Slocum 420

by Jake Logan

  “I just returned from risking life and limb for this town,” Slocum said without missing a beat. “Two other brave souls and I captured the Beast of Fall Pass, and this generous lady offered to thank me on behalf of this fine establishment!”

  Without much of any consideration, Rolf shook his head. “Still don’t cut it.”

  Before Slocum could come up with another grand statement to throw at the barkeep, Eliza said, “I’ll make it up to you,” and slipped her arm around Slocum’s.

  Rolf was sputtering, but quickly quieted down when another woman came along to pat him on the back. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Mary said. “I’ll watch the bar. You go along, Eliza. Have a good ol’ time.”

  “She will,” Slocum promised.

  • • •

  It had been simple instinct when Slocum had decided to pay a visit to the Second Saloon so he could call on Eliza. Seeing her in that black dress with raven hair framing her pretty face, Slocum felt a different kind of instinct that was even more powerful.

  They’d had supper at the steakhouse Slocum visited often enough to be recognized by the owner, who grudgingly agreed to extend him a short line of credit. Slocum and Eliza talked, laughed, and he told her plenty of stories. Just when he thought it was time for him to stop flapping his gums, she gazed at him intently and asked for more.

  Upon leaving the steakhouse, Slocum and Eliza took a walk in the cool night air. There was a gentle breeze playing with her hair and the edges of her skirt. Dim light from the stars played beautifully upon her face and arms. Although Slocum didn’t rightly know where they were walking, she led him to a small house at the end of a quiet street.

  They stepped inside after a few more pleasantries, but didn’t venture much farther than the sitting room just beyond her front door. Although she talked about parting ways after a splendid evening, her eyes told a different story. Slocum tested the waters by stepping in a bit closer while placing his hands upon her hips.

  “I . . . shouldn’t,” she whispered while leaning in closer to him.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. But something tells me you want to.”

  Every breath she took caused her body to swell, which pressed her against him even more. Eliza opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came out. When Slocum moved in a bit more, she placed her hands on his face and kissed him hungrily. Their tongues quickly started to wander, causing her to moan softly and with mounting passion.

  “Not here,” she said.

  Moving back, even an inch, at that moment was physically painful for Slocum but he somehow managed. “No?”

  “No.” With a smile, she took his hand and started walking down a short hallway. “In here.”

  She led him to her bedroom, and when she kissed him again, Eliza gave in to the desire that had been building the entire night. She trembled with anticipation as Slocum pushed her against a wall and started gathering up her skirts so he could reach beneath them. Her hands were busy as well, tugging at his belt buckle and occasionally cupping the growing bulge in his crotch.

  “Yes,” she sighed once his fingers discovered the moist lips between her legs.

  Slocum had pulled aside the layers of her clothing while she’d loosened his jeans enough for them to be pulled down far enough to free his erect member. He pressed her against the wall while taking hold of one of her legs so he could lift it up near his waist. Eliza was feeling his rigid cock, stroking every inch while looking into his eyes. When he moved his hips toward her, she guided him toward her slick opening. Slocum eased into her, causing Eliza to grip his shoulder and draw a sharp breath.

  Watching her as he slid in deeper, Slocum was careful not to pump too hard. Once he was all the way inside her, he felt her grind her hips while wrapping both arms around the back of his neck. She smiled hungrily, and Slocum started pumping faster, gliding in and out of her in a building rhythm. Leaning her head back against the wall, Eliza moaned softly.

  As good as it felt to be inside her, Slocum wanted more. He reached down to grab her other leg and Eliza hopped up to wrap them both around him. Cupping her ass in both hands, he held her up against the wall and thrust into her harder. Slocum could feel her fingers digging into his neck and shoulders. She leaned her face in close to his and grunted every time he plunged into her. The sound of her building pleasure was music to his ears, and he pumped into her again and again just to see how much she wanted him to give.

  Eliza showed no signs of letting up. In fact, the more he drove between her legs, the more she urged him onward with throaty moans and urgent motions with her hips. When he felt that she was gripping him tightly with both arms, Slocum moved away from the wall and carried her to the bed. He remained inside her all the way until lowering her onto the edge of the mattress to set her down. She looked up at him with her legs open and her pussy dripping.

  “You’re not going to stop, are you?” she asked.

  “Not hardly,” Slocum replied. Grabbing both of her ankles, he positioned her so her legs rested on his shoulders while he stood facing her. Eliza’s backside was on the very edge of the mattress so all he had to do to enter her again was ease forward and slip the tip of his cock between her glistening lips.

  Eliza moaned as he filled her with every inch of his hard flesh. She cried out even louder when he drove into her again and again while rubbing her little clit. Her eyes snapped open as if she could barely take a breath.

  “Oh God,” she cried. “Oh . . . that’s . . . I’m . . . I’m going to . . .” Suddenly, her back arched and she couldn’t make a sound. Her climax was so powerful that she remained that way until the pulsing orgasm had swept all the way through her body. He liked watching her as she trembled, and he enjoyed feeling her even more as she writhed slowly against him to feel him moving inside her.

  When she was finally able to catch her breath, Eliza looked up at him. As Slocum crawled on top of her, she scooted back so she wasn’t about to fall off the bed. He settled in and reached down to feel between her legs. She was wetter than ever and jolted at the slightest touch of his hand against her pussy. Slocum didn’t say a word as he undressed her and then stripped off his own clothes so they were both completely naked.

  Her skin felt smooth as silk in every spot that her body rubbed against his. For the next minute or two, Slocum and Eliza savored being so close, tasting each other’s lips and feeling each other’s bodies any way they could.

  “I want you inside me again,” she whispered while reaching down to feel him. Her fingers wrapped around his thick pole and stroked it slowly up and down. Slocum closed his eyes, savoring the way her hand worked him before placing his cock where she wanted it to be. As soon as he felt his tip brush against the wet lips of her pussy, he pushed his hips forward to plunge inside her.

  This time, Slocum’s entire body ached for only one thing, and he gave in to that desire by pumping into her like a piston. She was more than wet enough to accommodate him and she spread her legs open wide so he could thrust as deeply as he wanted. Slocum grabbed one of her hands and held it tightly as his other hand eased along the side of her body until he could cup the tight curve of her buttocks. Every one of his muscles strained with the effort of maintaining that rhythm, and soon Eliza was moaning again.

  Slocum grunted as he felt his climax swiftly approaching. Grabbing on to her ass with both hands, he pulled her in close while burying his cock deeply between her legs. He let out a moan, emptying himself inside her as Eliza cried out and gripped him tightly.

  Spent and exhausted, both of them lay there for a few minutes until Slocum gathered up enough strength to roll onto his side and lie next to her.

  Eliza got up and left the bedroom without saying a word or putting on a stitch of clothing. She returned with a cup of water, which she sipped before handing it over to Slocum. “So,” she said, “did you really catch the Beast of Fall Pass, or d
id you just say all that to impress me?”

  “Did it impress you?” he asked before taking a drink of the water.

  “A bit.”

  “Well, if that impressed you, just wait until you see what I’ve got in store after I’ve gotten some wind back in my sails.”

  She giggled and climbed on top of him. Her hands busied themselves by rubbing his chest as her hips ground slowly against his lower body. “I wonder if I can do anything to help with those sails.”

  “I can think of one thing.”

  Smiling, she eased herself down so her face was poised above his hips. She opened her mouth, wrapped her lips around his member, and started gently sucking.

  “I think we’re in for a long night,” Slocum said.

  19

  Ed Taylor had come to Bennsonn as a vagrant. He’d scraped together enough money to pay for a ticket on the stage heading north from a trading post near the California border with every intention of trying his luck panning for Canadian gold. Having sold most of what he’d owned to pay for food and a new coat, he didn’t have enough left over to get any farther than Bennsonn. The driver had left him off, recommending the mill as a good place to look for work. Mr. Womack saved his life by giving Ed a job.

  Despite all his good intentions, Ed was first and foremost a drunk. Liquor was soaked so deeply into his body that he barely even felt much of anything when he indulged anymore. The warmth whiskey gave him helped to thaw out his innards on cold nights, but he drank whatever he could because it was the only thing to put an end to the shakes that had claimed him in the last couple of years. On the night of Slocum’s return into town, Ed left the mill after sweeping the entire place for an extra bit of pay. Sobriety was an ache that bit all the way down to his core.

  It was close to midnight and perhaps a bit past it when he walked out of the mill and locked the door behind him. The air was crisp with a dampness that foretold an upcoming rain. More than anything, he wanted a drink of whiskey, and as he started the short walk back into town, he pondered each saloon in turn, weighing his odds of getting a line of credit large enough to put a splash of liquor into his chilled body.

  “Wait a minute!” he said as he stopped dead in his tracks. Mr. Womack kept a small bottle in his desk for the occasional nip. Ed had seen his boss take it out every now and then to celebrate a profitable season or toast some bit of good news. Remembering it now brought a smile to his face. Surely Womack wouldn’t know if there was just a little less of the liquor in his bottle the next time he reached for it. “He won’t notice at all,” Ed muttered to himself as he turned around and hurried back to the mill.

  Every step he took brought a new pain as his muscles tensed and his joints stiffened like hinges that hadn’t been oiled once during a long winter. Ignoring the pain as he ignored so many other things, Ed set his sights on the dark shape at the end of the road that loomed just out of his reach. The mill was a familiar sight to him and he’d walked to and from it so many times that he could do so with his eyes closed. Every bump in the ground along the way was familiar to him. Every creaking branch was something he’d heard at least a dozen times before. The stench that hit his nose, on the other hand, was new.

  “Damn dogs,” he grumbled while stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of his threadbare jacket. “Bringing more of them dead squirrels and leavin’ ’em where they won’t be found for—”

  Those would be the last words Ed would ever say. The rest of that final sentence was cut short when he turned toward a large, dark shape he’d spotted out of the corner of his eye. That shape stayed low to the ground and moved like a puddle of smoky ink with a stench that was almost too putrid to bear. He squinted into the darkness, trying to make sense out of what he was seeing, but couldn’t.

  When the shape pounced on him with teeth and claws bared, Ed tried to defend himself. His efforts didn’t amount to a hill of beans and only made the thing from the shadows work to pin him down for an extra couple of seconds. Once the thing was crouched on Ed’s chest, the struggle was over. From then on, it ripped into him as if it were digging a hole in the ground and Ed’s chest was in the way. It stuffed its short snout into the gaping, bloody cavity and pulled out whatever meat it could find.

  When it had sated its gnawing hunger, the beast clamped its teeth around Ed’s shoulder and dragged him away. Some small pieces of him were left behind. Some of the pieces weren’t so small.

  • • •

  It was early the following morning when the Beasley brothers arrived at the mill. For once, Merle was in as rough shape as Darryl since they’d both spent the night drinking away a good portion of the pay they’d gotten from the sheriff for dragging the wild man in from the woods. The only thing that could have gotten them to drag themselves so far away from the beds of the soiled doves they’d chosen during the night’s revelry was the promise of even more money from the man who’d put the hunting party together in the first place.

  “Why the hell did we walk up here?” Darryl grunted.

  “Because we probably would’ve fallen off our horses,” Merle replied.

  “I ain’t drunk no more.”

  “Me neither, but my head’s still spinnin’, and if that isn’t enough to put me on my ass, the fire in my damn skull is enough to make me throw myself onto a rock and hope I die.”

  Darryl laughed and immediately regretted it. Placing one hand flat against his eyes, he winced and staggered down the road that led from town to the mill. After tripping on a wagon rut, he stumbled a few more steps and eventually righted himself. “We almost there?”

  Merle slapped his brother’s arm. “You see that?”

  “No, but I smell it. One of us still reeks of that idiot hermit’s skins. I can’t believe any lady would have us, whether we paid her or not.”

  “No, damn it! Look!”

  As much as it pained him to do so, Darryl peeled his eyes open. Immediately upon seeing what was strewn on the ground farther up the road, he forgot about the throbbing pain behind his eyes. “What in the hell?”

  “Looks like an animal carcass,” Merle said.

  “If that’s a leg . . . it’s too big to belong to an animal.”

  Merle drew the pistol from his holster as he ran to get a closer look. Wincing as the smell of dead flesh hit him, he said, “There’s shreds of clothes scattered about. That means this definitely ain’t no dead animal.”

  “That smell,” Darryl said warily. “Did another killer get his hands on them skins?”

  That question still hung in the air between the brothers when something exploded from the trees near the side of the road. Merle fired a quick shot at the thing that rushed at him and didn’t know if he’d hit it or not before he was knocked off his feet. More shots were fired as Darryl rushed to help his brother. The thing that had attacked them leapt back and forth from one man to another. Both pistols had been silenced since the hands holding them were no longer able to pull a trigger. One of those hands wasn’t even attached to an arm any longer.

  20

  When Slocum arrived at the mill, just a bit late for his normal workday, he once again found all the other workers gathering inside the main building. He’d already checked in with the sheriff, only to get a much colder reception than he’d been expecting. The lawman had handed over the payment for following through on the hunt and wouldn’t answer any other questions on the matter.

  “Go have a word with Womack,” was all Krueger would say.

  Rather than press the sheriff for any more, Slocum headed to the mill.

  The crowd gathered in the main building was even larger than when Womack had delivered his last speech regarding the beast. After shouldering his way closer to the front of the group, Slocum could see that several of the men gathered there wore stars pinned to their shirts or jackets. One of those lawmen stood beside Womack. He was the same height as the mill’s boss and had
a lean, wiry frame. Somewhere in his sixties, the lawman had sharp eyes and carried himself as though he were about to pounce. He was clean shaven and mostly bald except for a partial ring of silver hair that circled around the back of his head.

  Upon spotting Slocum, Womack hurried over to meet him. “There you are, John. So glad you showed up before we got started.”

  “What’s going on here?” Slocum asked. “Is this some kind of announcement about the killer we brought in?”

  “In part.” Draping an arm around Slocum’s shoulders, Womack led him toward the door to his office.

  Slocum shook free and stopped before the office door could be opened. “Just tell me what’s going on!”

  “I’d rather do it in private.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Womack said in a voice that was almost too quiet for Slocum to hear, “more men were killed last night, and it looks like it was the beast’s work.”

  Before Slocum could ask for details, one of the younger lawmen near the front of the group began to talk. Mostly, he was calling for silence from the others, but workers were already filled with questions, which they flung toward the front of the room. Rather than dividing his attention by listening to the answers given by the lawman, Slocum put his back to all of them.

  Leading Womack away from the group without going into the man’s office, Slocum asked, “Did that hermit we brought in escape from the cell he was tossed into?”

  “No,” Womack replied. “Sheriff Krueger or one of his deputies has been keeping their eyes on him every second since he was brought in.”

  “Then what the hell happened?”

  Womack was shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe his own words before they left his mouth. “Ed Taylor was found on the road outside. Or it’s supposed to be Ed Taylor.”

  “Ed’s the one who stayed after the mill closed to do odd jobs and clean up?”

  “That’s him. His body . . . parts of it anyway . . . were found on the road and in the woods. He was found by Merle and Darryl Beasley.”