Slocum and the Hanging Horse Page 9

  Slocum ambled down the street, passed through the cloud of dust kicked up by the buckboard’s wheels, and knocked on the door. The Mexican woman answered immediately. The hopeful expression on her face faded when she saw Slocum.

  “Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but my lady friend was just here. Miss Gerardo. Amy Gerardo. I was supposed to join her, but we seem to be crossing paths without ever meeting up.”

  The woman only stared at Slocum with weak brown eyes.

  “You’d do me a great favor if you could tell me what she asked of you.”

  “No, I cannot,” the woman said. “She tole me not to tell.”

  “But Miss Gerardo and I are friends. More,” Slocum said, smiling just enough to give the wrong impression. This shocked the undoubtedly devout woman.

  “She not say anything ’bout that,” the woman said. “All she asked was ’bout spurs.”

  “Spurs?”

  “His spurs.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Slocum said. “You’ve been a great help.” He returned to the cantina and went back inside to sit.

  Amy hunted for whatever Jeter left behind him. That much was clear. Spurs? Slocum didn’t understand that, but he knew she wasn’t out here to hunt down the outlaw himself. She hadn’t even seemed to know of the bank robbery and Jeter’s part in it, or she would have mentioned it. He finally came to a decision.

  Again he left the cantina, and this time he also rode from the town, following Amy’s twin ruts cut through the grassland. He had given her enough of a head start so she wasn’t likely to spot him on her back trail.

  Hunting for spurs made no sense, but meeting Jeter did. When she found the outlaw, Slocum would be there with his Peacemaker drawn and ready to take the man down.

  9

  Slocum was glad that his horse walked so slowly and refused to hurry. It kept him from overtaking Amy Gerardo as she made her way through the valleys and hills of the Davis Mountains—and it afforded him the chance to look around at the nearby ridges. While Amy was certainly worth following—she was dynamite wrapped up in a small package and appealed to Slocum a great deal—the silhouette of the lone rider along a ridgeline intrigued him more. Who would be out here riding alone in the middle of a rocky wilderness?

  It was cooler in the hills than out in the desert, but there was precious little among the rocky, barren stretches to attract a rider. The small towns like the one Slocum had just left existed for no good reason amid the larger ranches with thousands of acres of sparse grazing for a handful of cattle. Some valleys were green and inviting, but growing anything in them would be a fool’s pursuit for anyone other than a hermit. It was too many miles to town for what necessities couldn’t be grown.

  Amy began driving at a right angle to the road, heading down a lane toward a partially hidden cabin in a stand of trees. Slocum reckoned this was her destination since she showed no hesitation once she spotted it. If she had gotten lost, she might take her time going to ask for directions. Men on the edge of civilization tended to shoot first, even at women as pretty as Amy.

  But the rider on the ridge? Where did he go? Slocum put his heels to the horse’s flanks and got it struggling up the steep hill to pick up the trail. It might be a dead end or the trail might peter out. Slocum might even overtake the rider and find he had some legitimate reason for riding along all by his lonesome in the middle of the mountains. But Slocum thought the rider’s shirt would have a piece ripped out of it and match with the scrap of cloth he had found back at the San Esteban bank.

  “Giddyap,” Slocum called, convincing the horse to not stop on the steep incline. It took more than a half hour to get to the summit, and less than a minute to pick up the other rider’s trail. Slocum stood in the stirrups and peered ahead. The rider had vanished. A feeling in his gut told him this was no stranger. Slocum was certain he had found Les Jeter and was close to a shoot-out with him. He settled down and checked the rounds in the Peacemaker’s cylinder. All six chambers were loaded. Slocum usually rode with the hammer resting on an empty chamber, just to be sure it didn’t jostle around and discharge when he wasn’t expecting it.

  Slocum let the horse pick its way along the rocky path, which looked more like a game trail than one pioneered by a man astride a horse. The ridge curved away from the direction Amy had driven. Slocum barely cast a look her way as he let the horse pick its way down the far side of the hill and into another valley, rockier than the one he had left but still dotted with grazing cattle. Somebody took the time to ranch up here.

  All day Slocum followed the rider’s trail, until he came to a pleasant little valley that was more lush and inviting than the others he had seen. A chilly mountain breeze caused Slocum to shiver a little, but he didn’t pull out his coat from his gear. He wanted to keep his arms free if he had to make a fast draw. There was no proof it was Jeter he had followed all day, but in his gut he knew he had the right sidewinder.

  Movement in a cabin window drew him. As he neared, Slocum grew warier, but he didn’t see a horse anywhere. He thought the barn might be some distance to the south, downhill some distance from the cabin. This was an odd arrangement, but the cabin had been built on sloping land. That might have been the only place with enough level land for such a structure as the barn without putting in considerable work.

  He circled, found the barn, and looked inside for a well-ridden horse. To his surprise, he saw only a couple of goats and a sickly cow isolated in a stall. He finished his hasty search and saw no evidence of a horse anywhere. This made him a little easier going to the front of the cabin.

  “Hello!” Slocum waited a decent amount of time, dismounted, and went to the door. Before he could knock, the door opened.

  “Who are you?” the woman asked without so much as a “howdy.”

  “Just passing through, ma’am,” Slocum said. He looked behind her into the cabin and saw no evidence that a man had been here in some time. It was done up in a frilly fashion, as if the woman decorated to suit herself and not to please a man. “I wondered if I might get some water? For me and my horse?”

  “Go on,” she said, pulling the door partly closed to keep him from seeing into the room. “Help yourself. There’s a stream down below the barn yonder.”

  Slocum wasn’t sure what made him ask the question that caused the woman to blanch.

  “When did Jeter leave?”

  “W-who?” The very way she stood, eyes wide in horror and her lower lip trembling, told Slocum the truth.

  He yanked out his six-shooter and kicked open the door. Ready to shoot, he quickly scanned the room for trouble. No one but the woman was inside. He lowered his six-gun and then thrust it into his holster.

  “You know Jeter, don’t you? He comes here?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said with growing defiance. “Get out. Get your water and leave this property.”

  “Your property? Or is it Jeter’s?”

  “Who is this Les Jeter? I’ve never heard of him.”

  Slocum said nothing as realization dawned on the woman of what she had said. Slocum had never mentioned the outlaw’s first name.

  “Look, you don’t want to tangle with him. He’s a . . . killer.”

  “Reckon I know that,” Slocum said. “What’s he to you?”

  “He . . . keeps me here. I can’t get away without a horse.”

  “You could set out on foot,” Slocum said.

  “Where’d I go? I don’t have any relatives. No friends. I’ve been here for over a year now and you’re only the third person I’ve seen who wasn’t Les. Sometimes, I think I’m going crazy.” Tears welled in the woman’s brown eyes and threatened to spill out. She caught up the edge of her apron and dabbed.

  “Anywhere away from him is better than with him,” Slocum said. He started to tell how Jeter had murdered the stagecoach driver and two passengers and left him for dead, but he held back on this story. He didn’t even bother with the bank robbery and the deaths of the San Esteb
an deputy and several more, including all the employees of the bank. Such stories would add nothing to the situation.

  “I suppose you’re right, but I . . . I’ve been with him for almost ten years.”

  It was Slocum’s turn to blink in surprise. The woman couldn’t have been older than her early twenties.

  “You related to him?”

  “His w-wife. He forced me to marry him down in San Antonio. I didn’t know any better and my ma and pa had just died. I was only fifteen.”

  “You’ve been with him ever since, so you know what he does.”

  “I know,” the woman said, holding out her wrists to show the bruises. “But how can I leave him? Les said he’d track me to the ends of the earth if I ever tried leaving him. And I believe him. Oh, how I believe him!”

  Slocum saw that there were victims of Jeter’s evil other than those in graves. He wanted the man—bad. He wanted to settle the score with the outlaw, and he wanted his watch back. But the woman was at Jeter’s mercy out here alone.

  “You want to leave him?”

  She blinked rapidly and the tears finally flowed down her cheeks unabashed. She nodded, her brunette hair bobbing about. Some of the color Slocum had shocked out of her had returned to highlight her cheeks. He thought she was a sight prettier now than when he had first laid eyes on her.

  “Y-you’d do that for me? Take me out of here?”

  Slocum was torn, but knew he had no choice.

  “I’ve only got one horse, but it’s strong. We can both ride to San Esteban on it. From there, you’d be on your own. Do you have anything you’d want to take?”

  The woman looked around and a wan smile came to her lips. She shook her head and said, “Not really. All this isn’t mine. Well, it is, but it’s Les’s. What he wanted.”

  “You were a prisoner all this time?”

  “I never thought of it that way. I thought it was how a wife was supposed to be. Les was gone a lot, but I never knew when he’d ride up and . . . want things from me. You know, what a husband wants from a wife. Sometimes he brought pretty things. Other times, he’d be shot up and I’d nurse him back to health. I thought that was all there was in the world.”

  “For some folks, you’re right,” Slocum said. Jeter had held her captive as surely as if he had put shackles on her. From the bruises on her wrists, he might do just that, although the woman had never come out and said that.

  “My name’s John Slocum,” he said.

  “Ruth. Ruth Jeter. Or I was Ruth Cameron before . . . before I got hitched to Les. Don’t know what name’s right to use.”

  “Don’t go announcing yourself as Mrs. Jeter,” Slocum advised. “Outside of this little valley are a whole lot of people willing to ventilate him.”

  “You look like you’re familiar with using that six-shooter, Mr. Slocum.”

  He put his hand on the Peacemaker and thought of the times he had used it. They were legion.

  “I don’t let anyone steal from me. Jeter left me for dead after robbing me.”

  “You intend to k-kill him?”

  Slocum knew the grim expression on his face answered the question.

  “Can we go? I mean, right now? The sooner I leave here, the better I’ll feel about everything. My life. My new life. What’s San Esteban like?”

  “We don’t have to go right away,” Slocum said. He was enough of a hunter to know decent bait when he saw it. If the rider on the ridge was Jeter, he might be snaking his way around, covering his tracks and coming home to his wife. Ruth would be perfect bait to lure the outlaw into a trap.

  Ruth was no one’s fool and saw what Slocum was thinking.

  “He’ll kill you, John. He’ll flat out shoot you where you stand if he catches you here.”

  “He tried before. He won’t be so lucky a second time. Does the prospect bother you that I intend to take him in? And if I can’t, I’ll gun him down?”

  “Yes, no, oh, John, I don’t know. This is all so confusing. What’ll I do if I leave him? Everything I have in the world is here, what you see, nothing else.”

  “That should have occurred to you a long time back,” Slocum said, not trying to sugarcoat his words. “A man who makes his way through life killing and robbing is going to end up on the wrong end of a rope eventually, if he’s not shot down before the law gives him a trial.”

  “I never considered that,” Ruth said in a low voice. “I was always watching for him and wondering when he would return. I don’t know which I was more afraid of, never seeing him again or . . .”

  “Seeing him again,” Slocum finished for her.

  She threw herself into his arms and hugged him tightly. He felt the hot tears she shed soaking through his shirt. When Ruth looked up, her brown eyes shone with tears, giving them a sparkling brilliance that captivated him. She closed those haunting eyes slowly and tipped her head back. As her ruby lips parted Slocum felt himself being drawn into something he knew was wrong. Ruth was married. But it was to a sidewinder who would end up dead. She was an attractive woman. Not as lovely as Amy Gerardo, but there was an earthiness to her that appealed greatly to Slocum.

  He kissed her. Hard. She returned his passion with her own. Their bodies crushed together until he felt the throbbing of her heart as if it were his own. Her soft breasts mashed flat against the hardness of his chest until those breasts were the only things soft between them. Slocum responded powerfully to her.

  “I want you, John. Please. Don’t deny me,” she said in a husky whisper he could hardly hear over the pounding in his ears.

  He reached down, got his arm behind her legs, and lifted powerfully, sweeping her into his arms. Spinning around, he looked for a bed where they could continue. The small pallet in the corner of the room had to be where Ruth slept. It was hardly adequate.

  “Outside,” she said. “To the barn. The hay. It’s so peaceful there and the hay’s soft.”

  “Peaceful?” Slocum had to laugh. “You’ve got a sick cow there lowing and goats demanding to be set free.”

  He felt her stiffen in his arms.

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Looking around,” he said. “I didn’t know what I’d find.”

  “You found me,” she said, melting against him again, her arms around his neck so she could pull herself closer and kiss him. Slocum carried her out into the cool air and downhill to the barn. He had grabbed a blanket as he swept out in a rush. He kicked open the barn door and found a pile of clean straw intended for the stall floors. Slocum spread the blanket on it and turned to find Ruth naked to the waist. She had unbuttoned her blouse and shucked it off, leaving her bare skin exposed to the cool night air. The temperature caused her nipples to harden into taut little red buttons he couldn’t resist.

  He bent and sucked first one and then the other into his mouth where he could toy with them. He pressed his tongue down hard, mashing the cherry button into the soft flesh beneath. Ruth groaned in pleasure at this oral assault. Slocum didn’t stop with her breasts. Cupping them in his hands, forefinger and thumb tweaking each, he slid lower. His tongue pushed against the waistband of her skirt.

  “Oh, let me get free, John. Free. Oh, yes, so nice, so very nice. He’s never like this.”

  “What do you want?” Slocum asked.

  “More. More of this. Ever so much more!”

  He gave it to her when she released the ties holding her skirt up. It slithered over her flaring hips and then cascaded to the floor, leaving her entirely naked. Slocum pressed his face into the nut-brown nest between her thighs. He felt her begin to tremble as his tongue invaded her. Ruth opened her stance a little, but soon she sank bonelessly to the blanket he had spread out.

  “I want you, John. I . . . I’ve never felt this excited before. Please, do—”

  He cut off her words by applying himself to her most intimate flesh, licking and lapping, driving his tongue deep within her and wiggling it about, then slowly sliding up and down the insides of her thighs as he sought
each and every spot on her body that aroused her. From the way she thrashed about, he was finding one after another.

  Slowly, he worked his way up her body. Her legs spread wantonly for him. He fit neatly between them, his hardness going into the territory his tongue had already pioneered so successfully. She tensed, arched her back, and began rolling her hips around him. His manhood was trapped within a softly clutching, heated chamber. Her legs rose on either side of his body as he slipped forward even more. When he felt himself fully within her, he began rolling his hips.

  Ruth gasped and went wild beneath him. Her upward thrusts ground their bodies together as she squeezed down all around him. Fingers clawing, the brunette half-rose from the blanket and kissed him fiercely.

  Slocum began moving in ways he hadn’t realized he could. In and out, spiraling as he went. His hips began to rock faster and faster as he returned the torrent of kisses she lavished on him.

  “More,” she gasped. Ruth fell back and her legs locked around his waist. He began more powerful thrusts, pinning her to the haystack. She reached up and began tweaking her own nipples. Eyes closed and her face a mask of ecstasy, the woman gasped, shuddered, and went limp.

  This condition lasted only a few seconds. Slocum stroked over her breasts, down her sides, and cupped her buttocks, lifting them up so he could drive deeply into her at a new and more exciting angle. She had relaxed, and now he felt the tension returning to her. Ruth’s breathing became ragged again as her passions mounted anew. He did all he could to tease every possible response from her willing, wanton body. She was strong and firm and he was hard and repeatedly vanishing into her wetness. The combinations of weak and strong, hard and soft brought her back to life under him. She gasped and moaned and began writhing about, impaled on his fleshy spike.

  Slocum picked up the pace and slipped back and forth with increasing need. Deep within he felt the tides rising and tried to hold back. He enjoyed the sensations of making love to this woman. She wasn’t the prettiest he had ever seen, but there was an attractive quality that appealed greatly to him.