Slocum and the Water Witch by Jake Logan

Author:Jake Logan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

“There’s not a bone in my body that doesn’t ache,” Madelaine Villareal declared as they rode into Dehydration just before dawn. “All I want is a hot bath and to sleep for a week. No, not a week, a month.”

“We can get the gear and explore the rest of the tunnel,” Slocum said, more to tease her than from any desire on his part.

“That’s true,” she said thoughtfully. “Perhaps I won’t sleep a week, after all. A bath and I’ll be ready to go back. Can you get the lamps and whatever else we’d need?”

“Whoa,” he said. “I need a bath, too, and there’s not much water in these parts. And I need to sleep.” He considered how tired he was and the notion of going to bed with Maddy didn’t even excite him at the moment. All he wanted was to sleep.

“Be like that,” she said tartly, then laughed. “Oh, John, it is so much fun teasing you. You take everything so seriously.”

“You were, too, when we were buried alive. That tunnel might have been our grave.”

“There’s water at the end. There has to be. That’s why the diving rod showed me how to get in.”

“Take your bath. I’ll come by later,” Slocum said.

“Not too much later,” Maddy said, bending over and giving him a wet kiss on his grimy cheek. She trotted away as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

Slocum walked his Appaloosa slowly to the stables and put the horse into a stall. The stableman was nowhere to be seen, so Slocum tended his horse, made sure plenty of food and a bucket of water was within easy reach, then flopped into the next stall, not even bothering to lay down his blanket. His dreams were more like nightmares: trapped underground, drowned, crushed, and all with Maddy reaching out to him—her fingers just beyond his grasp.

Sometime in the late afternoon, he awoke. Heat boiled in, but it had been the dreams that brought him out of his sleep. Slocum rubbed his eyes, then got up and tended his horse again. There was still no trace of the stableman, so Slocum tended the other three horses in the stalls before going to find himself some food. His belly growled and the drink he had taken from the horse’s water bucket didn’t go far to quench his thirst.

As he walked out into the main street, he looked around. Activity was at an ebb, even for Dehydration in the middle of a hot, dry summer. Nowhere did anyone stir. He sauntered to the restaurant and went in, hoping it would be open. At the rear of the dining area a well-dressed, portly man argued with another dressed in a white apron. Slocum couldn’t hear what was going on, but he caught the gist of the matter.

The one was a banker wanting money that the restaurant owner didn’t have.

“Please, Mr. Harlow. You can’t foreclose like this. There’s no business anywhere in town. It’s the drought.”

“You got till the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.