Slocum almost gave Laurel the high sign, then shook his head. Davies and his partner Butler appeared like ghosts coming out of fog to stand behind Holman.

  “What you got there, Colonel?” asked Davies.

  Slocum felt the tension between the enlisted men and the bogus post commander and didn’t understand it.

  “I found this man going through my desk, looking for something to steal,” Holman said. “Put him in the stockade.” Holman motioned with his pistol and Slocum quickly moved toward the door, keeping Holman’s attention focused on him and away from Laurel.

  “This here gent’s real dangerous,” Davies said. The sneer that curled his lip told Slocum he would be lucky to reach the stockade alive. “He might try to escape.”

  “That would be unfortunate,” said Holman. “Make sure it doesn’t happen. You have authorization to stop any such attempt at escape, Sergeant.”

  “Do tell,” Davies said, exchanging a quick look with Lem Butler. Slocum knew he had little time, but he dared not make a ruckus here, with Laurel still pressed hard against the wall, half-hidden in shadow and unable to run for her life.

  “Git a move on, Slocum,” said Lem Butler. The private shared the sergeant’s expression of glee at the notion of receiving such an order. It was more than an order. It was a death warrant.

  “I’ll relieve you of that iron, Slocum,” said Davies as Slocum pressed past.

  “I want a lawyer,” Slocum said loudly. He kept up his protests until he had drawn a few men from the barracks who wanted to relieve their boredom and came to see what the commotion was about.

  “Hey, Slocum, what you done?” called one corporal. “You bein’ jugged for long?”

  “I want a couple of you guarding me,” Slocum said. “Just to be sure I don’t escape.” He looked at Davies, who growled like a dog.

  “Git yer asses back to the barracks; there’s nuthin’ to see here.”

  “Hell, Sarge, I’ll guard Slocum,” called Colin O’Leary. “Me and him played cards and he took a whole dollar off me. I want to win it back.”

  “Return to your quarters!” This came from Colonel Holman.

  Slocum looked over his shoulder and saw Laurel Atkins slip from the commander’s office and edge along the wall until she reached the corner. She ducked around quick and disappeared from sight. Slocum heaved a sigh of relief at seeing her escape. Now, if she had any sense, she would get a horse and ride like the wind in any direction that was away from Fort Crumpland.

  The relief faded when Slocum realized that Laurel would try to break him out of the stockade, while Davies and Butler were waiting for the other soldiers to go away long enough so they could plug their prisoner in the back. He doubted either of them had ever faced a man they’d shot.

  In spite of the colonel’s order for the rest of the soldiers to return to their barracks, Slocum saw dozens slipping out to watch the procession to the stockade. This kept him alive. Neither Davies nor Butler had the guts to shoot him down with so many witnesses gathered around.

  “You won’t be goin’ nowhere, Slocum,” Davies said, shoving Slocum into one of the three cells in the stockade. The cell was hardly six foot by eight, but it was secure. Rather than bars, the cell had been fashioned from iron bands riveted together. Slocum didn’t have to dig down into the dirt floor to know he was entirely surrounded by the broad iron straps. Above, beneath his feet, on all four sides of the cell, the iron straps were not going to be defeated in the few hours—or minutes—he had left.

  He watched Davies lock the door and knew he could never open that lock, either, without a key. Whoever had designed the stockade had known his business too well. The metallic snap as the key turned in the mechanism and secured the bolt sent a shiver up Slocum’s spine.

  “Don’t git too comfortable, Slocum,” said Lem. “We’ll be back. When you try to break out, we’ll be back.”

  Davies and Butler left, laughing. Slocum sank to the low cot and studied the cell anew. It was as secure as he had thought.

  His mind wandered as he tried to figure out what was really going on at Fort Crumpland. Colonel Holman had murdered the assigned commander, who had been ordered to shut down the fort and combine the command with that at Fort Douglas. Then Holman had ridden into the fort and assumed command in Major Nicholas’s place. Slocum knew all this from the documents he had found and what Holman himself had said. But what about Davies and his gang outfitted in U.S. Army uniforms? They must work separately from Holman, taking their orders from Tartaglia. The colonel couldn’t know what they were doing, although he must have some inkling. After all, the soldiers had been paid in gold dust Davies and his partners had stolen from the miner Finnigan.

  Or did Holman, in his madness, believe the gold dust had been sent by the Army paymaster for his men? No matter that the Army thought Fort Crumpland was closed down. Slocum had seen men believe a lot crazier things.

  Slocum looked up when he heard a commotion in the outer office. He got to his feet and gripped the inch-wide iron straps of the cell wall.

  “Hey, Slocum, you got any money left?”

  Slocum heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the soldier whose poke was a dollar lighter after an earlier poker game.

  “A few dollars,” Slocum said. Davies and Butler had been so eager to get him out of sight where they could shoot him that they hadn’t bothered to search him and steal his money. They probably figured to steal whatever they found off his dead body.

  “Good. Then me and you kin shuffle these pasteboards and engage in a li’l bit o’ gamblin’. Name yer way of goin’ broke. I figger I only got a day or two ’fore they let you out. Ain’t nobody stays in the Fort Crumpland lockup long.”

  Colin O’Leary propped open the door between the cells and the outer office and carried the desk chair to a spot on the other side of the cell bars.

  “Reckon we have to put the cards on the floor, but that ain’t no trouble fer me.”

  Slocum licked his lips when he saw that the man sat with his back to the open door. The soldier thought he could hear anyone entering in time to hide the cards and pretend to be doing his job. He was wrong. Slocum had to force himself to look at the cards in his hand as Laurel silently crept closer.

  She lifted a gun and brought it down hard on the soldier’s head. O’Leary must have heard because he half stood and turned. Laurel’s blow glanced off the side of the man’s head. Slocum reached through the bars and grabbed the private around the neck and choked until the soldier went limp. Slocum eased O’Leary to the dirt floor.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t do it right, John. I never hit anybody before. Here.” Laurel thrust the gun—Slocum’s Colt Navy—out for him to take.

  “You could have waited a few minutes,” Slocum said.

  “Why?”

  “He dealt me a full house.” Slocum poked at the cards he had dropped into the dirt with his toe: three jacks and a pair of deuces.

  “I’m walking unknown territory,” Laurel said, fumbling with the keys and finally opening the lock. “Ever since my father disappeared, I have been like a fish out of water.”

  “But such a pretty one,” Slocum said, strapping on his gunbelt and settling his six-shooter at his hip. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I saddled horses. They’re outside.”

  Slocum wished she had left the horses in the stables. Two horses tethered outside the stockade would be a signal to Davies or Holman that something was amiss. With Davies waiting for his chance to kill Slocum after the colonel had given his blessing to such a murder, they might be walking out into an ambush.

  “Wait here,” he said as Laurel started out the door. “We need to be more careful.”

  “But nobody saw me.”

  “You said you were new at this. How do you know Davies wasn’t watching every move you made?”

  “Why, I didn’t see anyone. I thought—”

  “Never mind.” Slocum looked around the outer office and saw how one wall had fallen into disrepair. He kicked hard and knocked a board loose. A few minutes worrying the board and the one next to it opened a hole they could both slide through. They wiggled through and stood in the chill night.

  “What now?” Laurel whispered. She clung to his arm. Slocum shrugged off her hand. He had to keep free to use his six-gun if the need arose. He wasn’t too pleased that she had used the barrel to buffalo the guard inside, but she hadn’t gotten any blood on the metal.

  “Wait for me to give you the signal. When I whistle twice, get on your horse and hightail it out of here. Ride straight for the gate and go south to Newsome.”

  “Why there?”

  “We need the marshal’s help, but even more, we need to get Captain Wilson out of the town jail. The only way to clean out this nest of vipers is a company of troopers from Fort Douglas.”

  “But my father . . .”

  “We’ll find him, but we have to get away from Davies and Holman first.”

  Slocum faded into shadow and moved away from the stockade, making a wide circle and coming up behind the mess hall. He chanced a quick look inside what should have been a deserted building. Lem Butler crouched at a window facing the stockade door, a rifle leaning against the wall beside him.

  Davies might have positioned himself somewhere else, but Slocum felt the pressure of time weighing down heavily. He worried that Laurel would get antsy and show that she had left the stockade in some way other than by the door. That would unleash a hell storm of fire from Lem and Davies and wherever the third member of their gang was positioned.

  With only a small scraping sound, Slocum grabbed the windowsill and pulled himself up. He dropped into the mess hall and padded to a spot just behind Butler. The soldier was intent on watching the stockade and never heard Slocum draw and swing the pistol, landing it squarely on the side of the man’s head. He grunted and then collapsed to the floor.

  Slocum wiped off the six-gun barrel on Butler’s uniform, getting the small amount of blood off, then grabbed the fallen man’s carbine. The more firepower he carried, the more likely he and Laurel were to escape.

  Slocum poked his head out the window for a quick peek, then ducked back and decided the most likely spot for Davies was near the quartermaster’s office. The shot from the office to the stockade was almost twenty yards, but any hiding place closer would force Davies to show his hand.

  Taking a deep breath, Slocum stepped out in front of the mess hall and lifted the rifle to his shoulder. He let loose with two shrill, sharp whistles. Laurel rushed out and climbed into the saddle. As she showed herself, Davies’s other partner stepped into view at the quartermaster’s.

  Slocum wished it had been Davies himself, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He squeezed off a round. The carbine bucked hard against his shoulder, and from long experience in the war and after, he knew he had made a good shot. A kill. Talmidge had finally paid for his crimes.

  He ran across the open space to where Laurel held his horse’s reins. He grabbed them and vaulted into the saddle, hanging onto the rifle.

  “Ride!”

  Laurel didn’t argue. She put her head down and galloped straight for the guard at the gate. The soldier looked up from where he had been dozing. Laurel rushed past before he realized what was going on. By the time he started to lift his rifle and order her to halt, Slocum had reached the gate. He used his rifle to count coup, hitting the soldier’s arm and knocking his rifle to the ground.

  The hue and cry behind him was caused by one voice Slocum recognized: Davies’s.

  He bent low, but no bullets sang through the night seeking his flesh. Slocum quickly overtook Laurel and headed for Newsome.

  16

  “Wait,” Slocum shouted to Laurel over the pounding of their horses’ hooves. “Rein in.”

  “What’s wrong, John?” She turned in the saddle, her hair in disarray from their wild ride away from the post. “Are they coming after us? Why stop?”

  “They’ll be on our trail before we know it, but I wondered if you saw the colonel.”

  “Earlier, yes, before I sneaked into the stockade,” she said. “He and a dozen men rode from the fort.”

  “Which way did he go?” Slocum watched her reaction and saw her shrug her shoulders before she answered.

  “I don’t know. It didn’t seem important. Oh, it was important in that Holman wasn’t going to be around to stop us.”

  “He rode out. He’s ahead of us on the road to Newsome.” Slocum’s mind ran over all the possibilities. Holman knew the danger posed by Captain Wilson and must be going to kill him. That made getting to Newsome and talking with their new marshal all the more important. But an uneasiness in Slocum’s gut grew to a hard knot of certainty. “We can’t ride on the road. He’s left soldiers behind to stop anyone.”

  “Why? You were in the stockade.”

  “Holman isn’t in cahoots with Tartaglia, Davies and their gang. Not exactly, except where their interests overlap. Davies is a crook and a killer. Holman’s a killer, but I don’t think he is a road agent. He wants Wilson dead to prevent any challenge to his command at the fort.”

  “But both Davies and Holman want you dead. They want me dead, too,” Laurel said in a low voice. Slocum heard anger creeping into her words and guessed that a flush colored her cheeks now. The immediate danger was past, and she had had time to react, to get mad at Davies and Holman and everyone else who might have had anything to do with her father’s death.

  “Killing us is where Holman and Davies agree, but they have to do it out of sight of most soldiers at the fort. The troopers were never told the fort was closed, and they think Holman is their legal commanding officer. Those soldiers are dedicated to their duty and will obey orders.”

  “We should get to Newsome as fast as we can. Captain Wilson will—”

  “He’s locked up and likely to stay there. Holman will leave guards along his backtrail to keep anybody from stopping him.” Slocum considered Marshal Mendelsohn and the people in Newsome. Mendelsohn wasn’t going to turn Wilson over to Holman, even if the colonel insisted. The bank president, Weiss, would insist that they recover the gold before turning the captain over to any other cavalry officer. Unless Holman was willing to take on the marshal, the banker and probably the rest of the town, he wouldn’t get a chance to silence Wilson.

  That meant Slocum had to look after saving his own—and Laurel’s—scalp.

  “Davies won’t let Holman do anything to Wilson, either,” Slocum said, thinking out loud now.

  “Why would Davies try to stop him?”

  “Davies needs a fall guy for the bank robbery. The federal marshal might take an interest if Wilson is killed—or Wilson’s commanding officer at Fort Douglas would investigate. Davies wants to keep robbing because Tartaglia has found some bigger loot to steal.”

  “But the captain knows Holman isn’t the legitimate commander. That’s why he was so angry back at Fort Crumpland.”

  “Yeah,” Slocum said. “Holman sees his lies catching up with him and wants to eliminate some of the loose ends, but both sides are against him.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We can’t beat Holman to town and I hear horses behind us. Davies and enough soldiers are on our trail to make sure they run us to ground.”

  He wished he had killed Lem Butler, too, when he’d had the chance. That would have left Davies on his own and maybe frightened him away. Slocum had no sense that Davies thought much of Tartaglia as a gang leader.

  “What do we do, John?”

  “Head north,” he decided quickly. “Davies will think we’ve gone to Newsome, too. Let him and Holman fight it out over what to do with Wilson.”

  “North?” The blonde spoke in a curiously small voice.

  “We can look for your pa,” Slocum said. “We’re outnumbered and outgunned in these parts. Until the dust settles, there’s not much we can do. But that doesn’t mean we should simply stand around.”

  Slocum cut off from the road and reached a deep arroyo by the time Davies and a dozen soldiers galloped past, missing them entirely in the dark. Slocum pointed up the sandy ravine and set out, letting his horse pick its own way. Laurel rode beside him, wrapped up in her own thoughts.

  For hours they rode, and finally neither the horses nor Laurel could go on. Slocum felt more than a touch of exhaustion as well.

  “We can camp here,” he said, pointing to a protected area near the face of a cliff. “I’ll hunt up some breakfast.”

  “No, John, not right away. Stay with me. Please. Please?”

  Slocum looked at her and read her expression accurately.

  “We’ll rest,” he said.

  “Pitch camp, John. Hurry,” Laurel said. “I’m tired, but I want to do this.” She wrapped her reins around a low greasewood bush and began unbuttoning her blouse. By the time Slocum had found a grassy patch and stretched out his blanket, Laurel was naked to the waist. The rising sun highlighted her apple-sized, firm breasts and the bright red nipples popped up hard and proud at their crests.

  “I want you,” she said, her fingers fumbling to unfasten her skirt. She kicked free of it and stood before him clad only in boots.

  Slocum took a deep breath of the cool morning air. It would heat up mighty fast with the sun rising. But things more than the air were already heated. He dropped his gunbelt, then unbuttoned the fly on his pants to let his erection snap free.

  “That’s what I want,” Laurel said, coming to him slowly. She moved as if surrounded by water. She reached out and gripped him, then pulled him toward her until the purpled arrowhead at the end of his hardness rubbed across the blond thatch between her legs.

  Laurel released him as she moved even closer, pressing his hard warmth into her body and beginning to shuck off his shirt. Slocum sucked in his breath as she began moving her hips in a slow motion, rubbing her tangled mat against the sensitive underside of his manhood. She engaged him there and ran her hands over his chest, toying with the thick mat of hair she found.

  Slocum pushed back for a moment, skinned out of his jeans and then let her stroke across his chest again, reach around his body and pull him close. He felt her tremble with need, but neither of them wanted to rush this.