by Jake Logan
“How can you do that?” Annabelle asked. “If you’re paying twenty dollars a bottle, you’re losing money.”
“Even if Deutsch is selling it to you at half that, you’re losing a lot of money selling a shot for just a dime.”
Pete looked uneasy again, then gathered his courage and looked Slocum straight in the eye as he delivered the answer.
“I ain’t payin’ that. Only saloon owners who don’t have Rory Deutsch as a silent partner pay that much.”
Everything came together in a rush for Slocum. Deutsch would drive owners out of business selling his overpriced Taos Lightning—or they could take him in as majority owner and continue to sell at the usual rate. By doing this, he forced the other owners to either compete, go out of business, or take him in as partner. Whichever it was didn’t matter since he ended up owning all the liquor establishments in town.
“You should go to the marshal,” Annabelle said, staring in disbelief. “I never thought such a thing could happen here.”
“Marshal Donnelly ain’t no good. He’s scared of Deutsch. You ought to be, too, if you had any sense.” Pete screwed up his courage and said, “Your brother didn’t have a lick of sense, and look what it got him buckin’ Rory Deutsch.”
Annabelle hissed like a cat, spun, and flounced away. Slocum stared at the bottle of Taos Lightning for a moment, then left without a word to Pete. The bar owner called for them to forgive him, but Slocum was past that. If Annabelle heard his whining pleas, she might come back and rip out his eyes.
They returned to the Black Hole. Annabelle leaned against the bar, breathing hard as if she had run a mile. She looked up at Slocum.
“Want a drink?” he asked.
“Sure. I don’t even care that it comes out of the profits,” she said.
She drank down the shot of brandy he’d poured as if it were no more than water. He poured a second. She hesitated for only a moment, then downed that one, too. She sputtered, coughed, and finally got her breath back.
“Time to open the shop. Let those thirsty beggars in.”
Slocum started to ask what she intended to do about the whiskey supply, then decided this was something they could hash out later. Five cases of whiskey remained in the storeroom. The Black Hole might close or perhaps it could survive as a beer bar. He had heard of special taverns in San Francisco doing that, but they were high-class and catered to people with more money than taste.
The night passed in a blur of clinking glasses and spilled beer. Once Annabelle barked at a cowboy who had spilled his whiskey, then apologized and bought him one on the house. This created a stir among the patrons. As friendly as she was, none of them had ever seen her buy a drink for a customer before. Somehow the night passed and the last customer staggered out after midnight, heading to the Santa Fe Drinking Emporium to continue imbibing until dawn.
“I don’t know what we can do, John. I swear if I were a man, I’d strap on a gun and go call Rory Deutsch out.”
“You’d have to take on the entire family. Just because you cut the head off a snake doesn’t mean it’ll die right away.”
“Let it wiggle around until sundown, but it’s dead eventually. They killed Tom.”
“I never said that.”
“It makes sense from everything Lucas Deutsch said and how you skirted the matter. Finding the road agents riding horses with X Bar X brands is evidence enough for me.”
“Let’s go to your house. It’s getting chilly out.”
She smiled, tossed a bar rag into a bucket, and headed for the door.
“Beat you to bed!”
“Don’t start without me,” he said.
She laughed and went out into the cold mountain air. He pulled the front door shut behind him, and they headed for her house, arm in arm. When she shivered, he realized she had left her shawl in the bar.
“I’ll go fetch it,” he said. “Go ahead and get a fire going.”
“Don’t be long,” she said, “or I will start without you.”
He retraced his steps to the Black Hole, then slowed and finally came to a halt a dozen yards away. Dark figures moved about in the space between the saloon and the bookstore beside it. Slocum slid his pistol from the holster and edged along between the adobe buildings. The rough texture cut at his back, but he never noticed anything but the three masked men in the alley behind the saloon working to light torches.
Slocum aimed his six-shooter and called, “Drop the match or I’ll drop you!”
The sudden flare as one torch exploded into flame dazzled him. Then the air was filled with flying lead, tearing all around him.
6
Slocum fired but missed. This gave the three men the chance to rush him, using the lighted torch to keep him blinded and off balance. When a second torch ignited, he changed his aim slightly and fired at a point just under the ball of flame. A yelp of pain rewarded his shot. Then he found himself bowled over as two of the men hit high and low and slammed him into the adobe wall. He grunted as air rushed from his lungs, but he kept firing.
Then he shrieked as his clothing burst into flames. One torch had been thrust under his coat. Slocum clamped his arm down hard on the fiery end, jerked about, and started rolling. This would make a more difficult target for the three in the dark as well as extinguishing the fire.
He was covered in dirt by the time he fetched up against a post. He rebounded, brought up his six-shooter, ready to fire at . . .
Nothing.
The trio of arsonists had turned tail and run. He bent over, clutching his side, and moaned. Peeling away his scorched jacket revealed the singed skin. Blisters popped up and the skin was red enough to see even in the night. Slocum winched, sat up, and rested against the fence post that had stopped him. He danced between consciousness and passing out entirely.
When a wave of strength returned to taunt him, he got to his feet, stumbled out front of the saloon, and doused his coat and vest with water from the horse trough to put out any lingering embers, then used the icy liquid to shock himself completely awake. He sat on the edge of the trough, got to his feet, and managed to open the lock on the door. Inside, he grabbed a bottle of whiskey and poured a generous amount over the blistered skin.
He almost passed out, but when the initial pain died, he felt only coldness. He had driven away both pain and the chance of infection. Slocum took a quick drink from the bottle to steady himself, grabbed Annabelle’s shawl, and wrapped it around himself as he left.
Slocum’s pace quickened, and he felt right as rain by the time he reached Annabelle’s house.
“The fire’s got the place warmed up. And so am I,” she called from the bedroom.
He went to the bedroom and saw a white shoulder poking out from under the blanket. She turned and revealed a tantalizing bit more. Then Annabelle sat up abruptly.
“What’s wrong?”
“Brought your shawl,” he said, pulling it off his shoulders. Slocum tried not to flinch but couldn’t stop himself.
“You’re hurt. And you smell like you bathed in whiskey!”
“I did,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“You also smell like something’s burned.” In a lower voice she said, “Skin. That smell is burned flesh.”
“Mine,” he admitted. “But I ran off three owlhoots trying to set fire to the saloon.”
“You stopped them from burning the building by letting them set fire to you?”
“Something like that.”
“Men,” Annabelle said in disgust. “Lie back. I’ve got some salve that’ll fix you up better than a shot or two of whiskey sloshed all over your side.”
The cold salve caused Slocum a moment of pain and then the last of the burning sensation vanished.
“Was it Deutsch and his brother?”
“Looked to be. Couldn’t tell if one of them was
the size of a mountain, but who else could it be?”
“Oh, I’ll get even with them. You laughed when I said I’d strap on a gun and call out Rory Deutsch. I’ll take them all on! I’ll—”
“You’ll do nothing,” Slocum said. “This is my fight.”
“Mine, too!”
“Mine,” he insisted. “This isn’t the first feud I’ve gotten mixed up in. It won’t be the last.”
“It had better not be, John Slocum. If you get yourself killed, why, I’ll skin you alive!”
They chuckled at this. Slocum lay back, the woman’s arms around him until he fell asleep.
A little before dawn, he came awake in the bed. Annabelle still slept peacefully beside him. Moving more easily now thanks to the curative power of her salve, he got out of bed and went into the kitchen. The fire had died down but the room remained warm. He took his time and wrote her a quick note using a page out of her ledger book, then strapped on his six-gun and left. He had a score to settle.
• • •
Slocum scanned the land around the ranch house, then worked to the barn. For such a large operation, the X Bar X had very few wranglers. He had spent half a day spying on the Deutsch house and had counted only a half-dozen hands, and they had been more intent on going from the bunkhouse to the barn and back without doing any work. The time in the barn amounted to less than ten minutes, no matter which of the cowboys went in. Slocum couldn’t get his saddle soaped or his horse curried in that time. And no one rode out.
The ranch might be abandoned for all the activity he saw.
Most of the cowboys might be out farther west working a herd. Slocum decided to find out. He slipped back down the far side of the hill, mounted, and circled the ranch house, going far to the south and working his way through mountain meadows, which begged to have a herd grazing. He nodded in approval when he saw that none of the range had been fenced. Slocum preferred the open range to tightly penned herds. He knew some ranchers had success in dividing their land and allowing their herd to graze only a single section at a time. When the grass was close-cropped, the herd was moved to a different section, allowing the first to grow unimpeded again.
The cattle on an open range always grazed in the same fashion, and such close attention—and fencing with barbed wire, the devil’s rope—wasn’t necessary. Slocum thought some things were better left to nature.
He crossed a decent-sized stream and used it to hide his tracks by letting his Appaloosa splash about in the water. Who might trail him when no one expected him here was something of a poser, but crossing the Deutsch brothers had shown him how dangerous life could become. Better not to give any of them even a hint that a stranger prowled their pa’s range.
He had ridden a couple hundred yards when a song drifted down from higher in the hills. Cocking his head to one side, he heard distinct lyrics almost drowned out by the rush of the water. Whoever sang had a lovely voice. Avoiding the chanteuse appealed to his common sense, but he didn’t listen to his own advice. Something about the song drew him.
The singing grew louder. From the lay of the land, he thought a large pond formed at the top of a small waterfall. Whoever sang splashed about in that pool. Letting his horse pick its own way up the slope, he entered a stand of aspens and approached from the side. Through the trees he saw occasional flashes of white skin. Bare skin. He dismounted and crept closer on foot, placing each step carefully to avoid making a sound. No Indian could have moved through the forest as silently as Slocum.
Using a large lodgepole pine trunk as cover, he peered around to take in the pool. It stretched a good twenty yards across, larger than he’d expected. The waterfall was natural. The way rocks had dammed the flow to create this pond wasn’t.
He darted back behind the tree when the song lifted into a rousing chorus. Slocum recognized it as a bawdy song favored by dance hall girls.
The lyrics weren’t as he remembered them. These were even bawdier and more likely to be sung at a dive along the Barbary Coast in San Francisco. Even then more than a few sailors might blush.
Rising from the water, naked as a jaybird, a woman tossed her glistening long blond hair back so that it fell almost to her behind. She squeezed out the water and partly turned until Slocum saw her silhouette. He caught his breath. Her breasts were small, firm, and the pink nipples taut from the cold water. Unaware anyone watched, she finished wringing out her long hair and began running her hands over her body. A bar of soap formed lather, which was quickly washed away every time she dipped down.
Her arms and chest received a thorough scrubbing, but Slocum felt himself getting harder as she worked the soap down between her legs. The intimate parts were hidden by the rippling pond, but his imagination took him there to the damp blond patch.
The bar of soap squirted from her hand and splashed into the pond. She bent over, giving Slocum a view of her behind. Fishing about, she successfully retrieved the soap and stood. The sunlight glistened on the droplets all over her back, her hair, her breasts. She turned and faced him. Slocum froze like a rabbit stalked by a coyote.
She continued her song as she soaped her body some more. A final plunge and reemergence removed all traces of the lather. She worked a bit more on her long hair, then, still staring straight at him, she stopped singing and called, “You don’t have to hide in the forest, jerking off. Come on out so you can get a better look.”
Slocum saw no reason to turn and run like a guilty Peeping Tom. He walked to a large rock beside the pond and perched on it, drinking in her beauty as he settled down.
“Never thought I’d find a water nymph out in the mountains,” he said.
“A nymph? My, a man who has read mythology. What drew you up to this sylvan pool? My singing? Did you think I was a Siren luring you to your doom?” She cut loose with another verse of the song until Slocum had to smile.
“That’s enough to draw cowboys from miles off. But are you luring us all to our death?”
“Death? Perhaps it’s pleasure I want to deliver to you.” She cupped her apple-sized breasts, then tweaked the hard nipples until they turned red and visibly pulsed. “The idea you spied on me makes me very . . . what’s the right word?”
“Excited?” Slocum supplied.
“That is close. I was thinking more of . . . outraged. A stranger doesn’t come along, gawk at a lady’s naked form, then have any gentlemanly thoughts left in his head. Admit it. Your thoughts were less than those to expect from a well-bred gent.”
Slocum continued to drink in her sleek beauty. He found a mole lodged between her breasts that broke up the perfection, but he wasn’t complaining. And she made no move to hide her nakedness.
“Reckon that’s the problem. Seldom has anyone accused me of being polite and never a gentleman. So tell me. What’s a gent to do when he comes across a beautiful woman bathing in the woods?”
“Ride on by. Don’t snoop.” She splashed about, slipping onto her back and languidly moving about to create a froth between her legs with every scissor kick. Her breasts poked out like twin peaks as she began a backstroke to move around the pond in ever-widening circles that brought her closer to Slocum. “Averting your eyes would be the polite thing to do, also.”
“Good to remember,” Slocum said. He stared at her as she stopped, got her feet under her, and crouched in the shallower water ten feet from him. “Should I offer you a towel? I don’t see one.”
“I stretch out on a rock and let the sun dry me. I don’t like the feel of rough cloth against my skin.”
“You must dress in fine duds.”
“Silks, mostly.”
She bobbed about in the water, exposing the tops of her teats and then sinking below the water again as she teased him. Slocum enjoyed the byplay, but it got him nowhere.
“You saw me when I brought the three horses back to the ranch house.”
“Oh, yes, a week
or two ago,” she said. “You have sharp eyes to see me peeking around the upstairs curtains.”
“They were lace. I saw you through them.”
“As you see me through the water?”
“This is better,” he said.
“I will turn into a prune if I stay in the water much longer.”
She had shown no modesty up to this point. Slocum doubted she had suddenly developed a sense of decorum now.
“Rory Deutsch your pa?”
“He is. And Lucas and Timothy are my brothers. Older brothers,” she hastily added.
“You know what they’re up to in Taos?”
“I have no reason to ask about what is likely to be a sordid pursuit of loose women and too much alcohol.”
“They’re trying to monopolize the whiskey trade. Any saloon owner that doesn’t buy their Taos Lightning ends up burned out or dead.”
“Taos Lightning,” she said, nodding knowingly. “I have heard Lucas speak of it. A vile concoction.”
“Rumor has it if a man swills enough of it, he might go blind or even die.”
“That is potent, indeed.” She paddled around but kept her chin just at the surface of the water to maintain her newly modest pose.
“You might tell your brothers that they’ll end up dead if they try to burn down the Black Hole Saloon again.”
“Do you have a personal interest in it? Perhaps in the owner?”
“I am the owner,” Slocum said.
“Not the young girl? The sister of the man killed on the road to Denver?”
“I’m the owner, and I don’t take kindly to extortion.”
“No,” she said, eyeing him with her brilliant blue eyes, “I can see you are not the kind to be pushed around. You should know, however, that both Lucas and Timothy are terrible men. Killers. They would not think twice about filling you with lead.”
“I figured that out.”
“How do you intend to get back at them?”
“You have any ideas?”
“Oh, I have many ideas,” she said. Her smile was about as wicked as any Slocum had seen. Her pink tongue slipped out just a bit and made a slow circuit around her lips as if she tasted him. “You might exact some revenge for them trying to burn down your saloon.”