by Jake Logan
“Pass the word to the men in the center to retreat,” he said. “Keep both sides firing, then have them back up to the road. That’ll concentrate us all along the road, but maybe the extra firepower will hold them at bay.”
Slocum kept his attention on the house, hoping to catch sight of Cooper. The men inside the house were too canny to do more than poke their rifles through broken windows and take random shots at the attacking ranchers. He was forced to join the fight to slow the men advancing from the field. He watched carefully, and saw one man poke his head up from behind a rock and pull it back real quick. Slocum knew human nature and how men thought. He aimed at a spot to one side and waited. The man had thought to draw fire to the place he had appeared first. Slocum shot him through the head when he chanced a quick look at the side of the rock.
“Hurry it up,” Slocum yelled, seeing that Blevins’s men were going to make a full charge because they had heard the slackening of fire from the road. The men in the center of Tewksbury’s force couldn’t fire without hitting their friends. But the flanks fell back and gave all the men the chance to shoot just as Blevins’s men launched their attack.
The roar of rifles firing deafened Slocum. He had been in artillery barrages that were quieter. He fired as fast as he could get a cartridge into the chamber and pull the trigger. It didn’t matter if he aimed. All he wanted was for a powerful lot of lead to fill the air and keep Blevins’s gunmen down.
His ploy didn’t work. They ran forward, screaming and shooting as they came. Tewksbury’s men did the only thing they could do. They counterattacked. Slocum saw five men die in the span of a few seconds, and he didn’t even know to which side they owed their allegiance.
He turned his attention back to the house when he heard a shout from inside.
“Git ’em, kill ’em, boys!” The voice was muffled, but Slocum clearly saw Blevins and Cooper come out onto the porch.
There was something odd about the way they walked, but Slocum ignored that when he saw his chance and took it. He fired at Cooper and sent the killer’s hat flying through the air. Then Blevins swung around, as if to shield his son. Slocum’s rifle came up empty or he would have fired a second time at them.
A rifle discharged next to his ear and made his ears ring. Tewksbury stood there and fired frantically, every round finding its target in Matt Blevins’s body.
“Die, you son of a bitch. You took my daughter. You die!” Tewksbury tried to plug Cooper, too, but the man had dropped down out of sight on the porch.
“He killed my pa!” Cooper shouted from hiding. “They murdered Old Man Blevins! They shot him in the back! Get ’em. Cut ’em all down where they stand!”
The fusillade that followed filled the air with choking white gunsmoke. Worse, the men who had been guarding the barn poured forth like ants from an anthill. Each and every one of them screamed at the top of his lungs as he ran to avenge Blevins’s death.
14
“Run like hell!” Slocum’s advice came late. All the ranchers were running as if a pack of mad dogs was snapping at their heels. Slocum whipped out his six-shooter and began firing carefully, reserving a couple rounds. His four shots took down one man and wounded another. Then he was running with the rest of Tewksbury’s invasion force.
“Get on out of here, you hear?” Tewksbury was intent on seeing that as many of his friends as possible were on the road and headed for the safety of his ranch. Caleb had done a good job of rounding up their horses. Only a few men had to ride double, but then there ought to have been many spares because of the men who had fallen to Cooper’s attack.
“Grab yer horse, Slocum,” Tewksbury shouted. “We kin fight ’em another day.”
Slocum waved him on. He had come here to kill Cooper and rescue Lydia and had done neither.
“Catch!” Caleb Tewksbury tossed him a rifle. Slocum levered a round into the chamber and was pleased to see that the young man had given him a fully loaded Henry repeater. Without bothering to respond, Slocum dived for cover in the ditch he had used to get close to the Blevins house before. This time he had to avoid being seen by a couple dozen men running from house and barn, firing wildly and sure of their rout.
Slocum chanced a quick look. The disorderly retreat was as complete as it could be. Tewksbury had lost almost a quarter of his men and that many more were bloodied and might not have much determination to keep up the fight. Then Slocum ducked down and started wiggling back.
He worked his way faster to the house and saw that Cooper had ordered everyone in a total attack. If Tewksbury had planned his mission better, they could have lured Cooper and his men into an ambush. As it was, Cooper’s men hooted and hollered and shot after the rapidly scattering ranchers. Slocum reached the window where he had shot through before. This time he snaked over the sill and flopped onto the floor. He got to his feet, stepped over the bodies of the men he had put down earlier and made a quick search of the house.
“Lydia!” he called again, hoping she would answer. There might not be a chance to call out any louder—or ever again if Cooper returned. Slocum heard nothing stirring inside. He opened doors and poked into closets but failed to find the auburn-haired woman anywhere. Cooper had hidden her somewhere else.
The men from the field milled around and joined those from the barn and the handful of survivors from the house to congratulate themselves. Slocum knew he had only a few seconds before Cooper and some of his lieutenants would come back into the house, but something had been worrying at him like a burr under a saddle blanket.
Working onto the porch on his belly, he went to Matt Blevins’s body. Slocum grabbed a handful of shirt and heaved, rolling the man onto his back. None of the bullets had entered Blevins from the front but three had exited, leaving big wet holes. Rolling him back, Slocum saw that Blevins had taken four rounds in the back. One bullet hole was much smaller than the other three—the three that had gone all the way through the body.
“Cooper, you son of a bitch. You shot your own pa in the back!”
Slocum heard Andy Cooper and several others coming and had to retreat into the house. He pressed against a wall, his six-gun out. He had two rounds left and a rifle with six or seven rounds in it.
“We gotta bury your old man, Andy,” someone said. “Damn shame the way Tewksbury cut him down.”
“Shot him in the back with that rifle of his,” Cooper said. “You can see the holes.”
“Four times, yep,” said another. “He never had a chance. Shot in the back every last damn time!”
Slocum wanted to blurt out that Blevins had been dead when he and Cooper went out onto the porch. Cooper had been supporting his father’s weight—his dead weight. It only appeared that Tewksbury had killed Blevins, leaving Cooper in the clear. Slocum wasn’t sure what the Blevins spread was worth, but it had to be a pretty penny. Now it was all Andy Cooper’s.
“Come on in and let’s have a drink. We can get my pa buried later,” Cooper said. “Shootin’ up those owlhoots made me work up quite a thirst.”
“That the only thing you been doin’ to work up a thirst?” asked another henchman. Slocum tensed. They had to be joking about what Cooper had done to Lydia.
“I need to tend to that some more, but later. I’m tuckered out right now. You didn’t let anything happen to her during the gunfight, did you?”
“I told you that you could trust me, Andy,” the voice said. “She’s got all the comforts of home back there in the barn, even if the room’s a mite small.”
“That’s not all that’s small ’bout her,” Cooper said. “We were—”
The door opened and Cooper started to go inside. Slocum cocked his six-gun and aimed it for the spot where Cooper’s head would appear. But the man stopped.
“What’s that? Hell, can’t you figger it out yourself?” Cooper closed the door and went to tend to whatever problem had come up. Slocum lowered his six-shooter and tried to work through his dilemma. He had little firepower and was in the midst of the ene
my camp. Cooper had dozens of men all het up from winning a gunfight, but killing Cooper had been only half of the reason he had come to the Blevins ranch. Rescuing Lydia had to account for something.
And he knew Cooper was keeping her captive in the barn. He might escape with his own hide intact, but that wasn’t the way John Slocum lived his life. He drifted through the house like smoke on the wind and found a rear window. He knocked out the glass and dropped to the ground. He took a deep breath and looked at the twenty yards between the house and barn. It might as well have been the distance from San Francisco to New York. Boldness would work for him where stealth no longer would.
Straightening, walking as if he were a man being told to go fetch something from the barn, he began walking. Every step he took might be his last. He tried not to cringe at the sound of Cooper’s gang all around the house. But he didn’t turn so any could get a look at his face. He didn’t speed up or slow down. The steady pace brought him to the barn door. Only then did he betray his edginess by ducking fast through the door into the cool interior.
“Lydia?” He called her name softly. If Cooper had tied her up, she wouldn’t be able to come to him. If Cooper had left guards with her, Slocum didn’t want to lure them out until he was sure how many there were. He cocked his head to one side and strained to hear the slightest reply. Nothing. Moving fast, he checked the stalls and went to the rear, where the tack room and a storage room both promised safe places for Cooper to leave the woman.
The tack room stood empty except for the strong scent of leather and saddle soap. Slocum had started to lift the latch on the storage room when he heard men coming. He looked around and saw a ladder leading up to the hayloft. Scrambling as fast as he could without making overt noise, he had barely reached the loft when Cooper came in, flanked by four henchmen.
“You want some help, Andy?”
“Get outta here before I whup you good,” Cooper said, obviously joshing.
“You deserve a little reward after all that’s happened today.” The man shook his head sadly. “Imagine killin’ Old Man like that. Shot him in the back.”
“They’re animals,” Cooper said. “Wait outside and keep a sharp lookout for Slocum. I looked for his body and didn’t see it.”
“Aw, Andy, from all you’ve told us ’bout him, he’s a yellowbelly and probably ran like a scalded dog when he got the chance. He’s with the rest of ’em over at Tewksbury’s place.”
“We’ll mosey on over there when Larsen and his boys get here. Ought to be anytime.”
Slocum tensed at this. Cooper and “Shotgun” Larsen had been thick as thieves down in Texas. If there was any killer more inclined to shoot a man in the back than Andy Cooper, it was Larsen. Mention that he was arriving soon told Slocum the battle that Tewksbury had just lost would be fought—and his side would lose again. Between Cooper and Larsen there wasn’t likely to be anyone left.
If Cooper could shoot his own father in the back, expecting mercy from him in a gunfight was out of the question. This set Slocum’s pulse racing. Cooper held Lydia captive and it was obvious what he was going to do. It didn’t matter to Slocum that Cooper had four henchmen waiting for him outside the barn. He would plug the owlhoot and put an end to his putrid life, even if it meant putting Lydia in more danger.
Slocum started to shinny down the ladder but stopped when a half dozen men came into the barn to tend their horses. Getting past them wasn’t possible. Slocum silently retreated to the loft and looked around. A broken board at the rear of the loft, above the storage room, afforded him hope of getting down without being seen. Slocum pulled the board free and peered down into a narrow stone chimney that had been sealed after the storeroom had been added. Slocum saw he couldn’t fit easily, and taking the rifle with him was out of the question. The fit was too tight. He dropped his gunbelt and clutched the ebony handle of the Colt. Two shots. That was enough to end Cooper’s life.
Slocum pried loose another board, took a deep breath and then slid down the chimney. He fell five feet and then realized he had made a terrible mistake. He found himself wedged into the chimney so tightly he couldn’t move. His arms were stretched above his head, his six-shooter clutched in his right hand. He wiggled, then struggled with increasing alarm when it became obvious he was unable to drop any farther and was unlikely to get back up the narrow chute.
The sounds coming from the room made his attempts to free himself even more frantic.
“Take off that blouse, bitch,” Cooper said. “I want to see you naked.”
“No,” came Lydia’s defiant voice. “I won’t do it—oh!”
Slocum heard cloth tearing and imagined he saw buttons flying across the small room, ricocheting off the walls like pearl bullets.
“Nice,” Cooper said. “Real nice titties you got. What would you say if I licked them?”
“No, you wouldn’t!” The gasp and moan from Lydia told Slocum that Cooper was doing just that. “Oh, your mouth,” the woman gasped out. “You’re sucking my nipples. I’m on fire all over.”
“I’ll set you on fire even more. Get out of that skirt. I want you buck naked.”
“Make me!”
Slocum heard another ripping sound. Had Cooper torn off her skirt? There were small rustling sounds as if he tossed aside her skirt and worked to get her frilly undergarments pulled down around her ankles. The memory of that auburn patch between her legs, the musky odor and the heat boiling from within made Slocum struggle even harder to get free. All he succeeded in doing was creating more horror for himself. A stone came free from the chimney just under his chin and caught between his chest and the rocks lower down, causing pain every time he took a breath. Worse, he got a limited view of the storeroom and what Cooper was doing.
Patches of naked flesh swept past his narrow peephole, and then he got a full view of Cooper holding both of Lydia’s wrists in one hand as he forced her down on a table and fondled her breasts with the other. He moved from one succulent mound to the other, toying with the increasingly taut nip on one and then licking at it noisily before repeating the assault on the other.
“You’re ’bout the tastiest thing I ever sampled,” Cooper said.
“D-don’t sample lower,” Lydia got out. It was as if she had given Cooper an idea that would never have occurred to him.
His free hand parted her thighs. Slocum caught sight of that auburn-furred paradise Lydia had shared with him. But she wasn’t sharing with Cooper. He was taking. The outlaw moved his mouth across her naked belly to the tangled patch. She gasped aloud when he applied his mouth to her most intimate region.
She began to struggle, but his grip was too powerful to escape. He held her wrists easily with his right hand while he moved his left under her buttocks. Lydia arched upward, cramming herself into his face as he did something to her Slocum wasn’t able to see.
“That’s what I like,” Cooper said. “Cooperation.”
Slocum saw Lydia kicking and struggling as the man applied his mouth to her once more. Slocum tensed his shoulders and tried to force more stones in the chimney loose so he could move. If he could get his right hand down, he could thrust his six-gun through the hole and shoot Cooper. It seemed fitting that he would shoot Cooper in the back while he was raping a woman. But as hard as Slocum tried, he couldn’t budge any more stones.
“Turn over. I want to take you like a dog,” Cooper said. Lydia tried to kick him, but his hand caught her ankle and he somehow deftly flipped her over. Slocum caught a glimpse of her breasts as she ended up facedown on the table, bent in such a way that she presented her behind to Cooper.
“So smooth. Smooth and silky and tasty.” Cooper fondled her buttocks and then began kissing them. When Lydia tried to rise up, he pushed her flat on the table.
“Oh, you’re crushing my breasts.”
“Excites you, don’t it?” he said with glee. “Admit it, everything I’m doin’ to you is exciting. Say it. Say it!”
He swatted her taut, naked behind.
“No, I’ll never say anything like that.”
“Say it!” He applied his hand again. Slocum saw the pink outline of Cooper’s hand appear on her snowy white flesh. Lydia wiggled and struggled but her legs parted a little, giving Cooper all the encouragement he needed. “I thought so. You want more than my hand, don’t you?”
“No, yes!”
Cooper thrust his finger into her. From the way his shoulder muscles rippled, he was moving his hand around furiously.
Slocum was forced to watch because he couldn’t get his six-gun lowered enough to stop Cooper. He kicked a little and the toe of his boot caught an outcropping of stone. Slocum pressed down as hard as he could and managed to scoot upward a fraction of an inch before his toe slipped off the soot-covered rock.
He fell back to where he had been, to watch Cooper having his way with Lydia.
“Yeah, baby, round and smooth and so inviting. That’s what you’re doin’, isn’t it? Inviting me to do some more to you?”
“Please,” sobbed out Lydia. “Take your fingers out.”
“All right. I’ll do that because you asked all polite.” For a moment Slocum thought Cooper was going to let the woman go. Then he saw Cooper discard his gunbelt and undo the fly of his jeans. Cooper stepped up, gripped the woman’s hips and pulled her back, forcing her body into the curve of his groin. Lydia cried out as Cooper entered her from behind. The outlaw grunted with pleasure and began stroking back and forth.
Slocum closed his eyes to keep from watching, but he heard the sounds as plainly as if he were in the room with them. He opened his eyes, blinked out soot and watched in fascination, like a bird captivated by a snake, as Cooper finished in a rush.
“Oh, Andy, that was so good,” Lydia said.
For a moment Slocum thought his ears betrayed him. Lydia’s tone wasn’t that of a woman who had just been raped. It was that of a woman who had gotten from her lover what she wanted most.