Slocum #422 (19 page)

“John. John! I can't find her!”

Slocum forced one eyelid up. It took him a second to focus on Sarah Jane's lovely face. He pushed up to one elbow in the narrow bed and tried to make out what bothered her so. Then it hit him. He swung out of bed, his feet hitting the Pullman car floor so hard an echo ran from one end to the other.

“We're not moving,” he said, pulling on his jeans. The heavy blue work shirt got buttoned down fast, and he had his boots on before he strapped the ­six-­shooter to his hip. “Where'd she go?”

“We pulled into Eagle Pass a half hour ago. You were sleeping so soundly I didn't have the heart to wake you.” She smiled shyly. “If you were half as worn out as I was, you deserved the rest.” Then the smile vanished. “I went back to the mail car, thinking Marlene would be with Randolph. They were both gone.”

Slocum got to his feet, started forward, stopped, went back, and kissed Sarah Jane soundly.

“It's not your fault. It's mine for not ­bird-­dogging her after you warned me about the mail clerk.” He rushed forward, swung out, and made his way along the side of the tender.

Mad Tom cursed as he worked on a steam valve. He never looked up as he said, “You better bring me some damned good news, Slocum, or I'll throw you off the train. This here valve's broke, and I can't fix the ­mother-­lovin' son of a bitch.”

“How long before the Bullet's ready to roll?”

“We're only a hunnerd miles outta San Antonio and the valve has to go bust.” Tom looked up. “I'll push the damned Yuma Bullet all the way into San Antonio if I have to. We'll be there in three hours. Less, once we highball on outta here.”

“Take your time,” Slocum said.

Tom swore so sulfurously that Slocum stared at him.

“She done run off, didn't she?” Tom asked.

“With the mail clerk.”

“That puny sprout? Of course she'd run off with somebody like that 'cuz she can wrap him around her little finger.” Tom stared hard at Slocum. “Not that she could ever do a thing like that to
you
.”

Slocum accepted the jibe without comment. He had been duped and hadn't twigged to the real situation until close to when Sarah Jane had fessed up. The way ­Marlene—­the real ­Marlene—­acted since Deming had caused him to begin wondering about their switched identities. From what Sarah Jane explained, the Mark Twain book caused Marlene to think this was possible and ever so naughty.

“Don't go without us,” Slocum said, jumping to the ground.

“I oughta quit, that's what I oughta do.” The engineer returned to his repairs, working himself up into even grander obscenities.

Slocum walked to the mail car. The door had been pushed open and the clerk was nowhere to be seen. He waved to a railroad bull. The man came over, tapping a slungshot against his left palm, as if wondering about Slocum's right to be here.

“The clerk's lit out,” Slocum said. “You see where he went?”

“Don't know if I should even talk to you. The boss's daughter said somebody'd be askin' after ­her—­and him.”

“Morgan Burlison hired me to be her bodyguard. Randolph has kidnapped her.”

“Didn't look like that to me. She and him was all ­lovey-­dovey when they went . . .” He turned and looked in the direction of the road leading from the depot down Eagle Pass's main street.

Slocum ran out, inquired of the station agent, and got a similar reply. Marlene had convinced everyone that he was out to do her wrong. Disgusted, Slocum considered fetching the silver and gold coins he had hidden away and letting Marlene and her beau go off together. But he couldn't do that. Burlison had hired him to safeguard his daughter, even if Slocum had been confused as to her identity much of the way from San Diego. Even taking how he had been duped into account, he had protected her well.

Sarah Jane, too.

He started down the street, considering where the couple would go. He went into the hotel. The clerk was snoring behind the counter and didn't take kindly when Slocum woke him.

“Did a ­dark-­haired woman with a young man register here within the last hour or so?”

“Nope, nobody like that. Was she good looking?” Seeing Slocum's expression, the clerk shrugged. “I woulda noticed.”

Slocum left without a word, then froze on the hotel's front steps. He stared in disbelief as a man hobbled down the center of the main street. How Big Joe Joseph had gotten this far was a wonderment. His leg was all busted up and he used a crutch made from a cottonwood branch. His face had met the wrong side of a prickly pear pad, and his buckskins hung in tatters from his gaunt body. If Slocum had been through hell, Big Joe had come the same way crawling on his belly.

Ducking back into the hotel lobby, Slocum ran through to the rear exit. He came out in an alley not far from the livery stables. If Marlene and her boyfriend weren't in a hotel room, buying horses to cut across Texas or maybe go into Mexico made sense. As Slocum approached the stables, he spotted Randolph with two men, both well dressed. They were arguing. Taking advantage, Slocum went to the front of the stables, where Marlene paced anxiously. He was within a few feet of her when she noticed him. Before she could cry out, he clamped his hand over her mouth, winced as her teeth sank into his flesh, then bodily picked her up and carried her inside.

“Quit fighting me,” Slocum said. “Your pa hired me to get you to San Antonio all safe and sound, and I'm going to do just that. You can run off with Randolph then, but not before I deliver you to your ma.”

“Papa would never let me go with Randolph. Ever!”

Slocum cocked his head to one side as the argument between Randolph and the men intensified. He caught enough now to once more put his hand over the girl's mouth and bodily carry her to an open window at the rear of the livery. Everything the men outside said rang loud and clear.

She fought and tried to scream, then her struggles subsided. Slocum took the chance of putting her down. Marlene's face turned bright red with anger, and before she could blurt out anything, he silenced her again.

“Your swain just bartered you to those men for one hundred dollars.”

“The one in the gray suit's Papa's enemy. Kent Gallardo. He's been trying to force Papa to vote to sell the S&P for months. He . . . he
bought
me?”

“More like Randolph sold you,” Slocum said.

“But he said he loved me.”

“He loves money more, and he didn't bargain very hard to get more than a hundred dollars for you. If Gallardo ransoms you for your pa's vote, something tells me your family's going to be dirt poor.”

“Randolph ­said—”

“I'll take care of them for you,” Slocum said, “if you'll do me a favor.”

“I want to rip his eyes out! I'll feed his entrails to the buzzards. I . . . I'll tie him to the tracks so the Yuma Bullet runs over him!”

“Your pa hired me to do all that,” Slocum said. “All I want is for you to tell a man I've crossed the border, and last you saw of me, I was heading into Mexico. Tell him I'm traveling with Randolph and make up any story you choose as to why you want me dead.”

“All right. You can shoot him down for me. Or whatever you're planning. It sounds awful.”

“Painful,” Slocum said. “He'll suffer in ways you don't want to know about.”

“Who do I tell this to?”

“His name's Big Joe and he won't be hard to find,” Slocum said. Slocum quickly described the bounty hunter.

 • • • 

“She hasn't said a word all the way from Eagle Pass,” Sarah Jane said. “What did you do to her there?”

“Nothing much. We traded favors.”

Sarah Jane looked at him curiously.

“Let's say a problem of mine is hunting down a problem of hers in Mexico.”

“I don't understand.”

Slocum smiled and shook his head. Offering to tar and feather Randolph had been the easy part, especially after he winged Gallardo's bodyguard and chased the railroad magnate off amid a hail of bullets. A broad suggestion that Randolph might escape both tar and feathers and painful torture had set him on the trail for Mexico. After Marlene had told the bounty hunter that Slocum and Randolph were hightailing it into the interior to hide with the Yaqui Indians, he had taken off right away. Slocum reckoned he would overtake Randolph in a day or so. What happened then fired his imagination.

The train whistle sounded three long blasts as the Yuma Bullet pulled into the San Antonio station.

“That's her, Mrs. Burlison,” Sarah Jane said. “She's a lovely woman.”

“I see where Marlene gets her looks.”

Sarah Jane shot him an angry look, but it faded when he pulled her close and gave her a small kiss on the back of the neck. She wiggled her butt against his crotch, which was meant as an invitation, just as Mad Tom applied the brakes and sent them both staggering a step or two.

“Miss Burlison, I'll get your bags,” Sarah Jane called.

“Go to hell. You can both go to hell, where you deserve each other!” Marlene flounced off after giving Slocum a particularly black look.

She went out onto the platform and allowed her mother to hug her. They went off together to a carriage waiting in front of the station.

Slocum and Sarah Jane exited and stood silently, looking around until a ­well-­dressed man came up.

“Mr. Slocum? I am Bertram Tunney, Mr. Burlison's San Antonio manager. He instructed me to give this to you.” Tunney reached into his inner coat pocket and withdrew a bulging envelope.

“I'd hoped for gold, but scrip will do,” Slocum said. Tunney shrugged and walked away to a buggy of his own.

“What are you going to do now, John?”

“Give this to you. You earned it.” He handed her the envelope. “There ought to be three hundred dollars there.”

“I can't take this. It's your money.”

“After what happened with Randolph, do you think Marlene is going to keep you on? She has to blame someone, and blaming me isn't going to be enough for her. Take the money.”

“Very well, John, but what are you going to do?”

“Ride north.” He waited for her to say something more, but she looked down shyly. He put his index finger under her chin and raised her face. Again he wasn't sure who started the kiss. They were both breathless when they broke apart.

“I'll miss you, John.”

“Find something worth doing,” Slocum said. “Being Marlene's maid isn't a fit job.”

“But ­I—”

Slocum turned as tears welled up in her soft green eyes. He hopped down from the platform, went to the engine, and saw that both Mad Tom and the fireman were gone. It took him a few minutes to unfasten the metal plate and fish out the three sacks of gold and silver he had hidden there. He opened one sack and pulled out ten of the ­twenty-­dollar gold pieces and left them on Tom's drop seat. Then he left the rail yard and found a stable willing to sell him a good horse, gear, and supplies adequate to get him a couple weeks into the belly of Texas.

It was twilight when he left San Antonio behind, and the moon was rising as he made camp and prepared some grub. He was just finishing his meal when he heard the sound of an approaching horse. Looking up, he saw Sarah Jane decked out in trail clothes, astride a smallish mare.

“What?” she asked. “You didn't think I could ride?”

“I knew you could,” he said. “I didn't know you could track.”

“I smelled that coffee halfway to San Antonio. Are you going to offer me some?”

Slocum held up his tin cup, willing to give her a lot more than a cup of boiled coffee. He could even tell her about the gold. Later.

Watch for

SLOCUM AND THE REBEL CANYON RAIDERS

423
rd
novel in the exciting SLOCUM series from Jove

Coming in May!