Slocum Giant 2013 : Slocum and the Silver City Harlot (9781101601860)

by Logan, Jake

  “Nuthin’ of pressin’ interest here in Silver City. You got your gear?”

  “Don’t have a rifle, but I don’t think I’ll need one if you’re along.”

  “What are you talking about? John? Harvey?” Marianne looked from one to the other but her gaze settled on Slocum for the explanation.

  “I know where Gallifrey is going. He has to put down his own markers before registering the claim.”

  “How do you know?” Marianne stared at him. Slocum tried not to smile too much.

  “I figured out where Bedrich had hidden the deed back at the campsite.” He glanced sidelong at Whitehill, wondering if the sheriff would ask about this. The lawman seemed oblivious to what Slocum and Marianne had been doing before finding the hollowed-out tent pole.

  “You knew it was there, and you let me give it to Gallifrey?” Her mouth opened in surprise, then she clamped it shut. The set to her jaw told Slocum a storm was brewing.

  “We got to ride, Slocum. Don’t want that varmint to get too far ahead of us.”

  Slocum touched Marianne on the arm, then rushed from the Lonely Cuss, trailing the lawman. That he had found the deed before her had to rankle, but Slocum would never have let her make the exchange for Randolph if he had known Gallifrey had conspired to get her free of the jailhouse. The saloon owner had been a mite more clever than Slocum had expected.

  But it would all work out now. He vaulted onto horseback and trotted after the sheriff, ready to put this to an end.

  • • •

  “You sure this is the place, Slocum?”

  “I’m sure,” Slocum said. “It took a spell for me to figure out a patch of worthless ground that hadn’t been claimed already, yet was likely enough to fool Gallifrey.”

  “He ain’t a prospector. He knows squat about mining. From what Marianne said, he wants Texas Jack’s claim so he can sell it and then hightail it.”

  Slocum wondered at the sheriff’s anger. Somehow, it seemed a worse crime to sell the stolen claim than it would have been to work it. If Whitehill thought a minute, he would realize Tom Gallifrey spent all his time avoiding hard work. The Lonely Cuss was a failure in a sea of opportunity because he had no idea how to run a business. His brother, Justin, was clueless and yet did a better job. Marianne could have turned a profit if she had been in charge.

  His thoughts turned to her. She was something special in his life then and now. He admired the way she put her life on the line to save Randolph. It wouldn’t have been necessary if she’d stayed in jail, all safe and sound, but he couldn’t fault her for escaping. Since Whitehill never mentioned the jailbreak, the sheriff wasn’t likely to charge her with a crime. Before they had left, Whitehill had let Tucker out of the cell. The embarrassed look on the deputy’s face was punishment enough. When word got out in Silver City, Tucker would have a hard time living it down. But he would. He was a hard man and brooked no argument when it came to enforcing the law.

  “You coulda picked a better spot to ambush him. He can ride up from any of three directions. No way of being sure we got him in a cross-fire.”

  “Up on the rise,” Slocum said. “We position ourselves there and can get a decent view of all the approaches.”

  “Not through the trees,” Whitehill said, snapping the reins to get his horse moving in the direction Slocum had indicated. He bitched about their post even as he settled down with his rifle, overlooking the likeliest direction Gallifrey would use to stake his claim.

  They sat in silence for more than an hour. Slocum’s patience had been honed during the war when he was a sniper, but the killer’s absence began to wear on him. He doubted Tom Gallifrey had anything up his sleeve, but he’d been smarter than Slocum had expected several times before. It wasn’t until he’d figured out Gallifrey was Frank’s partner that everything fell into place. Gallifrey had been careful about not being seen at the cabin where Frank had held the boy hostage.

  “It don’t pay to think too much,” Whitehill said softly.

  “He’ll be here.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” the sheriff said. “After we nail this bastard, what are you gonna do?” The way the sheriff fixed him with a hard stare made Slocum uncomfortable.

  He wasn’t sure what he intended. Duty required him to get some justice for Marianne. Her time in Silver City had been rocky, and the people didn’t cotton much to her. They might think better of her if she had the full wealth of a major silver strike in her pocket, but Slocum knew things never changed deep down. Surface politeness peeled away quick unless there was deep-down respect.

  “Gallifrey might kill us both. That’ll take care of worrying about the future.”

  Whitehill snorted contemptuously.

  “Ain’t what I meant and you know it.”

  “Need a saddle for the pony,” Slocum said. “A rifle would be good, too.”

  “You can prance all around it, but what are your intentions toward—”

  Slocum silenced the lawman with a quick gesture. He pointed into a stand of trees where a man appeared as if by magic.

  “There’s the varmint,” Whitehill said. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder, finger tightening on the trigger. Slocum had no doubt the sheriff was going to cut down the claim jumper and murderer.

  “I’ll fetch him,” Slocum said. He slid his six-shooter back into its holster and made his way carefully down the side of the hill overlooking the claim.

  He knew how easy it would be to leave Gallifrey’s body for the carrion eaters, but he wanted more. He wanted to see the expression on the man’s face when he learned how he had been snookered. It gave some payback for his crimes. Not enough, but maybe a noose around his neck would give the best satisfaction. Slocum intended to find out.

  Moving like an Apache warrior, Slocum came within a dozen feet of Gallifrey without being detected. The man worked to pencil in descriptions of each cache he left to mark the boundaries of the claim. Now and again, he pulled out the deed he had taken from Marianne and matched the description. As he hummed to himself, he neglected to watch his back.

  “You wonder why you don’t find any of Bedrich’s markers?”

  Gallifrey whirled about, hand going for the six-gun tucked into his belt. He froze when he saw that Slocum had the drop on him.

  “Slocum,” he said, more a snarl than mere recognition. “You figured out where the claim was, too.”

  “Something like that,” Slocum said, going to the saloon owner and plucking the six-gun from his belt. He tossed it away.

  “We don’t have to fight over this. There’s plenty for the both of us. I ain’t spendin’ my life squeezin’ silver from the ground. I’ll sell the claim. We can split it. You don’t have the look of a miner either.”

  “I’ve done some of that in my day,” Slocum said, beginning to enjoy watching Gallifrey squirm. The weasely man’s eyes darted about like a trapped rat. He ought to suffer a bit more. “Truth is, I worked as a surveyor for damned near six months.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Gallifrey straightened as the truth hit him. “This ain’t Bedrich’s claim!”

  “Sheriff Whitehill came back from Santa Fe with a stack of blank deeds. I spent some time filling in the description of this piece of land.”

  “It’s worthless?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Then where’s the real deed?”

  “It was in the tent pole,” Slocum said. “I replaced it with the one Marianne gave you to ransom her son.”

  “You have the real deed? You’re gonna steal Texas Jack’s claim for yerself!”

  Gallifrey feinted toward the spot where Slocum had tossed his six-shooter, but Slocum saw a different scheme in the man’s eyes. He half turned and fumbled in his coat pocket. By the time he pulled out a derringer, Slocum had squeezed off a shot that hit a thigh bone and knocked the man to
the ground. Gallifrey continued to fumble his small pistol into line with Slocum’s chest.

  “You’ll never make it,” Slocum said, taking aim. “It’s not like shooting a man in the back, is it? Or killing a partner who doesn’t expect you to double-cross him.”

  “They had it comin’. They’d’ve done the same to me.”

  Slocum considered where to put his slug as Gallifrey steadied his derringer with both hands. The report from behind Slocum settled the matter. Whitehill had put his rifle bullet through the top of Gallifrey’s head.

  “He couldn’t have shot me, Sheriff,” Slocum said, sliding his pistol into the cross-draw holster.

  “Not the way I saw it.”

  “How did you see it?” Slocum asked, knowing the answer.

  “No way of provin’ he had anything to do with kidnapping young Randolph that first time. Frank was on the hook for that. Killing Frank? Could have been Marianne what done the deed. A clever prosecutor would make that point in court. With the drunk miners we got for a jury, and how they think about Marianne, they might have believed it.”

  “And him getting the bogus deed means nothing either, since Randolph was never actually kidnapped the second time,” Slocum said.

  “Might have tried him on fraud, but in New Mexico Territory who ain’t guilty of that?”

  “Better get on back to town,” Slocum said. “Do we leave him or take him with us?”

  It took them the better part of a half hour to tie Tom Gallifrey over his horse since Slocum took his saddle for his own pony.

  27

  “Good riddance,” Marianne said through clenched teeth.

  She stood in front of the Lonely Cuss watching the undertaker struggle with Tom Gallifrey’s body. He finally released the knots on the rope Slocum and Whitehill had used, only to have the corpse flop over the bare back of the horse and fall into the dust. Gallifrey lay sprawled in such an ungainly fashion that his brother rushed out to help Mr. Olney get the body upright and into a small cart he used to haul bodies around town.

  “You can thank Whitehill for that,” Slocum said. He almost added that he had considered the shooting all the way back to Silver City and had come to the conclusion Whitehill had gunned down Gallifrey to impress Marianne.

  “I’ll thank him in due time,” Marianne said. She stepped closer and pressed into Slocum’s side. “It’s well past time for you to get your reward for all you’ve done.”

  “Not that much,” Slocum said. He tried not to respond to the lovely woman’s nearness. He failed. She saw the bulge in his jeans and grinned broadly.

  “I see something that is that much,” she said, her fingers threading through his. She squeezed, then tugged him back from the crowd gathered to see Gallifrey carted off to the funeral parlor.

  Slocum was glad to leave the buzz of the citizens. Most of them speculated as to what happened, why the sheriff had cut down the saloon owner, what part Marianne Lomax had in it. From the overheard comments, many of them, especially the women, blamed Marianne for an innocent man’s death. The truth would percolate about and eventually they’d realize what a snake in the grass Tom Gallifrey had been.

  Slocum figured that Justin Gallifrey had nothing to do with his brother’s schemes. If anything, he had been used as cruelly as any of the others. But Justin might come out ahead and inherit the Lonely Cuss. The saloon might be knee-deep in unpaid bills, but anyone who couldn’t make a success of a gin mill in a mining boomtown was not concentrating on business. That had been Tom Gallifrey’s problem, Slocum guessed. He wanted to get rich quick and hadn’t tended his bar. The real mother lode had been his for the taking, and he had ignored it in favor of ill-gotten precious metal.

  “We can go up to my room,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Mrs. Gruhlkey is out for the day, over at the church getting ready for the social this Sunday.”

  Slocum let her lead him up the stairs.

  “What about Randolph?”

  “He and Billy are somewhere. I don’t know, and the way he’s been since that mending leg started itching something fierce, he’s not likely to come home ’til sundown.”

  They went into her small room. She looked around, hands on her hips.

  “Hardly seems right to call this home, but maybe home is where the bed is.” She turned and shoved Slocum backward. The edge of the bed caught him at the knees so he tumbled back, rocking on the springs.

  The springs creaked even more as Marianne added her weight to the bed, straddling his waist and towering above him. Their eyes locked. Her expression softened as she began unbuttoning her blouse. He helped her shuck it off, leaving her naked to the waist. She rose and scooted about, getting her skirts out of the way.

  His hand strayed under the piles of cloth, found a warm, bare leg, and worked upward. She wasn’t wearing her bloomers.

  “No underwear?” he said, grinning. “Is it that hot a day?”

  “Not yet. But it will be,” she said, leaning forward so her breasts hung just inches above his face.

  Straining, he locked his lips around one nipple, teased it to a throbbing hardness, then moved to the other. Supporting her weight on her hands, Marianne threw back her head as she moaned in pleasure at his oral attention.

  His tongue laved the tips and then slipped down into the deep canyon between. Salt and woman-taste assaulted his taste buds. She was sweating but there was more, so much more. He loved the way Marianne tasted, every part of her body. He lapped and licked and worked around the base of the cones until she trembled.

  She pushed back upright, catching his hands and pressing them into the tits he had just licked so excitingly. As he squeezed the soft, milky globes, she reached down and worked at his belt, his jeans, the buttons on his fly.

  Through some passionate wrestling, they rolled over and over, changed positions, and finally both ended up naked as jaybirds on their sides, facing each other. Marianne threw a leg up over Slocum’s hip and snuggled closer, his manhood pressing into the thatched triangle between her thighs.

  She rocked back and forth until Slocum thought he was going to lose control. The feel of her flesh, flowing under his roving hands, her firm round ass, the sleek thighs, and the tender spot now turning damp with her inner oils all convinced him he needed more.

  “Are you ready?” he whispered.

  “I’ve been ready from the instant I saw you back in Calhoun,” she said. No further talk was possible.

  Their mouths crushed together in a kiss that mixed passion with desperation. They clung to each other as their hips repositioned. The tip of Slocum’s erection touched her nether lips, parted them, and then sank in with a single long slick thrust.

  The sensation assaulting Slocum caused his body to freeze. She surrounded him with warm and wet female flesh, then began squeezing his hidden length. He felt her belly muscles as she massaged him while so far up into her core. Slocum tried to relax and enjoy the sensations mounting throughout his loins, his belly, his chest.

  He saw that she was flushed from her throat down across her breasts and knew she was as aroused as he was. Hips moving in a circular motion, he began stirring about within her. Her leg over his hip tightened, drawing him in even more.

  The small movements of their bodies became more pronounced, more powerful, took on the same air of desperation the kiss had enjoyed. The air filled with lewd noises and then Marianne cried out. She tensed, clung fiercely to him, and relaxed. Slocum kept moving, slipping in and out of her well-greased slit with complete abandon now. When he finally got his release, they were both covered in sweat.

  They flopped onto their backs, staring not at each other but at the cracked plaster ceiling. Slocum sought words to ask the question that had burned in him for some time.

  “Is he?”

  “Randolph?” Marianne partly turned away so he couldn’t see her face, even if he looked.r />
  “Is he my son?”

  Marianne was silent for a spell, then her body began to quake. She sat up, her bare back toward him as she slumped forward. In a tiny voice, she said, “No, he’s not.”

  Slocum sat on the other side of the bed, trying to figure if she’d lied. Or if it mattered. He put on his clothes and strapped down his gun belt. By the time he tugged on his boots, she had slipped back into her dress. Her eyes were dry, but her face was pale and drawn.

  “You’re going?”

  “I need to talk to the sheriff about a matter.”

  “But I’ll see you . . . later?”

  “Later,” he said, leaving her room. His footsteps were slow, measured, as if he were marching to the gallows. By the time he reached the street, his pace picked up.

  He found Sheriff Whitehill in his office, struggling over a pile of papers. The sheriff looked up with a disgusted expression.

  “Should have left the son of a bitch for the buzzards. Olney’s convinced the judge that the county’s responsible for payin’ for Gallifrey’s burial. I’m gonna be lucky if it doesn’t come out of my pay.”

  “I wanted to give you something,” Slocum said, pulling a couple sheets of paper from his coat pocket. He let them flutter to the desk.

  Whitehill didn’t even glance at them.

  “I wondered where Bedrich’s real claim had got off to. Didn’t want to rock the boat none on it, not since things look to be workin’ themselves out.”

  “Marianne hasn’t asked that question yet. Tell her you discovered the deed, then you give it to her.”

  “Woman can’t own real property.”

  “Then you should record the deed as her legacy from Texas Jack and help her sell it. From all that’s been said, the assay was high enough to have mining companies bidding on it till the cows come home.”

  “You don’t want to give it to her yourself, Slocum?”

  He shook his head. He wasn’t sure if she had lied and, if she had, why. Or if she had told him the truth. After so many years, she might not want to be tied down to him—or thought he didn’t want to be tied down with a family.