by Jake Logan
Where were their horses? Why no smoke? He reined Pacer toward the west for some higher ground and a better vantage point. Something was wrong. He couldn’t hear any dogs barking either. Maybe the camp had been abandoned?
Pacer lunged going up the steep slope and Slocum reined him up on the crest. He stood in the stirrups to look things over with a critical eye. A narrow stream of brown water snaked through the sandbars under the bluff nurturing the wind-rustled cottonwoods. Several large gnarled trunks, peeled bare in death, marked the course, and the wind fluttered white and red rags hanging on things about the camp. A dozen buffalo-hide lodges were scattered below him on the flat, but nothing stirred. Had all the inhabitants died?
He drew the Colt from his holster. In the high sun’s glare, he cocked the hammer and spun the cylinder. The five primer caps were on each nipple. The cylinder under the hammer was not loaded for safety. There was still lard plugging each .44 chamber. That prevented a cross fire or an explosion when shooting the weapon. Satisfied, he slapped the pistol back on his hip and reset the holster. Nothing moved and the only sound was the strong wind rustling the dollar-sized cottonwood leaves.
He leaned back in the saddle as Pacer descended the slope. As he swayed back and forth going downhill, a hard knot began to form in the pit of his stomach. He switched reins and dried his palm on his pants. Still no sound. No dogs. No children. No sign of life. The village had been abandoned. But why? Indians seldom left their hides behind when they left. They’d be too hard to replace.
Pacer stepped high going through the shallow water, and Slocum kept him from drinking by holding his head up. There would be time for that later. First, he had to be certain this was not a trap.
Many articles were strewn about as if left in haste, things Indians did not abandon. An iron pot hung over a dead fire. No squaw would have left without it. A bundle of arrows, a buffalo-hide shield, all things warriors took to their graves or places of final rest. He dismounted and tied Pacer to a bush. The barefoot pony tracks were days old. Even a blackened deer carcass hung rotting from a tree limb too high for coyotes to feed upon it.
A crow called in the distance. He halted and his hand sought his gun butt. He listened till his ears hurt, then walked with caution toward the first lodge. The frame was made of willow hauled there, for he saw none suitable for such construction in this creek bottom. Laced crosswise with rawhide, the hides on the first lodge were still green. When he went to pull the flap back, swarms of green flies went aloft. He removed his hat and looked inside the dark interior. The strong smell of sweat, body musk, and tobacco filled his nose. There were several jugs and even bedding inside. Not things women left behind unless they expected to come back or had to flee an enemy.
He straightened and asked himself, What drove them away? Other Indians? The army? Texas Rangers? He backed away from the buzzing flies he’d disturbed. They followed him like bees, as if angry that he had nothing to eat. Soon, the wind drove them away and the crows called again.
What else could he hear? The whimper of a small dog? He listened again, but it was gone. Something small was crying? Maybe a coyote pup. He’d heard them before. No, not that sound. He went from door opening to door opening. Nothing, but he saw the same thing in each dark lodge he stuck his head inside—many personal items had been abandoned in the inhabitants’ haste to leave.
Then he stopped and squatted in front of a doorway. The small whine came from this lodge. He carefully checked around outside—the bluff area and the rest of the camp. Pacer stood disinterested, his head down and right hind hoof up in hip-shot fashion. A horse sensed things around him before most dogs even caught wind of it.
There that cry was again. He set his hat down, and with his hand he moved the hide door aside, then stuck his head inside the tent. At the sight of a bare white leg and foot, he drew his gun. Trying to see in the lodge was near impossible. Satisfied the person was probably dead, he backed out and ripped the thick hide back further so sunlight shone in.
The body was that of a naked white woman. The insides of her legs were smeared in black dried blood and her swollen breasts looked blue. Not a girl, but a woman of thirty or so. Her teeth were bared and lips drawn back as if she’d died in pain with her hair crudely chopped short—not a pretty sight. Her wide blue eyes looked at nothing. He felt sick enough to vomit at the sight of her, and had started to duck out when he heard the cry again.
It was a tiny baby lying wrapped in a blanket beside her. Gingerly, he picked it up in his shaky hands. How long since you last ate, little fellow? Holy cow, a baby alive in a dead village. And he stank bad. Real bad. What next?
Nothing Slocum could do for the mother. He was hours away from his own camp. Straightening, he went outside with the small package in the crook of his arm and looked him over. The baby sure needed to be cleaned up. It was a wonder the flies had not eaten him alive. At the stream, he did a clumsy job of cleaning the baby, and found another blanket rag to wrap him in.
All this little fella had to do was hang on. The women back in camp would find him something to eat. You made it this far. Hang tight, little one, we’re going to where they’ve got airtight milk cans. With a last look around, the bundle in the crook of his arm, he mounted up and set Pacer for his camp. Grateful for the high-stepping horse’s ground-gaining pace, he checked the sun time. They needed to hurry.
The baby’s weak cries and coughing niggled at him. The miles proved long. What if it died from hunger going back? Should he have fed it something? What? Some rock-hard jerky from his saddlebags? His stomach had the jitters and he urged Pacer on faster—they had a little boy to save.
All he could do was soak the tail of his kerchief in his canteen water and let the baby suck on it. Then resoak it to let the baby ease some more down his dry throat. The best part to Slocum was when the little fellow coughed. Then he would throw him on his shoulder and pat him on the back. He was still alive—thank God.
“Hey! Hey!” he shouted, riding into the cow camp in the twilight. “Mary, Matilda, get out here.”
“What’s wrong?” Mary asked, holding her skirt up as she ran from the girls’ tent.
“I found a baby,” he said, stepping down and handing her the small bundle. “He ain’t had a thing to eat in days. Can we save him?”
She took the bundle and looked carefully at the small infant in her arms.
“We can try.”
“Good,” he said, and let his stiff shoulders slump. What a ride.
Mary rushed off with the other women behind her.
“Whose is it? How did you find it?” A million questions came from the vaqueros crowded around Slocum, and they followed on his heels. Tomas took Pacer by the reins, and Slocum instructed him to walk the horse till he cooled.
“Now let me drink a cup of coffee and we can all sit down. Then I’ll tell you about one of the strangest things ever happened to me.” He bent over and poured himself a cupful. Standing, he motioned to where they all sat on the ground for meals.
“About noon today, I rode up on a dozen lodges.” He shook his head and sipped some coffee. “Damnedest thing I ever saw . . .”
14
In late evening, a week later in their new location on Fly Creek, he rode into camp and asked Mary how the little fella had done that day. Airtight milk was bringing him around, but it had been touch-and-go for several days.
“He’s going to make it,” Mary said with the baby in her arms. “I was worried those first few days, but I think he’s going to be fine.”
“Good. He’s going to have Heck’s name if he lives. He could do worse being half Indian and half white,” Slocum said.
“He could do lots worse. Heck was a good man.”
He agreed. “Guess it’s all right here in camp. Everything going smooth?”
“Sure, why?”
“In the morning I’m going to ride up to Mason and try to find where the colonel was going to winter there.”
“How far away is that?”
“Maybe a hundred miles. Take me a week anyway to get up there, find out what I need to know, and get back to the herd. But we need to know where we can graze them till the grass breaks in the spring.”
She looked at him concerned. “Lots of cattle.”
“Lots and they’d eat lots of grass too. But Paco and the boys have this cattle driving down good. They’ll be fine. You girls keep an eye out. We’re still in Comanche country all the way up to Fort Worth.” He bent over and used his finger to flick the blanket back to see little Heck’s wrinkled tan face and small fists.
“Heck, keep fighting,” he said.
She dropped her voice. “Rosa is caring for him tonight. Leave room in the blankets for me.”
He tipped his hat to her. “I shall. I better go eat before Matilda throws it out.”
“Oh, she’d never do that. You’re her favorite cowboy.”
“I need to be someone’s favorite.” He placed both hands on his hips and strained his sore back as he headed for the cooking fire. Damn, he was sure stiff from all this cattle driving.
Before daylight the next morning, he sat up in the bedroll they’d shared, leaned over, and kissed her. “I hear pots banging.”
“Oh, well, I better go help. You ride easy going up there. We all have a stake in you.” She began to dress, putting on her blouse. “You know that.”
He hugged her. This entire business had been some kind of a dream. Finding Mary, Paco for a partner. He’d have to thank the colonel if he ever saw him in the hereafter for making it all possible. They were still a long way from Sedalia, and they had many things to cross through that would never be easy, but the cowboys were doing their part. Concerned about having enough riding stock in the cavvy, Paco wanted more horses rounded up and broke before spring and the final drive. Plus Slocum would need to gather more supplies on credit. Wary of the days ahead before he even started out, he shook his head in the predawn coolness, seated on the bedding and pulling on his boots. Just another morning . . .
After a long hot day in the saddle, he found a water source and threw down his bedroll. Then he hobbled Roan to graze, and gnawed on some beef jerky for his supper while the coyotes sang him a lullaby. He figured he was a third of the way there. Two more days riding he’d be in the frontier town of Mason and maybe find the colonel’s pasturage.
The next day, he saw the Texas flag flying over a low set of building and corrals. Some frontier trading post, no doubt, and he reined Roan in the direction of the place set under a few spindly cottonwoods and with a hand-dug well.
The sign said, BRISTOW’S TRADN POST. Four hip-shot horses stood at the hitch rack. Dried salt on their shoulders told him they’d been rode hard and put away wet. Two wore Texas saddles and the other two McClellan army rigs. That was not his concern. However, they could be outlaws or just renegades on the prowl. The latter meant they were looking for trouble with whoever they could find and wherever they could find it. Guns, knives, or fists, it made no difference to them. Their kind would rather fight than eat. As if they lacked something in their lives when they weren’t seeking or involved in some kind of scuffle. Hard men who came out of the war bitter— ruthless, like they wanted to hurt everyone in their path,
When Slocum stepped down, he felt leery about finding such a set of men inside the low-roofed post. Must have been hundreds like them—the damn war brought it all on. Maybe they felt cheated when they came home alive and all their pards were buried in some cotton field in the South. No way to run from them, no place to go. Slocum’d mind his own business as long as they’d let him.
He adjusted the .44 and took off his hat to wipe his wet forehead on his sleeve, then reset it. His eyes squinted against the midday glare reflecting off the hot ground as he strode for the open door. Actually, there was no door on the hand-hewn board frame. In cold weather, they must have tacked a blanket or hide over it for closure.
Forced to duck going in, he let his vision adjust to the candlelit darkness. First, a few figures emerged in sight as he straightened. A short Mexican woman in a low-cut blouse came swishing her way over suggestively to greet him. A man behind a full dark mustache and polishing a glass nodded to him from behind the bar. The four men playing cards acted too engrossed in their card game to look aside—but they stole glances to measure him.
One wore a felt hat with a gold-braid band two of them wore gray forage caps, and the fourth one a big sombrero.
“Welcome to Fort McKay,” the woman said and stepped in close in a familiar way. “You are lonesome, no?”
“No, not right now,” Slocum said in a low voice. “Maybe later.”
With her shoulders back, she pushed her ample breasts toward him and smiled. “My name is Lolita.”
He touched his hat. “Nice to meet you, Lolita.”
Then she held out her brown hand toward the bar. “Carlos will pour you something.”
“I could use a drink.” He nodded and smiled at her.
A chair scraped and the one in the sombrero stood up. “I think that’s plumb insulting to the little lady there.”
His words drew a titter of laughter from the cardplayers as they cut looks around at Slocum. He paused about halfway to the bar and turned back to look at the big man, who was now standing. With a slow nod of consideration, Slocum used his thumb to push his hat back and look over the huskily built challenger. With a pained expression on his face, Slocum asked, “Did I miss your name?”
“Williams—Colonel Iram Williams.”
“Slocum’s mine. I came in here for a drink and I’ll be riding on, I trust. I really don’t have time to notify your next of kin.”
No mistaking the menacing look on the colonel’s face that Slocum’s words had drawn out of him.
“You saying—”
“Colonel—” The boy wearing a cap on the colonel’s right jumped up and interceded. “I know him. He was a captain in the Georgia Thirty-second.”
Williams folded his arm over his chest as if appraising Slocum. “He don’t look like officer material to me.”
“He was, sir. I knowed him from Tennessee.” The youth’s wide eyes darted to the others at the table. “He was a hero there.”
“Hero, huh?”
“Yes, sir. Battle of Goose Crick, sir.”
“Hmm.” Williams snorted out his nose. “Billy Jack here says you’re a hero.”
“I was there,” Slocum said, slumped a little in his stance and turned more sideways to face the man so he presented a minimal target when or if the shooting ever started.
Williams rubbed his palms on the sides of his pants legs. A slight smile crossed his full lips. Like a coiled diamondback with his tail buzzing over his back—ready to strike.
If he thought the look was cunning, he was wrong. Slocum felt they were at the brink. Either Williams pressed on or he eased off. His call. Slocum aimed to finish it. Besides, he was thirsty. Then a flicker in the man’s hard brown eyes betrayed him. The muscles in Slocum’s arm readied for action. The fingers on his right hand were in an open clawlike position to jerk the .44 clear of the holster, cock, and fire it. Milliseconds passed, both men frozen in readiness.
A small tick in the muscle on the right side of Slocum’s jaw began to pulsate like a trip hammer. Go for it, you sumbitch. It’s a good day to die. His eyes, dry from the wind, glare, and heat, became steady and hard focused on the big man’s slightest shift.
Then, as if he considered the whole thing a mistake, Williams raised his hands and waved Slocum off. “No need in two brothers of the South having a misunderstanding, is there?”
“Your choice.”
“Well, join us. Boys here and I are having a friendly game of poker.”
“Thanks. I’ll have me a drink at the bar and ride on.”
“Hmm, must be pretty pressing business to cause you to be on the move like that.”
Slocum nodded and turned to walk to the bar.
“We could always use another man—”
He
shook his head, put his left arm on the bar, and nodded to the stone-faced man behind the bar. Without turning, he said over his shoulder. “Thanks, I’ve got work.”
Slocum could see Williams’s image in the smoky mirror behind the bar. He made a face at Slocum’s back and then sat down.
“Ah, Señor,” the woman said, and rushed in to hug his waist. Looking up with an eager smile and her breasts shoved into his side, she said, “Why rush away? We could go to my place and have a party.”
“Darling, I’d love to but I have business to attend to.” He nodded at the bartender’s choice of whiskey, and the man brought the bottle and glass to him.
“Business, business.” She stepped in and ran her palm familiarly over his fly. “You and I could do much business in my bed.”
He poured himself some liquor in a glass. Still on edge and not satisfied that Williams might not try something before he was through, he tossed down the whiskey. It cut the dust on his tongue and burned a path down his throat. He felt it slide clear to his stomach, and it even warmed his ears. With a nod of approval at the bartender, he poured two more fingers in the glass.
Attached to him like a tick, she wasn’t going to give up. Her fingers groped and played with him until he gently took her shoulder and pressed her a little ways aside. With a wink at her, he ordered another glass for her and poured two fingers in it.
He raised his and clinked it to hers. “To another day.”
Making a disappointed face, she nodded, then smiled again. “I can’t wait.”
When his second drink was down, he paid the man six bits. With her hugging his waist possessively, he headed for the bright doorway. She let go at the opening, and he stopped to let his eyes focus on the brilliance outside.
“Have a nice day, gents,” he said to the cardplayers over his shoulder, and went for Roan.
If they did more than grunt, he never heard them.
In the saddle, he looked back at the saloon one last time—somewhere, sometime, his and Williams’s paths would cross again. The next time might not end as smoothly. He reined Roan to the north. He had winter grazing to find.