“This is what I like most, John. Your mouth. Your mouth and lips and tongue everywhere, all over my body.”

  Slocum couldn’t answer because his mouth was occupied with stripping her blouse off. He had finished with one arm and worked the blouse down over the other, to leave Erin sitting on the blanket, naked to the waist. In the faint light of the rising moon filtering in through cracks in the walls and roof, her skin turned to liquid silver. But no metal had ever been so soft, tender and seductive.

  He brushed lightly over one nipple and then the other. They tasted salty as he suckled and then nipped with his teeth. His tongue shot out and crushed the hard nub down into the softness below. Erin groaned and sank back to lie on the blanket. Her strength had fled as Slocum kept up his oral assault on her body.

  He slid down the steep slope into the deep valley between to lavish more kisses her. He pushed aside the double eagle coin segment he found there. It would have been easy to snare it in his teeth, yank and win it as his prize. But Slocum wanted something more now.

  Slipping from side to side, he went lower and lower across her belly. He paused a moment to dip into the deep well of her belly button, but this wasn’t his goal. His tongue whirled about like a tornado and came to the tight waistband of her skirt. Here Slocum started to cheat, to use his fingers to release the button.

  Again Erin stopped him.

  “No,” she said. “Teeth. Rip off the button!”

  He was not going to gainsay her. His teeth locked around the large button holding together the skirt, and then he reared back, tossing his head like a magnificent stallion. The thread yielded, the button pulled off and Erin’s skirt flopped open. He pounced on it like a mountain lion going after a rabbit. Using only his teeth, he pulled and harried and finally dragged the offending skirt away from the aroused woman’s middle, to expose the spot he most wanted to sample.

  “Yes, there, do it, John. I want it so!”

  His lips kissed the heaving dome of her belly and then glided directly lower to the top of her pink nether lips, where he found a tiny bud growing. He licked and sucked and kissed and then drew it into his mouth as far as he could.

  Warm thighs crushed down powerfully on his ears and held him at his post. He realized Erin had reached the breaking point. He thrust out his tongue and slid from the quivering button of flesh into the woman’s moist interior. He began a steady motion that lifted Erin’s hips off the blanket and ground her crotch hard into his face.

  Slocum’s tongue began to tire, but the woman showed no signs of wanting him to leave. He surfaced for air, turned and lightly nipped her inner thigh. This set off a new tremor that passed through her trim body like an earthquake.

  As her legs parted this time, Slocum moved between them and up on her body. He kept licking and kissing, but now he was struggling to get himself out of his pants. He succeeded and released the fierce, hard length that had been trapped for too long.

  Before Erin could protest, he kissed her full on the lips, slid an arm under her left knee and lifted so her ankle rested on his shoulder. Tiny animal noises came from her now. Her eyes were clamped shut in ecstasy, and she tossed her head from side to side as the sensations rippling through her body built in intensity once more.

  She cried out in rapture as Slocum moved his hips, knocked on the gates to her inner fastness, then rushed inside. He gasped when he felt himself surrounded by her moist warmth. For a frenzied heartbeat, he paused, relishing the crush of her heated flesh around his. He withdrew slowly, savoring every inch of the retreat until only the thick head of his manhood remained with her.

  Ankle still on his shoulder, he bent forward again and entered her more slowly this time. The contrast between his first all-out thrust and this slow invasion caused her breasts to rise and fall rapidly, delightfully, as she gasped for breath. He kept up the agonizingly slow thrust and retreat until he wondered how he could stand even another instant of it. His loins were ablaze with need. He felt the hot white tide building inside and fought to contain it.

  He wanted as much of this stark, animal pleasure as possible. But Erin foiled him. She reached up and stroked his face, his cheeks, his lips, thrust her finger into his mouth. Then her knowing hands moved down his hirsute chest—and surged lower. Her teasing fingertips danced lightly on one of the tight, hard spheres dangling beneath his erect shaft. It was as if she had dipped her fingers in acid. Every touch sent shocks through him.

  Slocum grunted, ducked his other shoulder to scoop up her right leg and draped that ankle over his shoulder. Bent double, she could only accept his every move. Her upper legs pressed down hard into her breasts and crushed them flat. His stalk buried deeper and deeper into her until Erin cried out in release once more.

  This was more than Slocum could stand. He fought to hold back his own ultimate pleasure and could not. Sliding forward as far as possible into her core, he split apart and spewed forth his load. He lost all sense of time and place as he moved, friction heating his entire length and giving him the ultimate in human pleasure.

  Spent, he released her legs to fall on either side of him. He put his head down on her breasts for a moment, then rolled to the side. Erin’s arms curled around him as she clutched him tightly.

  “Is it always this good?” she asked.

  “Gets better,” Slocum assured her.

  “Oh?” Erin pushed back and looked at him sternly. “You’ll have to prove that!”

  “Later,” he said.

  “Not much later, I trust,” she said, but she returned, to put her head against his chest and listen to his strong heartbeat.

  Content for the moment, Slocum lay with his arms around her and let his thoughts tumble and flow in odd directions. No matter how he remembered the lusty coupling with Erin, thoughts of gold always intruded. He found himself in the same situation as Eustace Montrose. He had half the map and all of the double, and it still didn’t tell him where the gold was stashed. Whoever had thought up the system had wanted to be certain no one sneaked back to get the loot without the others along. Slocum had three-quarters of the information and was as far from getting the gold as Montrose.

  Working a deal with the outlaw and his cutthroat family hardly seemed likely. Montrose had slaughtered all his partners in the crime. Both Prestons were dead, as well as the Arnot family. Dealing with such a hardcase was out of the question, unless it was with a six-shooter pointed at the man’s gut.

  Even then Montrose might prefer to die rather than cut in someone outside his family.

  “John,” came an urgent whisper. “John, are you in there?”

  Slocum sat bolt upright and grabbed for his six-gun. He disturbed Erin out of her light sleep. She rolled over and clutched at the blanket in a fit of unnecessary modesty.

  “What’s wrong, John?” Erin sat up and began grabbing for her too-small clothing.

  “I heard Molly calling. From outside.” Slocum hastily pulled on his clothes, making sure to settle his cross-draw holster properly so he could get to his six-shooter if necessary.

  Erin took a bit longer to complete her toilet. She scrambled to her feet when Slocum opened the door and peered into the darkness.

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing,” Slocum said. “I wasn’t imagining it. I heard her.”

  “Does she need your help?” Erin’s tone carried a mixture of anxiety and anger. “How’d she know you were here?”

  That thought had crossed Slocum’s mind already. He drew his six-shooter and pulled open the door a bit farther to poke his head out for a quick look. He saw a faint figure on the far side of the burned down hotel that might have been Molly Preston. She waved to him, then walked away.

  “Wait!” Slocum stepped out of the shed, still cautious of a trap. “Molly!” She kept walking, never looking back. Slocum found himself caught between running after the elusive woman and remaining with Erin.

  “Hurry, John,” came the distant plea. “Hurry.”

  “Don’t leave me,” Erin pleaded. She clung to his arm but he pulled free.

  “I need to talk to her. She might know where the rest of the map is. If not, she certainly knows more about what’s going on than either of us.”

  “No!”

  Slocum ignored Erin and plunged into the chilly night. To the north lay Virginia City, bright and bawdy. To the west rose a steep slope to the top of Gold Hill, and south were more mines than he could count. Molly headed in that direction.

  “Molly!” His cry fell on deaf ears. He saw her walking at a steady pace but rapidly widening the distance between them. Slocum broke into a lope that devoured the ground and brought Molly more clearly into view. Then he skidded to a halt when he heard Erin shriek in fright. On the heels of that anguished cry came a bass laugh that rumbled like thunder through the still night.

  Slocum watched as Molly disappeared around a bend in the road, then reversed his course and dashed back to the outbuilding, cursing himself for being lured into a trap—but not for him. For Erin. He kicked open the door to the shed and thrust his Colt Navy in before him.

  Empty. The shed was empty save for a scrap of paper on the blanket where he and Erin had just made love.

  Slocum picked up the paper and read the few words on it. Eustace Montrose had Erin. He didn’t have to say that he would kill her unless Slocum turned over the map. That was unstated.

  So was how Slocum was supposed to exchange the map fragment for the woman’s life. Eustace had not wasted ink on such details. All Slocum could do was wait.

  That wasn’t something he wanted to do with Erin’s life on the line.

  15

  Slocum wasn’t the sort to sit around and do nothing. He knew Eustace Montrose expected him to stew and churn in his own juices, so that when a demand note came to ransom Erin Finnigan, he would obey frantically and without question. Instead, Slocum let a cold anger possess him.

  With that anger came an even colder logic. Molly had lured him away. He had not seen anyone who might have been a Montrose with her, holding a gun to her head or forcing her to obey. That meant Molly and the Montrose gang were in cahoots. In a way, Slocum preferred it this way. He didn’t have as many loose ends to tie up. With Molly and Eustace Montrose looking for the same thing—the map—Slocum stood a better chance of eliminating them all at once. And if, as he suspected, Montrose had the last part of the map, he might stir a little dissension in their ranks by turning Molly against the Montrose family. How hard could that be? They all wanted to be sole owners of a million dollars’ worth of gold bullion ripped from the mines around the Comstock Lode before even more silver had been discovered.

  Slocum looked in the direction Molly had taken and knew he could never follow her in the dark. Instead, he dropped to his knees, struck a lucifer and studied the ground around the shed until the match burned his fingers. He dropped the burnt match and set off in the direction of the tracks leading away from the outbuilding. The steep hill quickly leveled off into a rocky field. He found where Montrose had left his horses. From the tracks, Slocum guessed there had been three others with him. Two sons and a spare horse for Erin? To Slocum’s surprise they had ridden south, possibly to join up with Molly somewhere along the road.

  Returning to the shed, Slocum fetched his horse, saddled and mounted. He might overtake them if Montrose thought he was safe and rode slowly, but Slocum didn’t count on that. The moonlight was bright enough to track by, but gathering clouds often obscured it and cast long, deep shadows across the ground.

  Spurring his horse to a trot, Slocum returned to the area where Montrose had left his horse, then began the tedious process of tracking in the dark using only the hide-and-seek moonlight to work by. About an hour before dawn, bone-tired and almost falling out of his saddle from exhaustion, Slocum spotted the Montrose clan’s campsite.

  He sat astride his horse, sizing up the opposition. He knew he could ride in, shooting anyone who moved. If he did that, though, Erin might be killed in the confusion. Slocum doubted Eustace Montrose had much control over his family, other than to bully them. This wasn’t a disciplined cavalry troop but a gang of greedy outlaws each wanting a mountain of gold bars stacked in front of him.

  Greed made for stupidity.

  As he pondered that, Slocum almost laughed aloud. He was getting greedy and he was getting stupid. He had to play this hand right to keep Erin from getting killed—and still rake in the biggest pot of all. A million dollars in gold was a powerful goad.

  Sheriff George might be called in, but Slocum knew the outcome of that. The sheriff wanted the gold for himself. Slocum smelled the greed boiling from the man’s pores every time the gold was mentioned. If involving the lawman was foolish, not being able to attack straight on was out of the question, and waiting for Eustace Montrose to deliver a ransom note played into the owlhoots’ hands and wrote a death sentence for both Erin and himself—that left only one course of action.

  Slocum slid from the saddle, poked around in his saddlebags until he found his spare Colt and tucked it into his gunbelt. He could sneak as good as any Indian and intended to prove it. It was still too dark to be sure where everyone slept in the camp, but Slocum doubted the Montrose gang would be wary of him coming. If anything, they’d be passing around a bottle, celebrating how easy it was to put one over on the interloper—and how they were going to divvy up the gold and spend it when they got the map from him.

  Tethering his horse some distance away, where if it whinnied it would not draw attention, Slocum checked his firearms and began the slow descent into the camp. He watched for lookouts, but saw none. He relied on a silent tread and kept to the shadows to get within fifty feet of the camp. In the middle of the camp blazed a fire that cast flickering light across the terrain and the four large, old Army tents that had been pitched. Slocum tried to get one tent between him and the fire to see if he could make out silhouettes inside. With luck, he could see where Erin was being held.

  Or Molly. The difference in what he would do was simple when it came to the auburn-tressed beauty. He would gladly plug her for luring him away so Erin could be kidnapped.

  The canvas in the tents proved too thick for him to get a good idea of who was inside any of them. He saw two men sitting on rocks near the fire, huddled over and not talking. They drank silently. In the ten minutes he watched them, they poured themselves two cups of coffee from a pot boiling on the fire. Slocum suspected they also added a hefty dollop of whiskey to their coffee before drinking it, but both men were cast in heavy shadow from where he spied.

  He watched and waited another half hour before anyone came to join the pair at the fire. The man who crawled from one of the tents stood up and might have been a grizzly bear decked out in human clothing. He was immense, broad of shoulder and with a belly that bounced every time he took a step. Slocum knew better than to discount the man, however, because of the way he carried himself. He might look fat, but the quickness of his movement told of great strength. He looked like a bear and might be able to crack a man’s back with his own version of a bear hug.

  “You boys ain’t all liquored up now, are you?” The man walked around and grabbed a tin cup from one man’s hands. He lifted it and took a deep whiff. “I thought so, you drunken sots! No sons of mine’ll disobey me when I tell ’em to stay sober. Who’s out there watchin’ for that sneaky son of a bitch Slocum?”

  “Aw, Pa, he ain’t gonna come after that skinny little whore. She ain’t got much meat on her bones. Not like Essie May.”

  “You ain’t got the brains God gave a goat. It don’t matter what you like in a whore. It matters what he does. If Slocum’s sweet on her, he won’t want her all cut up.”

  “We could use her a mite and see what he likes ’bout her,” suggested the other man. The giant cuffed him so hard it knocked him off the rock where he had perched like some carrion eater.

  “The both of you. Stupid! If brains was gunpowder you couldn’t blow your own noses.”

  “Why’d we want to—” The first man ducked as the mountain of a man swung at him.

  Slocum remained as quiet as a statue, watching, taking it all in, getting ready to act. He pegged the huge man as Eustace Montrose and the other two as his remaining sons. Nobody had ever said exactly how many sons Eustace had riding with him, but it was a family affair, with his brothers and a couple cousins, too. But the Arnots had not died without putting up a fight. Any of them might have taken out a Montrose, and Michael Preston’s killer had some of the facial features of the unlamented Big Jack Montrose. Eustace was losing his family one by one and didn’t much care.

  All that mattered was the gold.

  “You worthless worms have one thing right. Might be downright interestin’ to find out what she’s got to entice a man like Slocum.” Eustace started for the tent on the south side of camp, then paused. He tilted his head to one side, sniffed the air like a bloodhound and turned slowly in a full circle.

  “What’s wrong, Pa?”

  “Don’t know. There’s somethin’ not right. You get out there and keep an eye peeled.”

  “I don’t unnerstand why you’re expectin’ him to come here. How would he find us? Wasn’t he supposed to wait back in town till you gave him another note? A ransom note with instructions?” The man stumbled over such big words. Slocum thought he was repeating what he had heard someone else tell him.

  “He’s too antsy for that. If he don’t find us, then I’ll send him a note. But he’s not like you, Teddy. He’s smart.”

  “Pa, that’s not right, raggin’ on Teddy like that.”

  “The both of you get your asses out there and watch for Slocum. Me, I think I’ll go get myself bedded down for a spell.” Eustace Montrose laughed, hitched up his trousers and went to the tent to his right.

  Slocum wondered where Erin was being held. From Eustace’s first words, he thought she might be in the southernmost tent, but he had gone to the one on the west side of the camp. Slocum went cold inside thinking of this animal forcing himself on Erin.