Slocum's Breakout - Jake Logan [55]
And not be locked up in San Quentin on trumped-up charges.
He came to a path leading to the top of a low hill. He trooped to the summit and then sat on a rock, staring across the cultivated fields. Some were brown from lack of irrigation but many were producing good crops. He remembered his home in Calhoun, Georgia, and how the family had farmed. Grains, mostly, and alfalfa for the livestock. Those had been good days before the war.
His family was long dead. He pulled his watch from his vest pocket and looked at it, case closed. This was his only legacy from his brother, Robert. Robert had been the good hunter. Slocum had tried to match his accuracy and stealthiness and had usually come up shy of that ideal. Robert had died during Pickett’s Charge. All the marksmanship and woodsmanship in the world wouldn’t have saved him once he started marching into the Federal guns.
Slocum wasn’t going to keep barking up the tree—the tree where Atencio would be hanged. He didn’t know the man and only owed Murrieta the effort to get his friend free from San Quentin because of how he had sacrificed himself in the first escape. There had to be an end, and Slocum had reached it.
He went into a crouch and had his Colt out of the holster at the faint crunch of a foot turning a rock behind him.
“You are very fast,” Maria said. “Your aim is good also, I suspect.”
“You shouldn’t have followed.”
“I had to, John, I had to. Atencio means the world to me, to Procipio, to the entire village.” She moved forward, as silent as a ghost now. He wondered if her tiny feet ever touched the earth. She had cleaned up and put on a fresh blouse. Her billowing skirt needed serious cleaning after her work in the fields, but he suspected she did not have another. Not for everyday use. He was sure she had a fancy Sunday-go-to-meeting dress, but there was no call for such wear now.
“I’ve done all I can. I can track down Durant and try to get the money back, but time’s running out.”
“Two days,” she said sadly. Maria moved closer and reached out to touch his cheek. “You have done all you could. I am sure Procipio will release you from your promise.”
That stung him. He jerked away and stared out over the valley and its neat fields of growing pinto beans. Some men made promises and forgot them right away. Slocum kept his. Having Maria tell him Murrieta would relieve him of his word, freely given, burned like a knife wound in his gut.
“What else can I do?”
“There is nothing,” she said. “You are so very clever to have saved Atencio. But you are going?”
“Yes.” He saw no reason to lie. Breaking his promise was bad enough.
“It is for the best. The sheriff hunts you, the guards from San Quentin seek you out, and even the Valenzuelas would kill you if they find you. There is no one here to keep you safe.”
Maria moved closer. Her lush body pressed into his back as her arms circled his waist and held him close. He found it increasingly difficult to simply stand. Her fingers pressed lower, beneath the buckle of his gun belt, moving slowly, carefully, stimulating and making him increasingly uncomfortable trapped in his jeans.
Slocum gasped when she unfastened his gun belt and let it drop to the ground, then began working on the buttons holding his fly together. When he sprang free, warm air surrounding his rigid manhood, he sighed with relief. Then he gasped again as her fingers circled him and began exerting a steady pressure all around. The warmth of her hand, the way she knew exactly where to touch him, made Slocum steely hard.
He ran his hands back along hers, up her wrists, and stroked her bare forearms. She pressed her cheek against his back. He felt her soft breathing become increasingly harsh as she moved her body against his.
He turned slowly in the circle of her arms. He was reluctant to have her release her hold on him but knew there was more, better, waiting. He kissed her upturned face. Her lips, her eyes, down to a shell-like ear. His tongue lightly ran around the rim. Maria sighed with the feathery light