Slocum and the Runaway Bride, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Teaser chapter
TRACKING THE TRACKERS
Slocum slid his Colt from its holster and brought it forward, leveling it on the rock and aiming it directly at one of the men’s heads.
“Sorry to break this up, boys,” he announced in a booming voice.
Both Rome and London jolted to their feet, plates flying, their hands going for their guns.
“Wouldn’t try that if I was you,” Slocum said calmly, and they paused, mid-draw, blinking like owls in the light of a torch. “All I know is that you boys stole my horse and my belongings. Now, that sorta pissed me off, if’n you get my drift.”
The two men below exchanged worried glances, but both their gun hands eased away from their holsters.
“That’s it,” Slocum continued. “Now, I don’t rightly know which one’a you is which, but I’m willin’ to wager I can nail you both before you can clear leather, and me and Mrs. Tanglewood can sort it out later.”
“If you can sort her out, you’re doin’ better than me and half the folks in the county,” the man with the scarless face said.
Tucked into the rocks below Slocum, the woman chuckled softly.
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SLOCUM AND THE RUNAWAY BRIDE
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
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Jove edition / March 2005
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1
At a face-burning, wind-lashing gallop, Slocum wheeled his Appy up one side of the ravine and ducked low to avoid the slugs whizzing past his head.
If the truth were told, he hadn’t expected the Parker brothers to turn around and come at him like this. But he was ready for them.
He hoped.
Suddenly, he reined his Appy hard to the right, toward the shelter of a jutting rock—and hauled back on the reins a half-second later. Quick as a barn cat after a mouse, he leapt from the horse’s back while it was still sliding to a stop, then rolled up to the far side of the rock.
The Appy, Panther by name, scampered out of range at the same time that Slocum took aim and fired back down the draw.
It only took two shots. One for each brother.
They fell from their saddles: Leroy landing clean, and Bill dragging and bouncing from the stirrup for a few yards.
But they were both dead, and they both deserved it. And they were both about as smart as a couple of brain-addled prairie chickens, Slocum thought with a shake of his head.
He stood up as their horses passed below him at a lazy lope. “Panther, fetch,” he called.
While his black and white, leopard-marked gelding set out after the fugitive mounts at a brisk trot, Slocum slowly walked down toward the bodies.
Bill came first. Bank robbery, murder, and many minor charges, too numerous to mention, lay at Slocum’s feet. Bill had been convicted of two murders back up in Flagstaff and scheduled to hang, but he’d escaped, aided by his brother, Leroy.
Leroy, too, lay dead. The charges against him had been the same as those against his brother, Bill, except that Leroy had escaped arrest, trial, and sentence. And had then come in at the last second to break his brother out of the hoosegow.
The two had ridden away, leaving four more bodies in their wake. After a sheriff was killed, and then half a posse, the authorities, at their wits’ end, had finally hired Slocum to get the job done. It was one that they were unable to do themselves, and one that Slocum was happy to take: The Parkers had done enough damage during their time that the reward for them was five thousand dollars a head, or ten thousand for both.
He nudged Leroy with the toe of his boot. The body limply gave to the pressure, then fell back.
Panther lazily returned, pushing the outlaws’ horses before him. Slocum hadn’t had Panther too long—less than six months, to be exact—and he had figured out in the first couple of days why his former owner had been so keen to sell.
The horse was a cutting fool. He’d cut cows, sheep, goats, dogs, or people—anything that was milling in a mob—and he’d retrieve strays all on his lonesome.
“A body’d think that was a real useful characteristic in a workin’ animal,” Slocum mused as he hoisted Leroy’s body across his mount’s saddle and proceeded to rope him into place.
“ ’Ceptin’ you do it all the time, Panther,” he muttered, “and with no warnin’ whatsoever. You big ol’ lunkhead.”
Panther whiffled air through those big freckled nostrils, and gazed at him, calm and unconcerned.
“Everytime we pass a herd of anything, from cows to goats to prairie dogs,” Slocum continued as he roped old Leroy in place, “you got to rush in and cut somethin’ out of it. Now, that’s a fine trait, but I can see where that’d be a real handicap to a man tryin’ to do a job. It can get kind of unsettlin’, you know?”
He reached under the belly of Leroy’s horse to grab the rope he’d just dangled over Leroy himself, and continued addressing Panther. “Especially when a feller ain’t ex-pectin’ it. Especially when he’s got no need for a goddamn pronghorn or coyote or wild burro right at that minute.”
Panther paid no attention and started to graze on the sparse vegetation. Slocum snugg
Now, Slocum wasn’t particularly fond of hunting down men for money. He’d been hunted himself, and he knew that sometimes, charges could be unfounded.
But he’d seen Bill and Leroy shoot down two of those men himself, and to his mind, there was no question of innocence. They’d done the deeds, and now they had to pay for them.
It was a simple matter of letting the law take its due and proper course, and Slocum being an agent of the law.
Sort of sideways, that was.
“Bounty hunter” wasn’t a title Slocum relished, and he’d be glad to get these bodies back to Flagstaff and turned in. He would be able to slip out of the bounty-hunter cloak as easily as he’d slipped into it, and he’d have ten thousand to boot.
Ten thousand dollars could buy a whole lot of fine cigars, good champagne, and all the loving a man could ever wish for.
He snugged up the last rope, picked up the Parker brothers’ reins, and whistled for Panther.
The bank teller in Flagstaff counted out the last of the money—in gold coins and hundreds and fifties—and Slocum stuck the last of the bills in his silver money clip.
Even with the rest of the cash tucked into his pockets, that money clip was plain overloaded.
He tipped his hat to the teller, said, “Nice doin’ business with you,” and walked out into the afternoon sunshine.
It had been a week since he’d brought in the Parkers, and he was getting to know Flagstaff pretty well. More than he wanted to, anyhow. Additionally, he figured it was time to get ol’ Panther out of that stable and on the trail again.
If Slocum had restless feet, Panther had hooves just as itchy.
He stopped by the hotel and picked up his bedroll and his saddlebags, and then collected Panther. He figured he’d head down to around Phoenix. He hadn’t been there in a while, and there was a certain gal he’d like to drop in on: beautiful and buxom Rosie, at Stella’s place.
For Slocum, it was more than reason enough.
Three days later, when he had Rosie weighing heavy on his mind and was riding into the high and beautiful red rock country about halfway to Phoenix, circling wide of Prescott on purpose—wanting no truck right at the moment with the Whiskey Row crowd—with most of his newly earned fortune tucked into his saddlebags, disaster struck.
All he remembered was that he’d been riding through a crisp, clear morning alongside a sun-dappled creek, when somebody leapt down from the rocks above. The bush-whacker had jumped right on top of him and slugged him over the head.
Hard.
The only thing he had to go on to identify the thief was that he’d worn black britches. Slocum had caught just a glimpse of the goddamn thief’s thigh before he’d passed out.
And now, here it was, coming nightfall. His money was gone—at least, what was in his saddlebags—his horse was gone, and all his vittles and possessions along with it.
“Great,” he muttered as he sat up and felt the back of his head. There was quite a goose egg. “Just perfect.”
On the off chance that those owlhoots hadn’t made off with Panther, he whistled loudly.
He was instantly sorry. His forehead was throbbing, and the high-pitched blast of air through his teeth nearly knocked his head off his shoulders.
Scowling, Slocum sighed.
No Panther.
He bet they’d rolled him, too, those bastards. He hadn’t thought to check. Immediately, his hand dropped to his side, and what he found turned that scowl into the briefest of smiles.
Whoever had made off with everything else hadn’t thought to take his guns. That was something, anyway. He patted his pocket, and said, “Well, I’ll be goddamned!” when he found his money clip still there, too, and still fat with bills.
He figured that the sonofabitch had been too busy thumbing through his saddlebag cash to bother with small things like a couple of pistols. Or a knife, he thought, when he ran a thumb around inside his boot top and felt his blade resting there.
Goddamn idiot, Slocum thought, and crouched beside the stream.
As he scooped up a handful of water and splashed his face, his newly cleared head began calculating his next move.
A man didn’t steal from John Slocum and get away with it.
A man didn’t take John Slocum’s money, and most of all, he didn’t make off with Slocum’s horse.
Not if he wanted to see old age and a rocking chair, that was.
Slowly, Slocum stood up. He glanced skyward. There was still some time to track them this afternoon. He had maybe three hours before it would be too dark to go any farther.
His head still throbbing, he set out on foot. He was hoping that the yahoo—actually, yahoos: there were several of them, by the tracks—who was riding Panther just happened to cross paths with a herd of real jumpy pronghorn.
But the strangest thing happened about five minutes later.
He discovered he was trailing three riders. Three sets of hoofprints, counting Panther’s. And Panther was carrying weight, as well. Which meant two of them must have been riding double until they lucked on to him.
He’d followed the trail back into the trees about thirty yards when he found one of his canteens lying smack in the middle of the broken brush and bent weeds that marked their track.
He picked it up and looked at it. Scowling, he hung its loop over his shoulder and walked on. Had they dropped it? It seemed pretty strange that a rider would be that careless out here.
If you dropped a canteen, you’d surely notice it. Wouldn’t you?
Then about another fifty yards farther along, he found a brown package. It looked familiar, and when he opened it, all he could do was shake his head. Why the hell would somebody drop his beef jerky?
It was Slocum’s all right, wrapped in paper from the mercantile where he’d bought it, and the contents bore the imprint of Slocum’s teeth, where he’d chewed off a hunk that morning.
They’d have had to dig down in his saddlebags to find it.
He paused long enough to take another bite of the newly found jerky before he started walking again.
He didn’t know who was in front of him, but he was feeling a bit kinder toward at least one of them. At least, for the moment.
It looked like the horse thief was dropping crumbs for him.
But why?
2
Beth Tanglewood, riding behind the Grangers at the end of a rope, surreptitiously reached back once more into the Appy’s saddlebags, and pulled out what turned out to be a thick roll of bills.
She gulped air in surprise, then hid her hands when Rome turned to look at her.
“What?” he demanded, his dark, scarred face glaring at her ominously.
By this time she should be used to it, she thought, but she still found herself wincing at the sheer ugliness of that scarred visage.
“N-nothing,” she stuttered.
“Well, shut the hell up, then, missus!” Rome Granger said, and then turned, ignoring her again.
Beth let out a careful little sigh. Rome and London Granger, who had obviously been raised by optimistic parents, hadn’t lived up to their worldly names. They were hired watchdogs and retrievers—in this case, hired by her so-called husband.
Damn Bass Tanglewood, anyway!
But they hadn’t returned her to Bass yet, not by a long shot, and at the moment, there were more important things to consider. The wad of money she’d hastily slipped under her leg, for example.
Making sure that Rome and London had their eyes on the trail in front of them instead of on her, Beth freed the roll and stared at it. Whoever that man was back there, he’d been rich.
Frankly, at the time she’d been amazed that Rome and London hadn’t gone through his pack roll, but she supposed they were happy just to have his horse and leave him for dead.
