Slocum and the James Gang

by Jake Logan

  “I can decipher them. He must have placed the location where the gold was being taken into the code. That means someone else is joining Jesse.”

  “It might mean someone else is joining Jesse, but the cipher doesn’t have to reveal the location of the gold anymore. It might give a rendezvous point since Jesse’s already got the gold.”

  “He’s probably stashed it somewhere safe by now. I wish I was a better scout. I could have followed and watched.” Audrey heaved a deep sigh.

  “We might be able to track him together, if you can get me on the right trail.”

  “You are good at that sort of thing, aren’t you, John?”

  He grinned and said, “I’m good at all manner of things.”

  She gave him an appraising look, then wheeled her horse about and set off at a brisk walk. He shook the cobwebs from his head, then mounted. It didn’t surprise him that he was a little woozy. The pellet had grazed his skull and shaken him up. He urged his mare to greater speed to catch up with Audrey, then he slowed. From behind he got a good view of the her riding form—and her own womanly form. When she half turned to look back to see if he was keeping up, he got a silhouette view of her that set his heart to beating just a little faster. The gentle bobbing up and down made her into a vision of pure sexiness.

  “There,” she said, coming to a halt. “This is the trail they took over the hills.”

  “Due west is Taos. To the southwest is Encantado. That’s where I’d bet he’s headed.”

  “Why’d Jesse want to go to a nothing of a town like Encantado?”

  Slocum explained how the gang had ridden down on the town and seized it as the first of what the outlaw expected to be a series of rapid conquests.

  “This is amazing,” Audrey said. “You told me what the gang intended doing, but somehow I discounted it as being too completely outrageous. Jesse James is actually going to establish a country for the Knights of the Golden Circle.”

  “He’s going to try. It’ll take more than one sleepy, dusty town and a small mountain of gold to bring the entire territory under his sway.”

  “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

  Slocum just stared at her, wondering what she meant. But he pulled his eyes off her to the Sangre de Cristos rising a few miles beyond. They had ridden through the foothills, but the mountains themselves were rugged, ragged, and difficult to cross. Unless you were a thunderstorm.

  “Lightning,” Slocum said. He had seen the flash and the thunder came a few seconds later, spooking his horse. “That storm’s boiling up over the mountains and coming right at us.”

  “There’s no point going after Jesse James in a rainstorm,” she said. “We’d better hole up somewhere.”

  “I saw a likely spot a quarter mile back along the trail.”

  “The cave?”

  Audrey continued to surprise him.

  “I wanted to be sure we weren’t riding past a couple of the gang waiting to ambush us. That would have been a great spot.”

  “I know. I thought the same thing. But nobody’d disturbed the dirt in front of the cave, except for some small animals. I didn’t see any bear tracks.”

  Again she surprised him with her observation. All he had wanted to be sure of was the lack of men with rifles trained on them as they rode past. They returned to the cave and a quick look at the terrain around the cave confirmed what Audrey had said. Coyotes and maybe a wolf had entered the cave—and left—but nothing bigger. No sign of a puma or bear.

  Slocum jumped to the ground as the first watery fist struck at his face. He pulled down his hat to protect himself, then tugged hard to lead his horse into the cave. The entrance was small but immediately inside widened enough for two horses to be stabled for the night.

  “It’s good if we sleep between them and the weather,” Audrey said. “The storm’s getting downright bad.”

  “You’re almost soaked,” Slocum said. She had followed him in. The brief added time she was outside had seen her drenched by the downpour. He liked the look of her blouse stuck against her skin. He could see every delightful contour and imagine even the moles and freckles.

  “What are you staring at, mister?” she said with mock severity. “You never seen a woman this wet before?”

  “Not recently.”

  “Then I’d better get out of these clothes and dry them. If I had a fire, that is.”

  Slocum hobbled their horses at the back of the cave, then hurried out to gather what dried wood he could find. By the time he had returned, he was soaked to the skin, too.

  He stopped just inside the mouth of the cave and stared. Audrey had shed all her clothing and sat with the blanket wrapped around her. Or rather, the blanket was almost wrapped around her. Enough bare skin showed to give him a tantalizing view of her breasts, her legs, and even a hint as she moved of the tangled thatch between those shapely thighs.

  “Don’t just stand there,” she said. “Start a fire. I want to warm up.”

  “Right away,” he said. As he worked, he found it increasingly difficult to concentrate because Audrey had dropped the blanket and moved behind him, working off his gun belt and coat, vest and shirt, then starting on his jeans. As the last button of his fly popped open, she caught at the fleshy handle that stuck up from his groin.

  He gasped when she began moving it up and down like a pump.

  “Hard to get the fire started with you doing that,” he grated out.

  “Yes, it is hard,” she agreed, putting her cheek against his bare back but never relinquishing her hold on him. Her hand moved up and down slowly, giving him lightning flashes to match those outside. The rain hammered down but they were safe in the cave. When he finally ignited the wood, they had a chance to be dry also.

  But by this time neither of them paid a whole lot of attention to laying out their clothes so they’d dry faster. They were locked in each other’s arms, kissing passionately and moving with increasing need, their bodies sliding back and forth. Slocum wanted everything but he found himself with a woman whose damp skin made it hard to hang on. Audrey slipped and slid until she was in the position she wanted.

  On hands and knees, she looked over her shoulder at him.

  “Go on,” she urged. “I’m feeling lusty, like an animal. Take me like an animal. I—” He cut her off by moving behind, giving her rounded butt a quick slap and then moving forward even more. He gripped the fleshy half-moons of her ass and parted them slightly to give himself a direct shot inward. His hips levered forward, the bulbous tip of his manhood rubbed along her moist nether lips, and then he sank into her heated center.

  It was his turn to be speechless. The sensations flooding his body robbed him of all rational thought. All he knew burned at his groin, in his loins. He gripped her waist and pulled her backward. Her ass fit the curve of his body perfectly and they remained unmoving for what seemed forever. She surrounded his length totally with warmth and increasing wetness as her desires mounted.

  Then Slocum could remain still no longer. He pulled back, then surged forward at the same time he pulled on her waist. She got into the rhythm and soon all he needed to do was balance himself. She was thrusting her hips back as he moved forward so they collided with growing power. He sank deeper into her with each thrust until the power began to take its toll on him. His control slipped away.

  She reached down through their legs and began fondling his dangling sac, which tightened even more at her touch. With her cheek resting on the blanket, she let out one long, low moan after another.

  “Hurry, John. I . . . I can’t stand more. Faster, go faster.”

  He obliged. He felt the friction burning at him, at her, consuming them both. When he reached the point of no return, a thunderclap outside marked their mutual release. Another eye-dazzling bolt followed and then even Audrey’s moans of pleasure were drowned out by the crashing of rain against the rocks.

  Spent, Slocum slipped forward. His arms wrapped around her and held her
close. She shivered now so he pulled the blanket around them.

  “This is so nice, John, so nice.” She began to drift off, but just before she fell sound asleep, Slocum heard her mutter, “Gold, so much gold.”

  Then he let the sounds of the storm lull him to sleep, too, with visions of gold shooting through his dreams.

  14

  Slocum stirred and reached out. Audrey wasn’t beside him. He sat up and reached for his six-shooter, but there wasn’t any cause. She was hunkered down beside the fire. When Slocum had lit it, the fire was low with only a few twigs to fuel it. Audrey had found enough wood to stoke it up and dry her clothing.

  “There,” she said, not turning. She had sensed he was awake. “Your clothes are washed and dried.”

  “Washed?”

  “From walking through the rain,” she said. Audrey turned, brushed back tangled hair from her eyes, and said, “So how do we find the gold?”

  Slocum laughed. She was as single-minded about the shiny gold metal as he was.

  “Jesse was on his way to Encantado,” he said. “He wouldn’t stash the gold in town, though. He told Zeke to put the symbols in the other cave to tell somebody else where the gold would be kept.”

  “So Zeke didn’t know what the cipher meant?” Audrey nodded slowly as she thought on this. “But Jesse’s not riding around New Mexico with the gold.”

  “This was a small amount of what he likely has. The real question is who is he giving directions to? Who’s going to decipher the code on that cave wall and find their way to the gold?”

  “He’s recruiting men steadily now. I got a telegram from my editor in Kansas City saying some of Jesse’s cousins are on the way here. Or at least they’ve left Missouri and are riding west. Where else would they be going?”

  “So he’s making sure his family knows where the gold is.” Slocum dressed slowly, aware of Audrey watching him closely. He strapped down his gun belt before he said anything more. “Is this like a last will and testament—his legacy?”

  “He’s a shrewd man,” Audrey said. “He might want Frank or one of his cousins to continue the revolt if he’s killed.”

  “Jesse thinks he’ll live forever,” Slocum said. It was possible that Jesse James had changed over the years since he had ridden with him, but Slocum doubted it. The gold was intended to pay off soldiers like Berglund and others throughout the territory. Jesse might give them the key to decipher the code so they could retrieve the gold and perform their duties to the Knights of the Golden Circle. He might even be leaving the precious metal for gunrunners as middlemen in the illicit trade of selling rifles to the Indians.

  There wasn’t a whole lot Slocum didn’t think Jesse James was capable of doing, as long as it was illegal.

  “We ought to try to find the gold.” Audrey’s tone was almost plaintive.

  Slocum started to ask her about the stack of wanted posters she had shown to Sheriff Narvaiz, then reconsidered. He didn’t want to know the answer. She might have shot Zeke to protect her investment in Slocum. Zeke was a newcomer to the outlaw trail and didn’t have a price on his head. For all Slocum knew, the wanted poster Audrey had only paid for John Slocum being delivered alive and kicking—so he could kick his last at the end of a rope.

  “Why are you looking at me so strangely, John?”

  “Never seen such a lovely bounty hunter,” he said.

  “You mean treasure hunter. I fully intend to recover the gold the James Gang has stolen.”

  “And turn it in for a reward?” He read the answer in the shock on her face. “I didn’t think so.”

  “I can be many things to many men, can’t I?” Audrey flounced around, kicking at the fire and looking out into the bright, clear spring day. “My editor ought to be waiting for a new story from me anytime now.”

  “What do you get paid for your reporting?”

  “Not nearly enough. That’s why I have my eye on the stolen gold.”

  “You’d steal what’s already been stolen?” The thought amused Slocum because that was the way he considered the gold. It didn’t rightly belong to Jesse because he had stolen it, so stealing from a thief made it all right to keep the gold for himself.

  “You make it sound . . . wrong.”

  “Do you think you could decode the cipher in the cave?”

  “I was on my way there when I came across you at the wrong end of a shotgun. If I can decipher the location, I—we—can wait for Jesse to leave it unguarded and then take it for ourselves.”

  Slocum only nodded. Jesse wouldn’t post a guard on it. Why go to the trouble of hiding it if you kept sentries looking over it? What Slocum worried about more was Audrey claiming she wasn’t able to figure out the message, then going to retrieve the gold herself.

  “Well, let’s ride. I’m anxious to become quite rich.”

  Slocum kicked out the fire, took the hobbles off the horses, and led them outside into the bright morning sunlight. The day was about perfect for riding and it took them almost no time to return to the cave where the encrypted message had been left. Slocum noted how Audrey made a point of lifting her chin and pretending not to see what the coyotes had done to Zeke as they rode past the outlaw’s body. In another day there wouldn’t be any flesh remaining on his bones. In a month, even the bones would be scattered and Zeke would be returned to the earth.

  It was more fitting a burial than he deserved. Slocum still pictured the huge bores of the shotgun pointed at him. He touched the scab forming on the side of his head where the single pellet had almost killed him. Zeke’s ambition had far outstripped his friendship.

  “The wagon!” Audrey said, excited. “It’s—”

  “Abandoned,” Slocum told her. He dismounted and looked around. The heavy rain had scrubbed the ground clean. No one had entered the cave since the rain had stopped sometime around dawn.

  “We should be careful about leaving our footprints,” Audrey said. “Is there any way we can get in and out without signaling that we’ve been here?”

  “We can walk along the rocks almost to the cave mouth. If you jump, you can miss the dirt right in front of the cave and then inside there’s nothing but rocky floor.”

  “Well, all right,” Audrey said, dubious of the scheme. She watched Slocum traverse the rocks, then gather his legs under him and launch through the air. He missed the rocky part by inches and left a deep heel print in the mud.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, kneeling and using a flat rock to move mud around and smooth over the depression he’d made. It took only a few seconds but if they had tromped into the cave and then out, even stepping in their own tracks as they retreated, it would have been the work of an hour to erase the prints. Even worse, the effort would be obvious to anyone noticing how the mud had formed in ridges and ripples from the wind. The careful work he did on the heel print would be apparent, too, if someone looked but they’d have to go over the ground far more carefully to find his handiwork.

  “Are you ready, John?” Audrey stood on the same rock and chewed her lower lip as she concentrated on the jump. “Here I come!”

  She arced through the air but would have come down short of the rocky cave floor where Slocum stood if he hadn’t reached out, caught her around her trim waist, and swung her about to lightly set her down.

  “That was quite the experience,” she said, trying to pat her hair into place and failing. She smoothed her skirt and then went directly to the message written on the wall.

  Slocum saw how water had seeped into the cave and tiny rivulets had blurred part of the coded message. He stood back, lit a lucifer, and looked at the entire wall, trying to decipher what Zeke had written. He finally gave up. Audrey muttered to herself, ran her fingers over some of the more indistinct symbols, and finally turned to him, a smile on her lips.

  “I’ve figured it out. Many of the symbols are common to other Knights of the Golden Circle caches. The only spot where I had to work at all hard to figure it out was here.” She tapped the spot were
many of the symbols were smudged from the rainwater dripping over them. “This gives the location.”

  “Back the way we came?”

  “On the other side of the pass and, if I’m right, about five miles north of Encantado.”

  “I was right about Jesse not keeping the gold with him. He’s not the kind to spend the night on the trail in a downpour. He’d want a roof over his head and a bottle of tequila in his hand.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me, John. I can sense it. Why don’t you trust me?”

  “We might get ourselves shot up at any instant. Jesse’s gang is on the move everywhere in these parts.”

  “So you’re worried about my safety? How sweet.” Audrey went to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You don’t have to. After all, I saved your life.”

  Slocum wasn’t sure what she was saving it for. She might need him to fight off Jesse’s gunmen so she could get to the gold, or she might be saving him for the sheriff. He couldn’t discount the possibility that Audrey planned both. Find the gold, then turn him in to the sheriff so she could both collect the reward on his head and take the gold for herself.

  “We know the trail,” he said. “The hardest part will be leaving the cave so nobody’ll know we were here.” And he was right. Scrambling up the rocks left signs he couldn’t hope to erase, but they were in such places that only someone looking for them would notice.

  The ride back across the hills went fast, but Slocum had miscalculated how long it would be for Zeke’s bones to vanish. As they rode past the spot where the outlaw had died, no trace remained. Some larger predator had dragged off the body. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . .

  By late afternoon they approached a low hill that seemed to just pop out of the ground. It was covered with lush grass and more than a few trees, mostly piñon and juniper. It didn’t look like the sort of place where a cave might just open up, and it wasn’t.

  “Buried,” Audrey said in disgust. “That must be what they’ve done with it. But it’ll be easier to find since the turned dirt will be fresh.”