“They got themselves a posse together and went out to string up all them Indians. Well, they ain’t Indians like we know. Those brown-skinned fellows what killed Hugh Malley.”

  “Darlene,” Slocum muttered.

  “Yep, she convinced my pa and a dozen others around town. She rode with ’em. She’s not all that good-lookin’, but she rides like a man. And I heard her cussin’. She can cuss a blue streak, too.”

  “I bet she can,” Slocum said. “When did they leave?” He hadn’t passed them on the road as he came into town.

  “Oh, they left ’fore dawn. They was gonna split up and go at the Indian camp from a couple different ways so none of them varmints could get away. They was a little a’feared of that elephant. Don’t much blame ’em, but I’d sure like to see it ’fore they kill it.”

  Slocum doubted the maharajah would care much if the posse shot all his servants, but if they touched one bristly hair on the elephant’s back, he would use that rifle of his to take out the men one by one. With such a large caliber rifle, he could shoot them from horseback at a half mile and never even need to squint.

  “There’s supposed to be another of them elephants comin’ to town.”

  “What’s that? Another elephant?” Slocum remembered something the maharajah had said about this.

  “Bein’ brung in from Cheyenne, or so I heard,” the boy said. “Cain’t say why since they don’t look to be good for much, other ’n scarin’ the little kids.” He obviously did not place himself in this group.

  Slocum left the general store without another word. Darlene had whipped the townspeople into a blood frenzy that would end up in too many more deaths. She wasn’t content letting him poke about and wanted revenge for Hugh herself.

  As Slocum galloped from town he saw Marshal Rothbottom leaning against the jamb of the door leading into his jailhouse. The peace officer glared at Slocum but said nothing. Slocum wondered if Rothbottom knew half his town was out ready to string up anyone with strange clothes and smelling of elephants or if he was completely oblivious to what went on around him. It didn’t matter since the outcome was the same either way.

  Someone was going to die, and it wasn’t necessarily the one responsible for Hugh Malley’s death.

  As he rode at such a quick pace, even the powerful horse began to tire. Slocum changed gait, then had to stop for a spell to let the horse cool off and regain its breath. Slocum was in a hurry to get to the camp to warn the maharajah, but only because he wanted to be the one who found who had killed Hugh Malley. Slocum knew a lynch mob such as the one Darlene had gathered would care nothing for truth or justice. They’d be whipped into a murderous frenzy and whomever they came across would be the victim—guilty or not.

  As he brought the horse into a walk, Slocum saw dust from off to his left. The spectacle of the Grand Tetons was dwarfed, however, when he saw that the approaching rider was the lovely Lakshmi. Her long black hair flowed behind her, caught on the wind like some delicate banner. Expensive clothing glinted in the sunlight and the occasional jewel on her person added to the belief that a drop of sun had come to earth to shed its brilliance. To his surprise, Lakshmi was an expert horsewoman and flowed well with the animal straining so under her.

  “Mr. Slocum!” she called. “Please. Help. We need your help.”

  “Whoa, slow down,” he said as she jerked back on the reins. Her horse dug its heels into the ground and sent up a dusty curtain all around. By the time she had settled down, they were almost leg-to-leg but facing in opposite directions. This gave Slocum a perfect look at her finely chiseled features, the darkly beguiling eyes and the strange red dot painted on her forehead.

  “Ali, they have Ali. They caught him some distance from camp. They were sneaking about. I happened to see them and told the maharajah. He told me to ride to town and get the marshal.”

  Slocum snorted in contempt at the idea Marshal Rothbottom would do anything to help. In a way, Slocum was surprised that the peace officer wasn’t with the crowd, helping them knot the hangman’s noose.

  “Where is he? Not in camp?”

  “I avoided the road to ride here, but no, you are right. Ali is several miles toward the foothills. The maharajah must have sent him on a hunt for berries or—oh, I do not know! I saw them shoving him back and forth. His hands were tied. A woman wanted the men to ‘string him up,’ she said.”

  “Darlene,” Slocum muttered. Louder he asked, “How long ago was that?”

  “Not more than ten minutes. Even with my detour off the road, not more than that.”

  “Dismount. Give me your horse,” Slocum said, thinking fast. “I can’t gallop mine long enough to get there since I’ve already tuckered him out, but your horse is still fresh.”

  “Very well,” Lakshmi said, unsure of what was happening. She dismounted. Slocum jumped from saddle to saddle. The spirited mare Lakshmi had ridden tried to show him who was boss, but he quickly settled the mare’s nerves.

  “Go back to camp, but if it looks like the posse’s coming, hide out until they’re gone.”

  “All right,” Lakshmi said, but it was to Slocum’s back. He bent low over the mare’s neck and used spurs and reins to urge the horse to full gallop. The mare wasn’t as strong as the stallion but had not been ridden into the ground already.

  The distance flew past and then seemed to drag when Slocum picked up tiny sounds ahead. The noises became more distinct, and then he heard men crying out angrily for blood. It hadn’t taken long for the posse to become a lynch mob, and they were going to string up Ali for the hell of it.

  The mare faltered and almost fell but recovered and kept on galloping gamely until Slocum reached a tall oak with a thick limb. The first thing he saw was the hangman’s noose dangling over the branch, swinging slowly in the sluggish Wyoming wind.

  A dozen yards away the posse had gathered in a circle and shoved a bound Ali back and forth to get him dizzy and disoriented. Darlene sat astride her horse, watching with a fixed expression that sent shivers up Slocum’s spine. He had seen men with tombstones in their eyes before but never a woman so intent on a man’s death.

  “Who was it?” she demanded. “Who murdered Hugh? Tell us and we’ll let you go.”

  “You will kill us all,” Ali cried. For his impudence, a man swung his rifle and caught the Indian on the back of the head. Ali stumbled forward and fell to his knees. The men began kicking him until he stood again. His back was straight and his chin held high in defiance. They could kill him, but they’d never get him to implicate anyone in Hugh’s death.

  “He’s not going to say a word. String him up,” Darlene said, as cold as Judge Parker sending another man to the gallows.

  “Wait a minute,” Slocum shouted. “Are you sure he’s the one who murdered Hugh Malley?”

  “What’s the difference?” Darlene asked. Slocum ignored her. She incited the crowd to violence, but he had to throw water on their fiery tempers if he wanted to save Ali. Worst of all, he didn’t actually want to save the Indian servant. Letting him swing at the end of a rope was probably too good for him, but his death wouldn’t answer the real question of how Hugh had died.

  Or why he had died.

  “You want the real killer. String this one up and you might get him, but you might let the actual killer go scot-free,” said Slocum.

  “Then we gotta introduce ’em all to a good ole-fashioned Western necktie party!” shouted someone in the crowd.

  “Hang the innocent with the guilty? How’d you like it if Marshal Rothbottom worked like that back in Hoback Junction? He might take it into his head to arrest the lot of you for stringing up the wrong Indian.”

  “They look alike,” another in the crowd said. “You sure,” he called to Darlene, “that this varmint’s the right one?”

  “She doesn’t know who killed Hugh any more than you do—than I do,” Slocum said. He saw some weaker sisters in the crowd wavering. He kept talking and finally drove a wedge through their resolve. Slocum caught his breath and held it when he saw the maharajah riding up. The prince carried one of his powerful hunting rifles. There was no telling where he had been. He probably had waited some distance off, ready to shoot anyone trying to actually hang Ali. Seeing Slocum easing the lynch mob away from their murderous ways, he chose to show himself.

  Slocum wasn’t sure that was a good thing, especially if the maharajah acted uppity like he had a yen to do.

  “Good afternoon,” the maharajah greeted, as if he had simply come upon fellow travelers along a road. “Out for a constitutional?”

  “What’s that mean?” asked a ruddy-faced man.

  “For your health, sir. Are you British, by any chance?” The maharajah’s question confused the man. Slocum had to admit he wasn’t alone. What was the prince up to?

  “Me a Brit? Hell, no. I hail from down around New Braunfels, just outside of San Antonio in Texas.”

  “German?”

  “Reckon so. Leastways, my pappy was so that makes me half German. My ma was a mestizo from down in Mexico, but we’re all Texans through and through.”

  Slocum didn’t interrupt. The peculiar questioning went on as the maharajah went from man to man asking if they were of British descent. By the time he had finished, the posse had lost all sense of purpose. Nothing Darlene could do stirred them to the same need for blood that had brought them from town.

  “Take your manservant, Maharajah,” Slocum said. “See that he’s tended.”

  “Quite,” the prince said, eyeing Slocum. The maharajah grabbed Ali by the collar and pulled him over the hindquarters of his horse, hands still tied behind him. When he rode back toward his camp, the spirit left the lynch mob entirely. They drifted away by ones and twos until only a fuming Darlene was left.

  “We could have got the truth from him. He would have told who was responsible for Hugh bein’ tramped on like he was.”

  “This isn’t the way to find whoever’s guilty,” Slocum said. “I told you I’d find out, and I meant it. Get on back to town. Let me keep poking around. They don’t trust me enough to talk, but I’m finding out plenty.”

  “Such as?” Darlene glowered.

  “I’ll let you know when I can tell you for sure who murdered Hugh,” he said.

  “You better or I swear, John, I swear you’ll be swingin’ from one of them oak tree limbs!”

  Darlene rode off, madder than a wet hen. But Ali hadn’t gotten his neck stretched.

  Slocum mopped sweat from his forehead, then turned the mare back toward the road and Lakshmi. This was his first and best chance to talk to the woman and find out what she knew of Hugh’s death—and the strange questions the maharajah had asked of the crowd.

  11

  Slocum found Lakshmi standing beside his horse along the road. He wondered if Darlene and the rest of her lynch mob had ridden past, but he doubted it from the anxious expression on the Indian woman’s face. She knew nothing of the outcome and would have known immediately if Darlene had come this way.

  “Is everything all right?” Lakshmi asked anxiously.

  Slocum dismounted and handed her the reins to her horse. He had used the mare as lavishly as he had his own stallion. Both horses were lathered from heavy, hard riding and deserved to be cleaned, curried and fed in addition to getting a good, long rest. Slocum found himself smiling a little at the idea that he deserved the same.

  “Ali almost got his neck stretched,” Slocum said. From her puzzled look, Lakshmi had no idea what that meant. Slocum explained.

  “The barbarians!” exclaimed Lakshmi. “They would murder an innocent man!”

  Slocum didn’t share the exotic woman’s appraisal of Ali—or anyone else in the maharajah’s camp. Hugh Malley had been murdered, and it was passed off as an accident with no investigation of the circumstances at all.

  “We should rest the horses,” Slocum said, looking around. “Over yonder.” Slocum pointed to a meandering stream some distance from the road. The grassy area on either bank would give the horses something to nibble, and a few low-growing stunted trees afforded a bit of shade.

  “I must return to the camp.”

  “Ali’s fine,” Slocum said. “The maharajah showed up after the crowd had decided to go home. He took Ali back.”

  “They are not hurt?”

  “Nope,” Slocum said. He was already walking his stallion to the stream. Lakshmi could do as she saw fit, but his expert eye caught signs that her horse would not go far before collapsing. Lakshmi had ridden it hard from the maharajah’s camp, and Slocum had given it an even more strenuous run.

  “You are right,” Lakshmi said, a smile dancing on her lips. She brushed back her midnight-dark hair and lifted her chin slightly to let the gentle breeze caress her face. She closed her eyes and let out a small, contented noise like a kitten purring. Slocum studied every plane of her beautiful face, her lush body, the tempting way the wind pressed her elaborate dress against her body and then released it, taunting him.

  Lakshmi opened her eyes and stared straight at Slocum. He caught his breath. He worried that she might not like the intent way he studied her, her body, everything about her. If anything, she welcomed it.

  “Come,” she said, reaching out and taking his hand. Together they walked to the stream. “We should rest along with our horses.”

  “Reckon so,” Slocum said. The way she looked at him told him they wouldn’t be doing much resting. He quickly unsaddled the horses, hobbled them so they could crop at the knee-high grass and drink from the stream and not wander away. As he turned back, he stopped.

  Slocum stared.

  “Sorry,” he said, not sorry at all. Lakshmi sat under a gnarled oak tree entirely naked. She had shucked off her dress and anything she had worn under it. Her mahogany skin shone in the light filtering through the gently dancing leaves, casting tempting shadows here and there as the wind picked up a little.

  Lakshmi had breasts the size of large apples and twice as tempting. Her waist was narrow and her hips wide. She sat with legs drawn up slightly to occasionally reveal the dimly seen, furred patch between her thighs. She reached out. Long fingers rippled as if she had no bones in them as she beckoned him toward her.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked.

  “You Americans are so formal at the wrong times,” Lakshmi said. “What is it about me that you do not want? Do I not have fine breasts?” She cupped her teats and lifted, then pinched the already hard nubs capping each. She sucked in her breath as she gave herself a jolt of pleasure. “Or can it be my belly is too fat?”

  Lakshmi lounged back slightly as she ran her long fingers across her firm, flat stomach. Those fingers pointed lower. She saw Slocum’s attention—and how he responded.

  “Perhaps you do not think this region is desirable? Too tangled? Not lush enough?” Her fingers stroked over her privates even as she moved her legs to alternately give Slocum a bold view and then a more chaste position with her legs drawn up tightly.

  “Or do you think I am inexperienced? I know the Kama Sutra well. From personal exploration, not merely academic study.”

  “What’s that?” Slocum dropped his gun belt and was kicking off his boots when Lakshmi laughed.

  “I should show you. The Kama Sutra is not to be talked of. It is to be exalted by action. Intimate action.”

  “I’ve got to agree. I’m in favor of doing rather than talking, too,” Slocum said. He dropped his shirt and began working off his jeans. He was aware of how Lakshmi stared at him with rising desire. Her fingers no longer strayed to other parts of her body but remained hidden between her legs. Her hand moved up and down, and Slocum knew what she was doing—what he wanted to be doing.

  He watched her closely as her hand stroked up and down and her arousal mounted second by second. Slocum responded to the sight by getting harder. He stepped closer and looked down at her. He felt a tremor pass from head to toe at the beautiful sight before him. The sleek nut-colored skin, the hair and breasts and legs—it was all enough to get any red-blooded man excited.

  Slocum knelt and gently parted her legs to expose her nether regions. One of her fingers curled around and disappeared inside that moist, tight recess.

  “Let me put something else there. Something we’ll both enjoy a whale of a lot more.”

  “No!”

  Her sharp refusal startled him. He could not have read her wrong. She was the one who had stripped off her clothing to entice him. And her arousal was obvious. The brown nub on each teat was hard and pulsing with need, begging for his lips and tongue and attention. Her chest heaved up and down as her heart raced. Why did she tell him “no”?

  “We must proceed slowly if I am to show you one page of the Kama Sutra.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It is the Hindu book of love,” she said. Her tongue slipped out and made a quick circuit of her lips. She fixed her dark ebony eyes on his green ones. Then she reached out, and he knew she wasn’t turning him down. She wanted to show him how Indians made love. He was so throbbingly hard that he would have hung upside down from a tree limb if that opened her book of love to the right page.

  He jerked when her fingers lightly brushed along the sensitive underside of his erect organ. She tapped and stroked, then pinched. The difference in sensations took him by surprise. Slocum fought to keep control.

  “You see, there are many ways of stimulation,” she said softly. Lakshmi moved closer so her hot breath gusted into his ear. A wet, darting tongue touched his lobe and tried to stuff itself into his ear before moving on. Lakshmi kissed and touched with her tongue to leave a wet spot before blowing on it. Cool, hot, neutral, aroused, she guided him through all possible sensations.

  He tried to kiss her but Lakshmi drew back.

  “Let me do for you,” she said softly as she rubbed her breasts against his naked chest. He felt the hammering of her heart. She seemed cool as a cucumber, but he felt the heat from her radiating into his body. Slowness in her movement masked her desires.