Holding down the ranch, p.1
Holding Down the Ranch, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Teaser chapter
PLAYIN’ POSSUM
Cursing, Slocum found a small space between two prickly pear pads big enough to shoot—and see—through. There was no sign of that bastard Crowfoot. Cold, hard rage coursed through Slocum. He just aimed at a clump of vegetation large enough to hide a man—and fired three times.
Returned shots spattered into the cactus mere inches from his head, and sent prickly thorns into his cheek. Ignoring the pain, Slocum fired twice at the next largest clump, the one from which the shots had come. This time, cactus exploded and he heard a faint yelp. No shots were returned. But Crowfoot was a tricky sonofabitch—he could very well be playing possum, waiting for Slocum to come check on him. But Slocum was taking no chances.
Jeb Crowfoot, bleeding from his thigh, was busy tying off the wound with a fresh handkerchief. He swore. This was supposed to be an easy job. It was why he’d broken his rule about never going to the same place twice . . .
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
HOLDING DOWN THE RANCH
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY Jove edition / November 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
All rights reserved.
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eISBN : 978-1-101-16621-5
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1
“Hey, you! Ain’t you Slocum?” called the voice, much too young and much too full of itself to do anybody any good.
Reluctantly, Slocum looked toward the sound. It was just as he had suspected. The boy was seventeen—and that was stretching it some—barely shaving, shortish, yellow-haired, and standing across the street in an all-too-familiar stance.
Everybody else on the street had recognized the boy’s stance, too—legs wide, arms curled toward his six-guns, and his face cocky and intense, albeit nervous—because they commenced to scatter like flies off a screen door.
Slocum hefted his parcel to his left arm and called back, “You’re mistaken, son,” while two men and a mangy dog ducked back into the mouth of an alley.
The last thing Slocum needed was some wet-behind-the-ears Quick Draw Johnny lying dead in the street. If this kid was intent on getting himself killed, let somebody else do it. Slocum had better things to do. For instance, take this yardage of red silk up to the delightful Miss Tansy Sykes. She’d been waiting for it for weeks.
“Don’t think I am,” the boy called. His voice hitched a little. “You’re him, all right.”
The fingers on the boy’s right hand twitched nervously, underscoring his uncertainty. “I’m callin’ you out, Slocum.”
“Don’t push it, kid,” Slocum warned just as the last matron on the street, dragging a reluctant ten-year-old, dived into a shop front a half block up the way. “You’re gettin’ yourself into more trouble than you want to know.”
“Draw,” shouted the boy, a whole lot louder than necessary.
“Your nerves are showin’,” replied Slocum. “Why don’t you go on home?”
In reply, the boy drew.
But Slocum drew faster.
He winged the kid in his gun arm before the boy had cleared leather all the way, and the boy’s gun went flying off to the side, shattering a storefront window. Simultaneously, the boy folded, dropped to his knees, and gripped his arm. He had a very surprised look on his face and a whimper on his trembling lips.
Slocum holstered his gun. He still had the brown paper package of yard goods tucked securely under his left arm. He looked up and down the vacant street, sighed, shook his head, then called out, “Somebody want to get this kid to the doc? You got a doc in this town, don’t you?”
A bald head poked out the door of the general store, followed tentatively by the scrawny body attached to it.
“I-I’ll see to it, Mister Slocum,” the man said hesitantly. Then added, “Are you really Sloucm? The John Slocum?”
“Never heard of him, buddy,” Slocum replied, and walked on up the street toward Tansy Sykes’s place. Behind him, he heard opening doors and folks coming out of their hiding places, and the murmur of excited conversation.
He tried not to listen.
But he knew one thing: No matter how much he denied his name, he was on borrowed time here in Bedrock.
Damn that kid, anyhow!
“Who was he?” Tansy said distractedly as she took the package from him. They were upstairs in her room, which was still disheveled from their marathon lovemaking.
Tansy wasn’t much better off, as she was still in her robe. She tore back the package’s corner and squealed, “Oh, it’s gorgeous! I been waiting for this silk for ’bout a whole month!”
“Don’t know who he was,” said Slocum, just as she stood on her tiptoes and threw her arms around his neck.
“Thanks for pickin’ it up, honey!” she whispered into his ear, just before her teeth nipped its lobe. “Oh, I’m gonna be splendiferous in this, don’t you think? I’m gonna send for the dressmaker right away!”
That was one thing about his Tansy, Slocum thought with a grin. She had her priorities.
He’d pulled into Bedrock three days prior and run into Tansy by accident—well, he went in the Bedrock Saloon, and she was there, just like she’d been waiting for him—and other than a few quick trips down to the livery to check on Concho, he hadn’t come back outside its doors until about noon today.
He was sort of surprised that Tansy could still walk.
As a matter of fact, he was a little surprised that he could, too.
And now here she was, nibbling at his ear again. “You game, big boy?” she whispered.
“Always am,” he said with a growl, and pulled her close.
She gave a little gasp of surprise, but she was grinning. She was dusky and dark, with a husky voice with a figure that would have put Venus herself to shame.
Slocum had met her three years before in a little mining town up north. As he recalled, that meeting had resulted in a five-day marathon that left him grinning like a fool for a fortnight.
He wondered if he could stretch this visit out long enough to equal it.
She wasn’t wearing anything under her robe. Slocum spread the pale blue silk and slid his hands beneath it to touch warm, soft flesh the color of creamed coffee. They traveled over a tiny waist, swept down to belled hips, then back up to cup full, heavy, round breasts. Her fingers, long and elegant, moved slowly down his chest and to his belt buckle.
“Just where you goin’, honey?” he asked with an ornery grin.
“As if you didn’t know,” she purred. She reached inside and took him, growing rapidly, in her hand. “My big, strong, handsome Slocum,” she murmured against his lips. “Bigger all the time.”
He took her against the wall, and she wrapped her long legs around his hips while he plunged into her—slowly at first, then faster and faster, then slowly again, until she was so crazed with passion that she begged him to please, please finish it before she went mad.
He quickened his pace once more, going ever deeper, and just when the fire in his own loins brightened, then flared into a heady bonfire, she exploded into her own climax.
He slumped against her, holding her up while she trembled mindlessly in the throes of it, even though he was barely able to stay on his feet. Resting his head on the dark softness of her shoulder, he puffed out his cheeks and exhaled through pursed lips.
Sometimes, at times like this, he wondered what it would be like to be a gal. It was brief, but he did wonder. They always came so . . . all out. Just lost their senses.
For him, it was pretty damned fine, too, but he never went into the sun or anything. That was how Tansy had described it. Like flying and soaring and spinning, and going right into the heart of the sun.
She relaxed, and he let her slide down to stand on the floor.
She stroked his cheek. “Slocum,” she purred, slit-eyed as a tabby cat full of fresh cream. “You’ll singe my wings.”
“Tansy, honey, I—” He stopped midsentence, and they both turned their heads toward the door. Somebody was pounding on it.
“We’re busy in here, if you don’t mind,” Tansy shouted.
Unfortunately, she shouted it directly into Slocum’s ear. He stuck a finger into it, but it was too late.
“Oops,” Tansy said belatedly. “Sorry.”
“Open up, Miss Tansy!” came the voice again, along with a series of serious knuckle raps.
Slocum reached down and pulled up his britches and his gunbelt, buckling both hurriedly. As he handed Tansy her robe, he growled, “Hang on a minute, there, buddy.”
But they didn’t. They broke the door in.
There in the hall stood a squat little man, pink-skinned as a newborn baby, clean shaven, and sporting a tin badge. Behind him stood a somewhat taller, much thinner galoot in a hat that looked two sizes too big for him. He had tin on his shirt, too.
It seemed that once they had the door caved in, they were stumped for what to do next, because they just stood there. The taller fellow, the one Slocum figured to be the deputy, swallowed several times, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously up and down.
Slocum just stood there, too, looking at them and waiting. The expression on his face wasn’t any too kind, either.
Tansy, back in her robe again, stepped between the men. “Bill Hawkins, have you lost all your manners?” she asked. Then she glanced at the man behind him. “Afternoon, Joey.”
The deputy briefly touched the brim of his too-large hat. “Miss Tansy, ma’am,” he said softly, and a little shyly.
Sheriff Bill Hawkins was still staring at Slocum. Something flickered over his features—Slocum couldn’t tell exactly what—and then Hawkins breathed, “You are him, ain’t you?”
“Depends on who you’re lookin’ for,” Slocum replied testily. He didn’t want a gunfight, and he sure as hell didn’t want to have one upstairs at the Bedrock Palace. But if this idiot pushed him hard enough, he’d push back.
Hawkins seemed to come back from wherever his mind had been floating, and cleared his throat. “Tall, dark hair, green eyes, powerful build, got an Appaloosa down to the livery . . . Yeah, you’re Slocum, all right,” he said, a little too forcefully. “We’re lookin’ for the man who shot young Al Childers out front of the dry goods about a half-hour ago. It was you, wasn’t it, Slocum?”
Curtly, Slocum nodded his head, although he was a little surprised that the sheriff had so much information on him so close at hand, right down to the Appaloosa.
“That’d be me,” Slocum said. “And that was a wild kid, lookin’ for a reputation, Sheriff. He drew on me. I didn’t have anything in my hand but this.” He grabbed the parcel he’d brought to Tansy from the tabletop and held it forward.
With his left hand, of course. He kept the right one free, just in case.
“You must’a had something, Mr. Slocum,” the deputy piped up. “Poor Al was all shot up.”
Tansy drew herself up. “Well, Slocum shot in self-defense, didn’t you, honey? And I could outdraw Al Childers.”
One corner of Slocum’s mouth quirked up and he whispered, “Gee, thanks, Tansy.”
She snatched the scarlet yardage from him, muttering, “I’m only trying to help, dammit.”
“Either way, he’s shot,” said the sheriff stubbornly. And, Slocum thought, a little apologetically.
“Now, I’m askin’ you, Slocum,” the sheriff went on, “and I’m askin’ you as nice as I know how—to get out of my town.”
“On what grounds?” Slocum shot back. “There’s no paper out on me.”
The sheriff swallowed, hard. “On . . . on the grounds that if Al Childers got himself a slug in the arm, he won’t be the only one gettin’ shot up. Fellers like you—fellers with a reputation for bein’ fast and tough, you know? They draw trouble like sugar-syrup draws in flies.”
“For this,” interjected Tansy, “you had to break down my door?”
“We was at a fever pitch, ma’am,” explained the deputy. “That is,” he added, blushing, “till we seen he was actually in here. You sure look pretty today, ma’am.”
Tansy, tousled and barely dressed, snorted and rolled her eyes.
Sharply, Sheriff Hawkins elbowed his deputy in the ribs. “Now, Slocum,” he said, “I’m askin’ you nice. I know damn well that you could kill us both before we cleared leather. I’ll make no beans about that. But the citizens of Bedrock voted me in to keep them free of shoot-outs in the street and the like. And, well, I figure you’re kind of a magnet for ’em.”
Slocum couldn’t disagree, and he had to admit that he was a little impressed with what the sheriff had just said. Most places, the constabulary would simply hide in an alley and try to backshoot him when he wasn’t looking.
He knew he’d best move along. Staying around was going to be a whole lot more trouble than it was worth.
Even considering Tansy.
So Slocum said, “All right. I’ll cut out this afternoon.”
Tansy’s eyebrows flew up a good half inch. “You’ll what?”
No one looked more surprised than the sheriff, though, although his deputy came in a close second. “You will?” asked Sheriff Hawkins. It seemed he had halfway expected a heated shoot-out.
“Really?” asked the bewildered deputy.
“Jesus,” muttered Slocum, and picking up his saddlebags, grabbed Tansy around the waist. “Goodbye, baby,” he said, and kissed her.
“You’re sure one surprisin’ son of a buzzard,” he heard the sheriff say.
Slocum just waved him off.
2
Slocum reined Concho down into the arroyo, then up and out the other side. It was a nice day, despite having been kicked out of Bedrock—the third such town he’d been kicked out of in less than three weeks.
Of course, in some of those places the kicking-out had been a little more literal.
And he was beginning to wonder why, all of a goddamn sudden, every two-bit gunman, quick-draw-Johnny, and kid with a slingshot in the Arizona Territory was so hot to leave him dead in the street.
It wasn’t as if he’d been in a fight with anybody famous lately. That was what usually triggered a chain of events like this, like the bad six months he’d spent after he’d taken out Toby Gassman up in Montana, or the tough three months in California after he’d shot Bad Bob Billings.
Hell, they’d been jumping out from underneath every rock and bush there for a while.
