by Logan, Jake
“I ain’t intendin’ to kill you, Slocum. I want you to carry a message back to town.”
“You kidnap the boy?”
“Me and Randolph, we been havin’ a fine time. The boy’s wasted in Silver City. Nuthin’ for him to do but get in trouble.”
“You teaching him how to steal?”
Frank laughed harshly.
“No call for me to do that. His step-pa was real masterful at that.”
“You mean Bedrich?” Slocum hunted for a way to get out of the trap he had blundered into and didn’t see it. If he kept Frank occupied by stalling as long as possible, there might be a chance for him to get off a shot or two.
Then he gritted his teeth in frustration. Killing Frank might mean Randolph would never be found alive.
“Reckon they wasn’t actually hitched, Texas Jack and his whore. Don’t matter a whit to me since the boy doesn’t know where Bedrich hid it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t know? Of course not. About the only one who does since the kid doesn’t have any idea has to be his ma.”
Slocum came into a crouch, ready to explode forward, firing as he went. He thought he had spotted Frank. A frontal attack might take him by surprise.
“Don’t bother wastin’ the effort, Slocum,” came the cheery words from behind. “Why don’t you drop that hogleg of yours. Never knew you was so good with it, but then I only just met up with you on the trail.”
“Did you kill Bedrich?”
“The stupid son of a bitch wouldn’t give me what I wanted. But I shot him in self-defense.”
“How’d he end up in the ice?”
“I couldn’t track him right away after we exchanged a few rounds. The Santa Fe marshal came to see what the ruckus was about. By the time I got free of him, Bedrich had run off.”
“To Holst’s ice plant?”
“That was the closest building to hide in. I searched the damned place for an hour and never found him.”
“How’d he get in the ice?”
“Must have fallen into one of them snow packers Holst uses. Mashes snow down into ice, then he ships the blocks. I searched that place from top to bottom, then asked damned near everyone in Santa Fe if they’d seen him. The only hint I had he was in the ice came from some blood I saw on the equipment.”
“So you came after me?”
“I was right. Bedrich was in the ice.”
“But he didn’t have what you were hunting for? What was it? Silver?”
“You’re too curious for your own good. I told you all I’m going to since you can’t prove none of it. Tell the sheriff or that deputy friend of yours. Doesn’t change things. Your word against mine, and it doesn’t look as if you’re in good standing with the Silver City law.”
“You had more reason to kill your partner than I did. I never met Texas Jack.”
“Partner.” Frank spat out the word as if it burned his tongue. “Double-crossing son of a bitch is more like it.”
“Are you going to shoot me or talk me to death?”
“Killin’ you would be a pleasure, like ice cream on a hot Sunday afternoon, Slocum, but you can be useful. You ride on back to Silver City on that Indian pony of yours and tell Marianne Lomax I’ll trade her son for . . .”
“For what?”
“She’ll know. She don’t bring it, her kid’s never found again and will die a horrible death. Or maybe I’ll cut him up like the Apaches do and send him back to her more dead than alive. Would she tend a boy with his hands and feet cut off and his eyes all poked out the rest of her life?”
“What’s to keep you from killing both her and Randolph if she gives you whatever it is you want and think she’s got?”
“Not much that I can see, but it’s a risk she has to take. If I don’t see her ridin’ along the road down to Shakespeare in two days, the boy starts losing body parts. Important parts.”
“I won’t tell her. You’ll kill them both.”
“Then I ought to kill you and put you out of my misery.” The six-gun cocked with a peal of doom.
“No promises. She won’t be able to make it. She’s locked up for killing Carstairs.”
“Do tell? He was a clumsy one, Lester Carstairs.”
“You killed him, didn’t you?”
“He didn’t have what I want, so why not? Him and me never got along. Putting a bullet in his belly ought to get me a reward.”
“Give me something to convince Whitehill that Marianne isn’t his killer so he’ll release her.”
Frank laughed, and it was an ugly sound.
“Never goin’ to happen, Slocum. Never. You figure how to get her on the road, two days from now. It’s a hard day’s ride back to Silver City, so you better get a move on.”
Slocum feinted right, dived left, and scooped up his fallen six-shooter. As he twisted about hunting for Frank, he knew the effort availed him nothing. Only empty forest stretched as far as he could see. If he hadn’t fired a few rounds so the acrid gunpowder stench still hung in the air, he wouldn’t have known Frank had even been here.
He scouted the forest a few minutes, but Frank had left no track to follow. The pressure of time crushed him down. Even killing Frank solved nothing. Randolph was a prisoner somewhere only Frank knew. Kill the redheaded varmint and Randolph likely died of thirst or hunger. This was mighty wide-open country, and Frank had had days to find a proper hiding place.
Slocum vaulted onto the horse and headed out in a straight path until he found a broad meadow with an unobstructed view of the sky. He waited until the sun dipped low and the stars came out so he could get a bearing off the North Star and ride straight back to Silver City. He had no idea how he’d get Sheriff Whitehill to release Marianne, but it likely had to do with someone dying.
16
As he rode, Slocum felt eyes watching him. He tried to locate Frank, but the man proved too wily. The red-haired son of a bitch made sure Slocum didn’t try finding Randolph or tracking him to his hideout. The thought had crossed Slocum’s mind, but nothing had gone right in the days he had been out hunting for Randolph, and he doubted such a trick would work now. Frank had plenty of time to prepare and think through his scheme.
He wanted something, and the best Slocum could think was that Bedrich had found one hell of a big silver strike. If Marianne had a map to the claim, she’d likely fork it over right away to get her son back. What galled Slocum was the unlikely happening.
Give Frank the map and he would kill both the boy and his mother. There wasn’t anything for him to lose doing that, and he had already killed Bedrich, though from the man’s own mouth he hadn’t intended to. The fight had gotten out of hand. All Frank wanted was to rob Texas Jack, not kill him. Or maybe he had planned to kill the silver prospector all the time and had just jumped the gun, pulling the trigger before getting the map.
The road was long and dusty, but Slocum never faltered. The pony maintained a steady pace and got him to town in late afternoon. He looked around and saw miners slowly filtering in from their mines, a powerful thirst needing to be slaked with whiskey and women. Slocum felt guilty about not going straight to the jailhouse to tell the sheriff what had happened. As hard as he had worked on a wide variety of schemes to get Marianne out of jail, none had come to him that Whitehill would agree to. The man was sweet on her and letting her out of his sight wasn’t in the cards.
Slocum dismounted and stuck his head into the Lonely Cuss. The portly barkeep shied away, then reached under the bar, probably hunting for a pistol or a sawed-off shotgun. Slocum didn’t see Dangerous Dan anywhere and backed out. No one but the barkeep had even noticed him in the doorway. Quick stepping it to the hotel, he spotted Billy McCarty huddled down and doing something secretive. As he walked up, the boy jumped like he’d had a nail driven into his skull.
“Whoa
, don’t get all spooked,” Slocum said. Billy put his hand down and hid whatever he had in the dust. Likely it was something he had stolen. “Have you seen the deputy?”
“Tucker? Yeah, the sheriff sent him out of town this mornin’ to serve process on an old coot east of town. Not sure what it’s all about. You want me to find out? For a dime I can do that.” His dirty fingers closed, and he hid the tiny treasure behind his back, making Slocum surer than ever Billy had stolen something he didn’t want seen.
“How long’s that likely to take him?”
“Be back tomorrow noon maybe. I know Tucker. If he took a bottle with him, he might not come back to Silver City ’til it’s drained dry.” Billy laughed, then sobered when he saw the joke didn’t set well with Slocum. “What’s eatin’ you?”
“Tell me more about the assay office burning down.”
“Ain’t much to tell. It just did. All Jerry’s equipment was burnt to cinders. He was gonna teach me code so I could cover for him, but that’s not too likely now.”
“The deeds for all the silver mines were lost?”
“Reckon so. Might be copies up in Santa Fe but I wouldn’t count on that.”
Slocum nodded as more pieces fell together for him. Bedrich had gone to Santa Fe to register his claim there, only to run afoul of Frank. Before he could properly authenticate the location of the strike, he had been gut-shot and died in a block of ice. Frank hadn’t expected that and had finally tracked Slocum and the body. Bedrich might have hidden the map before he died.
Or Slocum may have been all wet and Frank had killed him for some other reason. Bedrich might have gone to Santa Fe to enlist the aid of a federal marshal or any of a dozen other reasons.
“You look perturbed,” Billy said, rolling the big word over on his tongue as if he liked the taste.
“Got bad news to pass along to Randolph’s ma, that’s all.”
“Ain’t seen him neither. He was gonna get a job sweepin’ up at the Lonely Cuss so he could steal some whiskey for us, but he crapped out on that.”
“Yeah, he must have,” Slocum said. He started toward the sheriff’s office, stopped, and without looking back, said, “You’re going to get yourself in a world of trouble stealing.” The boy gasped that he had been accused so readily, but to his credit said nothing. A denial would have been worthless—and a lie. Slocum kept walking.
He felt as if he were mounting the thirteen steps of a gallows to his own execution. With Dan Tucker out of town, his best chance for someone helping him evaporated. He paused in front of the door, then went in. Whitehill sat at his desk reading a paper. Marianne had the blanket pulled up along one side of her cell to give herself some privacy. It looked exactly as it had a couple days earlier.
“What brings you by, Slocum?” the sheriff asked. From his tone, he hoped Slocum was going to tell him he’d come down with a bad case of ptomaine.
“John!” Marianne yanked down the blanket and clung fiercely to the bars. “Where’s Randolph? I told you to look after him. Why hasn’t he come by to see me?”
Slocum looked at her and realized how distraught she had become. A wild look in her eyes turned her into a caged animal rather than the lovely woman he knew. Rather than explaining to her, he turned to the sheriff.
“Jim Frank kidnapped the boy. I tracked him down.”
“But?” Whitehill’s gimlet stare pierced Slocum’s heart. “You got a dead body to explain?”
“He’ll trade Randolph for something Marianne has.”
Whitehill exploded. He slammed both fists on the desk and sent his newspaper fluttering away.
“Like hell I’ll let him have his way with her.”
“That’s not what he wants. When I caught Carstairs in her hotel room, I thought he wanted her. But it’s something else both men are after.”
Whitehill blinked. Then he fixed his hard gaze on Slocum as if he could core out the truth.
“What did Bedrich give you?” Slocum called to Marianne. “That’s what Frank wants.”
“Give me? He didn’t give me anything. Not even a ring. He said he’d take care of that later on, maybe after he got back from wherever he was headed.”
“He told you about his silver strike, though.”
“Well, he was always going on about how good a prospector he was and how he was going to be richer than all the kings of Europe. Believing him took most of my imagination.” She swallowed hard, then asked, “What’s this got to do with Randolph?”
“Frank will trade the boy for whatever Bedrich had. It must be a map.”
“But Jack never gave me anything like that. How can I give Frank something I don’t have? How’m I supposed to get Randolph back?” Her voice rose to such a pitch that Slocum flinched. She was approaching hysteria, which would do her no good all locked up in that iron cage.
“I heard tell that the assay office burned down, and all the records were lost. That so, Sheriff?”
“Careless storage of them chemicals, the ones used in telegraphy. Might have been the others Jerry used to assay ore. The whole building went up in less than ten minutes.”
“You’re sure it was accidental?”
“Sure as I can be. Jerry hightailed it out of town, ashamed as all get-out.”
“If Bedrich filed a claim there, it’d be lost.”
“Everyone’s was. Mostly the miners protect their claims with drawn guns and knives. It’s gonna take weeks to have everyone refile their claims, but first the town’s got to hire somebody what can read. That might take longer than the actual recordin’ of the claims from the miners’ copies.”
“Bedrich went to Santa Fe to file his claim there rather than wait. That’s when Frank killed him. He confessed the murder to me.”
“Do tell,” Whitehill said. “Don’t surprise me none. Frank was always a sneaky cuss.”
“Randolph! How do I get my son back?”
Both men glanced at Marianne, then went back to what had become a silent negotiation. Slocum didn’t come out and say what was in his head, but Whitehill did.
“No way I’m lettin’ her go talk to Frank. From what you said, he’s expectin’ a lawman to sneak up and try to arrest him. Besides, I can’t leave Silver City ’til Dangerous Dan gets back.”
“Sometime tomorrow,” Slocum said. Nothing worked out right for him. He repeated what Frank had said about Marianne taking the road to Shakespeare so he could watch and avoid anyone trailing her.
“He may be a mean cayuse but he’s smart, I’ll give him that,” Whitehill said. “If he sees a flash of a badge, he never lets her know where the boy is.”
“Sheriff, please. You have to let me go. I can talk him into letting Randolph go. I have to!” Seeing the sheriff’s reluctance, she began sobbing. “Harvey, I’m begging you. I have to try.”
“Let her go. I can trail her and nab Frank.”
“You’re assumin’ he’ll have the boy with him. That’s not smart. He’ll ask for the map and examine it, then tell her where her son is. Might even turn the boy over after he’s made sure the map’s for real.” Whitehill scratched his stubbled chin. “Frank’s holdin’ a royal flush, Slocum. No way I can see to pry that boy loose. Assumin’ he’s still alive.”
This brought a cry of utter, soul-wrenching agony from Marianne. She began sobbing bitterly.
“If I can catch Frank, I can make him talk.”
“All I got’s your word any of this happened. I don’t know that you’re not schemin’ to get her free and then ride off together.”
“The boy’s not been seen for a couple days. Ask the fat bastard over at the Lonely Cuss what happened. He saw Frank kidnap Randolph.”
“Tom’s brother, Justin?” Whitehill scratched vigorously behind his head now, as if following a migrating flea around. “Ain’t seen him sober since he came to Silver City. Not what I’d call relia
ble.”
“All right, Sheriff,” Slocum said. “Let Marianne out and lock me up in her place. You want a prisoner? This will guarantee that we’re not riding off together.” Slocum knew he had hit a bull’s-eye from the ripples of emotion on the lawman’s face.
“You’d do that, John?”
“I don’t have any idea how you can convince Frank to let your son go if you don’t have the map. It doesn’t set well with me that he might kill both of you if you don’t hand him something.”
“I . . . I’ll come up with a plan. Harvey? Please!” She rattled the bars.
“Hand over your piece, Slocum.” He took the six-shooter and dropped it into a desk drawer before giving Slocum the keys to Marianne’s cell.
Slocum opened the door and found his arms full of a quaking, crying woman. He held her, aware of the sheriff’s cold glare.
“You know what Frank said to do. Maybe if you have a gun, you can wing him and drag him back to town,” Slocum said. He hadn’t heard such a lame idea since Pickett’s Charge.
The best idea was to let Dan Tucker ride along. Slocum knew the man was an expert tracker and had a good chance of riding along unseen by Frank, but he was out of town and might as well have been on the other side of the world.
“Lock me up, Sheriff,” Slocum said. “And you go along with her.”
“Can’t rightly abrogate my official duty, Slocum.” He rolled the word out like young Billy had “perturbed.” This sparked an idea, a desperate one, but Slocum had nothing else.
Slocum pulled Marianne back into his arms and kissed her. She recoiled and tried to push away from such unseemly behavior in front of the sheriff. He held her tightly until Whitehill looked away in disgust. Then he whispered quickly what he wanted her to do.
“Billy? Why?” she whispered back.
“Get on out of here ’fore I change my mind,” the sheriff said.