by Jake Logan
“Of course I did,” Arlene said, looking indignant. The sputtering fire cast shadows on her face and turned her into something primitive. “I promised Deutsch I would help find Mr. Berenson because I could point out where I had seen him. I assumed Rolf Berenson was the man who was watching us after we crossed the Middle Fork River.”
“He was,” Slocum said. “He admitted as much.”
“Then you’ve talked to him! You know how sweet he is.”
“Sweet?” Slocum wondered if living in the cliff dwellings did something to a person’s brain. “He’s killed at least two men I know of and maybe more. He came within a hair of killing me.”
“Don’t be silly, John. You’re here. He didn’t kill you.”
“I got out of his trap.”
“Oh, those. He is very proud of them. He uses them to protect himself from intruders. If you got caught in one, he would never have let you die.”
“Like hell,” Slocum said. “Twice he’s stolen all my supplies. He’s a killer and a sneak thief.”
“Well,” Arlene said, “I admit his social graces are lacking. That comes from living out in the wilds like this, all alone.”
“He must like it or he wouldn’t trap and kill people.”
“I’m sure they meant him harm, John.”
Slocum had no answer for that. Mayerling was hardly going to bow and scrape and be at Berenson’s beck and call; the deputy wanted to take him back to Texas. But Deutsch had wanted to kill him, yet Arlene had cooperated with him.
“All my supplies are probably in his cave. He’s keeping you prisoner here, doling out only enough food to keep you alive.”
“I haven’t been here long enough to want for much, John,” she pointed out. “When Deutsch comes back—”
“He’s not coming back,” Slocum said harshly. “He got caught in one of Berenson’s traps. He got free and then tried to gun me down. It didn’t work.”
“He’s dead?” The expression on Arlene’s face revealed her shock. “I don’t believe it. He was so alive and cheerful.”
“He was a killer,” Slocum said. “A hired gunman.”
“Oh, no, he wasn’t,” she said, shaking her head.
Slocum put his finger to his lips when he heard scratching on the cliff face outside the cave entrance. He spun about and pointed his six-shooter directly at the mouth of the cave.
“John, no! You can’t shoot him!” cried Arlene. She scooted over and grabbed for his arm, knocking the six-gunoff target. For the briefest instant Rolf Berenson swung past the opening like the pendulum in a clock, dangling on a rope. His eyes went wide when he saw Slocum, then he kicked hard, pushed away from the entrance, and vanished into the night.
“The man’s a killer. He’s crazy and he’s a killer,” Slocum said. Arlene clung to his arm. “But I’m not going to kill him. I promised his wife I’d bring him back to Silver City—alive.”
“His wife?”
“She sent me out twice before to find him and bring him back so she could put him in a sanatorium.”
“Twice?”
“This is the third time I’ve come into the Gila Wilderness,” Slocum said. “This time was for you.”
“Really? But I don’t need to be rescued.”
Slocum got to the adobe wall and peered over it, wary that Berenson might be waiting to clobber him with a rock or tree limb. He chanced a quick glance out, drawing back fast. Then he looked more carefully. Whatever Berenson’s arrangement with the rope might be, it enabled him to scuttle up the side of the mountain and vanish entirely. Not even the rope dangled anymore.
“He’s gone. Do you think he’ll stick around because of you?” Slocum asked.
“I don’t know. You scared him.”
“He was born scared,” Slocum said. But he knew Berenson had more going on in that skull of his than might be guessed at. Slocum came to a quick decision. “Get your gear. We’ve leaving right now.”
“How?”
Slocum craned his neck around and saw spots where he might climb. If he reached the rim and found the rope Berenson had used, he could pull Arlene up easily.
“Be ready,” he said, scrambling out. He was still tired from his long climb to the cave, but he knew time worked against him now. This was Berenson’s territory and the wild man knew it too well to ever have to give up. Slocum began climbing with a determination fueled by his memory of Mayerling’s dead henchmen. He flopped belly down over the ragged, slippery, crumbling edge of the mesa and looked around. If Berenson was going to attack, this would be the right time. Not only did Slocum not see the hermit, he heard nothing to warn that Berenson was even in the same county.
Getting his feet under him, Slocum began hunting for the rope Berenson had used to lower Arlene. When he found it, he was astounded at the way it was set up. Berenson had a pulley attached to the rope so he could lift and lower heavy weights without undue effort. Slocum played out the rope, already fixed with a loop in the end, and dangled it directly over the cave where Arlene stood looking up.
“Get that around your waist. I’ll have you dragged up in two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” Slocum said. He waited to be sure Arlene had secured it under her arms, then began pulling on the other end. The pulley made lifting her easy—until the tree to which the pulley was fastened began to bend. Slocum heard the groaning as wood snapped and cracked. He pulled faster.
“Wait a minute, John, let me—”
“No time,” he shouted, pulling frantically now. There was no time—no way!—to attach the pulley to another tree. He should have checked to be sure the tree was adequate to support Arlene’s weight, but she claimed to have been lowered. Berenson was no fool. He might be crazy but he showed more than animal cunning in his traps. Slocum had thought the old man had fixed this properly.
Back straining to the utmost, he drew the rope through the pulley, over the creaking wheels until he was ready to drop. Just as the tree snapped, Slocum saw Arlene reaching over the edge of the cliff. He abandoned the rope and grabbed for her. His fingers circled her wrist as the tree snapped in two and sent the pulley sailing through the air as if it had been shot from a cannon.
The heavy metal assembly barely missed Slocum and went flying out into space. Slocum grabbed Arlene’s wrist with both hands and braced himself in time to take up the added weight of the pulley dragging her back. Grunting with exertion, he heaved and grounded her beside him on the mesa, looking as if he had landed a fish. She flopped about weakly, then sat up and began dusting herself off.
“You surely do know how to show a girl a good time, John. That was terrible.”
He slid the knife from his boot top and slashed at the rope around her waist. He heard the pulley fall free and clatter to the valley below.
For the first time Arlene realized how close she had come to dying.
“I . . . I would have fallen if—oh!”
Slocum got to his feet and brushed himself off. He went to the tree where the pulley had been fastened. A cold fury burned within him. The tree had been three-quarters cut through. Recently. He touched the notch and the sap was still damp. Berenson had swung past the cave mouth, gotten to the top, and immediately laid still another deadly trap. Slocum had come within seconds of letting Arlene plunge to her death.
“I want him. I want that crazy son of a bitch,” Slocum said. Arlene stared at him. The shock of her brush with death was slowly fading.
“He’s not—he couldn’t—”
“He did. He knew I’d use his pulley to pull you up, and he cut through the tree just before I reached the top.” Slocum poked around in the undergrowth around the tree and found a small hand axe. He swung it to release some of his fury. He buried its head deep in the tree.
“What are you going to do, John?”
“I’ll find him,” Slocum vowed. “After I’ve got you back to town, I’ll find him.”
“You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”
“I told you, his wife wants him alive. She�
��s about the only one, and that includes me right now. But I won’t hurt him any more than I have to.” Slocum hoped Rolf Berenson fought tooth and nail. He was an old man, but he was also a dangerous lunatic.
“That’s not true. Deutsch wants him alive, too. He told me.”
Slocum should have held his tongue, but his anger boiled over. “I’ll show you what happened to Deutsch.”
“Oh, good. Maybe we can all figure out a way of convincing Mr. Berenson to go with him.”
Slocum blundered around in the dark until he found a winding trail off the top of the cliff. It was almost sunset the next day when he finally mounted his horse, Arlene behind him, and began the long trip back to Silver City. But he wanted to show Arlene Deutsch’s body. He wanted to convince her that the gunman was a cold-blooded killer, not the humanitarian she thought him to be.
They had to camp after they crossed the river in the center of the valley and spent a tense night. Slocum lay awake with his rifle nestled in the crook of his arm, wishing it was Arlene there instead. And she lay tensely, wrapped in his bedroll. He knew she was not asleep, but neither of them said a word.
As dawn lit the countryside, Slocum fixed a quick breakfast for them of jerky and a cup of boiled coffee. Arlene ate in silence, speaking only when she swung up behind him again as they set out for the spot where Slocum and Deutsch had shot it out.
“Are you sure you’re not going to harm him?”
“Berenson? I gave my word,” Slocum said.
“Your word,” Arlene said softly. “Then that means you won’t hurt him.”
“Rolf Berenson will be as safe with me as possible, but if he tries to kill anybody else . . .”
“Oh, John, you must be mistaken. He would never harm a fly.”
“He kidnapped you after Deutsch tried to lure him out.”
“You make it sound so sordid. It wasn’t like that,” Arlene said. “I agreed to go with Deutsch. He is a very persuasive man,” she said with a soft sigh. Slocum had heard that before. She was in love with the gunman. For a moment, he hesitated about turning off the trail and crossing the clearing where he had shot Deutsch. Let Arlene keep her fantasy intact.
Then the anger bubbled up inside him again.
“He’s over there. He shot at me, I shot back. I killed him.”
“What?” Arlene tensed.
“Deutsch was caught in one of Berenson’s traps.”
“You told me that before. What do you mean you killed him?”
“He got free, stood on that tree limb yonder, reloaded his six-shooter, and began shooting at me using the tree trunk for cover.” Slocum glanced over to the rotted log where he had taken dubious cover. “When he showed himself, I shot him. He tumbled off the limb into the brush.”
“He’s dead? He can’t be dead. If this is a joke, John Slocum, it is in very poor taste.”
Slocum slid off and then helped Arlene down. He instinctively touched the ebony handle of his six-gun as he approached the spot where the snare had been sprung. The frayed rope dangled from the limb in mute testimony to how Deutsch had gotten free by kicking hard enough to swing so that the rope abraded on the rough limb.
“Those holes in the tree? Your bullets?” She pointed.
“Mine,” Slocum said. He had sent splinters flying. He had also hit Deutsch twice before the third, killing shot. He knew it had killed the man because it felt right. Slocum still pictured it perfectly in his head. He had lined up his sights with Deutsch’s midsection, then squeezed off the shot. The .36-caliber bullet had flown unobstructed, straight to the man’s gut. Deutsch had flopped backward and had hit the ground. He had been dead.
“We should bury him,” Arlene said in a tiny voice. “It’s the Christian thing to do.”
Slocum began thrashing around in the underbrush, hunting for the body. When he did not immediately find it, he got his bearings again, looked around, and still couldn’t locate it.
“What’s wrong, John?”
Slocum knelt and examined the brush. He found a piece of cloth, some blood, and a trail.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered to himself. “I didn’t kill him, after all. The son of a bitch is still alive.”
Arlene let out a huge sigh of relief. But Slocum knew this meant he had to watch his back even closer now. He and Berenson shared something in common now. There wasn’t a man alive in the Gila Wilderness not looking to kill them.
12
“He’s back here,” Arlene Castle said as they rode into Silver City. “He must be. If he wasn’t out by that tree, he’s got to be here.”
Slocum said nothing. All the way back she had been nattering on about Deutsch and how Slocum had missed and the man was out looking for Berenson. If Deutsch had remained where Berenson could capture him again, he was almost certainly a dead man. Slocum felt a mite cheated at that thought, but not too much. What galled him more than anything else was Arlene’s unshakable conviction that Deutsch wanted only what was best for Rolf Berenson.
“There’re things to clear up here,” Slocum said as he drew rein in front of the land office. If her pa was to be found anywhere in town, it would be here.
“All that matters is helping Deutsch,” she said. He helped her down and she continued to ramble on about things that made no sense to Slocum. As he went to open the door to the office, Caleb Castle came boiling out and almost knocked him over. Castle ignored Slocum entirely and grabbed his daughter by the arm, swinging her around.
“Where’d you go? You know you have to sign those papers. Why’d you run off without telling me?”
“It’s good to see you again, too, Papa,” she said. The expressionon her face convinced Slocum he had done the wrong thing. He should have rescued her from Rolf Berenson, then let her go. She would probably still be wandering the vastness of the Gila Wilderness in her search for Deutsch, but that had to be better than this.
“Don’t,” Slocum said, his fingers curling around Caleb Castle’s wrist. When the man did not release his daughter, Slocum tightened his grip. He had just scaled the sheer face of a cliff, and his muscles were as strong as when he had been riding the range, roping cattle and hanging on to the dogies to be branded. Castle wilted under the pressure.
“You brought her back to me. Thanks, Slocum,” Castle said.
“Don’t hurt her like that.”
“That’s all right, John,” Arlene said. “I’m used to it.”
“Do it again and you’ll be so stove in that you’ll be turned inside out.”
“There’s no call for you to get nasty, Slocum,” Castle said. He rubbed his wrist as he balanced precariously on his cane. He looked to be in pain. If he didn’t treat his daughter better, Slocum silently vowed he would hurt even more.
“She said she went willingly with Deutsch.”
“What? That goat roper? That—” Castle began sputtering. “You’re too good for him, girl.”
“And all the good I am to you is signing over Mama’s money.” She turned to Slocum and said, “The land here was owned by my uncle. When Uncle Zebulon died, he left his land to Papa and a goodly sum to Mama. He had always been sweet on her. I think he would have married her if Papa hadn’t.”
Slocum nodded. Women could not own real estate, so Arlene’s mother was unable to inherit, but her husband could. And had, for the price of the tax lien against the property. But cash? That was not real property.
“It’s mine. I need it to care for her proper-like,” Castle said. “And your ma never even liked my brother. They fought like cats and dogs.”
“Then why’d he leave Mama anything at all?” Arlene shot back.
“Don’t let him get your money away from you,” Slocum said. “How much is it?”
“Almost eight hundred dollars,” Arlene said.
“You hush, girl. This ain’t none of Slocum’s business.”
“You’re right about that,” Slocum said. That much money didn’t make Arlene rich, but it would give her a tad of independence from he
r pa. That more than anything else must stick in Caleb Castle’s craw. He was not a man to be ignored and demanded obedience from everyone around him. For all Slocum knew, Arlene had told her father she was taking the money and leaving him to his section of land.
She might even have told him she was riding off with Deutsch, though why the two of them had gone into the middle of a wilderness was beyond Slocum. There wasn’t anyone along the Gila River to take Arlene’s money. Out there it might be useful as starter for a fire but nothing more. In a town, though, it was worth a great deal more. It could buy her a year of living away from her father.
“You shouldn’t have ridden off without letting me know what happened to you,” Castle said.
Arlene looked from the angry man to Slocum, who found himself nodding.
“I left you a note, Papa,” she said. “I left it on your bed while you were out getting breakfast.”
“There wasn’t any note,” he insisted.
“There was!”
Slocum grabbed Castle’s wrist again as the man lurched forward to strike Arlene for her impudence.
“Did you look around for the note, Castle?”
“Why bother? There wasn’t one.”
“Let’s take a look. Where are you staying?”
“Out back, in a shed behind the land office.”
Slocum said nothing. If Caleb Castle had staked out a spot to camp, that one made the most sense. They went around back of the office, Castle hobbling along as fast as his injuries would allow, Slocum and Arlene a dozen paces ahead. Arlene threw open the door to the small shed. The door banged into the foot of the bed inside.
“There,” she said, pointing to the middle of the unmade bed. “That’s where I put the note.”
“You opened the door when you came back, Castle?”
“How the hell else would I get inside?”
Slocum walked around the bed and looked on the floor. Nothing. He dropped to his knees and peered under the bed. A piece of foolscap caught his eye. Straining, he caught it between thumb and forefinger and brought it up into the light.
“There it is. That’s my note!” Arlene cried in triumph.