Slocum and the Town Killers Read online

  “See who it is,” he ordered Kimbrell. His lieutenant was already running toward the perimeter of their camp, where two lookouts came forward, rifles aimed at the rider.

  “Stand down. It’s Lasker,” called Kimbrell.

  Magee walked more sedately, trying to keep his rampaging emotions under control. Lasker was the best scout in the unit.

  “Report, trooper,” Magee said, although Lasker and Kimbrell already spoke in guarded tones. “What have you found out?”

  “Major, I think I got a line on them two women you want,” the scout said. “There’s another town, not fifteen miles down the road. I talked to a couple men in a bar there and they was goin’ on about a woman they spotted ridin’ all alone.”

  “One? Only one? Not two?” Magee’s heart almost exploded in his chest. There had to be both of them. He would not let one slip through his fingers. There had to be both of them in the town.

  “Only one, but he thought there might be somebody else. This one was a young woman.”

  “Blond?”

  “Couldn’t say for certain sure,” Lasker said. He grinned. “Seems all he was lookin’ at was the woman’s tits. Besides, she had her hair all pushed up under a hat, so he couldn’t get a good look.”

  “Major, her hair would’ve been dirty. Hard to tell one way or the other,” Kimbrell said. Magee ignored him.

  “Well? Go on. What else was there?”

  “Not much else. Just that they seen a solitary woman. In these parts, the men know all the women, and they had never seen this one before. She’s a newcomer.”

  “Very well, Lasker. Thank you. Get some grub and rest. You’ll lead the troop tomorrow at daybreak.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lasker said, but he looked at Kimbrell, who nodded. Lasker hurried off.

  “Sir, what are your orders?” Kimbrell asked.

  “We need to avoid the errors that allowed them to slip through our fingers at the last town.”

  “Charity,” Kimbrell said. “Not much Charity in that place.”

  “I don’t give a damn what they call their towns. I want my family.”

  “Why’s that, Major? We been shootin’ up towns and then burnin’ ’em to the ground for more ’n a month now. What’s so all-fired important about these two women?”

  “You wouldn’t understand, would you. They are family,” Magee said with so much fire that Kimbrell took an involuntary step back. “All that is required of you is that we find them. Kill anyone with them. Kill everyone around them.”

  “That sounds mighty fine, Major,” Kimbrell said.

  “We must hone our skills and become more efficient. I leave those details to you. Carry on.” Magee put his hands behind his back and walked off, thinking hard on what the next day would bring. Fifteen miles away, the scout had said. That was a hard ride and would push his men to their limit when they arrived. He had complete faith that they would be up for the fight, but he was worried that they might be so tired that they would accidentally hurt Louisa or Sarah Beth.

  Magee almost turned back to voice his concern to Kimbrell, then stopped. Kimbrell would obey orders. He was a good soldier, even if he had no concept about how a man could love his wife and daughter. Kimbrell would just obey. Magee lowered his head, looked hard at the ground without seeing it, and walked to where he had spread his bedroll. He lay down, but his mind refused to allow him to sleep. Over and over, he thought of once more being reunited with his wife and daughter and killing everyone responsible for taking them from him.

  Albert Kimbrell watched Magee walk off, lost in his own thoughts. Kimbrell held down the cry of triumph welling up from within. Magee had just given the order to raid another town. To hell with the women the major chased after. The killing was fun and the burning was an added bonus, but looting the towns was best of all. Kimbrell had more than ten thousand dollars stashed along the Oklahoma road they followed. When the major got tired of chasing after the will-o’-the-wisps or was gunned down in a fight, Kimbrell would retrieve his loot and head south. He could live like a king the rest of his life in Mexico.

  The lure of those willing, lovely señoritas and of gallons of tequila and pulque was almost more than Kimbrell could fight. He could leave the major any time he wanted. Magee would never send anyone to track him down or even to find what had happened to the best lieutenant he ever had because he was too focused on finding the two blond bitches. Still, those women were the reason Kimbrell stayed with the major and his murderous gang.

  More towns, more killing, more money from banks and businesses. Kimbrell grinned broadly, then yelled, “What’s the matter? Go on, finish him off!”

  The men roared as one of the fighters reared back and punched his opponent. They both went down in a pile, exhausted from their fight. The men crowded close, but Kimbrell did not join them. He wanted to savor the idea of another town.

  Ride like the wind, shoot until the gun smoke from his six pistols and two rifles filled the air, and then snuff out the buildings with purifying fire. That was the icing on the cake, after he had taken as much money as he could carry.

  Kimbrell flopped down on his bedroll and looked up at the sky. Wisps of clouds moved across the stars, promising rain later. But that was later and didn’t much matter right now. Kimbrell lived for the present. He fished around in his saddlebags, pulled out a small oilskin package, and carefully unwrapped it.

  The severed finger had begun to wither, but the bulky gold West Point ring was still firmly attached. Somehow, Kimbrell liked it this way. He had never risen above private in rank during the war. Whenever he would get promoted, once to sergeant, the officers would always find fault with him and bust him to the ranks. He was better than any of those officers. He could never get a ring like this by graduating from West Point. Now he didn’t have to.

  Kimbrell stroked over the stiff, bloodless finger, and stopped only when he touched the cool metal ring. A thrill passed through him that was more than sexual. No whore he had ever had made him feel this good. He had taken this from some Federal officer. It made him feel superior. The man had been a weakling and had died as Kimbrell pumped bullets into him and had given up his ring so easily.

  Kimbrell might never have been promoted to the officer ranks, but he could have all the trappings. He carefully wrapped the finger and ring in the oilcloth and tucked it into his vest pocket where he could touch it whenever he liked. Then he put his hands behind his head and watched the clouds dancing about until they obscured the moon. He had the ring. When Major Magee finally died, he would have command. If he wanted it, he would be an officer.

  Or he might just collect all his money and go to Mexico. It was nice to have choices. Kimbrell fell asleep thinking about the men he would kill and the towns he would burn.

  6

  “I can’t go on,” Louisa Magee said. “Every bone in my body aches so! Please, Sarah Beth, let’s rest.”

  “The town’s not too far ahead, Mama. We can make it. Hot food.”

  “Can’t eat,” her mother said. “Too tired.”

  “There’ll be a hotel with a nice feather bed. You can sleep.”

  Louisa broke out crying. The more she tried to control her outburst, the worse she sobbed and shook. Sarah Beth rode closer until their legs brushed so she could reach out and put a hand on her mother’s shoulder.

  “We’ll get away from him. He won’t catch us.”

  “He won’t stop until he either catches us or he’s dead. You go on. I . . . I’ll wait for him. One of us ought to get away.”

  “We both can,” Sarah Beth said firmly. “We can get far, far away from him, but we can’t give up.”

  “So tired,” Louisa repeated. “How much farther?”

  Sarah Beth squeezed her mother’s arm reassuringly. She wished she was as confident as she tried to appear. They had ridden into the night, and once they had found a road, had ridden parallel to it. Sarah Beth had worried that her father might have lookouts posted along it. Or scouts. Or someone would se
e them and tell Clayton Magee. Sarah Beth had seen how persuasive her father could be. And how crazy.

  “It’s not much farther. I saw a sign somewhere when I rode back to see if anyone was on our trail. Foreman was the name. Does that mean anything to you, Mama?”

  Louisa shook her head. “I’d never heard of Charity or Cherokee Springs either. We can’t run forever, Sarah Beth. When do we stop? How do we stop?”

  Sarah Beth didn’t have an answer for that. Her father had to die for their nightmare to end. Or they had to find somewhere where he could never find them, not in a million years. Getting away long enough to set up a new life was the problem because Magee was so close. A month, even a week. There had to be something they could do to win the time to get away from the juggernaut trailing along behind them, destroying everything and everyone.

  “There’s the edge of town,” Sarah Beth said. “We got here, Mama. We can rest.”

  “I don’t have any money. What are we going to do for money?”

  “You worry so. We’re smart. We’ll find something.”

  Louisa Magee chewed at her lower lip and shook her head, as if saying it wasn’t going to happen, but Sarah Beth wouldn’t let her get down on herself.

  “Think of all the things you do well. You’re a fine seamstress. Nobody makes a better quilt or man’s shirt.” Seeing how her mother tensed at this memory of repairing all the holes in Clayton Magee’s uniform, Sarah Beth rushed on. “You can cook better than anyone else I know. There are ways to make a living in any frontier town.”

  “But this one? Shouldn’t we keep riding? To get away?” Louisa looked over her shoulder, as if she expected to see her husband watching her, his disapproving glare ready to wilt anything she might do.

  “We need to rest for a spell. You said so, Mama. And I’m sore from so much riding, too.”

  “These horses are stolen. The law . . .”

  “Mama,” Sarah Beth said sharply. “You can’t steal from a dead man. Think of them as gifts from Papa so we could get away from him. Unintentional, yes, but gifts. He owes us so much. It’s the least he could do.”

  “All right, daughter,” Louisa Magee said, finally giving in. “The town’s called Foreman? You don’t think he will find us here?”

  “Yes, it is, and no, I don’t. Now come on. I smell baking bread. We should find whoever’s responsible and ask for some.”

  Sarah Beth rode ahead, letting her mother trail her. It was just as well. Sarah Beth spoke more confidently than she felt. They had ridden all over Oklahoma, and she really had no idea where they had ended up. For all she knew, her pa and his killers had already found their trail. If so, riding into Foreman meant another town would die.

  It was either that or the two of them would die from hunger and exhaustion. Sarah Beth had already made up her mind. Let the town defend itself. Eventually, one would present such a challenge that her father would fail amid a fusillade of bullets. It might just be this one. If Clayton Magee was still on their trail at all.

  “Good morning,” Sarah Beth called, standing just outside the bakery door. A woman used the edge of her apron to wipe sweat off her face as she turned from her oven to look at Sarah Beth.

  “Don’t open for another hour. Come on back then and I’ll sell you the finest bread in all of Foreman.”

  “It’s got to be,” Sarah Beth said. “It surely does smell delicious.” She hesitated, then her hunger forced her on. “I need a job. My mother and I both need jobs. We’re on our way . . . west. Just passing through unless we find a hospitable spot to call home.”

  “Foreman’s hospitable enough,” the woman said. She wiped her hands on the apron to get flour off. “You ever do any baking?”

  “My ma has.”

  The woman looked Louisa Magee over and nodded slowly.

  “You’re not some flighty young thing. You look like you know how to work.”

  “I . . . I do,” Louisa said. “Like my daughter said, we both need jobs.”

  “My assistant upped and left me,” the woman said with a touch of bitterness. “Truth is, he was my husband. We’d been married more than a year before he decided a dance-hall floozy was more his style. He left with her almost a month back, and I’ve been killing myself to furnish everyone in town their bread.” She thrust out her hand. “Name’s Maggie Almquist.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Sarah Beth said. She had introduced herself and her mother using their real names before it occurred to her to hide their identities. Then her resolve stiffened. As she had told her ma, if Clayton Magee found them the town would have to fight. However her father did his scouting, just lying about their names wouldn’t slow him down one whit.

  “Louisa, get on over there and pop the loaves into the oven. Then get to kneading the bread we’ll let rise for tomorrow’s batch.” Maggie Almquist critically eyed Sarah Beth, thought for a moment, then said, “Mrs. Post just down the road needs a housekeeper. She’s getting up in years and can be cantankerous, but you don’t look like the type to take any guff off her. That doesn’t mean you can slack off the work or sass her.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Didn’t think so. You might get a room for you and your ma there, too. Mrs. Post has a big house ever since her husband and three sons died of diphtheria.”

  “There’s disease in the town?” Louisa sounded uneasy at the prospect.

  “There’s sickness everywhere. Wasn’t worse here than in other places. Just hit the Post household hardest last year. Can’t hold that against her none.”

  “Mama, I’ll go see about us sharing a room. How do we ever thank you, Mrs. Almquist?”

  “Work hard and call me Maggie. Otherwise, no need to go out of your way.”

  Sarah Beth left her mother shoving a dozen loaves of bread into the oven and went to find the Post house. She led their horses rather than riding since her hindquarters were so stiff and sore from the all-night ride. She tried to remember how many times they had cut across the countryside, gone up rises and through woods, along streams and down roads hardly bigger than a pair of ruts, in their attempt to elude Clayton Magee. It all blurred together in her head.

  She was staggering a little by the time she found the house, a small, slightly dilapidated dwelling not a quarter mile from the bakery. Sarah Beth fancied she could still smell the baking bread, although the wind worked against that notion.

  Going up the walk, she worried it might be too early to inquire after the job, but she saw a small woman bent over like a question mark, working at sweeping the front porch.

  “Mrs. Post? Maggie Almquist said you might need a housekeeper.” She hastily explained her plight and hoped the old woman would take pity on her.

  “Can’t hire the both of you. Just one,” Mrs. Post said. Her body might be old and tired, but she was sharp as a tack. Sarah Beth guessed her tongue was, too.

  “We’d share a room. I’m sure Ma could pay a little bit from her wages at the bakery, and I would clean and cook and do whatever else you needed me to do for my share.”

  They dickered a little more, and finally Mrs. Post handed her the broom.

  “Porch,” she said simply. “Then you can take out the rugs from the front room and beat them. Got a line out back to hang the rugs. Dust. When you finish that—” The woman stopped and squinted. She pushed her glasses up on her nose, then turned a little to look past Sarah Beth.

  “What is it?”

  “Might be you shouldn’t do any dusting today.”

  Sarah Beth turned and saw a brown cloud of dust miles off along the road she and her mother had taken to reach Foreman.

  “That’s one mighty big dust storm coming,” the woman said.

  “Or riders,” Sarah Beth said in a choked voice. “It might be riders.”

  “There’d have to be a powerful lot of them. And they’d have to be riding hard to stir up that much dust. Nope, it’s one of those darned dust storms we get here.”

  Frozen to the spot, Sarah Beth clutched t
he broom handle hard and stared at the approaching dust.

  7

  Slocum paused and looked through the darkness at Marshal Vannover. The man walked like he had one foot in a bucket. Slocum had heard drunks make less noise as they staggered along on their way home from a bender.

  “What’s wrong?” The lawman turned to Slocum and peered at him through the darkness.

  “Don’t step on every damned twig, and keep from scuffling your feet through the leaves,” Slocum said. He tried to keep his voice low, but his anger was growing. The marshal meant well, but had no idea what he faced. It might have been better if Slocum had taken the man to Cherokee Springs and shown him what Clayton Magee and his horde could really do. Charity had been almost destroyed. Almost. That small difference had led Vannover astray into thinking he could personally do something about the plague that had descended on his town and then left.

  “I’m not as good as you, Slocum,” the marshal said. His ire was growing, too, but from a different source. Slocum knew the lawman had to be scared out of his wits by the notion of sneaking up on the campsite. The pungent smell of burning oak from the campfires reached them now, and more than a little of the smoke carried coffee odors, too. The outlaws were awakening, although it was still an hour or two until dawn.

  “You stay,” said Slocum. “Let me scout the camp.”

  “I have to see with my own eyes. If I got to report to the army, I need to be sure.”

  “You calling me a liar?”

  “Stop it, Slocum, stop it right now. We got a job to do. Let’s do it without fighting.”

  “Watch where you step,” Slocum said. He moved through the trees like a ghost. Vannover did better, but still made a racket loud enough to waken the dead. Slocum only hoped those dead wouldn’t be them if one of Magee’s sentries heard them.

  Slocum stopped suddenly as the trees thinned and a grassy meadow stretched into the darkness. He saw more than one fire sputtering and several being stoked. He counted the men who were awake and getting ready for breakfast. He had silently hoped to take out a guard or two, killing them if necessary, but capturing someone to interrogate. With so many outlaws already awake, that hope vanished. All he could do now was observe. If he got lucky, he might get a count on the number in this large outlaw gang, and even catch sight of their leader. Those were more important for any army pursuit than anything he could do personally to Magee.