Slocum and the Lone Star Feud Read online

  “Dayton, you better not try it!” Sam shouted as she stripped her captor’s hands from her arms. “Let go of me!” The black-bearded man obeyed her, but not without a snide look.

  “Try it?” Taylor asked. “Why, my darling Sammie, we are sworn deputies of this county. We’re only doing our job of enforcing the law.”

  “You’re going to regret this.”

  “You boys take him over and have Lester lock him up,” Taylor said. Then he turned to Sam. “And we can make room for you over there if you interfere.”

  “Sam,” Slocum said with a shake of his head to discourage her. She was worth much more to him outside and free than in jail. One of Taylor’s men shoved him toward the door, and he fought the urge to lash out at all of them. He would have taken them all on, but not with her in the same room and in harm’s way. There had to be another time. He glanced at her again, and felt satisfied she’d pulled in her horns; he could see she wasn’t going to protest his arrest. Good, he had an ally on the outside.

  The punchers herded him across the street, kind of swaggering over their arrest. Four against one. His pulse raced, and he forced down his temper to restrain it.

  “Bet that bitch don’t start no roundup with him out of the way,” one of them said. Calling her a bitch was more than Slocum could take. These boys needed some serious lessons in manners. The puncher had barely finished his sentence when Slocum hit him in the jaw with a haymaker. He tossed the second man under a spooked horse at the hitch rack, and disarmed the third one when the flying dust from Taylor’s shots sprayed dirt in the man’s eyes.

  “You ain’t getting off that easy,” the big man said, hurrying over waving his gun barrel at him. Crouched ten paces apart, they faced each other like angry dogs with their fangs bared. Taylor held the Colt cocked and ready. Slocum had only his own bare hands. Then, from behind, one of those punchers hit him over the head with a gun butt. The lights went out.

  10

  His head aching, he rubbed the tender knot on the top of his crown as he paced the jail cell. A fine kettle of fish he had fallen into. For one thing, the telegram to Captain Spencer had not been sent, and that meant any help from the Texas Rangers wasn’t going to happen. Second, with Slocum out of the way, Taylor’s crew could take on Sam’s cowboys, who were hardly the killers she had described them to be. Her bluff might hold for a while, but Taylor was no fool. He’d see them as Mexican hands, not pistoleros, and Ray Ellis as a green kid. So his time left to act would be short. And inside this oven of a jail he couldn’t do much either. But there had to be a way....

  Someone hissed outside the barred window, and he checked on the waddy out in the sheriff’s office who they’d left to guard the place. Earlier Taylor and Knotts had gone to eat. The guard must not have heard the sound, for he sat reading a magazine with his back to the door leading to the cells. Relieved, Slocum climbed on the iron bunk and gripped the bars of the high window to see out the small opening. The cooler air from outside swept his sweaty face as he saw Sam standing in the back of the buckboard with a heavy rope in her hand.

  “Tie it on the bars. I think I can jerk them out of the adobe,” she announced.

  He ducked down to check on the guard again. Still interested in his reading, the waddy never looked back toward the cells. Slocum reached out and caught the tail of the rope when she threw it at him. He hitched it around the two bars in the window. If the rods were deeply implanted, it might jerk the axle out of the rig. He gave a quick prayer as he watched her smile confidently and wave as she clambered onto the spring seat and then took the lines from the brake, which she kicked loose with her boot. With a scream, she sent the sorrels headed down the alley, and the rope drew fiddle tight, almost upsetting the horses. Then the adobe wall crumbled in a cloud of dust as the bars were jerked free. Slocum almost fell out of his cell on to the ground. There was no time for regrets. He jumped through the large opening onto the pile of broken bricks, and then raced to the waiting buckboard. He undid the lariat from the axle in a second, then tossed it aside and piled in the back; she sent the sorrels racing northward as he hung on for dear life.

  Out of the Black City town limits, the wheels singing and the two horses running wide open, they headed north under the last bloody light of sundown. Slocum looked back, saw no pursuit, climbed up beside her, and settled in the spring seat.

  “Risky business, gal, breaking me out of jail, but you did good judging that wall’s strength. I figured you’d jerk the axle out from under this thing.”

  “I had to do something,” she said with a grin. “There’s a shack up on my Uncle Duncan’s old place where you can hide. We better not head for the ranch, right?”

  “Good idea, but I’d sure like to warn Ray and Lopez about what to expect.”

  “I can ride over there at first light and tell them. How will that be?”

  “Soon enough, I guess. I don’t think Taylor and that lazy sheriff will do much until daylight anyway.”

  “Here!” she shouted at the runaway horses as she swung the buckboard around the tight turn, almost upsetting it before she regained control of the team. The rig settled down on the outside tires in a lurch of the spring seat that promised to spill her out on the ground, but his arm went around her shoulders in time and he held her in with him long enough for their perch to settle. Seated again, she nodded her approval at him, then shouted at the team to hurry, and they were off down the wagon tracks that sliced the sunset-fired sea of dry grass.

  Two hours later, he cradled a cup of coffee in his hands on the porch of the small shack and studied the stars beginning to pinprick the vast black sky. Being sought by the law would not make his job to help her any easier. Somehow he had to tree Dayton Taylor to break this bunch’s back and hold on the country. He drew a deep breath and considered his surroundings. This was her late uncle Duncan’s old place—well watered in normal times, he knew, for a line of gnarled cottonwoods stood against the dark night along the dry creek bed.

  “I’ve got those beans soft enough to gnaw on,” she announced from the door.

  “Good,” he said. “How many sections in this ranch.”

  “Six. Duncan bought this place with his first cattle drive money, back right after the war.”

  “Normal times, I’d say it’s a good outfit,” he said, and started for the open doorway and the small candle lit on the table.

  “Normal times, I keep part of the herd here. But with this damn drought it’s too far for me to run back and forth and check on them. I took all the stock back to the CTX last year. Keeps on and doesn’t rain, I won’t need either place.”

  “It’ll rain one of these days. It always has.”

  He hung his hat on a wall peg, and then washed his hands and face in the pan she’d set out on the dry sink. His skull still hurt from the blow as he washed his sun-heated face with the tepid water. It felt refreshing.

  “How long until they think of this place to look for me, do you figure?” he asked, finished drying himself and hanging up the towel.

  “Who knows?” She shrugged her shoulders with a grim set to her full lips.

  “We need some help on our side, and Captain Spencer is the only hole card I can think about,” he said, sitting down. She dipped out a plate full of the hot brown beans for him and placed it in front of him.

  “Sorry, not much else up here to eat,” she apologized.

  “They’re better than prison fare,” he said, and winked at her.

  “I never had any of that.” She filled her own plate, and then seated herself across from him at the small table. “My uncle was always going to send off for a mail-order bride, but never did do a thing about it.”

  “A mail-order bride?” Slocum asked, amused, between bites.

  “On one of his trips to Fort Worth, he bought that big double bed. That’s it over there. Still waiting for her.”

  Slocum turned and glanced at the bedstead in the corner. Kind of a fancy rig for a bachelor’s place. High wood po
sters on the corner, and a detailed carved headboard and foot-board. It must have cost him a hundred dollars or more.

  “I asked him if he had any money left after he bought it to pay for her, and he said, ‘No, but I’m saving again.’ ”

  “He had plenty of ambition.”

  “He sure did. There’s a feather mattress locked in that big trunk too,” she said quietly.

  He nodded that he had heard her. Outside, the noisy cicadas had begun to sizzle and filled the hot night with their racket. The flickering candle’s flame danced and weaved in the gentle night breeze that had begun to cool the day’s oppressive heat.

  He set his fork down on the tabletop as he looked across the table into the depth of her green eyes and studied the orange reflection of the small candle as it swirled over the dark centers of her irises. In deep concentration, he tried to fathom the depth of her intentions. As if on cue they both rose to their feet, locked in each other’s gaze; then, like a soft willow in the wind, she swiftly bent over and blew out the candle.

  He stepped around the table and took her in his arms. She stood as tall as he did. Her full breasts pushed into his chest as his mouth sought hers. Their lips collided like a bolt of lightning, the electricity of their contact making his every nerve ending tingle with anticipation. His hips ached to press to hers as they probed each other’s mouth. Ready to knead her flesh in his fingers, he ran his hands up and down the muscles of her back as they continued to seek each other in wild abandon.

  “I’m sorry they hit you today,” she finally managed with a ragged breath. “I didn’t want you hurt.”

  “They never hurt me,” he said, and sought more of her mouth.

  “I guess I should sell out,” she said, tearing her lips away from him.

  “Not because they made you do it.”

  Pressed to him again, she took his hand and then guided it under her left breast. At his touch, a soft sigh escaped her and she threw her head back in pleasure. He cupped her breast, then gently massaged the firm globe until he could feel the large nipple began to stiffen under her shirt.

  “Can I taste it?” he whispered in he ear.

  “Yes!”

  With stiff fingers, they fumbled with her buttons, and then her full snowy breasts spilled out into the inky night. His mouth sought the right one, and she clutched his head against it as his tongue explored the puckered crown.

  “Oh, God. Slocum, please let me get the feather mattress out of the trunk. I don’t want to do it on the floor and if we wait much longer, I may have to do it there.”

  “You need help?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I need to go outside for a minute.”

  “Sure,” she said, out of breath, as she threw the locker lid open and the creamy-looking feather mattress began to pour out into her arms.

  Beside the porch, he listened to the distant coyotes as he emptied his bladder into the sand. The sizzle of the night bugs filled the night. A drought never stopped them. He finished his business and paused in the doorway for a last check around. Then his mind went back to the matter at hand, her body.

  “I’m in bed,” she said in a little girl’s voice.

  “I’m coming.” He hung up his shirt on the back of the chair, then sat down and eased his feet out of his boots. There was no time to dawdle; she might change her mind about this. He undid his britches, and wondered if she was still dressed as he stripped off his underwear and tiptoed on the gritty floor to the bedside in the dark room.

  “You can change your mind,” he said.

  “Get in here,” she said with an edge of impatience, and when he started to get on the bed, she pulled him down onto the shadowy mattress.

  “There’s always another day,” he said. But her finger silenced him, and his hand slid over the smooth shape of her hip as he settled down beside her. He let his fingertips comb the mound of her pubic hair, and heard her sharp intake of breath as he explored her. He eased himself up on his knees, and then moved between her legs. She parted them, and pulled him down to kiss him.

  “I am so afraid that I’m trembling inside,” she said in a half whisper. “You better start soon or I may run away.”

  “Yes,” he said, feeling his root enlarge at the notion of taking her. His finger felt the moist seam between the silky skin of her thighs—she gasped and drew her knees up beside him. He nosed his aching root homeward into her, and she cried out as his shaft passed through her tight ring of fire. Tenderly, he kissed her mouth, then smiled at her.

  “It will be all right,” he promised her.

  “Yes! Yes!” she cried aloud, and squirmed under him to push her rock-hard stomach up to him.

  With deliberate intent, he began to seek the depth of her pleasure. She began to cry out and move her hips toward his. Soon they were swept into a frenzy of actions. She raised her butt off the protesting bed and screamed at him for more. Then she strained and went limp beneath him for a full thirty seconds. Warm waves of her fluids spilled out around his plunger and in a sudsy wash, they coated his scrotum.

  Like a patient teacher, he poised above her, then slowly drew her back up to new heights of excitement, and after fevered moaning and crying, she fainted away again into a drunken love spell. Then her releases grew closer and closer, until at last he felt his own needs coming to a peak. For his final thrust he buried his sword deep past her spasming muscles into her womanhood. And there, he felt his own force and the fountain inside her meet in a wild clash of liquids like two giant ocean waves colliding with each other. Depleted, they fell apart and lay on the mattress.

  “Damn, Slocum, why couldn’t you have had me first?” she mumbled, and then buried her face on his chest as he lay back on the bed. Hugging her tight in his arms, he had no answer for her, only a disbelief that others had not found what he had discovered—a hot-blooded woman. He closed his eyes as she cuddled to him, her rock-hard globes pressed against his chest. Somehow he had to stop Dayton Taylor or find her help to stop him. He tightened his hold to reassure her of his presence.

  11

  “I’ll bring you a horse, saddle, and some supplies,” she promised. “And I’ll tell Ray and the men where you are and all that’s happened. What else?” she asked, seated on the spring seat of the buckboard in the predawn light.

  “Be careful,” he said as he stood on his toes to kiss her good-bye.

  When she lifted her mouth from his, she gazed upward, as if to look for heaven’s help, then drew a deep breath. He gave her leg a playful squeeze and watched for her reaction.

  “I better leave before we get started over again,” she whispered. Then she sat up straight and clucked to the team.

  “Be careful!”

  “I will,” she shouted back, and was gone in a cloud of dust.

  He watched the plume of swirling dirt in her wake as she headed northward. On the porch stood the Winchester that she had removed from its secure hiding place under the bed where her uncle had stashed it for emergencies. Slocum sat down on the stoop and finished loading it.

  A bobwhite quail somewhere was calling to its mate. Slocum savored the still-cool morning air as he set the long gun aside and tried to think of a way to defuse Dayton Taylor. First, he needed to know more about the man. Taylor had to be vulnerable, with some soft spot in his armor that Slocum could penetrate. But that would require a better knowledge of the country and the man than Slocum had. Sam and her handful of cowboys could never win an out-and-out range war. He had to stop Taylor, and then the others would lose the notion without a leader.

  Maybe his own arrest the day before had been a blessing in disguise. Now he would be forced to work in secret. What this bunch needed was some kind of scare to put them on the defensive. But how could he do that? He needed someone who knew the country. Sam had to be the key to that. Besides being raised here, she knew every one of the men and their places. It might get them both shot, but it also might throw Taylor and his plans into complete chaos.

  Sl
ocum set out to explore the small ranch on foot. There would be lots for him to do in the next few days. He glanced off to the north. When would she be back so they could get started? There were still some of her uncle’s old clothes in the house. Good. He could use them to dress dummies—that would be a start. He set out through the dried weed stems to look over the pens and corrals. It would soon be another boiling-hot day.

  In late afternoon, she returned astride her sweaty horse leading a stout bay for him and some supplies tied across the empty saddle.

  “Have they been to the ranch looking for me?” he asked, carrying in the two pokes of food for her.

  “No. They haven’t showed up there yet,” she said as she dismounted.

  “Strange. I figured they’d ride right out and look for me there.” He removed his hat and scratched a deep itch on the top of his skull. Still niggled by their inactions, he slapped his hat back on again. Something was wrong. He stared at the dusty ground and tried to figure what they were up to.

  “Neither that dumb sheriff nor Taylor has been there, nor was there any sign of them when I rode out. The boys are forted up. I told them to stay there until one of us told them to do something different.” She frowned at him.

  “What are you thinking?”

  He snapped his fingers as their plans became apparent to him. “That’s what Taylor or whoever is rustling your cattle wants you to do.”

  “Why is that?” she demanded.

  “So they can steal those rebranded cattle. Your men are at the home place, so they can come in and rustle your cattle without interference.”

  “Oh, Slocum, I never thought of that.”

  “They did.”

  “What should we do now?”

  “Ride up there and see if that’s their plan.”

  “Let’s go.”

  The setting sun was burning the hilly skyline in brilliant red and orange as they eased their way through the cedars close to the breaks trying to observe the operation of the rustlers they’d discovered. The dust rose skyward as the thieves moved the herd northward.