by Jake Logan
“You ever look for them?”
“Out of my jurisdiction.”
“Still is,” Slocum said.
“I’m making an exception for this Anton Bulwer fellow. He tried to make a fool out of me busting a prisoner from my jail. That bruises my reputation and makes me eager to prevent him from doing whatever it is that he’s doing.”
Slocum had to laugh. He had told the marshal what went on here. So had Pullman and so had Elena, when Pullman let her get a word in edgewise.
“I can’t go accusing a man of counterfeiting until I see some proof,” Atkinson said with mock indignation. “Of course, those papers about him working for the U.S. Treasury, how he got himself fired, and the other documents the Pinkertons gave me strongly suggest Bulwer is one mean gent.”
“We’re getting close,” Slocum said. He pointed to the curl of smoke drifting lazily into the clear sky. A bit of rain would have helped them sneak closer by shrouding their approach, but the day had bloomed bright and fresh as a daisy.
“You say Rafe was still in the camp when you got away with the little lady?”
“Are you worried for him?”
“It’s like this. He’s my wife’s cousin and never got the hang of making a decent living. Being a teamster’s as close as he’s ever got to supporting himself. He’s not a bad man.”
“Sounded to me as if he didn’t know what he was hauling,” Slocum said.
“Good.”
Atkinson motioned to six of the posse to circle wide and cut off retreat southward. Slocum knew they would never get into position before Bulwer spotted them—and so did Atkinson. Barely had the six galloped off when the lawman ordered the attack to begin.
Rifles and shotguns were the weapons of choice as they wheeled toward the buildings and tapped spurs against their horses’ flanks.
Slocum levered a round into his Winchester just as the first slug ripped past him. They hadn’t gotten twenty yards in their attack before Bulwer’s sentry spotted them. Slocum fired as he rode, not finding any target but wanting to make the outlaws duck so they wouldn’t fire into the posse. Whether this worked or Bulwer’s men were already running for their lives, Slocum couldn’t tell.
The posse swept through the camp, the fighting fierce and mercifully brief.
“Round them gents up and get them over here so I can look at them,” Atkinson said.
Slocum had already noticed what the marshal was struggling to understand. Anton Bulwer was not among the handful of men captured.
“Where’re the rest?” Atkinson demanded. He punctuated his question with a shotgun blast that tore off one man’s toes. After a few minutes of interrogation, the marshal said to Slocum, “Looks like we rounded up the lot of them.”
“You don’t believe them that Bulwer is with Rafe on a wagon headed toward Pueblo, do you?”
“No reason not to,” Atkinson said. “I didn’t lose a man, and I’m keeping it that way.”
“Marshal, we have them. We found the dies!” Pullman held up a thick cylinder and then turned the end so the lawman could see.
“That’s what Bulwer used to imprint the lead slugs,” Atkinson said. “Clem over there’s found a whole lot of thin sheet gold. Make the milled lead slug, use the die to stamp out the pattern, then coat it with gold. That’s the process, isn’t it, Miss Warburton?”
“It is, Marshal,” she said. She still refused to look in Slocum’s direction. “From what we can tell of the supplies, there are very few fake coins in camp. We believe he is shipping them to Pueblo for another train robbery to substitute the coins.”
“Every lawman I know would think it failed if there were these fakes still in the train car,” Atkinson said, holding a counterfeit coin up to peer at it. “Bulwer could ride off with the real coins and do this again somewhere else, nobody knowing a crime had been committed. Clever devil. I’ll be glad when my boys bring him in.”
“The six that were supposed to cut off escape are going after him?” Slocum asked.
“If Rafe’s driving, he won’t have got far.”
Slocum wondered if the freighter might not have a three-or four-day head start on the posse but said nothing. He looked around as Atkinson ordered the counterfeiters put on their horses, hands tied, and then led toward the trail winding up from the valley to go back to Leadville.
“Your reward will be waiting for you, Mr. Slocum,” Elena said stiffly. “Your assistance has been quite instrumental in bringing these . . . these counterfeiters to justice.” Her voice cracked but didn’t break with emotion.
“It will be a sizable reward, too,” Pullman said. “I am sure the Pinkerton Detective Agency will gift you with as much as one hundred dollars. Good work, man, leading us to these foul fiends so we could properly arrest them.”
Elena started to speak, then clamped her mouth shut and lowered her eyes.
“Give my reward to Miss Warburton,” Slocum said. “She’s done more to earn it than I have.”
“Why, she is an employee. I am not sure she—” Pullman swallowed hard when he saw Slocum’s cold gaze. “Very well, I will do that very thing.”
“Put in a recommendation on her, too. A commendation for outstanding work in the field.”
“Why, uh, yes, that goes without saying. Come along, Miss Warburton. We want to tie up all the loose ends by aiding Marshal Atkinson with his interrogation of the prisoners.”
Elena looked up at Slocum, started to speak, but then turned and ran off. He wondered if tears were streaming down her cheeks. He thought so.
The posse started back to Leadville with their prisoners. Pullman and Elena had possession of the dies used to make the fake coins. The counterfeiting ring had been broken.
In ten minutes, Slocum stood in the camp all alone. He looked into the mist-hazy south, then over at the barn where Elena had been tortured. Anton Bulwer might be with Rafe heading for Pueblo with the fake coins.
Slocum thought the counterfeiter was somewhere else. Near.
He listened hard but heard only the soft soughing wind blowing down the valley. Slocum checked his Colt before walking to the barn. Behind it he saw a tethered, saddled horse. He looked in the saddlebags and saw enough gold double eagles to let a man live in style, even at the Union Club in San Francisco, for quite a spell.
Softly approaching the side door into the barn, he chanced a quick peek around the corner. Nothing moved inside. He stepped in just as a bit of dirt and splintery wood fell from above. Reacting instantly, Slocum dropped into a gunfighter’s crouch, pointed his six-shooter up, and fired the instant before Bulwer cut loose with a shotgun.
Slocum staggered back, fire burning his thighs. He recovered, stepped forward, and fired twice more, just to be sure. His first shot had ended the counterfeiter’s life, but the additional rounds tearing through Bulwer’s body made him feel better. The counterfeiter hung draped over the same beam that his henchmen had used to suspend Elena.
“So why were you in here?” Slocum asked softly. His only answer was whistling wind through the cracks in the side of the barn. Poking around got him nowhere. He found a lantern and after considerable effort got the wick trimmed and lit. Holding it high, he prowled throughout the barn until he came to a stall where the straw had been disturbed recently.
He kicked it away and saw a freshly dug hole, now filled in. The dirt hadn’t been properly tamped down, but Bulwer might not have had the time. He had taken what he could from the camp and sacrificed his men so he could escape.
Anton Bulwer didn’t strike Slocum as the kind of man who rode away empty-handed. The gold coins in his saddlebags were hardly enough for a man as clever as Anton Bulwer.
Before he began digging, Slocum had to bind his fresh wounds. Three buckshot pellets had ripped into his legs. Only the angle had saved him from serious injury. After tying bandages around his thighs and stanching the blood, only then did he start to dig. He didn’t have to go down far before he hit a canvas sack.
He dragged it outsid
e and into the afternoon sun. Gold coins spilled onto the ground in a glittering waterfall of wealth. Slocum caught his breath as he stared at the riches at his feet. He bent, picked one up, and bit down on it.
He laughed when his tooth sank into . . . real gold. Where Bulwer had gotten these coins hardly mattered. They were legal tender.
And they were John Slocum’s reward for his part in stopping Anton Bulwer.
He recovered Bulwer’s saddlebags and then filled his own with the coins from the barn, mounted, and headed north. Half the posse was riding south and he wanted to avoid them. Atkinson was taking the most direct trail with his prisoners back to Leadville.
Slocum rode north with a smile on his lips, a fortune in gold in his saddlebags, and only best wishes for Elena Warburton and her burgeoning career as a Pinkerton detective.
Watch for
SLOCUM’S REWARD
386th novel in the exciting SLOCUM series from Jove
Coming in April!