by Jake Logan
“Life’s pretty cheap. Ain’t it?” Bud said, coming in after him.
“Pretty damn cheap. They should have figured they’d never get away with it.”
“Sounded like to me they never counted on you.”
“They made that mistake twice,” he said, looking up as the two women came around Mia’s corpse and stopped in the doorway.
“What’s that?” Lilly asked.
“I guess this is what’s left of your money.”
“Thank you. Help me find a sack,” Lilly said to Easter.
Slocum nodded as they began to collect the coins, and he went to the doorway to gaze out at the countryside. Maybe he could go on to San Antonio now?
24
Slocum wore a white shirt, a tie, a brown suit, and a snowy white ten-gallon hat. His handmade boots shuffled to the guitar polka music as he swept Lilly around the dance floor. Her head thrown back, she laughed at his comments about how cold it would be in Wyoming. The music stopped and they joined the others at the bar.
Her friends, area ranchers and business folks, were glad to have her home safe. They had accepted Slocum as one of them. The Bar M Ranch was back to working in full swing, and Slocum was enjoying the fandango.
“What did Bud say that cowboy did with the money you paid him?” he asked her, leaning on the bar.
“Said he got someone’s wife and took her away with him to Arizona.”
“Sounds like he knew what he wanted to do. But you can’t kid me. Easter wrote the letter. Bud couldn’t write his name that good.”
“How many wives does that make him?”
Slocum winked at her. “I’ve lost count. Let’s dance.”
“Certain—what’s Curly want? Something must be wrong.”
Slocum and Lilly went to the edge of the dance floor where the ranch foreman waited. The shorter man was shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“What’s wrong?”
“Tom, them two fellas you warned me about showed up at the ranch this evening. One was riding a big Appaloosa horse like you said.” He lowered his voice. “Said they was Kansas deputies and they’d be back when you got home tomorrow.”
Slocum turned and saw the paleness of Lilly’s face. He nodded.
“What will you—” she gasped.
“Thanks, Curly. Take care of things.” He shook the man’s hand. “You can run her. Take good care of Lilly.”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
When Curly left, he guided Lilly behind the drapes. In the darkness, he took her tall willowy form in his arms and kissed her long and hard.
Then he swept the hair from her face. “The time has come.”
She nested her face against his shoulder. “God be with you.”
An hour later, Slocum looked out of the open boxcar door as the freight chugged along at fifteen miles an hour away from San Antonio. The candle lamps made orange squares in the adobe hovel windows along the tracks, and the train engine whistled in the night.
He’d be a while getting over her.