by Gene Curry
Saddler arrived at the Alaskan-Yukon border, a lawless territory exploding with gold lust, loose women and flying lead. But Saddler wasn’t there for gold—he was after a dead man.
Saddler was hired to transport the body of Judge Phineas Slocum to San Francisco. When Saddler set out, winter was sweeping in with killing force, and he knew he was in for a taste of hell.
On his long and tortuous journey, Saddler’s hardships were eased by willing saloon girls and lonely wives—until Saddler came across a crazed gunman not only his blood, but the Judge’s corpse as well!
JIM SADDLER 7: YUKON RIDE
By Gene Curry
First Published by Tower Books in 1981
Copyright © 1981, 2018 by Peter McCurtin
First Edition: July 2018
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Cover image © 2018 by Edward Martin
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.
Chapter One
The knocking on the door grew louder, more insistent, and I got out of bed in a hurry.
“I thought you said your husband was in Alaska,” I said to the naked woman who had been under me for most of the night. She was beautiful as well as naked, and I hated to leave that bed, so sweet and smelling of perfume and clean sweat.
“He is in Alaska,” she whispered. “Perhaps they’ll just go away.” Cynthia used to say “maybe” when I knew her in the Colorado mining camps. Now it was “perhaps.” Why not? She was the lady of the manor.
“Doesn’t sound like it,” I said, grabbing my shirt and pants.
“Mrs. Slocum,” a voice called. It was followed by more knocking. “Mrs. Slocum, I have a telegraph message for you. The Western Union boy said it was most urgent.”
I took refuge in the bathroom while Cynthia Slocum slipped on a quilted robe. An empty whiskey bottle and two glasses stood on a bedside table, and she put them in a drawer before she unlocked the door.
The butler’s name was Travers and he was a real Englishman. Nothing but the best for good old Cynthia, who had parlayed her beauty and bed knowledge into one of the finest mansions on Nob Hill. But for my money she was a lot more of a lady that most of the old society biddies who tore into her behind her back.
Travers sniffed the bedroom air with that long beak of his, and there was no way he couldn’t have known there was a man in there. I guess Cynthia entertained a lot and all her gentlemen callers came up the back stairs after dark. I had done just that the night before.
For a girl who was dragged up in a Colorado mining town Cynthia can be haughty when she wants to be. Like I said, she was a real true-blue lady no matter how many times she spread her legs.
“Yes, Travers, what is it?” she demanded, gathering the robe around her.
Servants are worse snobs than the people they work for, and I could see that old Travers dearly longed to make some snotty remark. But he had a good job and he knew it.
The old bastard had a Western Union envelope on a silver tray and he held it out to her. His eyes flicked toward the bathroom and he knew I was watching him through a crack in the door.
“Will there be anything else, madam?” he asked, deadpan as an Indian.
“Judge Slocum is dead,” Cynthia said. “I’ll ring for you if I need you.”
“May I tender my deepest regrets?” Travers said.
Cynthia nodded him out of the room and locked the door. I came out of the bathroom tucking in my shirt. Rain pattered on the windows—it rains a lot in San Francisco in the fall—as Cynthia sat on the edge of the rumpled bed holding the message from Western Union.
“Phineas died a month ago on the Alaska-Yukon border,” she said. “I told him, other people told him he was too old for that hard country. But you know Phineas.”
I didn’t know Phineas Slocum and didn’t want to. What I knew most about him was that he was known as the harshest federal judge in the West before he retired from the bench. In some ways he was like Hanging Judge Isaac Parker of Fort Smith, Arkansas; and if he wasn’t quite as bloodthirsty as Parker, he came a close second. He bullied juries into guilty verdicts, and handed out death sentences and life terms like free beer at a picnic. In recent years he had become enormously rich speculating in mines, lumber, and cattle.
“You feel bad about it?” I asked.
“Not bad enough to cry,” she said. “I know people hated him, but he always treated me all right. The whole Slocum family cried bloody murder when he said he was going to marry me. After we got married, never once did he mention what I’d been. That meant a lot to me. But I guess I never changed. You know how many men have been in this bed?”
“Your business,” I said. “There’s no use feeling guilty about it, if that’s what you’re thinking. You’re a young woman, he was an old man.”
“Thanks for telling me, Saddler. The funny thing, I think Phineas knew about my men, but never brought it up. We had an arrangement we never talked about. I needed what he couldn’t give me and he accepted that. I was a good wife in my way. At least I tried to be discreet.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Don’t say ‘sure’ like that. You know, the only reason he stopped being a judge was me. He said he was tired of it. I knew better. After all, how would it look, a federal judge married to a fallen woman?”
“Drop it,” I said. “What else does the telegraph say?”
“They want to know what to do with the body. Phineas died at a mining camp called Dulcimer, but the message was sent from Dawson. Now Western Union says the wires are down between Dawson and Skagway. Listen, Saddler, I have to get his body back so he can be buried with the rest of the family. I owe him that much. Will you do it?”
I guess my mouth hung open for a minute. “You want me to go all the way to the Alaska-Yukon border? You have any idea how far that is? It’s fall here but it’s nearly winter there. The rivers’ll be frozen solid, the passes blocked with snow. Not much moves up there in winter.”
“But you’ve been up there, haven’t you?”
“I was there in the army and didn’t like it. There must be men willing to sled the body to the coast. After that it’s just a boat ride.”
“Western Union says nobody wants to take the job. There may be other reasons besides winter. Phineas was far from popular. A lot of men hated him.”
I looked at her sitting there with the robe half open. There was a lot to see when you looked at Cynthia.
“I didn’t hate him. I didn’t know him,” I said. “I just don’t want to go to the Far North.”
Her gray eyes turned a trifle hard. Cynthia might be a lady now, but she hadn’t forgotten the lessons of the mining camps. She could be tough.
“You owe me a few things,” she said. “Like the time I staked you to that big poker game in Leadville. You were busted, flat broke, down in your luck. I hate to say that.”
“You’re saying it,” I said.
She looked away from me. “I know I am. All right. Forget about old times and all that bullshit. Name your price and I’ll pay it. What do you say to five thousand?”
I shrugged. “That’s a lot of money.”
“Double that, make it ten,” she said angrily. “I told you to forget the old
days. We’re talking money here.”
“I wasn’t trying to up the price,” I said.
“I don’t care what you were trying to do. I want my husband’s body back. So don’t act like a shit-kicker. Will you do it, or not?”
“Why me? For ten thousand you should be able to find men here in Frisco.”
“I can find men but can I trust them? What’s to stop them from taking the money and heading for the hills? What’s to stop them from going to Alaska, then changing their minds? Or saying the job just can’t be done?”
“Maybe it can’t,” I said, but at the same time I was thinking about the ten thousand. By trade I’m a gambler and lately the cards had been running kind of cold. They have a way of doing that no matter how good you are at the gaming tables. When that happens all you can do is wait out your streak of bad luck. Still and all, hauling dead bodies down frozen rivers and over icy mountain passes wasn’t quite my line of work.
“You can do it, Saddler,” Cynthia urged. “You’ll do it if you say you’ll do it. You’ll do your best, and that’s all that matters to me. Don’t tell me you can’t use the money. Hell! The wild way you live, you’re broke half the time. Be a friend, Saddler. Do it for me.”
Well, I couldn’t say she hadn’t been good to me in the past. In bed and out of it. Of course, our paths didn’t cross all that often—the West is a big place—but when we did meet we were always glad of it. Now we were in Frisco, arguing about a corpse.
“How soon do you want me to start?” I asked her.
“Not right this minute,” she said, letting the robe fall from her shoulders and holding out her arms. “Poor Phineas won’t get any deader than he is, and you’ll be gone a long time. I’ll be good to you now and when you come back.”
I knew she wasn’t thinking about money, and neither was I. Getting back between her legs for the rest of the morning was my only interest, and if you think that wasn’t altogether respectful to the dead judge, you may be right. On the other hand, the judge was dead—left out to freeze solid, I figured—and we were very much alive. And if Cynthia felt any lingering grief for the dear departed, it didn’t show in her face when I drove into her and she wrapped her legs around the small of my back.
What Cynthia doesn’t know about wild sex you could fit into a thimble and still have room to spare. Her cunt was sweet and hot, and I thought with gut-wrenching regret how much I was going to miss it on the miserable, dangerous journey I faced in the wilds of Alaska. Getting in there at the start of winter was going to be bad enough. How I planned to get the judge’s body was a thought I hadn’t even rolled around in my mind. In the years since I left my hometown, Jonesboro, West Texas, I had taken part in many foolhardy enterprises, but this one beat all. The more I thought about it, the more inclined I was to finish my fuck, kiss Cynthia goodbye and head back south where it’s warm. Up north it’s a nice day when it warms up to freezing; it’s country fit only for gold-crazed madmen, and while I could understand some of their craziness, I’ve always preferred to make my money indoors, with a bottle and a cigarillo and maybe a thick steak close at hand.
Yet I knew I wasn’t going to run out on Cynthia. I had given my word and I was going to keep it. Most men of honor are a pain in the ass, and although I am somewhat less than honorable at times, especially in my dealings with women, there are things that have to be done, no matter how dumb they seem. Under me Cynthia was bucking like a wild thing, and I had to do everything I could to hold her down. You would need a chalk and blackboard to check off all the men she had been in bed with, but the nice thing about her was that she never got tired of it, never got enough. Or if she got enough, it didn’t last very long.
“Oh Saddler, I’m going to miss you so much,” Cynthia cried out, climbing up to her orgasm. “I’ll be thinking of you out there on the trail. I won’t know what to do.”
“You’ll figure something,” I said.
There were beads of sweat along her hairline and she gripped me hard. “That’s a lousy thing to say. I swear I’ll miss you like crazy.” Her nails raked my back.
I grinned into her face. “You’re going to miss me so much, why don’t you come along? We could bundle up on the snowy nights. It’s not like you haven’t camped out before this.”
Cynthia didn’t answer until she had shuddered herself to satisfaction. Then she sighed and said, “Not lately I haven’t. I wouldn’t be any good on the trail, Saddler. I’d just slow you down. Anyway, it wouldn’t be right: you and me snuggled up warm and the judge cold in his coffin.”
Once again common sense warned me to get the hell out of there. Cynthia must have read my thoughts, because she ground her crotch into me, arguing with the best part of her. As usual, that’s the one argument I have no defense against, and I held her steady while I shot my load deep inside her. She came again when she felt me coming—I like women who respond so generously—and after that we lay side by side, not saying anything.
From the grille in the floor came the soft, whooshing sound of forced hot air. It was warm as toast in the big comfortable room, and I could have stayed there for a dog’s age, or at least until I got tired of Cynthia, or she tired of me. Fog from the bay drifted against the windows; the rain had stopped. It can get cold in San Francisco in the fall, but it’s nothing compared to Alaska.
“I’m going to have a lot of money,” Cynthia said. “Think of all the things we can do when you come back.”
“It’s going to be a long time,” I said. “Months.”
Cynthia kissed my ear. “I’ll be right here waiting, Saddler. It’ll be winter then and we can go some place where the sun shines all the time. Down south there’s a new resort called Palm Springs where rich people go. There’s a big new hotel and it’s hot by day and cool at night.”
I made one last try to get out of going to Alaska in winter. “How about this for an idea,” I said, putting my hand between her legs. “We’ll go to Palm Springs now and I’ll go fetch the judge in the spring. The rivers will be thawed by then, and I can take the judge back by steamboat. In the spring the judge can have a real nice funeral. Flowers and everything. What do you think?”
Cynthia stroked my stubbly chin. “I think we should have a bath and you a shave. We’ve been at this since yesterday and we’re starting to smell a little gamey.”
I couldn’t deny that, and a nice hot soapy bath with a good looking woman is always a pleasure, but there was something about her determination to recover the judge’s body that bothered me. The old man was dead, and in the bitter Alaska cold the corpse would keep forever, so why not wait for spring? It made sense. Or at least it made sense to me.
I asked her why not.
The huge bathtub was filling with water and she was sprinkling bath salts into it. In the bathroom the steam from the tub condensed on the frosted window and trickled down. The faucets that filled the tub looked like solid gold; none of that plated junk. Everything in Cynthia’s house spelled money, the bathroom no less than any of the other rooms.
“Why the big hurry?” I said again.
“Because I want my husband’s body back now. Why are you going on with this, Saddler?”
“Because I think you want to get the judge’s body back for some other reason. Not just to bury him with his family. I don’t care what your reasons are. Just tell me what I’m getting into.”
Cynthia tested the water with her toe before she got in, and before she answered she soaped a gold-backed brush and gave her shoulders a few strokes. There was plenty of gold in the Slocum mansion, plenty more in the bank. I was thinking that the return of the dead man’s body had everything to do with gold.
“The reason, some of the reason is money. I want him to have a proper funeral, but the money is important.” Cynthia said at last. “My husband is dead in Alaska, I don’t know how many thousands of miles from here. It’s possible that if I don’t get him back—to bury him—the family will say he isn’t dead at all. I know his will leaves everything to m
e. They don’t like that. There was no love lost between Phineas and his brothers, Bart and George. They’d like to contest the will, break it if they could. If Phineas’s body stays up there all winter, God knows what will happen to it. No body, no final reading of the will—not for a long time. It could drag on for years.”
I got into the tub with her and she gave me the brush so that I could scrub her back. “They’d have to make a settlement with you,” I said. “What’s wrong with that?”
Cynthia gave me a cold-eyed stare that I’d only seen a few times before. “I want it all, Saddler. Those bastard brothers hate my guts and would like to do me out of what’s mine. You want to let them do that?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know how mean, how greedy Phineas Slocum’s brothers were, but I was thinking about it. Men will do anything for money—some men—and I was considering the idea that the only trouble I faced wasn’t going to be ice and snow.
“Be honest,” I said. “You’ve said that I owe you. All right, I do. Now you be straight with me. You think the Slocums will try to stop me? What are they like? Tell me that.”
Cynthia turned on the hot water again and turned so I could get at the rest of her back. She groaned with pleasure as the soft bristles tickled her skin.
“Come on,” I said.
“They’re bad enough,” Cynthia said. “Bart failed in business and George gambles and drinks. They keep big houses and can’t afford them. Bart is the mean one, though. There’s always been talk that he shipped escaped convicts from Australia. That was in the old days when his shipping line was going bust.”
“Did this Bart ever run coast steamers to Alaska?” I was beginning to get interested in Bart Slocum. Any man who did business with Australian convicts, as bad a breed as there was, would know where to find gunmen. After the Gold Rush the Sydney Ducks, as the Australian thugs were called, had been the terror of San Francisco, and it took a lot of lynchings by the Vigilance Committee to chase them out.
Cynthia told me to face the other way so she could do my back. “Bart ran coast boats,” she said. “But not anymore. From here to Seattle, then on to Skagway. I don’t think you have to worry about Bart. Not the way you mean. He’s a year older than Phineas was. That makes him an old man.”