Slocum stepped closer and saw that blood had leaked from the nail holes in Neville’s hands onto the stone floor. Other blood had dripped down the wall after Neville had smashed his head there repeatedly in pain. He made his way around the small room, his gut churning. Neville had been alive when he had been nailed up.
“Polly,” he muttered under his breath.
Prowling about, he found partial bloody boot prints. The men who had done this to Neville had stood around a spell and watched him die. Slocum knelt and looked more closely at the footprints. If his gut had churned before, it tumbled over and over now. Two sets of footprints were larger than the third. The smallest prints might have been from a woman’s boots.
Polly.
Julian and his gunmen had brought Neville’s daughter here to watch him die a lingering death. No torture was beyond Hawkins and his henchmen. But what had they done with Polly? Slocum failed to find her tracks leaving the vault.
He went outside and studied the ground. He found more boot prints now that he hunted for them off the trail. Grass had been crushed down but now sprang back. They had walked around the crypt within the past eight hours, but that told him nothing. Where had they gone? How had they found her and her father?
On hands and knees, Slocum used the sun angling through the trees to find even fainter traces. He crawled along, hoping to get a definite direction. He lost the trail, found it again as it went deeper into the woods until he lost the faint impressions entirely in the vegetation on the soft forest floor.
He wiped his hands off on his pants. Reaching for his Colt Navy and slipping because of mud might spell his death. Without a definite path to follow, Slocum crashed through the undergrowth, ignoring the sharp spines and nettles. He slowed his pace, then hunted around for a game trail or other way through the trees. No sign of anyone other than himself bulling through the undergrowth convinced him he was reacting emotionally and not methodically. When he came across another trail, he found one clear set of tracks.
He made the best time he could while keeping a sharp eye out for a possible ambush. But the single set of tracks went both ways. Polly had not been carried along this way as a prisoner, but it was all Slocum had to work on.
Another entryway to an underground crypt showed through the weeds. This structure was intentionally hidden. Slocum pushed back the foliage and went down the stone steps. A new padlock held the door shut. He pressed his ear against the wood panel to listen for any cries inside. Slocum realized Polly might not know help had come. He used the butt of his pistol to rap loudly several times.
“Polly, you in there? It’s me, Slocum. Make a noise if you’re inside.”
He listened harder. Silence. Quiet as a tomb. He stepped back, ready to shoot off the lock, when he heard shouts from the woods. Backing off, going up the steps, he knelt and peered through the weeds and waited.
Two men armed with rifles came closer to the steps, but they didn’t see him. He sighted on one and calculated his chances of taking him out first, then shooting the other before he realized they were under attack. Slocum eased back on the trigger, then released pressure when two more armed men joined the first pair.
“I don’t know how she got away. Julian’s gonna skin us alive if we don’t find her.”
“I tole you we oughta have nailed her up like we done her old man,” said a grizzled man. His mouth sparkled when he spoke. The sun caught a gold tooth in the front of his mouth.
“Julian wanted her for himself. If Hawkins got the mail-order bitch, the boss thought he owed it to himself to get a little, too.”
“He coulda shared.”
“Not me. She looks like the type to give us all the clap.”
Slocum considered getting off four killing shots before the outlaws responded. Any chance at that died when another joined the group. Slocum swung his six-shooter to cover Julian, only to have the other four crowd close around him and ruin a decent shot. He sank back down on the stone steps, trapped. Getting into the crypt, even if he shot off the lock, only trapped him. Pushing through the sheltering weeds made him an easy target. Wiping his nose as the pollen around him billowed into the air, he watched and waited. His chance would come soon.
“She isn’t going to run toward town,” Julian said. “More likely, she’ll go deeper into the woods. That way.” He pointed away from the crypt where Slocum hid.
“It wasn’t our fault she got free, boss. Honest,” said the man with the gold tooth. “She wiggled through a hole smaller than my damned fist.”
“Right through the rock wall,” piped up another. “It’s like she turned to smoke.”
“I’ll smoke the lot of you if you don’t find her soon. Sikes, Garcia, come with me. The rest of you go on back to camp. She won’t go that way, but as crazy as she is, who knows what she’ll actually do.”
Two men hurried off, glad to be away from their boss. Sikes—the man with the gold tooth—and his partner fanned out on either side of their leader and strode away, alert for anything moving through the grove. Slocum watched them disappear, then edged from his hiding place.
Polly’s only chance to escape lay in getting out of the woods and away from Julian’s gang. Slocum thought Julian was right about the woman hightailing it deeper into the forest rather than appealing to someone in town for help. She had no faith in a town where the marshal and bank president were brothers to the man who had brought such horror to her family. The rest of the citizens were under Hawkins’s thumb and too frightened or bought off to help. And would anyone help the daughter of the man responsible for massacring half the town?
Even if she found someone in Espero to lend a hand, what could they do?
She had to reach the sheriff in another town or even a Texas Ranger. But Slocum knew telling the law what had happened to her and her family wouldn’t be good enough. Even if a company of Rangers arrived and strung up everyone who had blighted her life, Polly wouldn’t be happy. She wanted Hawkins for herself.
Just as Slocum wanted him.
He cut off to the right from the direction Julian and his men had taken. If he could find where Polly had been held prisoner, he might track her. Slocum had no reason to believe Julian wasn’t a decent tracker or had one riding with him. That meant finding Polly amounted to Lady Luck smiling on him.
Slocum made his way into the woods long enough for the sun to sink low and bathe the world in twilight. The smaller forest critters popped out of their burrows and began foraging and feasting. More than one fox eyed him hungrily. Distant crashing through the brush warned him of a rampaging javelina. And sitting and watching brought him the piece of luck he had been missing.
A small dark form moved along the path where he sat, simply waiting. If Slocum had been the hunted, he would have done the same thing, his pursuers moving faster along the cleared trail. They would overtake him and his freedom—and life—would be in peril.
The shadow moved parallel to the dirt track, then came out to look around.
“Hello, Polly,” he said.
She jumped a foot. So startled, she took a step back, got her feet tangled, and fell heavily. She clutched a sharp-edged rock in one hand and clawed at the air like a mad cougar with the other.
“Settle down,” he said. “Julian and his men went off in a different direction, but they might have circled around.”
“John, how’d you find me?”
He held out his hand. She relaxed her claw and pulled herself up with his help. She stared at him for a moment, then collapsed against him, sobbing.
“They killed him for sure this time. They made me look while they nailed him up and—”
Her sobbing became uncontrollable.
“I saw. That’s how I knew you were still alive. I found a footprint in the blood.”
“I hate them, I hate them all!”
He wanted to ask if Julian had done anything to her other than forcing her to watch her pa’s humiliation and death, but he held back. If she wanted to tell him, she would. Getting out of sight immediately trumped finding what had happened to her.
“There’s got to be a place we can go to ground.”
“I found a place yonder, by the river. Tree roots grew out and made a little cave on the bank.”
He turned her in that direction and went along, letting her lead the way even as he supported her. By the time they reached the river, she had recovered some of her gumption.
“There’s my hidey-hole.”
Slocum said nothing. The roots formed a dubious cave. Anyone on the far side of the stream could see them, and once inside, there was no way to go except out into the water, which would hinder an escape.
“It’s not all that good, is it, John? It’s all I could find being chased by a pack of jackals.”
“Let’s take a rest,” he said. Slocum looked around, hunting for any sign that they had been spotted. In the dimness of the early evening, they might be safe. For a while.
After Polly worked her way into the muddy cave, Slocum followed, turned, and sat on a patch of moss to keep from sliding back out on the slick mud.
“I never expected you to find me,” she said. “Thank you.”
Slocum wasn’t going to tell her it had been sheer luck. He put his arm around her and held her close. Polly’s head rested on his shoulder. They said nothing as darkness became almost complete outside. He thought she had drifted off to sleep, but she finally said, “I thought we were hidden. I knew of an old ranch a couple miles off the road to Dexter. The owner had been a friend of Pa’s, but Hawkins forced him to sell. Mr. Hulbert and his family moved. I never heard where. They were the smart ones.”
“Your pa did right not to give in to a man like Hawkins.”
“It cost him his wife and son and me my brother and Mama. And”—her sobs shook her now—“my pa. All I’ve got left is a worthless ranch and a need for revenge. You won’t kill him, John. Don’t kill him. I’ve got to.”
“Staying alive long enough to figure how is the most important thing,” he said.
The darkness closed in around him, bringing back impressions of the coffin. Water dripped on his head. He was underground. He was buried again.
“J-John, you tensed up. Did you hear something?”
“No, nothing.”
He tried to relax but couldn’t. Being buried alive had ignited his imagination so any dark, tight place became that coffin. Polly had rescued him. He concentrated on her being near, but he couldn’t save her if he was buried. Could she save him if they were in the same grave?
“John! You’re hurting me.”
“Sorry,” he said, taking his arm from around her shoulder. He had gripped down so hard his arm had lost circulation. Needles danced along it while he shook it to get feeling back. “I’ve never faced anyone like Hawkins before.”
“Maybe we can kill him together?” Polly rested her head on his shoulder again and took his hand in hers. “How would we do that? Together?”
“How did you get away from Julian after they did that to your pa? He had a half-dozen men hunting for you.”
“They took me to a stone hut. I don’t know where it is. I just ran from it when I got free. The door was sturdy and locked on the outside, but I found a loose rock near the foundation. I knew what Julian intended to do to me, so I began digging as hard and fast as I could when I found it.
“The mortar came loose so I could pull out a stone about the size of my fist. I used that to chip away more mortar until the hole was big enough for me to stick my head out.”
“Why didn’t a guard see you? Or had Julian underestimated you and not left any?”
“Oh, there were guards. Three of them. But they had a friend to keep them company. A bottle of whiskey. For once I was glad the price in town is so low. The three of them couldn’t have cobbled together enough change to trade for a silver dollar.
“So I kept digging and they kept passing the bottle around. My hole was finally big enough to squeeze through if I twisted my shoulders this way and that.” She demonstrated. “Then I waited until they were snockered enough to pass out.”
“Then you ran.”
“I ran in the direction away from the front of the stone hut. It took me too long, though, because I hadn’t gone a dozen yards when the hue and cry went up. Julian had come to . . . to take his due.”
Slocum moved the gang leader to a spot just under Leonard Hawkins on his “to be shot like a mad dog” list. He owed Julian, but the things he had intended doing to Polly sealed his fate.
“I tried to run in a straight line to put as much distance between me and them as I could, but I got turned around and started veering off to my right. I think that was where I went since I splashed through the river. That was all turned around from what I thought, but I found this place and holed up here. You know the rest.”
“You left to get out of the woods?”
“I left to find Julian. I was going to claw out his eyes and bash in his head.”
Her voice had risen to a shrill pitch, but the constant rush of water masked any nosie they might make. Slocum waited for her to calm down, then said, “I’m thirsty. Join me at the river?”
“It’s a long way to go, John. Why, it’s almost five feet.”
They slid from the tree root cave. Polly flopped belly down and scooped water into her mouth, Slocum knelt and lifted a palm dripping with water to his lips. What warned him he never knew, but he felt a presence behind him. He whirled about and flung the few drops of water in his right hand into Sikes’s face. The man bellowed in surprise, momentarily showing his gold tooth.
Slocum fell into the river but got out his six-shooter. Using the shiny tooth as a target, he fired. The back of Sikes’s head exploded as Slocum’s aim was perfect.
“Oh, no, they’ve found us!”
Slocum shifted his aim and got off another shot at Sikes’s partner—Garcia, Julian had called him. This round went high but put a hole through the brim of the man’s hat. The nearness of the shot caused Garcia to miss Slocum. This split second gave Slocum enough time to cock his Colt and fire a third time.
He caught Garcia in the chest but didn’t drop him. Garcia starting firing wildly, bullets splashing into the water all around. He grunted once when Slocum got off another shot at the man. This one took the outlaw in the neck. His six-gun fell from his hand, and he grabbed his throat. Blood squirted from between his fingers. He took a step forward, slipped on the mud, and toppled into the river. Slocum followed his body into the darkness, but he knew the man was dead.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.
No answer.
“Polly? Julian’s not far off. The three of them went looking for you together.”
He pulled himself out of the river and went to the bank, where the woman lay unmoving. He rolled her over. One of Garcia’s wild bullets had caught her in the head, just above the ear. Other than a tiny spot of blood, she didn’t have any obvious wound. But that bullet hole had done for her. She had died instantly.
Slocum stood and hunted for Julian. He would pay his debt for all he had done to the Neville family. Then Slocum would collect the rest of the debt from Leonard Hawkins.