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

  Teaser chapter

  BLOWN AWAY

  Slocum scrambled as the road agent greeted him with repeated shots from his six-gun. Slocum swung about, pulled his rifle, and aimed at the crate of explosives next to the man. His first round missed and whined off into the night. The second hit the dynamite square on. For a moment, nothing happened—then a giant windstorm lifted him and threw him down the hill.

  Somewhere along the way he lost his Winchester, but the pain was so intense in his arms and face he hardly noticed. He landed, rolled, and came to a halt as he was pelted with rocks from above. Most were small, but one grazed his forehead and knocked him back. Then the world turned entirely black, as a cloud of choking dust washed over him, and he was buried in a rain of stone. . . .

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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.

  SLOCUM’S GOLD MOUNTAIN

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / May 2005

  Copyright © 2005 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

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  1

  The chilly autumn wind kicked up a fuss outside the Stolen Nugget Saloon, but inside, half-hidden in clouds of smoke and greed, the poker game grew hotter and nastier by the minute.

  John Slocum leaned back in his rickety chair, eyeing the well-dressed man across the table from him. Playing poker had less to do with luck than it did reading the others in the game. To Slocum’s right sat a drunken prospector who bet recklessly because it made him feel rich, even as every hand made him poorer. On the other side sat a tinhorn gambler Slocum had watched cheat by dealing seconds and even palming a card or two. The gambler had blanched a mite when Slocum had reached over, deliberately drawn his Colt Navy from his holster and laid it on the table, muzzle toward the gambler.

  Slocum’s hard green eyes had locked on the gambler’s bloodshot, muddy brown ones, and that had been the last of the cheating. As far as Slocum was concerned cheating in this game was worse than dishonest, it was downright lazy. The other players bet foolishly and, like the prospector, had reasons to be at the table that had nothing to do with walking away richer.

  Slocum needed the money and intended to win it fair and square, even if it felt as if the others were simply handing it to him. He had been on the trail for more than a month, stopping briefly in San Francisco before meandering northward and then cutting across California and heading for Geiger Pass. He had come to rest here in Truckee, California, because of the threat of a storm higher in the mountain passes. Snow fell early and hard in the Sierra Nevadas, and prudence dictated that he ought to let the weather clear before heading farther east toward Denver. Then? He had no idea where he would go when he reached the Queen City of the Rockies. And it hardly mattered, because he would be several hundred dollars richer in a few minutes thanks to the wild-eyed businessman sitting across the poker table.

  Of all the men at the table, he was the one whose motives were most opaque to Slocum. He bluffed outrageously and lost, taking only small pots with decent hands. Slocum could not rule out the possibility that the man was priming the pump for this very hand. The man’s expression told how close he was to flying off the handle. The money mattered to him—a lot. But he played poorly and might as well have written his hand on his forehead. Why did he play? Debts to pay? Prestige? Or simply for the thrill of it?

  It did not matter to Slocum because he was going to win this hand and clean out the man’s stake.

  The bustle of the Stolen Nugget ebbed and flowed like the wind whining outside, but Slocum ignored it all. The man with the money looked prosperous enough and had nigh on five hundred dollars on the table. Slocum had won enough in earlier hands to raise him another ten dollars, but that would tap him out. The man was not going to let the pot slip through his fingers because he didn’t have enough money to call Slocum.

  Slocum rested his hands on the cards in front of him. He had no need to look at the full house, aces over queens, again. The businessman had something less but still a good hand. He wasn’t bluffing and thought this was going to be his time to strike it rich. Slocum read it all on the man’s face.

  “Are you in or are you folding?” asked Slocum.

  “I, uh, I don’t have enough to call,” the man said. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He had to win this pot and thought he would. Slocum knew he wouldn’t.

  “Then the pot’s mine,” Slocum said. He didn’t reach for the chips, coins and greenbacks on the poker table because the man couldn’t let it go that easily. There had to be a kicker. Slocum wasn’t disappointed when it came.

  “I own this here saloon,” the man said, wiping his face with a fancy silk monogrammed handkerchief pulled from his shirt pocket. “It’s worth more than the pot, but I’ll put it all up.”

  “That so?” Slocum looked around. One or two of the men watching the game nodded without knowing it. The man did own the saloon.

  “I own controlling interest. That there fellow behind the bar—Preston—owns the rest.”

  Slocum saw the sour look on Preston’s face and guessed he didn’t cotton much to getting a new partner. That would change soon enough. Slocum had no interest in running a gin mill and would sell out for a decent price. Unlike the saloon owner, the money in the pot was enough to sate his avarice. Slocum had the man pegged now. The man had to win to prove he was better than anyone else in the game.

  “Let’s see what you got,” Slocum said. The man grinned and turned over his cards. Slocum nodded slowly as he stared at the full house. The man had kings and deuces. “Good but not enough this time.” Slocum flipped over
his hand, then reached for his six-shooter still on the table to emphasize his intention to collect what was his. The former owner of the saloon had lost more than money. He had lost face in front of a room filled with his regular customers.

  “You got beat, Carnell!” From behind the bar came a rollicking laugh. Preston’s mirth grew until he had to hold his sides. “This is just desserts, Carnell. Get the hell out of the saloon. I never much liked you as my partner, anyway.”

  “Might be a good idea,” Slocum said softly, hefting his ebony-handled six-gun.

  Carnell shot to his feet, his face as stormy as the weather outside the saloon. He stalked from the smoky room, his boot heels clicking angrily until the wind drowned out the sound of him going down the boardwalk.

  “How much of this place do I own?” Slocum asked Preston. The barkeep wiped tears from his eyes, fished under the bar for a bottle and a pair of shot glasses and came over to the table.

  “You and me look to be partners,” Preston said. “You bein’ the senior partner. Carnell owned fifty-one percent and called the shots. No more!” Laughing at his small joke, the barkeep put the two shot glasses on the table and poured a healthy jolt of rye into each. He lifted his in salute to Slocum.

  Slocum was slower to follow suit, wary of a Mickey Finn. He didn’t know Preston or anything about how the Stolen Nugget Saloon was run and had always been skeptical about drinking with strangers. Preston seemed good-natured and honestly pleased at having a new partner. Seeing that Preston knocked back a second shot poured from the bottle with no ill effect, Slocum sipped at the rye whiskey, studied the man some more and wondered how Preston had become a bartender and part owner of a saloon. He had the same footloose look about him that Slocum did.

  “How much do you reckon fifty-one percent of the Stolen Nugget Saloon is worth?” Slocum asked.

  “You fixin’ to sell out already? You can’t! This place is a gold mine.”

  “Have places to go and things to do,” Slocum said.

  “I did, too, ’fore I came to Truckee and saw this place. I decided to settle down, for a spell. The more I thought on it, the more I realized I had always wanted to run a saloon. This place catches the flow of gold and silver from the Comstock and greenbacks from the direction of San Francisco as financiers rush toward Nevada with money fallin’ out of their coat pockets.”

  Slocum raked in the money he had won in the game and thought on it for a few seconds. Getting over the mountains at this time of year was tricky. Treacherous snowstorms blew in quick and left frozen bodies behind as grisly trail markers. The notion of going over Donner Pass always bothered him, even in the heat of summer. Eating your fellow man wasn’t something that Slocum wanted to dwell on very long.

  “That’s a powerful lot of money, but you can double it in a month. That’s a promise,” Preston said.

  “You make that much in a month?” Slocum had better than a thousand dollars on the table. Some of the scrip was probably worthless, issued on banks that had long since gone out of business, but the gold and silver coins accounted for a couple hundred dollars. He was richer than he had been in months.

  “Twice that. Remember, we’re both owners.”

  “I own controlling interest,” Slocum pointed out.

  “Not sayin’ you don’t,” Preston went on as cheerfully as ever. “I could buy you out right now, but ’less I got you all wrong, you’re a lot like me. I ain’t stayin’ here forever, but for the winter, maybe, haulin’ in money hand over fist, that’s all right. Warm in here, all the food and whiskey you want, there’s a whorehouse down the street with mighty purty fillies in it. When you—when we—get tired, we can float off like a thistle on the wind, but with our pokes full of gold and silver.”

  Slocum thought Preston wasn’t telling him everything. The barkeep had the feel of a man hiding out, or waiting for something to happen that he did not want to share with anyone else. It might be interesting finding out what it was, but Slocum wasn’t that curious.

  “I’ll stick around until the storm blows over. Then I’ll head out. You can buy my share then or I can ask around Truckee and find someone interested in making a pile of dough.”

  “The storm’s likely to blow for three-four days,” Preston said. “I almost got caught in one last spring comin’ over from . . .” The words trailed off, as if he realized he was saying too much. Preston clamped his mouth shut and looked sharply at Slocum, as if he had gleaned the great secret from this slip of the tongue. Slocum made a point of ignoring what Preston had said as he counted through the greenbacks. He finished, then tossed them to Preston.

  “Take this as operating money.”

  “You want gold back for it, don’t you?” Preston asked slyly. “I knew you was my kind of gent. Discount rate’s eighty percent. You got six hundred dollars in scrip, you get back one twenty.”

  Slocum nodded absently. The keyed-up feeling during the poker game had worn off now and left him drained. Finding a soft bed and a willing woman to help warm it over a frosty night was more important than dickering about how much he could get for worthless paper money.

  “You take care of the business by yourself?” Slocum asked. “I need to find a place to spend the night. Got any suggestions?”

  “Leila’s got a bunk or two free, betcha,” Preston said. “Not that she’s free, if you know what I mean, but she’s worth every dime she charges. I’ll point you in the direction.”

  The two went to the door. Slocum grabbed to hold his hat in place as a gust of wind threatened to steal it off his head. Preston stepped out and pointed down the street. Slocum turned to look and saw the expression on Preston’s face. Then the barkeep wrapped his arms around Slocum’s shoulders in a powerful bear hug. His weight bore Slocum backward, and the two crashed hard to the dusty street. The instant they hit Preston was rolling and getting to his knees, his six-shooter coming out from a shoulder rig slung so his pistol rode hidden under his left arm.

  Slocum rolled in the other direction and stayed flat on his back. He fumbled for his Colt Navy but was clumsy, slow—and looking at imminent death. Carnell stood on the boardwalk with a scattergun leveled at him.

  Slocum cringed as the report echoed forth, caught on the wind and was immediately swallowed. For an instant Slocum simply stared. Then he rolled to his right, got his six-shooter out and came back ready to fight, but by this time Carnell had slumped to a boneless pile in front of the saloon.

  Out of the corner of his eye Slocum saw Preston holding his six-gun in a rock-steady hand.

  “Thanks,” Slocum said.

  “I saw him comin’ to shoot you in the back. Sorry if I roughed you up gettin’ you out of his sights,” Preston said. He climbed to his feet and cautiously advanced, his pistol never leaving the corpse. Slocum appreciated a vigilant man. One who had saved his life with a deadly accurate shot was even more prized.

  “Thanks for drilling him when you had a chance,” Slocum said. “With that sawed-off shotgun, he couldn’t have missed me.”

  “Always knew Carnell was a no-account snake in the grass but never thought he’d shoot anyone in the back.”

  “That’s a good way of keeping down the return fire,” Slocum said dryly. He poked at Carnell with his toe. The man was deader than a doornail.

  “Don’t know about you, Slocum, but I can use a drink. On the house.”

  “It’s fifty-one percent my house,” Slocum said, laughing. He clapped Preston on the shoulder and the two went inside, out of the wind that tugged fitfully at the dead man’s clothing.

  Slocum wasn’t sure how long they sat drinking, swapping lies and getting to know one another. The more Preston talked, the more Slocum liked the man. They had similar backgrounds, even if Preston had fought for the North in the Sixth Pennsylvania. Slocum wasn’t sure but the two of them might have swapped lead at a skirmish or two during the war. After Appomattox, their histories were almost identical. Legal chicanery had driven both of them off family farms and put them on the road westward. Preston never came right out and said he had engaged in a bit of highway robbery, but Slocum caught the hints. He had been known to rob a stage or two in his day, too, when the need arose.