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

  Teaser chapter

  A GIFT HORSE

  “I want you to pay me for my horse,” Slocum said to the maharajah.

  The mahout let out a wordless cry of rage and rushed forward, swinging his hooked stick at Slocum. Slocum deflected the stick with his left arm and reached out with his right hand to clutch the mahout’s throat. Gasim’s eyes bulged as Slocum squeezed. The mahout tried to twist away but was off balance from his headlong rush. Slocum stepped back, turned, and sent Gasim crashing facedown in the dirt.

  Slocum picked up the hooked stick and turned toward the maharajah, who had watched with an amused smile dancing on his lips. Behind the prince, Ali scrambled to get a clean shot without hitting his master. But it wasn’t necessary. Slocum grabbed the pole with both hands and broke it with a snap that rang out like a gunshot. He threw the pieces onto the mahout’s limp body.

  “You fight splendidly,” the maharajah said. “I will give you a new horse, but you must agree to be my scout.”

  DON’T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts

  Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him . . . the Gunsmith.

  LONGARM by Tabor Evans

  The popular long-running series about Deputy U.S. Marshal Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.

  SLOCUM by Jake Logan

  Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.

  BUSHWHACKERS by B. J. Lanagan

  An action-packed series by the creators of Longarm! The rousing adventures of the most brutal gang of cutthroats ever assembled—Quantrill’s Raiders.

  DIAMONDBACK by Guy Brewer

  Dex Yancey is Diamondback, a Southern gentleman turned con man when his brother cheats him out of the family fortune. Ladies love him. Gamblers hate him. But nobody pulls one over on Dex . . .

  WILDGUN by Jack Hanson

  The blazing adventures of mountain man Will Barlow—from the creators of Longarm!

  TEXAS TRACKER by Tom Calhoun

  Meet J.T. Law: the most relentless—and dangerous—man-hunter in all Texas. Where sheriffs and posses fail, he’s the best man to bring in the most vicious outlaws—for a price.

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B2, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  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.

  SLOCUM’S SWEET REVENGE

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / June 2005

  Copyright © 2005 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-16709-0

  JOVE®

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “J” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  1

  The Grand Tetons rose majestically in front of John Slocum. He wiped sweat from his forehead with his frayed bandanna and took in their soaring purpled beauty after the endless miles of flat Wyoming grasslands he and his traveling companions had crossed in the past week. Spring was turning into summer, and the cool breezes whipping down the tall mountain slopes would be appreciated. If they ever got there.

  “You need help?” Slocum called. He craned his neck to see if Hugh Malley could fix whatever trouble he had gotten into this time. Hugh’s sweetheart, Darlene, sat in the driver’s box of the flatbed wagon and looked peeved at the delay. Slocum shared her irritation, but Darlene had added to the time they had spent on the trail with her insistence on avoiding anything that looked like a ravine, hill or possible rattler den. If things ran smooth as silk and there wasn’t anything to complain about, she could make up a new problem at the drop of a hat.

  Slocum heaved a sigh. It was Darlene’s wagon, not Hugh’s. Hugh was a hard-rock miner looking to find a decent job. Slocum had come across them in Central City, Colorado, and had struck up a friendship with Hugh. If he had known Darlene was going to be part of their journey north out of Colorado and then westward diagonally through Wyoming, he might have agreed on some other location closer to Central City.

  Darlene was a good-looking woman, but she spent most of her time worrying about things she couldn’t change. She tossed her mane of long brunette hair and let the feeble, hot prairie breeze pull it into a small banner proclaiming her gender, as if the well-filled bodice of her gingham dress and the occasional glimpse of her well-turned ankle and calf didn’t tell the tale properly. Slocum had to admit he would not have minded a roll in the hay with Darlene, had she not been so firmly attached to Hugh. But that would have been it. To have her nagging and worrying on a permanent basis could wear down any man.

  That might be why Hugh had chosen to be a hard-rock miner—he was buried under tons of rock twelve hours a day and only had to worry about firedamp, cave-ins and a dozen other ways of dying quickly. The last thing he would likely hear would be the groaning of timbers or rock crashing downward to crush him, which had to be better than Darlene’s constant carping.

  “Can’t figure what’s wrong, John. Can you take a look and see what you can do?”

  John hid his irritation as he turned his horse about and walked back to where the right rear wagon wheel had contrived to wedge itself in a deep rut blocked by a large rock.

  “We can roll the wagon backward and avoid the rock,” Slocum said, seeing the problem right away. He wondered why Hugh hadn’t seen this himself. Jumping down, he went to put his shoulder to the wagon to help Hugh.

  “Wanted to talk to you, private-like, John,” Hugh said in a low voice. “What can I do to quiet her down? Darlene’s a fine gal; don’t get me wrong, but she never stops flapping her gums.”

  Slocum knew better than to say a word. Darlene wasn’t his woman, and Hugh had to figure out how to deal with her on his own. Sooner or later it would occur to him that they weren’t married, and he would take off to find his own destiny.

  “What’s holding the two of you together?” asked Slocum.

  Hugh braced himself against the wood side and heaved. The wagon came out of the rut and rolled free of the rock blocking the way. The broad-shouldered, heavyset Welsh miner was easily twice as strong as Slocum, but his mind worked slower. Far slower. It took him a few more seconds of laborious thought before he answered.

  “She’s a bit like my old ma. Think that’s it? I want what my pa got?” Then he grinned ear to ear, showing a broken front tooth and another one that had been repaired with bright gold. “And she’s mighty good between the sheets. You can’t believe the things she can do when she puts her mind to it.”

  “Don’t need to know that,” Slocum said. He dusted off his hands and looked at the Grand Tetons glowing a hazy purple in the distance. No matter what, they would go their separate trails in another day or so. He had decided to part company and see what the high country had to offer this summer.

  “How far is it to some town?” Darlene called. “We’ve still got hours and hours of daylight
. I don’t want to spend any longer on this godforsaken prairie than I have to. I want to sleep in a bed with a fine feather mattress and pillows. How I miss real pillows. Not that your shoulder’s not fine, Hugh, dear,” she said ingratiatingly.

  Slocum mounted and rode west again.

  “I’ll scout a trail so this doesn’t happen again,” he said as he passed Darlene, who was hunched over in the driver’s box and waiting to get rolling again. “That’ll speed up our trip. I think Hoback Junction is only about fifteen miles off.”

  “Is that Hoback Canyon running to the southeast?” Hugh asked. His eagerness made Slocum wonder what the miner had heard about a gold or silver strike there. But then, Hugh didn’t much care what he mined. Coal, lead, silver, it was all the same to him. He actually enjoyed being underground pecking away at the earth’s bones to pry loose a few tons of pay dirt, whatever that might be.

  Slocum shielded his eyes from the bright Wyoming sun and saw mountains running in that direction. The Grand Tetons loomed ahead, a spine of rock stretching away to the left, towering peaks to the north.

  “Could be. It’s been more ’n a year since I rode this way, and I don’t remember. Anything special there for you?”

  “Hoback Junction will be a good place to stay,” Darlene said. “It’s larger than the rest of those miserable so-called towns we’ve passed through.”

  “You been there before?” Slocum asked.

  “Why, no, but Hugh has spoken so glowingly of the spot, it has to be far larger than even Central City.”

  Slocum wasn’t so sure but said nothing. It wasn’t his place. He spent the rest of the day scouting a trail for them and was about as happy as a man could be when they saw the outskirts of Hoback Junction a little before sundown. Slocum glanced over and saw Hugh and Darlene all lovey-dovey and sitting close to each other in the driver’s box. The rest of the world might not even exist.

  Slocum looked around for a decent saloon to wet his whistle as they rode down the main street, but he didn’t see one. The town probably had a big population of Mormons, who didn’t cotton much to others drinking whiskey since it was against their religion. But Slocum had ridden throughout Utah Territory and had always found some establishment serving a nip. He might have to look for it, but it was here. This was too close to Fort Bridger to the south and the Oregon Trail to the north for alcohol not to be a profitable commodity.

  “There!” cried Darlene. “A hotel. A nice-looking one. The first since Central City!”

  “Go on, get us a couple rooms,” Hugh said. “Me and Slocum will poke around to see what jobs’re available.”

  “You mean you want to imbibe liquor,” Darlene said in her snippy tone. “Well, go ahead. Get soused. Just don’t expect to sleep in the same bed if you come in reeking of demon rum!”

  Hugh bent over and whispered for more than a minute. Darlene finally smiled and then gave him a little peck on the cheek. From what Slocum could tell, Hugh was doing just fine keeping her corralled.

  The miner jumped to the ground and let Darlene tend the rig. He looked up at Slocum with big brown eyes and a grin that wouldn’t quit. “Where’s a good watering hole?” he asked.

  “See one anywhere?”

  “Nope, but there’s got to be a place where a nickel’ll buy a beer.” Hugh was more cheerful than he had been in the month since leaving Central City. Slocum figured that was because he had finally sent Darlene off and was free to get liquored up.

  Slocum and Hugh wandered through the streets, politely nodding to the locals and keeping their ears open. Without having to ask, Slocum soon found a street running toward the south of town where there was a bit more coming-and-going than along the other streets in Hoback Junction.

  “You got the knack, John. That’s only one of the things I like ’bout you,” Hugh said, slapping Slocum on the back. The two went into the saloon and looked around. Slocum was used to boisterous singing, bawdy women running around, exposing their privates in an attempt to lure drunks upstairs so they could rob them, or even women barkeeps leaning over to coax their customers into drinking just one more round. This place didn’t even have a sign proclaiming its name.

  A man with a bushy mustache walked back and forth behind the bar, looking bored. His apron was almost clean, attesting to the lack of work. Seeing Slocum and Hugh Malley lit his face.

  “Come on in, gents. I kin tell you got the look of trail dust ’bout you. How’s about a shot of whiskey?”

  Slocum considered, then shook his head. He dropped a dime on the bar.

  “Two beers.”

  “Comin’ up,” the barkeep said, not put out by his inability to foist off some of his trade whiskey on the newcomers. He dropped the warm, frothy beers in front of them.

  “What’s the prospect of minin’ jobs around here?” asked Hugh, taking a sip of his beer. From the face he made, Slocum knew it wasn’t the best beer west of the Mississippi. He sipped at his own. Bitter.

  “Not a whole lot, truth to tell. Most everyone’s gone west to the Comstock Lode to paw through them danged rocks.” The barkeep tipped his head to one side and studied Hugh. “You look like a miner, not a prospector.”

  “That I am. My pa and his, too, was hard-rock men from Wales. No coal mine’s too deep or ore too hard for me to pick out.”

  “Save your spiel,” the barkeep said. “There’s no minin’ in the area. Hoback Junction is just that—a crossroads, north-south and east-west. Was, at least.”

  “What happened?” Slocum wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but from Hugh’s hangdog look, he needed someone to keep up his end of the conversation. Listening to tall tales told by a bartender was better than Hugh’s depression.

  “I ain’t one to spread gossip, mind you,” the barkeep said, and Slocum knew he was the very person to do so. “I heard it with my own ears.”

  “It?”

  “The most mournful sound you ever did hear. Some folks from up Minnesota way claim it’s a wendigo. A critter that used to be human but has become an animal, livin’ out in the woods and eatin’ moss off the north side of trees. Blood runs from the eyeball sockets! And the wendigo wants to be human again, but he can’t. Regular food makes him puke.”

  “Good thing,” Slocum said, reaching over and taking a pickle from a jar on the bar and biting into it. “Leaves that much more food for my friend and me.”

  “This ain’t no yarn,” the barkeep insisted. “Half the town’s heard the moanin’ and cries! Ain’t that so, Jethro? Little Pete?”

  From the table at the rear of the saloon came mumbled agreement. Slocum paused, wondering what was going on. If the barkeep had been funning them, the other two would have chimed in with even more outrageous claims. Instead, they looked scared.

  “At night?” asked Hugh, obviously taken in by the narrative.

  “Night, day, ’bout anytime. Strangest echoes all the way from down in Hoback Canyon. Nobody’s been brave enough to go find out what’s makin’ the sound.” The bartender lowered his voice, leaned forward and said confidentially, “You get bit by a wendigo and you become one, too. Nobody’s stupid enough to tangle with trouble like that.”

  “Only in Hoback Canyon?” Slocum asked. “Or does it move around?”

  “Moves. Last anyone’d heard, the sounds was comin’ from up north, in the country this side of the steam vents in the ground. ’Course that was Whiskey Sam what heard it, so nobody’s sure whether to believe him or if he was just havin’ more of his hallucinations. They get real bad when he don’t have enough money for a pint of his pop-skull.”

  Slocum had traveled through the Yellowstone area many times and had always marveled at the pools of boiling water standing on the ground and the geysers spewing steam far into the air. But anyone living in this part of Wyoming wouldn’t mistake the screech of water blasting upward for a tortured soul pissing and moaning.