by Logan, Jake
If he hadn’t killed the judge . . .
“What’s it like?” Billy sounded way too eager for Slocum.
“It chews away at your soul, gives you nightmares. I killed enough soldiers during the war to last me a lifetime. Since then, more.”
“But you have killed a lot more? They all needed killin’, didn’t they?”
“I believe so. It doesn’t let me sleep any better, even knowing that,” Slocum said.
Billy muttered to himself and finally said, “I’m not gonna kill no one what doesn’t deserve it either.”
“We get to Frank’s hideout, you let me do what’s necessary. I’ll drag that snake all the way back to Silver City behind his own horse so the sheriff can throw him in jail.”
“That’s mighty fine,” Billy said. “Better than killin’ him outright. Let him suffer.”
“Let him think about ending up in Yuma Penitentiary to pay for all he’s done.”
“Or hang ’im. I never seen a hangin’. I’d like to see one.”
“What happened to your ma and pa?”
“Ma died of consumption not so long back. She’s buried outside of town, not far from Mr. Olney’s undertakin’ parlor. I found her. She’d died in bed over the night, coughin’ up a whole lot of blood. Didn’t bother me much, seein’ so much blood.”
Slocum looked hard at the boy, but Billy’s head was turned away.
“Where was your pa?”
“Gone. He upped and lit out a year earlier, prospectin’ or doin’ somethin’ like that. It’d been me and ma and—” Billy drew rein and put his finger to his lips, then pointed ahead.
Slocum spotted the curl of smoke rising above the trees before he caught the scent of burning pine. The wall of trees cut off direct view of what had to be a cabin.
“He has his horse ’round back. You go in the front, gun blazin’, and I’ll steal his horse,” Billy said. He looked guiltily at Slocum and added, “For Randolph. He’ll need to ride somethin’.”
“Stay here,” Slocum said, for the first time wondering where Billy had found the horse he rode. The boy was a tad too bloodthirsty for his liking. Slocum would have no problem filling Frank with all six rounds from his Colt Navy, but he didn’t intend killing the red-haired man unless he had to.
Slocum approached the side of the cabin. Billy had been right about the horse tethered behind the cabin. Frank was inside—or around somewhere. Rushing in would likely get someone killed, and Slocum didn’t want that to be him or Randolph. He crouched and waited to see if Frank was inside the cabin. After five minutes, he heard a twig snap behind him.
“I told you to stay where you were, Billy,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
The sound of metal sliding across leather caused him to react instinctively. Slocum drove forward as hard as he could, his toes digging down into the soft dirt. A slug ripped through the air just above him. He hit the ground, rolled onto his back, and dragged his six-shooter out. All he saw was a branch swaying back and forth where someone had retreated.
He found himself tossed on the horns of a dilemma. The question of Frank’s location had been decided. He’d crashed around out in the woods and had just failed to back-shoot an inattentive prowler. Slocum didn’t much care if Frank knew who had been spying on the cabin. Dead was dead, no matter if the shooter knew the identity of his target.
New worry popped up as Slocum realized Billy might be in danger. He owed the boy for finding Frank, and abandoning him now would be as serious as neglecting Randolph. But Marianne’s son might be all trussed up inside the cabin. Slocum found himself torn between entering the cabin to find Randolph, being certain of Billy’s safety, and tracking down the man who had just ambushed him. He was sure it had been Frank—or mostly sure. Not getting a look at the shooter caused him to worry that Frank had a partner.
Slocum swung around and studied the front of the cabin for any sign of someone coming out to join the fight. Getting caught between Frank on one side and a possible partner on the other gave a quick path to that cemetery just down the road from Rafe Olney’s undertaker’s parlor. More likely, his dead body would be left for the scavengers, and nobody would ever think about him again.
When he heard brush rustling to his left, he took a quick look right and behind, then drew a bead on the spot where a man had to come through the thorny undergrowth. His finger tensed, then slid off the trigger when he spotted Billy.
“Get down. Someone’s out here and took a potshot at me.”
“I tried to get a look ’cuz I wanted to help.” Billy drew a knife and flourished it.
“Get down,” Slocum shouted. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and got off two quick shots.
One of his slugs tore away at the cabin door. The other sailed into the crack between door and jamb, ruining the rifleman’s aim. The Winchester pointing from the cabin bucked, but the slug went high. If Slocum hadn’t fired first, Billy McCarty would have been carrying an extra bit of weight in his chest.
“Thanks, Mr. Slocum. You saved me for sure.” Billy was flushed but not from fear.
Slocum had seen men in battle. Most were scared shitless. Others were stoic. A few, a very few, yearned for combat. They lived for bullets singing past them—and sending death back to those they faced. Billy showed no fear, only excitement. He made stabbing motions with his knife, as if he could reach across the dozen yards between him and the gunman in the cabin.
“Watch my back. There’s two of them. You ever see Frank with a partner?”
“Not in town. Only partner he ever threw in with was Texas Jack.”
“He’s got another one now. Good thing he got buck fever and shot too soon or he’d have drilled me in the back,” Slocum said, eyes fixed on the cabin.
“Ain’t no windows. Just the one door,” Billy said. “I scouted it real good when I saw this was where Frank came.”
Slocum nodded once, motioned for Billy to move around and take cover on the far side of the cabin. That way, if it was Frank inside, he would have to open the door almost all the way and expose himself to get another shot at Billy. While Billy was moving around, Slocum crept closer. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Every sound behind him sent an electric thrill into him. His best way of flushing Frank from the cabin was to get onto the roof.
Billy waved, giving away his position. Slocum shook his head. The boy had a lot to learn, if he lived long enough. With his six-shooter leveled and ready if the door opened again, Slocum edged closer until he pressed against the side of the cabin.
He holstered his Colt, found a handhold on the side of the cabin, and scaled the wall. Flopping belly down on the sloping roof, Slocum inched toward the chimney, where the smoke billowed up. For there to be so much smoke, Frank must have been fixing a meal.
Slocum stood and used the stone chimney as a shield as he took a quick look around the treed area nearest the cabin, hunting for the gunman who had tried to back-shoot him. He whipped out his pistol and steadied it against the rock chimney when he saw a flash of brown about the color of a miner’s canvas pants. He squeezed off a round for effect, watched as the bushes began rustling to the left of where his slug had gone. Moving in a smooth arc, he fired to the right. Slocum was savvy enough to recognize a feint.
He heard a loud yelp. He fired twice more but had no sense he had hit the lurking gunman. The cry before had been from surprise, not pain. Slocum had come close, but he had missed. Not by much, but he had missed. As he watched, the brush stopped moving. Straining, he heard heavy footfalls going away.
Frank’s partner—or maybe Frank—had decided to cut and run.
Slocum took time to reload, then turned his attention to the chimney and the clouds of wood smoke reaching for the sky. He skinned out of his coat, wadded it up, and stuffed it down a foot to cut off the smoke. Satisfied he had plugged the chimney, Slocum slipped and
slid back to a spot at the front of the roof where he could get a decent shot at Frank.
The way he figured it would occur was simple. When Frank started choking on the smoke in a cabin with no windows, he had to come out the front. As he did, Slocum would get the drop on him. Frank was nobody’s fool, so he would come out with Randolph as a shield. That made the shot a bit trickier for Slocum, but not impossible. He intended to remove Frank entirely for all he had done to Randolph—and to Marianne.
Choking smoke began seeping from around the door, but Frank didn’t come rushing out. Slocum tensed as he heard movement inside the cabin. Somebody coughed. Frank? Then came a second hacking sound joining the first. One of them had to be Randolph Lomax.
Slocum’s grip grew sweaty on the ebony handle of his six-gun. The smoke oozed greasy wisps through the roof, out the sides of the cabin.
“Come on out, Frank. Come out and I won’t kill you!” Slocum began to worry Frank had passed out from the smoke. His mind raced as he considered what he had to do if this proved the case.
Letting Randolph choke to death wasn’t in the cards.
He looked out to see if Billy stood his ground. The damn fool kid waved to let him know all was well.
The smoke coming through cracks in the roof around Slocum reached the level where he couldn’t breathe. Inside the cabin had to be impossible.
Slocum waved back to Billy, then dangled his legs over the edge of the roof, turned, gripped the edge of the roof, and dropped. He sank to a crouch, dragging out his pistol. Duck-walking over to the door, he tugged it open a few inches and received a gale of smoke that forced him to look away for a moment. His eyes watered and blurred. In spite of himself, he coughed so hard that he bent double. If Frank had rushed out at that instant, he would have found himself an easy target in the debilitated Slocum.
“Come out, Frank! You can’t get away.”
Scrapping sounds from inside warned him Frank readied himself for an escape. But when nothing happened, Slocum threw open the door. The billows coming out forced him to look away involuntarily. So much rushed outward that Slocum wondered if Frank had stoked the fire in the fireplace rather than trying to put it out.
Why would he do that if he didn’t intend using it to cover an escape attempt?
When the smoke continued to gust out, Slocum knew what had to be done. He pulled up his bandanna so it covered his nose and mouth, wishing he had a bucket of water to soak the cloth first. Squinting hard, he peered around the door jamb. A dark figure slumped in a chair by the fireplace. Slocum tried to locate a second man and couldn’t.
He sucked in a deep breath, whipped around the corner, and flopped onto the dirt floor, pistol aimed. The fresh air following him in created an island of better visibility for a split second.
“Randolph!” Marianne’s son had been tied to the chair. Slocum couldn’t see any movement, even of the boy’s chest rising and falling. More than one man had died in a fire, not from the flames but from suffocation.
Slocum wiggled over, grabbed the chair leg with his left hand, and pulled it toward him. Randolph stirred, then choked and began retching.
“Where’s Frank?” Slocum tried to get the boy to respond. When Randolph did nothing more than cough in the fresher air, Slocum yanked harder on the chair and scooted it toward the door and fresh air.
He sat up and swung his pistol around, hunting for Frank. The man was nowhere to be seen in the smoke-cloaked room. Deciding quickly, Slocum threw his arms around Randolph and lifted the boy, still tied to the chair, and staggered to the door. With a heave, he tossed him a couple yards. The chair landed on one leg and broke.
“Tend him,” Slocum yelled to Billy. The boy had already rushed out to cut his friend free.
Rather than plunging back into the smoke-filled cabin to find Frank, Slocum kicked the door shut. Let it fill, let it kill a man who had murdered two and kidnapped a boy.
Slocum went to where Billy held a convulsing Randolph.
“Breathe out real hard,” Slocum ordered. When Randolph only tried to gasp in short breaths, he punched him in the belly.
Billy reacted, his knife coming around.
“Stop that! You can’t beat up on him when he cain’t defend himself.”
“He has to get the smoke out of his lungs,” Slocum said to Billy. “Exhale hard, suck in shallow,” he told Randolph.
It took a dozen breaths before Randolph began to get color back into his cheeks. His bloodshot eyes opened. His emerald eyes fixed on Slocum.
“You saved me.”
“Was it Frank in there with you?”
Randolph nodded, coughed, then worked to clear his throat and lungs the way Slocum had told him.
The boy finally got out, “He went crazy when the smoke started fillin’ the cabin. Don’t know why he done that.”
Slocum didn’t either. He stood and surveyed the area, hunting for Frank’s partner. Frank must have died inside the cabin, but Slocum was willing to drag his partner back for Sheriff Whitehill to throw into the calaboose.
“You see anyone else with Frank?”
“I heard him talk with somebody outside. Never saw who. They argued over what to do with me. Frank wanted to kill me when I couldn’t tell him nuthin’ ’bout some dumb map. The other guy wanted to torture me.” Randolph coughed again.
Slocum motioned for Billy to get his friend out of the way. He waited for them to reach cover before walking back to the cabin. Getting back to the roof, he plucked his coat from the chimney, releasing a huge gout of smoke. But the open door and the draw up the chimney quickly sucked out the smoke from inside.
Jumping back to the ground, Slocum cautiously went to the cabin door and pushed it all the way open with his six-shooter’s barrel.
“You still alive, Frank? You have five seconds to surrender before I come in to get you.” He hoped Frank didn’t give up. He itched for a reason to shoot the man.
A quick look into the cabin showed how most of the smoke had gathered up near the roof. Slocum looked low. If Frank had been breathing at all, it had to be near the floor where the air wasn’t as smoky.
“Damnation,” he cried, spinning around and running to the far side of the cabin where a horse had been tethered.
The horse was gone. At ankle level several rough-hewn logs had been pushed away. When Frank had noticed the cabin filling with smoke, he had stoked the fire, then kicked out the lower part of the back wall and escaped on horseback. Slocum had missed the getaway entirely in his rush to save Randolph.
“Where’d the varmint git off to?” Billy asked. He slashed the air with his knife. “I wanted to cut off a piece of ’im. An important piece. Or two.”
Slocum slammed his six-gun into his holster, angry at himself for letting not only Frank but Frank’s partner get clean away.
“Let’s get Randolph back to his ma.”
The ride to Silver City stretched for an eternity, Slocum stewing and Billy and Randolph chattering like magpies, working on their tall-tale-telling skills.
19
“If I’d knowed it was gonna be like that, I’da left him out there,” William McCarty said in disgust. He turned away from where Marianne hugged Randolph so tightly that the boy moaned in consternation at such public affection.
“His ribs are likely sore,” Slocum said, but Marianne paid him no heed. She had her son back and nothing else mattered.
“I can always stick her back in the cell,” the sheriff said. “I agree with Billy. This is more ’n I can stand.” He inclined his head and both Slocum and Billy left the jailhouse, leaving mother and son alone.
“All right, you two, tell me what happened out there,” the sheriff said, finding a spot in the shade and sitting down. Slocum heard the man’s joints popping and cracking. If he had to stand fast, he wouldn’t be able to do it because of the arthritis.
Thi
s set off a new line of conjecture. If Slocum signaled to Marianne and Randolph to run, the sheriff would be left in the dust. As appealing as that was, to simply get the both of them out of Silver City and on the road to somewhere else—anywhere else—he wouldn’t do it. He had come to a grudging respect for Whitehill.
Billy looked at Slocum, licked his lips, and kept quiet. For once, politeness dictated. He’d let his elders talk first. Slocum almost wished he had blurted everything out. His mouth had sores from too little water out on the trail. Returning had been his primary goal. He had turned a mite nervous knowing both Frank and his partner had gotten away. If he saw Frank, he’d know what to do. His partner remained a mystery and could be anyone.
“You start, Billy, while I get me a dipper of water,” Slocum said. He wanted to step back as the verbal dam broke and everything rushed out.
He found a watering trough with enough water in it to give him a drink and to wash the trail dust from his face. He slapped his hat against his thigh a few times and cleaned himself up before returning. Billy had about finished with the recitation.
“Do I have this straight, Slocum? Billy here did ever’thin’ he said he did?”
Billy looked defiant, daring Slocum to contradict him.
“That’s the gospel truth, Sheriff,” he said.
“I don’t know if I ought to give you a medal or clap you in jail for bein’ such a menace, William McCarty,” the marshal said sternly. “That was a brave thing you did, ridin’ after Frank and scoutin’ for Slocum here.”
“You had him locked up. Somebody had to save Randolph.” The defiance marking the boy’s words would get him in trouble someday, but this wasn’t it.
The sheriff clapped him on the shoulder and said, “You done good. When you’re older, might be I’ll need a deputy.”
Billy looked skeptical but accepted the compliment without adding his opinion.