Slocum and the Yellowback Trail

by Jake Logan

  Picking up the key, Slocum said, “I was going to have a look in his room myself, but was waiting for a chance to get in there without being seen by all the folks coming and going right now.”

  “Seems to be quiet now,” Sykes said. “Mind if I come along?”

  “Actually, I may need you to act as a lookout.”

  “Great!” Although he started to get up, Sykes quickly sat down again. “Can I finish my steak first?”

  20

  Harper’s room was at the end of the second floor hallway that faced the street. It was a prime spot for a man to keep his back to a wall, have everyone else where he could see them, and maintain a vantage point from high ground. The only thing wrong with it was that it was a stone’s throw away from the men he was stalking. Harper had to know Slocum was staying at that hotel, but was bold enough to stay close anyway. Or perhaps that’s where the crazy part came in.

  On the other hand, this could still be some sort of ruse to get Slocum to take a wrong step that would end up with him playing into someone’s hands. When he thought back to how this whole mess had started, Slocum cursed himself for thinking too damn much. Corrington was just a writer who’d used the wrong man’s name to sell his books. James and Cam were just pimps and crooks who had a score to settle. Sykes needed to make sure more zeroes weren’t added to the price that was already on his head, and Harper was just a maniac trying to impress his idol. Once Slocum had pulled all those strings apart, he saw they didn’t actually form one solid length of rope. They were just a bunch of loose ends that needed tying.

  Slocum checked over his shoulder as he approached the door. Sykes was at the opposite end of the hall, in a corner marked by a pair of small doors that looked like they led to a closet. He wasn’t as far from the stairs as Slocum was now, but he could watch the staircase and most of the rest of the second floor without being easily spotted himself. Probably still picking the steak from his teeth, Sykes gave him a wave to let Slocum know everything was good on his end.

  Slocum didn’t trust that man completely, but he figured their arrangement was still mutually beneficial enough for them to work together. And if Sykes planned on double-crossing him, he already would have taken a shot using the holdout pistol Slocum had loaned him. The sooner that shoe was dropped, the quicker one loose end would be cut.

  Fishing the skeleton key from his pocket, Slocum eased it into the lock and slowly turned it. He kept one hand on the door handle and held his breath. There was no way of knowing for certain if Jessica had been truthful with him. After all, he’d already been betrayed by one woman on this hunt. Even if Jessica’s intentions were good, there was no way of knowing if Harper was in his room at that moment. For that matter, Slocum didn’t know if his footsteps had been heard and Harper already had a gun pointed at the door.

  Every little click within the lock mechanism sounded like a gunshot in his ears.

  When the lock clicked for the last time, Slocum swore the entire door shook within its frame.

  Pushing the door open slowly produced a grating creak from the hinges, so Slocum just shoved it open and was done with it. What he found inside was more than just a loose end. It was the hand that had been fraying the entire rope.

  “What the hell is this?” Slocum asked when he saw Harper leaning against the wall near his window and Corrington sitting at a small desk against the wall adjacent to the door.

  Harper straightened up and reflexively reached for the gun at his side, but stopped short when Slocum’s hand slapped firmly against the grip of his Colt Navy.

  Corrington raised both arms as if he was being robbed for the pencil and paper in his grasp. “This isn’t what you think! I merely discovered Mr. Harper was right down the hall from me and decided to pay him a visit. You know, to help ease the tensions between us all.”

  Walking over to the desk without taking his eyes off of Harper, Slocum said, “Then you won’t mind letting me take a gander at what you’re writing.”

  “There’s no need. I was simply signing a book.”

  “That’s not a book you were writing in,” Slocum pointed out.

  “Not a finished book, no,” Corrington sputtered. “It’s a work in progress. A manuscript. I thought Mike might like to read it over before it’s released for the public’s approval.”

  “If it’s anything like the rest of your books,” Slocum said, “there’s already a bunch of folks in the public that won’t approve.” Now that he was close enough to the desk to see the papers in front of the writer, Slocum spread out the small stack so he could glance at them. From what he could tell, they were hastily scribbled notes detailing some very familiar instances. “Is this about the times me and Harper locked horns the other night?”

  The writer looked like he was ready to try and squirm out of his skin. “I was having a conversation with Mr. Harper,” he explained. “I meant to try and resolve all of this, but—”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit,” Slocum said as he turned toward Corrington. “You mean to write about the times when me and him traded shots. Either one of us could have been killed! Doesn’t that bother you in the slightest?”

  Corrington stammered a few syllables, but didn’t get a chance to say much else before Harper went for his gun.

  It happened in a flicker of movement that Slocum almost missed. In his burst of anger at what was going on, Slocum had taken his eyes away from his main target. As soon as he saw Harper twitch, he drew his Colt.

  Harper was faster than Slocum had expected, but not very accurate. He cleared leather before Slocum, pulled his trigger, and sent a shot hissing past Slocum’s ear.

  Cool under fire, Slocum drew his Colt and fired as Corrington rammed into him from the side to knock off his aim. Swearing under his breath, Slocum wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. He kept his eyes fixed on Harper even as he reached across with his left hand to grab Corrington by the shirt and throw him to the floor. “Stay down if you know what’s good for you!” he shouted to the writer.

  Harper fired a few more times in quick succession, filling the room with hot lead.

  Slocum’s response was to stay low and pick his shot. He squeezed his trigger and grazed the other man’s side. Harper clutched at the wound while firing the rest of his shots at Slocum. Fortunately, the room had also filled with acrid smoke, which marred his vision and burned his eyes enough to make all of his shots near misses. Unfortunately, Slocum didn’t have much better luck and fired two misguided shots into the wall as Harper scrambled for cover.

  “Stop this!” Corrington shouted as he clawed at Slocum’s leg. “There’s no need for all of this blood! I can fix things!”

  “You’ve done enough!” Slocum said.

  When he heard the door swing open, Slocum thought the writer had found a way to skitter across the floor and work the handle himself. He’d just lined up a shot at Harper’s skull when Slocum felt a set of thick hands drop down on his shoulders and pull him out into the hall. The next thing he felt was the wall pounding against his spine hard enough to cause his fist to clench and send a shot into the floor. When Slocum was pounded against the wall a second time, the impact knocked the gun from his hand.

  “So you came to us, huh?” James said as he peeled Slocum off the wall and snapped his fist into his face. “Saves us a bit of trouble.”

  Slocum pushed away from the wall, which gave him just enough space to snap his leg back and drive it straight up into James’s groin. His boot thumped against some very delicate parts of the other man’s anatomy, loosening James’s grip so Slocum could pull completely away. Less than a second after he moved, a bullet from Harper’s gun knocked a hole through the spot where Slocum’s head had been.

  If he’d been keeping track of the number of shots fired, that information had been knocked out of Slocum’s head when he was slammed against the wall. Rather than take his chances that Harper’s cylinder was dry, Slocum grabbed James’s shirt and shoved him farther down the hall. But they we
ren’t the only ones filling the hall with the sounds of a struggle. At the far end, Sykes was in an all-out brawl with another man. He delivered a solid uppercut to the man’s chin, spinning him around enough for Slocum to get a look at Cam’s face.

  “Been waitin’ for this for a while,” James said as he charged at Slocum. The problem with kicking a man south of the border was that he was madder than hell when his eyesight cleared up from the initial blow. James was so fired up now that he nearly put his fist through the wall when Slocum stepped aside to clear a path for the incoming punch.

  While he was in the vicinity, Slocum drove a few punches of his own into James’s ribs. The other man was too angry to feel them and needed a lot more punishment than that to slow him down. Slocum lashed out with as many punches as he could, hoping they might be enough to chop James down like a tree.

  “Get out of my way!” Harper shouted from within the next room. Corrington’s voice followed that in a wave of nervous chatter. Slocum couldn’t make out the words, but he saw that the writer was clinging to the other man in a similar fashion to how he’d weighed Slocum down earlier.

  A solid fist delivered to Slocum’s stomach doubled him over and forced him to hack up a pained breath. “That’s what I like to hear!” James said. “Shouldn’t have wronged me in Chicago. Now you gotta pay!” He immediately made good on his threat by hitting Slocum again in the same spot.

  When that second punch landed, Slocum thought he might pass out. If that happened, he knew he probably wouldn’t wake up again. It was pure force of will that got him to stand up straight, pull in a breath, and fight back. Putting all the strength he could muster behind a punch intended for James’s chin, he wound up scraping his knuckles against James’s chest instead.

  James smiled as if he’d just gotten an early Christmas gift. Clamping a hand around Slocum’s throat, he knocked his head against a wall and leaned in to tell him, “Think I’ll drag your carcass all the way back to Chicago. After that, maybe I can write about how it feels to be the man who killed John Sl—”

  When Slocum snapped his head forward, his forehead cracked against James’s nose. The rest of the boast wound up lodged in the back of James’s throat along with a few teeth and a surprised yelp of pain. Unfortunately, the head-butt hurt Slocum only slightly less. When he turned to get a look down the hall to check on Sykes, Slocum felt dizzy enough to lose his footing. His back touched the wall and he used it for support, but he still felt as if he could fold at any second.

  “Son of a bitch!” James roared as he pressed one hand to his face. With his other hand, he made a clumsy reach for his pistol. Blood poured from the wound that had been put there when Slocum had cracked him in Chicago. That wound, combined with all the others, threw off James’s aim enough so his bullet landed several feet off target.

  Hearing the shot echo in such close proximity caused Slocum’s entire body to react. He dove for his Colt and fired back. To call that shot wild would have been generous, but it did a good enough job of getting James away from him. When he squeezed his trigger again, Slocum heard only the metallic slap of the hammer against empty brass.

  Suddenly, Corrington bolted from the room. He carried a .32 in one hand as if he hardly knew which end of a gun to hold. “I’ve disarmed Mr. Harper and now I’ll see to it that you men stop as well! I won’t have anyone hurt on my account!”

  Harper stepped into the doorway next. As soon as he spotted Slocum, he drew his .32 from the holster under his arm.

  Slocum rammed his shoulder into the closest door he could find and stampeded inside as the .32 was fired behind him in a quick series of pops. His ears were ringing from the noise and his head was still jangling from the head-butt as he reloaded his Colt. Someone hurried toward the room as Slocum finished putting the third round in the cylinder. That would have to be good enough.

  He approached the door and was immediately overwhelmed by the mass of James’s body. The gunman must have been gambling on the fact that Slocum was still off his game, because he charged in like he’d been invited. A wide, predatory smile was on his face as he once again grabbed Slocum’s throat.

  “This time I’m wringin’ yer goddamn neck,” James said as his grip tightened.

  Slocum felt his balance waver and his eyesight dim. The thump of his own heartbeat filled his ears so much that he barely heard the shot when he jammed the Colt’s barrel into the other man’s belly and pulled his trigger.

  James bucked, but his grip remained strong. His eyes showed more confusion than anything else as he grunted, “You shot me?”

  Slocum had to finish the job he’d started before James choked the life from him and dragged him down into hell along with him. With Harper surely coming for him, Slocum couldn’t allow himself to be pinned down like a lamb staked out for the lions. Harper had already proven himself to be just the sort of man to take advantage of that situation. Cursing James for making him waste the second of his three bullets, Slocum angled the Colt upward and pulled his trigger again.

  This time, the bullet sent a jolt through James’s entire body. No longer stunned, the gunman threw both arms out to his sides and staggered back. He turned on one heel, pivoted around to show Slocum the messy holes that had been blown through his torso, and dropped.

  Someone in the room screamed, causing Slocum to spin around and take aim with his pistol. He recognized the brunette who had been sitting at Corrington’s table along with Walter and the other two women; he hadn’t realized it was her room he’d busted into.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he said, “but you might want to hide somewhere until the shooting stops.”

  Rose didn’t need to hear any more than that before she scooted off the far side of the bed and huddled with it between her and the door.

  “You’ve got to listen to me, John . . . Good Lord!” Corrington exclaimed when he rushed in and nearly tripped over James’s corpse.

  Slocum meant to throw the writer somewhere he wouldn’t get shot, but the fire in Slocum’s eyes was more than enough to send Corrington into a panic.

  “I’m sorry, John! Please don’t kill me!” he wailed as he backed into the hall.

  Before Slocum could do or say anything to warn him, the writer was grabbed from behind by Harper and held in place to act as a shield.

  As more gunshots were fired back and forth at the end of the hall, Harper twitched nervously while holding his .32 against the writer’s temple. “You wanted a good end to your series about real gunmen,” he said. “Looks to me like we’re about to write one together.”

  “This isn’t what I wanted,” Corrington insisted.

  “Isn’t it?” Slocum asked. “From what I saw, you and him were having a nice little chat. Makes sense to me. You send some fancy-dressed back-shooter to kick up some dust and then write about it. Sells a lot of books!”

  “No, he was only a consultant,” Corrington insisted. “He had some good stories to share and I embellished upon them. That’s all it was supposed to be.”

  “You know what he’s been doing,” Slocum said. “You told me and Dan all about it.” Shifting his gaze to the man directly behind the writer, he added, “In fact, Mike, he told us that you were one of the craziest men he’d ever met.”

  “He wouldn’t do that!” Harper said.

  “I’m not so sure. Why don’t you ask him?”

  Cinching his arm in a bit tighter around Corrington’s neck, Harper asked, “Is that true? Did you tell these men I was crazy so they would kill me?”

  Corrington’s face was turning from flushed pink to dark red. “You . . . threatened to shoot me that time. Remember?”

  “Only because you didn’t want to list my name in your next book.”

  “I never told you to go after anyone,” the writer croaked. “I just thought you were a bounty hunter with some good stories.”

  “I told you about how I found out where John Slocum really was. Then I told you about what happened in Chicago.”

  “You did?”
Slocum growled.

  Corrington winced and struggled to draw a breath. “Books were . . . selling. I’m just a . . . just a writer.”

  “And,” Slocum said, “if your next book just happened to be the first to give a written account of the last days of someone like me or Sykes, well that would probably sell quicker than cups of cold water in hell. Ain’t that the idea?”

  Even though Harper was the one squashing his head like a grape, Corrington appeared to be more afraid of Slocum. When he spoke this time, it was more of a squeak. “You don’t . . . understand just how . . . how well those books sold.”

  “Go ahead, Harper. Pull his head off.”

  “Set your gun down or his blood truly will be on your hands,” Harper replied.

  Slocum lowered his arm and let it hang limply from his shoulder. “Then what? You let him go and shoot me anyway?”

  “You’ve got to pay for what you done in Fort Griffin, John. You can either take your punishment like a man or you can be put down like a dog.”

  “I didn’t slaughter any eight folks in Fort Griffin, you crazy bastard!”

  “I’m not crazy!”

  But his eyes told a different story. When Slocum looked into them, he could see a storm raging inside of Michael Harper that couldn’t be found inside a man that had his head screwed on tight. Even though he was staring at Slocum, Harper didn’t appear to be seeing much of anything at all. His lips trembled with words that were flowing in his mind but which he was unable to say. Hands shook as knuckles whitened. Sweat dripped from his brow with the strain of dealing with whatever demons had brought him to the conclusion that Corrington’s cheap novels were gospel.

  “Fine,” Slocum sighed. “You win. If you swear I’ll see a judge, I’ll take my chances with him.”

  Harper nodded and released his grip on Corrington.

  “Edward,” Slocum said, “MOVE!”

  The writer dropped straight down as Slocum snapped his arm up like a whip and fired at the point when it would have cracked.