by Jake Logan
“I was tracking a wounded elk,” he told them. “You’re lucky I found you. This is wilderness.”
“You can say that again,” Fenster said, his brown eyes like a pair of polished buttons.
“We left all those people down there on the road,” Jasmine said.
“And all our things are still there,” Lydia added.
“Where?” Slocum asked.
Jasmine pointed down the road, which was littered with pine bark and branches, the detritus left behind by woodcutters who hauled timber out of the mountains and down to the sawmills.
“Can you take us there, see if anybody’s still alive?” Jasmine asked.
Slocum thought about it for a long moment. If what the women had told him was true, a wagon train had been attacked by Indians and white men. People had died. They hadn’t used guns, which meant whoever committed that atrocity knew they had the upper hand. They knew they were attacking helpless people, people who wouldn’t resist. Why? To rob them, probably. And if his hunch was right, to leave no witnesses.
“You’d better all stay here,” Slocum said. “I’ll walk down there and look things over.”
He pointed up to the opposite slope.
“I’ve got a boy up there on that mountain,” he said. “He’s waiting for me. We have two horses and two pack mules. After I check things out where you say you were attacked, I’ll go up there and we’ll ride back down here.”
“What if those Indians and those men are still looking for us?” Jasmine asked. “They’ll murder us while you’re gone.”
Slocum unbuckled his gun belt.
“Any of you know how to shoot a pistol? This is a Colt 45, double-action revolver.”
“I—I do,” Jasmine stammered. “I mean I fired my father’s pistol a few times. I don’t think it was that big.”
“You just thumb back the hammer, aim, and shoot,” Slocum said, handing her the gun belt. If you see sign of any of those robbers, you just shoot it twice and I’ll get here as fast as I can. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jasmine said. She held the gun belt in her hands as if it were a dead snake. Or a live one. Lydia eyed it and took a step backward.
“A gun’s just a tool, ma’am,” Slocum said. “It can give a warning or it can drop a man at close range. Take the pistol in your hand. Get used to it. Use it if you have to. As a warning or as a weapon.”
“I—I’ll try,” Jasmine said. She pulled the pistol from its holster. Her hand dropped with the weight, but she brought it back up and put her finger inside the trigger guard and clasped the grip with her hand.
“It’s a lot heavier than my daddy’s pistol,” she said. “But his gun was like this. You had to pull the hammer back each time you shot it.”
“Well, then,” Slocum said. “You’re halfway there, Miss Jasmine. It is Miss, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m not married.”
“Neither am I,” Lydia said and flashed a becoming smile at Slocum.
He touched two fingers to the brim of his black hat and walked toward the creek.
“Don’t leave us here too long,” Fenster said.
Slocum crossed the creek, stepping on stones, and reached the other side. He waved to the three people and walked down the road. Their tracks were plain to see. They had been running, at least part of the time.
There were many such roads in the mountains, but he was not familiar with this one. From the looks of it, it had not been used for some time, at least a year, he figured. Woodcutters would have had to climb up the mountainsides, cut down trees, trim them, and use mules or horses to skid them back to the road, where they loaded them on wagons. He was surprised that they hadn’t built a ramp of some sort so that they could just roll the logs onto the wagons. They had done it the hard way.
The women and Fenster had not come far. After he rounded a bend in the road, he saw what was left of the wagon train. Beyond was the main road. He wondered why the wagon master had turned off on this scrawny little road.
Then, as he reached the wagons, he saw why. On the other side of the road someone had put up a sign that pointed up the logging road.
The sign was crude, painted on a board with one end coming to a point.
The sign read: BIG TIMBER, 2 MILES
Big Timber was at least ten miles away on that main road.
3
Slocum walked down to the road and put his shoulder to the pole holding up the sign. He pushed and the road sign tipped over. Then he walked onto the logging road and surveyed the tilted wagons, the coach, the scattered garments, the opened suitcases, the jewelry boxes.
Then he looked at the dead.
One man was slumped over the seat of the coach. There was an arrow buried in his chest. Another man lay on the ground nearby. He, too, had an arrow through his back. Slocum examined the fletching, the feathers, the markings on the shaft.
“Crow,” he said to himself.
Two women in flowered cotton dresses lay in the bed of one of the wagons. Their throats were slit. A young man lay across the seat, his head split open, his brains leaking out like boiled oatmeal. The women’s dresses were pulled up around their waists, their panties slit open, their legs spread. They had been violated, Slocum could see. Brutally violated.
He walked among the dead and tried to imagine how so many had died so quickly.
The bandits had slit open the boot of the stagecoach and some of the contents had tumbled out. These lay in a heap on the ground. However, inside the boot, strapped in, were two black guitar cases. They were difficult to see against the black crepe at the back of the boot. Someone had kicked through the stack of valises that had fallen to the ground, and had opened each one and left them all gaping like the mouths of large dark birds. A few tintypes lay scattered on the ground, fading yellowish likenesses of hardscrabble farmers, their wives and children standing before graying frame houses or paintless barns cobbled together from odd-sized boards of whipsawed lumber on some flat and lifeless prairie in Kansas or Nebraska.
He saw horse tracks in a maze around the wagons and coach, and signs that some of the riders had ventured up the road and into the woods, no doubt searching for those who had escaped. He saw tracks that might have been made by Jasmine, Lydia, and Fenster that had somehow been overlooked by the robbers.
He also found the place where the bushwhackers had waited for the small wagon train to turn up the old woodcutters’ road. In a copse of spruce trees atop a small ridge were signs that men on horseback had waited there. The soft ground was scarred with the hieroglyphs of shod and unshod horses, thin scraps of paper from partially smoked cigarettes, a few piles of human excrement, and holes where men had pissed onto the fallen pine needles. One patch of snow was filled with such holes that had a yellowish tinge from the urine.
He followed the tracks he thought might have belonged to the two women and the little man in the dark suit. It was plain to see how they had escaped notice. They had scrambled up a vein of limestone rock and into the shelter of spruce and fir trees, then continued on a course parallel to the road.
Evidently, none of the raiders had seen the women and the little man make their escape, and the buried limestone, like the spine of a prehistoric beast, ran straight up a steep ridgeline that would have been difficult for a man on horseback to climb. The trees were thick and bushy. There was a splintered juniper where a bull elk had sharpened its antlers during the previous fall season. Its trunk was splayed as if it had been struck by a massive lightning bolt. Slocum had seen such trees before and had even seen elk attack a juniper during the rut.
As he was about to leave the ridge top, Slocum heard a sound that froze him in his tracks.
He moved his head slowly, less than an inch at a time, to focus on the direction from whence the sound had come. He heard it again, higher up the slope. He did not move for several seconds. He just listened.
At first he thought he might be hearing a chipmunk or a squirrel scurrying through the leaves. But after a moment, he k
new that it was something else. Something big.
He eased his rifle up and let the barrel fall onto his left hand, which was opened like a cradle. His right hand slid down to the stock, just behind the lever. He gripped the fore-stock with his left hand and slowly eased down the lever. The breech opened and a cartridge slid from the magazine into the barrel. He slammed the lever back into place, sealing the breech, and dropped to his knees behind a pine tree.
There was a rustle of branches above him and the sound of someone breathing.
“Oh, damn it,” he heard someone say.
The voice was unmistakably female. A woman’s voice, without a doubt.
Slocum peered from behind the tree. He kept his head low and his rifle at the ready.
Something black moved like a shadow through the brush above him.
Then he heard something fly through the air. It wasn’t a bird. He ducked instinctively, but when the object landed off to his left, he pulled his rifle away from the tree and whirled. Something struck the ground with a thud, then rolled downhill.
Slocum craned his neck to see what it was. Leaves and pine needles rose and fell as the object passed over them.
He thought he heard something behind him.
But before he could turn his head, something hard slammed into the base of his skull. He felt his body lose its balance and pitch forward.
Everything went black, and multicolored stars danced in Slocum’s head. He tried to open his eyes, but the stars dimmed and tumbled into a Stygian pit of blackness.
All the world inside Slocum’s head went dark.
Then there was an emptiness that was the void, where nothing existed.
He slipped into unconsciousness, where he hovered weightless over a churning sea that was all black and very deep.
4
Slocum dreamed that he was on a high cliff, a bleak limestone cliff that towered above a green sea. He could hear seagulls calling, their screeches like the voices of lost souls. Cottony clouds floated in a blue sky, and as he gazed upward, the earth began to spin beneath him. He felt himself topple from the cliff. His clothing flew off his body as he plummeted toward the water. He struck the sea face first and gasped for air as his mouth tasted water.
Slocum opened his eyes as he was jerked from the dream. He clawed for his pistol, and his fingers struck an empty holster. He reached for his rifle as he wiped water from his eyes.
That was when he saw the ugly snouts of a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun just inches from his face.
“What the hell . . .” Slocum gasped as he spat drops of water from his mouth.
“Mister, I got both barrels cocked and my finger’s ready to pull the trigger. You got two seconds to tell me who you are and what you’re doing here.”
“I’m John Slocum,” he said as he touched the sore spot on the back of his head. “I’m here to see what happened with the folks in that wagon train. Have I used up my two seconds?”
He looked up at the woman who held the shotgun. She laughed and lowered the weapon. She was tall and slender, with a regal face that seemed to be chiseled to perfection. She was dressed in black and wore a simple strand of pearls around her alabaster neck.
He heard the whisper of the twin hammers as she eased them back down to the half-cock position.
“I took away your pistol and moved your rifle, just in case you were one of those jaspers who jumped the wagons. I didn’t think you were, but I had to be sure.”
“That was quite a whack you gave me.”
“Like I said, I didn’t know who you were. Where did you come from?”
“You were with the wagons?” Slocum said. “How did you get away?”
“I was in the stagecoach when it turned off the main road. I knew something was wrong. I saw horses’ legs up on that ridge, in the trees, and I dove for the opposite door, opened it, and pushed out the other passengers. I whispered to them as I ran. Told them to follow me. I had the Greener with me and I hid out. The two other women and their companion just kept running. I don’t know where they went, or even if they got away and are still alive.”
“They are,” Slocum said. “They told me what happened. I came down to have a look for myself.”
He steadied himself against a tree and got to his feet. He was a little woozy, but he stood there, bracing himself against the pine until the dizziness went away.
“Your pistol and rifle are up there where I spent the night,” she said. “Follow me.”
The woman led him to a depression in the earth. He saw where she had lain. There were large chunks of pine bark and juniper limbs piled next to the small ditch.
He reached down and picked up his pistol, then hefted his rifle out of the sunken makeshift bed.
“You stayed there all night?”
“It’s what I call a debris shelter. My husband taught me how to survive in the mountains if I ever got bucked off my horse. You find a ditch or low spot and cover yourself with forest debris. I tucked myself into a ball and shivered all night. It was cold. But the shelter worked.”
“Was your husband . . .”
He looked down the slope at the jumble of wagons and the tilted coach.
“He wasn’t there, no. I was coming home from his funeral in Billings. I’m a widow woman,” she said. He detected a note of sadness in her voice, a wistful strain in her tone that bespoke of loneliness and loss.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He walked over to where he had been knocked cold and picked up his hat. He brushed it off and set it squarely on his head. He fiddled in his pocket for a cheroot.
“Ma’am, I didn’t get your name.”
“I didn’t give it. But it’s Velva Granville. I was married to Albert Granville. I knew this wasn’t the road to Big Timber because that’s where Bert and I lived.”
“Are you connected with Granville Outfitters in Big Timber?”
She nodded. “You know of it?”
“I saw the sign. I hired on to hunt for Ray Mallory at the Big Timber Hotel.”
“Albert and I hunted for Nelson Montague of the Grant Hotel. Bert was a hunting and fishing guide. That’s our store on Main Street.”
“Why were you lugging that Greener with you in the coach?” Slocum asked.
“There have been Crow attacks on that road of late,” she said. “Not many, but I didn’t want my scalp hanging in some buck’s lodge.”
“So, you were prepared for an attack on the wagons?”
“Not at all,” she said. “But there was a kind of wake for Albert after the funeral,” she said. “It was held at the Absaroka Hotel, and there was talk of white men organizing some of the Crow tribe to rob people from the Little Big Horn to the Yellowstone. It was just talk, but from what I saw yesterday, I believe the gossip to be true. There were white men with those Crow braves and they ran the whole show. They were looking for something, or someone.”
“What makes you say that?” Slocum asked.
“The man I took to be the leader of the bunch kept yelling, ‘Where is she?’ and ‘Where is that bitch?’ ”
Slocum felt his stomach swirl with moths and he got a sick feeling.
“He say a name?”
“No. He was just looking for some bitch. I didn’t think it was a favorite female dog of his.”
“One of the women down there who was defiled?” he asked.
“You mean raped, don’t you? That’s what they did to them before they cut their throats. I can still hear their awful screams.”
“Yes, the women who were raped.”
“I don’t think so. The Crow braves violated the women first. Then, from what I heard, and what little I saw, some of the white men took their turns.”
“Well, Velva, here’s the situation,” Slocum said. “I’ve got two horses up on the mountain and two pack mules. Ray’s kid, Donnie, is up there waiting for me. You can either walk up the road to where Lydia, Jasmine, and Fenster are waiting for me in a cave, or you can hike up that mountain yonde
r with me and we’ll all ride down and pick up the three people. We’ll have to double up, but we can all ride back to Big Timber. As the crow flies.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said, “although I wish had on boots instead of these severe widow’s shoes. And my dress is beginning to look like widow’s weeds.”
“You can ride a mule back down or you can ride with me, Mrs. Granville,” he said. “Suit yourself.”
“I’ll look over the mules. Just so I don’t ride with Donnie.”
“You know the kid?”
“He hung around our store. Bert threw him out more than once. I don’t think he has all his marbles, that kid. Or if he does, they’re all chipped and lopsided.”
Slocum laughed.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Donnie’s probably worried that I’ve been gone so long.”
“I’m surprised you left him with your horses and mules. That kid couldn’t watch corn grow without peeing his pants. He’d be scared of the scarecrow.”
“I think I know what you mean, Mrs. Granville.”
“Please, Mr. Slocum. Call me Velva. I’m no longer Mrs. Granville. My husband is dead and I’m his widow. May I call you John?”
“Velva,” he said with a grin, “you can call me anything you like.”
She reached out and squeezed his arm in a friendly manner. The two walked down the slope at an angle, crossed the road, and began to climb the slope. Slocum knew exactly where Donnie was waiting with the horses and mules. Despite the shoes, Velva kept up with him. He chewed his cheroot down to a nub and finally spit it out.
The sun was straight above them in a blue and cloudless sky.
When the horses came into view, it was high noon in Montana, and Slocum was sweating like a horse himself.
5
Donnie was sound asleep inside the cave when Slocum and Velva approached. When he looked up, after Slocum kicked the sole of his boot, Donnie’s eyes widened in fear. His jaw dropped and a tiny squeak issued from his throat.
“Get up, Donnie,” Slocum said.
“Gawd,” Donnie exclaimed, “I thought you two was the undertakers and I had plumb died.”