“Get to shelter, if we can,” Slocum said. “He’s not going to be eaten by wolves in this storm, and he won’t start rotting until he thaws.”

  “Oh.” Erin gulped and looked even paler than usual. She got to her feet, tottered and almost fell.

  “Sorry,” Slocum said, knowing the sight of the woman’s murdered lover affected her more than it ever could him. He had seen too many bodies in his day to be overly upset finding a man he did not even know. All Seamus’s death meant to him was being unable to deliver the map. The most tragic part was Seamus dying not knowing his brother was also dead.

  “Bury him,” Erin said. “I’ll bury him. It’s the proper thing to do since he’s dead.” The woman’s face was locked into a mask of grief. Slocum knew the signs of shock when he saw them. He didn’t want to add frostbite to them.

  “It’ll wait,” Slocum said. “Let the storm blow through.”

  “I killed him. I mean, I was responsible.” She clutched her throat and wobbled a tad more. Slocum got his arm around her in time to keep her from fainting dead away. Over her feeble protests, he steered her away from Seamus’s body. His appraisal of the situation hadn’t changed. The only thing that would happen to the man’s corpse was that it might freeze through and through. Otherwise, it was safe from predators of all stripes.

  “A mine shaft,” Slocum said, looking at the cinderlike tailings crunching underfoot. Not even the blowing snow could hide the ugly black residue. He followed the black stream like it was a road to the mouth of a boarded-up mine. All the ore must have petered out in this vicinity for so many of the mines to be shuttered.

  Gripping the boards, Slocum pulled a few free and then stacked them just inside. Why anybody had bothered to board up the shaft was beyond him. This was a waste of valuable lumber. As he pushed Erin ahead of him to keep her from returning to Seamus’s body, he saw why the place had been boarded up. Someone had stored a considerable amount of supplies here and had wanted to keep them out of sight.

  “We hit the mother lode,” he told her. “Cases of canned fruit and even some bacon all done up in salt.” He also saw crates with U.S. Army stamped on the side. Someone had stolen enough rifles from the Army to start a small war. Alongside was a mound of ammo. “Why don’t you get to fixing us some food?”

  Slocum looked around to see Erin stumbling toward the mouth of the mine, intent on returning to Seamus Preston’s side. He grabbed her, swung her around and forced her to sit on a crate.

  “Stay here. If you go out in that storm, you’re going to die.”

  “They killed him because of me. He thought I could keep it safe, but when they didn’t find it, they killed him.” Again her hand went to her throat. Then she burst into tears.

  “I’ll fix the food,” Slocum said. He built a fire pit just inside the mine and used some of the lumber to start a fire. He decided there was no reason to skimp and added enough to make a roaring bonfire. The smoke was sucked out of the cave by the wind, and the heat radiated back, making it warm enough for him to strip off his heavy coat. In the pile of stolen goods, he found a dozen or more Army blankets and spread these on the floor a ways back from the fire. Then he set about fixing supper.

  “Here,” he said, handing Erin an empty tin can to use as a crude bowl. “Eat. You need to keep up your strength.”

  “I never thought they’d find him like that. He was always so . . . so alert. Seamus slept with his hand on his six-gun. I didn’t like it, but now I understand why he did it. He knew they would kill him.”

  “Who’re you talking about?”

  “I don’t know their names. They were partners. Michael got him involved in something so terribly wrong that he would never tell me about it. He was ashamed of what he’d done. But Michael was proud of it. I think it was a robbery that turned bloody. I don’t know.”

  Slocum rested his hand on the map in his pocket. This might be an actual treasure map he was supposed to deliver to Seamus Preston. A real prize and not some fictitious hoard born of long hours of solitude as a prospector slowly went crazy. Slocum had to decide what to do with the map. The lure of gold from such a robbery was a powerful one for him. If it had already been stolen, why return it? He could claim it as salvage, like seafaring captains did when they came upon a wreck.

  “Did Seamus and Michael have any brothers or sisters?” he asked.

  “Why are you so keen on that?” Erin asked. “Seamus never mentioned anyone other than Michael. He was mighty closemouthed when it came to his family. I don’t think either of them had a decent mother, and all he ever said of his pa was how the man spent every possible minute of the day drunk as an English lord.”

  “Which is why Seamus was a teetotaler?”

  “How’d you know?” Erin looked at him with new admiration. “I must be careful around you. You listen to what a body says.”

  Slocum was a mite hesitant to say what Erin’s body was telling him now. She had loosened her coat and sat closer to the blazing fire. The woman’s normally pale face was flushed now, though Slocum might have imagined that, as the rosy glare from the fire added highlights to her fair skin. It might even have been some frostbite from their exposure out in the wind. Or it might have been more.

  “John,” she said in a small voice. “My world’s been turned upside down today. I’ve lost the man I loved most, almost died myself, and now I can’t think of anything but how the men who killed Seamus will come after me.”

  “Why’s that?” he asked. “What were they looking for?”

  “Seamus trusted me with his secret. I’m not sure I should put your life at risk by telling you.”

  She peeled off her coat and set it neatly, patting it into a pillow on the stack of blankets he had laid out for her.

  “That’s up to you,” Slocum said, but he could guess what it might be. If Michael Preston had sent half a map to his brother, that meant Seamus had the other part. Placed together, the map might lead a man so inclined to where loot from a big robbery had been hidden. Molly had certainly known of the map, and Erin was hinting that she had the other part.

  Slocum wasn’t sure what to do. Molly had been underhanded and an obvious liar but could he be sure Erin was any better? All he had to go on was that she and Sheriff George had shown up with a few deputized men in a posse. Slocum had never found pinning a badge on a man’s chest to make him any more honest. Sometimes, it was just the reverse. A good man turned rotten with power.

  If there was enough gold at stake, Sheriff George might throw in with Erin to grab a cut. For all that, Slocum had nothing but the woman’s word that she and Seamus had even been lovers. There had been no trace of a woman’s presence in the shack, but it had been well searched and mostly destroyed.

  “Everything I do is up to me,” Erin said, her blue eyes bold. “It’s true, you know. I hadn’t believed it, but Michael claimed it was so.”

  “What’s true?” Slocum watched in fascination as Erin kept stripping off layer after layer of clothing. He looked away once and saw snowflakes fluttering through the fire, turning into instant raindrops that became steam. But beyond, the dancing flakes took on the eerie aspect of red fireflies. He turned back from the swirl of snow to see that Erin was bare to the waist. In spite of the heat from the fire, she shivered a little and gooseflesh covered her sleek alabaster skin. Her nipples hardened into ruddy cherries surrounded by bumpy, coppery rings atop mounds whiter than the snow.

  Raven’s-wing-dark hair, bright blue eyes, skin clear and white and breasts firm like twin apples—Slocum felt himself responding.

  “What’s true is that Michael said that a brush with death makes a body feel . . . horny. I had thought it was more of his blarney, but it’s not, is it?” Erin lay back on the blanket, lifted her buttocks off the blanket and began wiggling out of her skirts. When she was completely naked and stretched out on the blanket, she stared at him in bold challenge. “Do you feel that way? That death makes you want to reaffirm life?”

  “Never thought on it,” Slocum said. He was getting powerful uncomfortable in his jeans. “Might be the death has to be personal.”

  “You’ve seen so much, haven’t you, John?”

  “The war—and after,” he said, unwilling to dwell on the oceans of blood and bodies that he had seen stacked like cordwood. He had been responsible for some of the blood and not a few of those bodies, but seldom had anyone died who meant that much to him. Slocum had learned that caring meant nothing but pain.

  “Help me ease my pain,” Erin said, as if reading his mind. “We both need to ease our ache—the ache of a tormented soul.” She tossed her head and got a pendant moved around behind her out of the way, so only a gold chain circled her perfect neck.

  Slocum kicked free of his boots and dropped his gunbelt before getting out of his jeans. He kept his eyes fixed on the lovely woman stretched so enticingly for him. From head to foot and back he studied every luscious curve of her recumbent body. He had thought her breasts were her finest quality, but that had been after she had stripped down for him. Before, he had thought her portrait-perfect face had been the most beguiling he had seen in a month of Sundays. But now he was unsure. Her legs were sculpted by an artist, and the dark furry triangle hidden between her legs was as powerful as any magnet he had ever felt. He was drawn to her inexorably.

  Slocum dropped down but was in too much of a rush to let Erin peel back his shirt to get him as naked as she was. Bending low, he kissed her hand, worked up her arm and then lavished full attention to her ear and cheek and luscious lips. She responded with gusto. Her arms went around his neck and pulled him down fully against her trembling body. He felt her lust-hard nipples poking into his chest, and this spurred him on. If there had been any question as to her intentions before, it was gone now.

  Whatever her reasons for wanting him, he wanted her as fervently.

  He broke off the kiss and worked his way down her body, to the deep chasm between her breasts. Switching from one tip to the other, he alternately kissed and suckled like a newborn babe until she was thrashing about under him with desires running wild.

  Of their own accord, her sleek, slender legs parted and revealed the trembling nether lips that had been partially hidden to him before. Slocum worked his way down her belly to the spot and then thrust out his tongue. Erin went wild with need. Her legs parted even more as she lifted off the pile of blankets to get more of his oral loving.

  “Yes, oh, I’m on fire inside. Don’t stop, John. Never stop. Oh, oh!”

  He gave her a tongue-lashing that drove her crazy with need. Then he left the tasty morsel and worked down the insides of her legs, kissing, licking, lightly nipping. She became incoherent by the time he had gone down one leg and all the way back up the other. He rubbed his stubbled chin against her tender flesh and got a response so intense it left him blind and suffocating for a moment as she clamped her legs around his head.

  The tender rictus passed and Erin sank back to the blankets. Sweat beaded her fine skin, and she looked a bit dazed.

  “Never felt like that before,” she mumbled. She half sat up and looked at him, but something had caught his attention that he had missed before. The pendant on the gold chain she had swung behind her now had fallen between her ample breasts. Firelight glinted off a twin to the sawed-in-half gold coin he had taken from the dead outlaw.

  Erin didn’t have the other half of the map. She wore the gold coin that completed the one he had hidden away beneath his shirt. All this passed through Slocum’s mind in a flash.

  “Don’t stop, John. I couldn’t stand it. I feel like a raw nerve. I’m tingling all over. I . . . I need more.”

  “So do I,” he said. He stroked gently along the woman’s outer thighs, then reared back, gripped down hard on her posterior and twisted, rolling her onto her belly.

  “What do you want me to do, John?”

  “Up on your hands and knees.”

  Erin obeyed with an eagerness that matched Slocum’s own need. He moved in behind her, scooting forward on his knees until the curve of his groin pressed fully against her silky, rounded buttocks. He felt her trembling like a horse eager for a race. Then he entered her from behind, his manhood slipping easily into her moist, tight female passage.

  “Oh, oh,” she gasped out. “So big. You’re so big, John. Ride me hard, ride me like you’re breaking a bronco!”

  He reached around her waist and braced himself, then thrust fully into her. Every last inch of his steely length slipped into her sheath, then withdrew as quickly. He caught sight of the half coin swinging back and forth under her, occasionally catching firelight. Gold, pure gold, and a clue to finding more gold. But he knew he had struck a different kind of pay dirt as he slid forward and vanished within her tender, clutching, clinging body. She enveloped him totally, then began squeezing down around him.

  Slocum grunted and withdrew, only to race back. It was cold outside; it was burning hot within. He wanted more. Hips swinging in an ages old rhythm, he built the carnal pressures within both of their bodies. Erin began ramming her hips back to meet his inward thrust, and added to the tensions mounting in their loins.

  Slocum felt the bubbling cauldron deep within threaten to explode. He slowed, but the woman was too insistent with the motions of her hips, her body, those parts within that so excited him. Slocum could not rest, so he returned to his thrusting with renewed vigor, until he passed the point of no return.

  He grabbed Erin’s hips with both hands as she shuddered and tried to fall forward onto the blankets. That wouldn’t do. He was close and couldn’t slip free until he was finished. But sexual release having riven her, the woman’s muscles turned to jelly and she sank forward to lie facedown. Slocum followed her forward, never withdrawing, and discovered even greater sensation ripping through him. Her fleshy rump pressed sensually into him as he drove downward. She elevated herself just enough to give a new angle of entry that rubbed and stroked along the most sensitive portion of Slocum’s anatomy. She realized what effect she had on him and did all she could to give him pleasure equal to that which she had already experienced. Erin twitched and turned and excited him until he could no longer control himself.

  He spilled his seed, then continued his powerful strokes until he melted like an icicle in the morning sun. Slocum sank full length on top of the woman, then rolled to one side as she drew up to face him.

  Side by side, faces bare inches apart, they lay gazing at one another. Slocum had no idea what went through the woman’s mind, but he couldn’t help staring at the gold pendant around her neck, so enticingly resting on her firm, full breast.

  A double treat.

  Erin snuggled closer and put her head onto his shoulder. Then she drifted off to sleep after Slocum pulled the blankets up over them. It took him a while longer to fall asleep, visions of feminine beauty and gold refusing to leave him be.

  10

  Slocum awoke before Erin and looked at the woman. He reached out and lightly touched the half gold double eagle coin on the chain around her neck. She stirred, murmured something and then rolled onto her back, giving Slocum a view not only of the coin but the woman’s breasts. He wanted to dig out the coin he had taken off the outlaw and compare it with the woman’s, but he knew she would wake up if he tried. He looked as closely as he could at the coin, but Erin’s eyes still popped open.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Slocum covered his interest in the coin the best way he could think of. He bent over and lightly kissed each of her breasts.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “That certainly makes it a better morning,” Erin said.

  She stretched like a cat in the sun, then settled down. Slocum saw the slow change in her expression. She had started out happy, but the memory of finding Seamus Preston and the reasons for his death erased her mood.

  “We can bury him,” Slocum suggested. The snow had stopped during the night, leaving a bright, shiny new day with skies rivaling Erin’s eyes and even a warmth out of place after a storm had dumped two inches of snow on the ground.

  “Why not?” Erin sat up and shivered. She pulled a blanket around her shoulders. Slocum had the feeling of the final curtain closing on the stage, signaling the exit of the actors and the end of the play.

  “The ground’ll be frozen, but maybe not too deep. Digging in rocky country like this will be a bigger problem.”

  “Too bad we can’t send him home to Ireland. He was from County Kerry, you know.”

  Slocum didn’t. He knew nothing about the family he had become enmeshed with. Erin went on about the Emerald Isle and how she had followed Seamus when he came to America, but Slocum’s thoughts drifted from the tale of woe and young love. He had half the map and half of a mysterious coin. Both were clues to the location of what might be a robber baron’s treasure trove. Too many men were willing to kill to get the map for the reward to be a few dollars. Slocum had seen eight men back at Liberty Bell Canyon when he and Molly had escaped.

  The thought of Molly churned. Was she Preston’s sister? Erin had not exactly denied it. She had only said Seamus Preston had said nothing about having a sister, but Molly had been mighty skittish when it came to facing Sheriff George and had been like a cuckoo sneaking into another bird’s nest when she used the miner’s shack while he was gone. Simply move in, call it her own, seduce Slocum and then try to steal the map.

  As Erin went about getting into her clothes, Slocum saw the coin swaying delightfully. Then she buttoned her blouse and hid both her feminine charms and the coin. The dark-haired beauty saw him watching her and smiled weakly.

  “You are a good man, John. But—”

  “Not your type?” he finished for her.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “We met under . . . odd circumstances. Seamus dying, the claim jumpers, the storm, last night.” A tiny smile crept to the corners of her mouth. It vanished as quickly as it was born. “May I be frank?”