by Logan, Jake
“Strange how they’d figure all that gold they scratched out of the mountain with their fingernails and paid to have smelted into bars was theirs.”
Slocum looked up to the driver of the far wagon. Mackley.
Mackley recognized him at the same instant.
“Well, what have we here? You’ll use anybody to do your work for you, won’t you, Plover?”
“Shut up.” Plover prodded Slocum with his rifle. “Get the gold loaded in the wagon.”
Slocum began lifting the heavy bars and piling them in the back of the wagon. When he realized he was the only one working, he stopped.
“What about him? Baransky?” Slocum turned but Plover struck him on the shoulder with his rifle butt. Slocum fell to his knee, pain filling his body. His muscles were burned out from moving the gold and felt weaker than a newborn kitten. He glared at Plover, who smiled crookedly at him.
“He’s got other work to do.”
“If the miners get too insistent on getting their gold back, Trueheart wants the tunnel blasted shut,” Mackley said. “And it’s my job to get this gold down the hill. Won’t do to have it layin’ about where the rightful owners might get it back.”
“We’re the rightful owners,” Plover said, laughing. “We stole it fair and square!”
“You’re going to steal it from the rest of your gang,” Baransky called out.
“Get him back into the cave,” Plover snapped. “Do it or I’ll plug him and plant the dynamite myself.”
Baransky was pushed and shoved back into the tunnel, screaming the entire way. Slocum tried to use the diversion to make an escape. Whether Baransky did it with this in mind or was only protesting his own fate, Slocum couldn’t say, but he wasn’t going to let it go to waste. He got his feet under him and launched himself so his shoulder hit Plover in the belly. The man’s belt buckle cut into Slocum’s numbed arm, but he didn’t stop driving with his legs. Only when he hit a patch of sand covering rock did he slip and fall. This gave Plover time to recover.
Slocum looked up into the rifle muzzle.
“Good-bye, Slocum,” Plover said. His finger tightened on the trigger.
“I still need him to load the gold,” Mackley called. “When he’s done, tie him up real good, toss him in the back of the wagon, and I’ll take care of him at the bottom, after he’s earned his keep. I can use him to unload down there.”
“Why should I help when I know you’re going to kill me anyway?” Slocum grated out. Needles of sensation danced along his arm. He rubbed circulation back. The deadness turned into outright pain. Careful flexing convinced him Plover hadn’t broken his collarbone but otherwise he wasn’t in good shape to fight.
“Here, catch,” Plover said, tossing Slocum’s Colt to Mackley. “It’d be good to shoot him with his own gun.”
Slocum saw he had no choice other than to continue working. They were right. Every minute he worked was another minute he stayed alive. It took a while, but he finally loaded the gold into the wagon. The axles creaked and the wagon bed sagged under the heavy load. He spun, thinking to jump Plover, but the outlaw was too quick for him.
Plover kicked Slocum’s feet out from under him. Once he knocked him onto his belly, Plover snared his wrists and expertly lashed them together. With a heave, he dumped him into the back of the wagon atop the gold. Slocum had to wiggle around to get the heavy metal bars out from under his ribs so he could breathe.
“Don’t screw up, Mackley. I swear, you try anything and I’ll kill you.”
“You worry too much. Everything’s goin’ better ’n good, right? We’re all rich men. I wouldn’t do anything to risk my share.”
Slocum almost called out to Plover to warn him of Mackley’s plan, then bit back the words. Mackley didn’t know Slocum had overheard. Somehow, he had to use that knowledge to his advantage.
The wagon shuddered and began rolling down the steep slope to the road leading into Almost There and away from Trueheart’s hidden town. Mackley rode the brake, his left foot pressing hard into the wood lever. From the way the wagon threatened to overtake the six-mule team, he ought to have shoved a steel rod through the spokes and let the wagon slide down, wheels locked.
Slocum had to admire the way Mackley handled the wagon, though. He rounded the upper bend and started down toward the lower one, where Slocum knew he would let the wagon go tumbling over the edge.
“Yes, sir, this is my lucky day,” Mackley said as he neared the sharp bend in the road. “I thought all I’d get was a bunch of stolen equipment, not a load of gold.”
“Why not steal it all?” Slocum called. He worked to get his hands free, but Plover had been a cowboy at some time. His binding was as secure as any thrown around a calf’s legs as it awaited branding.
“Trueheart is a man of some influence all over these parts. I’d have to kill him to make off with this much gold. No, better to steal more ’n my share and let him think it’s lost. He has a fair amount of gold in that cave up there scratched off the cave walls, but this is beyond my wildest dreams. Trueheart’s gonna get—”
The shot rang out over the creaking of the wagon and the grating of steel-clad wheel rims against rock. Mackley straightened, looked back at Slocum with a surprised expression, then reached down to his chest before toppling over in the driver’s box.
With the strong hand gone from the reins, the mule team bolted and things went to hell fast. The tongue broke, the foot on the brake was dead, and the gold-laden wagon plunged over the edge of the road with Slocum in the back.
17
Slocum tried to curl up in a tight ball, but the force of the wagon leaving the road flung him outward. When he hit the ground, the air blasted from his lungs and sent him rolling downhill. He felt the cut of rock and thorn and then dropped into a ravine. Slocum lay flat on his back and stared up at the bright blue Idaho sky. His eyes went wide when the wagon arced over his head. As if it had been dipped in molasses, the wagon turned over in midair and then vanished from sight. The immense crash that followed made him cringe.
Then came only silence.
Slocum gasped for breath and finally fought to sit up. He tugged at the ropes binding his wrists, but the strands refused to budge and cut into his flesh until blood trickled.
“John! John! Where are you?”
He shook his head to clear it, tried to call out and discovered the words clogged up in his throat. He spat out blood, then gasped, “Melissa? Down here!”
Stones rattled nearby and then the sky was suddenly filled with a lovely angelic visage. Melissa stared down at him, eyes wide in concern, then she dropped and kissed him hard. He gasped and sputtered.
“Air, can’t breathe,” he finally got out.
He winced as she hugged him.
“Oh, John, you’re alive. I didn’t know what I was doing. I … I shot him. I used a rifle I stole, and I shot him.”
He rolled to his side and held out his bound hands as much as he could in silent urging for her to free him. It took Melissa a second to understand, then she set to work with a vengeance, finally taking a sharp-edged piece of flint from the ground and using it to saw painfully through his bonds. He gasped in relief as his wrists finally popped free.
“Oh, your poor hands. You’re hurt.” She kissed his hands and wrists, then pulled back and made a face. She spat some of the blood to the ground.
“Are you sure Mackley is dead?” he asked, accepting her help in standing. He was shaky from the wreck and from all the lifting and hauling he had done during the day. As used to hard work as Slocum was, Trueheart had given him chores that drained his strength to the point where he could hardly stand.
“Let me help you up to the road,” she said, her arm around him. He held back for a moment, seeing how the gold had scattered down the hill. The wagon had smashed into splinters.
“Over there,” he said, pointing.
“It’s Mackley,” she said in a choked voice. “You want to make sure I killed him?”
; “He’s dead,” Slocum said with certainty. Mackley’s head was twisted at a crazy angle. If the woman’s bullet hadn’t killed him outright, the fall down the hill had.
“But—”
He pulled free and made his way to the corpse. Ants already worked on Mackley’s flesh, but Slocum cared less about this than he did the gun thrust into the man’s belt. He yanked his Colt Navy free and held it up so it caught the sun’s rays. It felt good settled once more in his holster. Slocum motioned for Melissa to begin climbing back to the road. Every step he took gave him renewed strength as he realized he was not only free, but had a chance to take revenge on Trueheart and his gang.
“What do we do now, John?”
Melissa looked at him as he made the final few feet of the slope and stumbled onto the road.
“Your pa’s still a prisoner,” he said. Slocum looked up the road, but dusk cast long shadows and the air turned chilly. “It won’t do any good to go after him right away.”
“We can’t let him stay up there!”
“Trueheart has to come down this road.”
“We can’t let Trueheart kill him!”
Slocum nodded, understanding her concern. The instant Trueheart had no more use for Baransky, the man was a goner. He hadn’t thought it through, and she was right. Trueheart wouldn’t come down the road, surrounded by his gang—and with Clem Baransky. Slocum wasn’t sure Trueheart would even leave his hideout with many of his men. Setting them against each other was more in keeping with the way Trueheart operated.
He wasn’t a leader—he was a scavenger, and he reveled in picking over the remains left by others.
“You still have the rifle you used to shoot Mackley?”
“There. Over there,” she said. She had propped it against a rock before sliding down the hillside to help him. Melissa hefted the rifle and looked determined. “We’re going after Papa, aren’t we, John?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, John, I knew I could count on you.”
“You saved me. Mackley would have killed me after we got down the hill.”
“Don’t think you owe me, John. I can save Papa on my own,” she said defiantly.
Slocum explained what had happened and how Baransky was likely to remain alive if Trueheart needed him.
“He’s a smart man. He’ll draw out the work setting the charges as long as he can, but Trueheart isn’t stupid either. Eventually he will have to blow up the tunnel and won’t care if it is done right.”
“The entire mountain might come down,” Melissa said. “Papa explained that to me repeatedly when he worked in the coal mines. The geology has to be studied and every possible outcome weighed.”
“Trueheart won’t care,” Slocum said, “but your pa might take it into his head to blow everything up and take Trueheart with it.”
She started to speak, then clamped her mouth shut. She put her head down and started walking faster. The conclusion Slocum had already reached finally occurred to her. Baransky might kill himself if he could take Trueheart and his men with him in one huge blast.
Slocum wished he still had the carbide lamp to light the way. The darkness was close to absolute, heavy clouds hiding the sliver of rising moon and blanket of stars. They began to stumble as the night deepened, then came heavy drops of rain pelting against his hat.
“We could push on,” Slocum said. “It’d be better if we found cover and waited out the storm.”
“I’m mighty tired,” she said reluctantly. “Where can we go?”
“There’s got to be a cave around somewhere,” he said. He put his arm around her shoulders and guided her off the road, up a slope, and to a spot blacker than the surrounding terrain.
“A cave! How’d you see it, John?”
“By contrast with the rock around it,” he said, herding Melissa inside just as the sky opened and a deluge caused raindrops to dance a foot or more off the rock. He sank to the dusty floor and watched the rain move closer to the cave mouth. He took off his hat and held it in a small river draining from above to capture enough water to wash off the dirt he had accumulated during his blasting and freighting for Trueheart.
“Let me help, John. You are a sight.”
Her fingers slipped under his collar and pulled his coat away. He dropped his gun belt where it wouldn’t get wet and stood, letting her strip off his vest and shirt. The water splashing onto his bare back from the rain sent a shiver through him—or was it the rain? Melissa’s fingers worked across his chest and down to unbutton his jeans. As she worked on his fly, he kicked free of his boots.
“Time for a bath,” he said, standing naked before her.
“Want company?”
In answer, he reached out and unbuttoned her blouse and cast it aside. It took a bit more work, but he got her naked to the waist. Her perfect breasts gleamed dully in the dark. He worked more by feel than sight, taking the pair into his palms so he could squeeze down until she moaned and stepped forward, crushing them into his palms.
“So nice,” she cooed. “More. I want more.”
“Greedy bitch,” he said as he kissed her cheek and worked back to her ear. His tongue flicked out, lightly traced around the lobe, and dipped deeper in promise of what more would come.
“You haven’t seen anything yet, mister!”
She finally stripped off her skirt and pressed hard against him. They stepped back a pace so the water cascaded over them. Slocum gasped at the cold but relished the slickness of her skin moving sensually against his, the stimulation of the rain, the vibrant feel of her young body, the gusts of wind that blew across his nakedness.
“More, I want more.”
He slipped his hand between them, past the deep valley of her tits, across her belly, farther, and then curled around and entered her with his middle finger. She tensed. He began working it around within her as she became slipperier, and not just with the rainwater. Her hips moved in rhythm as she lifted one slim leg and hooked it around his back to pull herself even closer.
Slocum had to abandon the finger in her hot core when she grasped his hardness and insistently tugged it toward her crotch. He wasn’t going to complain. She stood on tiptoe, positioned herself, tensed the leg around his back, then plunged downward. They both gasped with the sudden intrusion.
Surrounded by clinging, moist, hot female, Slocum supported her by grabbing a double handful of ass flesh. They danced out into the rain and let the water pour over them. For what stretched to an eternity, Slocum contentedly reveled in the feel of her around him, deep within her, arms around his neck, supporting her weight and letting the rain fall.
When she began tensing and relaxing her inner muscles, he found it impossible to simply stand. Fires banked within his loins began to flare. The heat burned downward toward the end of his manhood, but he fought it back.
The ordeal he had been through and the emphatic movement of her hips robbed him of both balance and strength. Slowly sinking to the ground, still out in the driving rain, he laid her back.
She looked up at him, eyes aglow. Darkness hid much of her body, but Slocum felt skin move slickly under his fingers, rubbery nubs at the crests of her breasts, the heaving of her chest, the way her knees drew up on either side of his body to open wantonly for him.
“Hard, John, I want it hard.”
That’s how he delivered it. The lovemaking took on animal intensity until they both cried out. Slocum rammed forward, trying to split her in half. She responded by shoving her hips down against his to take him even deeper inside. The speed built and then neither could hold back any longer. They clung to one another and then sank down, spent.
“It’s even better when we don’t have an audience,” he said.
“I never noticed. Either then or now.”
Slocum laughed, kissed her, then began running his hands over her sleek body to remove the mud they had accumulated with their lovemaking. She returned the favor, and clean, they returned to the cave.
Both began shiverin
g from the cold.
“We need a fire,” she said.
“Mine’s gone out. For a while.”
“Only a little while, I hope.” Melissa fit into the circle of his arms and shared bodily warmth until they both dried enough to put on their dirty clothing.
“I wish we could wash these filthy rags,” she said, giving a shimmy to settle her blouse. “We were clean, and now I feel dirty.”
“How dirty?”
“Oh, you.” She punched at him playfully. He caught her wrist and pulled her close. She didn’t resist his kisses.
After a while they settled down, not speaking, watching the rain fall outside their snug cave.
Slocum drifted off to sleep, only to snap awake when he realized the sun was coming up over the horizon. Melissa still slept in the circle of his arms. He shook her gently.
“We’d better move. Trueheart’s not going to wait.”
“Papa,” she moaned softly, then came fully awake. “Oh, dear, we haven’t let him—”
“We need to get your pa away from him,” Slocum said. The chances of Baransky being alive had diminished with the rain. Trueheart might not be able to get down the steep road, but he had no reason to keep his prisoner alive either.
Slocum stood, strapped on his gun belt, and saw that Melissa clutched the rifle she had used to shoot Mackley as if she faced Trueheart.
He looked out at the steep hillside leading down to the road. New gullies had been cut into the ground by the fierce rainstorm. Slocum took one down to the road, sliding more than walking. Melissa joined him.
“How far is the mine?”
“Not too far,” Slocum said. He studied the road, its turns, and decided they had come closer than he’d believed possible the night before. As they walked, he kept an eye out for Trueheart and his men. They would be on the move anytime now.
“I hear wagons,” Slocum said. “They’ll be coming down the mountain any second.”
“There,” Melissa said, pointing. “We can shoot them from there!”
Slocum doubted that shooting it out with the gang would be possible. Better to concentrate on freeing her father, and if Clement Baransky was already dead, letting Trueheart and his scavengers go their way. Justice wouldn’t be served but at least Melissa—and Slocum—would be alive.