Slocum and the Widow's Range Wars

by Jake Logan

  There were lights on in Raul’s house and three strange horses tied in front at the rack. Slocum let Jeminez go in first. After checking around and seeing nothing out of place, he also went inside.

  A big man with an expensive hat and a walrus mustache turned around in a chair and looked at him hard, then glanced back to Jeminez.

  “See, Don Jeminez, the sheriff has a court order that a judge has ruled your land grant is invalid.”

  “That’s right,” the so-called sheriff said. “That means you can’t stop the grazing on this land until this is settled in court.”

  “You work for the MC?” Slocum asked.

  The chair scraped on the tile and the big man rose. “I never caught your name.”

  “Tom White. A federal judge declared their grant as valid. Who is this judge?”

  “Mr. White, I’m the law in this county and I enforce the law.”

  “Let me see that paper.” Slocum took it from Raul. He looked down to the signature—JUSTICE OF THE PEACE SAMUEL DUGGER, LAS VEGAS, NMT. “This Dugger can’t invalidate a federal court order, he’s only a justice of the peace. His jurisdiction doesn’t go all over the county either.”

  “Sheriff Garcia, are you going to enforce this court order or not?” the man with the small black mustache demanded.

  “Since we’re getting on a first-name basis, what’s your name?” Slocum asked.

  “Barton, Alex Barton of Barton, Schofeld, and Morris.”

  “And who are you?” Slocum asked the third man.

  “Court clerk for Judge Dugger. Martin Goldstein. I am here to see the law is carried out.”

  “Barton’s a lawyer for the MC, right?”

  With his coat lapels in both hands, the lawyer stuck his chest out. “My firm represents many interests in the livestock business.”

  “No, the MC is footing the bill for you to come out here and that ain’t cheap. And I suppose that Sheriff Garcia is going to issue deputy badges to every MC cowboy to enforce this worthless document.”

  Obviously affronted by Slocum’s accusation, Garcia scowled at him. “I’ll deputize anyone I see fit.”

  “All the MC crew or just the ones that aren’t on wanted posters?”

  Garcia frowned at Barton. Good, he’d hit a sore spot.

  “I assure you that none of the MC employees are wanted men,” Barton shot back at Slocum.

  “When you go to their camp to make them deputies, better take along a stack of them bills. There’s more faces over there on them than there are in Tascosa.”

  “I’ll have you know—” Garcia blustered red-faced at him.

  “Have me know what? That you were going to send a box of badges over there with Barton here and let him handle it? Was that what you were going to say?”

  The sheriff pointed his finger at Slocum. “I am the law in the county—”

  “Yes, and you sleep with this MC bunch and you won’t be after the next election. Those Texans can’t vote here.”

  Garcia pounded his fist on the table. “This is a valid court order.”

  “This is crap.” Slocum reached over and tossed the paper at Goldstein, the court clerk. He fumbled to catch it, looking bug-eyed at Slocum. “You tell your boss to stick with sentencing drunks to thirty days. He has no authority to challenge a federal decree.”

  “I am placing you under arrest for blocking a court order.”

  Slocum shook his head like that was impossible. “I don’t think you noticed. There are several rifle barrels at each window. I’d hate to attend your funeral.”

  “This is insurrection!”

  “Sheriff, Sheriff,” Barton said with his hand on the man’s arm to restrain him. “I think we can handle this matter in Superior Court.”

  “No one is going to tell me—you’re under arrest in the name of the Territory of New Mexico.”

  The metallic click of rifles being cocked was the loudest sound in the predawn. Garcia’s eyes turned to slits. Then, glaring at Slocum, he dried his palms on his fancy woolen pants. Barton was dragging him to the doorway. Goldstein was like a panicked sheep trying to get in between them as they hurried outside.

  “You better not go against that order,” Gracia shouted from horseback, and the threesome left like foxes with hounds on their butts headed south.

  “Is what you said for sure the truth?” Raul asked.

  Slocum nodded, watching them retreat. “It was just a deal they thought they could slap down and you’d be so afraid you’d believe it.”

  “I would never have known better,” Jeminez said. “I can’t read that good.”

  “A lawyer would have laughed at it,” Slocum said. “They aren’t through. They’re going to try every trick in the book and you better believe me they have more.”

  “What can we do?” Raul asked.

  “Guard the ranch from raids and send four more men with us today. While they are licking their wounds, I want to push more cattle east.”

  Slocum’s teeth were about ready to float out for some coffee, but he stopped and turned to the men and women gathered in the square. “You have done a brave thing this morning. They will try and try over and over again to take your ranchero. But we can win. We started really winning today.”

  Jeminez nodded at his words and they went to the house. Belle rushed out and before she could even speak, he caught her upper arms and kissed her hard on the mouth. He could taste the honey in her mouth, and her firm body against him felt exciting. Hank Nelson must have been a real man—shame he never met him. Bigger shame she and Hank couldn’t have lived out their dreams on the ranch they were building. Finally he hugged her. “You know we’ve got cattle to move today?”

  She swept the hair back from her face. “Yes, and we have breakfast ready.”

  “Ah, Slocum ran off the lawyers and the sheriff today,” Jeminez said as Juanita came out to see what was keeping them.

  “Good. Come in and eat before it gets cold.”

  Slocum looked at the eastern sky where the purple of dawn began to crease the horizon. What would the Texans try next?

  11

  The rain had settled the dust, but the cattle were more scattered since they didn’t need to walk back to a water source with pools in every dry wash or depression. But the additional riders helped them cover more ground making a large sweep, and cattle soon came pouring in from all directions. They also had to cut out the cattle bearing the brand of the Rancho de Vaca. Since its animals had been herded in that direction, there were many in the herd that they assembled at midday.

  Ropes and reatas sliced the air. Ropers rode amongst the cattle to catch the ones who were not the MC’s. Bawling cows and even some calves were dragged out of the large herd and sent away by three young boys who rode out to help.

  Slocum decided there was no way they’d do more than finish culling before the day was gone, and sent word to Raul via a youth helping them. His crew would need food and blankets so they could hold the cattle in a bunch overnight and start east with them in the morning.

  “How many do we have?” Belle asked him when he rode to where she sat her horse.

  “We’ll have five hundred or more when we get through.”

  “They really have been pushing their cattle on here, haven’t they?”

  Slocum agreed. “More than I even imagined. This many head, they’d’ve eaten up the ranch’s range in a short while.”

  “Now what?” She used the back of her glove to push an errant wave of hair back toward her hat.

  “I sent for food and blankets. We’ll spend the night here and then trot this bunch hard east.”

  She winked at him. “Save a place in your bedroll for me.”

  He looked off across the sea of grass at a small mesa with black volcanic rock sides. “Wish I was an eagle, could see what they’re doing.”

  “Why not take your glasses and go up there and look?” she said, indicating the rise.

  “Might work. I’ll go tell Don Jeminez he’s in charge
. You want to go along? They about have the ranch cattle cut out.”

  “Sure, why not?”

  After putting Jeminez in charge, they raced across the open ground, spooking cottontails and jacks. At the base of the mesa, he loosened cinches and hobbled the horses. She took a blanket roll and retrieved his field glasses from the saddlebags.

  Slocum studied the sheer wall searching for a way up it. Then, with his eyes squinted against the sun, he thought he saw a possible route.

  “Let’s go,” he said, shouldering the blanket roll.

  She smiled and, holding a canteen and with field glass around her neck, she joined him. He led the way and glanced back as he strove to climb the steep wall. Right behind him she came grinning. His breath became short from real exertion in places, and he reached back several times to haul her up with him, until at last they topped the grassy flat. He unfurled the blanket, then bellied down to search the far-flung plains dotted with an occasional juniper.

  She joined him and handed him the field glasses. He scanned the country to the east for any sign of activity.

  “See anything?” she asked.

  He shook his head. The MC crew was out there brewing up something. If only he knew their plans and could nip them off. But there was no way, he’d have to face them as they came to him. Another drive after this one would mean more time sorting out ranch cattle mixed with the MC herd. But another drive might clear them all off the ranch.

  What would happen then? He glanced over. She was lying on her back looking whimsically out from under her hat brim. “What were you thinking?” he asked.

  She rolled over to face him and propped her head up on an elbow. “What I usually think when I am in bed with you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh, my foot. You realize how little time we’ve had to be alone?”

  He turned over on his back and studied the clear azure sky. “No, but if you think I’ve given up on you, you’re wrong.”

  “Good.” She bolted up and began unbuttoning her blouse. “Show me.”

  He laughed, sitting up and jerking off his boots. “Lady, you ever been seduced on a mesa top before?”

  She paused, ready to pull the shirt back, and looked reflectively at him. “No, I can’t recall that ever happening.”

  He was on his knees, unbuckling his gun belt and laughing. “Today is the day.”

  “Wonderful,” she said, and scrambled to her feet. She shed her britches, and the sun shone on snowy legs that led to a shapely derriere. With her shirt off at last, her proud breasts shook at him like the tempting apples of Eden. In desperation to get to her, he fought off his underwear and tackled her. They landed on the blanket, and he pushed the hair from her face to find her mouth.

  In each other’s clutches, their lips mashed hard together. Then he worked his way over her legs and once he was between them, she raised her knees. His urge to drive his throbbing dick in her was inflamed, and he pushed forward in an attempt to plunge through her gates.

  She reached under him and set it on course. Then she settled on her back at his entry, and gasped at the passage of his enlarged erection through her tight ring. It was slick enough with her natural lubricant, but he still felt the muscled constriction and it required a full thrust to pump into her.

  Braced on top of her, he smiled down as he threw himself into it. Again and again his thrust sought her depths—her clit scraping the top of his rock-hard pecker like a large nail. With her heels locked behind his knees, she too fought the war and raised her butt off the blanket to meet his actions. Harder, faster, more, more. Every nerve in the length of his sore swollen dick was electrified by the friction of her contracting walls and the sensations that led to the finale.

  “Oh,” came from her parted lips as she tossed her head from side to side deliriously in pleasure’s arms. Her hard stomach pressed against the cords of muscles that rippled down his belly. Like a fiery torch, the swollen head of his dick screamed for relief, plunging in and out of the swollen tunnel until, at last out of breath, he halted braced above her. Dizzy and fearing the task had no end, he raised his sweaty face up to let the wind cool it.

  Then, with a newfound fury, he attacked her harder than ever before. His surges were stronger, more deliberate, with longer strokes, until they both were lost in a desperate whirlwind that drew from the depths of his balls molten-hot lava. It erupted out of the head, and she cried out in stiffening surrender under his onslaught. Her sharp nails dug into the muscles of his upper arms until she collapsed in a heap beneath him.

  They slept in each other’s arms until a screaming red-tailed hawk challenged their presence on his range. Slocum fought to open his eyes in the glare and see it as its shadow passed over them. Grinning at the bird of prey’s loud insistence, he sat up, and she hugged his arm to keep him there.

  He smiled at her, then rolled over and used the glasses. They had company coming. “We better get down there.”

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, busy dressing.

  “Three, four, five riders are coming from the east. They’re Texans by their hats, and I’d say they have rifles.”

  “What can we do?”

  “I’ll try and stop them.”

  “Not without me.”

  “Too dangerous.”

  She pulled him half up to stare hard in his face. “I’m going with you.”

  He put down the glass. “Then we better get our butts off this mesa and head them off.”

  In minutes, they were dressed and scrambling down the mountainside for their grazing horses. With the hobbles off, and cinches tightened, they swung in their saddles, jerking rifles out of their scabbards as they set in a hard run for the east. Those riders were taking a wagon road and he hoped to waylay them.

  Meadowlarks, quail, and jackrabbits fled aside at their hard approach. On top of the rise, they paralleled the wagon tracks on a ridge headed for the jumble of juniper and rocks where he hoped to ambush the riders.

  They dismounted from their hard-breathing horses in a wash, and he hitched them to a small cottonwood and told her to follow him up the steep slope. The steep climb had them out of breath, but crouched in a nest of boulders, he felt they had won the race as he checked the chamber of his .44/40. Satisfied it was loaded, he sat back and listened.

  “You believe that hawk warned us?”

  He looked over at her, hearing the drum of hooves, and slowly nodded. “They’re coming. I don’t want them killed if they’ll surrender, but if their guns come out, then we need to put them down.”

  She nodded and bit her lip.

  “It’s their decision.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly, and took off her hat. With her hands, she swept her hair back and tied it with a ribbon. “I’m ready.”

  The snort of the oncoming horses and steel shoes striking rocks drew closer; then the men’s voices began to carry to Slocum’s hideout. Rifle ready, he rose and aimed it at them in the narrow confines of the draw.

  “Throw down your arms!”

  “What in the hell—”

  “Drop ’em or die!”

  One of the riders jerked his horse around and went for his sidearm. Slocum’s Winchester blasted him out of the saddle. An acrid sweep of black powder washed over his face, with his cheek hard pressed on the polished stock, and he levered in another cartridge. Ready for another to try something.

  The cowboys halted their ponies and shouted, “Don’t shoot.”

  “Cover me,” he said to her and she nodded, holding the rifle to her shoulder and ready for anything. “Get off them ponies and put your hands up high. Step away from them.”

  On his boot heels, he slid down the slope and with the rifle ready, he circled them making certain they had no other arms that he could detect.

  “We’re just drovers, mister,” one of them said.

  “Where’s Booth?”

  “In camp, I guess. He can’t ride. They busted his ribs in a fight.”

  “What were your o
rders?”

  “Check on the cattle.”

  “Five of you together?”

  “Well—to see if any of them greasers was rounding up our stock.”

  “What then?”

  The older one doing the talking shrugged. “I guess stop them.”

  “Like some of you beat up that boy with the sheep?”

  The man held out his hands as if to ward off the accusation. “Wasn’t us—”

  “Oh, no, but you’d’ve done it today. The boss said for you to, didn’t he?”

  The man swallowed hard, and the rest of the punchers shared worried looks.

  “Mister, you give us a chance, we’ll quit this outfit and ride out of here.”

  “Put your arms down. How many punchers are left besides you four?”

  “None. There’s a cook, a kid helps him, and two gunhands not counting Booth.”

  “Where are those gunhands?”

  “In camp—resting,” the kid of the bunch said. “Everyone else besides us quit. Booth’s sending for more if the supply wagons ever get here.”

  “It’s late?” Slocum asked, concealing his amusement.

  “Them wagons should have been here by now.”

  “You boys promise to ride for the Big Bend country, I might consider giving you a pardon. If you go back and join Booth, I won’t tell you to halt next time. I’ll gun you down.”

  Seriousness masked their somber faces—heads nodded.

  “What about Hoot?” One of the others nodded toward the one lying crumpled on the ground.

  “Shame he didn’t listen. Load him up and somewhere you can borrow a shovel and plant him.”

  “We’ll do that.”

  “Just remember this is your final chance. Join Booth and you’ll die with him.”

  “Them greasers paying you a lot?” the kid asked, trying to get on his shying horse.

  Slocum shook his head. “Some old friends I owed a favor to.”

  “They better be damn grateful they got you. Booth’s got a big rep for cleaning out ranges of anyone gets in his way. Guess he never met the likes of you before.” The kid finally mounted his horse and checked him so he could look back for Slocum’s reply.