Slocum Buried Alive Read online

  Blinking furiously, he cleared his vision and let his longer legs take him up the slope to the gnarled elm tree where one of the men leaned back, clutching his chest.

  “Frank!” Polly saw that her brother had been shot before Slocum, no matter that he was in the lead.

  Slocum veered away and ran after Hawkins. He should have overtaken the man in a few seconds, but the undertaker knew the layout better than Slocum. Slocum stepped in clumps of cactus and stumbled over unseen tombstones. When he kicked out and his boot met nothing but thin air, he plunged into an open grave. He threw up his arms and smashed his hands against the far side of the grave even as he was bent double until his back threatened to break. A twist turned him belly up to the cloudy night sky. He lay folded up in two for a moment until he caught his breath, then kicked around and stood.

  This grave had been dug to the proper depth. His eyes peered along the ground, vision blocked to either side by the mounds of dirt from the grave. He put his hands on the lip and pulled himself up in time to look down a rifle barrel.

  “You’d better tell me you left his corpse in that grave, or I swear, I’ll put you down there for all eternity.”

  “He got away,” Slocum said, pushing Polly’s rifle out of his face. “How’s your brother?”

  Tears shone like diamonds on the woman’s cheeks. Her hands began to shake and she turned away.

  Slocum brushed himself off and looked around the cemetery. Wherever Hawkins had gotten off to, he had escaped them. He took the woman’s shoulder and turned her back around. For a moment Polly stood as stiff as a statue, then she collapsed into his arms, crying unashamedly.

  “He killed my brother. He kidnapped my ma and pa, and he killed Frank. Shot him dead.”

  “Did your brother say anything about where your folks are?”

  “All he said was ‘bells.’”

  Slocum swung her around and ran off, homing in on the gentle tinkling of bells at two grave sites on a higher hill to the south. When a distant flash of lightning lit the sky, he caught the reflection off two bells held on stakes above graves. Both made feeble ringing noises.

  “He put those bell cords down into the coffins,” Slocum said, shoving his pistol into his holster and beginning to dig.

  The ground was freshly turned, soft, not packed down by weather.

  “Get to work on the other grave. This has to be where Hawkins buried your ma and pa.”

  Polly stood for a moment, then let out a strangled cry that mixed rage and hope into one throat-squeezing sound. She used the stock of her rifle to move dirt away as fast as any prairie dog could dig its burrow on the prairie. Slocum’s hands cramped, but he kept them curled into scoops, pulling away large clumps of dirt as well as finer dust and an occasional rock.

  They dug furiously for what seemed an eternity. Polly let out a cry of triumph when her rifle stock scrapped across the hidden coffin lid. She abandoned her rifle and used her hands to finish the job. Slocum picked up the rifle and used it the way she had. Before Polly begged him for help pulling the coffin lid up, he had revealed the second casket. He had to choose between helping her and leaving this or continuing.

  Slocum slid over, worked his fingers under the nailed-down coffin lid on the far side from Polly. He nodded. Both lifted in unison. The muscles in his forearms corded and threatened to burst from strain. Slocum refused to stop pulling. Nails creaked against the wood, then yielded. He fell back with the lid yanked free. A woman lay in the box.

  “The other coffin,” he gasped out. “Help me get your pa out now.”

  Polly hesitated, unsure whether to help her mother or release her father from his wooden prison. She rolled over and got to the far side of the coffin lid so she and Slocum could repeat the lid-opening pull.

  The wood cracked and split into pieces. Slocum tossed them aside and bent low. Bubbles on the elder Neville’s lips showed he was still alive and struggling to breathe. He pulled the man to a sitting position. This produced a flood of dirt from his nose and mouth. A few gasps and Neville’s eyes slowly opened.

  “Gotta be heaven. I see my angel.”

  “Oh, Papa!” Polly threw her arms around him and nearly crushed the wind from his lungs all over again.

  Slocum let them cling to each other. Polly had forgotten her mother. He went to the grave and stared down. The woman’s dirty lips carried a pale blue tint to them he had seen before in drowned men. Not a muscle twitched. No movement of her eyelids or pulsing of a vein in her throat showed.

  “Mama, Mama!”

  Slocum caught Polly and swung her around. He held her tight.

  “She’s dead.”

  “But the bell. The bell’s still ringing and there’s no wind and she has to be pulling on that old cord!”

  Slocum glanced over his shoulder and saw why the bell tinkled. A mouse in the coffin gnawed at the string connected to the bell.

  “Where’s Frank?” Neville struggled over and had to use his daughter for support. “Hawkins killed Marie as sure as the sun rises ever’ mornin’. Me and Frank’ll fix him for good. Hangin’s too good. I ought to—”

  “Frank’s dead, too, Mr. Neville.” Slocum saw no reason to sugarcoat the news. He had to find out eventually. “Hawkins shot him, then ran off. But Frank died trying to get you and his ma free.”

  “He died a hero, Papa. But Mama—” Polly broke down entirely now, sobbing uncontrollably.

  Slocum let her go to her pa so they could share their grief.

  He spun, hand flashing to his six-gun, when he heard boots crunching on gravel downhill.

  “Don’t you throw down on me, boy,” the marshal said. He huffed and puffed and waved a shotgun around. If it discharged, there was no telling who would get cut down. “Is that Liam Neville? Where you been, Liam? The whole damned town’s been huntin’ fer you.”

  Slocum knew that was a lie. Too many people in Espero disappeared—and all the citizens knew the reason. Leonard Hawkins had his hand in each of those, and his brother was in cahoots.

  “Leonard upped and buried me and Marie alive to force me to sign over my ranch. I refused and . . . and Marie died.” Neville looked over at the open grave.

  “Th-That don’t sound like Len,” the marshal stammered out.

  “Why did you come out here, Marshal?”

  Slocum waited for a violent coughing attack to pass before he got in the marshal’s face.

  “What brought you out here tonight?”

  “Some gent came by the office and called out that there was murder goin’ on out here. What do you know about that, Slocum?”

  “Who was it that warned you?”

  Junior Hawkins shook his head, looking a mite worried.

  “Never saw who. He was mounted and yelled in at me from out in the street. When I opened the door, he lit out like his horse’s tail was on fire. It wasn’t. I could see that and—”

  “Was he wearing a yellow slicker?”

  “You know the varmint, then, Slocum? He surely was. What’s happened here?”

  “Your brother murdered Frank Neville. His body’s over there.” Slocum jerked his thumb in the direction of the stunted tree where Frank still lay. “We dug up the Nevilles, but Mrs. Neville was dead. Mr. Neville damned near was, thanks to your brother’s murderous ways.”

  “Now, you don’t know it was Len what done all this. You didn’t see him good enough, did you, Slocum? You didn’t see him shoot down young Neville or bury them two. Why—”

  “I’ll testify in court that it was him what put me and the missus into our graves,” Liam Neville said with hellfire in his voice. “He’s gonna pay for that, too. Killin’ Frank and Marie and what he done to the rest of this town. He’s gonna pay!”

  “Settle down now, Liam. You been through hell, from the sound of it, but there’s no call for you to talk ’bout takin’ the law into y
our own hands. Get your nerves all quieted ’fore you go makin’ threats.”

  Liam Neville surged. He would have struck the marshal if Slocum hadn’t caught him in a bear hug and swung him around so fast his feet left the ground.

  “Take you pa back to the ranch,” he ordered Polly. “I’ll handle this.”

  “You better, John Slocum. You’d better do right by us Nevilles!” Polly stormed off, almost dragging her father in her wake.

  Junior Hawkins took off his hat and mopped his face with his bandanna as Polly and her pa left.

  “Much obliged, Slocum. You took care of that real good.” He coughed, then turned and spat out a bloody gob. He wiped his lips with his bandanna before tying it back around his neck. “If there wouldn’t be an outcry over it, I’d hire you on as my deputy.”

  “Do that and the first thing I’d do is bring your brother in.”

  “Len’s not the easiest man to get along with.”

  “Help me,” Slocum said. He didn’t wait to see if the marshal followed. He stalked up the hill to where Frank Neville lay slumped over. Bugs of all stripe worked on his carcass in the humid night air.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Grab his feet.” Slocum got his arms around Neville, then heaved.

  The marshal almost keeled over as he took some of the weight of the dead body in both arms. A coughing fit hit him again, but he struggled along as Slocum went to the empty grave where Liam Neville had lain, waiting to die in the suffocating dark. If anything, having the bell to ring made matters worse. If he tugged on the cord, that told Hawkins of complete surrender. But thrashing around in the box, how could Neville not have pulled on the cord?

  “We can’t go and plant him in somebody’s used coffin,” protested Hawkins. “That’s not right.”

  Slocum grunted as he dropped Frank into the coffin so recently occupied by his father. He pointed to the coffin lid, which had been broken apart getting Liam Neville free.

  “Might go back together,” Junior Hawkins muttered.

  He began rubbing the broken pieces together until he had the puzzle solved. The lid wasn’t solid, but it covered the body. Slocum began scraping the dirt back into the grave. All he had to do was glower to get the marshal to help. It took the better part of twenty minutes before Slocum was satisfied, but he wouldn’t let the marshal go. They replaced the lid and dirt on Marie Hawkins’s grave.

  “Ought to get a preacher out here to say words.”

  “Wait,” Slocum said.

  “Fer what?”

  “There’ll be another grave, but I’m not sure any God-fearing preacher would want to say a prayer over your brother’s grave.”

  “You cain’t go ’round threatenin’ him like that. You cain’t. He’s a pillar of the community.”

  Slocum looked strangely at the marshal. His protests were loud, but his tone carried the opposite meaning.

  “You want me to kill your brother for you?”

  “I . . . Look, Slocum, I never wanted to be marshal. Len, he put me in the job. I always done what he said ever since I was a little kid.” Junior Hawkins swallowed hard, choked, spat, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “When I wasn’t more ’n five, he buried me like that.” The marshal pointed to Marie Neville’s grave. “Only for a few minutes but he promised he’d leave me in the ground if ’n I tole anybody. I . . . I never tole no one till this very second. Truth is, I’m scared of Leonard, damned scared.”

  “Ride out. Leave. Go to Dexter Junction or Eagle Pass. Hightail it to Mexico. He can’t hunt you down if you put enough miles between the two of you.”

  “You don’t know how determined Len is when it comes to family. He would find me. I swear he would. He’s got those bully boys ridin’ fer him.”

  “Julian and his gang?”

  “Them’s the ones. I saw wanted posters on them. There ain’t no crime they haven’t all done—twice. Look, Slocum, you get rid of Len, and I won’t do nothin’ to arrest you.”

  Slocum laughed harshly, as if this pathetic man could arrest anyone wearing a side arm. From the way he coughed up blood and lung, consumption was eating him alive.

  “I suppose I could ride off, but it’d be good if I had a trail partner. Me and you, Slocum, we could up and leave Espero. Right now. I don’t need nothin’ from the office.”

  “I’ve got a chore ahead of me. Go back to your office. If I need anything from you, I’ll let you know, Marshal.”

  “Good, glad we had this talk. I . . . I’ll be ready to do whatever’s needed. In my office. In town.”

  Junior Hawkins left, stumbling on the uneven path as he made his way downhill. Long after he disappeared into the dark, Slocum heard his coughing and spitting. Slocum walked back to Marie Neville’s grave, took off his hat, and said a few words he’d heard over the years. They didn’t say much, but he hoped it was enough. He repeated the small service over Frank Neville’s grave, then went downhill to the iron arch and passed under it. A weight lifted from his shoulders as he stepped on the far side.

  He wished he could depend on the marshal for support, but Junior Hawkins would switch allegiance at the first sign his brother might come out on top. Slocum didn’t fool himself. Taking on Hawkins and Julian’s gang singlehandedly was going to be tough. As much hate as Polly vented for Hawkins, Slocum let ten times that build in his gut. Hawkins’s men had buried him alive, as they had the elder Nevilles. Such evil had to be stopped.

  If he had to shoot his way through every hired gunman Leonard Hawkins had in his employ, so be it.

  9

  He was going to kill him in cold blood.

  Slocum shook his head, thinking about that. It really wasn’t going to be in cold blood when he killed Leonard Hawkins because he had a festering hatred growing inside him unlike anything he had experienced. Through the years he had drifted across the plains, climbed the Rockies, found death and misery, but John Slocum had never felt this way before. He had been gut-shot by Bloody Bill Anderson for complaining to Quantrill about the viciousness of the Lawrence, Kansas, raid. Boys as young as six had been slaughtered.

  He had taken a slug to the gut and had survived. Returning to the family farm in Calhoun, Georgia, had brought new troubles. A carpetbagger judge tried to steal the land. Slocum and buried him and his hired gun down by the springhouse, ridden away, and never looked back. Terrible things had been done to him and those he loved, but never had he felt such seething anger toward another man.

  Maybe because those who had wronged him were all dead, his wrath and hatred had been muted. How can anyone hate someone planted six feet down? How could he hate them for long? Justice had been served quickly, without mercy. But now his hand shook thinking about Hawkins and how he took lives in the most cowardly, despicable way imaginable.

  The cold dark of the grave should be reserved for those dead, not for the living.

  Slocum would shoot his way through Julian’s gang to get to the undertaker, if it came to that, but Leonard Hawkins would die.

  The clouds moved across the sky, blotting out what starlight there had been. Distant thunder hinted at a new thunderstorm billowing off the Gulf of Mexico to drench the land. A storm was a fitting time for a man to die.

  A truly fitting time for Hawkins to die.

  A few drops of rain pelted down against Slocum’s hat brim. Each splattered wetly and sounded like a lead bullet striking from above. He pulled his hat lower as he came to the funeral parlor. A single light glowed in the room where the caskets were placed on display. Kicking a leg over, Slocum dropped to the ground. He took time to tether his horse out of the rain angling down from the southeast. By the time the storm sent sheets of rain hurtling straight down, he would be done with his chore.

  With his vengeance.

  Slocum scouted the building, hunting for signs that Julian and his gunmen were still here. He
pushed open the front door and slipped inside. Rain dripped from his hat onto the floor, every drop echoing in the stillness. The heavy drapes leading to the viewing room hung slightly open. Through the inch-wide crack came the only light in the building.

  Slocum crossed to the velvet drapes and pushed one back using his pistol barrel. He expected to see Leonard Hawkins. Instead, Miranda Madison leaned against a coffin, her head bowed as if in prayer. Slocum moved into the room, kept his back to a solid wall, and watched her.

  When she looked up and saw him, she jumped a foot. Her hand flew to her mouth to cover her outcry. She sagged down then and said, “John, you startled me. I didn’t expect anyone to be here. No one but . . . him.”

  She looked back into the coffin.

  Slocum walked forward and peered over the edge. The outlaw he had shot in the gut lay stretched out. If the contorted expression etched forever on his face was any indication, he had died in utter agony from his wound.

  “He deserved it,” Slocum said.

  “What? What do you mean?” Miranda turned from him to the body and then back. Her hand hid her mouth again. “You killed him?”

  “I wish I had gunned down the three others with him.”

  “One of them, I think it was the one they called Porkbelly, had been shot in the arm.”

  Slocum nodded. Polly’s marksmanship was decent. He wished it had been better. One had been killed out on the road, another lay in the coffin with Slocum’s bullet, and another had a hard time moving because of a shoulder wound. He had seen Julian and the unscathed outlaw coming into the funeral parlor on his way out to the cemetery.

  “Did Julian and the other two leave?”

  Miranda nodded. She swallowed hard, then put her hand on her throat. Her lips moved but only faint sounds came out.