Slocum and the Hellfire Harem (9781101613382) by Jake Logan Page A

regard them as somehow inferior.
    And this lot was anything but, especially bristling with all that firepower. Slocum had no intention of approaching the house without keeping Ruth before him. It wasn’t but a short while before that she’d been trying to ambush him. And he still didn’t know why.
    â€œMy rifle, if you don’t mind.” She held out a strong, callused hand and beckoned with her fingers.
    Downright demanding, thought Slocum. “As it happens,” he said, careful not to point the muzzle of his pistol or the rifle toward the kids or the house. “I do mind. And no, I don’t trust you.”
    The kids looked at him with a mixture of mistrust and confusion, but one little girl caught his own gaze and smiled, her red cheeks bunching high, before burying her face against Ruth’s leg.
    He had to smile. “Yours?”
    â€œNot all of ’em.” She looked at the kids, who’d begun to wander off, wrestling and shrieking and pushing one another. “Enough, though.”
    Where before she’d looked fiery and mischievous, now she just looked tired.
    â€œWhat’s say we try to talk your friends over there into putting down their weapons before I end up hurt. I have a long way to go and a short time to get there.”
    She nodded as they walked toward the house, but before she could reply, he said, “Which reminds me, you haven’t seen any other men out this way, have you?”
    The question stopped her in her tracks. “What . . . makes you ask that?”
    Interesting, he thought. Given that the road was not too heavily traveled, he was beginning to wonder if he had lost Mueller’s trail. Do have to wonder if these women and kids just might be the ones the bandits supposedly absconded with back at the old man’s place. If so, he thought, they look fine and dandy, and that’s as far as I care to take the matter.
    â€œBecause I am tracking a man,” he said, choosing to keep the sunburned gang out of conversation for the time being. “I believe he’s wearing a red shirt, or was at one time. He’s done some bad things, shouldn’t be trusted.” He nodded toward the gaggle of kids. “Especially not where kids and women are concerned.” And once again, it was as if he’d flipped a switch.
    She turned on him, her teeth set, that glint in her eyes, but nothing playful about it now. She poked a finger at him, all but ignoring the pistol in his hand and the rifle within swinging distance. “You got a lot of gall to say that to me, mister. I’ll have you know we all can take care of ourselves just fine without the help of any menfolk.”
    â€œYeah, well, you haven’t run into Tunk Mueller.”
    Ruth turned her back on him and said, “Or maybe he ain’t run into us.”
    Slocum could only nod. It appeared he’d stumbled into a nest of she-vipers and he didn’t want to be the next thing they stung. But by God, if they weren’t the prettiest nest of vipers he’d ever seen. In addition to Ruth, there were the two girls who looked enough alike that he was sure they were twins, from their dark, wavy hair to their hard-staring, big-lashed eyes to their proud chests and round hips. They also appeared to be sporting smears of axle grease on their hands and cheeks. And in their hands they each held a Winchester rifle.
    The youngest was a fine-looking girl on her way to being a handsome woman—apparently one who could shoot, for she wore a double-gun rig in holsters on her hips. Just now her hands rested lightly on the butts, and on her perky little face sat narrowed eyes and a scowl, all directed his way. In the middle of them stood the short, stout woman who he could tell had been a great beauty herself before time and years of hard work tending a family had worn her down. He also guessed she was the matriarch of this deadly, pretty brood.
    â€œMama, this here