Slocum Buried Alive Page 7

7

  Slocum coughed, tried to get his breath, and then screamed as he thrashed about, hands crashing into the wood sides of a coffin. He shook his head to get sweat from his eyes, but open or closed, free of sweat or not, those eyes were met only with complete darkness.

  He tried to suck in another breath. The air was turning bad. A stint working as a miner in a deep gold mine had inured him to darkness, heat, and lack of air, but there had been a way to move about in the mine, even if he wiggled along a stope flat on his belly while tons of rock pressed into his back. He kicked and found only wood. Pushing upward, his head rubbed against rough pinewood. A lump on his left side made him roll slightly to his right so he could reach his cross-draw holster.

  Whoever had buried him had left him his pistol.

  Wild thoughts jumbled and confused him. He was buried six feet under, doomed to suffocate in the cramped dark coffin. Suicide. Take the six-shooter out and shoot himself. End it now. No escape.

  Slocum roared in rage. The next time he fired his Colt, it would be aimed at the head of the man who had buried him alive.

  Recovering, he forced himself to breathe slowly and shallowly. Slocum began exploring his wooden prison. Kicking loosened the end panel of the coffin. Pushing hard caused nails to creak above his head, but he got no traction in forcing away the side panels. He lifted his knees and tried to push up the lid. Small cascades of dirt tumbled around the edges when he forced up a fraction of an inch. He collapsed, gasping for breath. He was close to death, and there was nothing he could do to escape.

  He gripped the butt of his six-gun again and got even madder at whoever had done this to him. The gang working for Hawkins had buried Frank Neville this way. Whether Leonard Hawkins had ordered them to put Slocum underground didn’t matter. If they worked for the undertaker, they would die. So would Hawkins.

  He futilely kicked again and only caused some dust to float up to his nose, making him sneeze. He sank back, all strength gone. Closing his eyes, he worked through other possible ways of escaping. Thoughts blurring and harder to follow as he ran out of air, he realized he was starting to hallucinate. Voices mocked him. The scrape of metal on the coffin lid promised salvation, but he knew that wasn’t possible.

  Then he gasped as fresh air rushed into his face. He opened his eyes and got dirt in them, but this didn’t stop him from lifting his six-shooter, ready to fling lead in all directions.

  “Settle down, John, you’re not dead. Not yet.”

  “Polly?”

  Strong hands grabbed his arms and lifted him up. He tried to take a step and fell forward on the edge of the opened grave.

  “How’d you find me?” He swung around and sat on the edge of the grave. He had been buried three feet under. Slocum wasn’t sure if that irritated him. His would-be killers hadn’t bothered to bury him properly. At that depth, scavengers would have dug him up in a week or two when he started decomposing and the smell drew them to an easy meal.

  He bushed dirt off his face and peered up at Polly. Beside her, leaning on a shovel, Frank Neville glared at him.

  “We’re even,” Neville said. He hoisted the shovel to his shoulder and stalked off.

  “Hell of a way to get even,” Slocum said. He got to his feet. “How did you come to dig me up?”

  “Frank and I tried to grab one of Hawkins’s gang to make him talk.”

  “To find your ma and pa?”

  Polly nodded. She began pacing about, not looking at him as if she felt guilty.

  “I saw you with the whore Hawkins bought. I wanted to nab the son of a bitch named Julian who seems to be the leader of the gang working for Hawkins, but you came out ’fore I spotted him. You rode off.”

  “And Julian followed me out of town,” Slocum said. “I should have paid more attention to my back trail.”

  “Yeah, you should have. Julian and four others lit out after you with a cheap coffin tied down to a pack horse. There was nothing Frank or I could do against five of them. We overtook them as they were finishing with the last spade of dirt on your grave.”

  Slocum patted his pockets. The money Hawkins had paid him was gone. This was another score he had to settle. Men tried to kill him all too often, but doing it to steal back money turned the motives from personal to venal. That defined the undertaker more than anything else in his mind.

  “Where did they go? This Julian and the men riding with him?”

  Polly shrugged. The movement caught his attention. She noticed his interest in the way her blouse moved about and smiled wryly.

  “I see you aren’t entirely dead.”

  “Parts of me are more alive than others.”

  “Might be those parts can get another workout,” she said, staring boldly at him.

  “After we get your ma and pa back,” he said.

  “You’re not only horny, you’re smart,” she said. “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment.”

  “I’ll take it as such,” Slocum said, stretching.

  He then checked his Colt Navy to be sure the dirt hadn’t fouled the mechanism. The pistol never failed him because he tended it carefully. Too many men let their six-shooters rust in their holsters. For them, it would have been better going unarmed since they wouldn’t have the false security of a six-gun coming into their grips and firing dead on target.

  “You two going to spend the rest of eternity lollygagging or are we going to get on the trail?”

  “Your brother’s anxious to die,” Slocum said.

  “He’s like me. Anxious to put those snakes into a grave where they belong.”

  Slocum had to admit he shared this with Polly and her brother.

  “They didn’t even bother taking your horse,” Polly said. “Or it ran off and they weren’t inclined to chase after it.”

  Slocum patted his empty vest pocket again. Julian and his partners had been in a hurry, but not enough of one that they didn’t search him.

  “You have any plan to find your parents, other than kidnapping Julian?”

  “You make it sound like that’s not going to work.” Polly glared at him. “I’m beginning to think we made a mistake bothering to dig you back up.”

  “Hawkins is the man you want, not his lackeys.”

  “That’s easy to say, John, but he has bodyguards around him all the time. They’re not always easy to spot. When they aren’t there, his brother is.”

  “Junior?” Slocum pursed his lips. “The marshal looks like a weak link in the Hawkins family.”

  “How do you intend to break that chain?”

  Slocum thought hard, then looked up.

  “Your brother’s gone. He rode a ways, then galloped like there was no tomorrow.”

  “Frank!” Polly ran ahead of Slocum and looked down the road in the direction of Espero. “Oh, no, Frank, you crazy—”

  “Let’s ride,” Slocum said. He swung up and felt his horse shudder under him, getting used to his weight once more. “You figure he’s going straight for Hawkins?”

  “Where else? You were right about the cause of all the trouble in these parts. Hawkins wants to own it all. Get rid of him and the problems go away.”

  “Kill him and you might never find your ma and pa,” Slocum said. He snapped his reins and got his horse into a long lope.

  Slocum didn’t bother sharing his opinion that Polly and Frank’s parents were already dead. Hawkins pretended to keep things legal, demanding the elder Neville’s signature to make the land transfer legal, but with both the marshal and the bank president his brothers, all Hawkins had to do was forge the signature. Who would contest it? Hawkins had some twisted sense a forced signature on a bill of sale was legal and a forged one wasn’t, but the result was the same.

  Twilight sank down around him, dulling details and bringing out the bugs. Slocum pulled up his bandanna to keep them out of his nose and mouth. Th
e buzzing around his ears almost drowned out the thunder of his horse’s hooves and the occasional curse Polly threw at her brother, Hawkins, and the world in general. At least she didn’t seem to include Slocum in the things that had gone wrong in Espero.

  He was so lost in the ride and planning what to do once they overtook Frank that he failed to see movement on either side of the road ahead until it was too late. Coming from the shadowy thickets came four riders, two on either side.

  The air filled with bullets that rivaled the bugs with their nasty whines. He jerked to one side when a hot streak ran across the top of his shoulder. The sudden shift caused his horse to stumble, spilling Slocum to the ground. He landed on his right side, arm pinned beneath him as he skidded along.

  Behind him came the sharp crack of a rifle. This produced immediate confusion among the four men attacking him.

  “He’s got a partner. Kill him!”

  That order was the last the outlaw gave. A rifle bullet struck him smack in the middle of the chest. He threw up his hands, twisted slightly, and then joined Slocum on the ground. The three remaining road agents’ horses reared and sent their shots wildly into the owl-light, giving Slocum the chance to get to his knees. He shook his right arm to get feeling back, then drew and fired in a smooth movement.

  His bullet missed, but the stir caused proved more useful than if he had dropped one of the remaining riders. The outlaws’ horses bucked even harder. Slocum ran forward, not shooting, waiting for a decent target. When he came close enough to worry about how the rearing horse would lash out at him with his front hooves, he aimed and fired. The rider grunted and bent double but did not fall off the horse. Slocum shot again and missed. The man’s horse spun around and tried to kick Slocum with its rear hooves.

  Polly came to a halt beside him, the still-smoking rifle in her hands.

  “They’re getting away. Get your horse. We have to stop them.”

  “They were only road agents,” Slocum said. Then he looked up at her. The darkness hid her face, but the set to her body told the story. “Those were Julian’s gang?”

  “I take back what I said about you being smart. Of course they were.”

  Slocum checked the dead outlaw on the ground, hands patting him down in search of any of the money that had been taken from him. The outlaw’s pockets were as empty as Slocum’s. He spun and caught the reins thrown in his direction. Polly had run down his horse and brought it back.

  “Three of them left,” she said grimly. “I winged one.”

  “I gut-shot another.”

  That explained why they had run away, though they outnumbered Slocum and Polly. Two of them were wounded, one seriously.

  “Was Julian with them? I couldn’t tell. I was too far away.”

  Slocum admitted he had never seen Julian and asked what he looked like.

  “Real thin face, like a hatchet. Got a burn scar on his left cheek. Ugly son of a bitch. His eyes are the worst. All dead-like and blacker than the ace of spades. They bore right into your soul.”

  Slocum slowed his headlong pace and straightened to get a better look at the road ahead. A bend in the road gave a perfect spot for an ambush, and he told Polly as much. She showed good sense by slowing and finally pulling up beside him.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked. “We can’t be fraidy-cats, or we’ll never catch them.”

  “We don’t know who they are,” Slocum said. “None of them was Julian, or did you see him?”

  Polly shook her head and started to speak, then clamped her mouth shut as she realized what Slocum was saying.

  “We need to get after your brother. He’s going to get himself in a world of trouble.” Slocum worried that the road agents were part of Julian’s gang—part of Hawkins’s gang—and had let Frank ride past into worse trouble.

  “Hawkins enjoys playing with people like a cat plays with a mouse,” she said.

  “All the more reason to forget the road agents and find Frank.”

  Polly reluctantly rode on, then tapped her heels against her horse’s flanks to pick up the gait. Slocum followed now, wary of the darkness along the sides of the road. Any hint of movement made him jump needlessly until he settled down. The injuries the men had taken likely sent them to a doctor, not into a new ambush. None of the men he had seen matched Julian’s description. If they ever were his gang, he might have ridden back to Espero to let Hawkins know Slocum had been taken care of.

  He touched his empty vest pocket for the hundredth time and got mad all over again. Burying him alive was one thing; stealing his money was another. Either dictated that he put a slug into the heart of the coward who was responsible.

  “There’s the edge of town,” Polly said after they had ridden for a considerable spell. Slocum had lost track of time but noticed his horse was beginning to falter.

  “What would Frank do? Go straight to Hawkins’s funeral parlor?”

  “He had built up such a head of steam, he’s likely to buy dynamite and blow the place up.”

  Slocum doubted that. Anger such as Frank’s required personal vindication. Frank wanted to sight down the gun barrel as he shot Hawkins. If Neville even thought about it and held his anger in check, he had to pry the information about his parents from Hawkins. The undertaker would say anything to stay alive and wait for Julian and the rest of his gang to show up.

  “He’ll take Hawkins somewhere they won’t be disturbed.”

  “That’s not the funeral parlor,” Polly said. “Frank might drag Hawkins back to our place.”

  “Too far.” He strained to hear a bell ringing mournfully in the darkness.

  “Somebody died,” he said. “That bell’s hanging in front of Hawkins’s mortuary. He must ring it when somebody’s died.”

  “The wind’s doing it,” Polly said. “Not much of a wind, but enough. He even puts bells on graves, in case he’s buried someone alive.”

  Slocum reflected on how he hadn’t been given that chance for release. He had heard of Easterners with a morbid fear of getting stuck underground alive. As fearsome as it was and considering the panic Slocum had experienced, it was a real problem for anyone not dying outright. Some diseases put the person into a coma that wasn’t much different from death, only coming out of the coma after burial required some way of letting those aboveground know what had happened.

  “The cemetery,” Slocum said. “Frank will take him to the cemetery outside town. It’s remote and who’d disturb them if he got down to serious torture?”

  “I’d stop him from torturing Hawkins,” Polly said grimly. “I want my turn at the son of a bitch. Frank shouldn’t be so greedy to keep him all to himself.”

  They rode past the mortuary. Slocum slowed when he saw an indistinct figure slip from the side door and mount. For a moment the light from inside the funeral parlor caught the rider. Slocum couldn’t see his face but recognized the battered yellow slicker as belonging to the man who had followed him and Miranda from Dexter Junction.

  It took all his willpower not to ride after the man and find who he was.

  “Come on, John. He’s not in there, and you know it.”

  Polly pointed to the funeral parlor. Slocum relied on his gut, and instinct told him she was right. Hawkins was elsewhere. Their best chance of finding him was to find Frank Neville.

  As they turned the corner at the end of the street, heading for the cemetery, Slocum glanced back thinking to catch sight of the slicker-clad stranger. Instead he saw three men dismount in front of the mortuary. One man fell from his horse and had to be supported by a tall, wiry man. The front door opened and spilled forth light. Slocum couldn’t tell at this distance but the man supporting his partner matched Polly’s description of Julian pretty closely.

  If Slocum went back to the funeral home, he could take out all of Hawkins’s gang.

  “Do I have to ride alon
e?”

  Slocum forced himself to consider other possibilities. He had told Polly that getting rid of Hawkins eliminated the problem. Julian and his men would drift on. Cut the head off the snake. It might not die until sundown, but it would die. All the troubles Polly and her family faced ended if Hawkins died.

  He tapped his spurs against his horse’s sides and caught up with her. He still worried that leaving behind Julian and his gang, even with the gut-shot man, created a problem hard to deal with later. Worse yet, who was the man in the slicker?

  Slocum rode as fast as his horse could go toward the town cemetery. He heard the tinny ringing of bells a ways off. And the evening wind had died down, leaving the sultry night as still as . . . a cemetery.

  8

  The faint tinkling became indistinct when horses neighed deep within the cemetery. Slocum felt a moment of triumph. He had guessed right what Frank Neville would do, though nothing much else fit into the framework he had constructed. Julian and his gang had arrived at the funeral parlor, but after the mystery man had ridden away. A hell of a lot of firepower spread out behind him if anything went wrong here.

  “We can’t afford to let Hawkins get away,” he told Polly.

  From the glare she sent his way, he was preaching to the choir. Slocum made sure his six-shooter rested easy in its holster as he studied the cemetery in front of him. He pointed to the main entrance with a wrought iron arch over the gate. A knee-high picket fence ran the length of the front and disappeared down a slope to either side. The cemetery perched on the top of a low hill.

  He slid from the saddle, tied up his horse, and then went to the gate leading into the graveyard. Under the iron arch, he looked up and saw how the dark metal separated one section of sky from another. Ahead lay clouds. Behind, the sky blazed with a million twinkling stars. It struck him as appropriate.

  A shriek ahead set him off at a run, pistol clutched in his hand. Polly paced him, her rifle swinging to and fro as she ran.

  A moment’s silence let through the tinkling bells again. Slocum started toward the sound, but Polly nudged him with the rifle barrel so he looked in a different direction. Two dim figures merged, separated, and once again melted into one giant shadowy being. Slocum recognized the portly Hawkins by his silhouette. It was harder identifying Frank Neville. As he stared at the two men fighting for supremacy, a pistol went off. The muzzle flash momentarily dazzled him and yellow and blue dots bounced about wildly.