“Liar!”

  “Believe me or not,” Slocum shouted. “No skin off my back.”

  With an outraged shout of “You sonofabitch!” Rance stood up all the way and started shooting at the chimney—and Slocum. There was no time for Slocum to get a shot off. All he could do was hit the deck.

  But somebody did get a shot off, because quite suddenly, Rance stopped firing. Slocum peeked around the chimney and saw him, surprised and wavering.

  Slocum brought up his gun and aimed right for the center of Rance’s forehead.

  He didn’t miss.

  Rance went down—this time, hopefully for good—and Slocum, who had just discovered that one of Rance’s slugs had nicked him in the calf, limped quickly down the stairs.

  “Is he dead?” asked a tremulous male voice, high up somewhere above him.

  “Wait,” was all Slocum said. He’d sure like to know who fired that shot. He hoped it had been Blue, but he knew better than to try to fool himself into believing he was still alive.

  He rounded the side of the bank, saw Blue’s body there at the foot of the steps, took a deep breath and stepped over it. Gun drawn, he started up the creaky steps.

  He peered over the rim of the roof, and finally relaxed. Rance lay sprawled, his gun fallen from his outstretched hand. Blood trickled from a neat hole in the center of his forehead.

  But Slocum didn’t holster his gun. He still didn’t trust the nine-lived sonofabitch.

  He stepped over the rim and made his way toward the body. He kicked it. It didn’t move. He kicked it more savagely. Still nothing.

  But he aimed his pistol downward, and in rapid succession, fired three more slugs straight down into Rance Carthage’s brain.

  The body jumped with each impact, then lay still again. The face was now unrecognizable.

  And Slocum? He felt damn good about it. Damned satisfied. Still, there was something missing.

  There was silence, as if the town itself was holding its breath.

  And then, a soft whisper. “Oh, shoot him just once more, for me.”

  Slocum’s head jerked up, and he broke out in a grin. “Amos?”

  Two days later, Slocum was back in Hoopskirt, in Lucy’s soft bed, smoking a cigar and trying to explain the last few days’ events.

  “Tell me about Blue,” Lucy asked. She was naked and beautiful, a thin sheen of sweat covering her from head to toe, and she lay beside him, curled under his arm.

  There hadn’t been a chance for questions when he first walked in the saloon. He had just wanted her, and wanted her now.

  “He’ll be fine, thank God,” Slocum said, staring up at the ceiling. Ceilings made him think of rooftops, and rooftops made him think of Rance, and that was highly unpleasant. He looked over at Lucy, instead.

  Better.

  “I thought he was dead at first. But when I came down the stairs haulin’ Amos, he moved. Just a little bit,” he said. “Be a few weeks before he’s on his feet again. Your doc’s takin’ good care of him.”

  “And the Carthage brothers?” she asked. “That Rance, especially!”

  “Boys got blown up,” he said, taking a puff on his cigar. He blew out the smoke in a soft plume. “And as for Rance . . . well, I told you that we killed him. And then the townsfolk, once they got hold of his body. . . .”

  “What?” she urged.

  “They tore him apart. With their bare hands.”

  Slocum had never seen anything like it, and he never hoped to again. He didn’t know that decent people could be like that. But then, he wasn’t so certain that the people of Crowfoot were all that decent.

  To his surprise, Lucy said, “Good. He deserved it.”>

  He gave his head an almost imperceptible shake. “Bloodthirsty little bitch, ain’t you?”

  She sighed, then gave a little shudder. “Guess so. I hope there ain’t many more out there like ’em. And if there are, I sure hope they don’t cross my path. I’ve lost enough friends to last a lifetime, thanks.”

  Dutch and Harry, too, Slocum thought. He and Amos had found Dutch’s bay when they were carting Blue home in the wagon. The Lord only knew what had happened to Harry’s sorrel.

  And Blue was hurt pretty bad. Rance’s shot had taken him in the side, grazing a lung, but it had been the fall that had done him the worst. He had two broken legs, an arm, a collarbone, and suffered a concussion. He’d be laid up for a good, long time.

  “And your English friend, Amos?” Lucy asked. “He looks just fine to me. I mean, considering.”

  “If you mean considering that he got clipped in the side here in town, then in the shoulder the night we blew up the first two Carthages, and then shot in the neck that last night? Yeah, I’d say he was doing pretty goddamned good.” Slocum smiled and shook his head. “He’s one lucky sonofabitch.”

  Actually, Amos had lost quite a bit of blood, but had the presence of mind to press a bandanna over his neck wound with one hand while he was trying to grope for his gun—without Rance seeing—with the other.

  The local doc had patched him up, and he was currently across the hall with one of the other girls. Doubtless, bragging about his exploit and coaxing out all the sympathy he could get.

  “I’d say you fellers did yourselves proud out there,” Lucy said, and ran her hand down his chest, down his belly, and took his already swelling cock into her little hand.

  “Don’t know about proud,” he said, remembering the way he’d felt when he pumped those extra shots into Rance Carthage’s face. “But we got the job done, anyhow.”

  He didn’t add that he’d finally gotten a straight answer out of Amos about the pay. It was five hundred, and it was being wired to him today, along, Amos said, with the thanks of a grateful nation.

  He didn’t much care about the grateful nation part. His leg had stopped bothering him—it had only been nicked, after all—and right now he was feeling as randy as hell.

  He dropped his cigar in the ashtray, turned toward Lucy, and smiling, he kissed her.

 

 

  Jake Logan, Slocum in the Secret Service

 

 

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