Slocum Giant 2013 : Slocum and the Silver City Harlot (9781101601860) (24 page)

“He couldn't have shot me, Sheriff,” Slocum said, sliding his pistol into the cross-draw holster.

“Not the way I saw it.”

“How did you see it?” Slocum asked, knowing the answer.

“No way of provin' he had anything to do with kidnapping young Randolph that first time. Frank was on the hook for that. Killing Frank? Could have been Marianne what done the deed. A clever prosecutor would make that point in court. With the drunk miners we got for a jury, and how they think about Marianne, they might have believed it.”

“And him getting the bogus deed means nothing either, since Randolph was never actually kidnapped the second time,” Slocum said.

“Might have tried him on fraud, but in New Mexico Territory who ain't guilty of that?”

“Better get on back to town,” Slocum said. “Do we leave him or take him with us?”

It took them the better part of a half hour to tie Tom Gallifrey over his horse since Slocum took his saddle for his own pony.

“Good riddance,” Marianne said through clenched teeth.

She stood in front of the Lonely Cuss watching the undertaker struggle with Tom Gallifrey's body. He finally released the knots on the rope Slocum and Whitehill had used, only to have the corpse flop over the bare back of the horse and fall into the dust. Gallifrey lay sprawled in such an ungainly fashion that his brother rushed out to help Mr. Olney get the body upright and into a small cart he used to haul bodies around town.

“You can thank Whitehill for that,” Slocum said. He almost added that he had considered the shooting all the way back to Silver City and had come to the conclusion Whitehill had gunned down Gallifrey to impress Marianne.

“I'll thank him in due time,” Marianne said. She stepped closer and pressed into Slocum's side. “It's well past time for you to get your reward for all you've done.”

“Not that much,” Slocum said. He tried not to respond to the lovely woman's nearness. He failed. She saw the bulge in his jeans and grinned broadly.

“I see something that
is
that much,” she said, her fingers threading through his. She squeezed, then tugged him back from the crowd gathered to see Gallifrey carted off to the funeral parlor.

Slocum was glad to leave the buzz of the citizens. Most of them speculated as to what happened, why the sheriff had cut down the saloon owner, what part Marianne Lomax had in it. From the overheard comments, many of them, especially the women, blamed Marianne for an innocent man's death. The truth would percolate about and eventually they'd realize what a snake in the grass Tom Gallifrey had been.

Slocum figured that Justin Gallifrey had nothing to do with his brother's schemes. If anything, he had been used as cruelly as any of the others. But Justin might come out ahead and inherit the Lonely Cuss. The saloon might be knee-deep in unpaid bills, but anyone who couldn't make a success of a gin mill in a mining boomtown was not concentrating on business. That had been Tom Gallifrey's problem, Slocum guessed. He wanted to get rich quick and hadn't tended his bar. The real mother lode had been his for the taking, and he had ignored it in favor of ill-gotten precious metal.

“We can go up to my room,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Mrs. Gruhlkey is out for the day, over at the church getting ready for the social this Sunday.”

Slocum let her lead him up the stairs.

“What about Randolph?”

“He and Billy are somewhere. I don't know, and the way he's been since that mending leg started itching something fierce, he's not likely to come home 'til sundown.”

They went into her small room. She looked around, hands on her hips.

“Hardly seems right to call this home, but maybe home is where the bed is.” She turned and shoved Slocum backward. The edge of the bed caught him at the knees so he tumbled back, rocking on the springs.

The springs creaked even more as Marianne added her weight to the bed, straddling his waist and towering above him. Their eyes locked. Her expression softened as she began unbuttoning her blouse. He helped her shuck it off, leaving her naked to the waist. She rose and scooted about, getting her skirts out of the way.

His hand strayed under the piles of cloth, found a warm, bare leg, and worked upward. She wasn't wearing her bloomers.

“No underwear?” he said, grinning. “Is it that hot a day?”

“Not yet. But it will be,” she said, leaning forward so her breasts hung just inches above his face.

Straining, he locked his lips around one nipple, teased it to a throbbing hardness, then moved to the other. Supporting her weight on her hands, Marianne threw back her head as she moaned in pleasure at his oral attention.

His tongue laved the tips and then slipped down into the deep canyon between. Salt and woman-taste assaulted his taste buds. She was sweating but there was more, so much more. He loved the way Marianne tasted, every part of her body. He lapped and licked and worked around the base of the cones until she trembled.

She pushed back upright, catching his hands and pressing them into the tits he had just licked so excitingly. As he squeezed the soft, milky globes, she reached down and worked at his belt, his jeans, the buttons on his fly.

Through some passionate wrestling, they rolled over and over, changed positions, and finally both ended up naked as jaybirds on their sides, facing each other. Marianne threw a leg up over Slocum's hip and snuggled closer, his manhood pressing into the thatched triangle between her thighs.

She rocked back and forth until Slocum thought he was going to lose control. The feel of her flesh, flowing under his roving hands, her firm round ass, the sleek thighs, and the tender spot now turning damp with her inner oils all convinced him he needed more.

“Are you ready?” he whispered.

“I've been ready from the instant I saw you back in Calhoun,” she said. No further talk was possible.

Their mouths crushed together in a kiss that mixed passion with desperation. They clung to each other as their hips repositioned. The tip of Slocum's erection touched her nether lips, parted them, and then sank in with a single long slick thrust.

The sensation assaulting Slocum caused his body to freeze. She surrounded him with warm and wet female flesh, then began squeezing his hidden length. He felt her belly muscles as she massaged him while so far up into her core. Slocum tried to relax and enjoy the sensations mounting throughout his loins, his belly, his chest.

He saw that she was flushed from her throat down across her breasts and knew she was as aroused as he was. Hips moving in a circular motion, he began stirring about within her. Her leg over his hip tightened, drawing him in even more.

The small movements of their bodies became more pronounced, more powerful, took on the same air of desperation the kiss had enjoyed. The air filled with lewd noises and then Marianne cried out. She tensed, clung fiercely to him, and relaxed. Slocum kept moving, slipping in and out of her well-greased slit with complete abandon now. When he finally got his release, they were both covered in sweat.

They flopped onto their backs, staring not at each other but at the cracked plaster ceiling. Slocum sought words to ask the question that had burned in him for some time.

“Is he?”

“Randolph?” Marianne partly turned away so he couldn't see her face, even if he looked.

“Is he my son?”

Marianne was silent for a spell, then her body began to quake. She sat up, her bare back toward him as she slumped forward. In a tiny voice, she said, “No, he's not.”

Slocum sat on the other side of the bed, trying to figure if she'd lied. Or if it mattered. He put on his clothes and strapped down his gun belt. By the time he tugged on his boots, she had slipped back into her dress. Her eyes were dry, but her face was pale and drawn.

“You're going?”

“I need to talk to the sheriff about a matter.”

“But I'll see you . . . later?”

“Later,” he said, leaving her room. His footsteps were slow, measured, as if he were marching to the gallows. By the time he reached the street, his pace picked up.

He found Sheriff Whitehill in his office, struggling over a pile of papers. The sheriff looked up with a disgusted expression.

“Should have left the son of a bitch for the buzzards. Olney's convinced the judge that the county's responsible for
payin' for Gallifrey's burial. I'm gonna be lucky if it doesn't come out of my pay.”

“I wanted to give you something,” Slocum said, pulling a couple sheets of paper from his coat pocket. He let them flutter to the desk.

Whitehill didn't even glance at them.

“I wondered where Bedrich's real claim had got off to. Didn't want to rock the boat none on it, not since things look to be workin' themselves out.”

“Marianne hasn't asked that question yet. Tell her you discovered the deed, then you give it to her.”

“Woman can't own real property.”

“Then you should record the deed as her legacy from Texas Jack and help her sell it. From all that's been said, the assay was high enough to have mining companies bidding on it till the cows come home.”

“You don't want to give it to her yourself, Slocum?”

He shook his head. He wasn't sure if she had lied and, if she had, why. Or if she had told him the truth. After so many years, she might not want to be tied down to him—or thought he didn't want to be tied down with a family.

“Sheriff, Sheriff Whitehill! Come right now. I caught this sneak thief stealin' a half wheel of cheese from my store!”

Slocum saw the burly owner of the general store with his hand on Billy McCarty's collar. The boy struggled but couldn't get free.

“Are you goin' to arrest him?” the storekeeper demanded.

“A fellow gets mighty hungry, Seth,” the lawman said to the store owner. He heaved a sigh, got to his feet, and took Billy by the arm. “Come along, son. I got to lock you up.”

“You cain't! Mr. Slocum, you tell him I was only helpin' out Randolph. He was hungry and—”

“Take this to heart,” Slocum said. “Don't do anything that'll get yourself locked up again.”

He glanced at Texas Jack Bedrich's deed, fought a momentary hesitation, then nodded to the sheriff and stepped into the bright New Mexico sun. He had an Indian pony with a dead man's saddle on it. He mounted and rode away, trotting past the hotel. He looked up at the window of Marianne's room, thought he saw the curtain move. He might have been wrong.

“Later,” he said, then put his heels to the horse and galloped east to find somewhere that wasn't Silver City.