by Jake Logan
“I have a fine bed,” she said seductively. “It’s in that partitioned section behind you.”
“It’ll take more than that—or anything you can do right now.”
“Spoilsport. But later?” The tip of her tongue slipped out and made a slow circuit in wanton invitation.
She pushed down her skirts, stood, and strutted to the back door.
“I’ll let you get dressed.” She blew him a kiss. With that she disappeared, leaving Slocum standing naked and alone in the car.
He pulled up his pants and retrieved his shirt from where she had tossed it. He picked up his gun belt as the rear door opened and Marlene rushed in, flustered.
“John, you’ve got to—oh!” She put her hand over her mouth but kept her gaze fixed on his groin. He still hung out, not having buttoned up again. “I remember that,” she said. A small smile flickered, then she sobered quickly. “You and her, you just did—”
“What’s wrong?” He settled the cross-draw holster and only then did he tuck himself in and button his fly.
“The mail clerk. The one we picked up in Deming. He’s the one who—oh, this is so difficult. He and she were lovers in San Diego and—”
“And Morgan Burlison is sending her to San Antonio to get his daughter away from him.”
“That and—” She stared at him. Her hand went to her mouth again as she shook her head. “You know?”
“I figured it out. I was kinda slow but too many things never quite made sense. The two of you switching places would have gone to hell a long time back if I’d listened harder to the way Mad Tom and Jefferson talked around you and Marlene.”
The blonde sank to a chair and stared at him. Tears welled in her eyes.
“I didn’t want to lie to you, but Marlene thought it would be great fun. She read about it in that book.”
“The Mark Twain book?”
She nodded.
“When I got you out of the wrecked car after the bridge collapse, I should have known then. She wanted only to get on to Yuma. Your first thought was of her. She’s lucky to have a companion as dedicated.” Then Slocum laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“The first time I saw you, I wondered why a lady let her maid spy on anyone screwing in the next room. She wanted to go there. You didn’t have any choice but to accompany her.”
“She made me spy, for a little while.” Sarah Jane blushed. When she looked up, her expression was bold and challenging. “And I enjoyed it. I wanted to see more, but she insisted on looking instead.”
“You wanted to be in there taking part,” Slocum said. She blushed again. “What about this mail clerk?”
“I wandered about while you and Marlene were, well, when you were occupied with each other. I saw him in the mail car and could hardly believe my eyes.”
“So her pa wants them kept apart.”
“Randolph is a bad influence, a very low-life man. But Mr. Burlison is worried about his business rivals kidnapping Marlene to force him to sell the S&P to a new consortium for pennies on the dollar and not go through with a merger he has fashioned with another railroad. That’s why he went to San Francisco, to fight off a proxy vote. It’s all very complicated, but he doesn’t want Marlene used as a threat against him. He certainly doesn’t want her around Randolph either.”
“Do you think Randolph will harm her?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” Sarah Jane said, choosing her words carefully. “But he is a wild soul. There’s no telling what he might convince her to do.”
“She’s got an iron will. She won’t do anything she doesn’t want to,” Slocum said.
Then he reconsidered. He had seen women fall in love with outlaws because of the supposed romance. If Morgan Burlison tried too hard to keep his daughter away from someone he considered a bad influence, Marlene would have to show her pa who was right—who was in charge.
“It can be like that,” Sarah Jane said, as if reading his mind. “She has an uncontrollable streak that takes a real man to tame.”
“Do you know anything about Randolph?”
“I don’t like him. I think Mr. Burlison is right and that he’s only after Marlene for the family money.”
“There’s not much they can do aboard the train,” Slocum said. “Unless you have other advice, I say let ’em be.”
Sarah Jane looked at him. Her eyebrows arched. She started to speak, closed her mouth, and thought for a moment more before saying, “You’re asking me for advice?”
“You know her—and him—better than I do. I trust your instincts.”
Her green eyes fixed on him, as if seeing him in a new light. Slocum got a little uncomfortable until she looked away.
“We’ll be stopping at Eagle Pass to take on coal and water,” she said. “That’s where I’d worry most about her.”
“That’s a ways down the line,” Slocum said. “You have any ideas about how to spend the time it’ll take getting there?”
“There’s always a card game going in a passenger car. Gin rummy at a penny a point, most likely, though sometimes I see poker games.”
“I’m not interested in cards,” he said.
She locked eyes with him again.
“I have several of Marlene’s books. We can take our pick of titles. She bought several new ones in Deming.”
“You want to read to me?”
This caused a tiny smile to dance on the woman’s lips.
“You can read, Mr. Slocum. I know it.”
“I can read you like an open book.” He stepped closer.
She moved until their bodies almost touched.
“I can see we’re on the same page.”
Slocum was never sure if he kissed Sarah Jane or if she kissed him. It didn’t matter since they had found a way to occupy their time all the way to Eagle Pass.
19
“John. John! I can’t find her!”
Slocum forced one eyelid up. It took him a second to focus on Sarah Jane’s lovely face. He pushed up to one elbow in the narrow bed and tried to make out what bothered her so. Then it hit him. He swung out of bed, his feet hitting the Pullman car floor so hard an echo ran from one end to the other.
“We’re not moving,” he said, pulling on his jeans. The heavy blue work shirt got buttoned down fast, and he had his boots on before he strapped the six-shooter to his hip. “Where’d she go?”
“We pulled into Eagle Pass a half hour ago. You were sleeping so soundly I didn’t have the heart to wake you.” She smiled shyly. “If you were half as worn out as I was, you deserved the rest.” Then the smile vanished. “I went back to the mail car, thinking Marlene would be with Randolph. They were both gone.”
Slocum got to his feet, started forward, stopped, went back, and kissed Sarah Jane soundly.
“It’s not your fault. It’s mine for not bird-dogging her after you warned me about the mail clerk.” He rushed forward, swung out, and made his way along the side of the tender.
Mad Tom cursed as he worked on a steam valve. He never looked up as he said, “You better bring me some damned good news, Slocum, or I’ll throw you off the train. This here valve’s broke, and I can’t fix the mother-lovin’ son of a bitch.”
“How long before the Bullet’s ready to roll?”
“We’re only a hunnerd miles outta San Antonio and the valve has to go bust.” Tom looked up. “I’ll push the damned Yuma Bullet all the way into San Antonio if I have to. We’ll be there in three hours. Less, once we highball on outta here.”
“Take your time,” Slocum said.
Tom swore so sulfurously that Slocum stared at him.
“She done run off, didn’t she?” Tom asked.
“With the mail clerk.”
“That puny sprout? Of course she’d run
off with somebody like that ’cuz she can wrap him around her little finger.” Tom stared hard at Slocum. “Not that she could ever do a thing like that to you.”
Slocum accepted the jibe without comment. He had been duped and hadn’t twigged to the real situation until close to when Sarah Jane had fessed up. The way Marlene—the real Marlene—acted since Deming had caused him to begin wondering about their switched identities. From what Sarah Jane explained, the Mark Twain book caused Marlene to think this was possible and ever so naughty.
“Don’t go without us,” Slocum said, jumping to the ground.
“I oughta quit, that’s what I oughta do.” The engineer returned to his repairs, working himself up into even grander obscenities.
Slocum walked to the mail car. The door had been pushed open and the clerk was nowhere to be seen. He waved to a railroad bull. The man came over, tapping a slungshot against his left palm, as if wondering about Slocum’s right to be here.
“The clerk’s lit out,” Slocum said. “You see where he went?”
“Don’t know if I should even talk to you. The boss’s daughter said somebody’d be askin’ after her—and him.”
“Morgan Burlison hired me to be her bodyguard. Randolph has kidnapped her.”
“Didn’t look like that to me. She and him was all lovey-dovey when they went . . .” He turned and looked in the direction of the road leading from the depot down Eagle Pass’s main street.
Slocum ran out, inquired of the station agent, and got a similar reply. Marlene had convinced everyone that he was out to do her wrong. Disgusted, Slocum considered fetching the silver and gold coins he had hidden away and letting Marlene and her beau go off together. But he couldn’t do that. Burlison had hired him to safeguard his daughter, even if Slocum had been confused as to her identity much of the way from San Diego. Even taking how he had been duped into account, he had protected her well.
Sarah Jane, too.
He started down the street, considering where the couple would go. He went into the hotel. The clerk was snoring behind the counter and didn’t take kindly when Slocum woke him.
“Did a dark-haired woman with a young man register here within the last hour or so?”
“Nope, nobody like that. Was she good looking?” Seeing Slocum’s expression, the clerk shrugged. “I woulda noticed.”
Slocum left without a word, then froze on the hotel’s front steps. He stared in disbelief as a man hobbled down the center of the main street. How Big Joe Joseph had gotten this far was a wonderment. His leg was all busted up and he used a crutch made from a cottonwood branch. His face had met the wrong side of a prickly pear pad, and his buckskins hung in tatters from his gaunt body. If Slocum had been through hell, Big Joe had come the same way crawling on his belly.
Ducking back into the hotel lobby, Slocum ran through to the rear exit. He came out in an alley not far from the livery stables. If Marlene and her boyfriend weren’t in a hotel room, buying horses to cut across Texas or maybe go into Mexico made sense. As Slocum approached the stables, he spotted Randolph with two men, both well dressed. They were arguing. Taking advantage, Slocum went to the front of the stables, where Marlene paced anxiously. He was within a few feet of her when she noticed him. Before she could cry out, he clamped his hand over her mouth, winced as her teeth sank into his flesh, then bodily picked her up and carried her inside.
“Quit fighting me,” Slocum said. “Your pa hired me to get you to San Antonio all safe and sound, and I’m going to do just that. You can run off with Randolph then, but not before I deliver you to your ma.”
“Papa would never let me go with Randolph. Ever!”
Slocum cocked his head to one side as the argument between Randolph and the men intensified. He caught enough now to once more put his hand over the girl’s mouth and bodily carry her to an open window at the rear of the livery. Everything the men outside said rang loud and clear.
She fought and tried to scream, then her struggles subsided. Slocum took the chance of putting her down. Marlene’s face turned bright red with anger, and before she could blurt out anything, he silenced her again.
“Your swain just bartered you to those men for one hundred dollars.”
“The one in the gray suit’s Papa’s enemy. Kent Gallardo. He’s been trying to force Papa to vote to sell the S&P for months. He . . . he bought me?”
“More like Randolph sold you,” Slocum said.
“But he said he loved me.”
“He loves money more, and he didn’t bargain very hard to get more than a hundred dollars for you. If Gallardo ransoms you for your pa’s vote, something tells me your family’s going to be dirt poor.”
“Randolph said—”
“I’ll take care of them for you,” Slocum said, “if you’ll do me a favor.”
“I want to rip his eyes out! I’ll feed his entrails to the buzzards. I . . . I’ll tie him to the tracks so the Yuma Bullet runs over him!”
“Your pa hired me to do all that,” Slocum said. “All I want is for you to tell a man I’ve crossed the border, and last you saw of me, I was heading into Mexico. Tell him I’m traveling with Randolph and make up any story you choose as to why you want me dead.”
“All right. You can shoot him down for me. Or whatever you’re planning. It sounds awful.”
“Painful,” Slocum said. “He’ll suffer in ways you don’t want to know about.”
“Who do I tell this to?”
“His name’s Big Joe and he won’t be hard to find,” Slocum said. Slocum quickly described the bounty hunter.
• • •
“She hasn’t said a word all the way from Eagle Pass,” Sarah Jane said. “What did you do to her there?”
“Nothing much. We traded favors.”
Sarah Jane looked at him curiously.
“Let’s say a problem of mine is hunting down a problem of hers in Mexico.”
“I don’t understand.”
Slocum smiled and shook his head. Offering to tar and feather Randolph had been the easy part, especially after he winged Gallardo’s bodyguard and chased the railroad magnate off amid a hail of bullets. A broad suggestion that Randolph might escape both tar and feathers and painful torture had set him on the trail for Mexico. After Marlene had told the bounty hunter that Slocum and Randolph were hightailing it into the interior to hide with the Yaqui Indians, he had taken off right away. Slocum reckoned he would overtake Randolph in a day or so. What happened then fired his imagination.
The train whistle sounded three long blasts as the Yuma Bullet pulled into the San Antonio station.
“That’s her, Mrs. Burlison,” Sarah Jane said. “She’s a lovely woman.”
“I see where Marlene gets her looks.”
Sarah Jane shot him an angry look, but it faded when he pulled her close and gave her a small kiss on the back of the neck. She wiggled her butt against his crotch, which was meant as an invitation, just as Mad Tom applied the brakes and sent them both staggering a step or two.
“Miss Burlison, I’ll get your bags,” Sarah Jane called.
“Go to hell. You can both go to hell, where you deserve each other!” Marlene flounced off after giving Slocum a particularly black look.
She went out onto the platform and allowed her mother to hug her. They went off together to a carriage waiting in front of the station.
Slocum and Sarah Jane exited and stood silently, looking around until a well-dressed man came up.
“Mr. Slocum? I am Bertram Tunney, Mr. Burlison’s San Antonio manager. He instructed me to give this to you.” Tunney reached into his inner coat pocket and withdrew a bulging envelope.
“I’d hoped for gold, but scrip will do,” Slocum said. Tunney shrugged and walked away to a buggy of his own.
“What are you going to do now, John?”
�
��Give this to you. You earned it.” He handed her the envelope. “There ought to be three hundred dollars there.”
“I can’t take this. It’s your money.”
“After what happened with Randolph, do you think Marlene is going to keep you on? She has to blame someone, and blaming me isn’t going to be enough for her. Take the money.”
“Very well, John, but what are you going to do?”
“Ride north.” He waited for her to say something more, but she looked down shyly. He put his index finger under her chin and raised her face. Again he wasn’t sure who started the kiss. They were both breathless when they broke apart.
“I’ll miss you, John.”
“Find something worth doing,” Slocum said. “Being Marlene’s maid isn’t a fit job.”
“But I—”
Slocum turned as tears welled up in her soft green eyes. He hopped down from the platform, went to the engine, and saw that both Mad Tom and the fireman were gone. It took him a few minutes to unfasten the metal plate and fish out the three sacks of gold and silver he had hidden there. He opened one sack and pulled out ten of the twenty-dollar gold pieces and left them on Tom’s drop seat. Then he left the rail yard and found a stable willing to sell him a good horse, gear, and supplies adequate to get him a couple weeks into the belly of Texas.
It was twilight when he left San Antonio behind, and the moon was rising as he made camp and prepared some grub. He was just finishing his meal when he heard the sound of an approaching horse. Looking up, he saw Sarah Jane decked out in trail clothes, astride a smallish mare.
“What?” she asked. “You didn’t think I could ride?”
“I knew you could,” he said. “I didn’t know you could track.”
“I smelled that coffee halfway to San Antonio. Are you going to offer me some?”
Slocum held up his tin cup, willing to give her a lot more than a cup of boiled coffee. He could even tell her about the gold. Later.
Watch for
SLOCUM AND THE REBEL CANYON RAIDERS
423rd novel in the exciting SLOCUM series from Jove