by Jake Logan
He stepped back, looked at the barn, and saw how rickety it was. Bulwer had found an abandoned farm and taken it over, not bothering to repair anything but the corral before setting up his forge and rolling mill. Circling the barn, Slocum found a spot at the rear where varmints had gnawed through the wood and left a sizable hole. He looped his fingers around the boards and pulled slowly, trying not to make too much noise. When the nails tore free with a loud squeak, he was sure the men would come to investigate.
The coldness moved from Slocum’s gut to his heart when he poked his head through and saw that they weren’t paying attention to anything but Elena. They had her wrists bound and had dangled her from an overhead beam. Her toes barely raked the dirty floor. She was naked to the waist. Moonlight angled in from a hole in the roof, turning her breasts into silvery mounds.
One man walked close to her and kissed her bare breast. She flinched away and started to swing. She would have moaned louder except they had left the gag in her mouth.
“Lemme try that.” The other man stepped up and tried to suckle at her tit. The more Elena struggled, the worse it became for her. Slocum knew the pressure on her shoulders but couldn’t guess at the emotional torture she endured.
Again he touched his pistol and again he knew this wasn’t the way to stop her rape. A shot would bring the rest of the gang down on his head in a flash.
Slocum squeezed through the hole he’d made in the wall and rolled to crouch behind a stall wall. He peered around the edge of the stall to get a better idea how to prevent the men from torturing Elena.
One now held her legs while the other fumbled at her skirt. In seconds she would be completely naked and hung up like a side of beef. The more she struggled, the more the pair liked it. They laughed and made lewd comments. One ran his hand up under her skirt. From the way she reacted, Slocum knew where the man had thrust his fingers. Elena arched her back and tried to flip over, to get away from the sexual punishment.
“You like that, don’t you? Jist wait till I get the real thing shoved up there. I—”
He never said another word. Slocum drew his Colt, stepped out, and swung it as hard as he could, the butt crushing into the back of the man’s skull. He dropped to his knees, clutching his head. Slocum cursed himself for not being stronger, but the ride had drained him of energy. Even the long sleep had failed to rejuvenate him.
Then he found himself caught up in a bear hug, his arms pinned at his sides by the other man’s powerful embrace. Slocum grunted. The man lifted him off his feet and began bending him backward. Slocum fought. To give in meant having his spine snapped. He tried to get off a shot. Even if he hit the outlaw in the leg, it would break the grip.
The world started to collapse into a single bright spot, blackness all around. Slocum let out a scream to coordinate his strength, to startle the man dealing out such punishment to him—anything to win free. It didn’t work.
“I don’t know who you are, but you’re gonna be real dead mighty quick.” The outlaw grunted, and redoubled his effort to break Slocum in half.
Then something smashed into Slocum’s face, knocking him to one side. Long, trim, white legs came out of nowhere and encircled the outlaw’s head.
“Elena,” Slocum gasped out, dropping to his knees. She had swung up and locked her legs around the man’s head. With a convulsive jerk, she spun about, still dangling from her bound wrists. The loud crack as the man’s neck broke filled the barn, and then there was only silence. Even then she did not release her hold. She swung back and forth until Slocum thought she would tear the man’s head from his shoulders.
“Enough,” he said, standing up painfully. “He’s dead.”
He thought she said through her gag, “Not dead enough,” but he couldn’t tell. His arms circled her legs as he lifted enough for her to free her ropes from the hook above. When he had to support her weight, he wasn’t up to it and collapsed. She landed on top of him.
“Sorry,” Slocum said. “I’m a mite tuckered out.”
She pushed away and disappeared from his field of vision. He sucked in huge drafts of air, the pain in his ribs going away but the one in his side remaining. No matter how much punishment the outlaws delivered to him, it was always Elena’s stab wound that caused him the most grief.
He sat up and found himself peering into the bore of a .44.
The outlaw he had clubbed propped himself against a stall. Blood flowed freely down the side of the man’s head and turned his collar and shoulder into a red swamp. Slocum was sorry he hadn’t delivered a second blow and finished him off. If he hadn’t been so weak, he would have.
“I don’t know who the hell you are, but I want you to know it’s Billy Bee who’s gonna kill you.” Billy Bee let out a loud howl, and Slocum thought he was a goner. Then the outlaw fell facedown onto the floor. A pitchfork stuck up out of his back.
A naked, panting Elena stared at the second man she had killed in the span of a couple minutes.
“Is he dead?”
“Yeah,” Slocum said.
“Damn, I wanted to kill him some more.” She kicked the corpse with her bare foot, fell to her knees, and pounded at the man’s back with her bound hands. Slocum let her drain some of the anger, then took her in his arms and held her. To his surprise, she didn’t cry. She shook all over but that could as easily have been from being naked in the cold spring night as emotional reaction.
“Let me get you free.” Slocum fumbled with the ropes but finally got them off her wrists. Her hands were covered in her own blood from where the ropes had cut into her flesh. He had to help her dress.
“I want to kill them all. Especially Anton Bulwer. He told them they could have me. Just like I was a cheap whore. Worse, he paid them to do this to me. He paid them!”
Slocum rolled over the one with the pitchfork in his spine and found a couple coins. Bogus? Real? He didn’t bother to check. He tucked them away in his pocket, then found another pair in the pocket of the man Elena had almost decapitated.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Slocum said, taking her arm. She yanked free.
“Not until every last one is dead!”
“We need the law to handle this. The marshal. A federal marshal.”
“I’m a detective, dammit. A Pinkerton! They can’t get away with doing this to me!”
He held her close again. This time she did cry. He felt her hot tears soaking into his shirt, mingling with the blood already there. Carefully, he steered her toward the rear of the barn. When Bulwer found his two henchmen dead, there’d be hell to pay. The best he could hope for was to get a decent head start—and find a place to make a stand.
After she dressed hurriedly in her torn clothing, Slocum and Elena slid out into the chilly night air and began their escape.
18
“My horse, where’s my horse?”
Slocum put his arm around Elena to keep her moving away from the corral, where Rafe still sat on an upper rail. He no longer talked to himself and might have been asleep. Slocum didn’t want to take the chance of being seen. If the teamster let out a cry, the rest of the counterfeiters might have flocked over to see what was wrong. It wouldn’t take long for them to find the dead pair in the barn and then all hell would be out for lunch.
“We’ll ride double. My horse can take the extra weight. You don’t weigh that much.”
“You’ve lost some weight, too,” Elena said. She tried to turn and go back, but Slocum herded her into the dark until she finally stumbled along. As she started to speak, he whispered a warning in her ear.
“Yes, yes, the sons of bitches. Mustn’t find us. But how will I get my revenge?”
“Let Marshal Atkinson do it. Let the law lock them up forever.” He knew counterfeiting was about the only crime that Bulwer and his henchmen were likely to be convicted of, but he had to soothe Elena to get her away. Retribution could come later. He remembered how she had stabbed the man in the back with the pitchfork.
And the sight o
f the man with his neck broken as surely as if a hangman’s noose had been dropped around it would linger for years.
“There’s my horse.”
“We can’t ride back up the trail. I was trying to get away. Back of the wagon. Looked out,” she said, her thoughts still disjointed. “But it was steep. They’ll see us if they follow.”
“There has to be another way back to Leadville. We’ll ride north in the canyon until we find another trail up to the main road.” His mind raced. That might take days to find, but he wasn’t in any hurry. And for Elena, time meant nothing. She was still in shock from what had happened to her.
He stepped up into the saddle and felt all the strength flow from him like a dam had broken. He reached down and almost tumbled from the saddle as he pulled her up behind him. The horse dutifully set out. Slocum wanted to gallop, but carrying twice the weight, the mare would falter and might break a leg in the darkness. The thin slice of moon gave the landscape an eerie quality. Slocum jumped at shadows and more than once had his six-shooter halfway out of the holster as a coyote or fox poked a head out of vegetation to see the intruders.
By sunup he was about ready to fall out of the saddle. Elena rode behind him, arms locked around his waist. After rubbing his eyes, he saw a spot where they could hole up for a few hours. He needed the rest or they’d never get all the way back to Leadville.
“We can rest,” he said. “There, in the trees out of sight.”
“Have you been hiding our trail?”
“No need,” he said, looking up. The heavy clouds that had moved in just after sunrise might have given Leadville its name. A fat drop of rain spatted against the brim of his hat. “The rain will wash away our tracks.”
“They’ll come for us.”
“I know.”
He rode into the trees just as the rain began pelting down more heavily. He was thinking how to use his slicker to cover them both when he saw a ramshackle shed. Luck finally smiled on him. Like so much else in this part of Colorado, the cabin, if he wanted to grace it with such a noble name, had been abandoned a long time back as richer strikes had sent the miners racing to find new fortunes. He slid off the saddle and caught Elena as she clumsily dismounted.
“What about your horse?”
“There’s room inside.” He led the horse to the door, but the mare refused to enter. He let Elena precede him, then took off the tack and led the horse around back. Again luck favored him. The lean-to attached to the rear of the cabin was in better shape than the building itself. Making sure the horse was secure, Slocum stumbled back around and into the cabin. Elena had spread out the blanket in a corner of the room higher than the rest, in case the roof leaked.
As Slocum went to where she was already curled up in a tight ball, he heard the tap-tap of rain on the brim of his hat. He looked up and saw a dozen leaks, but they were still drier inside than out. He pulled his slicker from his saddlebags and draped it over them.
As he lay down, she uncurled and then fit against him like spoons in a drawer. He would have enjoyed it, but he was so dog tired he slipped off to sleep in seconds.
Slocum wasn’t sure how much later that he felt fingers working on his gun belt and pulling it away. He reached down and caught a slender wrist.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I want to forget, John. I want you to make me forget.”
“Are you sure, after they raped you?”
“You can make me forget it all, if only for a few minutes. Please.”
He rolled over. As he did so, he looked up, surprised to see blue sky through the roof. He felt as if he had slept for a hundred years, yet it was daylight.
“We slept the day around,” she said.
“No, this is the morning after we escaped.”
“No,” Elena said firmly. “I was awake most of the past twenty-four hours. You slept so hard I worried you might have died.”
Her hand slipped down under the waistband of his jeans and found a sleeping giant. His manhood stirred as she stroked along it.
“But you can’t be dead. This isn’t dead.”
Slocum rolled the rest of the way and faced her. Tears streaked the dirt on her cheeks. He gently kissed her closed eyes, then worked down to her perfect lips. The propriety of making love to her so soon after she had been raped and tortured bothered him, but she wanted it. Her insistent squeezing on him showed that. He continued drawing his lips over hers, lower, across her slender throat, back to an ear. Somehow they rubbed against each other and buttons were opened and clothing discarded. It might have taken an hour or a few minutes. Slocum hardly knew or cared.
His hands roamed over the curves and depressions of her valley, eliciting moans of pleasure that grew in intensity. When she gasped as his finger invaded her and stroked over that tender territory, he was achingly hard and needy. Rolling over, he fitted himself between her legs. She opened for him.
He hesitated.
“Yes, John, do it. I need you to wipe out the bad memories.”
His hips moved slightly, touching her nether lips, now slick with her inner juices. Another movement inserted the plum tip of his manhood and then he was unable to move any slower. He slipped all the way into her. Elena let out a cry of pleasure, arched her back, and began grinding her hips down to take him even deeper into her heated center.
For a moment, Slocum and Elena hung there, in a limbo of warmth and tightness, hearts beating together, their needs merging. Then he began slipping back and forth, moving faster, with greater passion. The white heat mounted in him, and he soon exploded within her.
She clawed at his back and crammed herself harder against him, their crotches slamming hard. And then it was over. Slocum slipped down atop her, then rolled over to hold her close. She pressed herself into him. He felt tears again but said nothing, did nothing. Eventually the tears stopped and Elena spoke.
“We have to get back to Leadville to stop them.”
“Are you going to get them arrested or kill them?”
“Whatever it takes to stop them,” she said. She looked up, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. “I won’t lie. I want them all dead, but seeing them sent off to a federal prison forever and ever will be good enough. Why does it bother you that I want to kill Bulwer for what he’s done?”
“It changes you,” Slocum said. “I don’t want you changed.”
“Like killing men has changed you?”
Slocum paused, then said, “Yes.”
Nothing more passed between them for long minutes, then they rose, wordlessly began dressing, and gathered the tack to saddle his mare. Only when they were well on their way up the valley and had found another road curling up the side to the road running along the ridge to Leadville did Elena say anything more.
“I sent Mr. Pullman a telegram before I was kidnapped. He knows everything we did up to that point.”
“I reckoned you’d do something like that. You don’t think he’ll do anything stupid?” Slocum had to ask, but he knew the answer, no matter what Elena said. If there was anything Josiah Pullman could do to scare off the counterfeiters, he’d do it and never realize what he had done.
In spite of his dour thoughts, Slocum had to laugh.
“What’s so funny, John?”
“Just remembering how Pullman looked with the phony mustache glued on his upper lip.”
“It was funny, wasn’t it?” Elena chuckled, and Slocum counted that as success. For the moment. She would probably never forget what Bulwer’s henchmen had done to her, but whatever took the sharp edges off that burr was worthwhile.
“What do we do?” Slocum asked.
“The only place to begin is with the freighter.”
“Rafe,” Slocum supplied. “He’s not too keen on his part, but I don’t think he understands what he’s doing for Bulwer.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’s breaking the law.”
“He might be a useful wedge to drive between Bulwer and the rest of his gang.” The
y tossed back and forth possible ways of bringing the counterfeiter to justice, but Slocum worried more that Rafe had been sent south with a load of fake coins. He had overheard the gang talking about a robbery in Pueblo. To catch Bulwer, it might be necessary to ride south.
“There’s Leadville,” Elena said with a catch in her voice.
“Nobody’ll know,” he told her. “You don’t have a sign tacked to your back. If you don’t mention it, nobody’ll know.”
“If I report to the marshal . . .”
“I’d advise against it. Atkinson might be honorable enough about not spreading it around town how you were used, but his deputies don’t have enough brains between them to outthink a mule. For them, it’d be a story to get free drinks at the nearest saloon.”
“The counterfeiting is the crime that matters,” she said, a catch in her voice.
“That’s the one that’ll put them behind bars.”
They rode in silence the rest of the way to the hotel. Elena dropped from the horse and hurried inside, not bothering to look back. He hoped she would stay in her room the rest of the day while he prowled about town hunting for Rafe or any of the counterfeiters who might have come back.
For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine why Bulwer would let any of his gang come to Leadville. A misspoken word, a drunken boast, a gunfight—all could ruin Bulwer’s plans for making himself a millionaire by passing fake gold coins.
Slocum rode directly to Rafe’s freight company and dropped to the ground in front of the office. He made sure his six-shooter was loaded and ready before he went inside. The metallic click of a shotgun hammer drawing back stopped him dead in his tracks.
“I might have known you would show up eventually, Slocum,” said Marshal Atkinson.
“What brings you here, Marshal?”
“Now, now, Slocum, don’t play coy with me. I got witnesses that saw you come into this office a couple days back. Shots were fired. A gent I haven’t identified yet was left out back by the corral with three holes in his gut. And Rafe? The owner? Can’t seem to find hide nor hair of him. Might be you can help with some of this?”