Slocum and the Hanging Horse Read online

  “I told you not to run,” he said. “Now you’re gonna pleasure me.” She tried to kick him, but he sidestepped and caught her leg at the thigh, pulling it up. He stepped forward so his crotch pressed into hers.

  “Oh, ohhh,” she moaned. Her brown eyes closed as he dropped his pants again and raked his manhood back and forth along the delicate pink chasm between her legs. Unbidden, her other leg rose and curled around his waist, drawing him in even tighter.

  “This is what I’ve been dreamin’ of out on the trail. This is what I’ve wanted.”

  “No, yes, oh, do it, do it!” she cried out.

  He slid full-length into her seething interior, surrounded by clinging female flesh. The dampness turned to an oily flood as he stroked back and forth, causing her to swing slightly as she hung from the leather strap. He bent down and kissed her bouncing teats, licking and sucking and tonguing until she quivered. But lower where they were joined generated the most intense sensations. He moved faster and faster, his need for female companionship smothering everything else.

  Face-to-face, he stared into her desire-glazed eyes. Then his hips exploded in a wild frenzy of movement he could no longer control. The carnal heat built and then he gasped, arched his back, and tried to drive himself even deeper within the woman’s heated core.

  He spilled his seed as she shuddered and began twisting and turning from the strap. Her legs clamped around his waist like steel bands to prevent him from leaving—as if he wanted to. Or could.

  Then he sagged down, spent. Her legs fell down, and she once more supported herself on tiptoe.

  “That was mighty special, Mr. Jeter,” she said, a soft afterglow of a good loving on her face and extending down to her exposed breasts.

  “Yes, it was, Mrs. Jeter,” he said.

  4

  It had to be San Esteban. There weren’t many towns along the road, but Slocum had hoped for more. As he rode down the main street, he counted the businesses. A dozen, maybe one or two more, and that was it. But the town wasn’t a complete void in the vast West Texas desert because it sported not one but two saloons. There might be only one general mercantile, one pharmacy, and a single bakery, but the two saloons looked to have a monopoly on the real business.

  Slocum knew this was being a mite unfair. It was past sundown and most businesses other than a saloon would be shuttered and their proprietors gone home for the night—or gone to belly up to the bar and quaff a few brews. He doubted many in this sleepy little town could afford whiskey. Hardly realizing he did so, he reached up and touched his shirt pocket where his bankroll had been. He was in the majority, not being able to afford a whiskey or even a beer unless he found a nickel tucked away in some other pocket.

  Seeing the marshal’s office, he stopped in the street and wondered if the lawman was inside. No light burned in the solitary slit window of the adobe building. Slocum dismounted, securely fastened his occasionally balky horse, and went inside.

  He reached for his six-shooter when he mistook the deputy’s snoring for a rattler ready to strike. The man had his feet hiked up on the desk and his head was tipped far back. He jerked about as his snoring disturbed even the man causing it.

  “Hello,” Slocum said. When he got no response, he rapped his knuckles hard on the door. The deputy’s feet slid off the desk and crashed to the floor, bringing him awake with a start. The man grabbed for his pistol, but he was still enough asleep that he was clumsy. All he did was fumble and drop the weapon.

  “I want to report a robbery. You in charge?”

  “Who’re you?” The deputy peered at Slocum in the gloom, then reached out and worked until he lit a coal-oil lamp on the desk. A warm, yellow light suffused the small room. Slocum saw a solitary jail cell that looked like it was easier to get out of than the office itself. The door hung at a curious angle, and rusty spots showed on the inch-wide steel straps making up the cage. For anything to show rust in this waterless desolation meant the cage had come from somewhere else, possibly Galveston or some other seacoast town.

  “I was a passenger on the stage. We were robbed about ten miles outside of town.”

  “Stage is overdue. More than eight hours late,” the deputy said, squinting at the Regulator clock methodically ticking off the seconds from its spot on the wall.

  “That’s because it was held up. Two passengers and the driver are dead and everything worth taking’s been took,” Slocum said.

  The deputy shrugged and looked increasingly peeved that Slocum had disturbed his sleep.

  “Nuthin’ I kin do. The marshal’s out serving process.” The way he said it, he resented being left alone in town. Or maybe he resented the marshal making a few dollars serving legal papers for some judge while all he had to do was sit and wait for animals to keel over in the San Esteban streets. It was probably his job to be sure all the dead animals were removed before they rotted too much in the hot sun.

  “You don’t care that three men are dead?”

  “I don’t know ’em, so why should I care?”

  “You’re wearing a badge, that’s why.” Slocum ground his teeth together to keep from saying what he really thought. Three men had died, and he had lost his brother’s watch in a brutal robbery.

  “You git a good look at the varmint?” the deputy asked. He gestured toward a few wanted posters tacked onto the adobe wall. Dust had piled up on the floor under each, showing that the nails had done more damage to the wall than to the posters.

  “He wore a mask. And he knocked me out with a long-barreled shotgun.” Slocum saw the deputy recoil as if he had been struck. “Who is it? You know the outlaw, don’t you?”

  “Yer description’s mighty vague, mister. If you want, I’ll take down some notes and leave ’em for the marshal. I only work here when he’s not in town. He’ll be back in a day or two.”

  “Where’s the Butterfield office?”

  “What you want—oh, you think Ole Man Sanford’s gonna give two hoots and a holler. Well, he might. The stage line’s been losin’ a fair amount of cargo over the past couple months.”

  “To the same road agent?” Slocum saw that his question had been answered without words by the frightened expression on the deputy’s face.

  “Down the street, across from the Drunk Camel.”

  “The saloon?”

  “What else? Now, if you don’t mind, I got serious work to do.” The deputy opened a desk drawer and searched inside for something official-looking. All that was inside were old newspapers and a penny dreadful with a garish cover. He hastily closed the drawer and grabbed a stack of papers and began shuffling through them. Slocum knew he wasn’t going to get any satisfaction from the part-time deputy. The man did nothing but keep the seat warm, not that the marshal probably did any more than that himself when he was in town.

  Slocum stepped out into the cold night and looked around. Both saloons were doing better business now, but the Drunk Camel looked to be the more populated of the pair. Across the street where the deputy had said was the stagecoach office. The door stood open to let a sliver of light spill out in a pie-shaped wedge onto the boardwalk. Slocum hitched up his gun belt and went over.

  He peered inside. A wizened old man hunched over a desk as he scribbled a long letter. A six-shooter lay on the desk close at hand.

  “Are you Sanford?” Slocum got the reaction he expected. The old man’s skeletal hand went to the six-shooter with remarkable speed for someone who looked half-dead.

  “Who’re you?”

  “One of the passengers on the stagecoach that’s not going to arrive,” Slocum said. Sanford sagged even more, turning himself into a human question mark burdened by more than age now.

  “I figured that was the way it was,” the old man said. “Since I didn’t hear the stage come rattlin’ in, that means you walked?”

  Slocum looked over his shoulder in the direction of the horse he had taken from the team.

  “We were robbed about ten miles outside town. The driver and
the other two passengers were killed. I got slugged and left for dead. There was only one road agent who did it all. He had a shotgun.” Slocum saw that nothing after the part about the driver and passengers being murdered came as a surprise.

  “He’s a one-man terror. A regular horde of outlaws all rolled into one.”

  “Does he always kill everyone?”

  “Not always. Sometimes he just shoots ’em up so they can tell the marshal about it.”

  “Why hasn’t he been caught? The deputy said he’s been at it for months.”

  Sanford spat and missed the brass cuspidor in the corner of the room. From the way the wall was stained with tobacco juice, he didn’t often hit his target.

  “Deputy? Just ’cuz he wears a badge don’t make him a lawman. He’s the town drunk when he’s not sittin’ in the office fer Marshal Benbow.”

  “If there’s enough trouble, why isn’t there a vigilance committee?”

  “Mister, folks in San Esteban are peaceable and mind their own business.”

  “You mean they’re scared shitless of the road agent.”

  Sanford laughed without a trace of humor and nodded. “Might say that. Hell, I do say that. All it gets me is stared at. They drift off then, muttering to themselves. I been sendin’ letters to the home office, but they got other problems.”

  “The Apaches?”

  “Don’t get me wrong. Colonel Grierson’s the finest man what ever sat astride a horse, but he got nothing but them black soldiers. They fight just fine, but they slack off when they got to ride down the Apaches.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard,” Slocum said.

  “Whatever you heard, they’s not interested in catchin’ a lone outlaw holdin’ up stagecoaches out in the middle of nowhere. And mister, in case you didn’t notice, San Esteban is the middle of nowhere.”

  “A mile from water, ten feet from hell,” Slocum muttered.

  “How’s that?” Sanford finally took his hand off the six-gun. “Don’t matter what you think. I got another report goin’ in to the main office. You say Jethro’s dead? And two passengers? The road agent got the strongbox too, I reckon?”

  Slocum nodded. Jethro must have been the driver.

  “You want a job? Soon as we get the stage back, we’ll need a driver. You got the look of a man who can handle a team. And you know what you’d be up against.”

  “I’ve got other plans,” Slocum said, resting his hand on the empty vest pocket where his watch had been.

  “There ain’t a reward on this varmint. There ought to be. A big one. Maybe a hunnerd dollars.”

  “I’ll get him for nothing.”

  “You’ll only end up like the rest if you cross him. We don’t even know his name, but he blowed into the territory three-four months back and has been a regular Texas tornado whippin’ up dust ever since.”

  “That’s too long for a town to let an owlhoot like him keep on robbing and killing.”

  “They’re scared, mister. Hell, I’m scared and I’m older than dirt. I been through Injun wars and even them Warm Springs Apaches don’t frighten me much, but this fella, he’s pure evil.”

  “He’ll be pure dead.”

  “Good luck then. And in case you don’t make it, it’ll ease your mind to know that we got a real nice cemetery outside town.”

  “Hope there’ll be room for one more grave,” Slocum said. He didn’t care if the outlaw was buried there or left for the voracious buzzards, the way he had left Jethro the stagecoach driver. As long as the outlaw was dead and Slocum had his watch back, everything would be fine.

  Slocum patted down his pockets, but the storekeeper had been too thorough in obeying the road agent’s orders. Every single penny had been dropped into the hat. Still, Slocum went to the saloon and stopped in the doorway, studying the crowd inside. They were a boisterous and happy-looking bunch. He went to the end of the bar and shoved his back against the wall as he leaned on an elbow.

  “You got the look of a man with a powerful thirst,” the barkeep said.

  “I’ve got the look of a man who’s been robbed of everything,” Slocum said. “I was on the stage.” He saw how the bartender backed off a pace.

  “That’s a crying shame, mister,” the barkeep said. His hatchet-thin face paled a little under his weatherbeaten hide. “D-did he k-kill anyone?”

  “Everyone else. He left me for dead.”

  “H-here, on the house,” the barkeep said, sliding a beer down the bar to stop in front of Slocum.

  “Much obliged,” Slocum said, tasting the beer. It was surprisingly good, or maybe he was just thirsty. “You got any idea who it is doing the robbing?”

  “D-don’t care to find out neither,” the bartender said, turning and hurrying to the far end of the bar. He talked quickly with several men there. Slocum watched their good nature drain. They all looked as if they would bolt and run, just from the telling of the story.

  “How many robberies have there been?” Slocum asked a man who had been eavesdropping from a nearby table.

  “More ’n I kin count,” the man said. “He’s bad medicine. Real bad. Got everyone in town afraid to even go to the outhouse without packin’ a six-shooter. Rumor has it he rode with the Zaragosa bandidos.”

  “He didn’t look or sound Mexican.”

  The man shrugged. “Might be he killed all of them and went out on his own. Or he might be like Luke—he’s the barkeep—thinks, a Texas Ranger gone bad. It happens. And when it does, they turn mean. Meaner than when they wore badges.”

  “So nobody knows who this owlhoot is?”

  “Lot of guesses, no answers.”

  “You could form a posse and track him down.”

  “Hell, mister, as long as he don’t come into town, we’re willin’ to let him be. He don’t bother us none, we won’t tempt fate goin’ after him.”

  “He’s choking off travel to San Esteban. Won’t be much longer until the railroad is built and there won’t even be a stagecoach coming this way. The whole town’d dry up and blow away then. Looks like he’s speeding that up by robbing every stage that comes here.”

  “He’s killed a passel of folks, but none of them’s been residents. That keeps it from being our direct concern.” The man downed his beer, wiped his lips, and considered another. Then he decided against it. “You’ll be better off ridin’ on. Tangle with him and you’ll end up dead.”

  “Yeah, out in the town cemetery,” Slocum said angrily. “That’s already been suggested by the stagecoach agent.”

  “Old Man Sanford’s got it right this time. You heed him, mister, you do or that son of a bitch will kill you.”

  “He tried once and failed. He won’t get a second chance,” Slocum said.

  “Suit yourself.” The man pushed back and hurried from the saloon, probably headed for the other saloon, and left Slocum stewing in his thoughts.

  He finished the beer and saw Luke wasn’t likely to come back to ask if he wanted more, already knowing the answer. Slocum simply being in the saloon reminded everyone of the danger out on the road. He had seen fear clutch a town by the throat before, and it wasn’t pretty. San Esteban would die long before the railroad choked off the traffic along the San Antonio-El Paso road because they refused to grab the nettle and pull it out, no matter how painful such an act might be. In the long run, they would all be safer and better off, but not a one of the citizens of this hellhole town would admit that.

  Slocum stepped out into the street and shivered. When the sun went down in the desert, it got cold mighty fast.

  “They call it the Drunk Camel because there used to be camels up at Fort Davis. They all died.”

  Slocum turned and saw a petite woman sitting in a chair, shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She had long blond hair, eyes the color of the West Texas sky, and a smile burning brighter than even the noonday sun.

  “You were wondering about the odd name, weren’t you?”

  “Among other things,” Slocum said.

&
nbsp; “My name’s Amy Gerardo.” She stood gracefully and came to him, her delicate hand outstretched. Slocum didn’t know if she expected him to shake it or kiss it. Amy proved to be almost a foot shorter than his six feet, but the old saying about good things coming in small packages looked to be true. She was about the prettiest woman he had seen in a coon’s age.

  “Pleased to meet you. Mine’s John Slocum.”

  “Mr. Slocum, I happened to overhear much of what you said inside the saloon.”

  “Do you always spy on men in saloons? You don’t look like the type.”

  “Oh, thank you, sir,” she said, feigning embarrassment and pleasure that he would think well of her. “News travels fast. I followed you here after I spoke with Mr. Sanford. Of course it was improper for me to actually enter, so I positioned myself here where I could overhear and be sure I saw you when you chose to leave.”

  “The barkeep gave me a beer because the outlaw stole all my money.”

  “I know. Les Jeter is a terrible man.”

  “You know his name?” Slocum tensed. The beautiful woman easily divulged a name that no one else in town admitted to knowing.

  “He is the foremost outlaw in Texas,” she said almost breathlessly. A flush came to her cheeks and her breasts heaved with—what? Excitement? It wasn’t fear.

  “How do you know of him?”

  “I work for Mr. Ambrose Killian,” she said. “And it is my job to learn as much of Jeter as I can. Please, Mr. Slocum, tell me what happened out on the road.”

  “Is there somewhere we can sit down? It’s mighty cold out here.”

  “What? Oh, yes, of course. Why don’t I buy you dinner? While you eat you can tell me all the details of this horrendous crime. There’s a small restaurant down the street that serves quite good food.”

  “Most anything would set well with me. It’s been a spell since I had anything to eat,” Slocum admitted.

  “I am sure I can get them to open up. They usually close before now.” She waited with some expectation until Slocum realized she waited for him to offer her his arm. He did, and they went down the street past the Prancing Pony Drinking Emporium to a small adobe. As Amy had said, the restaurant was closed, but she arranged for the proprietor to open. Slocum saw how much money changed hands, and wondered anew at his lovely companion.