by Jake Logan
“Rain’s letting up,” he said. “Must be close to nine o’clock.”
“Seems like sometime next year instead of just nine in the morning,” said Molly. She shook out the slicker and sent water flying in all directions before pulling it back down over her head. Her once-lustrous dark hair lay plastered against her skull, and her clothing had lost all shape not provided by her lush body. Every time she stood and tried to take a step, she squished. Her shoes had never been intended for the rugged Missouri countryside.
“I see some sky poking through the clouds,” Slocum said.
“It’s about time. I was ready to grow gills and swim away.”
Slocum insisted they wait a spell for the rain to stop. He divvied up with the woman what trail rations he had, wishing he had taken more time to buy proper provisions.
“What do we do now to find him?”
“I marked the direction of his trail before the rain started. There’s nothing we can do other than ride in the same direction and hope we find him alive.”
“What?” Molly looked at him sharply.
“The deep ravines are there because rain like this isn’t unusual. If Harry got caught in an arroyo, he’d be a goner.” Slocum wondered if he wanted this to be Ibbotson’s fate. If it was, he and Molly could return to Columbia, find a hotel, and take their sweet time while their clothing dried. He was sure he could assuage her grief if her brother was dead.
Slocum glanced over at the woman. She looked more like a drowned rat than the sexy, confident woman he had met on the train. Thinking about slipping up next to her in bed, naked as a jaybird, and then doing what came natural might be as much a fantasy as winning the $50,000 prize.
“He wouldn’t do anything that foolish,” Molly said, but he heard the doubt in her voice.
“You want to wring out your clothes while I do a little scouting?”
She started to disagree, then nodded slowly. Water fell forward as she moved her head.
Slocum worked methodically to dry off the saddle, and the blanket was as dry as anything could be after such a storm. If he could tell, the horse was grateful to get saddled and have the blanket next to its hide. Swinging easily into the saddle, he rode away from their pitiful camp, fighting to keep from looking back to see if Molly had begun stripping off her soaking-wet clothes.
When he topped a rise, all thought of the woman vanished. Ahead, not more than a mile, he saw three men on horseback slowly circling a man on foot. Slocum didn’t need his field glasses, left back in St. Louis with the rest of his gear, to know who the man on foot was. The riders, though, were another matter. They seemed to be bedeviling Harry Ibbotson rather than helping him from the way they trotted close and then galloped off, only to return. It was as if they were herding him like they would a stray refusing to be branded.
He had started to ride straight for the horsemen and Ibbotson when he realized that would be impossible. The rain had cut a deep and treacherously muddy ravine through the prairie. If he fell into it, getting out would be hard. His horse could easily break a leg, and that might be the least of his worries. The swiftly moving stream at the bottom of the ravine flowed fast enough to sweep a man off his feet. Crossing it required some scouting—and he didn’t know if there was time for Harry Ibbotson.
The three riders looped ropes around Ibbotson’s arms, pinning them to his sides. They trotted off, forcing Ibbotson to run to keep his footing. When he tired, they would drag him along through the mud. Slocum thought they might be nothing more than cowboys out to have some fun with a tenderfoot, but as he watched them disappear, he doubted that. There was too much determination in what they were doing, as if they had found their prey and now took it off to their nest for safekeeping.
Slocum glared at the river flowing twenty feet below the lip of the ravine, backed his horse from it, and hurried back to camp. Molly had her blouse and skirt draped over a low branch. Hearing him return so soon, she grabbed her clothes and held them up to hide herself.
“Show some decency, sir!”
“Three men just took your brother prisoner,” he said. “You better get dressed. It won’t matter much if it’s dry or not. We’ve got to cross a new river.”
“There must be a ford somewhere,” Molly said, looking around wildly. She fixed her gaze on him and demanded, “It was my brother?”
“Couldn’t be anyone else, not wearing that brown coat.”
“Damn,” she said, startling Slocum. He had not expected her to use such an unladylike word.
“Don’t just gawk,” she said. “Ready my horse while I dress. We can’t let Harry remain a prisoner.”
Slocum thought it was curious she didn’t ask about the men taking her brother prisoner—or was it hostage? He touched the key on his watch chain again. Somehow, Harry Ibbotson getting himself roped like he had fitted in with Colonel Turner’s race and the gold at the end of it.
It took less than five minutes to saddle the horses and settle the saddlebags on their hindquarters. By the time Slocum was ready to ride, Molly had dressed. Silently, he helped her into the saddle.
They rode out, each lost in his or her own thoughts. Slocum set a brisk pace, knowing how easy it would be to lose the riders on this sloppy ground. If the ground hardened soon, good tracks would be left, but right now it was like trying to track a fish through water.
“What’s that ahead?” Molly pointed. It took Slocum a few seconds to figure out what she had seen since he was so engrossed in not losing the trail.
He rubbed his eyes, squinted, and finally said, “Looks to be a town. I’m no expert on Missouri towns, but I don’t remember any in this direction.”
“It might have sprung up suddenly.”
“A boomtown,” he said. The riders had been going in the general direction of the town, so Slocum turned his horse’s face that way, too. “It could spring up fast, and die even faster.”
“That’s a ghost town?”
Slocum picked his way across a muddy stream and got his horse up the slippery bank before answering.
“I don’t see any roads leading there.”
“Maybe they come in from St. Louis,” she said.
“Makes more sense if they got supplies from Columbia, since it’s not only closer, but it is on the railroad line.” He scratched his chin before finishing his thought. “The town died because the railroad bypassed it. Why it was built didn’t much matter if the railroad didn’t put a depot here.”
“I see someone, John. There. Did you see him? That’s Harry. It’s got to be!”
Slocum couldn’t make out any details, even the color of the distant rider’s coat. What worried him more was that there was only one man in sight. What had happened to the other riders he had seen with Ibbotson? The way the rider sat and waited made Slocum wary of being lured into a trap.
“Hold your horses,” he told Molly. “Something’s not right.”
“But it’s Harry. It has to be!”
The sun cracked open a hole in the heavy clouds and dropped a solitary ray of light onto the town ahead, giving Slocum his first good look at it. He had been right about the condition of this town. From the decaying boards and lack of paint, it had been abandoned some time ago. He tried to remember when the railroad had come through. Maybe five years back. That was plenty of time for this town to fall apart, victim to the wind and rain and termites chewing away at the wood.
“You’re sure you don’t know of anybody who’d want to kidnap your brother?”
“Of course not. We haven’t been out here long enough to make that kind of enemy.”
“How did you come by your gold key?” Slocum asked. He realized he knew nothing about Colonel Turner’s contest other than the snippets he had overheard.
“The same way everyone else did,” Molly said, glaring at him. When he said nothing, she spat out, “Harry stole the key. A clerk at a yard goods store had been given it for drumming up a thousand dollars worth of business for the colonel’s freight company.�
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“Most folks came by their keys doing favors for the colonel?”
“I have no idea. Harry switched the gold key for another one he had. He saw the clerk being turned away when the colonel’s guards determined he didn’t have an official key.”
“That makes one enemy willing to kill your brother,” Slocum said. “Still, this clerk would shoot Harry outright and take back what was rightfully his. Why get friends to kidnap him and take him to a ghost town?”
Slocum chewed on his lower lip as he tried to figure this out. The clerk back in St. Louis had reason to bushwhack Harry Ibbotson, but why not kill him outright? Something else accounted for Ibbotson being taken prisoner rather than left for the buzzards to pick clean out on the prairie.
“Are we going after him or are we going to sit out here and let them . . . do things to him?” she asked. A catch came to Molly’s voice.
“If he knows something and isn’t telling them, it’ll take a spell before they force him to talk.”
“Harry doesn’t know a thing.” The woman’s tone was bitter, scornful of her brother. Slocum was coming to share that opinion and he had never met the man.
“They know we’re out here,” Slocum said. “The sentry must have alerted his partners by now.” Slocum hunted for any trace of the mounted man Molly had spotted, but he had ridden into the town and disappeared. “There’s no reason for us to pussyfoot around.” Slocum slid his Colt Navy from its holster and made sure all six chambers were loaded. He usually rode with the hammer resting on an empty chamber, but now he needed the extra firepower. He wished he had a half dozen other six-shooters, like he had used when he rode with William Quantrill. Festooned with pistols, the company would ride into a Yankee town, firing until a six-gun came up empty, then switch to the next and the next. Each man in the company commanded thirty or forty rounds. With as many as fifty men, more than fifteen hundred rounds could be loosed in the time it took to ride the length of the main street.
All he had now were the six rounds and he faced three men, armed and ready for him. Worse, they had a prisoner who might get shot at any time they thought they were in trouble.
“What do you want me to do?” Molly asked.
“Can you fire a rifle?”
“I suppose, if I have to.”
Slocum pulled the old Henry rifle from the saddle sheath, and wished he wasn’t rushing into the teeth of a trap this way. During the war, he had been a sniper and a good one. It might take all day for him to get off one deadly shot, but it usually robbed the Federals of a high-ranking officer and threw their attack plans into chaos. If he had such luxury of time, he could find a spot and wait for Ibbotson’s kidnappers to show themselves, then pot them like rabbits.
“Find a spot a hundred yards outside town,” he said. “In ten minutes, start shooting at anything that moves.”
“What if they use Harry as a shield?”
“They won’t,” Slocum said. He didn’t want to make her mad by pointing out that an inexperienced rifleman with such an old rifle had almost no chance of hitting a man-sized target at that range. All he wanted was for Molly to create a commotion while he circled and came at them from the other side of town. It wasn’t much of a plan, but was the best he could come up with on the spur of the moment.
“Ten minutes?” She took the rifle and held it gingerly, as if it would turn into a snake and bite her.
“Keep the muzzle pointed toward town. You pull back on the trigger and—”
“I’m not an idiot,” she snapped.
Slocum nodded in agreement, then rode at right angles to their original path, circling the dilapidated buildings to approach from a different direction. He saw there was no time to get to the far side before Molly opened fire, so he cut directly for the town and worked his way between two buildings that had toppled into each other, creating a splintery tunnel showing only a sliver of light at the far end that opened onto the main street.
He brought up his six-gun when a flash of brown crossed in front of him. He urged his balking horse forward, scraped the sides of the buildings, and finally came out into the light of day.
Slocum saw Harry Ibbotson come from a doorway, only to be yanked back inside.
“Come on out,” Slocum called. “You let him go and there doesn’t have to be any gunplay.” He didn’t expect the man’s captors to give in that easily. And they didn’t.
A rifle report echoed from Molly’s direction. He didn’t hear the slug hit anything solid. She might have fired into the air for all the effect it had. He had hoped, rather foolishly, that her gunfire would drive the men out into the street where he could cut them down.
Slocum dropped to the ground and made his way toward an empty watering trough he intended to use for cover. Halfway to it, he felt wobbly in the knees. At first he thought he was simply sinking into the ankle-deep mud. Then he realized the ground was giving way beneath him.
He let out a startled cry as he plunged downward to smash hard into the bottom of a pit. He struggled to keep from passing out. He forced his eyes to focus on the moving blurs fifteen feet above him, and then the effort was no longer possible.
Slocum blacked out.
6
“We’re in this together, ever’body gettin’ an equal share?” The gunman squinted as he studied Sid Calhoun, who lounged back in the passenger car seat trying to get comfortable. The clanking journey of the train over the steel rails kept them all on edge, including Calhoun.
“Dammit, you stupid son of a bitch, I told you we was sharin’, didn’t I? You callin’ me a liar?” Calhoun reached for his pistol tucked into the broad linen sash secured around his trim waist.
“No, no, Sid, you got me all wrong. I was just, uh, just gettin’ all square in my head. You know I don’t think so fast.”
“Curly, you’re a complete idiot,” Calhoun said. He watched for any reaction. If his henchman made so much as a twitch, he was a dead man. Curly looked confused and not a little bit scared. That was good. Calhoun could handle scared—in others. It kept his gang in line.
“Don’t go ragging on him, Sid,” said another of the gang.
“You crossin’ me, too, Abel?” This time Calhoun didn’t watch. He acted. His hand flashed to his pistol, he drew, and swung as hard as he could, catching Abel alongside the head with a crunching sound that drew attention from everyone else in the car. After a moment of stunned silence, mumbled conversations began again as Abel lay flat on his back in the aisle between the seats. One man lifted his boot to keep blood from the gash on Abel’s temple from staining the leather. He lifted his boot, but said nothing, and pointedly looked out the window to show he wasn’t going to call out Calhoun.
Calhoun stood and glared down at the unconscious man.
“Throw the son of a bitch off the train.”
“But he’s done good, Sid,” protested Curly. “He’s got more of the keys than any of the rest of us.”
“Take him into the mail car.” Calhoun looked around to see if he had to deal with any other threat from the rest of the racers. Only a couple dared to look in his direction, but they were scared. He liked that. The rest ignored him. Some of them might be dangerous, but he doubted it. He was the wolf in this flock of sheep, and intended to keep it that way.
“He’s too heavy fer me to drag,” Curly protested. His feet slipped on the railcar floor that was now slick with Abel’s blood. The head wound gushed now.
“All of you,” Calhoun said, motioning with his still-drawn six-shooter. “Help him out. We got to palaver in the mail car.”
He stepped over the fallen Abel, who groaned now, and led the way. He didn’t bother holding the door for the others struggling with Abel’s limp form. When he stepped into the mail car, he smiled crookedly. A right pretty woman stood to one side, busily scribbling in a small notebook.
“What do we have here?”
“A private conversation,” came the cold voice. Big Thom Carson levered himself off a pile of mailbags. The
way he squared off, he knew how to use the iron hanging at his side. “Why don’t you clear out and let us be?”
Calhoun stepped to one side as Curly and the others pulled Abel into the car. With a curt gesture, Calhoun indicated what they ought to do with the unconscious man. Curly grunted as he dragged Abel to the open side door.
“Hold on,” Calhoun said. He knelt and rifled through the man’s pockets until he found three gold keys. Keeping them out of sight from the man still ready to throw down on him, Calhoun tucked the keys into a coat pocket along with the key he already had. He backed off and nodded to Curly.
Abel’s body bounced a couple times as it hit the ground and rolled down a small incline away from the track bed.
“Oh.” Zoe Murchison stared at him with eyes wide in horror. They locked gazes for an instant; then the woman began scribbling in her notebook.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m recording this,” she said. Calhoun crossed the car and grabbed for the notebook. “No, that’s mine!” she cried.
“You ain’t recordin’ anything. Give me the book.”
“She doesn’t have to unless she wants to,” Big Thom said. The man’s fingers curled just enough to tell Calhoun that lead was going to fly if he pressed the matter.
“Get on out of here. Take her with you.”
Zoe scampered past Calhoun, but the look she gave Big Thom was hardly one of gratitude. Calhoun wondered what had been going on before he barged in, because the woman was as frightened of Big Thom as she was of him.
He turned to the man, and saw the tenseness in his shoulders and the way his trigger finger nervously twitched now. Calhoun had seen his share of men ready to draw, and knew the signs. Big Thom Carson was close to throwing down.
“Sorry to have interrupted your tryst,” he said.
“What’s that?” Big Thom wasn’t distracted. The tension remained.
“You and that cute little filly. I saw how she was lookin’ at you. Might be when we get to K.C., you and her can find a hotel room and continue your tryst.”