by Jake Logan
“One way to find out,” he said to his horse. This time he got no answer since the paint was too busy cropping at the trampled grass. Letting the horse eat a few minutes longer, Slocum continued to explore the trampled area. A few dropped cartridges, all for a .44, made him reconsider his guess that this was a company of cavalry. Soldiers were not usually so careless with their ammo. Every round meant life or death in a fierce fight. He tried to get an idea of the lay of the land. Any soldiers would come from Fort Gibson, although that was some miles away eastward.
Slocum shrugged it off as he mounted. The paint reluctantly allowed him to follow the hoofprints until he came to a badly painted sign promising him that he was almost inside the town limits of Cherokee Springs.
Slocum did not remember the name from any map he had seen, but it hardly mattered what the town was called. Towns came and went fast, sometimes not even being boom-towns that had a reason for existing and then dying. He wanted a meal that wasn’t half burned over an open fire, and his horse could use a good currying and a bag of oats. He had enough money for all that, and then some. The poker in St. Louis hadn’t been too bad.
The road went directly up the side of a low hill, but Slocum stopped and stared before he reached the ridge. A tiny curl of smoke appeared, then was carried away on a fitful breeze. Slocum sniffed hard and caught the stench of burned wood—and meat. His stomach churned at the all-too-familiar smell. He had gone through more than one battle during the war with this peculiar, gut-twisting smell lingering in his nostrils and on his uniform. No amount of washing or nightmares ever entirely removed the memories.
If he had the sense God gave a goose, he would have reversed his course and ridden east. That was as good a direction as any and promised less misery. Or he could have ridden south. Eventually, he would cross the Red River and find himself in Texas. Any of those options was still open to him.
Slocum rode to the top of the rise and looked down at Cherokee Springs. The source of most of the smoke was obvious. Half the town was still enveloped in flames eating away at what remained of walls. Even as he watched, one roof fell into a building amid a tower of sparks that cascaded down onto other buildings and ignited more fires.
The smell of burned human flesh was not hidden by the new fires.
Hating every instant of it and fighting to keep his more sensible horse from bolting and running away, Slocum made his way slowly into Cherokee Springs. Everywhere he looked he saw dead bodies. In the streets, hanging out of windows in smoldering buildings, in the fires. He started breathing in short, quick gasps through his mouth, then gave up and pulled his bandanna up over his nose and mouth. The cloth ought to be wet to keep out the worst of the odors.
Slocum dismounted and made sure his horse was securely tied to a post before going to a rain barrel. It had so many holes in it, there was hardly any water left. He dipped his bandanna in it, then wrung it out and tied it tightly around his nose. This made it almost bearable to breathe.
Almost.
He began a careful search of the town for survivors. The bank had been looted before being set ablaze. Slocum found three men inside, all charred. From what remained of one’s clothing, Slocum guessed he was the bank president. The other two might have been tellers. All three were laid out side by side. In his mind, he pictured what had happened. They had been forced from behind the tellers’ cages and ordered to lie down beside the bank officer. All three had been shot in the back more times than he cared to count. One shot would have been callous. So many needless shots after the men were long dead was sadistic.
He bent and picked up a dozen brass cartridges. All were .44s. The owlhoots doing the killing had reloaded so they could keep firing into dead bodies. Slocum tossed the brass from him angrily. He had seen savagery during the war. He had ridden with William Quantrill and had taken part in the Lawrence, Kansas, raid. Kill every man above the age of eight had been the order. Burn the town to the ground. There had been more than the killing of young boys that had sickened Slocum then. He had protested, and been shot in the gut and left for dead.
He had recovered slowly, but the hatred for such brutalities had never faded. Slocum picked up a few greenbacks that had survived the fire and tucked them into his pocket. These pieces of paper might be the only survivors of the vicious raid.
Store by store, building by building, he searched for anyone still alive. When he came to the only saloon in town that had not burned, he wished he had found some other place. Three of the Cyprians who had worked in the bar were stripped naked and laid out, one on a green felt-covered poker table and the other two across the billiards table. They had been raped. Slocum couldn’t tell if it had been before or after their throats had been slit with such power that their heads were almost separated from their bodies.
He had toyed with the idea of burying the dead, but the sheer numbers dissuaded him. Getting everyone decently planted, even in a mass grave, would take more effort than he was willing to expend. It might be a week to gather all the bodies, and Slocum was increasingly anxious to leave Cherokee Springs.
He found a bottle of liquor behind the bar and pulled the cork out with his teeth. He spat it in the direction of the three raped whores and raised the bottle in salute.
“You deserved better,” he said. “Might be I can find who did this to you and settle accounts.” He took a long pull of the whiskey and almost gagged. It was trade whiskey that had not cured long enough. The rusty-nail taste lingered, and the hydrochloric acid the barkeep had added for kick burned at his lips and tongue. Even though it blistered his mouth, Slocum took another swig, letting it sear all the way down to his belly.
He flung the bottle away and left the saloon without a backward glance at the three women.
There were too many more dead in Cherokee Springs for him to mourn just a trio of soiled doves he had never met.
He began hunting for supplies he would need to keep him on the trail of the men who had done this massacre. Even if he had not seen the evidence of shod horses riding into town, he would not have believed any of the Oklahoma Indians were capable of such violence. They weren’t called the Five Civilized Tribes for nothing. Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, along with the Creek and Cherokee, had fought fiercely in the past, but since the war those days had been over. They had settled down in Indian Territory and had been peaceful, as such things went. Part of this was the iron hand of Judge Parker over in Fort Smith, but mostly the tribes wanted to be left alone and to govern themselves.
Slocum saw not a single hint amid the killing and pillage to show that Indians had been responsible.
“Looks like guerrillas who can’t believe the war is over,” he said aloud. He had no idea if the gang rampaging through had ridden with the Union or cleaved to Southern ways, nor did it matter. Missouri and Kansas had bred a particularly vicious variety of war and warrior. It was too bad for the people of Cherokee Springs that their killers had never forgotten the old days.
Slocum lugged an armful of airtights from the general store and dumped them near his still-nervous horse. The smell of burnt wood and human blood would keep the horse jittery until they were long gone.
Although he knew what he would find, he turned back to make a quick run through the rest of Cherokee Springs. The hotel had been burned to the ground with most of the customers still inside. The schoolhouse had been partially destroyed, but the attack had come too early for any children to be inside. Slocum doubted that would have mattered to any of the gang raping the entire town. Incongruously, the church at the edge of town remained unscathed.
He went inside and stood for a moment, looking at the altar. Soot had blown in through the open doors. Otherwise, nothing in the church looked out of place. There was an eerie silence, though, that ate away at Slocum’s soul—or what remained of it. He felt only coldness and the desire to do to the killers what they had done to this town. Such unbridled ferocity could only be met with equal ferocity.
Then he sagged down and sat
in the back pew, head bowed. He was not the one to bring the killers to justice. There were too many of them and the murders had been committed on such a large scale that even the entire cavalry in all of Indian Territory might have trouble stopping them.
Slocum knew that, having gotten away with destroying so thoroughly an entire town, they would repeat the atrocities. Even simple murder and rape would not be enough. For all he knew, Cherokee Springs was not the first town they had delivered such vengeance upon. But in his gut he knew it was not going to be the last. Such hatred could only be snuffed out with a noose or a bullet.
Looking up, he stared at the altar and wondered what fate the minister had suffered. Slocum hoped the man of the cloth had truly believed in Heaven because that was where he was bound.
Slocum put his hands on the back of the pew in front and heaved to his feet. He was done here and had found no peace in the house of the Lord. As he stepped out into the noonday sun beating down so harshly, he rested his hand on the ebony butt of his Colt Navy slung in its cross-draw holster. He was as ready as he could be to move on. After the butchers who had destroyed Cherokee Springs.
Slocum froze when he heard a slight sound behind him in the church. He turned slowly, drawing his six-gun. Moving deliberately, he went back into the church, but stopped just inside the door this time. He pulled down his bandanna and took a deep whiff, trying to identify the odor that had not been here even a few seconds earlier. Nose working like a rabbit’s, he homed in on the flowery scent. He went to the side of the church and looked around. He heard nothing and the faint rose odor—it had to be roses—disappeared amid a strong gust of wind blowing from the direction of the town. Whatever respite the flower scent had given, it was gone now, once more buried under the ugly stench of burned buildings and charred human flesh.
He shoved his pistol back into his holster, backed away, still alert, then left the church. His stride long, he walked back to his horse. Somewhere along the way, his bandanna had finally dried out. For a few yards, Slocum thought he would not need the filter of a water-soaked rag across his nose, but when he began gagging so hard his stomach felt as if it would empty, he turned toward another water barrel. Like the first one, this had been filled with more lead than he could imagine being fired at an inanimate object. He yanked off the bandanna and thrust it into the water remaining in the barrel. As he stood and wrung it out, he froze.
The soft moan was almost too low to hear. Slocum finished his chore and tied the bandanna around his face, then turned slowly, hand moving to his holstered six-shooter. When he homed in on the sound, he drew, cocked, and aimed in one smooth motion.
“Who’s there?” Slocum wanted to take no chances. If a resident had survived, the man was likely to shoot first and keep firing until his pistol came up empty. Slocum wouldn’t have faulted him for that either, not after the carnage he had seen already.
“Help me,” said the weak voice.
Slocum saw a body mostly buried in mud formed by the draining water barrel and a goodly amount of blood. If he had not called out, the man would have gone unseen, part of the ground rather than a human being. This was probably how he had survived the slaughter.
Cautiously circling, Slocum made sure he wasn’t walking into a trap, then shoved his six-gun back into his holster as he knelt. His hand pressed down into mud and dried blood to find a quaking arm.
“Help me,” sobbed the man, still facedown. Slocum took hold of the man’s shirt and tugged, trying to figure out how badly he had been hurt. As the man’s body came off the muddy ground, Slocum saw. He sucked in his breath and then heaved once to roll the man onto his back. A shriek of pain escaped the man’s lips.
“Thanks,” he said to Slocum in a voice hardly above a hoarse whisper. “I couldn’t roll over. I wanted to see the sky again ’fore I died.”
“Nickson? Are you Jerome Nickson?” Slocum used his fingertips to remove the mud and gore from the man’s face. It was racked with pain, but it was a face that Slocum recognized.
Nickson coughed up some blood and turned toward Slocum, fighting to focus his eyes.
“As I live and breathe, it’s John Slocum.” He coughed again and smiled wanly. “Reckon I’m not gonna be doin’ either livin’ or breathin’ much longer.” A coughing fit lifted his shoulders off the ground. Slocum tried to hold him down. A man could do himself a powerful lot of harm by coughing so hard. Slocum wanted to make things as easy as he could for Nickson before the man died.
Slocum wiped more blood from the face of the man he had ridden with for almost six months when they had both worked for the Cross T ranch. Those had been good times, and they always had full bellies and earned reasonable wages, thanks to the Cross T owner, Ben Charteris. Charteris has been killed in a stampede. Nickson had tried to save their boss and had failed in the attempt, getting thrown when his horse stepped in a prairie-dog hole. Slocum had saved his life then, but there was nothing he could do now.
“The whole town’s been shot up and burned,” Slocum said. “Who did it? I can tell the federal marshal or maybe ride back to Fort Gibson and let the army know.”
“The army,” said Nickson in a voice as natural as if he was bellied up to a bar, cold beer in his hand. “I was in the army.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Slocum. “You were a Federal.”
“That never came ’tween us did it, Slocum?”
“Never did. The war’s over.”
“You know I was a captain?”
“Reckon you mentioned it,” Slocum said. He had seen the West Point ring Nickson always wore, in spite of being surrounded by former Rebels at every turn down in Texas. Most of the cowboys they worked with had not cared and seldom spoke of their own backgrounds. They certainly never pried. Even in as friendly an outfit as the Cross T, poking around asking questions about another man’s history was a good way to end up dead.
“You know I had a son?”
“That you never mentioned,” Slocum said, not too surprised. One subject Nickson had always steered clear of was his personal life. Slocum figured it was a sore spot, just as his own was. After the war Slocum had returned home to Calhoun county, Georgia, to recuperate from wounds, only to find a carpetbagger judge had taken a fancy to the farm that had been in the Slocum family for generations. Bogus tax claims had been filed, and Slocum had found himself on the wrong end of an eviction notice.
The judge and his hired gunman had come out to seize the farm. They got more than they had bargained for. Slocum buried both of them near the springhouse, then rode West, never looking back. The wanted posters had followed him like a bloodhound on the scent, but he had kept ahead of the law and arrest on charges of judge killing. He doubted Nickson had such a sordid past, but he figured a woman played a more prominent role in the man’s reluctance not to talk much about himself.
“Never did right by him,” Nickson said. “I wasn’t that good a husband and was a damn sight worse as a father. Slocum”—Nickson reached out and clutched Slocum’s sleeve—“I don’t have anything to give Patrick. Nothing but my West Point ring. See that he gets it.”
“I will,” Slocum said.
“You were always a man of your word, Slocum. You’ve promised. You’ve promised. Take it off my finger and give to Patrick and tell him not to think too poorly of me.”
Nickson’s fingers tightened on Slocum’s arm, then relaxed a little as he died. Slocum reached over and pried the fingers loose. For a moment, Slocum couldn’t figure out what wasn’t right.
Then he saw. Jerome Nickson’s ring finger and the ring that had been on it were both gone.
3
“Faster, Mama, we have to go faster.” Sarah Beth Magee craned her neck and looked back down the road. The dust cloud kicked up by their buggy wheels obscured the road, but she felt in her gut that they were not going fast enough to get away.
“The horse is tiring, dear,” her mother said. Louisa Magee snapped the reins to get their swayback mare moving faster. The horse balked, bri
nging the buggy to a sudden halt. “What am I going to do? The horse just won’t keep up the pace.” Louisa pushed a strand of blond hair back under her wide-brimmed hat. The unconscious gesture caused the flower-decorated hat to go flying. “Oh!” she cried as it sailed away on the sudden wind.
“I’ll get it, Mama.”
“But we have to keep moving,” Louisa protested.
“The mare’s not budging. I can convince her to move.” With that, Sarah Beth jumped to the ground and wobbled a bit. Her long legs had been cramped in the buggy all day long, but there had been no way to stretch them—not if they wanted to continue traveling to stay ahead of her pa.
She hurried back to grab her mother’s Sunday-go-to-meeting hat before the fitful wind blew it into the ditch alongside the road. Sarah Beth snared it and tucked the hat under her arm as she rushed back. Her mother snapped the reins, but the horse refused to do more than twitch her tail about to keep off buzzing deer flies.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Louisa moaned. She sank down in the buggy seat, slumped forward in defeat. She began to sob.
“There, there, Mama, we’ll reach town before Pa catches us.”
“He’s so close. What he did to that town!”
“Cherokee Springs,” Sarah Beth said. Her lips thinned to a determined line, and she lifted her chin defiantly. “We’ll get to safety, Mama. I know it, but we can’t give up. He’ll get us for sure if we quit.” She handed her mother the hat, now dirty and all the worse for the wear and tear. Louisa took it, brushed off the dirt, and smiled wanly.
“Where do you get that optimism? Not from me.” Louisa smiled a little, then turned grim again. “Certainly not from your father.”