by Jake Logan
Slocum turned and leaned on the bar, both elbows supporting him. Not ten feet away in the rear of the saloon sat a man he knew all too well—and maybe not at all. Herk concentrated on every word the bartender said. His eyes glowed and he was breathing a mite faster than usual.
The teller pushed away from the bar and said, “Thanks for the whiskey. It went down real good. Wish I coulda gone along like Slick, but Mr. Turnbull, he needed me to keep the home fires burnin’, so to speak.” He took a step, then stopped and said to Slocum, “The man what played the joke on them two the other night? That’s him in the back of the room.” He walked out on unsteady legs.
Slocum and Herk stared at each other. Slocum doubted it was too hard for Herk to read his mind. The crippled man got up and scuttled out the rear door into the night.
16
“You’re quite the hero,” Angelina said, moving closer to Slocum. Her hip pressed hotly into his as they sat on the bench staring out into the main street. Sounds from the kitchen behind them put Slocum on edge. Worry over what the townspeople would say about Angelina and an unmarried man sitting so close together in a restaurant was foremost in his thoughts.
Almost foremost. He saw Herk hobbling along the street, occasionally talking earnestly to people. Some brushed him off but others stopped and listened.
“What’s he saying?” Slocum wondered aloud.
“John,” Angelina rebuked. “I was paying you a compliment, and you weren’t listening to a thing I said.”
He looked at her. She was prettier than ever. The night’s sleep in a decent bed had done wonders for her.
“Is the señora going to let you stay?”
“Why, I didn’t ask. She is very nice. Her husband is, too. I spoke with him about getting a lawyer—abrogado, as he called it—and he steered me to one right away.”
Slocum wondered if it was the marshal’s nephew or the other lawyer. Somehow, selling the ranch had faded in importance, at least to him. He craned his neck but lost sight of Herk. For a man with a game leg, he certainly moved around fast.
This thought made Slocum frown. Something didn’t seem right, and he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“John!”
“Sorry, I was thinking about the bank robbery.”
“I heard that you tried to stop it, and when you couldn’t, you volunteered to be deputized and ride after the crooks.”
“I killed one of them,” he said bluntly. Angelina recoiled at this.
“I had heard the shooting was done by the bartender.”
“He claimed it, but I wasn’t more than ten feet from the robber.” Slocum snorted in wonder. “I wasn’t even trying to hit him, not like that.” He pressed his forefinger down on Angelina’s thigh and said softly, “That’s about where I shot him by accident.”
“Really,” she said, her bosoms rising and falling a little faster. “Would you shoot me there? Or take aim here?” Her hand gripped his and moved it up and over toward her crotch.
They both jumped when the waiter came with their breakfast.
“Here you go. If you want salt or pepper, just ask. I got ’em both in back. Too many customers steal the shakers.” The waiter laughed. “That’s usually what passes for crime in Hedison.”
“Looks good,” Angelina said, but her eyes weren’t on the steak and eggs in front of her. She stared at the bulge in Slocum’s jeans.
“Want anything else, just ask.”
“Good advice,” Slocum said.
“Yes, John, if you want anything else, you just ask.”
“I intend to.” He dived into the food, eating with the hunger that had built from missing too many meals recently. Halfway through the steak, he paused and pointed with the tip of his knife.
“You know him? The short fellow.”
“The one with the bad leg? Why, yes, I think I remember him. He and Michael argued once in Abilene.”
“Over what?”
“I can’t say. Michael was furious, and he never told me. There… there was hardly time for such things before he was killed.”
“Don’t you think it’s curious he turns up in Hedison?”
“I suppose. Why do you care, John?”
Slocum didn’t have a good answer for her. Something about Herk bothered him. It was like an itch he couldn’t quite scratch. It wouldn’t go away, and even if he did reach it, there wasn’t likely to be any relief.
“Somebody got a teller drunk.”
“I beg your pardon? What are you going on about?”
“Never mind,” he said. “You about finished with your breakfast?”
“I am still hungry, if that’s what you mean.”
The sly smile curling her lips matched his own. He fumbled in his pocket and found a greenback. It fluttered to the table. He helped Angelina scoot across the slick bench seat, aware of how her ankles showed as she moved. It had been a while and he wanted to see more of her than the well-turned ankle or a bit of calf. Showing her where he had shot the outlaw would be part of it, if he could press his finger into her milky white thigh before moving up into a more dangerous—and pleasurable—area.
“We can hardly return to the boardinghouse,” she said. “The bed is so delightful, but too many people are there all the time. There are three children, you know.”
“I didn’t know—that,” he said. His arm snaked around her waist and pulled her tightly to his body. “I know a lot of other things.”
“Don’t tell me, show me!”
“You’ve sure gotten pushy,” he said.
“Not pushy, horny,” she said, moving closer and nibbling on his earlobe. Slocum tried to look around to be sure no one saw them, but with his earlobe caught between her sharp teeth, he wasn’t able to do much looking. “And you can certainly get some pussy,” she whispered. She immediately latched on to his ear again.
They walked on until she had to give up her tasty treat.
“There,” he said.
“Where? The windmill?”
“It’s pumping water. There ought to be a small house holding the gears and pumping mechanism where we can get some privacy.”
The blades on the windmill creaked as they spun in the sluggish West Texas wind. From deep below the ground came sucking sounds as the pump brought water to the surface and spewed it out into a large tank. Slocum worried that this was the town water supply and citizens would come by to fill barrels or buckets and find them.
Then that thought disappeared as Angelina reached down and boldly grabbed his crotch. He moaned softly as he grew under her rhythmic movement, grasping and relaxing.
“In,” she said. He didn’t know what she was referring to, but he could do both.
They swung around. He kicked open the door to the shack, revealing the gears and pump he had expected. What was unexpected was a cot along the far wall of the shed. As if it were a magnet and they were iron, they went directly to it. She pushed him down and dropped between his legs, her fingers fumbling to open the buttons of his fly.
Slocum sighed in relief as his erection popped free of the cloth prison, then gasped when her soft lips closed around the very tip and began applying suction. Bit by bit, inch by inch, she moved closer to him, taking more of his steely length into her mouth. He felt the underside of his organ rub across her wet tongue and then she made a convulsive gasp and took him full length. He sagged back, supporting himself on his elbows as she continued to use her mouth in exciting ways all over him.
With a lewd pop! she pulled away and looked up at him, blue eyes glowing.
“More,” was all she said.
He was willing.
She stood and lifted her skirts. He caught his breath as she slowly revealed more and more of her legs. The trim calves, the milky thighs, the tangled black nest hidden between her legs. He lay back on the cot. It creaked under their combined weight as she straddled his waist.
Her fingers closed around him and tugged hard, lifting him off the bed so she could position herself dire
ctly over him. Slocum watched as the plum tip of his manhood parted her pinkly scalloped nether lips and then slowly disappeared into her hot moist core as she lowered herself. When she had fully relaxed, he was hidden full length within her.
It was even better than having her tongue and lips moving and kissing. When she began tensing and relaxing her inner muscles, she gave him a massage that excited him almost to the breaking point.
“Move,” he said. “Move up!” He grabbed her tits and began massaging them, then pushing her upward until she got the idea. Through half-closed eyes, she looked down at him. Angelina put her hands on his shoulders for leverage and lifted herself even as he continued to fondle her.
He felt himself slipping from her tightness, then she paused and slowly lowered her hips again. Once more he was fully buried within a wanton, willing woman.
He moved from her breasts to the spot at the top of the vee where her nether lips joined. He found the tiny spire there and began pressing into it with his thumb. It was as if he had set her on fire. Her movement began to jerk and twist as she lost all control. She cried out, rose, slammed back down. The inner oils leaked from her. He used these to slicken the tiny spire, stroking it with every twitch she made until she finally threw back her head and cried out at the top of her lungs.
He felt the tightness within his loins growing, but he didn’t want her to stop. With deft movements he urged her to keep pounding up and down, engulfing his spire, turning around it and then lifting again. Her arousal mounted once more, and the second time she got off, he did, too.
The hot rush exploded upward into her yearning cavity, and the world disappeared into a starburst of utter pleasure. Then she slowed her frantic movement and leaned forward. Her legs stretched out along his and she lay atop him, her head resting on his shoulder. He felt her slow, warm breath against his neck.
“So nice, John, just what I needed.”
“Can’t argue with that. It was about perfect.”
He stroked her tangled hair and turned a bit so she could lie alongside him rather than on top. As he adjusted his position, he saw a blur of movement at the half-closed door to the pumping shed. He started to push her aside and track down whoever had been spying on them, but she clung too fiercely to him.
“Don’t go, not yet,” she said in a whisper. “I need you more now than… than before we started making love.”
He had no choice but to hold her, listen to the mechanical sounds all around—and let the Peeping Tom go his way.
“We better go,” Angelina said after a spell. She heaved a deep sigh, snuggled a little closer, then pushed herself up using Slocum’s chest as a base. Her blue eyes danced. “I wish we could…”
“Time to go,” he agreed. He watched as she stood and arranged her skirts, sharing her wish that they could stay here for another hour or so. But the clanking from the pump warned that it was getting close to breaking down. When it did, somebody would come to fix it, even if that repair was no more than slamming a sledgehammer against it a couple times.
Angelina peeked out the door.
“See anyone?” he asked. She jumped.
“Why, I wanted to make sure that… no one. Why? Did you expect to see somebody? Watching us?” Her tone combined both fear and excitement at the idea of being watched while she screwed.
“What are you going to do?”
“Find the lawyer,” she said. “The sooner I get the ranch sold, the sooner I can do… something else.”
“Hedison is a nice town,” Slocum said, fishing a bit to see what her thoughts might be.
“I don’t know what I could do. I’m not much of a cook. My sewing skills are poor.” She grinned. “The one thing I do might not be illegal, but it’s not what a proper lady does.”
“You do a couple things well,” Slocum said. He got her moving, almost pushing her out into the hot sun. Even in direct sunlight, it was cooler than inside the shed. Heat boiled out from the machinery as it ground up and down, pulling water from deep under the prairie. Slocum craned his neck and looked up at the windmill. One blade wobbled. It would fall off in a week or if a high wind blew from the south.
“Let’s get together later, John.” She hesitated, then stood on tiptoe and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. She actually blushed, looked away, and then hurried off. Angelina looked back over her shoulder an instant before rounding a building and heading down the town’s main street to find the lawyer.
Slocum wandered around, looking for any sign of who might have been spying on them in the shed. He found faint boot prints in the dust but couldn’t be sure when they had been made. From the condition of his and Angelina’s prints, they all were made about the same time. Backtracking, Slocum measured the stride and guessed the spy was about five-foot-five. One strange thing was how the right heel had been cut down—he tried to remember where he had seen a print like that and couldn’t. Any other information was lost by the time he got to the street. Too much traffic had effectively erased the trail.
He preferred tracking in the wilderness. There other people weren’t as inclined to wipe out the tracks. More than this, there wasn’t the noise even a town as small as Hedison generated. The clank of chains and creak of wagons going by in the street were dimmed by the whinny of dozens of horses and the sounds of everyday commerce.
It was early, but he headed across the street and went into the saloon. The barkeep was pressed close to the pale-complected waif who had taken over bartending duties while he had been on the trail of the bank robbers. He looked up, saw Slocum, and flashed him a grin, then turned back for a final word with the woman. She bowed her head and left through the rear door.
“Top o’ the morning, Slocum. You’re in early for a beer.”
“It’s getting hot enough for a couple,” Slocum said. He waited as the barkeep slid the frothy brew toward him. A quick sample and he put the mug down on the bar. “That your woman?”
“Clara?” The barkeep’s cheerful disposition faded as if a cloud had crossed the sun. “You might say that. She’s not a whore, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Farthest thing from my mind. You trusted her to run the saloon while you were gone. That’s all I meant.”
“She came to town a month back, down on her luck, without two nickels to rub together. I gave her a job.”
Slocum guessed it was more complicated than that. From the woman’s complexion, she didn’t sample the liquor but dipped into laudanum a bit too much. It wasn’t his business.
Two farmers came in and the barkeep hurried off to put beers in front of them. They took their drinks to a table and sat, genially arguing over something inconsequential. From what Slocum could tell, they were in town to pick up supplies from the general store.
As he worked on his beer, the two farmers left, joshing one another. Slocum finished his beer and followed them into the street a few minutes later, to see the two squaring off.
“You can’t say that about me!”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“Talking behind my back, you son of a bitch. I never touched that little girl!”
“My niece? You and her?” The farmer balled his fists but he was too late. The other farmer launched a haymaker that collided with the man’s belly, sending him stumbling back.
The two launched into an all-out fight. Slocum took a couple steps toward them but remembered what had happened when he tried to stop the bank robbery. This was something best left to the marshal.
But the tenor of the fight changed fast. One farmer pulled out a wicked thick-bladed knife and cut the air just a fraction of an inch from the other’s belly.
“What’s got into you?” demanded the unarmed one.
“You can’t go around lyin’ about me.”
“I never said a word!”
The knife drove forward but was batted away at the last instant. Slocum saw a spray of blood, though. Fighting a man with a knife meant blood would be spilled. A man afraid of taking
some injury was sure to die. The only way to survive was to ignore the pain and concentrate on getting the knife away from the attacker.
The two circled, the knife wielder making tentative stabs and slashes. Then everything changed. A strong hand against Slocum’s shoulder blades sent him stumbling forward between the two. He cried out in pain as the knife cut deep in his side and he lost his balance, falling to his knees between the two enemies.
Slocum called out for them to stop, but all he saw was the silver blade flashing in the sun and driving straight for his face.
17
The wound in his side burned like a prairie wildfire, forcing Slocum to jerk as he put pressure on it. This saved his life. The blade missed his face and got stuck in his hat brim. As he tumbled downward, the knife flew out of the farmer’s grip. Slocum hit the ground, clutching his side in agony.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” The demand was followed quickly by a gunshot.
Through a red haze of pain, Slocum saw Marshal Hooker bustling up.
Even the presence of the law didn’t stop the two men from fighting. One kicked Slocum in the side where he was wounded as the man grabbed for the throat of the other farmer. They went down in a tangle because Slocum reached out and used his arms to embrace their legs. If they had worn spurs, he would have been cut up even more than he was. Instead, he brought them crashing down like felled trees.
He rolled away, still clutching his side to stanch the blood flowing freely now. He looked up and saw Herk not ten feet away. The man had an expression that would have been more reasonable if he’d just had the finest woman in all of Texas in his bed. His eyes locked with Slocum’s. Herk sneered, then turned and vanished into the crowd forming along the street.
“Glory be, Slocum, you got the worst of it,” Hooker said. He grabbed Slocum’s shirt and pulled him upright. “You just keep on pressin’ into that wound. We’ll get the doc here right away.”
“Ain’t got a doctor in Hedison,” someone said. “He’s the vet.”
“Suits me,” Slocum said. He bundled up his vest and shirt, using them as bandages. For all the blood, the cut wasn’t that serious. Painful, to be sure, and bloody enough to make the marshal think he was dying.