Slocum and the Diamond City Affair (9781101612118) (15 page)

He nodded, his attention centered on the darkening country outside the shade. Then he listened hard and put his finger on her mouth. He'd heard a noise—the sound of something under someone's foot snapping.

“They are coming,” she whispered and sucked in her breath.

“Real easy,” he said in her ear and kissed her on the cheek. She quickly clutched his head and kissed him hard.

His hand tightened on the pistol grip. He heard the sound of more soles scraping, and the brittle grass complained. His heart pounded hard beneath his throat.

18

Time for him to move away from Lucia. He rose and waved for her to stay. In the dim light, he saw her cross herself. They were coming across the open ground. One of them was dragging his leg; obviously he had been injured. The other person, not looking too steady, held a rifle.

“Halt,” Slocum ordered.

The rifle bearer shot from the hip and the .45 in Slocum's hand exploded. His target screamed. Slocum drew a bead on the other silhouette and shot at him. The orange flash of that man's pistol went off into the dirt. Slocum shot him again.

“Did you get them?” Lucia whispered as the baby began to cry.

“I'm not certain. You and the baby stay here until I know for sure.”

She agreed, quietly comforting the child in her arms.

His injured foot hurt to walk on. He stood outside the shade in the twilight and reloaded his handgun. With that task complete and the pistol cocked, he started for the two downed outlaws. When he drew closer, he heard the rifleman complaining in Spanish.

He crossed the ground quickly and kicked the rifle away with his sore foot, pointing his six-gun at the man. “You Valdez?”

“Who are you, hombre?”

“My name is Slocum. I'm the man who shot you. I've been gunning for you for what you did to a young woman named Nana in the mountains.”

“I never did anything to any woman.”

Slocum reached down and grabbed his wrist. Then he jerked the three-fingered claw up in the air to see the outline. “Yes. You are one of the bastards who raped her.”

“I'm bleeding to death. Do something for me.”

“If you were drowning in a well, I wouldn't do anything but piss on you.”

“You are not human,” Valdez complained.

“Yeah, I am. Outlaws like you never earned one tear from me.”

“I hope you burn in hell.”

“You will first.” Slocum found the other one on the ground, breathing his last. Satisfied, he gathered their weapons and took them back to the shade. He had no problem turning his back and leaving the two men to die. Valdez would soon expire, and his compadre would slip away even sooner.

“Are they dead?” she whispered.

“They will be soon.”

He could see in the little light left that she was holding herself tightly. He hugged her to him. “The baby is all right?”

“He is fine. The shots upset him, but he is asleep now.”

“This is about over.”

She stood on her toes and kissed him hard on the mouth. He nodded, squeezing her warmly, then went back to check on the two dying men. Valdez's compadre had no pulse, and neither did Valdez. He closed the outlaw's blue eyes and stood up to look at the array of stars overhead.

One more rapist to find—Gorman. That might require more strength than he had; if that rapist stayed inside Old Man Clanton's fortress, Slocum might not be able to get to him. If Gorman ever left the fortified ranch, he'd sure enough run him down. But he had better things to do right now than to worry about that worthless scum.

He ducked at the roof edge and came under the shade, and once well inside he straightened.

She hissed at him.

“Coming. They're no problem to anyone anymore.”

She raised the light blanket for him to join her in the shadowy light. He pulled off his boots—the right one carefully—and quickly shed his clothing. The gun holster was rebuckled and set beside where he kneeled to join her on the pallet.

Under the light covers, she pressed her ripe body and belly against him and her hot mouth sought his. She was so hungry for his affection, he hoped that she did not bust her heart in her anxious search for some escape from her loneliness. Her hand soon clutched his half erection, moved him on top of her, and started it inside her vagina. In seconds, he pumped his hard-on upward into her tunnel. They were coupled and the rise in her belly was easily surmountable. Both were pounding away in matched efforts with no sense of time or place in their wild abandon.

Their hard breathing sounded like wind-broke horses gasping for air. Time and again their hungry mouths fed on each other. Then they sped up, hunching each other until at last, deep in his sac, lightning struck his balls and a volcano shot off into her depths. Depleted, they both collapsed, with him being careful not to crush her.

“Oh.” She huffed. “Oh, how wonderful you are. I never felt like this before.”

“Maybe you weren't so lonely back then. But I have never felt so excited in my life. Some man needs you.” Her small breasts rose and fell between them; she was still short of breath. They lay on their sides and recovered. Her hands could not resist jacking him off.

They kissed and honey seeped from her mouth into his. They slept some, then woke up and had more involvement again. The third time they awoke, his balls screamed for relief, and he hugged her to his chest until his erection grew and she put him in from the backside.

The baby woke them at dawn. She quickly half dressed and soon had her son in her arms. A rose light of dawn crept over the distant sawtooth mountains. After she fed her child and set him in his cradle, she made Slocum some breakfast of fresh tortillas and coffee.

He finished the meal and looked up at her. “I'm going to bury those outlaws in a dry wash today.”

“Then you will leave me?”

“I will stay another night—give my foot a chance to heal up some more. Then I must go.”

“I savvy, but I will cry when you go away.” She pulled his face down to kiss him and put his hand on her exposed breast. He eased it over the tight form. He really felt sorry for her, but he could not take her with him, nor could he stay. But he would send a couple of pack mule loads of supplies back for her.

His morning was spent saddling his horse and dragging the corpses by their feet with a rope tied on the saddle horn to a place where he could collapse a dry wash wall to cover them. Then he used a short-handled shovel to dig out the wall and let it fall in on the still bodies. He limped through it all on his still-sore right foot.

When he finished, he bathed and washed his clothing in a rock-mortar stock tank. Lucia came to talk to him while his clothing dried. She slipped into his arms and smiled confidently up at him. “I have you captured.”

“For now, girl, you have me.”

“You must be tired. After all that work, take a siesta. I will bring your clothing when they are dry.”

He agreed, kissed her, and went to lie down for a nap. A pounding headache racked his brain when she woke him. One look and she told him to sit there.

“Do you have a headache?” she asked, peering into his eyes.

He held his head and agreed, not certain about the cause. The hammerlike thumps made him wonder what was wrong inside his skull.

“I can make you some willow bark tea and stop it. Can you hold the baby? He is crying,” she said and went to get him.

Slocum took the small fellow in his arms to hold and talk to him. He soon settled down, and she busied herself making the tea with boiling water. In a few minutes, she took back her son and left him holding a large tin cup of the brew.

The boy, who she called José, stopped his snuffling once she changed his diaper.

With the cup in his hand, Slocum blew on the brew so it did not scald his tongue. He was anxious to get the medicine into his system to stop the pounding in his head, not to mention the throbbing in his foot.

“What should we do with their guns and their saddles?” she asked.

“You may sell them or your man can sell them. They will bring some money.”

She nodded that she understood. “Did they have any money?”

“Not much. I only found a few dollars on them.” He dug out the handful he had collected and tried to give it to her.

“No, you will need it to find that other
bastardo
.” But his insistence prevailed and she took it.

A while after he drank the tea, his headache began to recede, and his aching foot felt a little better too. Lucia decided it was time to dig out the rest of the cactus spines still in his foot, which were red and starting to fester. She got out her sewing needle and carefully worked the leftover spines out of his foot, though each one made him wince in pain. Finally, she was done, and she washed his foot, then sent him to lie down on the pallet.

When the sun set, they made love twice and finally went to sleep with her naked body clinging to his under the blanket that kept them warm in the cool night. Slocum dreaded the ride back and leaving her openness and the generous gift of her young body. Even pregnant she was a love child with tender, sweet ways not many women ever shared with a man. Like they were afraid to expose themselves and then be hurt.

He rode off the next morning, heading north and feeling sad to have to part from Lucia. He stopped in St. Thomas, arranged to send supplies to Lucia, and spent the night with Teresa. She left him little opportunity to sleep, trying hard to prove to him that she was the best woman for him in all of Mexico and that he should stay there with her. But he left the village and her asleep to wander north the next day until midafternoon, when he found some cottonwood shade to sleep in for a few hours. He woke in the night, gnawed on some hard beef jerky, and rode on north under the stars in a groggy state. Late the next day he reached the Peralta Springs Ranch, where he planned to cross the border.

The good food there revived him some and he went to bed early, realizing the handsome older woman Carmellia would probably join him in the night. He was not disappointed, for she came to his hammock after midnight.

He was awake as she hurried to undress beside his swing. She whispered, “Oh, I wondered for how long you would be gone.”

Then she slipped into his arms like she belonged there. Her fine, pear-shaped breasts rested on his chest when she reached under and inserted him in her vagina. His erection was stiff enough by then to stay inside of her, and she squirmed on top of him. Then she bent over and kissed him hard. “Oh, you are ready so quick. What a pleasure you are to me.”

She hunched at his growing sword and let out small sighs of pleasure. “Oh, how I have dreamed you would come back to visit me.”

In dreamland with her riding his shaft, he kneaded her breasts and she closed her eyes in the starlight at the pleasure she enjoyed from being in his arms. Then they changed positions and he climbed on top of her, poking his way to heaven atop her flat belly and savoring every moment of his capture. Their pelvic bones smashed their pubic hair in a gritty grinding as he sought her depths. On and on they went until at last he felt on the brink and he signaled to her he was about to close on this session. She wrapped her legs around him and strained, then they both came—hard—and fell out into a world of faint, free-falling through space.

Excited at her successful ending, she smothered him with kisses and slipped off the hammock. “I must go now, big hombre.”

In minutes, she was dressed, the shawl covering her head. He studied the silhouette of her figure standing over him against the starry sky before she kissed him again, and he nodded in approval. “God bless you.”

Then she left, silent as the night wind that swept across his face. Whew. She was some woman and he was the fortunate receiver of her love. Damn, he knew some neat women in his world. He wondered if the man he had hired had delivered Lucia her supplies. Now maybe she and the baby had better nutrition than simply beans all the time.

He slept some more before the ranch came alive in the predawn. Where in the hell would he find Gorman? A question he'd asked himself a hundred times since he started out of Sonora for the Arizona Territory. Still a half-day's ride out of Tombstone, he saddled his horse. Several vaqueros spoke about the handsome gelding.

“Ah,” he agreed. “He not only looks good, but he's as tough as that old Roman-nosed goose I rode over here a few weeks ago.”

The men laughed with lots of “
Sí
's.” They were a tough lot. Desert vaqueros were a brand all their own; they were always floured in dust and ready for fun. They could rope better than most any ranch hands in the West. And they used riatas, the braided strands cut full-length from a raw steer hide and lubricated with sheep fat. They dally roped because they needed to let the rope slip on the saddle horn when roping big stock and avoid the full weight slamming to the end. He loved to simply watch them catch hind hooves at roundup.

He also liked that they accepted him as one of them. The feeling of belonging there was good. To be in a fraternity with such tough men was an honor few gringos could brag about.

After breakfast, he rode on to Carla Hunton's cat house in Tombstone, where he planned to headquarter and from there look for Gorman. Hopefully he wasn't at Old Man Clanton's ranch, but Slocum needed to find out either way. Someone in the city knew the outlaw's whereabouts and he wanted the address and to get this business over and be gone.

There was always the fear that someone would get drunk somewhere and be asked, “Where's this Slocum at?” and that someone would spill the beans to the bounty hunter asking. “I seed him last week in Tombstone.” That would be all it took, and some kid looking for a name for himself or some gritty old reward finder would ride over and jump him. Old or young, they all wanted the price on his head and the fame for whatever two cents that was worth.

Slocum dismounted at the livery and boarded his horse. Then he walked the four blocks across town to Carla's place, packing his saddlebags and rifle. When he slugged up the six stairs to the porch, the front door popped open, and one of the girls in a white shift held her finger to her lips for him to be quiet. He removed the big sombrero and tiptoed inside the doorway. Out of the hot sun, he set his bags and rifle down, then gave her the hat and removed his spurs, leaning against the jamb. He'd already removed his chaps and left them at the livery on his saddle. She took his spurs, returned his hat, and led him to the stairs.