by Jake Logan
His gloved hand closed over hers and she seemed to shift her gaze back to him. He squeezed her wrist and turned the little pistol so it pointed away from his gut. She seemed surprised that she still held the gun, and before he could snatch it up, she transferred it to her other hand and slipped it inside a pocket of her cloak.
The entire time she kept her face close to his, though he sensed she was again looking beyond him toward the dead man. He felt awkward, still on his knees, with this woman on her knees in front of him. He couldn’t tell whether it was the cold, the excitement of the moment, or the odd position they were both in, their nearness in this strange place, or a combination of all three, but something definitely seemed about to happen.
The mysterious woman’s black woolen traveling cloak parted and Slocum saw her breasts rise and fall, the nipples visible through Lord knew what else she was wearing underneath.
He eased the hammer back on the Colt and holstered it, all the while keeping an eye on the veiled face, the slight clouds of breath rising from behind the veil. And then a sharp tickle of excitement charged upward from his crotch. She’d begun running a fingertip along his manhood, and within seconds, it grew mighty uncomfortable.
“Ma’am—”
“Shhh,” she whispered and touched his lips with the fingers from her other hand, the first hand showing no signs of letting up. Slocum suppressed a groan and tried to draw her to him. But the veiled face moved slowly side to side, indicating no.
“Not yet,” she said, and reached for his gun belt’s buckle. He tensed, then helped her undo it—but he laid it just to the side, within his easy reach, not hers.
She worked his belt buckle apart, then, too slow by half, she unbuttoned his fly, one, two, three, four, five buttons, until she reached his woolen longhandles underneath. I hate winter, he thought as he watched her work slowly, steadily at the buttons there, one, two, three.
As if called by name, his member appeared and he could have sworn he heard a gasp as she saw it, too. Not the first time a woman had reacted so, but he never tired of hearing it. He wasn’t sure what she had in mind then, and he was ready to hoist her up to him, but she pulled away slightly and shook her head. “Not yet.”
This woman was the single most frustrating creature he’d met lately. Then his thoughts flashed briefly on the young Miss Barr, at the rear of the train, and he felt himself stiffen to a degree he’d not thought possible. No, there were definitely things these two had in common, beyond the obvious. But this woman—someone whose name he didn’t even know, and whose face he’d never seen—this one took the cake.
Both of her gloved hands rested, gripping lightly, on the tops of his thighs, kneading his muscled legs through the leather of her gloves, the denim of his pants, and then she lowered her head into his lap.
Any visions he might have had of something unimaginable beneath the veil vanished when he felt her warm breath against the tip of his member. “Jesus H.,” he whispered as she worked down him, then up again, slowly, drawing on him as she rose back to the tip as if she were sipping through a drinking straw.
Then slowly down again, the moistness of her mouth, the soft sound of her breathing through her nose were more intoxicating than a bottle of top-shelf whiskey. The train rumbled steadily onward, the cargo all about them filling the air with irregular squeaks and jostling sounds. For a moment, he closed his eyes and didn’t try to understand, didn’t want to give in to the thought that every time he had seen her, this mysterious veiled woman had been within a few feet of the man he’d just shot. Or someone who looked just like him.
As if reading his mind, he heard a soft growling purr rise up from her throat. Once again at the base of his shaft, she worked her head and throat back and forth as if she were agreeing and disagreeing with herself all at the same time. The purr arose from her throat again and that seemed to do something else still to him. Then her tongue slipped out from the side of her mouth and snaked around his shaft, teasing him down there. It had been a long time since he’d been pleasured quite like this. No, he thought. Make that never quite like this.
All of it—the veil, the clacking, rocking train, the fresh, spring smell of her, the dark, the cold of the car and the warmth of her mouth, the very mystery of her, even the damn dead body behind him, or rather the fact that it seemed to excite her—worked to heighten the thrill he was experiencing. She held him there, at the very edge of release, a man too stunned from the intensity of the moment to do much more than hold his breath.
He wanted to push her away, to indulge more fully with her, to offer her some of the same, but he imagined her voice ringing in his head: “Not yet.” And that was it. He filled her mouth, even as she worked him harder, faster, the veil tickling his shaft, her soft warm breath doing the same, and he exploded. And she worked faster to keep up with him, taking all he offered as if it were honey and she were a hungry bear.
He leaned back against the crates, his legs stiff from the reclining kneeling position he’d been in for the past few minutes, but he didn’t mind. His sheepskin coat lay flopped open, and even the cold didn’t seem to bother him all that much. He felt himself growing soft and she lifted her head from him, one last time—and kissed the tip before sitting up.
He touched her shoulder as she sat up, still kneeling before him. “I don’t even know your name,” he said. “Hell, I don’t even know what you look like.”
“My name is…not important.” She adjusted the simple black hat, the veil still very much in place.
“And your face?”
She seemed to look at him for a moment, then shook her head. “Not yet.” Still, she sat there, kneeling before him smoothing her dress front, her cloak as if she just donned it for a stroll through town.
He tucked himself in and buttoned up his fly. As he worked on his belt, he said, “Why this?” He’d caught her at it again, glancing over his shoulder into the darkness, where the dead man lay. “And what does he have to do with you? He seemed to have followed you around like a homesick puppy.”
She laughed, a light musical sound, and shook her head. “I never really knew him. But it doesn’t matter. He is…gone now.”
He shook his head as if that might help rouse himself from a foolish stupor. “I have to go—I’ve been foolish.” He stood and buckled on his gun belt, checked the Colt, replacing the spent cartridges.
Slocum thought about the dead man, following the woman’s gaze into the dark behind them. Suddenly he thought of her not as an enchanting, mysterious stranger—she was all those things to be sure, but there was something more to her. She was also unexplained, unknown to him. He’d been with a few women who were that way, and a few that turned out to be bad medicine. And he suddenly had that same gut-drop feeling he’d had about them in years past. Damn, what have I done? What if she really did know him and this was some sort of trick?
A thought occurred to him that chilled him to his core. What if there really were two of them? In his mind, he saw the dead man’s face, as if lit by a lightning strike, and wondered what in the hell else he was in store for? The dead man was obviously the man he’d seen on the train earlier, and that man was also obviously a brother of some sort to the two men he’d killed on the trail. But there was something else gnawing at him.
Then it hit him, and he scrambled in his pocket for another lucifer. He scratched it alight on a tooth, and once again, he held it before him in the cold dark. He saw less than he hoped he would see: “No frostbite,” Slocum whispered.
That meant that the man he’d passed earlier on his way to the front of the train hadn’t been this man. So there had been two more of the big devils! Behind him he heard that same rustle of fabric, hurried footsteps, then the door to the car opened, the rushing sounds of the train cutting through the cold winter air, then the door slammed shut and she was gone.
Two of the big men on this train, one dead and one alive. Did that mean the woman was merely providing a distraction so that the other one could s
trike the Barr car again?
Even as the thought occurred to him, Slocum was on the move toward the door. He forced his way through the next cargo car, and tallied the items that now needed his attention, none of them more important than ensuring the safety of Miss Barr and the incapacitated Ling. Though something told Slocum that even at death’s door, Mr. Ling could take care of himself.
Slocum knew he had to report the shooting to the head porter. He only hoped that the Barrs’ influential hand as primary stakeholders of the railroad would be enough to keep him from the lockup, at least for the duration of the trip. He was just doing the job for which he’d been hired. Someone was going to a whole lot of trouble to get him out of the picture. But why? So they could get to the Barrs’ jewel box? That was the most obvious answer.
As much as he hated to admit it, in light of recent circumstances, he was more convinced than ever that the veiled woman was in on the mix, though he wasn’t sure yet just how. There would be time to think it out later, he decided. But now, he had to make sure she didn’t get too far.
On his way to the Barr car, he didn’t see the veiled woman, just lots more of the same damn faces he’d come to know since boarding the train more than a day before. Some looked up at him with vague curiosity. Most ignored him altogether; for that he was grateful. Now that the train was once again moving, apparently having plowed through the drifts and snowslide that had slowed it down, there was little reason for these people to be concerned about much.
They reminded him of complacent cattle. Feed them and they were fine. Cause them any amount of discomfort and all hell would break loose, indignation would set in, and they’d moan until they were fed again.
And wasn’t that what you were up to in the cargo car? Slocum asked himself. He had to admit, he was no better than anyone else here in that regard. But none of this mattered much to him. All he knew was that if anything happened to Miss Barr, he’d never forgive himself. And neither would her father. Slocum was sure he’d deservedly end up spending the rest of his life in jail, or worse.
Slocum reached the door to the fancy car, and as he rummaged for his key, he inspected the handle and lock. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. No signs that the door had been attacked or worked on in any way. He tested the handle and it remained locked and unmoving.
He didn’t remember in what pocket he’d hidden the key. It was a heavy brass skeleton key on a short length of brass chain, attached to a circular flat fob bearing that distinctive scrolled letter B. He could not find it. He tugged off his leather gloves, tossed them to the floor, and searched every pocket twice. He rapped hard on the door with the side of his fist.
“Miss Barr? Miss Barr, it’s Slocum, I know you can hear me. Listen, you don’t have to open the door, but I need you to tell me you’re in there and that you’re okay. Miss Barr?”
10
Long seconds passed. The door was thick steel sandwiching wood, and the locking mechanism was a three-bar sliding deadbolt that rammed into the doorjamb in three equally spaced points inside on the doorjamb. Finally, he heard the muffled voice of Miss Augusta Barr. “Mr. Slocum?”
“Miss Barr!” He pressed his face close to the door. “You okay?”
A pause, then, “Yes.”
“You and Ling are in there, and you’re safe? No one’s tried to get in?”
Another pause, then, “We’re fine, Slocum.”
He tensed. She had called him “Slocum.” He had only known her a short time, though in that time, she had been nothing but ladylike and formal, and had always preceded his name with “Mr.” Did she not trust that he was who he said he was, or was someone in there with her, forcing her to say these things? Seemed likely.
“Miss Barr, there’s been a shooting. I have to go find the porter, attend to these matters. I’ll be back when I can.” He straightened, his head still inclined toward the door, but he heard nothing. He leaned back down.
“Sit tight. And tell Ling not to overdo it. He opens up that wound, why, there’s no telling if he’ll survive.”
It was a feeble attempt, he knew, but maybe she understood that he was telling her to tell Ling to lay low, bide his time, then attack. If whoever was in there with her thought Ling was worse off than he was, they might underestimate him.
Fighting down a welling anger, Slocum bolted from the doorway, back toward the way he’d just come. It was the only thing he could think of, but he had to try to find that veiled woman, the other red-haired giant, or the key. If he found the key, chances were the veiled woman was indeed just some bizarre widow out for a bit of fun, no questions asked—or certainly none answered.
But if he couldn’t find it, and he was laying his money on that probability, then she was in it deep, along with the remaining Red Giant. All the way through the same damned cars, he got more looks than usual. He was starting to think he’d walked up and down these aisles more than the damn porter.
He made it all the way back to the cargo car in which he’d shot the man without seeing a porter, nor hide nor hair of a red-haired man, or the veiled woman. He realized she could have ditched the veil and he’d never known who she was. She could be in the lavatory, could be hidden in a berth.
On the face of it, a train seemed such a simple thing—a line of cars that offered few options in the way of hiding. And yet, he couldn’t seem to find much of anything on this damn train. The train still wasn’t moving at too impressive a clip, but it was a damn sight faster than a man could run, and considering it had recently been mired in snow, he guessed that any rate of speed in winter was a decent one.
The oil lamp hung in a fixed cage on the wall beside the door, at head height. He thumbed alight a match, and that was when he realized he’d left his gloves back at the door to the Barrs’ car. He’d retrieve them later. After he convinced a porter to let him into the car. They had to have a key; otherwise how else could the brakemen and porters get beyond the car to the caboose?
The lamp flared too bright until he adjusted it. Then he lowered the mantle and hefted it down, holding it aloft before him by the wire bail handle. It was odd to see the dark car lit in the warm glow from the lamp. He drew his Colt and stepped low and slow around the crates until he was back at the spot where so much had happened just a short time before.
Nothing on the floor looked like a key. He’d make a more thorough search in a moment, including the spots he’d been crouched when the man had taken shots at him. But right now he needed to inspect the dead man, see if there was some clue as to what was going on, something more than he’d gotten from the man’s brothers back on the trail to Salt Lake.
Slocum swung the lamp low, and where the body should have been, the lamp’s light revealed nothing. He looked closer, and saw nothing more than a dusty floor and a stain marking the spot that had once been a puddle of blood. The gritty wooden floor showed drag marks. Warning chimes clanged in the back of his skull.
He thumbed back the hammer to full cock and held the lamp out before him, low-walking around the maze of crates, eyeing ahead of him into the darkness past the lamp’s ring of yellow light. The lamp smoked and caused his right eye to tear. He closed it, blinking away the sting, when he sensed a sudden move from the right. He ducked down and swung the pistol, but too late—something hard snapped outward and knocked it from his grasp.
Slocum lost his balance and he sprawled backward, landing hard on his left side. Something else slammed into the side of his head, piling him into a wall of wooden crates. A hot rush of pain flowered upward from his ear, and he tried to rise, finally gaining his knees.
He managed to hold the lamp aloft, but it swung from the wire bail and the room blurred and swam before him, alternating between blackness and amber light. And as he pivoted on his knees, he looked up into a nightmare: the huge, wide, angry face of the man he shot, teeth covered in blood, head covered in redness. The face growled and lurched closer, then retreated, moved in closer and whipped backward. What was happening?
Then something else rammed into his head and the last thing he saw as he fell flat on his back on the floor of the boxcar was that big face staring down at him. He fought to stay conscious, to make sense of this mess, but what little lamp glow there had been now dimmed to a pinprick of starlight in the blackest of night skies.
11
Was it a rope around his neck, reviving him and choking off his wind at the same time? Slocum recalled he’d been strung up before, but somehow had always managed to escape. This time, though, something was different. But what?
Another tug on his neck, more sustained than the last, jerked him to full wakefulness and his hands instinctively clawed at whatever constricted on his neck.
“What the…hell?” Slocum thought he’d shouted it, but his words sounded more like gagging. Then, from above him, he heard steel squawking and…clang! As if something hard and heavy were thrown wide open.
His head clunked against something hard, caught there, then popped free and he was dragged upward again. But this time he felt cool air blasting his face, smelled smoke, heard the train’s singular churning sound.
I’m outside, he thought. Someone’s dragged me up out of the car and onto the roof. The cold air revived his senses, and he felt strength returning to his arms. The pressure on his neck lessened and he realized as he twisted around that it had been the big brute—and he remembered in a flash the last seconds before he’d lost consciousness. That man he’d shot was alive again? But that couldn’t be. He’d shot him, watched him drop, seen him flopped and finished on the floor of the boxcar. And then the woman had come…
But it was the dead man who had just clubbed him, it had to be, he saw the bleeding face…Wait, something about the face, then he remembered the frostbite and the derby hat—neither of which he’d seen just now. After he had killed the other one, someone must have dragged the body off behind the crates, only to be surprised by me, thought Slocum. So he attacked me and dragged me by the coat collar up the steel ladder to the roof.