Slocum and the Grizzly Flats Killers (9781101619216) Read Free Page A

and knees. She ought to run but couldn’t find the strength. The men rummaged through camp for another twenty minutes hunting for a map or gold or anything that might show that the gold had even been found.
    She pressed her fingers against the two gold coins Ike had found. If he had carried those when they searched him, there wouldn’t be any chance in hell of her getting away. As it was, not finding any hint of the treasure, the three men eventually disappeared into the woods near the camp. She heard hoofbeats as they left.
    It was another hour before she summoned the courage to go into the camp.
    Sennick had been tortured as efficiently and effectively as if an Apache had worked him over. David Garrison had been slashed to bloody ribbons before he died. Terrence was a still smoldering lump of once human flesh. Cara and Irene lay on their backs. Their clothing had been ripped away. She didn’t need to check to know they had been raped before having their throats slashed.
    And then there was her husband.
    Mirabelle dropped beside Ike and cried until no more tears would flow. Replacing the grief was something Mirabelle didn’t like, hardly recognized.
    She wanted revenge and nothing would stop her from exacting it from the men who had gunned down her husband and committed such atrocities on the other five.

2
    â€œThat’s one thing I like about you, Slocum. You don’t drink when you’re working.” Jim “Beefsteak” Malone laughed his full-belly laugh and returned to industriously using a rag that might have cleaned off his boots before being applied to the shot glasses stacked in front of him. The rest of the back bar was in a similar slovenly condition, but it hardly mattered to the saloon’s customers.
    Slocum said nothing. The owner of the Damned Shame Drinking Emporium and Gambling Parlor never shut his piehole. That made him a good barkeep, but it irritated Slocum, who preferred his own company. Still, Beefsteak Malone had given him a job when he needed it most. There hadn’t been a poker game in all of Sacramento that had gone his way. Some of the tinhorn gamblers were cheating, but Slocum hadn’t been able to turn the cards against them. And the honest games had proven even worse for his poke. How anyone could lose with four queens was a poser, but he had. It had been a low straight diamond flush, but it had been drawn against him all right and proper.
    Changing his luck by riding east, intending to find someplace in Nevada to hole up for the winter, hadn’t worked for him either. His horse had started coughing up its guts, and he had finally been forced to shoot it not three miles outside Grizzly Flats. Having the town so close had been his only good luck, though the walk in carrying his gear had been a chore on the rocky road.
    Malone had taken one look at the worn ebony handle on the Colt Navy slung in a cross-draw holster and had offered him a job as bouncer in his saloon. Having only a dollar and a dime in his pocket, Slocum had accepted. So far the chore hadn’t been too onerous. The clientele in the Damned Shame proved mostly peaceful, even when they got a snootful of Beefsteak’s poisonous trade whiskey. He had broken up a couple fights, but the participants had been halfhearted, as if they wanted him to shove them apart, then escort them into the street, where they circled each other for a few minutes, then ended up staggering off to find another watering hole. From what Slocum could tell, saloons were Grizzly Flats’ only real bright speck of prosperity. There were a dozen, and all seemed to turn a profit.
    â€œI had one bouncer,” Malone went on, “who claimed to never touch the stuff. Only when I found out that he was drunk all the time did I realize he meant water. Sober, the man was one mean son of a buck. Drunk, you couldn’t tell. ’Cept for the smell.”
    â€œWhat’s their story?” Slocum leaned back on