Slocum and the Hellfire Harem (9781101613382) (10 page)

“Yeah, so you are. Okay, but we best keep it down, skedaddle back to the house.”

As Slocum and Judith light-footed back around the low barn, he heard the quick ratcheting sound of a hammer cocking back. In the sliver of a second that it occurred to him, he dragged Judith down to the dusty earth and lay atop her as best he could to shield her from anything that might kick up—like a bullet. At the same time, he marked the burst of flame where the rifle shot came from and directed two quick pistol shots straight at it. He was rewarded with the sharp strangled gurgle of someone shot in the throat. That's all he'll ever say again, thought Slocum, acutely aware that the girl with him was probably the dying man's sister.

He pushed away from Judith. “You okay?”

He saw her nod once in the pale new moonlight.

“I'm sorry, Judith. You know I had no choice. They may be your family, but they are behaving like wild dogs.”

“I know.” Her voice sounded raw, husky, the voice of someone about to cry. He supposed he couldn't blame her. Kin was kin, after all.

“Let's get back to the house. We have to talk with the others, form a plan. Something tells me we're in for a long night.”

Once back inside, he was careful to keep his voice down for fear of frightening the children, who were sleeping in a pile in the corner. He didn't blame them. But there was too much commotion tonight for the rest of them to get any rest.

“Look, ma'am. We need to post a couple of sentries so they don't sneak up on us. They're like a pack of mad wolves, there's no telling what they'll do. We should have at least four on constant lookout. By my count there are four of them.”

“Five,” said the old lady, but she paused when Slocum didn't respond. Her face grew stony and sad, all at once, when he shook his head.

“Who was it, then?”

He shrugged. “No way for me to know.”

“You didn't see who you shot?”

“Not in the dark, no. I'm sorry.”

“Then how do you know you got anybody?” She sounded hopeful.

“There was no mistaking it, ma'am.”

She turned to the girl. “Judith, is he speaking truthfully?”

“Yes, Mama. He did it to save me.” Then the girl broke down, sobbed into her hands. No one made a move to comfort her.

The old woman's face became even more pinched. “It's not knowing which of my babies is gone. I never should have done this, never should have dragged you all out here. It's my fight with him, always has been.”

Ruth barked a short laugh. “Your fault? Your fight? Who do you think has put up with them all these years? Don't you dare try to shoulder this blame all for your own. I wear it proudly. I'm a full-grown woman and so are they.” She nodded toward the twins.

“And Judith.” Ruth looked around, but Judith must have slipped outside. “Wherever she got to is pretty near it, too. And someday they will be.” She nodded toward her sleeping children. “No, Mama. This is our fight and we ain't goin' back.”

Slocum cut in. “Fine, now that we all agree that we're on the same side, what do you say we hammer out a plan to keep them from wearing us down before we can do it to them.”

Within a minute, they had each chosen a direction to keep guard over, the mother taking the front, along with Ruth covering the east and rear, while the twins took the west and helped with the front and rear. Slocum felt he would be best suited making sure the perimeter of the place got a close look throughout the coming long hours of dark. “While I'm out there, I'll find Judith and send her back inside to help you cover the house, protect the children.”

“Mr. Slocum, don't shoot any more of my babies.”

He stared at the old lady for a moment, then stepped on out the door into the dark, keeping low and hugging the side of the house. He hoped like hell they could buy enough time to get them to daylight. And after that? he asked himself—and came up with no good answer.

15

Slocum headed straight out the back and kept going until he felt the longer grass of the sloping meadow brush his fingers. Then he cut west and soon found himself in the sparse undergrowth. He intended to continue in this manner until he circled wide enough that he could come up on the men from behind them at their camp, assuming they had made one.

It was turning cold, so he guessed they had backed away from the roadway enough to build up a campfire. Likely as not, they'd try to storm the place in the night, so he didn't want to venture too far away from the women and children, but he had to try something. Sitting still, like a lone duck on a small pond, wasn't something he was used to, leg wound or no.

Most of all, it gave him the chance to do something constructive and a way to work out his frustrations with this family—both sides. He held nothing against the women—they were trying to better their lot in life. It was obvious they had to get away. And the men? What sort of family opened fire on its fellow family members? He didn't feel too bad about shooting one already.

He felt the ground slope gradually away from him, and he did his best to avoid stepping on anything that might crackle and snap underfoot—not an easy task in the dark. A couple of times he made the mistake of setting his wounded leg down too heavily on a brittle branch or loose rock and froze, crouched low, hoping none of the Tinker men were nearby with a rifle swung his way.

The night had gone cool, but he'd worked up a sweat in the short amount of time he'd been walking. Then he stepped on another stick with his increasingly stiff and throbbing, tired leg. The crackle of twigs sounded to him like a series of forest-floor gunshots. He paused, frozen in place. Then the finicky cloud cover slid westward and revealed the three-quarter moon. It served to help him orient himself. He looked down and saw he'd been steadily edging toward a forty-foot drop that led down to the rough roadway. But it was a drop with no easy way to the bottom, unless he ventured another few hundred yards to either side.

Slocum bent his head back and breathed deeply. The cool night air felt good on his feverish, sweat-covered forehead. What was he doing? He was as crazy as them. He should crawl back to the little ramshackle barn, curl up in the hay, and wait for daylight, when the Tinker men would most probably begin their demented assault again.

But then he heard it, the faint but unmistakable sound of someone or something advancing on him. He couldn't count on the moon to save him twice—discovering the cliff was enough. But it would be the moonlight that would reveal to him whatever was advancing with barely veiled stealth.

Slocum spun and dropped all at once, bringing the rifle to bear as he landed prone, his feet hanging off the edge of the rocky precipice. He squinted into the gloom, back where he'd come from. There was a dark, hunched shape there, looking less like a rock than a man trying to look like a rock. Whoever it was didn't realize that rocks, especially large ones, rarely wobbled. Then the rock spoke.

“That you, Peter? It's Caleb.”

Slocum thought about his next move for a moment. Maybe this would work out just right, and he could draw in the fool as if he were using a call on a turkey or grunting for a moose. “Yeah,” he said in what he hoped was a sufficiently Peter-sounding tone.

“Well, come here. I seen you for a while now, looks like you did what Papa asked and figured out a way down there. He wants to get in that house, without no more blood being spilled, only if need be, he said. I . . . I don't know if I can follow through with his wishes.”

The man was breathing hard and he advanced like a bear, on all fours. Slocum couldn't back up, and dashing to either side would show the man he was definitely not his brother. He'd have to wait him out. At least he had the advantage of his rifle, and he trained it on the big man.

“Peter, where you at? I can't see you no more, the moon's gone to hiding again.”

“Here.” Slocum grunted, trying to keep the bulky shape of the man in view as he shambled forward.

“It's one thing to shoot at them adobe walls, where you know Mama and the girls won't get hurt, but it's another when you start thinking how some of them could have been hurt by our shooting and we might never know, just keep on shooting at them like Papa said we had to. That ain't right. But I daren't say a thing to Papa. You know what he's like, right, Peter?”

The man had advanced to within twelve or so feet. Slocum was trapped with no direction to go but backward, off the forty-foot cliff. And that was no direction he wanted to travel.

“Peter? Why don't you say something? You don't think I'm wrong, do you? I thought we talked about all this, agreed we'd do what we could to keep the girls from harm, right? Peter?”

Slocum licked his lips, made a vague moaning sound as if Peter had been hurt. If Peter were the one he'd shot in the neck, then yes, Peter had indeed been hurt.

The man rose up off his hands to his knees, leaning slightly forward, facing Slocum. The clouds parted, revealing half of the moon, and offered just enough of its light to illuminate the scene before Slocum, as if God had lit an oil lamp just for them. Thanks, thought Slocum, as he watched the big angry face of one of the Tinker boys, the biggest of them all, from the looks of him, grow even angrier.

“You . . . you . . .”

Slocum raised the rifle, thumbed back the hammer, and the big brute froze in mid-knee-stride. But his menacing scowl stayed on his face. He was within striking distance. Even if Slocum got off a shot, the man could probably succeed in pushing Slocum off the cliff. While it was not a hundred-foot drop, he'd fall backward, and with his leg, there wasn't much chance he'd come out of it in very good shape at all. Not to mention the fact that he'd probably not land on anything soft, just a hard-packed roadway or rocks at the sides of the road. No, it would do no good to have this brute drive him backward off the cliff.

“One more move, big man, and I'll drop you where you stand. I'll core your foul heart and you can meet up with your brother. You know, the one I already shot in the throat.”

“What?” The man nearly bellowed where before they had talked in whispers. It had the effect Slocum had hoped for—it riled the beast. But then the man did something he'd not counted on . . . the brute swatted at the rifle. The shot went wide, a brief flash of flame and curling smoke filled their faces, the stink clouded their noses, and the blast felt like steel hammers ringing on anvils in their ears.

He came onto Slocum at a full-bore bull-grizz gallop, covering the last few yards at a bellowing lope. Slocum had just enough time to swing the rifle barrel hard at the man's face. It connected and the brute was, if only for a moment, stunned into silence. He swayed on all fours like a bear, shaking his head. Must have addled him. If Slocum hadn't been so preoccupied with trying to get away from the cliff top, where he'd slid farther off, his legs now hanging in space, he would have struck the man a second time in the head, but he found himself clawing his way back upward, realizing he was rapidly losing ground, sliding farther backward off the cliff top.

He let go of the rifle and managed to snag a hand on a thin, finger-thick sapling, but it soon pulled away from the thin topsoil, its roots popping and tearing. And then, just as it let go, Slocum's boot, the one at the end of his weakened, wounded leg, found solid purchase against an upthrusting of rock that felt solid enough to trust with his entire weight. By that time, the big man had regained some sense of coherence, and was groping along the ground, once again in darkness. That moon was playing the devil out of them tonight, thought Slocum.

He heard shouts from below in the roadway . . . men's voices.

“What's going on up there? That you, Peter? Caleb? Stop playing games. God don't approve of a game player!”

The old man railed on, from what sounded to Slocum like a position directly below them. He was thankful the moon was still covered up, but for how long, he had no idea.

The big man lunged at him again, and caught a handful of Slocum's shirt. He felt it tighten and the shoulder seams pop from the tightening grip of the big, work-hardened hand.

Try as he might, Slocum was growing weaker, scrabbling for his now-lost foothold, and in a position such that fighting back would render him completely at the man's power. And two feet from falling off the cliff.

He had one chance. Now or never, Slocum, old boy, he told himself. He reached up at the growling, chuffing face, got a handful of jowly cheek meat, and pressed his thumb into the man's eye socket.

“Gaaah!” the big brute wailed and lessened his grip on Slocum's shirt enough that he rolled out of the hold, at the same time grabbing a thicker tree his arm had slammed into seconds before. The rough bark at the base provided a welcome handhold. He swung his body upward and drove his wounded leg right into the bent brute's shoulder. The man grunted and Slocum did it again. The moaning man lashed out, trying to grab hold of him, groping blindly, wildly for Slocum. Then his hand found Slocum's rifle and he snatched it up, still shaking his head from the eye gouging.

“Oh no you don't,” said Slocum through gritted teeth. He drove a fist straight at the man's nose and felt something inside it snap twice under his knuckles, then smear sideways into pulp. An immediate gush of blood, warm and foul, burst from the screaming man's face. Slocum followed it up with a boot heel to the middle of the man's mouth, and still he didn't let up. Slocum kept pushing, driving the big man backward. In his dazed condition, the man never noticed the cliff edge until it was far too late.

Slocum grew vaguely aware that the men's voices had carried on shouting up at them from down below.

As the man felt himself slipping backward off the cliff, he screamed unintelligible words, like the world's biggest baby howling and gibbering for help. But he kept sliding backward, his fingers scrabbling at the thin matte of topsoil, roots, and gravel, none of which offered a bit of help.

The man let go of the rifle and slid backward, back, back. Then the clouds drifted once again from the moon's face, and the two men looked each other in the eyes. Slocum had no more time for thought before the man, staring with shock at the other, dropped backward. Though it was only forty feet, he screamed like a man tumbling into a steep gorge. Then his voice cut off abruptly with a hard, smacking sound and Slocum knew the man was dead.

Drifting up to him from the base, Slocum heard at least two men's voices, but one was loud and howling and full of pious rage.

Slocum lay atop the cliff for fleeting seconds before he realized he had to move. They would be up here, he knew, within minutes. And he needed all the time he could muster to get away. He groped in the dark once again for his wayward rifle, cursing the fickle moon. He found it, and used it to drag himself upright, then took off at a low, panting lope back the way he had come. Back toward the broken-down homestead and the women.

Judith had said the old woman knew medicines. Maybe she could fix him up with something that would take away the ache he felt throughout his entire body. Otherwise, the only thing Slocum knew to fix how he felt was time. Time and sleep. He just wanted a bit of sleep.

He straggled back down the trail he'd made, shapes rising up then becoming rocks or fallen trees in the shifting light of the night sky. The filtered moonlight brightened patches of earth and revealed holes and jumbles of rocks just right for snapping an ankle. Slocum finally found himself at the edge of the wood and paused, but heard no sounds from behind. Still, by his count, there were three more of the bastards out there somewhere. They would be angry, but he didn't think the old man would give up now. Not after Slocum had killed two of his boys. As he staggered toward the little compound, it was strangely quiet, and he wondered what the old lady would think about the fact he'd been forced to kill another of her offspring. Not that he had any intention of telling her. At least not right away.