Slocum Buried Alive Page 5

  “We’d better hurry. We’re in for a downpour before morning,” Polly warned.

  “Storms come from the southeast?”

  “Off the Gulf of Mexico this time of year. It’s clear overhead, but back yonder’s a different can of worms.”

  Slocum trusted her knowledge of the storm tracks. A rancher learned to feel such things in his bones. He urged his horse to a quicker gait, and less than fifteen minutes later he saw where Frank had been ambushed. It took no skill to see the man’s hat in the grass—or a rifle lying nearby.

  He dismounted and fetched both. Polly took the hat, but he kept the rifle. Trusting her as much as she trusted him had its drawbacks. Having a second rifle if he got into a fierce shootout meant the difference between living and dying.

  Leaving his horse, he circled the area on foot. Crushed grass, trampled bushes, and a patch of cactus that had been recently kicked by horses gave him the direction. He pointed and asked, “What’s that way?”

  “More of Hawkins’s land. Hell and damnation, most all of this is his—or will be when he steals it. The Gonzalez family had a place not a mile off. You think that’s where they took Frank?”

  Slocum didn’t answer directly. He mounted and laid the rifle across the saddle in front of him.

  “You have somewhere to hole up?”

  “I’m not leaving my brother!”

  “You’ll get in my way.”

  “What if they shoot you down like a rabid dog? What if you’re wounded and can’t get away? I can keep after them. By all that’s holy, I swear I will get them.”

  Slocum knew his choices were few. He could hog-tie Polly and leave her here, but if her dire prediction came true and he was killed, she might die if she couldn’t get free. If he tied her so poorly she could get free eventually, she’d be on his trail in a flash. Taking her horse would only slow her down.

  “Stay back a few yards. Keep that rifle of yours in its sheath. I don’t want you accidentally shooting me in the back.”

  “It won’t be by accident if you’re lying to me.”

  Slocum had to laugh. She had sand.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Be quiet,” Slocum said. He took a deep whiff of the night air. Mingled with the earth and vegetation came a hint of the rain Polly had predicted. He also caught wood smoke. Turning like a weather vane, he found the direction and listened hard. The distant sound of horses told him how close he was to finding at least a few riders.

  He motioned for her to follow. She had the good sense to obey him and hung back until he found a dirt road. Then she came up beside him.

  “The Gonzalez house is just around the bend in the road.”

  “Where’s the road go?” He looked behind them. The dirt tracks disappeared into a stand of trees.

  “On to the main road, then into Espero.”

  “A day’s travel?”

  “More or less,” she said. “This is a good place for Hawkins to keep the people he wants to torture.” Polly’s voice rose when she said, “Might be my folks are here, too. All three of them, Frank and my parents.”

  Slocum hefted the rifle, checked to be sure a round rested in the chamber, then rode slowly forward. At the bend in the road, he brought the rifle to his shoulder, but no target centered on his sights.

  “The fire’s too high to have burned longer than a few minutes,” Slocum said. “Wait for my signal, then come on in.” He glanced at Polly’s rifle. The unspoken order made her draw the weapon and clutch it fiercely.

  He dropped to the ground and advanced on the house. The slight breeze made the house creak. Other than the scurrying of small forest animals, he heard nothing. A quick look in one window showed the kitchen where the fire had been built in an iron stove. Slocum ducked back, edged around to the door, then kicked it in. If anything had moved, he would have fired.

  Empty.

  A quick search of the house further disappointed him. Here and there he saw traces of men being present recently. Whatever had brought them here took them away as quickly. He left the house and headed for the barn when he heard Polly shriek.

  He reversed his course and ran back to find her on hands and knees, digging like a prairie dog. In the pale moonlight he traced out the rectangular pattern of a freshly dug grave.

  “He’s here,” she sobbed. “Frank’s here. Help me dig him up. Help me. Please!”

  Knowing what he would find, Slocum lent a hand. But a few minutes of digging revealed something he never expected to see—ever.

  5

  The pinewood coffin lid had cracked and fingers poked through. Slocum worked alongside Polly to get more dirt away from the lid so he could wrap his own fingers around the lid and yank hard. Dust flew everywhere as the lid broke into three pieces. Slocum tumbled back and sat in the dirt, staring as Frank Neville sat up in the coffin and spat dirt from his mouth.

  “H-He tried to do it to me,” he gasped out. He stared directly at Slocum with nothing but pure terror in his eyes.

  “Those men—Hawkins’s gang—they buried you alive?” Slocum got to his knees and edged closer.

  Staring into the coffin told him that was exactly what had happened. Huge curls of wood had been gouged from the sides of the coffin where Neville fought to get free. In some places it looked as if a router rather than fingernails had been used to form the deep trenches in the wood. But the man’s bloody, broken fingernails told the story.

  “I had to get out. Didn’t know how deep they’d planted me, but I hoped they were lazy bastards.” Neville turned to one side and puked, wiped his mouth, and then got to his feet.

  He let Polly help him but shied away from Slocum.

  “He’s one of ’em,” he accused. “I shot McIntyre. Couldn’t get a decent bead on this one.”

  “Where’s the woman who was with me? Did Hawkins’s men have her?” Slocum grabbed a double handful of the man’s coat and shook him like a terrier would a rat. Neville’s head snapped back and forth as strength fled from his body.

  “Stop it! Can’t you see what he’s been through? He would have died here if I hadn’t found him in time.” Polly pushed Slocum away and clung to her weak brother. Getting her legs under her body and arms wrapped around him, she heaved Neville to his feet so he could step out of the coffin.

  “He helped, Frank, he really did. Hawkins had duped him. He’s not one of the gang.”

  “Doin’ what Hawkins wants is same as bein’ one of the gang.”

  Slocum let the pair of them make their way to the house while he prowled about. He had no trouble finding the tracks of several horses, perhaps a half dozen, riding toward the road that Polly said went to Espero. The gang returned to report to their boss. He sat heavily on a stump used as a chopping block and wiped away the dirt from his coat and then rubbed his hands as clean as he could.

  Hearing only one side of what had to be a deadly feud prejudiced him against Hawkins, but the undertaker might have good explanations for what was going on. He might not have kidnapped the elder Nevilles. In spite of what Polly thought, they might have taken the money and left the region without telling their children. Slocum leaned forward and put his head on his hands. That made no sense. Unless Hawkins had paid them and demanded they leave without telling their children, but why do that?

  His head threatened to explode. When a sudden flash almost blinded him, he thought his head had blown apart. Heavy raindrops spatted against the brim of his hat. As he turned his face to the sky, several cold drops hit him in the eyes. His headache deepened as his eyes became swelled grapes pulsing against his eyelids.

  He swung about and headed for the house. Its roof looked intact. Even if it wasn’t, there had to be a dry spot where he could recover his senses and figure out what to do next. Hiring on to chaperon Miranda Madison wore heaviest on him. The bump on the top of his head gave a constant remind
er of failing at that job. He had taken money, even if only a few dollars remained of the first payment. To collect the four hundred dollars remaining of the agreed-upon fee, he had to deliver Miss Madison into Hawkins’s hands. The only problem with that was not knowing where she was.

  New pain lanced into his head, and he explored the bloody bump he had acquired hunting for her. The sounds he had heard earlier were likely Polly and her brother. Maybe the Hawkins gang shooting at them. Had Miranda beaned him? Why? They were getting along just fine, and she showed no hesitation about Espero or meeting her husband-to-be. If anything, she accepted her new role as wife with great enthusiasm. Greater enthusiasm than Slocum would have expected, at any rate, but he had met Hawkins and she had yet to have that pleasure.

  He pushed hard against the door into the kitchen. It resisted. He pushed harder. It suddenly gave way, sending him facedown onto the floor. Not an inch from his nose was a pair of scuffed boots. Arching his back, he looked up into a rifle held in rock-steady hands. Sighting down the barrel, Frank Neville had him dead to rights.

  “Either pull the trigger and put me out of my misery or help me up.”

  Slocum saw that Neville intended to shoot him. With a combination of wiggle and dive, he got his arms around the man’s knees and drove his shoulder into his right shin. The rifle discharged, but the bullet went high, breaking out a pane of glass that had somehow survived to this point.

  Knowing better than to let up, Slocum swarmed up the man’s body. The smell of dirt—earth from a grave—clung to Neville like a poisonous perfume. Slocum clawed his way up and slammed his shoulder against the rifle barrel as Neville fired again. The burning sensation on his arm came from the heated barrel, not from a bullet. With the smell of dirt and gun smoke in his nostrils, Slocum grabbed hard on Neville’s shirt and slammed him backward. His head banged against a chair. This gave Slocum time to yank the rifle from his hand and use it to bludgeon his attacker.

  “Stop! What are you doing? Stop!”

  Polly’s cry kept Slocum from ramming the rifle stock into her brother’s face. He used the rifle as a crutch to stand. She stared at him, aghast.

  “Why’d you hit him? Frank didn’t do anything!”

  “Kill you, you miserable . . .” Neville’s words trickled away.

  Polly cradled him in her arms. Whatever he whispered to her caused the woman to drop him. His head hit the floor with a loud thud.

  “You’re so stupid, flies wouldn’t land on you, Franklin Pierce Neville! He helped me. You had no call trying to gun him down again.”

  Slocum nudged her, pressing the rifle into her hands. She stared at the weapon then up at Slocum. Her mouth thinned to a razor slash, and she launched into berating her brother some more.

  Slocum left them in the kitchen and found a dry patch in the front room to sit. The storm gathered fury, but the roof held. Only when the wind blew rain parallel to the ground did the walls start leaking. Slocum ignored the small spray coming after him and closed his eyes. The lump on the top of his head throbbed now and sent dull waves of pain through his head and neck. Other cuts and scrapes on his body and arms hardly bothered him, or at least not as much as worry over Miranda Madison’s fate.

  “You have to excuse my brother. He’s been through hell.”

  “Getting buried alive can do that,” Slocum said.

  “It’s how Hawkins punishes everyone. Who’s not afraid of being treated that way? Frank was lucky we were so close.”

  “You learned one thing,” Slocum said, closing his eyes and stretching out on the floor. “He wasn’t kidnapped to be used to force your pa to sign over the ranch. Otherwise, he would have been buried in front of him. Just telling your pa that Frank was buried would only steel his resolve. He’d think they were lying to him.”

  “You’re mighty smart, John Slocum.” She put her hand on his chest lightly, teasingly. “How’d that come about?”

  “Been dropped on my head one too many times,” Slocum said. He took off his hat to show her where he had been struck.

  “That lump’s the size of the Alamo! Don’t flinch.”

  She tore off part of her already disheveled blouse and soaked it in rainwater puddling nearby. With surprisingly tender touches, she dabbed away the caked blood. As she bent over him, her chest was only inches from his face. Slocum couldn’t help noticing the gentle sway of her breasts as she moved or how the rips and tears exposed deliciously naked titflesh.

  Polly stopped and looked down at him, her breasts just inches from his face.

  “Do you need a written invite?” She shimmied a little, causing quakes in her breasts. By pulling back her shoulders, she contrived to get one teat entirely free. Naked and inviting, she lowered her chest so that a dark brown nipple brushed his lips.

  “Your brother’s ready to kill me, just because,” Slocum said.

  “Frank’s passed out in the kitchen. Are you passed out here? When you can have this?”

  Her breast moved a fraction of an inch lower. Slocum’s resolve vanished. His tongue flicked out and rolled around the hard nub of flesh. Polly moaned softly, the sound lost in the crash of rain against the walls and roof. When a dazzling flash of lightning lit the room, Slocum got the best view yet of her. Her eyes were closed and she chewed on her lower lip. Auburn hair turned to mahogany as the afterimage from the flash faded, but the nearness of her warm flesh remained.

  Slocum sucked the entire tit into his mouth. Using his tongue, he rolled around the blood-engorged pebble at the summit, then tried to mash it down into the soft flesh beneath. Polly sank lower, shoving her chest out in such a way to force even more into his mouth. He obliged. Using his teeth to lightly score the soft slopes, he worked back until only the cherry-sized bud remained between his lips. Then he used teeth and lips and sucked for all he was worth. Polly arched her back and tried to jam herself into his mouth fully.

  He wasn’t having any of that. He wanted to arouse her—and he did when he used his tongue to slither about in the canyon between her tits. She shuddered as he worked his way from one snowy crest to the other, taking plenty of time to lave the nips and suckle on them until he felt as if he would explode.

  “I want more, John,” she said, her lips touching his ear. She nibbled at his earlobe.

  “Got to get free of these jeans.”

  He almost erupted like a young buck when she reached down and pressed hard into the bulge at his crotch. Her fingers danced about and magically freed his fly one button at a time. He snapped to attention like a soldier on parade. Her fingers curled about him and began stroking up and down until he was steelier than he ever had been. Keeping himself under control proved hard when she began tapping her fingertips lightly on his balls. Everything tumbled and churned inside him.

  Slocum arched his back and moved her around so they lay side by side. She started to protest, but he cut her off with a deep kiss. Her lips parted slightly, allowing him to invade. His tongue flashed out and teased her tongue before engaging in an erotic hide-and-seek that took away both their breaths.

  They rolled over, Polly’s legs parting.

  “I don’t have anything on underneath,” she said in a sex-husky voice.

  His exploring hand found she told the truth. He pushed up her riding skirt and found warm inner thigh. He stroked over it. Every touch on the sleek skin sent ripples of desire throughout her body. He knew that from the way she moaned and curled up, her knees rising so she could wantonly open herself for him.

  He ached from need, but he wanted her to feel the same anticipation. His finger invaded her core, wiggled about in the damp heat, and then slipped back out. Dampened fingers slathered her own inner oils all over the pinkly scalloped nether lips. When he found the tiny spire at the top of her sex lips, he squeezed down just a little.

  Polly let out a shriek that would wake the dead. He retreated for a moment, but her hand fo
und his beneath her skirts and held it in place.

  “Don’t you dare leave, not now,” she said.

  “Frank—”

  “Is out like a light. And if he comes in, to hell with him!” She passionately kissed Slocum until his lips bruised.

  He hardly noticed. His hands were too busy exploring the mysteries of her body, finding places to touch and arouse and bring gasps of delight to her lips. He kissed over her eyes, to her ear, and then worked down her neck and finally to the valley where he had begun.

  “Now, John, now!”

  She wasn’t to be denied. Neither was he. Slocum moved between her legs, ran his arms under her knees, and lifted, bending her almost double. In this position he bent forward, hips thrusting. The plum-colored tip of his manhood brushed across her most intimate flesh, then parted the curtains and sank balls deep within. They both cried out at the smooth, quick insertion.

  She felt tight and hot and wet all around him. He looked down into her half-opened eyes and saw the lust boiling there. It fed his own. He pulled back slightly, letting her legs relax a mite. Then he rushed back in, again bending her double. With the rain pounding outside, they continued their lovemaking until neither could stand another instant. Slocum felt her tense and clutch at his buried length. This triggered his own eruption. He spilled into her needy, greedy interior as he continued stroking.

  When he was drained and his organ limp, he sank down atop her to give her a slow, tender kiss.

  “Never felt like that before, during, or after,” Polly said in a tiny voice. She stared at him, and he saw a touch of fear.

  “You don’t have to be afraid of anything.”