Slocum's Silver Burden (18 page)

Underwood looked to Tamara, who nodded.

“Reckon that's it, then. The outlaws are all dead. That son of a bitch Ford collected part of the reward for returnin' what he did to Mr. Collingswood. It'll be another week to pick up the bars that dropped down the cliff, but from what we got back so far, that's only half of the full shipment.”

“What now?” Slocum asked.

Underwood snorted, tossed aside the knife, and took the bar from Gus.

“I report to Mr. Collingswood. Workin' for him ain't the best job in the world, but it's better than anything else I can do.” He spun around and stalked off, Gus following him.

Slocum and Tamara stared at each other, then hastily followed. By the time they climbed the stairs and exited into the alley, Underwood was nowhere to be seen.

“It's the end of the trail,” Slocum said.

Tamara clung to him, shaking with emotion. She pushed back, stared up into his green eyes, and smiled weakly.

“Not yet, John. Not quite yet.”

“My treat, John. It's the least I can do.” Tamara bowed and swept her arm out to indicate the bathhouse door.

The heat boiling from inside the stone-walled room began erasing the sweat and grime from his face and hands the instant he stepped inside. Buckets of hot water stood around a large galvanized tub with a high back. Clean towels lay on a table on the far side of the tub.

“Get out of those clothes. By the time we're through, they'll be all clean.”

Slocum peeled the clothes stuck to his skin with blood and handed them to Tamara. She laid the filthy garments over the back of the tub and quickly shucked off her own clothes to stand gloriously naked. Even with dirt smeared all over her, some of it by Slocum's own hand, she was gorgeous. She swept up the pile of clothes and took them to the door, held her arm out, then pulled it back without the clothes.

“The Chinese are good at things other than building railroads or smoking opium. This bathhouse is the finest in all of San Francisco.”

“Seeing you like that makes me think of something more than a bath.”

“I noticed,” she said, glancing at his groin. “That'll happen—in due time. Wash first, then . . . indecency later.”

She herded him into the tub. The cold metal caused gooseflesh to ripple on his skin. Then he yelped when she began dumping in the hot water. He leaned back and soaked in the warmth. Closing his eyes, he began to drift. It had been too long since he'd felt this relaxed.

Then realization slipped away as Tamara joined him in the tub. She straddled his waist, facing him. Her thighs pressed into his as she began scrubbing with a soft rag and plenty of soap. She worked from his face, down his chest. The hair had become matted with the Chinaman's blood. This vanished and let her work still lower, down to his crotch, where his manhood poked above the water like a one-eyed snake.

“I want to be sure this is nice and clean . . . before we get down to the dirty deeds.”

Slocum grabbed the fallen bar of soap and slathered it over her chest. Hard pink points poked through the lather. He gave those twin peaks special treatment as she worked on his shaft. Together they began thrashing about, splashing water over the rim of the tub. Tamara rose, positioned herself, and gripped him firmly.

Her eyes opened and locked with his. Then she lowered her hips and guided him into her inner fastness. Fully inside her, Slocum tried to lift himself up. His movement proved too awkward because of the way she pinned him down, and the sides of tub prevented much movement.

“I'll do it all, darling,” she said. Tamara rocked back and let him slip halfway from her nether lips. “I'll do it
all
.”

She began rotating her hips, moving him around although he was only half inside. Then she shoved herself down and took him fully. This time her rotary motion caused Slocum to gasp. She was tight and hot around him. The sloshing water stimulated his skin and the sight of her breasts bobbing gently as she moved thrilled him to the breaking point. He fought for control. He wanted this to last as long as Tamara could move.

He reached out and caught her tits, capturing the hard nips between thumbs and forefingers. He squeezed down gently, released them, and then mashed his palms down as she moved. She squealed with glee and began moving faster. Her knees slipped back and forth along the bottom of the tub, adding to the sensation rippling into Slocum's loins.

He slipped his soap-slick hands from her breasts, down her sides, and around to grip the double handful of her ass cheeks. Pretending they were lumps of dough, he kneaded and moved, sometimes with her body and other times against the motion. Either way caused her body to quiver and jerk with new desire for him.

She bent forward and kissed him. Lips locked, she began moving with greater urgency. She tensed around his hidden shaft, as if an invisible hand milked him. She began lifting and falling faster. He guided her with his hands gripping her behind. He stared at the rictus of pure passion on her face, then closed his eyes and lost himself to the motion, the friction, the nearness, her body . . . the totality of Tamara Crittenden.

He grunted as he exploded. Her hips went wild as if this was the touch that lit her fuse. Locked together, they crashed about in the tub and lost most of the water in it. By the time their passion was spent and they clung to each other's naked, wet bodies, Slocum knew he had received the best reward possible for all he had been through.

She pushed him back as she moved to stare at him. He tried to read her expression but couldn't.

“Time for more water and a final scrub-down,” she said.

He enjoyed the sight of her rising from what water remained. Soapsuds still clung to parts of her body, but nothing exciting was hidden. She dumped the last buckets of hot water in, then joined him. This time they finished the bath and languished in the cooling water, his arms around her as she sat on his lap facing away.

“Is there any chance we can find Drury's share?”

“With Underwood and his men searching, I doubt it. He knew that Baldy and Drury were partners. They would have hidden their shares near one another.”

“Oh, John, to be so close.” She leaned back and ran her hands up and down the outsides of his legs. Even as she did so, all erotic message was lost. He knew her thoughts were on silver, not him.

“What are you going to do?” He stroked over her water-slickened breasts and got the response he thought he would. Nothing. She was lost in the mountains east of San Francisco, across the Bay, and along the stretch of the Central California Railroad where the robbery had occurred.

“It's time for me to leave town,” she said. “Mr. Collingswood isn't likely to think well of me, and I don't want him sending Underwood after me to, well, you can guess.”

“Underwood let us go twice.”

“You're no fool, John. He let
me
go. You were only standing close enough to be included.”

“That's how I saw it, too,” he said. He sat up, urged her to stand. For a moment he stared at her delightful naked body, then he got out of the tub.

“I'll dry you off,” she said, taking a towel and applying it to his flesh.

It would have been exciting if there hadn't been a “good-bye” mixed in with it. He returned the favor, and by the time they were both dry, their clothes had been returned fresh and cleaner than Slocum remembered them ever being. Even the tears and bullet holes had been mended. They dressed in silence, then took each other in their arms and kissed.

“As the French say,
au revoir
. That's not a good-bye as much as ‘see you later,'” she said.

“
Hasta la vista
is the same thing, only in Spanish.”

She laughed with forced gaiety and put her cheek against his chest for a moment, then pushed away.

“Aren't we the maudlin ones? It's been good, John. I wish it had been more lucrative. You even had to give up the single silver bar to get us out of that opium den.”

“Underwood can use it more than I can. He'll prove his usefulness to Collingswood by handing it over. All I'd do would be use it for whiskey.”

“Just whiskey? Not whiskey and women?”

“Just whiskey,” he assured her.

“You are such a liar.”

She smiled sadly, put her hand on his chest, moved away, and was gone. Slocum stared at the empty doorway for a while, then followed. By the time he got into the street, Tamara was nowhere to be seen. He found his mare—or the one he was stealing from the Central California Railroad as payment for all he had been through—and rode to the ferry. Every step closer to the boat added another touch of loss.

Until it occurred to him.

*   *   *

Slocum had ridden hard and reached the spot where Jackson's map had led before. He lined up the mountains and then settled down to see if anyone was on his back trail. All the way from San Francisco he had worried that Underwood or one of his men would be after him. There hadn't been anyone obviously interested in him. After another half hour, he stood and took a final look around. Then he fished out Jackson's treasure map.

He laid it down, positioned it according to the mountain peaks, and then remembered what Tamara had said about the robber. He got things mixed up. Simple directions got reversed. Left was right to him.

Slocum lifted the map and let the sun shine through the paper. The signal peaks changed this way so Slocum turned until they matched up once more. Instead of hunting along the trail, he saw that the map indicated a spot some distance to the right of the trail. He began walking and within twenty minutes found a series of caves.

A quick look convinced him none of them held Jackson's share of the robbery. But he remembered how little time the outlaws thought they had before a posse came after them. Slocum sat on a rock, then looked down a steep embankment. He scrambled a few feet and saw how the rocks had been dislodged. At the edge of a crevice he flopped onto his belly and looked into the dim recess. He pulled out a lucifer, struck it, and set fire to a dried clump of brush. Dropping it into the crevice brought a smile to his lips.

Silver. A flash of silver from the bottom. Jackson had dumped it down so it would be hidden from sight. But was it easily retrieved?

Slocum got his rope and tied it around a rock, then dropped the free end into the crevice. He lowered himself until he barely had room to turn. The bars of silver were stacked up knee deep. Taking off his coat, he fashioned a rude knapsack, then worked his way up to the surface to dump the bars.

All afternoon he worked to remove the stolen silver. The final trip up the rope caused his aching back to protest. His shoulders had been weighed down by more than two hundred pounds of silver, and he was filthy from rubbing against the rocky walls of the shaft.

He pulled himself up the final few feet and sat heavily. He had piled the bars neatly, but he saw one was missing.

He didn't bother reaching for his six-shooter. Instead, he asked without looking back over his shoulder, “Where are you headed?”

Tamara Crittenden stepped from a cave, holding the missing bar in her hands. She replaced it on the neat stack and then said, “Wherever you are, John.”

“I have a mind to settle down.”

“Do tell.”

“I've been on the trail too long, and the notion of raising Appaloosas up in Oregon appeals to me, now that I have the money.”

Tamara came over and stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. She evaluated the silver bars critically.

“Half of this pile, as impressive as it is, won't buy that ranch.”

“I know,” he said. Their eyes locked.

“The notion of a stud farm appeals to me,” she said. “If you're the stud.”

Slocum laughed. She kept things light when his thoughts turned dark. He needed that brightness in his life.

“Working a horse ranch isn't easy,” he said. “I know horses. I've farmed, I've done most things out West.”

“But it is what you want to do.” Tamara moved closer and put her arms around his shoulders before laying her cheek on his shoulder. “Do you remember what I said a long time back?”

He said nothing. His heart threatened to explode.

“I said I loved you. I'd never said that to a man before. Ever. It came out so easy and natural with you. I love you, John Slocum.”

He kissed her to show he felt the same way about her. Drifting had been right for him. Until now. Until she had come along and shown him a woman could be a partner and a lover and everything he was not.

“This is your last chance to take your half of the silver,” he said. Their faces were inches apart. He had never been happier when she smiled, just a little.

“We need to hit the trail. It's a long way to Oregon,” Tamara said decisively.

He kissed her again to seal the deal. Horses first, then more? A family appealed to him more than it ever had since the war, especially if a boy took after his brother, Robert, and the girls their mother. But that kind of deal had to be sealed with more than a handshake or a kiss.

It took a day to load the silver and a week to reach Oregon and a month to get settled on a small ranch near Grants Pass. John Slocum had found what he had sought for so many years.

Finally.