by Jake Logan
“Put down the rifle, sir,” she said. Then Marlene toppled from the driver’s box when the bounty hunter fired.
From the report and the huge puff of white smoke, he carried a monster of a gun. Likely a .45-70 H&R Buffalo rifle from the recoil and that he had to reload. Single shot, powerful enough to bring down a man at a thousand yards, the kind of rifle a bounty hunter carried.
Slocum cast a quick look over his shoulder to see how Marlene fared but couldn’t find where she had fallen or if she was even alive. The team reared and jerked on the reins he had looped around the wagon brake, making it difficult for him to draw a bead on the bounty hunter. The battle between their fright and the strength of the harness had to end soon. Slocum didn’t care which way it went—he needed to get off a shot or Big Joe would have the upper hand.
He dug his toes into the litter in the wagon bed and propelled himself over the tailgate. Slocum hit the ground, rolled, and brought the shotgun up. The bounty hunter watched the rearing team and didn’t see Slocum until it was too late. The first shell detonated, lifting the muzzle of the shotgun. Over the years Slocum had developed a sense for when he hit his target and when he missed. This was close.
The bounty hunter jerked about, grabbing for his left side. His rifle fell from his grip as blood oozed between his fingers. He looked up, pure hatred etching his ugly features.
“Slocum!”
Slocum fired the second barrel. He knocked open the breech and ejected both spent shells. Before he had loaded two more shells, he saw there wasn’t any need for more gunplay. Big Joe Joseph had caught the second load of buckshot in the chest and was knocked back off his horse. The animal reared, pawed at the air, and then galloped away.
Slocum stood and watched as Big Joe was dragged along behind. His right foot had tangled in the stirrup. After the bounty hunter and his runaway horse disappeared in a cloud of dust, Slocum ran to the wagon, jumped over the traces, and stood on the yoke, taking reins in both hands and pulling hard to settle the team. The horses finally settled down so he could tighten the lash around the wagon brake. Only when it was secured did he hop off on the far side to hunt for Marlene.
He heaved a sigh of relief. The girl sat up in the dust and brushed off the new layers of dirt.
“Are you all right?” He helped her to her feet. Other than the dirt, he saw no trace of blood. Big Joe had either fired for effect or he had been a lousy shot.
“How did he miss at such close range?” She looked at him. “You didn’t miss, did you?”
Slocum looked around. He had dropped the shotgun on the far side of the wagon. He shook his head, then reached out to take her hand and lead her back to the driver’s box. With a heave, he lifted her off her feet. For a moment, her feet weakly sought purchase, then found a hole in the side of the wagon. She pushed herself on up and sat heavily.
Her response was as depleted as Slocum felt. He brought her a dipper of water, took some himself, then secured the water barrel before climbing back to take the reins.
“We can reach the railroad tracks in ten or fifteen minutes,” he said, snapping the reins and steering the team toward the gleaming steel rails. “The repair crew has to be sent anytime now.”
“We might have missed them.” Although she looked ahead without turning her head, she jerked her thumb back in the direction of the Colorado River. “They can be back there.”
“We push on,” he said.
“Because of the bounty hunter? Because he might be at the head of a posse?”
Her question hit close to home. Slocum remembered the posse after him. By now they had all gone home. But Big Joe might be only the first of a string of bounty hunters since the reward had been set so high. If he had a way to do so, Slocum would turn himself in for the reward. As it was, getting Marlene back to her family would bring him as much and let him ride off a thousand miles away from all the trouble in San Diego. He had never cared much for San Antonio, but right now it drew him like a flower attracts a bee.
Wheels rattling over the rugged ground, he followed the tracks so long that he wondered if he would drive over the edge of the world before he found the repair crew. The sun sank behind the wagon and still he drove on until a glint ahead made him sit a little straighter. He glanced over at Marlene. She slumped, then said, “I saw it, too. That’s the Yuma Bullet ahead.”
“Why isn’t it running?”
“It might have brought the repair crew out and is parked.”
Slocum tried to keep her talking. He preferred even obvious answers to her silence, but too soon Marlene fell back into a glum, mute state.
As they drove closer, he saw the Yuma Bullet had pulled onto a siding. Mad Tom, his fireman, and a burly man in a conductor’s uniform stood by the front wheels, arguing. Even when Slocum came within a dozen yards, he didn’t disturb their heated debate.
“Tom!” He stood and called. “Good of you to wait for us.”
“Damnation, it’s Doc Slocum and the little lady herself.” He pushed past the conductor and came over. “I wondered if I’d ever see you again, but I shoulda knowed you was too cussed to die.”
“Miss Burlison!” The conductor stepped up but hesitated when he heard a shriek of joy.
The outcry from the Pullman car platform told Slocum everyone knew they had arrived.
“Miss Mulligan,” he said, touching the brim of his hat. Dust cascaded down. “I brought her back.”
For an instant, the girl stared up at him. Then she laughed in delight and called, “You mean you brought Miss Burlison back! I misunderstood.”
“She’s in bad shape. Terrible things happened to her.” Slocum reached out to Marlene to help her down from the wagon. She jerked away from him and climbed down on her own.
Sarah Jane threw her arms around her mistress, but Marlene pushed away from her, too.
“Stop that. Stop that now. Come with me,” Sarah Jane said sharply.
“Treat her real gentle,” Slocum said, his eyes boring down on Sarah Jane. “She’s been through hell.”
“You don’t tell me what to do,” Sarah Jane said sharply.
“Uh, Slocum, I reckon you got a fine story to tell. Let the ladies go off to the Pullman. I need some advice from you on a matter.” Mad Tom sounded frantic that he obey.
Slocum had been through too much to argue. He watched as Sarah Jane led Marlene to the Pullman car, all lit up with gaslights. Once inside, Sarah Jane spun Marlene around and poked her in the chest with a finger, backing the woman up.
“That’s not right. I’m going to stop that,” Slocum said. Tom caught his arm.
“We got some serious problems, Slocum. You let them be. The ways of the rich ain’t ours to meddle in.”
Sarah Jane closed curtains so he could no longer see how she badgered Marlene. Maybe in her distraught state, someone taking charge was the best thing for Marlene. It still rankled seeing the girl bullied like that after she had almost lost her life a dozen times since the cars fell into the river.
“Why’d you park at this siding? Waiting for us to show up?”
Mad Tom snorted like steam from his locomotive’s stack.
“Ain’t a bit of it. Fact is, we’d’ve plowed right on ahead if the ole engine hadn’t seized up.” He took Slocum’s elbow and steered him to where the conductor stood, glaring. “That there’s Hanks. Picked him up in Yuma to replace Jefferson.”
“That’s a hard man to replace.”
“He don’t even come close,” Tom said under his breath. “You shake hands with this one, you count yer fingers afterwards. Ain’t sayin’ he’s a sneak thief or nuthin’ like that, mind you, but you jist watch out for him.”
Hanks walked up to Slocum and gave him the once-over. It was mutual. Taking into account what Tom had said colored Slocum’s reaction to the new conductor. The man stood as tall as Slocum and looked to be as w
iry. He had the build of a man used to long days in the saddle, and his weathered face doubled down on that notion. Men who spend their days and nights on trains had a different look. Other than physique, conductors prided themselves on their uniforms. Hanks’s fit like he had taken it off a dead man, tight in the shoulders and floppy around the waist.
“You lose your pocket watch?” Slocum asked.
“What’s that?”
“You’re the first conductor I ever saw who didn’t have a watch tucked away to be sure the train left the station on time.”
Hanks pressed his gnarled hand against his empty watch pocket.
“Musta left it with the rest of my gear. You’re Slocum, the one this old walleyed fool is always goin’ on about?”
“The name’s Slocum. I don’t know about the rest.”
Hanks gave him a sour look, then said, “You work for Burlison. Order the engineer to get us on to Deming.”
“Because I’m the engineer of the Yuma Bullet’s why I ain’t pressin’ on,” Mad Tom said. His lips thinned, showing yellowed teeth behind his chapped lips. “We got ourselves a problem. No oil. If I don’t get plenty on the bearings, they’ll seize up and ruin the whole damned engine.”
“You don’t know what yer talkin’ ’bout,” Hanks said. “Them bearings always run hot and stink to high heaven.”
“I kin lubricate ’em with your brains,” Tom said, “but them bearings’d be jist as dry as they are now.” He pointedly turned his back on the conductor and faced Slocum. “We need oil to get into a repair depot. No train’s comin’ this way from Deming until we git back. And none’s comin’ across the bridge anytime soon. The repair crew foreman tole me it’d be at least a week to rebuild.”
“So we sit and wait a week?”
“Well, Slocum, might not have to. See, there’s an abandoned town a half-dozen miles off that might have stored up some oil.”
“A railroad town?” Slocum asked.
“Made strictly to house the construction crews. A thrivin’ mee-tropolis in its day, but it got abandoned when it warn’t needed no more.”
“Any water there?”
“Nary a drop,” Tom said. “The depots along the way where we fill up have a handful of folks tendin’ ’em. That ain’t one.”
“You want me to ride on over and see if I can rustle up some oil? How much do you need?”
“A gallon would do me, but less if that’s all there is. You got a wagon. Don’t matter how much there is ’cuz you kin load it all up fer me.”
Slocum wanted nothing more than to curl up in a quiet corner and sleep for a week. He had more aches and bruises than any five men ought to sport.
“Get me some victuals and water and I’ll be on my way. Six miles away, you say?”
“Might be more. Could be ten. I’d have set out myself but crossin’ this desert on foot’s enough to kill a man.”
“Heard that’s the case,” Slocum said. Memory of his own hike through the desert would haunt him for a spell. “You want to help get the water into the wagon?” He looked straight at Hanks, who pointedly turned away.
“He’s like that, Slocum,” Mad Tom said. “Me and the coal boy’ll help.” Louder so Hanks could hear, he added, “Some folks on this here railroad are used to workin’ fer their pay.”
The trio poured water from the train into the barrel, made sure the team had plenty to drink, and then Slocum stepped up into the driver’s box. He cast a quick look up at the Pullman car, worrying about the way Sarah Jane had acted toward Marlene. Shrugging this off, he settled down, took the reins, and snapped them. The team began pulling.
He had gone barely a mile when he hit a rock that set the entire wagon to bouncing. He fought to keep control, then he went cold inside.
From the rear of the wagon came muffled curses. He touched his six-gun, then remembered the Colt was empty. Reaching back, he found the knife he had taken off one of the men he had killed in the desert, then swung around, grabbed a mattress, and yanked it away. He thrust out the knife, ready to spit whoever was hiding.
He drew back as Sarah Jane looked up and smiled.
“It’s about time you realized you had a traveling companion. Aren’t you going to invite me to sit up there with you?”
Slocum fought to find words but couldn’t. He sank back and shook his head in wonder. Taking the job to see Marlene Burlison safely to San Antonio was going to be the death of him yet.
15
“What are you doing? Don’t go back. I forbid it!” Sarah Jane grabbed his arm and dug in her fingernails until she drew blood. Slocum pulled away.
“I just spent the past few days babysitting your mistress. That’s not something I’m looking forward to doing with you.”
“Oh, John, really? This isn’t a dangerous trip, is it? If it is, I’m sure you’ll keep me safe and sound.” She snuggled close until Slocum felt their mingled sweat plastering his sleeve to his arm. “I got so bored sitting around, waiting, with nothing to do. I simply had to get away.”
“Miss Burlison needs you,” he said. “She’s been through more than you can imagine.”
“Really? Then tell me about it. Every little detail. I want to hear it all! What did she say about me?”
Slocum wondered what kind of servant Sarah Jane was. She had lived it up in the Pullman car while her mistress almost drowned, got raped by a gang of savages, fought Indians, and was damned near shot by a bounty hunter. Then the elements had been brutal, offering too little water and too much heat.
“She can tell you.”
“I want you to, John. Now.”
He started to turn the team around, but Sarah Jane pouted and drew away from him.
“Oh, be like that. Why you won’t tell me is a great mystery.”
“It’s none of your business, unless Miss Burlison wants to tell you. Did you ask her?”
“I did. Her lips were too chapped and her tongue too swollen for her to speak.”
“All the more reason for you to be tending her and not riding to a ghost town with me.”
“I remember the town,” she said. “We passed through it a few times as the tracks were being laid. Hell on Wheels, they called it. Nobody would escort me into the town to see what it had to offer and . . . and Marlene refused to go. Such a spoilsport.”
Slocum had been in enough boomtowns to guess what a railroad town—and a temporary one moving along with the tracks as they were laid—could be like. It was no place for a lady and her maid, though he had been surprised at Sarah Jane’s appetites in San Diego at the whorehouse and even more amazed that Marlene had allowed her to indulge them.
“Rough trade,” he said. “But if you passed through, tell me where the building crew stored its oil.”
“I don’t know, but there were a couple big warehouses not far from the tracks. I saw them from the window of my car as . . . as Mr. Burlison did whatever business he had to at the main station house.”
Slocum doubted finding the storage area would be difficult. At most, only a few hundred people had occupied the town, and all of them were transients. A couple tent saloons, a hotel or two, and more likely bunkhouses, a company store, and whatever else the town needed to survive.
“All supplies were brought in?”
“By rail, of course, you silly goose. There wasn’t any water, and who would raise cattle or grow crops out here?” Sarah Jane made a sweeping gesture encompassing the entire desert. Slocum saw that her nails had been perfectly manicured. Comparing them with the way Marlene’s hands looked after a few days of roughing it made him a tad resentful.
“Did you get all the way to Deming and then return to find us—to find Marlene?”
“Marlene, is it? You and she are on first name terms now? Was it charming out there, just the two of you? Under the stars?”
“Under
the killing hot sun without water most of the time, and when we did have water, Marlene almost drowned after her Pullman car toppled into the Colorado from the trestle.” He felt a knot grow in his belly. “Jefferson died, too, trying to save her.”
“Oh, we picked up a new conductor in Yuma. I don’t know a thing about him, but he is rather cute.”
“His uniform doesn’t fit,” Slocum said. Why that bothered him had to be considered some other day. Ahead through the heat shimmer popped up a tall building. He pointed it out.
“That’s a bell tower. I don’t know why Mr. Burlison ever had it built. Such a waste of time and money.”
“Might be he likes bells.”
“Do you like belles, John? Of course you do. We spent a fine time together, and I am certainly a belle.”
“The belle of the ball,” he said.
“I hope I’m the belle of your ball.” She reached over and grabbed at his crotch. “I’d certainly like to ring these balls again.”
He caught her wrist and moved her hand away.
“There’s someone else in town.”
“What? How could there be? This is railroad property. They’re trespassing! You’re just saying that to distract me. Who would be here? Other than the two of us?”
Slocum wondered at her outrage, but the solitary mule hitched beside the tumbledown hotel warned of at least one other man in town. The mule wore a double pack fastened with a diamond hitch the way a prospector would sling his gear. They drove past with Sarah Jane not even looking up to see the animal and what it meant.
“That the big warehouse where railroad supplies were kept?” He pointed to a two-story windowless building down the street from the hotel.
“It was. Are you sure someone else is in town? What are you going to do about him, John? He can’t stay. I won’t allow it!”
“Why’s it up to you to tell him where he can get out of the sun?”
“I am the representative of the S&P and as such must uphold the integrity of all property along the tracks. He might be stealing something valuable.”
“The only thing of value out here,” Slocum said, “is water. Right now, I’d swap him some for a small barrel of oil so we can get the Yuma Bullet rolling again.”