by Jake Logan
“Booth! Booth! Throw your gun out and come out with your hands high or die.”
“Go to hell, you sumbitch.”
Hooker answered with two swift bullets that shattered a row of jars in the window and doused the light inside.
Coughing and choking, Booth shouted that he was giving up.
“One trick and you’re dead,” Slocum said as he moved in toward the bent-over figure coughing up his guts as he came outside.
“Where’s Waters’s money?” He jerked Booth upright.
“What money?”
Slocum slashed him across the face with his pistol barrel. “Where is it?”
He held his arm up in self-defense. “Damn you! It’s in there on the table.”
“Handcuff him,” Slocum said to Snyder and stalked over to the doorway. He struck a match and located a candle on the table. He lit the wick and spotted the canvas belt. It looked intact. He checked a few of the pouches and nodded to Hooker, who was standing in the doorway. “Guess it’s all here.”
“How much, you reckon?”
“Guess we can count it.”
“Naw, let’s make some food. Best part is that we got him and the money.”
Slocum nodded. “Best thing, yes.”
They ate some bacon and fried potatoes out of Booth’s meager larder and, with him chained to a tree, slept a few hours. Before sunup, they saddled his horse and took him to Tascosa.
In town, Slocum gave them each a hundred-dollar reward from the wallet. They shook his hand and acted grateful. Snyder put Booth in a cell, and Slocum had the belt locked in the mercantile safe until he was ready to leave for the ranch.
By that afternoon, he’d hired three cowboys for Francie. Buck, a blue-eyed, freckle-faced puncher in his twenties who could rope anything including a pig, showed Slocum his skill on a loose shoat in the street. Rake, the youngest, hardly out of his teens, was eager for work—Slocum found him at the livery swamping out the stalls. The oldest, Teodoro, was Mexican and could make a reata sing. He wore a high-crowned sombrero and carried a fiddle he could play.
“Who has a horse of his own?” Slocum asked his new crew in front of the livery.
“I do,” Buck said.
“I have my own, Señor,” said the Mexican.
Slocum nodded to the kid. “You get to drive the wagon. You got any tack?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll find you a saddle and some spurs. We all had to learn how.” Slocum dropped his gaze to the ground. “Any man here can’t take orders from a woman better stay here.”
“Couple of square meals a day and twenty-five a month and I’d be happy working for anyone,” Buck said. “Bet her cooking would beat most ranch cooks anyway.”
“No problem for me, Señor.”
“No, sir,” the kid said. “I’m just proud to get a chance.”
“There’s lots of work out there. Waters spent more time here than tending his business.”
“When we leave?” Buck asked.
“In the morning. They’re loading the supplies this afternoon.”
“You need us to oversee that?” Buck asked.
“Wouldn’t be a bad idea. Hitch up the wagon and take it down there. Pick the kid out a saddle, slicker, and spurs too. I missed anything you can think of, put them on the list.”
“Thanks,” the youth said to Slocum as he grinned.
Slocum crossed the street looking for One Eye in Gilly’s. From the swinging doors, he asked the bartender about him.
“I ain’t seen him today, Tom. But I heard yah brought in that killer.”
“He’s in the jail.”
“Good. Next whiskey is on me.”
“Thanks. See him, tell him I got his money.”
“I will.”
There were three thousand and fifty dollars in gold coins in that belt. Was that from cattle sales or what? That much money in one man’s wallet looked strange. Slocum would probably never know the answer, but Francie could damn well ranch as long as she wanted. He smiled crossing over to the Longhorn Bar across the street as he remembered how Margie had gotten sore from Waters’s belt.
He pushed in the batwing doors. “One Eye in here?”
The barkeep shook his head and threw a rag over his shoulder. “Not today.”
“Thanks.”
He saw the boys hitching the team up at the livery. He went to the jail and stuck his head inside the door. “How’s things going?”
“I’m taking Booth to the fort in the morning.”
“Be a good idea.”
“Army’s got a better jail.”
Slocum nodded and went down to the mercantile. Buck had the list and stood with a young clerk out front. Buck was telling the young man in the white apron how he wanted the items placed. The boy was listening good. There was a good used saddle on the hitch rack, and when the kid came out he nodded toward the rig.
“Got spurs and a slicker too, boss.”
“Good. Teodoro, you got any extra strings for that fiddle?” he asked the man.
“No, Señor.”
“Get some and put them on the ranch’s bill. The boss lady loves that music.”
“Ah, sí. I am in love with her already.”
“She put up with that cranky Waters for a long time. She needs some spoiling.” Slocum stopped the fresh-faced clerk. “Got any flower seeds?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Put some in the order.”
“But it’s late—”
“She can dream all winter about planting them next year. You ever wait on Waters when he loaded up?”
“I-I did.”
“What did he take back?”
“I’d say bare essentials.”
“I thought so. Add in dried apples, raisins, airtight cases—four peaches and six tomatoes, brown sugar, sorghum lick, cinnamon, vanilla.”
“He never ordered any of them except a few cans for himself—to eat going home, I figured.”
“One more thing,” Slocum stopped the boy. “He always paid cash?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s fine, go ahead. I just wondered.” It cost Waters plenty to chase whores and drink, play poker—where in hell did it come from? Maybe Slocum would never know.
20
At sunup, Snyder set out east in a buckboard for the fort with his manacled prisoner. Slocum had left One Eye’s half of the money with the Gilly bartender the night before. Rake was sitting on the spring seat, holding the lines with his feet braced and the team acting a little snorty. Buck snubbed the nye horse to his saddle horn to keep them in line. At Slocum’s nod, they left Tscaosa headed west. The wagon wheels stirred the thin dust and the prancing team headed across the mesquite and grass scattering meadowlarks and killdeers.
Late afternoon showers swept on them causing the outfit to shuck out their slickers. Then the storms danced off across the vast expansion of rolling range. The men made camp beside some sorry water. The horses were grained, and supper was cooked on firewood collected that day as they crossed the land and stored on a stiff cowhide swung under the wagon’s belly.
Before they left, Slocum had bought half a fat calf carcass that he wrapped in a wet canvas to keep it cool. He figured it would last the trip. Men could always put away plenty of beef. They roasted the front shoulder for supper and ate a good portion of it—the rest of the cooked portion, he knew, would feed them breakfast.
The boys did the dishes in the twilight and Teodoro played the fiddle. The strains of his music drifted across the wide-open space. Slocum figured the notes went as far out as they could and then they settled like dew on the brown bunchgrass.
At noon the second day, a rider came hard out of the east. Slocum saw his dust first on their back trail, and told Buck someone was coming in toward them. The wagon continued on as they waited for the rider.
When the youth reined up in a sliding stop, he swallowed hard. “Marshal Hooker sent me. They ambushed Marshal Snyder, and Booth got away.”
“Bad off. They don’t expect him to live.”
“Who done it?”
“You know One Eye?”
“Was he alone?”
Grim-faced, the youth shook his head. “Hooker figures they were part of Booth’s gang.”
Slocum wet his cracked lips and nodded. Looking across the plains toward a red mesa that seemed diffused in the heat and dust, he came to a quick conclusion. Booth would know where they were going.
“Tell Hooker I can’t help him, but I’ll send word if Booth shows up.”
“He wanted you to know ’cause he figures Booth’ll come after you.”
“Booth better bring his best suit.”
“How is that, sir?”
“’Cause that’s what I’ll bury him in.”
Buck and Teodoro laughed. The youth grinned. Slocum dug out a dollar. “Tell Hooker I’m obliged for the information.”
“Gee, I will. Thanks, mister.” The boy looked in disbelief at the silver cartwheel in his palm.
Rake reined up the team as Slocum and the others approached. “What’s happened?”
“Booth escaped,” Buck said.
The kid stood up, holding the lines tight, and looked around the top of the tarp at their back trail. “He coming after us?”
“Sleep with your six-gun is all I kin say.” Buck dismounted and joined the others getting a drink from the water barrel on the side of the rig.
“I ain’t got one,” said Rake.
“Gawdamn, boy, we took you to raise, I guess.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll have one,” Slocum said and frowned at Buck. “Did you go to Kansas as a swamper for Cookie the first time?”
Buck stopped the dipper gourd short of his face. “Yes, sir.”
“Then remember that trip. Rake ain’t doing half bad.”
Buck nodded and finished his drink. “I will.”
“Good.”
The fourth day they reached the ranch, and Francie rode out on a bay horse to meet them. One troubled look at each of them and she frowned. “Where’s he at?”
“Frank’s dead,” Slocum said. “I had him buried there. He was shot in a robbery scheme.” He waved the boys on. “We’ll be there in a short while.”
They all had their hats off for her, and they rode on with a pleased nod.
She dismounted and ran over to hug Slocum. “Oh, I’m so glad you found him. How much do I owe for the goods?”
He squeezed her. “Frank ever say he had money from the cattle?”
“No. He said they never paid the bills and he owed for the past year’s supplies. So we were real careful what we got and laid off the hands soon as we could because things were so bad.”
“Frank ever been an outlaw?”
“Why ask me that?” She shook her head as if that was impossible.
“Well, he didn’t owe a soul in Tascosa. He paid cash for everything he got in the past, and all I can find is he was stingy about the supplies he brought out here.”
She blinked her eyes at him.
“I recovered over three thousand dollars from the murdering thief in a money belt he stole off Frank.”
“Three—” She sucked in her breath and he caught her as she fainted.
When her eyelids fluttered, he smiled down at her. “I want to search the ranch. I think your husband had more money from some source other than cattle.”
“But where?”
He shook his head and eased her onto her feet. “We may never find the rest.” He showed her a gold twenty-dollar piece that glinted in the sun. “Fresh-minted.”
“But—”
He caught the horses and started for the distant house.
“Thought you couldn’t come back,” she said, looking at the dusty toes of her scuffed boots peeking from under the hem of her dress as she walked.
“I had to. Besides, if there is more, maybe we can find it.”
She stepped in front of him. Her arms shot around his neck and she closed her eyes for him to kiss her. When they parted, she stood flush-faced in his way. “And I worried it was Frank coming back and he’d have more bad news. That bastard.”
So they made wild love at night in her bed and used the days to search. The hands rode out each day at daybreak to make a tally book of the FW cattle that Buck kept. At night they came in, dropping heavy out of the saddle, each day picking up more of the remuda horses in their journeys.
On Saturday night, she told them to rest on Sunday, and they smiled in appreciation. “I can stay in the house and you all can take a bath in the tank if you warn me.”
“We will, ma’am,” Buck said with his hat wadded in his hand.
After supper, when the boys had gone to the bunkhouse, she told Slocum Buck would make a good foreman, and he agreed. He climbed on a chair and used his knife on a loose rock he’d noticed in the upper chimney structure.
“Find anything?”
“Bring a light.” He reached inside and found a yellow newspaper and unfurled it. The headline said: JESSE ROBS THE TRAIN. He stepped down and began to read aloud.
In broad daylight seven members of the James Gang had struck the mail car on a Missouri Pacific train and taken the army payroll worth over thirty thousand dollars. The murderous outlaws had struck while the train was being watered at a small station and water tower called Erp some sixty miles southwest of Saint Louis. They commandeered the crew and then ordered the mail car opened. After a brief shoot-out leaving two of the four soldier guards wounded, they took the payroll and loaded it in a wagon, a conveyance that they had stolen earlier in the day along with its two powerful mules. They shot the car ceilings full of holes, making the passengers take cover on the floor, and thankfully, except for a few who were nicked by stray bullets, all were unhurt.
Various posses took up the trail, but no doubt the bandits were hidden by Confederate sympathizers in the region, for no trace was found of them. Seven men on fancy-grade horses, all strangers to the land, driving a stolen team and wagon, and they’d all disappeared.
According to the article, Pinkerton agents were still searching the region for any witnesses and gang members. Anyone with any information about this robbery or the James gang should contact Pinkerton Detective Agency. Post Office Box 34, Saint Louis, Missouri. Generous rewards were offered for any information.
“Did it say what color those mules were?”
Slocum looked up and shook his head. “Why?”
She looked at the date of the robbery. “He showed up in McDonald County shortly after that date and bought a farm right next to ours.”
“He ever wear a canvas wallet around you?”
“No.”
“He did in Tascosa.”
“Any money up there?” She nodded toward the chimney.
He stood up on the chair, reached in, and found two more sacks. The canvas was almost rotten as he eased the sacks down to Francie. She set them on the table and sighed. “How much are they worth?”
“A thousand apiece, I figure.”
“Wow, I can build a ranch, can’t I?”
He hugged her and swung her around until she threw her head back. “Did he steal that money from the gang?”
“He might have. Guess we’ll never know.”
She snuggled to his chest. “All those years he hid the whole thing from me and we lived like paupers.”
Holding her tight, he rocked her back and forth.
The door burst open and Slocum stared at the gun in Booth’s hand. “Move a muscle and you’re both dead.” One Eye slipped in the door.
“Where did you get this newspaper?” Booth picked it up. “James Gang,” he scoffed. “They was looking for Jesse all right. Wasn’t them at all. Big Frank switched the money to his own wagon and they killed them damn stolen mules and buried them and the wagon. No way they’d find us. They was looking for Jesse and the other Frank.” Booth laughed and nodded to One Eye,
“You recognize him i
n Tascosa?” Slocum asked.
“Yeah, I recognized him before that. But when that whore Margie said he wore a hole in her belly with his heavy wallet, I figured he still had part of the loot.”
“He didn’t remember you?”
“Naw, I was the kid stole the first wagon and mules for John Keyes. Keyes paid me. Waters never knew me. Then later I learned one of the gang got off with all the money. Keyes let it slip one day that his name was Waters. Boy, he’d’ve given me a big reward for this.” Booth slammed the sack down and the coins spilled out on the floor.
Both Booth and One Eye dived for the money. Then the room exploded in shots. The sulfurous gun smoke made Slocum and Francie cough and stagger outside.
“You all right, ma’am?” Buck asked her. “Sorry, but we didn’t want you or Slocum shot, so Teo and I waited until they got distracted.”
“You two did good.” Slocum clapped the short Mexican on the shoulder. “Saved our skins.”
Francie nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
They buried the dead men at sunup and took the day off.
21
The following March, Slocum was on the road to Mexico south of San Antonio. Short new cheatgrass had begun to wave in the spring wind. A week earlier, he’d read in the San Antonio Clarion where bounty hunter Wesley Harrigan had been killed in a shoot-out with two outlaws near Mason, Texas. He’d left the information about Belle Nelson’s bank account with her bereaved parents when he had been through their place in north Texas. As far as he was concerned, he had the whole thing wound up.
The trail drovers had begun to stir with long lines of cattle streaming across the Rio Grande. Two thousand head to the outfit, they lined out in mile-long ribbons of horn-clacking three-and four-year-old steers. Their cloven hooves cut the tender new shoots of wildflowers intending to spread their seed over this land after they blossomed (if they survived). Riders, hoarse from yelling, cracked whips and waved coils of rope at their wards, which made a constant bawl of complaint about how they wanted to bolt back to the thorny thickets rather than make the trek northward.