by Logan, Jake
She said nothing, but led his horse away from him, just out of his reach. He stiff-legged it over toward her, but she was too quick for him and jumped aboard the beast.
“You get back here right now, Judith!” He’d had enough of her games but the girl just smiled at him and booted the horse toward Mueller’s little camp.
“I’ll look at it for you and be back right quick.”
The commotion forced more blood through the stitching in his leg and he felt weaker by the minute. He watched her ride, knowing she was safe. They’d both seen Mueller headed northward. He was grateful Mueller still wore that red shirt, made him easy to spot at a distance. He doubted she’d find anything but a smoldering campfire. Hell, he thought, might as well do what she’d said and move on into Mueller’s camp himself for the night.
In fact, he’d have to camp here, he knew that now. But he wouldn’t tell her that. He’d send her back up the hill to her horse. It would be dark in another few hours, but he’d make sure she was long gone back to her kin at their run-down place. He knew they’d be sick with worry over her. They’d lost a whole day in worry over her, he bet. And they’d be anxious to be on their way toward California.
The word seemed to ring in his head, as though it had been shouted down a deep, dark well . . .
13
He must have been worse off than he knew, because the next time he looked up, she was just a few yards away, atop the Appaloosa, looking down at him.
“You don’t look so good, Mr. Slocum. In fact, you look downright awful. No color at all, unless you call gray a color.”
“I appreciate your concern and your help with my leg—”
She cut him off. “Don’t you want to know what I found at the bandit’s camp?”
He stared at her for a moment. The girl didn’t seem to make sense. Then he remembered what she’d been doing. He cursed himself for not keeping his mind focused. “Yes, yes, okay. What did you find?”
“Nothing but a campfire it looked like he had urinated on.”
Again, Slocum shook his head. He didn’t believe he’d ever heard a woman say that word. This trip was not going at all like he’d planned. He had been sure up until two days ago that he would have found Tunk Mueller and have been halfway back to Arizona by now. He closed his eyes and sighed.
“Judith,” he said, not opening his eyes. “I have a job to do and the life I live is no place for a woman, let alone a young one. You need to go on to California with your family, make a life for yourself. You understand me?” He tried not to look at the silent teardrops rolling down her young cheeks, dripping off the end of her perfect little nose. She was just a confused kid.
“But I wanted to go with you. I meant to. I . . . I don’t want to go with them. They . . . they beat me!”
He had to smile at the unlikely thought of it. “It’s true I didn’t spend much time with your mother and sister and the others, just a few hours, really, but they didn’t seem the type to hit a child. At least not like that bill of goods you’re trying to sell me.”
“I can be useful to you. I got these guns. I can use ’em, too. Mama said that women should know how to shoot.”
“What about your father? What did he say?”
Her jaw thrust outward. “What do you know about him?”
He shook his head and shrugged, not wanting to dredge up something she didn’t want to discuss. Not yet anyway But the conversation seemed to revive him, and he felt better than he had minutes before.
She stepped down off the horse and he stood up.
“If you work at it, you could well become famous one day for using those. If it means as much to you as you say it does.”
“What do you mean?” She dragged a hand across her eyes, trying hard to overcome her crying.
“Now I don’t mean as an outlaw.” He smiled again, tried to get her to do the same. It worked a bit. He struggled and, with her help, managed to saddle up.
“I mean you might become a trick-shot artist,” he said, catching his breath. Climbing into the saddle had taken a mighty effort, and he felt shaky and had broken a sweat. “All the famous ones are women. Traveling shows and the like, and someone as pretty as you should be able to find her way into a theatrical troupe without too much worry. If you can shoot.”
She looked up at him, narrowed her eyes, and they took on that hard look again. “You’re funnin’ me.”
“No, ma’am. I would not do that. But I am moving on, and you’re not coming with me. Is that understood?”
She scowled at the ground again, then looked at him through hooded eyes. “Least you can do is ride me back up that hill to my horse. It’s a long walk.”
Slocum looked up the hill. She did help him with his leg. Even though she caused it. He sighed, kicked a foot out of the stirrup, and lowered an arm. “Let’s go,” he said, swinging her up behind him in the saddle. It was a tight fit and he suspected she was enjoying it more than he was. She might well one day be as pretty or prettier than her older sisters, but right now she was a child playing games and all he wanted to do was get her to her horse and point her toward her family. She’d be there within a few hours. The country was desolate enough that he doubted she’d get herself in any trouble.
As the Appaloosa, with a few booted urgings from Slocum, switch-backed up the slope, dark, worrisome thoughts came to Slocum with each step upward. What if she did run into trouble? Where there was one outlaw, there was bound to be another. Or what if her horse were to spook a rattler or shy up for any reason at all? She could get thrown, hit her head, and lie there dying, and no one would ever know.
Stop it, he told himself. You keep thinking like that, you’ll lose out on your fast-retreating chance to catch up with Tunk Mueller. Dump her onto her horse and hightail it north while you still have strength and a chance. But as he reached the top, he knew that, despite everything his free-ranging spirit was shouting at him to do, he ought not leave the girl alone. He’d escort her back to her family, then head north, once again, onto Mueller’s cooling trail. It would mean another day gone, but what could he do? She was just a kid.
They reached the top and he recognized the stand of trees through which he’d cut downward hours before. “Where’d you leave your horse, Judith?”
She didn’t answer.
“Hey, Judith, where did you tie your mount?”
“I . . . I don’t see it.” There was genuine fear in her voice.
“What do you mean? You had to have a horse to follow me that close, so where is it? No games now, Judith.”
She slipped down from behind him and the Appaloosa fidgeted.
“It was the mare. She was right here, I swear it.” She rubbed a low branch on a yellow pine and looked at him. “But she’s gone. Oh, Mama’s going to tan me for certain.”
“Yeah, and for more than one thing, I reckon.” He kicked out of the stirrup and extended his arm again. “Come on, we’ll track it. Like as not, it headed back the way you came, homeward bound for a bait of feed. We might just catch up with it. Then you’ll at least be in trouble for one less thing.”
“Are you going to tell . . . about me running away, I mean?”
“I don’t think I’ll have to, do you?”
As they rode, the afternoon’s waning light and heat, and the insect buzz around them, lulled them into a silence that they maintained for a few miles. Then close to his ear, Judith said, “Mr. Slocum.”
It startled him a bit, but he said, “Mm-hm?”
“I seen you. Last night, I mean. You and Ruth.”
His guts tightened and he felt as if he’d been punched. He cleared his throat. “I don’t know what you—”
“I am not a child, Mr. Slocum. I understand how these things work.”
“Then you should also know there are certain things that are private
affairs and nobody’s business. You understand? That was none of yours. Your sister and I are both adults and—”
“You got no call to be angry. Just wondered what she was up to, is all. I figured I’d follow her. I couldn’t really see all that well anyway. Not much at all, truth be told.”
“Well, good. Because it’s none of your business.”
“I know, I know. You already said that.”
Slocum reined up and turned in the saddle to see her face. “Look, Judith. You can’t go around following people. It’s just not right.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing with that Turkey fella?”
He had to admit her point, and smiled. “Tunk, yeah, well, it’s not quite the same thing. He’s a bad person. A killer, and I aim to bring him in to see that he pays for his crimes. The law will decide his fate. But you have given me an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“An idea how you can make a living someday. You are a natural born snoop. You could be a lady detective. If you’re genuinely handy with those peashooters of yours, it’s a damn sight more useful to society than being a trick-shot artist.”
“But I was warming to that notion. Being on the stage and all.”
“Yeah, but detectives get to stop bad folks, and they get to wear disguises doing it.”
“Really?”
“Sure,” he said. “Don’t you ever read the dime novels?”
“Oh no, Papa says they’re the devil’s work.” She stopped talking as fast as she’d begun.
At the mention of her father, Slocum thought of the sunburned men. If the old man with the big beard, the wild eyes, and the preachy speechifying was her father, then that meant that Ruth and the twins were his daughters as well. And that meant that the other men were their brothers. Surely the old man didn’t mean that these women were their own brothers’ wives? If that were the case, did that mean they fathered their own nieces?
He’d heard about such nests of strange families tucked in the hills, especially back in Georgia, where he’d grown up. But such stories had always struck him as too strange to have much truth behind them. Besides, these women and the kids all seemed normal, not tetched. Well, not outwardly anyway.
They passed a few minutes in silence, then Judith said, “How’s your leg?”
“I’ll live—thanks and no thanks to you.” He glanced at her to let her know he was only partly serious.
Before she could offer up what he was sure would be a biting response, they heard a shout from up ahead. A rider came toward them, rounding a cluster of boulders. Dark hair, no hat, and it looked to Slocum as if it was a woman. The rider was leading a second horse, riderless.
“I do believe that’s Ruth.” Slocum pulled his hat low over his forehead.
“Oh boy,” said Judith. And as they rode closer, Slocum was inclined to agree with Judith’s remark. Ruth’s pretty face was set in a scowl of rage. Even from fifty feet out, she hurled a string of harsh oaths at them, some of which Slocum wasn’t sure he’d ever heard before—and certainly not from a woman. They rode within ten feet of each other and Ruth kept right on barking and growling in anger that looked to be directed all at Slocum.
When she stopped long enough to draw a breath, he dove in with a quick volley of his own. “Good thing she was along, else I might not be here.” He turned the horse enough that Ruth could see his bloodied pant leg and the puckered, raw wound sticking out of it, swollen and bristling with tag ends of thread. He’d not looked down at the wound in a while, but it had grown more swollen and looked god-awful.
The sight of it at least had the pleasant effect of shutting up Ruth’s tirade. Even if only for a moment. Her face softened and she hopped down off her horse. She approached him with her hands out as if she were approaching a wounded bird.
When it looked as though she were about to touch it, he said, “Easy, I don’t want a blasted thing to graze it. It’s mighty tender just now. Truth is, I’m about spent and I expect Judith is, too. We had a big day. If I remember right, we’re not far from your encampment.”
That seemed to snap Ruth out of her daze of sympathy for him. “Yes, another twenty minutes or so should have us back there. I . . . I found Judith’s horse.” She looked at her sister with more relief than anger. “I’ve been looking most of the day. And when I found it, I feared the worst. I thought for sure you were laying bleeding to death somewhere.”
Slocum cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to partake of your hospitality once again. I could use a decent night’s rest, ride out again first light.”
“Like you did today, huh?”
“Yes, just like I said I would.” He stared straight at her, not letting her try to imply anything that hadn’t already been covered between them the night before.
Her face softened again. “Mount up, Judith. Mama’s got a few choice words for you, I expect.” She turned to Slocum. “And you, you look terrible . . . John.”
He offered a weary smile. “I expect I do. I’m not usually at my best when I’ve been shot.”
“Mama’s good with injuries. She’ll fix you up in no time.”
All those kids and men, I expect she’d have to be, he thought. As they headed back to the little run-down house with all the kids and women, Slocum had to admit it would be better than spending the night alone out in the foothills, but he knew that was only the throbbing pain in his leg talking.
The terrain was familiar to him, and he knew when they were drawing close. He fancied he could almost smell a pot of bubbling stew. And then they heard gunfire. And not just a random shot, but a volley. Up the last rise and there before them was the little tumbledown place, the wagon still out back, the little barn off to the left of the corral, and no people in sight. But a whole lot of smoke rose into the air from gunshots from the ridge directly across the trail from the house, close by. Dangerously close.
Slocum booted his horse into a gallop, barely outdistancing the two sisters on their own mounts. “Who’d be shooting at your family?” he shouted, not really needing an answer, for even as he asked it, he knew. And the looks on their faces told him his suspicions were probably right.
14
From the location of the flashes peppering the hillside across from the little house, it looked to Slocum as if there were four or five guns raining lead down on the place. He hustled the two women and their mounts into the barn and found that someone had already put the two workhorses in as well. The structure would keep them relatively safe, unless it caught fire. And would also prevent whoever it was attacking from stealing or running off the horses.
He slid his rifle from its boot, and stuffed extra shells into his pockets. “We have to get to the house, see if your family’s okay. You two go first, don’t waste time. I’ll cover you, then you do the same as I head to the wagon, halfway between the barn and house. Ready? I’ll say ‘Go!’ and you make tracks, got me?”
The sisters nodded to him and crouched low, holding hands.
“Go! Go! Go!” Slocum ripped off one shot after another into the trees and rocks across the trail, then managed two more rounds as he hightailed it, stiff-legged and hobble-running, toward the house. Within seconds, he joined the rest in the little thick-walled adobe house. It would withstand a lot of bullets. He only hoped the attackers didn’t have anything that they might toss at them through the sagged, hole-filled roof.
Slocum was relieved to note everyone seemed to be unhurt and clustered in the rearmost—and safest—corner of the house. Shots from their attackers echoed at random. Occasional shouts, unintelligible, reached his ears. They were the voices of men, but beyond that, he didn’t know what was being shouted.
The littlest ones were visibly frightened, whimpering and huddled under blankets, but there was little that Slocum could do, at least during daylight. Even then, he wondered how
useful he’d be to them now that his mobility was limited.
“Ma’am,” he said to the old lady, who wasn’t budging from her position just behind the shutter at the front window. “What’s going on here?”
Without looking at him, she snorted, said, “What does it look like? We’re being shot at.”
He joined her at the window, peeked carefully outside, the fading afternoon light revealing even less than mere moments before. “How long’s it been going on?” Before she could answer him, a shot spanged off the edge of the window inches from his face. “Damn!”
The old woman laughed.
“So who is it, do you know?”
She looked at him, but said nothing.
“Your husband and sons?”
That pulled her from her post by the window, and riveted every other eye in the place on him, too. “How’d you know?” Her voice was low, cold, and measured.
“How do you think? Before I arrived here yesterday, I came right by their place, found them lashed to fence posts out front, naked and nearly dead, sunburned beyond belief. I’d never seen anybody looking so bad off from the sun. It would have been funny, but a few more hours and they’d have surely been dead.” He watched their faces, and saw horror and worry there.
“Nearly dead, you say?” The old woman looked at the rifle in her hands, then spoke in a low voice, almost to herself. “Thought for sure they would have slipped them ropes in short order.” She looked up at him, a weird mixture of relief and anger on her face. “Only trying to buy us some time . . .”
“That would explain why they didn’t follow along until now,” said one of the twins. “We were just trying to give ourselves extra time to skedaddle, is all . . .”
The mother looked at him. “We never expected to break down so close to home.”
“In that wagon?” said Slocum. “You’d be lucky to make it another day or two without something else giving out.”
He peered out another window hole. “He wasn’t too happy when I left them. Talking all sorts of religious stuff, God this and God that and devil this and devil that and seasoning his speechifying with big words I’ve never heard a preacher use.”