by Jake Logan
“Your husband in business?” the man asked.
“What? Oh, no. I am on my way to San Francisco to claim his—my—estate.”
“A sizable one?”
“You are most impertinent, sir,” she said sharply. Molly started to order him to move, then looked out the window and saw Sid Calhoun and the henchman with a stripe of white hair rushing to catch the train. She turned so they could not see her face. If it appeared she was with a man Calhoun didn’t recognize, he might never give her a second glance.
“Didn’t mean to be, ma’am,” the hotel owner said. “I know how it is to be grieving. My own dear wife passed on only last year.”
“Tell me about the waters. Are they restorative?”
He hurried on to tell her more than she cared to know about the sulfur springs. He faced her while she pretended to hang on his every word. As the train lurched forward, she chanced a look back. Calhoun and his partner had missed the train. That was good because it gave her a decided head start over him in reaching San Francisco and the $50,000 prize.
What wasn’t so good was having to listen to the hotel man all the way to Colorado Springs. Somehow, even the lure of so much gold at the end of the trip wasn’t enough to erase the tedium.
19
“Can’t we ride faster, John?” Zoe Murchison rose in the stirrups and rubbed her hindquarters. “I’m not used to spending so much time in the saddle.”
“I’m still worried about my mare’s leg,” he said.
“We have two other horses, and you’re letting your horse walk along without a rider. Granted, the horses we took from . . . from the dead man aren’t of the finest quality, but we can make better time if we pressed on.”
“What’s your hurry?”
Zoe glared at him before saying, “I have a story to telegraph to Mr. Zelnicoff. He will certainly fire me and strand me in the middle of nowhere if I don’t continue to furnish fine copy for him.”
“You going to relate how Harry Ibbotson tried to kill us and I shot him dead?”
Zoe opened her mouth, then snapped it closed. Slocum saw how conflicted she was on this point. There was no question she had participated in a killing and that, as a reporter, she shouldn’t cover the death. Being part of the story made it imperative that another reporter who was more objective write this story. As if the woman was an open book that he read easily, he knew she wasn’t going to do that. She would send in her story with details blurred or even ignored so she would appear to be closely observing the colonel’s race, with detailed interviews with the top participants.
Slocum snorted. He was not only a top contender, he might be the only one, other than Molly Ibbotson and the Calhoun gang. While those who had taken different routes might still be in the race, he had figured that the only way to the prize was through Denver. Molly wasn’t anyone’s fool, and was heading there directly on the stagecoach. Why Harry had tried to bushwhack them was open to dispute, but with the man dead, there would never be an answer.
Slocum touched the keys in his vest pocket. It might have been as simple as Harry wanting more of the keys to improve his chance of opening the colonel’s treasure chest at the end of the race.
“San Francisco,” Zoe said. Seeing his frown, she hurried on with her explanation. “We arrive in Denver and, no matter what the new instructions say, we go directly to San Francisco. There’s nowhere else the colonel is likely to have the press coverage of the winner claiming his prize.”
“If anyone claims the prize. Fifty keys, only one opening the box. How many have been lost?”
“How many men have died and given up their keys?”
“I know of at least one,” Slocum said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the unmarked grave where he had buried Harry Ibbotson. “I’m sure there have been more.”
“A lot more. That’s part of my article,” she said. “What will a man do to claim such a rich prize?”
“Murder’s the least of it,” Slocum said. “Harry might have been double-crossing his own sister.”
“If she even was his sister,” Zoe said archly. “They might have been more. I saw how they looked at one another.”
Slocum shook his head. He had considered different relationships between the two, and had long ago decided Harry and Molly were siblings. She was the younger of the pair, but acted like his mother because of his impulsive behavior. Harry had never grown up—and Molly had grown too old for her years with her responsibility for him.
“What do you think we’ll find in Dry Water?”
The sudden change of topic took Slocum by surprise.
“I doubt we’ll find a whole lot,” he said, “though there might be something new to occupy us. You came after me to say that Calhoun and his gang had ridden into Clarkesville and were on my trail. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of anyone on this road.”
“They might have taken a shortcut,” Zoe said.
“Why head us off when they could ride up and shoot it out with us, if that’s what was on Calhoun’s mind?”
“They are dangerous men, especially the one with the white stripe through his hair. You can tell.”
“I can tell,” Slocum said. He had seen his share of men like Swain, and knew the only way to deal with them was to shoot first. What Zoe said about them riding ahead had put him on guard. Setting an ambush was the sort of trap Calhoun would fancy. The prairie was mighty flat through here, but ravines and the occasional low, rolling hill provided ample spots for a decent bushwhacking.
“Should we get off the road and cut across country?” Zoe asked.
“The road is as straight as an arrow from what I’ve seen and lets us make the best time. If Calhoun is ahead of us, tromping across the prairie will only slow us down and give him time to lay a better trap.”
“Oh,” she said. “So we should ride faster?”
Slocum had to laugh. The entire conversation had circled around to where it had started, with Zoe telling him to speed up. He dismounted, much to her chagrin, examined his mare’s leg, and decided a faster pace wasn’t going to hurt anything. As much as he hated to do it, when they reached Denver he would have to sell the mare and the other horses. Riding the train westward was quicker, and the notion of Calhoun or Molly or any of the others in the race getting to San Francisco first rankled him. He had shot at the others, and almost gotten shot himself, and gone through hell. Simply giving up on the chance of claiming so much gold wasn’t in the cards.
Slocum wasn’t a greedy man, but $50,000 would be reasonable payment for all that he had endured.
They trotted the horses, and only occasionally let them slow to a walk. Alternating the gait moved them to Dry Water faster than Slocum anticipated.
“Doesn’t look like much,” he said.
“It’s so ordinary,” Zoe said, “but there is a telegraph.” She pointed to the pole alongside the road. “I’ve composed my article as we rode. It won’t take more than a half hour to send it.”
“You go on ahead and let me ask around.”
“About further instructions on the race?”
“About Calhoun,” he said. She tried to hide the momentary look of fear, then rode away without another word, leaving Slocum with his mare and the second horse they had claimed after Harry Ibbotson had died with a bullet through the heart.
Dry Water was such a small town that Slocum had no trouble learning that not only was there no Turner Haulage Company office, but that a trio of men had been asking the questions Slocum would have if he hadn’t heard about the three owlhoots first.
The saloon gave him the obvious spot to begin his hunt for Calhoun and his two henchmen, but he didn’t even have to go inside. Curly blundered out, roaring drunk.
“I’m the wildest, most dangerous-est cayuse in the whole damn West!” he bellowed. He drew his six-shooter and fired a couple shots in the air. Slocum waited to see who came. No marshal, no sheriff, nobody. It was as if a bubble had formed around Curly and he floated thro
ugh an uninhabited town.
When the drunk began staggering down the middle of the street, Slocum followed cautiously. Curly had gone only a block before Slocum saw his chance and took it. He moved fast, came up behind the man, and wrapped his forearm around a turkey neck. Pulling back, he rocked Curly onto his heels and kept him entirely off balance. As the man tried to point his gun back and get off a shot at Slocum, his gun hand was momentarily vulnerable. Slocum grabbed the wrist and jerked hard enough to break bones. The six-gun dropped to the street from nerveless fingers.
“You hurt me, dammit!”
Slocum tightened his grip around Curly’s neck until the man stopped struggling. Dragging the unconscious man down an alley, Slocum dropped him to the ground and then knelt, his knee in the middle of Curly’s chest. The man gasped and began choking. Slocum let up just enough to let him breathe.
“Where’s Calhoun?”
“He—don’t know.”
Slocum rocked forward and drove his knee down hard into Curly’s belly. This doubled him up, and he started retching.
While he was incapacitated, Slocum rummaged through the owlhoot’s pockets and found two gold keys. He added them to his collection.
“Where’s Calhoun?” he repeated. “I won’t ask again.”
“Went on ahead. Him and Swain went on. I was left here to stop you.”
“You certainly slowed us down,” Slocum said. “It’s taken a fair amount of time to get all that information out of you.”
“Don’t kill me. Please. That’s what Calhoun was gonna do. Or Skunk. Never saw a man who enjoyed killin’ the way he does.”
“What would happen if I let you go?”
“I’ll head on back to St. Louis. Got cousins there.”
“If I see your ugly face again, I’ll blow it off,” Slocum said in a level voice. Curly’s eyes grew wide as he realized Slocum wasn’t joshing him.
“You . . . you and Skunk Swain. You’re like peas in a pod.”
“Naw,” Slocum said. “I’m worse.” He let Curly get to his feet. The man staggered away, clutching his belly and trying not to fall over from all the liquor he’d imbibed. After he disappeared, Slocum returned to the main street and spotted Zoe waving to him.
“I’ve sent off my article,” she said excitedly. “And I bought a newspaper. It’s a little out of date, but I’m sure my first stories must be in it somewhere.” She rustled through the pages, handing each to Slocum when she didn’t see her name in print.
All he saw were reports on the spreading depression. The Panic of ’73, some were calling it. Competing with such a financial crisis would be hard for any reporter, much less a cub reporter covering a race nobody outside St. Louis seemed to know squat about.
“I was sure there’d be mention somewhere,” she said, disheartened.
“We’re on our way to Denver. A big city’ll have your stories in one of the papers.”
He watched as she brightened. She stood on tiptoe and gave him a quick kiss, not caring that several citizens saw this unseemly behavior.
“Thank you, John. I keep forgetting this is the frontier.”
He wondered if he ought to suggest they stay in Dry Water overnight so she could thank him more properly. Then he began worrying about the race.
“It’s another couple days’ hard ride to Denver. You up for it?”
“I was born ready,” she said, grinning.
The days in the saddle were long and the nights filled with passion. Slocum wasn’t sure he was grateful to see the Front Range with Denver and all its smaller camps settled at their base. Cherry Creek had been one of the first, born of a gold strike, but the town had become more than that. Commerce and the railroad had brought settlers and miners and men willing to gamble everything. Many failed. The ones who didn’t prospered beyond even their dreams of avarice. Then there was Aurora and tiny Denver City, which had somehow spread and gobbled up the rest.
“Your horse isn’t going to sell for much, John,” Zoe said sorrowfully. “I’m sorry we had to rush so. Do you think the lameness will ever go away?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Slocum said. “From here, we have to get on the train and get over the mountains.”
“Do you think Calhoun is already here?”
“That’s what Curly said. I’m wondering if Molly Ibbotson has passed through already, too.”
“We can find the office and get the instructions.” She heaved a sigh and shook her head. “If we had only known the freight agent we could have bribed him to telegraph us the instructions.”
“Being around so many crooks is making you like them. That’s something I’d’ve expected Calhoun to think up.”
“I’m trying to understand how a man like that thinks,” she said. “For the article, of course.”
“Not for the fifty thousand dollars,” Slocum said, wondering if he ought to worry more about her honesty. Zoe was a delightful traveling companion, and the nights had been as tiring as the days, but in a more pleasurable way. The lure of money often outweighed any desire for fame.
“Of course not,” she said, staring straight ahead so he couldn’t see her face. “I’m a reporter. We cannot allow ourselves to become part of the story. That is unethical.”
They rode farther into town, both lost in thought. After twenty minutes, they were surrounded by the crush of people, and Slocum began to get antsy. Zoe was about all the company he wanted right now. He found himself jumping at sudden noises and staring into shadows, wondering if Calhoun or another of the racers was drawing a bead on him.
“I’ll find out where Turner’s freight office is.” It took longer than he thought since no one knew. He finally located another freight company that operated locally. The clerk directed Slocum to the Turner Haulage Company office.
A small crowd had gathered outside as they rode up. Slocum shook his head. A man was selling bars of soap for five dollars each.
“Why ever are they paying so much for soap?” Zoe asked. She frowned as she tried to figure it out. Before Slocum could tell her, a grizzled miner on the far side of the crowd held up an unwrapped bar of soap in one hand and a fifty-dollar bill in the other as he shouted, “I got me fifty dollars! I’m rich! Lookee!”
“He found such a large bill wrapped in the soap?”
“You don’t want to get involved,” Slocum said.
“But there’s a story here. Whoever—”
“The man who’s selling the soap has several confederates in the crowd.” As Slocum spoke, it dawned on Zoe what was happening.
“They’re working together. They’re not actually finding fifty-dollar bills, are they?”
“The man doing the selling has the wrappers marked to give the right bar of soap to his partners.”
“Why, that’s dishonest! The others think they have a chance to unwrap a bar of soap and become rich.”
“It’s probably not even good soap,” Slocum said. “Welcome to Denver.”
“You can’t allow them to be cheated. You have to tell them.”
“Write a story about it,” Slocum said, swinging his leg over and dropping to the ground. The impact of dirt under his boot soles jarred him. He had been on the trail too long, and his entire body ached from the ride from Dry Water.
“If you won’t, I will.”
Slocum went to Zoe’s horse, reached up, grabbed the woman around the waist, and yanked, pulling her from the saddle. She kicked and fought a little, then stopped and glared at him.
“You’re as bad as the men stealing from the others,” she said. “You know it’s all a confidence game, and you’re doing nothing about it.”
“If you bought a bar of soap for five dollars expecting to find a fifty wrapped around it, what’d you think?”
“That I was cheated!”
“Nope, you’d buy another bar, hoping to get the prize. Most of those in the crowd will end up with ten bars of very expensive soap. Some might end up with more, but it’ll be a lesson they won’t forget.” Slocum
said that only to pacify Zoe, because most of the men would never figure out they had been duped. Their need to get something for nothing was too strong. Greed was so powerful, they would spend a dozen times what they might hope to get just to win.
Slocum stopped at the door of the colonel’s freight office, and wondered if his behavior was any different. He sought a king’s ransom in gold and, at best, had only as many chances of winning as he had golden keys. A racer getting to San Francisco with a single key might win, and all of Slocum’s efforts would then be worthless.
At least the citizens of Denver would receive soap as a reminder of their misadventure. Slocum had nothing but a trail of dead bodies to show for his efforts so far.
The clerk looked up, a sour look on his face.
“Git yer soap outside. From that one. Soapy Smith.”
“We’re more interested in directions for the race, Colonel J. Patterson Turner’s Transcontinental Race.” Slocum saw the sudden furtive look and wondered what was going on.
He drew his six-shooter and laid it on the counter, not quite aiming the muzzle in the clerk’s direction.
“What are the instructions?” There was no way for the man not to realize what would happen if he didn’t provide the requested directions.
“Look, I was paid to, uh, get the instructions. I didn’t know nothing ’bout them until she—”
“She?” Zoe quickly described Molly Ibbotson. Slocum thought Zoe was a trifle harsh as she lingered on certain details, but he couldn’t blame her too much. It looked as if the woman had abandoned her brother and cared nothing that he had been killed trying to commit murder.
“That’s the one,” said the clerk. “Real looker, she was. She told me not to show this to anybody.” The clerk produced a yellow telegram and held it in a shaking hand. Slocum grabbed it.
“Salt Lake City,” he said. “The next instructions are in Salt Lake City.”
“The finish line is in San Francisco,” Zoe said. “It has to be. There’s no other conclusion. We should go directly there.”