by Jake Logan
“We didn’t meet. I saw you get off the train at the station.”
“In Columbia,” Slocum said.
“Yes, there, not at Jubilee Junction.”
Slocum didn’t understand what she was going on about. He grabbed a handful of the dead man’s shirt and pulled him upright so he could lean against the muddy ravine wall.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Thinking on how to bury him without a shovel. You don’t have a shovel with you, do you?”
“No, all I have is my bag and—” She bit off her sentence, took a deep breath, and started again. “I’m Zoe Murchison and I work for the St. Louis Dispatch, covering the colonel’s race. That man, the dead one, is Big Thom Carson.”
“Never heard of him,” Slocum said, wondering how upset Miss Zoe Murchison would get if he stripped the body of everything useful. There wasn’t a whole lot Big Thom was going to need, dead with a fractured spine and all.
“I met him on the train,” she said. “When the racers got off in Jubilee Junction, I followed him, thinking he would make a good story.”
“Don’t know about Jubilee Junction.”
“But you are one of them, the contestants.”
“I was hired to rescue Molly Ibbotson’s brother, who is one of them.” He tried to keep the contempt he felt from his voice. From Zoe’s expression, he knew he had failed. It didn’t matter to him.
Not much did right now. He had barely escaped dying back in the ghost town, and had no good feelings toward anyone. Slocum began stripping Big Thom of anything he might sell or use later. To his surprise, Zoe said nothing except, “His horse is tethered a few yards away. Should I fetch it?”
Slocum nodded, finished his plundering, and stepped back to study the matter. The rapidly flowing water had undercut the bank where he had propped Big Thom. He moved the man around so his body lay entirely hidden by the overhang.
He silently unfastened the lariat from the man’s horse when Zoe led it over, got a decent loop, and then cast it upward to drop around a post oak on the bank, half its roots exposed by erosion.
“I see,” Zoe said. “You’re a very clever man, sir.”
“John Slocum,” he said, tying the other end of the rope to the saddle horn. He slapped the horse on the rump and got it tugging hard on the rope until the tree began to fall. When its roots popped free of the wet ground, it brought down a small avalanche of mud that buried Big Thom Carson completely.
“It’s not much, but it’s more than he deserved,” she said. “I can’t imagine why he wanted to shoot me. Yet he tried. That was a rifle bullet that came this close.” Zoe held out her hands, indicating a distance of only a few inches.
“You get shot at enough to know the sound of a rifle bullet instead of a pistol round?”
“I’m not the hothouse flower you seem to think, Mr. Slocum.”
“The sight of a dead man made you almost faint.”
“It was the idea he had tried to kill me that I found . . . disconcerting. He had no cause!”
“Where’s Jubilee Junction?”
“Back along a road, possibly ten miles or thereabouts,” she said.
“We’re going back. If there’s a marshal in town, he can find Harry Ibbotson.”
“Didn’t you say his sister had paid you?”
Slocum pressed his fingers against the wad of greenbacks Molly Ibbotson had paid him, but the roll had been diminished by the purchase of the horse and gear. He might owe Molly what remained, but she could ask him for it. He wasn’t going to get himself gunned down, not when every mother’s son in Colonel J. Patterson Turner’s Transcontinental Race was so intent on murdering their competition.
With two keys to sell, he might make as much as Molly had promised him and could pay her back. If she asked personally. Slocum wasn’t feeling all that charitable at the moment.
“That the town?” Slocum pointed to a spiral of smoke rising, to be caught on a gentle breeze and smeared out across the sky. Another storm was building, but Slocum sniffed the air and didn’t scent it. The smoke from the town made his nostrils flare slightly, and reminded him why it was good to return to civilization now and then. He caught more than a little hint of baking bread.
“Jubilee Junction,” Zoe said.
They rode to the edge of a town still abuzz from having the colonel’s race come through. Slocum saw a few familiar faces from the train and knew not everyone had gotten the clue to move on to the next station along the race course.
“Mister, hey mister, I’ll give you a hundred dollars for your horse!” Slocum ignored the man. “Two hundred! I’m gonna win fifty thousand dollars, but I need a horse!”
“The ones off the train first must have stolen the others’ horses,” Zoe said. “I didn’t realize how lucky I was finding this horse.”
“It’s one of the colonel’s?”
She shrugged. Slocum hesitated, hoping she would repeat the gesture. She didn’t.
“There must be a clue in the saddlebags,” he said. “Did you look?”
“I was too intent on pursuing Big Thom, more’s the pity. He would have murdered me. Then I would never have been able to file my story.”
“Why don’t you go to the telegraph office and send your story?”
Zoe looked hard at him, then smiled a little. “You understand my need to succeed, don’t you, Mr. Slocum?”
“We all hunt for gold in different ways.”
They dismounted in front of the telegrapher’s office. When Zoe went inside, Slocum searched through the saddlebags on her horse for the clue to finding the next stop along the course. The supplies were adequate for a week on the trail, but he was damned if he could find anything that even hinted at where to head next.
“I got it, mister,” came a weak voice. “I got it.”
Slocum turned slowly and saw a man hobbling along, his right leg splinted from ankle to thigh.
“I busted my damn fool leg and can’t ride. Hell, I can hardly walk.”
“Too bad,” Slocum said, not really caring.
“I took it.”
“What?”
“I took this,” the man said, leaning heavily against the side of the telegraph office. He held up an envelope. “It’s got the instructions on where to ride.”
“You’re telling me for a reason.”
“Buy it from me. I can’t ride. There’s no way I can get to the treasure chest first, not with a busted-up leg. Doc says I ought to keep weight off it for a few weeks to let it heal. Otherwise, I’ll seize up and be a gimp for the rest of my life.”
“Show me your key,” Slocum said suddenly. The demand took the man by surprise. He started to protest, then grinned.
“You’re a smart one, I’ll give you that. You want to be sure I didn’t just scribble down something to sell.”
“Something like that.”
Slocum watched the man fish out a gold key and hold it out so it caught a vagrant ray of sunlight. The storm moved in again. This time, Slocum smelled the familiar tang of moisture in air.
“Yeah, rain on the way,” the man confirmed. “If you want to catch up with the rest, you’ll have to get on the trail before it rains again. Real drenching rain in these parts.” The man held up both the key and the envelope. “Two hundred dollars.”
“Too much.”
“For both. Key and instructions. The key’s not doing me any good. Who knows, it might be the one that opens the colonel’s strongbox. You’d be rich.”
“Too much,” Slocum said. He played enough poker to know when a man was desperate enough to make mistakes.
“A hundred. It’s worth more ’n that. You gotta admit that.”
“Who’d buy it? Everyone else has left.”
“The town’s full of men willing to join the race here.”
“The colonel knows who started the race. Only the ones on the train from St. Louis can win.” Slocum had told a bald-faced lie to gauge the man’s gullibility. Since he had joined th
e race on the spur of the moment after winning his key from a river man only hours before, he doubted the colonel knew who had boarded the train. For Colonel Turner’s purpose, anyone winning gave him the publicity he needed for the Turner Haulage Company.
“I didn’t know that.” The man pursed his lips, then said, “Cut me in. I’ll sell you the instructions and the key for fifty dollars and you give me two hundred—five hundred if you win.”
“What’s your name?”
“Morrisey. Ned Morrisey,” the man said. “I’ll go back to St. Louis and you can get the money to me there.”
Slocum drew a soggy wad of greenbacks from his pocket and counted out fifty dollars. Seeing that Morrisey wasn’t able to come to him, Slocum went to Morrisey and handed over the scrip. Morrisey licked his lips, counted the money, and with some reluctance handed Slocum both key and envelope.
“Good luck,” he said. “You’re in the race for both of us.”
Slocum slipped the key into his pocket and fingered the envelope, remembering how he had intended to chuck it all and go on his way. For all he knew, his intended path might have been the same as that detailed in the instruction letter.
9
“There,” Zoe Murchison said, folding a flimsy sheet of yellow paper as she emerged from the telegraph office. “My story is sent.” She stopped and looked around, then frowned. “Where did you go, Mr. Slocum? Mr. Slocum!”
“You lookin’ for the gent who was out here a few minutes ago?”
“I am, sir,” Zoe said, eyeing the man with the splinted leg. “Did you see where he got off to?”
“Not to take a leak, that’s for certain sure.”
“Really, sir.” She drew herself up and started away.
“He bought the instructions.”
This stopped Zoe in her tracks. She stared straight ahead for a heartbeat, then turned slowly to face the man, who hobbled out and caught himself on a hitching post.
“Which instructions might those be?”
“You’re that lady reporter covering the race. I saw you on the train and overheard some of what you said to that ugly galoot Carson.”
“Big Thom Carson, yes, what about him?”
“Bad company to keep, ma’am, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”
“I’m sure that will not be a problem in the future. What instructions?”
“Do all reporters have a one-track mind?” The man hobbled a bit more and perched against the rail. “You know that all the racers got instructions on where to go next. Except you since you took that horse.”
“I did, and there were no instructions . . . you took them!”
“I certainly did, and I sold them to your friend, the one you’re lookin’ around for. What’d you call him? Slocum?”
“Where is he?”
“He bought the instructions I took from those very saddlebags and rode on out like his tail was on fire.”
She tried not to grind her teeth in anger, and failed. How could she have trusted John Slocum, actually believed him when he said he wasn’t interested in the reward at the end of the colonel’s race? He was like all the others. Worse! He had stolen what was rightly hers since she had picked this horse from the colonel’s remuda without knowing the new directions were missing.
“You stole them, he bought them. Where is he?” She didn’t try to keep from snapping out the words so they cracked like a whip. Even her harsh tone didn’t make the man cower. If anything, he laughed at her.
“For a few more dollars, I can tell you what the letter in that white envelope said.”
“You read it, of course.”
“I’m no simpleton. Of course I did. I resealed the envelope so it would look like it was all pure as the wind-driven snow when I found someone to buy it. Like your friend, Slocum.”
“He is no friend. What’s the letter say?”
“Fifty dollars might jog my memory.”
Zoe stepped closer, put her hand on the man’s shoulder, and then kicked him as hard as she could in his injured leg. He let out a howl of pain and collapsed to the ground, where he writhed around in the mud.
“What’d you go and do a thing like that for?”
“I will pay you five dollars to tell me what I need to know. That’s only fair.”
“Go to hell!”
She kicked him again. This time she had her left foot securely planted, and delivered a painful kick just above the knee. He turned pale with pain.
“I’ll get the damn marshal and have you arrested!”
“Go on. I’m a reporter. I’ll promise the marshal a front page story that’ll make him famous. Who’s he likely to listen to, a no-account like you or a pretty lady reporter?” Zoe reached up to her neck and unfastened a button to show just a hint of her snowy white throat. A second button opened and more skin appeared. A third button made the view even more interesting.
“Stop, I understand. You wouldn’t do that to me! Have me arrested?”
“Fifty dollars? Is that what Slocum paid you?” She smiled crookedly when he nodded. “I’ll give you odds of ten to one against that sum that I will have you arrested and see you rotting in jail for the next five years.”
“West. The instructions said to ride west until he came to a crossroads. There’s a lightning-struck stump with new directions there.”
“How far is this crossroads?”
“I don’t know. Honest!” He slithered away in the mud as she moved toward him. “That’s all it said. I don’t know how far. Could be an hour or a day. Ask around town. Somebody here has to know about crossroads and stumps.”
“Thank you,” Zoe said primly. She slowly buttoned her blouse all the way up the neck, then took her horse’s reins and led it away. She fumed at how Slocum had treated her. She needed him for her story, but if he had ridden away as he did, she would just find another racer and write his story. That’d show John Slocum a thing or two. He had just passed up a chance to be famous.
She walked along the boardwalk, but after the rain there was hardly any difference between the wood planking and the middle of the sloppy street. She finally realized how difficult and time-consuming it was for her to walk along the boardwalk and move the reins from one hand to another to get around posts holding up dubious overhangs. Securing the reins at the corner of the dry goods store, she went inside, taking great care to use the boot scraper to get the mud from her shoes.
“Hello,” said the woman behind the counter. She gave Zoe a quick once-over, starting at her shoes, moving up, and then returning to her shoes. “Thank you for taking the effort to remove the mud. It sticks so on our floor.”
“I know,” Zoe said, swinging into a story from her childhood about having to clean up mud from her mother’s kitchen floor. By the time she had finished, the clerk had offered her some tea.
“Warms the body, it does,” the woman said. “Since you’re not from around here, you must have left the train with all those ruffians.”
“I did,” Zoe said. “It has been quite harrowing dealing with them, I must say.”
They exchanged a few more words and then Zoe asked, “If I ride due west from Jubilee Junction, how far is it to the first crossroads?”
“Crossroads? My, you’d have to go ten miles or more,” the woman said, sipping at her tea. “The road north goes to Benedict and south, why, it is a goodly thirty miles to Camp Larrup. That’s the closest cavalry post to Jubilee Junction, so we rely on the telegraph and the train to bring any help we might need.”
“Help against Indians? Are they a problem?”
“The Sioux are a constant thorn in our sides,” the clerk said. “Time was, nobody was safe going out alone. My husband, rest his soul, was shot and scalped almost on this very doorstep.”
“Recently?” Zoe wondered if she might get another story to go along with that of the colonel’s race. Her hope faded when the woman answered.
“Seems like yesterday, but it was nigh on six years back. I’ve run this store all by mys
elf since then.”
“You’re doing an admirable job of keeping yourself together,” Zoe said, putting down the cup. “I appreciate your company, but I really must be on my way.”
“Interest you in some gingham? No? A lady such as yourself would appreciate a yard of fine Irish lace.”
Zoe chafed at the delay, but let the store owner show her some fine linen. She made appropriate compliments on the quality, and eventually worked her way out of the store. As she stepped into the street, she turned and hid her face from the tight knot of men slogging along through the mud. Only when they had passed did she stare after Sid Calhoun and his gang.
A crazy thought hit her that she might interview Calhoun or one of his men about their steadfast determination to continue with the transcontinental race. She stopped and swallowed hard when she saw how the men spread out. She overheard Calhoun as he choked a man who had come from the saloon and slammed him hard against a wall.
“I need to know where they went. The racers.”
“Don’t know,” Calhoun’s victim rasped out. “All gone, ’cept—”
“Except? Who’s left?”
“Guy named Morrisey. Ned Morrisey. He busted up his leg and dropped out, but he had the directions. I swear he did!”
Calhoun dropped the man, who sank to the boardwalk as if his legs had turned to water.
“Boys! Find me an owlhoot named Morrisey. You’ll recognize him. He was on the train with us.”
Zoe stepped back and tried to become invisible as one of Calhoun’s henchmen stomped by, spattering mud as he came. He barely glanced in her direction. Zoe wasn’t sure if she ought to be offended or thankful. She was filthy from riding all over the muddy prairie and almost getting shot, and her hair must be a fright, but she wasn’t in that sorry a condition that he wouldn’t give her a second look.
Then she had to admit how much trouble would befall her if Calhoun did spot her. He might take it into his head that she knew where the instructions had sent the racers—and she did, because she had gotten the information from a man she assumed was this Ned Morrisey.
“Found him, Boss,” bellowed a man not far from the telegraph station.