Slocum and the Rancher's Daughter

by Jake Logan

  “Get around back and shoot the upstairs windows out.”

  Slocum hurried to the outhouse and slipped inside the bad-smelling interior. No, Yodder wasn’t in there. He stood and listened to the fall of boot soles coming in his direction, then the click of a lever-action rifle. Each shot sent glass flying. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Clicked on empty.

  Slocum slammed open the outhouse door and struck the man over the head. He wilted, his knees buckled, and he went down. Slocum jerked the rifle out of his hand.

  “Carson, you reloading? Damnit, Carson.” Gantry sounded uncertain. “Answer me, gawdamnit.”

  Slocum was bent over the unconscious man, shoving fresh rounds in the .44/40 magazine.

  “Carson! Yodder!”

  With the Winchester loaded, Slocum headed for the front of the house in a long lope. He looked up in time to see Cora in the bedroom window cussing and blasting away with her pistol at someone in front of the house.

  “Cora, get inside!” he ordered.

  Hearing his words and holding the pistol in both hands, she disappeared inside.

  When Slocum cleared the corner, he knew Gantry had already run for his horse. He ran harder, but a horse was getting away. He dropped to one knee and took aim at the fleeing horse and rider beyond the post-and-rail fence. Two quick shots and Gantry was gone out of range.

  He wanted to rush to the barn, get a horse, and go after him, but he couldn’t leave the two outlaws to the women.

  “You all right?” Cora called down.

  He waved. “I have one in the backyard to get and one in the pantry to round up.”

  “Pantry?”

  “You can come downstairs. I’ll be there in a minute or so.”

  The shooter out back was still on his butt, rubbing his head and wondering what devil had jumped out of the crap-per and knocked him out. Slocum pulled him up to his feet.

  “Where’s your boss headed?”

  “Huh?”

  “You want your balls roasted?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me where Gantry’s run off to.”

  “My head hurts. Damn, how should I know?”

  “’Cause there’s an old Mexican woman in there going to cut your pecker off and then eat your balls raw if you don’t—”

  Maria had the door open and stuck her head out.

  At the sight of her, the outlaw threw his arms over his face. “No. No. I’ll tell you. It’s some old ranch south of here.”

  “What is?” Cora demanded. Dressed in a riding outfit with her blond hair tied back with a ribbon, she came out and looked defiantly at the outlaw.

  “Where Gantry’s hiding.” Slocum shoved the outlaw through the door into the kitchen. “Open that pantry door slow-like.”

  The gray-haired Maria’s hand shook as she drew back the bolt. Then she stepped back as she opened the door. Hands over her mouth, she began to laugh and shake her head at the sight inside.

  The other two women rushed over to peer at the outlaw seated on his butt with the towel stuffed in his mouth.

  “Who are they?” Cora asked.

  “Tell her.”

  The outlaw he had by the collar sullied.

  “Maria, bring your biggest, sharpest knife over here.”

  The bug-eyed outlaw quickly swallowed and began to speak. “We was hired by Gantry to take you all prisoner and get them others out of jail in exchange.”

  “Where’s Worthington?”

  “I swear, I don’t know him.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ed Carson and he’s Frank Yodder.”

  “Jerk that gag out of his mouth,” Slocum said.

  Cora stepped in and when she took the gag away, the outlaw gasped for breath. “Who in the hell are you?”

  “Slocum’s my name. You heard of me?”

  Cora steadied him to get him on his feet, and then she shoved him into the kitchen. “Do you two to know how much those windows you shot out will cost to replace?” she demanded.

  “No, ma’ am,” Yodder said.

  “Over a hundred dollars. How much money you got on you?” She held out her hand.

  “We ain’t got no money,” Carson said.

  “What shall we do with ’em?” She turned to Slocum.

  “Send then to Antelope Springs for trial is all that I know.”

  “Makes me so mad. I’d personally horse-whip them.”

  “When’s Nevada coming back?”

  “This evening sometime.”

  “Good, he can take them up there. I’m sure Jeff will keep them for the judge.”

  “What’re you going to do?” Cora asked.

  “I’m going to track down Gantry after I tie them up and lock them in the tack room. Nevada can take them to jail when he returns.”

  “Maria, fix all of us some breakfast,” Cora said with a displeased look at Slocum. “We can clean up the broken glass later.”

  “You two head for the shed,” Slocum said. “Try anything and I’ll cut you down in your tracks.”

  “I’m going with him,” Cora announced, and marched beside Slocum behind the two outlaws.

  “I guess you won’t reconsider my offer?” she asked under her breath.

  He shook his head. “You know it’s not you. I’ve got men after me.”

  “I could hide you. No one would ever . . .”

  “That’s far enough. Carson, put both hands on that shed wall and lean out. You make a move, you’re dead.” He holstered his gun and took down some rope from the wall. It was stout enough hard hemp. He bound Carson’s hands. Then he forced both men to lie on their bellies on the floor of the feed room and tied their feet together. Next he threw the end of the rope over a rafter to pull their knees off the floor a few inches, and tied it off. Then he strung another lariat under their armpits, and tied it to a post in the center so they were suspended between the posts and the rafter.

  “Hell, we’ll die like this,” Carson said.

  “I doubt it, but you’ll sure be here dead or alive when her foreman gets back.”

  “You can’t leave us in here to die,” Yodder said before Slocum closed the door.

  Slocum looked inside at them. “You would have raped and killed those women in the house an hour ago. I ain’t got any love for either of you.”

  Slocum closed the door and put a bolt in the hasp. “They should be there when Nevada returns.”

  “Will you come back and see me?” Cora clung to his arm as they went toward the house.

  “You can find a better man.”

  “I don’t want a better man. I want you. Can I come and join you sometime? I’d be very secretive.”

  “It’s too dangerous, Cora.”

  “Am I what? Too fat? Too ugly? What is wrong with me?”

  “It isn’t you. It’s me.”

  She stopped him short of the back door. “I have some money. I can meet you somewhere. No one will ever know about us. Do you trust me?”

  He hugged her. “What I want and what I must do are two different things.”

  “Will you try it?”

  He could smell her fine perfume. The rich sweetness intoxicated him. His eyes closed. He held her tight in his arms—eaten up about staying there and about going on. Cora was old enough, wise enough to know what she really wanted. He was, too. But his conscience said, You can’t.

  He minded his conscience a lot.

  “If I find a place—I might write you.”

  She tossed her head back and then pushed the golden hair back from her face. “Don’t might—write me. I promise not to bitch at you or complain about where it is at or how primitive a place it is. If it is only for a short while, I promise to be agreeable.”

  She clutched her hands together and beat him lightly on his breastbone. “Promise me.”

  “All right. If I find a place—”

  She stood on her toes and kissed him. “I can wait. It won’t be easy, but I can wait.”

  “If I find the
opportunity, I’ll write for you. The letter will come from Tom White.”

  The name tumbled off her lips. “Tom White. I’ll be waiting.” She hooked her arm in his. “You must eat breakfast now and promise me you will be careful. You can drop me a line now and then even if I can’t come. I don’t care if you don’t write much. Like, ‘I am fine. Tom White.’ ”

  He nodded. He’d heard her.

  Chapter 19

  Over the next two days, he tracked Gantry’s flight to Tucson. Gantry had ridden two good horses into the ground. Slocum found one of them at a ranch. The animal in question was down in the corral. The owner, a man named Henry, showed him the broken-down pony.

  “I never allowed him much in trade for him,” Henry said. “I may have to take him out and shoot him. Don’t think he’ll ever be any good.”

  The hip-shot horse hung his lead low and coughed in the dust. He was gaunt as a ghost and his hindquarters looked caved in. The saddle sores on his withers were raw and scabbed over. His coat was still white from sweating salt.

  “What color horse did you trade him?”

  “A ring-tailed bay. You can’t miss it. Got a coon tail with bands of black and white. Good colt, young and green broke, but he never bucked much when your friend left out on him.” Henry leaned back from the corral to look Slocum over. “Hell, I thought the devil hisself was after that man.”

  Slocum thanked Henry and rode on. The next day late in the afternoon, he found the ring-tailed bay in a wide, dry wash, bleeding out his nose, crusted in salt, with his eyes sunk in his head, saddle and bridle still on him. Rode to death. Slocum shot him in the center of the forehead with his .44 to put him out of his misery.

  A few miles farther, he came to a ranch and store with a windmill creaking. He watered Big Man, who Cora had insisted he take with him, at the stone-mortar tank. A whiskered man came out in overalls, his pants tucked in knee-high boots. He took a corncob pipe out of his mouth.

  “I’m looking for a man came through here on foot a while ago,” Slocum said and dismounted. He loosened the cinch and then hitched Big Man to the rack.

  “You’re too late.” The man had a rusty-sounding voice. “He done caught the mail wagon to Tucson a couple hours ago.”

  “Guess I’ll find him there then.”

  “I ain’t too sure. He looked like a man with his pants on fire.” He used his pipe to point off in that direction. “He sure never wanted to see you again.”

  “He say that?”

  “Nope. I jest figured it out when I seed you ride up. He’s lost some growth, too, I’d bet.”

  “Maybe in prison he can catch up.”

  “What all did he do?”

  “Murdered some, raped some, robbed some, and run a bad sheriff’s office.”

  “Marthie,” he said over his shoulder. “Fix this man some food. He’s after that crazy guy walked in here this morning.”

  Skinny Marthie appeared in a wash-worn Mother Hub-bard dress and smiled at him. Her front teeth were gone and she was cross-eyed, turning her head to the side to look at him. “I said he was no good and on the run. Lord, if I could see that, anyone could. Come in, mister, I’s got vittles I can feed ya.”

  He nodded to the man and followed her inside the store, which was cluttered with dusty new overalls, bottles of patented medicine, cheap frying pans showing some rust, and a table of one-size-fits-all brogans. There was also an open tow sack of brown beans and crackers in tin cans that you could open and close.

  She dipped him out some white ham bones and beans in a metal pot with a wire handle and handed it to him with a spoon. “Want some corn bread?”

  He nodded, and she took a handful of dodgers out of a poke and put them on the table beside his pot. “That should fill you. Does most folks. Fact is, most can’t eat it all.”

  He could believe her. Since he’d sat down, he’d noticed more flies in the place than a dead cow drew. Under the table, he shined the spoon on his pants, satisfied it had been recently washed. She was right, his appetite had slacked a lot.

  “I need to get on to Tucson. How much do I owe you?”

  “Ten cents.”

  He paid her, thanked her, and told the old man he’d see him again sometime and rode on. It was two hours later before he could even chew on some beef jerky from his saddlebags. A knot he couldn’t swallow kept climbing up his throat.

  The next day, he reached the Santa Cruz River about midday, and instead of riding into the town, he rode upstream to Louise Martinez’s jacal. He didn’t want to enter Tucson in broad daylight and broadcast his presence in the place.

  An old wooden-wheeled carreta was parked in a bed of prickly pear. A white burro stood hip-shot by the house, sleeping and stomping at the biting flies without waking. Some fighting chickens scratched in the yard, and a long line of clothes hung on the line.

  When Big Man snorted in the dust, a short Mexican woman came to the doorway to watch him dismount. Her dark eyes studied him hard; then a smile of recognition crossed her full lips.

  “I have not seen you in a long time, my lover.” She rushed out, skirt in hand, and hugged him. “It has been almost a year. Come in. Come in. Let me look at you. Oh, my, you have lost weight, too.”

  “I’m fine. Let me put my horse in your pen and feed him. Then we can talk about fun times, huh?”

  “Oh, yes.” And then she began to babble to him in Spanish about how long he’d been gone from her and how she had missed him every day. With her hip hard against his leg, she led him and the horse to the pen under the rustling cottonwoods. Slocum could smell the armload of rich sweet alfalfa she put in the manger for the horse.

  “There is water, too, for him over there.”

  Slocum agreed and thanked her. Then he unsaddled the horse and put his rig on the pole fence. He’d be fine. So would the horse.

  “I must go get some more wine,” she told him.

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Thirty minutes maybe.”

  “Good, I need a siesta.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Sleep a lot. I have much work for you.” Then she laughed at her own joke, and afterward acted embarrassed.

  He gave her money for the wine and some meat. “Louise, see if you can learn anything about a man named Worthington. Where he stays. What he does each day.”

  She nodded and repeated the name.

  “The second man’s name is Gantry. He just arrived. He may be with the other man. I really need to know all about them. I would even pay someone to find them for me.”

  “I will see what I can learn.” She looked at the money in her small hand and smiled at him. “We will have a great party.”

  He bent over and kissed her. From the doorway, he watched her hurry away. Then he toed off his boots, hung his six-gun holster on a chair nearby, and sprawled out in the hammock. Despite the afternoon heat, he was soon asleep.

  “Wake up. Wake up. I have man that knows of this Wordington.”

  He awoke—Louise was back. He swung his legs over the edge and rubbed his sleepy face.

  “This is Lomas,” she said about the man who stood before him dressed in the clothes of a peon. He held a great straw sombrero over his chest.

  Slocum spoke to him in Spanish. “How are you today?”

  “I am fine, Señor. She says you wish to know about this man Worthington.”

  Slocum nodded.

  “He rents a small house here that he uses when he comes to Tucson.”

  “He comes often?”

  “Sí, Senor. They say he is very rich.”

  “Can you draw me a map to this place?”

  “Sí.” The man dropped to his knees, and in the dirt floor drew a map with his knife. With the blade tip pointing at an intersection, he said, “This is La Huerta Cantina here.”

  Slocum nodded. He’d been there before.

  “Go one block south. Turn west, it is the second house on the right.”

  “I can find that. Is this man Gantr
y here?”

  “I don’t know, Señor. Do you need him, too?”

  “You have done very good.” He paid him two pesos.

  The man bowed his head twice. “She said you were a very generous man. Gracias.” He left, still impressed with his pay.

  Louise came over, put her arm around Slocum’s neck, and slipped into his lap. “How long can this person wait?”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I need you for a while.” She pushed the hair back from his forehead.

  “You may have me.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I better feed—”

  His mouth cut off her words. And when he began to kiss her, she hoisted her skirt to free her legs and sat straddling his lap. They kissed, and his hands molded her breasts under the blouse until she quickly shed it and grinned at him.

  In no time, they were on the hammock. Her small body was folded in two with her feet on his shoulders and him poking her hard. Sweat greased his belly, and the drum of her heels on his collarbone sent him off into a faraway land and he came. They collapsed in the hammock.

  “I must fix some food. There are people coming for fiesta.”

  He hugged her. “Who?”

  “Good people. You know some of them.”

  He released her and she bounded off the hammock to quickly dress. “You know, I wish now I had invited no one to celebrate. We could have done that all night.” Then she laughed. “We can still do it when they go home. Right, amigo?”

  He agreed. She was like a bumblebee—buzzing all the time. He walked down to the river with a towel and soap and took a bath. No one stared at bathers. Women, children, even men used the stream. He saw no one this trip, but it was not uncommon to see a naked woman scrubbing her kids or washing her clothes in the buff.

  The music soothed the night, and the Chinese lanterns illuminated the area in front of her house. A man brought a cooked side of calf. Others carried in dishes, and two women deftly made flour and corn tortillas like a factory.

  Louise clung to his left arm introducing him to people he’d met before and many he’d never met. They danced in the dirt—no ballroom needed. They danced fast and they danced slow.

  A very pregnant young woman asked him to dance and when they were done, she made him bend down and then whispered in his ear, “There is room for you in there.”