by Jake Logan
Slocum whoaed up his horse and stepped down. Ed stopped, too. He’d been too busy thinking and gazing ahead into the distance to realize that they were already to the boulders. They were bigger when you got up on them than they’d looked from a distance.
While Slocum took the baby from Mrs. West and helped her down, Ed took a last look back at the horizon—no Charlie, yet—and dismounted.
He smiled. “You want I should take care of the horses, Slocum?” he asked.
Slocum didn’t trust this Ed Frame any farther than he could pick him up and throw him, which he reckoned was about ten feet. Too goddamn smiley, for one thing.
Slocum had put him on firewood duty and seen to the horses himself. Ed Frame rode a tall, slab-sided, bay gelding, whose condition told Slocum that Ed had been out in the storm, all right, so that part of his story was true. Slocum must have curried a good pound of dust and grit out of his coat. Curried out a good deal of long-dead coat, too.
Ed Frame also didn’t believe in graining his horse much, if at all. He didn’t carry any grain on him, and when Slocum fed the gelding a measure of Tubac’s oats, he practically inhaled them.
By the time Slocum walked over to the pile of firewood that Ed was just coaxing into flame, Slocum was as mad as a wet hen. It didn’t help when Ed looked up with that big, stupid grin on his face, and said, “Howdy, pardner!”
“I ain’t your partner, Frame,” Slocum growled, and resisted the urge to punch him out. The resistance was more for Lydia’s sake than Ed Frame’s. But any man who didn’t take decent care of his own horse was a jackass in Slocum’s book. Probably worse.
Why, that horse hadn’t had a good groom—or a good feed—in a coon’s age!
Frame’s face went slack for just a second. But the grin popped back as if it had never faded.
“Why, sorry there, Slocum,” he said apologetically. “I guess I ain’t known you long enough to call you my pard.”
“How’s the kid?” Slocum asked Lydia, pointedly ignoring Frame’s half-assed apology.
Lydia, who had refilled the baby’s little bottle with more of the thinned canned milk, was feeding him. She looked up from his greedy little face.
“He’s just fine, Slocum,” she said, keeping her voice soothing. “Well, as fine as can be expected. He’ll be a lot better once we get to Cross Point, though. How much longer will it be, do you suppose?”
“Depends on those hills,” he said, nodding toward the east. The hills, looming only a moment before, were now little more than fading shadows against a darkening sky. All the color and fire of the Arizona sunset was to the west.
“As I remember, they’re kind of tricky,” he added.
“Tricky, how?” she asked.
“There’s no one pass,” he replied. “Just several trails that are hard to follow, because the terrain’s so rough and rocky. Lots of caves. Most of ’em are full of bats and some of ’em come with cougars. Lots of dead ends.”
Surprisingly, Lydia smiled. “You make it sound so enticing, Slocum.”
He didn’t quite know what to say.
But Ed Frame did. “Oh, them hills ain’t so hard to navigate.”
Slocum turned toward him, one brow cocked. “You been through here recently, Frame?”
Ed Frame shook his head quickly. “Oh, no. Not recent-like. But I been through them hills lots of times. I can lead the way, if’n you want.”
“We’ll see,” Slocum said flatly. He had a bad feeling about Frame to start with, and it was gnawing at him more all the time. He particularly didn’t want to put his fate into Frame’s hands. He just wanted to stall the sonofabitch until he could think of something better.
Other than a bullet to the head, that was. That might get him on Lydia’s bad side, and he was too drawn to her to want that in any way, shape, or form.
In fact, it had been about all he could do to keep from cupping one of those high, round breasts of hers in his hand while they were riding along. He’d had a hard-on for about half the time, too. She’d kept on leaning back into him, and she was so pretty and wheat-blond and she was so soft . . .
“What’s for supper?” Ed asked.
“Thought you said you had your own grub,” Slocum snapped.
Lydia said, “Can’t we share, Slocum?”
By the tone of her voice, Slocum knew that she was aware there was tension between him and Ed. At least she hadn’t mentioned that deed they’d found with the baby’s things. Slocum was certain he didn’t trust Ed Frame with that information.
He pushed his anger back down. “I didn’t shoot any game,” he replied, “on account of little Tyler, there. We’ll have to make do with what’s in the possibles bag.”
“That’s fine with me,” Lydia said. “I’ve got a little food left in my bag, too. Three boiled eggs, a little coffee—”
“Real coffee?” Ed interrupted.
“Certainly,” said Lydia, as if she’d never settle for less. “Arbuckle’s.”
Ed took off his hat and slapped it across his chest. “Hell, ma’am, I ain’t drunk nothin’ but burnt and boiled grain for weeks. I swan, real live Arbuckle’s! You’re a regular goddess, Mrs. West.”
And Lydia, dad-blast her, blushed.
Another reason to dislike Ed Frame.
It was getting to be a pretty long list.
It was too dark to track them any farther, but Charlie Frame wasn’t worried, not by a long shot. Their trail had met up with a lone rider’s several hundred yards back, and by the way the rider’s horse toed in just a tad in front, Charlie knew who it belonged to.
His little brother, Ed.
Charlie leaned back against his bedroll, took another chaw off his jerky, and smiled. Unlike his brother’s open, stupid grin, it was a calculating expression. But then, Charlie was a calculating man.
He figured that Ed had just sort of joined up with them. A fellow pilgrim, so to speak.
He leaned forward, toward his little fire, and poured himself a cup of coffee. Or what passed for it. He didn’t figure he could afford to take a chance on a very big fire, but he hankered for something hot to drink, even if it tasted like shit.
As it had turned out, he didn’t need to worry about his little fire alerting anybody. It had gone all the way dark by this time, and he couldn’t see even a hint of their fire.
Oh well. He’d catch up with them tomorrow. Then he’d take care of what Ed had no stomach for. He wondered if they’d make the hills before he caught up. He supposed so. It couldn’t be helped.
But he knew the same trails through those hills that Ed did, knew ’em by heart. He took a long drink of bitter coffee, then leaned back again.
Hell, he wished he’d shot himself something for supper. Couldn’t take a chance on firing a shot out here, though. Sound carried a pretty far piece.
Musty-tasting jerky, crumbly hardtack, and bad coffee, that’s what he’d settle for tonight. But tomorrow? That would be different, all right.
Lydia could sure slap together a good dinner out of next to nothing, Slocum thought as he mopped his plate with a biscuit.
It turned out that she’d had some scraps of ham left on her, and between her ham and her fixings and his fixings—and the donation of a little salt and pepper from Ed Frame—she’d stirred them up a pot of thick ham-and-bean soup and made up a pan of feather-light biscuits to go alongside it. She even had a little pot of raspberry jelly to go with them.
They’d gone through two pots of coffee, too. He figured that Ed Frame had downed at least one and a half of them by his lonesome. He’d also eaten nearly half of their soup.
Lydia had slid Slocum a glance and a surprisingly fetching roll of her eyes when ol’ Ed dived in for thirds.
That single glance of hers made it almost worth eating with a pig.
’Course, he couldn’t do anything about it. Not with Ed Frame hanging around. But Slocum was sure stirred up, all right. He was, in fact, about to get himself a bad case of the blue balls.
Lydia leaned over and took his plate. She smiled. “I believe I won’t even have to clean this one, Slocum. It appears you’ve already done it for me.”
Before Slocum could reply, an eager Ed Frame piped up, “I done better than that, Mrs. West. I licked mine clean, I did!”
Lydia turned toward him and took his outstretched plate. “That’s nice, Mr. Frame, but I believe I’ll wash it, anyway.”
Slocum snorted.
Frame just shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said with that stupid grin.
The baby was crying.
Beneath a lonely sky filled with distant, glimmering stars, Slocum rolled over underneath his blanket and forced his eyes open. Lydia was already sitting up, he saw. The baby was in her arms, and she was rocking it, trying to soothe it.
“Diaper?” Slocum offered groggily.
“No,” Lydia whispered with a shake of her head. “I guess he’s hungry.”
“In the goddamn middle of the night?” Slocum asked. He was tired and wanted to go back to sleep, or else he wanted Ed Frame gone so that he and Lydia could get to know each other better.
In a biblical sense, of course.
But just then Ed Frame woke up, too, and asked, “What the heck’s that racket?”
“The kid’s hungry,” Slocum snapped.
Lydia got up and started to root around for the can of milk.
“Well, gosh, I didn’t know,” Ed Frame said apologetically. “It’s the gol-dang middle of the night! Can’t he wait till breakfast, like the rest of us?”
“Babies have tiny stomachs,” Lydia said. She poured a couple inches of milk into the bottle, then topped it off with water from a canteen. “And they’re brand-new. They’re not supposed to know about things like breakfast and dinner times. I think.”
She offered the bottle, and little Ty took it greedily. Just the sound of that baby sucking at that bottle reminded Slocum that he’d like to be at Lydia’s breast, for real, and his pants felt suddenly tighter. He shifted uncomfortably.
Across the fire, Ed Frame yanked his blanket over his head and rolled away, muttering, “Finally!”
Slocum stared at him for a moment, mostly to take his mind off of Lydia’s charms, then said to her, “For somebody who don’t know nothin’ about babies, I’d say you’re doin’ right by him.”
She shrugged her pretty shoulders. “Just common sense, that’s all. He’s got the prettiest hair! Was his mama a redhead, too?”
“No,” said Slocum. “She was dark. Brown hair and brown eyes. There was a picture of both his folks, though. His daddy had light hair. Might have been red. Want to see it?”
“Surely,” Lydia replied, her smile soft. “I’d like to very much.”
Slocum reached over his head toward his saddlebags and dragged them around. After a little digging by the light of the campfire, he pulled out the photograph and handed it over.
When he did, his fingers touched Lydia’s. He could have sworn they sparked.
Lydia must have felt the same thing, too, because a look of surprise crossed her face, just for a split second.
She didn’t remark on it, though. She merely pulled the photograph toward her, then tilted it so that the fire lit its surface.
“Yes,” she whispered after a moment. “Yes, it could have been red. Strawberry blond, perhaps.” She handed it back, this time careful to avoid bodily contact with Slocum. “I believe he looks like his daddy,” she added.
Slocum squinted at the picture. “How the hell can you tell?”
She laughed with a soft chuckle that burrowed inside him. “All babies look alike, right?”
He nodded.
“I thought so, too, until I got to studying Tyler, here,” she said. The baby was still working eagerly at the bottle, and this time her gentle smile was for him. “He’s beautiful. I don’t believe there’s ever been another baby quite like him.”
Slocum gave a good-natured snort.
“Oh hush,” she admonished him, but she was smiling as she said it. “Don’t go thinking I’ve gone all soft.” She looked down at the child in her arms once more. “Well, maybe just a little bit. Right, Tyler?”
Slocum half expected her to make cootchie-cootchie noises at the baby, and the sad thing was that in his present condition, he would have found that sexually enticing, too.
He had it bad, all right.
Lydia set the empty bottle aside and lifted the baby to her shoulder. Softly patting his back, she leaned forward a bit and slid a glance over toward the sleeping Ed Frame.
“You don’t trust him, do you?” she whispered.
“Not rightly,” Slocum replied. She was smarter than he’d credited her with. In a lower tone, he whispered, “Don’t even trust him to be asleep.”
She nodded her understanding and sat back. Just then, the baby burped, a tiny sound, and she brought him back down into her arms again. Gently, she began to rock him back and forth.
“Won’t be long before you’re fast asleep, Ty,” she murmured. And then she looked up at Slocum.
“We won’t make Cross Point before nightfall tomorrow, will we?” she asked. “I’ve traveled this route with Winston a couple times, and it seems to me like we’re making slow headway.”
Slocum nodded. “I think you’re right. If we had another horse, it might be different. But I don’t want to push Tubac too hard. We got enough milk?”
She shrugged. “There’s maybe a little less than half a can left. It would have helped if you’d known to thin it down when you first fed him.”
“Sorry,” said Slocum.
“I think it’ll be all right,” she replied, and gave him another pretty smile. “He’s a fat baby. Must be almost nine pounds. He might get a little grouchy, but he’ll make it fine, so long as we don’t run in to any unnecessary delays.”
She began to hum to the baby, which Slocum took as his cue to roll back over and try to go to sleep. The emphasis being on “try.”
Ed Frame, beneath the cover of his blanket, smiled to himself. He figured that Charlie wasn’t close behind. And Charlie was going to prove to be an “unnecessary delay,” all right.
Ed had decided for sure not to try to shoot Slocum in his sleep, or in the morning. For one thing, Ed didn’t like to get up early, not for anybody.
He’d decided to do it on the trail, tomorrow.
Now, Ed knew that Slocum didn’t trust him, which was why he’d offered to trailblaze once they got into the hills. He figured that, having offered, there wasn’t any way Slocum would let him lead the way.
And behind was where he wanted to be.
After all, you couldn’t very well shoot a man in the back while you were in front of him, now could you?
7
Miles to the southwest on the old Winston West spread, Billy Cree, a drying, blood-soaked dish towel wrapped around his head, finally decided that he was strong enough to ride.
And to get that bitch.
His horse, which had come back all by itself, was in the corral, along with Randy’s. He didn’t know where the hell Wes’s had got to. His boys, Randy and Wes, lay beneath hastily and painfully carried rocks out in the yard, near what he supposed was the Kid’s mound. Damn him anyway.
Those slugs Lydia fired had split the side of his head, bringing on a long state of unconsciousness from which he supposed he was lucky to have awakened.
By then it was too late, though. Wes and Randy were dead and beginning to stink up the place, and Mrs. Show Low Kid was long gone. And then, of course, there was the wind.
He’d waited it out. And while he was waiting, he’d stitched up his own head with hairs plucked from his horse’s tail, and survived off a couple of chickens that had been stupid enough to hang around the place.
His head still hurt him, still pounded when he did anything strenuous—like carry those damned cairn stones, for example—but he was alive. And that was the main thing, wasn’t it?
His vision was a little cockeyed for a day or two. He couldn’t hit
the side of the barn, for starters. But by now it was almost as good as before.
He’d done quite a bit of cogitating on the matter of where Lydia might go off to, and had finally decided that she’d probably gone east, over to Cross Point. And he figured that hellacious dust storm had to have slowed her down a good bit.
Maybe even killed her. Which would save him the trouble.
Damned women. Nothing but trouble.
He loaded up his horse, said a word or two over Wes’s and Randy’s makeshift graves, slung a vitriolic curse toward the Kid’s, and set off at a jog.
Slocum, Lydia, baby Tyler, and Ed Frame were just about to start climbing up into the hills. And much to Ed’s surprise, Slocum had put him in the lead, which fouled up Ed’s plans any way you looked at it.
“You still back there?” he called when he rounded a bend and found himself alone.
In half a second, that Appy’s nose came into sight, and the rest of him followed, bearing Slocum and Lydia. And the baby, naturally.
“Don’t worry about us,” Slocum shouted. He didn’t appear any too jovial. “Just keep on going and we’ll keep following.”
Goddamn him, anyway.
Last night, Ed had been sure that he would have had plenty of opportunities to blast Slocum’s head open by now. Maybe Slocum was on to him. Ed couldn’t figure how, but Slocum seemed half-psychic about some things. Mayhap this was one of them.
But then, if Slocum had somehow figured out what he was doing, why hadn’t Slocum killed him? Or tried to, at least.
It was a puzzlement.
Ed just hoped that Charlie wasn’t far behind. For instance, close enough that he could pop Slocum in the back of the skull and they could just get on with it.
Ed wasn’t too crazy about the killing parts of this deal, but the more he thought about it, two deaths didn’t seem like too much of a price to pay for that gold mine the kid had.
Still, he’d feel a lot better if he didn’t have to do it. Kill anybody, that was. Especially that nice Mrs. West. She was awful pretty.