off.”

  “Did you see the other woman, John?”

  He shook his head. “No. They were both in the timber beyond the rimrock by then. I was down on the road. But there were at least two women up there.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Any idea who they might be?” he asked.

  “Two women, you say.”

  “Yes. And one of them is a killer. Maybe they both are.”

  She thought for a moment. “No one comes to mind right off,” she said.

  “Any other miners get blown up like that lately?”

  She sat up, brushed her hair away from her mouth. She looked down at Slocum and a beam of light shone in her right eye.

  “There was an incident a couple of weeks ago. I heard about it at the Mother Lode one night.”

  “The saloon?”

  “Yes. Some men were talking about a friend of theirs, a miner who was accused of raping another man’s wife. They didn’t mention his name, but I gather these men thought it was a setup, that their friend was the real victim.”

  “What did they say?”

  “I’m trying to think. At first, I thought they were just jawin’ like men do when they’ve had a few swallows of corn whiskey.”

  “Tell me what you remember,” he said.

  “They said their friend was lured by some gal up to a cabin or something. Then, when they were both naked as jaybirds, a man busted into the bedroom and threw down on the miner. Accused him of raping the gal. Said she was his wife.”

  “Then the man who busted in shot the miner?”

  “No, not from what they said. They said their friend was pistol-whipped and made to sign some papers.”

  “What kind of papers?” Slocum asked.

  “I don’t know. Mining claim, I think.”

  “And did they say what happened after that?” Slocum asked.

  A look came over Amy’s face. The blood seemed to drain from her features and turn pasty.

  “A few days later, the men came into the Mother Lode again, in a bunch. They looked sad and they didn’t raise their voices so I couldn’t hear much of what they were saying. But I heard enough to know where they’d been.”

  “Where was that?”

  “To a funeral,” she said. “They were just back in from a funeral.”

  Slocum took the cheroot out of his mouth and his face hardened. A tremor riffled his skin along the jawline.

  “What are you thinking, John? I don’t know whose funeral it was, or whether it was their friend who died. I wasn’t really paying all that much attention. It was a busy night and I had to herd my girls like cattle.”

  “I’m thinking that th
eir friend fell prey to an old game. The badger game.”

  “What is that?”

  “Gal lures a man to her digs, gets him in the sack, then the husband shows up and demands money. You see it a lot in big cities. The poor souls are usually from out of town and they light a shuck and never press charges.”

  “How awful,” she said.

  “Well, it looks like the badger game has come to Durango.”

  “None of your business, John. Don’t get into something you can’t handle.”

  “Somebody has to, Amy. When there’s no law, and there is injustice, then someone has to step up and see that justice is done.”

  “There’s not much law in Durango,” she said. “But there is a lot of treachery and enough murders to fill up Boot Hill. You should just let matters run their course.”

  “I saw a man blown to bits this morning,” he said. “A man who had every right to live out his days. Someone took that life and I am going to find out who.”

  “John, it’s really none of your business. You don’t have a stake in Durango. It’s a mining town and people live and die here all the time.”

  “Amy, I’m a wanted man,” he said. “I’m wanted for murder. A carpetbagger judge back in Calhoun County, Georgia, claimed my family’s land for himself after the war, and he got it—permanently. I buried him by the springhouse. That’s a fact that I can’t change right now. But this Nichols man, he deserves better than he got. His soul cries out for justice.”

  “But it’s still not your place to—”

  He cut her off.

  “Yes, it’s my place. I saw it happen. I have to do something for Nichols and maybe a few others who have been swept under the old rug.”

  She gasped in alarm and hung her head.

  Slocum got up and set the cheroot in the ashtray. He began to put his clothes back on while Amy sat there on the bed, her eyes welling up with tears.

  “Don’t get yourself killed, John. Not now. Not after this. Not after you and me.”

  Slocum pulled on his boots and thought about the man in the mine, flying through the air, dead as a stone.

  And he thought about the women’s voices.

  If he ever heard them again, he would recognize them.

  One way or another, Wilbur Nichols would get the justice he deserved.

  Either at the end of a rope, or from the barrel of a gun.

  5

  Amy dressed quickly. She combed her hair and put on fresh lipstick and a touch of rouge to each cheek.

  Slocum watched her dress and felt desire for her all over again.

  “Well, I guess this is as good as I’m going to feel all day,” she said. She gave Slocum a peck on the cheek. She stood on tiptoes to reach him with her lips.

  “There will be other times,” he said.

  “Promise?”

  “I promise,” he said. “Before you go, can you give me a starting point?”

  “A starting point?”

  “A name, or names. Those fellers you overheard in the saloon. I’d like to talk to at least one of them.”

  “There was only one whose name I knew,” she said. “Wally Fowler. He’s more of a regular than the others. He’s not a miner or prospector. I think he owns a hardware store. Sells mining tools and such.”

  “Thanks. Know the name of his store?”

  “Oh, I think it’s Fowler’s Tools or something like that.”

  “Good. That’s a start.”

  “John, I wish you’d stay out of this. I’ll just worry about you and get sick.”

  “I’m not going to stick my neck out. I’m just curious, that’s all.”

  “Ha. You’re a town tamer if I ever saw one.”

  Slocum laughed and kissed her on the lips.

  “See you at the saloon later,” he said.

  “I’ll be a nervous wreck until you walk through those batwing doors.”

  “Don’t be. Just take care of your girls.”

  “I will,” she said.

  “But don’t take the place of any of them.”

  Amy laughed heartily.

  “Never,” she said, and then Slocum walked her to the door and opened it.

  “Good-bye, John.”

  “Good-bye, Amy.” He locked the door as she walked down the hall. He wanted her again when he saw the bounce of her buttocks.

  He found the store owned by Wally Fowler. The sign on the false front proclaimed that it was FOWLER’S MINING EQUIPMENT CO. “Close enough,” he said to himself as he walked up to the front door.

  Inside, he saw stacks of picks, shovels, adzes, sluice boxes, plowshares, harnesses, boxes of DuPont dynamite, percussion caps, fuses, knives, gold pans, square nails, and assorted pieces of heavy timbers and planking, sacks of concrete, trowels, water jugs, and wooden canteens.

  There were two customers in the store and a man arranging items on a shelf behind the counter where sat a bulky mechanical cash register and jars of hard candy. The place smelled of wood and metal and the faint aroma of stale hardtack.

  “Help you, mister?” the man behind the counter said as he turned around at Slocum’s approach.

  “You Wally Fowler?” Slocum said.

  “Yep, I’m Mrs. Fowler’s boy, Wally. What can I do you for?” Wally grinned at his corruption of the standard customer greeting.

  “I wanted to ask you about your friend, I don’t know his name, who was caught up in the old badger game.”

  “What?”

  “The man who was surprised with another man’s wife or gal friend.”

  “Oh, that. That’s old news. What’s your interest?”

  “I’m more interested in the gal that got him into that fix and the man who claimed he was being dishonored.”

  Wally looked askance at Slocum. He was a wiry man, stood about five and a half feet tall in his boots. He wore a faded green shirt and a tattered vest with pencils jutting from one pocket, striped trousers. He had beady eyes and a furrowed forehead that projected over a slightly bulbous nose that was raw around the nostrils from a nasal drip that he wiped every so often with a crumpled handkerchief.

  “You ain’t the law?”

  “No. But I saw a man killed this morning, and I think a gal worked the plunger that dynamited the man from his mine.”

  “I hadn’t heard,” Wally said.

  “Probably one of your customers,” Slocum said. “Wilbur Nichols.”

  “Wilbur? Hell, I just saw him last night. Had a drink with him.”

  “Well, you won’t drink with him anymore. What I’m trying to find out is who killed him and why, if I can.”

  “Everybody liked Wilbur.”

  “Somebody didn’t,” Slocum said. “That feller who got tangled up with a gal in a badger game. I need to talk to him.”

  “Why?”

  “It was a gal who dynamited Wilbur’s mine. Might be a connection there.”

  “Awww.”

  “I need his name,” Slocum said.

  Wally’s eyes went wide and rolled in their sockets.

  “Man’s name is Ed Jenkins. But you can’t talk to him.”

  “Why?” Slocum asked.

  “Because Ed’s dead. Somebody shot him in the back less’n a month ago.”

  “Know who killed him?”

  “Nope. He was backshot at his mine early one morning.”

  Slocum thought for a minute.

  “He have any kin?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “So who got his mine, Wally?”

  Wally scratched his head.

  “Damned if I know. You might check at the assay office down the street. I know Ed filed a claim.”

  “Any other miners you know who got backshot or dynamited?”

  Wally blinked.

 
; “There’s always somebody buys the farm up here. It’s a rough town. I seen a gunfight in the saloon one night. Two or three men started blasting away with Colts and they carried one of them out, and he was buried next day.”

  “Miner?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Drifter, maybe. Gold brings the bad men to town and they . . . hey, wait a minute. I just thought of something.”

  “What’s that?” Slocum asked.

  “A man came to town about four or five months ago. He looked like a gunslinger when we saw him belly up to the bar at the Mother Lode. ’Bout a week later, another’n come in and they acted like they knowed each other. And pretty soon there was a bunch of them. They didn’t buy any tools from me. They played cards and kept to theirselves. And one of ’em come in with a pair of pretty gals. I think they was his daughters. But he was one of the bunch all right.”

  “How many, and do you know the names of any of them?”

  “There’s a half dozen of ’em. That first ’un what come to town is the leader, I think. They called him Wolf. He’s got a face ragged up with scars and wears a red bandanna, sports a pair of Colt pistols on his belt. Wooden grips and they got notches in ’em.”

  “Just Wolf, huh?”

  “Onliest name I heard him called by. They was another’n called Hobart, I think. Hell, I don’t remember names when I don’t know a feller. But they’re a secretive bunch. Stay to themselves and don’t buy no drinks for nobody. They go up to the cribs now and then, but never seen them gals since. Both mighty purty, though.”

  “Do you know the name of the man who brought the gals into town?”

  “Clemson, I think. Faron Clemson. He looks meaner’n a bulldog, but don’t come out much.”

  “Thanks, Wally,” Slocum said.

  “You goin’ to remember all them names?”

  “Like I grew up with them,” Slocum said. He touched a finger to the brim of his hat and walked out of the store.

  Wally stared at him for a long time until Roy Cheever, a man who worked in the store, came up to him.

  “Who was that, Wally?” the man said.

  “I don’t know. Forgot to ask him what his handle was.”

  “He looks like he can take care of hisself,” Cheever said.

  He was a thin young man with peach fuzz on his cheeks and a hatchet face. He had a tablet in his hand with writing on it.