Slocum and the Hellfire Harem (9781101613382) Read Online Free PDF

seemed to make the men feel better to have covered themselves up in front of the stranger.
    He didn’t press them, but Slocum was curious about their story. It being late in the day, and since he was still unsure if they were fit to take care of themselves, he figured he’d stay the night in the barn. He turned the Appaloosa loose into the corral and helped himself to some of the hay. The barn sat curiously empty save for an old mule whose livelier days were long behind him. He now shuffled about his own paddock off the back of the barn in much the same manner as the burnt men inside the house.
    Slocum set his gear in a heap against a wall inside the barn, a decent spot to stretch out for a few nighttime hours. He was frustrated, but there was nothing for it. If he attempted to keep on into dark, he could end up with an injured horse, afoot in the middle of a long way from nowhere. His only consolation was that Mueller would have to do the same.
    He headed back to the house and found the men seated gingerly around a big kitchen table. They looked considerably better, given the short amount of time that had passed since he’d freed them. He also noticed, by the looks they shot one another, that these men were angry. And rightfully so, thought Slocum. They’d been robbed, lashed to a fence, and left to die. But something about them and their plight didn’t sit right. And the warning bells that he’d felt jangling in the back of his head were gonging louder than ever now. In part because they seemed, as before, angry with him.
    â€œHow long ago did that other man come by? I ask because he is a killer and a thief, and I am tracking him. Have been since Arizona.”
    The old man’s knobbed thumbs worked back and forth with force over the worn brown leather cover of a thick Bible. His lips worked in a frantic, trembling, soundless speech. Slocum found nothing odd in that. Plenty of folks had a Bible around, and especially given what these men had just been through, he figured they might find a bit of comfort in the Good Book. A memory came to him, unbidden, of his mother reading her Bible by lamplight. He shook it off and figured he needed some answers. Before he could speak, the old man mumbled something.
    â€œPardon me?” said Slocum.
    â€œI say I don’t know more about the devil you are chasing,” said Tinker. “Except that he robbed us, took water from us. Never offered us none, nor helped us at all.”
    Slocum nodded, mentally adding to Mueller’s list the crime of ignoring his fellow men in a time of dire need. Not just ignoring them, but laughing at them, robbing them, before riding on. “Do you have any idea who did this to you?” He gestured toward them, assuming they would know that he was referring to their scarlet bodies.
    â€œIt was devil-sent bandits who did this to us.” The old man licked his lips and continued.
    Everyone’s a devil to this old man, thought Slocum.
    Tinker continued. “Tied us up out yonder, took our horses, money, foodstuffs.” The old man glanced at the other four, who sat around the kitchen table looking at their hands, at the tabletop, anywhere, it seemed to Slocum, but meeting the old man’s hard gaze. “And they took our womenfolk.”
    That last bit surprised Slocum. “How many women?”
    â€œHah?”
    â€œI said, how many women did they take?”
    â€œOh, the Good Lord seen fit to give us a woman each, except for Luke there.” He indicated the youngest. “Be a few seasons more ’til he’s ready to spread his seed so that he might add to our congregation and bring glory to God by putting more men in His service.” As he spoke, the old man’s voice quavered and rose in pitch. He seemed to be working himself up into a lather.
    The young boy blushed a deeper crimson through the sunburn. The Ortons hadn’t told Slocum that there were people other than the