Slocum Buried Alive

by Jake Logan

  How Hawkins had rustled up so many wagons and had hammered together so many coffins in such a short time would have shown devotion to his trade. For Slocum it seemed more like an eagerness to put people six feet under.

  He edged forward, then slipped off to the mortuary as Miranda came out the front door, looking haggard and defeated. What her first two nights as a married woman had been like wasn’t something Slocum wanted to think on too long. She went to the bell cord on the tower between the funeral parlor and the street and began tolling slowly, not doing the measured one ring every thirty seconds she had the day before. This was a general calling to service, not an honor for each of the dead.

  He waved to catch her eye, but she kept her eyes downcast. Seldom had Slocum seen a woman so beaten in spirit. Hawkins had done it in only a few days after meeting her for the first time.

  Search the crowd as he might, Slocum couldn’t locate the woman’s stalker. He wanted to ask about the poison in the food, but there was no chance. From her look, Miranda hadn’t eaten breakfast. If she stayed away from meals until Slocum stopped the man, she would be all right. And he couldn’t have cared less if Hawkins gobbled up everything on the plate. As much as he wanted the satisfaction of taking out Hawkins himself, if another did it, he wasn’t going to complain overly.

  One wagon returned from the cemetery. Slocum watched as four of Julian’s men hefted another coffin and loaded it into the wagon, complaining as they did so. Robbing banks was more to their liking than physical labor. One opined how he enjoyed that because it felt good shooting people and getting paid for it.

  Slocum had shot his share of men during the war and after, and he had never cottoned much to it. For Leonard Hawkins, he would make an exception, and that was more like cleansing the world of a terrible canker. He wasn’t going to enjoy the killing for the sake of taking another man’s life.

  But the notion of robbing a bank . . .

  He had done his share of that, too, mostly to get money to eat. Guilt never intruded when he did something illegal. If it had, he would be cowering in a corner, gibbering like a fool. Life had been harsh, and he met it on its own terms. So far he had won, though he knew someday death would lay down the royal flush and beat any possible hand he might hold. This wasn’t that day, and Hawkins had to be removed before he gave in to death.

  Besides, memories of Polly kept poking into his head. She knew just the right things to say and do to keep him interested in living to see another dawn. While he intended to kill Hawkins for his own revenge, the undertaker’s death would give the woman some relief. It might even be enough to soothe the powerful hurt her pa had taken unto himself trying to kill Hawkins. Slocum wished he could have stopped the elder Neville from killing so many of his fellow townspeople, but the way Neville acted showed he had gone plumb loco. When he recovered from his wounds, he might never be right in the head again. The deaths of his wife and son were part of that, but being buried alive beside his precious Marie might be enough to keep him out of his head until the day he died.

  Slocum reflected on how different people dealt with grief. Those around him watching the coffin-filled wagons roll to the cemetery were proof. Some openly wept, both men and women. Others had a haggard, drawn expression. A small number had hardened emotionally to the world and its pitiless ways. Slocum wasn’t sure which was best. All he knew was that shedding tears had been impossible for him over the years.

  Getting even provided the most comfort.

  Approaching Miranda as she bent her back into ringing the bell to mark the passing of so many people would gain him nothing but trouble. Too many of Julian’s men milled about, some working to load coffins, others driving the wagons. From inside the funeral parlor came sawing and hammering sounds as more coffins were hastily built.

  As he edged forward with a small segment of the crowd, he drifted farther to the edge until he finally stood by the ditch where he had taken refuge the night before. No sign of guards at the edge of the woods sent his heart pounding. He walked slowly and purposefully along the muddy track to the spot where he had seen the one bodyguard smoking the night before. Traces of gray ash on a leaf of a tall butterfly bush showed where the smoker had carelessly flicked his cigarette. Mingled with the purple petals from the bush that had fallen to the ground Slocum saw a piece of unburnt rolling paper.

  He pushed deeper into woods, following the trail. How many boots had trod this path before him, he couldn’t tell, but grasses tried to overgrow the trail, telling him it wasn’t as frequently traveled as it had been in the past. Pushing low-hanging branches away, he kept walking until he came to a muddy spot devoid of all weeds and grass, where many feet had recently trampled. He couldn’t help staring at the white marble structure, almost five feet tall and as wide, that had been built so that the trees sheltered it from casual discovery.

  On closer investigation he saw this was only the top of a set of marble steps going down fully ten feet. Shoulders brushing against the walls on either side of the staircase, he descended and found a teakwood door standing partially open. He used the toe of his boot to push the door open as he drew his six-shooter. The interior yielded up only absolute darkness. Using senses other than his eyes, he listened hard and heard nothing inside. The odors coming from the chamber made his nose wrinkle. He might have blundered into a brothel.

  Edging forward, he saw a kerosene lamp on a low table just inside the door. Laying his six-gun on the table, he pulled the chimney off to expose the wick. He used a lucifer to light the lamp, replaced the glass mantle, and adjusted the light so a soft yellow glow filled the small chamber. He quickly snatched up his six-shooter when movement at the edge of his vision warned him.

  Slocum relaxed a mite. He was too keyed up. He had been reduced to jumping at shadows. Worse than that, it was his own shadow cast across a section of strangely decorated wall. He began his investigation of the room, starting with the most obvious feature.

  In the middle of the eight-by-ten room was a bed barely wide enough for two people.

  “I doubt you enjoyed lying here in spite of the finery, Miranda,” Slocum said softly, touching the rumpled, stained sheets. They were finely woven, expensive, almost like butter flowing under his fingers. The image of Hawkins on top of Miranda pumping away caused Slocum to pull back.

  As he did, he looked around and saw the frescoes on the walls that had startled him earlier. He took a closer look at the figures. An artist had worked long hours creating the scene that circled the room. Slocum had seen a book of mythology once and recognized some of the creatures and their erotic tendencies, but others damned near made him blush. It took him some time to circle the room and return to the doorway. He tried to imagine what it had been like, in a fine bed with Miranda Madison, looking at the raunchy pictures as he made love to her. His imagination failed. Why would any man need more than the beautiful raven-haired woman in his arms?

  Slocum backed away, then frowned when he saw how the bed had been constructed. It bore a striking resemblance to an oversized coffin. A cold shiver ran up and down his spine. He extinguished the lamp and hurried up the steps into the close, hot forest air. Being in the crypt had brought back terrible memories of being buried alive.

  If anything, seeing Hawkins’s love nest hardened his determination to put the undertaker six feet under. Slocum would even consider sealing the undertaker in his love vault, as long as he never escaped. Somehow that notion appealed to Slocum, just a little. Then he realized Hawkins would enjoy the paintings until the light burned out. He gave up on this idea because it allowed Hawkins a tiny bit of enjoyment before the suffocating death in the dark.

  He started back toward the funeral parlor, then saw another branching path that had been used recently. He looked around, saw no hint that Julian or his men patrolled the area, then set off to explore. The path curled into the deepest part of the woods. Trees here grew only a few feet apart, and off the path
bramble bushes grew so thick that getting through them would require a big knife like Slocum had seen a Mexican carrying when he had drifted into Sonora. A machete, the man had called it. He used it to cut up dogs and threaten men afraid of big knives.

  Slocum had never been afraid of a knife, no matter the size. He wished he had picked up the machete after his fight with the arrogant fool. It would have been useful now.

  He came to a small clearing where another crypt had been built. The one appeared to be above ground and not sunk ten feet into the ground like Hawkins’s love nest. Slocum circled and found only one door into the crypt. He turned to go when he saw a double rut leading to the door as if someone had been dragged inside.

  Considering the heavy summer rains, whoever had been put into the crypt had been laid to rest recently. The heavy toll Liam Neville had taken among the townspeople trying to blow up Hawkins made an interment distressingly ordinary. But who deserved such a fancy sepulcher? Slocum examined the exterior but found no name chiseled anywhere. And why did it look as if someone had been dragged inside rather than carried in?

  Slocum went cold inside. Hawkins had buried someone else alive. It might have been a fancy marble vault but above ground or below made no difference. The dark. The suffocation.

  He tugged on the door, but it refused to open. Slocum looked around and found a sturdy limb that had fallen off a lightning-struck tree nearby. Wedging the end into a small crack, he applied increasing pressure until he thought his back would break. The memory of the grave added strength and determination to his assault on the door.

  Inch by inch the door opened until Slocum got his fingers around the edge and gave a huge pull. He stumbled back, recovered, and returned to peer inside the crypt. Sunlight penetrated only a foot or so. Slocum struck another lucifer and held it up as it flared.

  He felt as if he had stepped off a cliff and plunged downward.

  Crucified on the back wall hung Liam Neville.

  15

  Slocum stepped closer and saw that blood had leaked from the nail holes in Neville’s hands onto the stone floor. Other blood had dripped down the wall after Neville had smashed his head there repeatedly in pain. He made his way around the small room, his gut churning. Neville had been alive when he had been nailed up.

  “Polly,” he muttered under his breath.

  Prowling about, he found partial bloody boot prints. The men who had done this to Neville had stood around a spell and watched him die. Slocum knelt and looked more closely at the footprints. If his gut had churned before, it tumbled over and over now. Two sets of footprints were larger than the third. The smallest prints might have been from a woman’s boots.

  Polly.

  Julian and his gunmen had brought Neville’s daughter here to watch him die a lingering death. No torture was beyond Hawkins and his henchmen. But what had they done with Polly? Slocum failed to find her tracks leaving the vault.

  He went outside and studied the ground. He found more boot prints now that he hunted for them off the trail. Grass had been crushed down but now sprang back. They had walked around the crypt within the past eight hours, but that told him nothing. Where had they gone? How had they found her and her father?

  On hands and knees, Slocum used the sun angling through the trees to find even fainter traces. He crawled along, hoping to get a definite direction. He lost the trail, found it again as it went deeper into the woods until he lost the faint impressions entirely in the vegetation on the soft forest floor.

  He wiped his hands off on his pants. Reaching for his Colt Navy and slipping because of mud might spell his death. Without a definite path to follow, Slocum crashed through the undergrowth, ignoring the sharp spines and nettles. He slowed his pace, then hunted around for a game trail or other way through the trees. No sign of anyone other than himself bulling through the undergrowth convinced him he was reacting emotionally and not methodically. When he came across another trail, he found one clear set of tracks.

  He made the best time he could while keeping a sharp eye out for a possible ambush. But the single set of tracks went both ways. Polly had not been carried along this way as a prisoner, but it was all Slocum had to work on.

  Another entryway to an underground crypt showed through the weeds. This structure was intentionally hidden. Slocum pushed back the foliage and went down the stone steps. A new padlock held the door shut. He pressed his ear against the wood panel to listen for any cries inside. Slocum realized Polly might not know help had come. He used the butt of his pistol to rap loudly several times.

  “Polly, you in there? It’s me, Slocum. Make a noise if you’re inside.”

  He listened harder. Silence. Quiet as a tomb. He stepped back, ready to shoot off the lock, when he heard shouts from the woods. Backing off, going up the steps, he knelt and peered through the weeds and waited.

  Two men armed with rifles came closer to the steps, but they didn’t see him. He sighted on one and calculated his chances of taking him out first, then shooting the other before he realized they were under attack. Slocum eased back on the trigger, then released pressure when two more armed men joined the first pair.

  “I don’t know how she got away. Julian’s gonna skin us alive if we don’t find her.”

  “I tole you we oughta have nailed her up like we done her old man,” said a grizzled man. His mouth sparkled when he spoke. The sun caught a gold tooth in the front of his mouth.

  “Julian wanted her for himself. If Hawkins got the mail-order bitch, the boss thought he owed it to himself to get a little, too.”

  “He coulda shared.”

  “Not me. She looks like the type to give us all the clap.”

  Slocum considered getting off four killing shots before the outlaws responded. Any chance at that died when another joined the group. Slocum swung his six-shooter to cover Julian, only to have the other four crowd close around him and ruin a decent shot. He sank back down on the stone steps, trapped. Getting into the crypt, even if he shot off the lock, only trapped him. Pushing through the sheltering weeds made him an easy target. Wiping his nose as the pollen around him billowed into the air, he watched and waited. His chance would come soon.

  “She isn’t going to run toward town,” Julian said. “More likely, she’ll go deeper into the woods. That way.” He pointed away from the crypt where Slocum hid.

  “It wasn’t our fault she got free, boss. Honest,” said the man with the gold tooth. “She wiggled through a hole smaller than my damned fist.”

  “Right through the rock wall,” piped up another. “It’s like she turned to smoke.”

  “I’ll smoke the lot of you if you don’t find her soon. Sikes, Garcia, come with me. The rest of you go on back to camp. She won’t go that way, but as crazy as she is, who knows what she’ll actually do.”

  Two men hurried off, glad to be away from their boss. Sikes—the man with the gold tooth—and his partner fanned out on either side of their leader and strode away, alert for anything moving through the grove. Slocum watched them disappear, then edged from his hiding place.

  Polly’s only chance to escape lay in getting out of the woods and away from Julian’s gang. Slocum thought Julian was right about the woman hightailing it deeper into the forest rather than appealing to someone in town for help. She had no faith in a town where the marshal and bank president were brothers to the man who had brought such horror to her family. The rest of the citizens were under Hawkins’s thumb and too frightened or bought off to help. And would anyone help the daughter of the man responsible for massacring half the town?

  Even if she found someone in Espero to lend a hand, what could they do?

  She had to reach the sheriff in another town or even a Texas Ranger. But Slocum knew telling the law what had happened to her and her family wouldn’t be good enough. Even if a company of Rangers arrived and strung up everyone who had blighted her life, Polly
wouldn’t be happy. She wanted Hawkins for herself.

  Just as Slocum wanted him.

  He cut off to the right from the direction Julian and his men had taken. If he could find where Polly had been held prisoner, he might track her. Slocum had no reason to believe Julian wasn’t a decent tracker or had one riding with him. That meant finding Polly amounted to Lady Luck smiling on him.

  Slocum made his way into the woods long enough for the sun to sink low and bathe the world in twilight. The smaller forest critters popped out of their burrows and began foraging and feasting. More than one fox eyed him hungrily. Distant crashing through the brush warned him of a rampaging javelina. And sitting and watching brought him the piece of luck he had been missing.

  A small dark form moved along the path where he sat, simply waiting. If Slocum had been the hunted, he would have done the same thing, his pursuers moving faster along the cleared trail. They would overtake him and his freedom—and life—would be in peril.

  The shadow moved parallel to the dirt track, then came out to look around.

  “Hello, Polly,” he said.

  She jumped a foot. So startled, she took a step back, got her feet tangled, and fell heavily. She clutched a sharp-edged rock in one hand and clawed at the air like a mad cougar with the other.

  “Settle down,” he said. “Julian and his men went off in a different direction, but they might have circled around.”

  “John, how’d you find me?”

  He held out his hand. She relaxed her claw and pulled herself up with his help. She stared at him for a moment, then collapsed against him, sobbing.

  “They killed him for sure this time. They made me look while they nailed him up and—”