by Jake Logan
“Who—” That was as far as one rustler got. Jonesy plugged him.
The other three went for their six-shooters. Slocum dropped one and then the other two gave up, hands flying into the air. One pissed himself in his fright.
“Don’t shoot. We give up!”
“Jonesy, no.” Slocum saw that the cowboy was going to cut them down in cold blood. Under other circumstances, this was the best cattle thieves could hope for. Otherwise, they’d get their necks stretched when the nearest tree was found.
“Spoilsport,” the cowboy grumbled. “Whatcha gonna do with ’em? No way we’re guardin’ ’em all the way to the railhead.”
“Pendergast,” Slocum said loudly, watching the two men’s reaction. Confusion. They exchanged looks, then stared up at Slocum.
“Mister, neither of us is anybody named Pendergast. Should we know ’em?”
“Probably help your cause if you did.”
Slocum saw the lie forming on one man’s lips—the one who had pissed all over himself. He caught himself and only looked frightened. The other shook his head.
“We ain’t Pendergast, and we don’t know anyone named that.”
“What’s that all about, Slocum?”
“Take two of the horses and gear—the dead men’s,” Slocum said to Jonesy. “And we drive back the beeves you’ve stolen.” He glared at the two rustlers. It hardly seemed possible but the one who had pissed himself before did it again.
“What’re you gonna do about us?”
“I’ll cut you down where you stand if I ever set on eyes on either of you again,” Slocum said in a tone that convinced both men they heard the gospel truth.
“You cain’t jist let ’em go, Slocum!”
“Yes, I can,” he declared.
The two surviving rustlers jumped into the saddle and rode like their tails were on fire.
“Shoulda kilt them. They’ll only steal somebody else’s cows.”
“That’s somebody else’s worry.” Slocum circled the bawling cattle and got them moving. Jonesy helped and they returned the steers to the herd a bit after sundown.
All the way back he kept thinking how this must have been some kind of test—or trap—laid down by Pendergast. Slocum knew rustlers would flock to a trail drive like flies to fresh cow flop. Picking up a stray or two was easy enough, and if the outriders weren’t attentive enough, a hundred cattle might be cut from the herd. With enough unscrupulous ranchers willing to buy the cattle and mix them in with their own herd at the railhead, considerable money could change hands. And some of it would go to the purchasing agents, willing to overlook the different brands in a herd.
But the rustlers he had caught showed no sign of having heard of Pendergast. Slocum was a good enough poker player to read when a man was lying about his hand. The one surviving rustler would have said anything to get away alive—even lying about knowing Pendergast, if that had been his ticket to freedom. His partner had ridden a different road and denied knowing Pendergast, and Slocum reluctantly believed him.
They got back to the main herd. Slocum was bone-tired but made one last circuit to see that everything was going well. When he returned to their camp, he looked around.
“Somethin’ chewin’ on you, Slocum?” Jonesy asked.
“Where’s Garvin?”
“Ain’t seen him. Lemme ask around. Damn fool’s as likely to git himself in more trouble than pluggin’ himself in the chest with his own gun out here.”
Slocum ate a can of beans and followed it with some peaches. The tinny taste burned his tongue, more because he worried about Garvin than the actual condition of the food in the airtights. He looked up when Jonesy returned.
“You ain’t gonna believe this, Slocum. He lit out after the two cow thieves you let go.”
“You mean he’s out there taking the law into his own hands?”
Jonesy nodded, then squatted and started his own cold meal.
“Son of a bitch.” Slocum got to his feet and went to saddle his horse.
“You ain’t goin’ after him, are you? Let him go, Slocum. He’s not worth the trouble.”
Slocum had vouched for the greenhorn, had shown him how to do the simpler tasks around a ranch, and now Garvin thought he knew it all. If he got the drop on the two outlaws, he might gun them down. There had been a wildness in his eye whenever he touched his six-shooter that bothered Slocum. He had seen enough killers in his day to recognize the bloodthirstiness building in the youngster.
“You keep everything calm, Jonesy,” Slocum said, wheeling his horse around and heading into the twilight.
“If you don’t let him be, you’re as much a fool as he is,” Jonesy shouted after him. Slocum couldn’t argue with that. He felt like a complete dunderhead, but he was responsible for Garvin, just as he was for the rest of the trail crew.
He got his bearings from the early evening stars and traced his path back to where he and Jonesy had stopped the rustlers. The track to the spot where the two bodies still lay was easy to find in the dim light. The cattle he and Jonesy had recovered had left a trail a blind man could have followed.
He snorted in disgust. The two fleeing outlaws hadn’t bothered to bury their partners. Dismounting, Slocum prowled about and saw that the bodies had been stripped of anything valuable. Their guns were missing, and torn pockets showed where hurried searches had found a watch or silver dollar tucked away.
Such behavior disgusted him. Jonesy had been right. If they hadn’t hanged the two rustlers, they should have gunned them down on the spot.
A second circuit of the area showed the direction taken by the fleeing outlaws. Slocum lit a lucifer and studied the ground more closely.
Three horses.
Two rustlers and Tom Garvin.
He looked into the distance, and before the match burned his fingers, he thought he caught faint signs of their hoofprints. He tossed the match aside, mounted, and started riding straight in the direction taken by the trio. For more than an hour he rode before he heard gunfire. Standing in the stirrups, he tried to get a better view ahead. The stars were his only illumination—and this let him find where the gunshots came from.
Long tongues of yellow-orange leaped out from his left. To his right came a different report, sharper, with a blue-yellow flash. He sized up the situation quickly. Garvin was to the right, shooting with his Smith & Wesson. The two rustlers had pinned him down with rifle fire. The young cowboy didn’t stand a chance because Slocum remembered Jonesy passing around boxes of ammunition. None of it had fit Garvin’s pistol.
Whatever ammo he had was in his pistol and the loops in his gun belt. The way he returned fire, he would be out of luck soon.
Slocum put his heels to his horse and got it moving forward, heading for a halfway point. The rustlers wouldn’t stay put when Garvin came up empty. They’d want to take out whoever had tried to kill them.
Deep in his gut Slocum knew that was the way it had gone down. Tom Garvin had opened fire on the two men, probably without announcing himself or giving them the chance to surrender. He might be wrong on this, but he doubted it. Worse, it hardly mattered. Garvin was in no position to run, and his ability to fight was dwindling rapidly.
Riding faster, Slocum heard the S&W come up empty. Muffled sounds followed. Garvin cursed as he either tried to reload or found he didn’t have any more ammunition.
The two outlaws advanced quickly. For all their fear when he and Jonesy had caught them, the two worked well together now. One fired while the other advanced. When it became obvious to them Garvin wasn’t returning their fire, either because he was wounded or had run out of cartridges, both advanced. Slocum reached a point where they crossed his line of sight. Both were too intent on their quarry to notice him level his Winchester and squeeze off a round.
One yelped. Slocum
didn’t have the certain feeling he had even winged him. That might have been a cry of surprise rather than pain. He fired with grim regularity until his magazine came up empty.
“Go get ’em, Garvin!” His order was intended to rout the rustlers. Not even Garvin would be foolish enough to actually rush the outlaws.
Slocum was wrong. Tom Garvin let out a shrill screech and ran forward, waving his pistol in the air. The moon had poked up enough above the horizon so that its light caught the S&W, turning it into a silvery sword waving above the man’s head.
Against all logic, the frontal assault caused the outlaws to turn tail and run. If Garvin had any rounds left, he could have finished them. Slocum drew his Colt and fired carefully, but the range was too extreme for accurate shooting, even under the best of circumstances.
The pair ran uphill and disappeared. Slocum galloped forward and overtook Garvin. The cowboy ran as hard as he could. His breath came like a locomotive, and beads of sweat had turned to liquid silver on his forehead. For a moment Slocum hardly recognized him. It might have been the skull of a dead man rather than Garvin’s face he saw.
“Slow down, dammit. Stop!” When Garvin showed no sign of obeying, Slocum drew even and kicked out, catching him between the shoulder blades and propelling him forward. Unable to keep his balance, Garvin skidded along in the dirt facedown.
He squirmed around, sat up, and waved his six-gun at Slocum.
“You—you can’t do that! I almost had ’em!”
“Quiet,” Slocum said. “You’re out of ammo.”
“They was runnin’ fer their lives!”
Slocum held up his Colt Navy and said nothing. Garvin sucked in deep drafts of air and calmed down somewhat. He finally got to his feet and shoved his six-gun into his holster.
“I coulda caught them, Slocum. You stopped me from catchin’ ’em!”
“How’d you have caught them, Tom?” He tried to sound calm, but his anger was almost at the boiling point.
“With this! I’d have hog-tied ’em!” Garvin held up his black rope. In the moonlight the silver strands glowed as if they were lit from within. “I’d’ve roped ’em!”
For a hoot and a holler Slocum would have let him try.
“You stay back of me. I’ve got the gun.”
“Let me have your rifle. You can’t shoot both at the same time.”
“It’s empty.”
This finally hit Garvin with the seriousness of their position. If all Slocum had left were the rounds in his six-shooter, any attack was likely to end in their deaths. Garvin panted harshly and finally got his breath back.
“We’re going to let them go. Let them think they got a posse on their asses.”
“No!”
Before Slocum could knock some sense into the young fool, the matter was determined for him. The two outlaws had decided to fight rather than run. Bullets whined past Slocum. He dived from the saddle, not wanting to lose another horse. Hitting the ground hard, he rolled and felt a sharp pain as a rock poked into his right elbow. It took a few seconds to shake the feeling back into the paralyzed arm.
When he looked around, he saw where one cattle thief had taken refuge. Garvin and the other were nowhere to be seen. Staying low, Slocum wormed his way uphill until he found a gully where he could take cover. And scant cover it provided, barely being deep enough for him to lie in so his back was level with the ground.
Two quick shots came, giving him both range and a spot to aim. The instant a third flash leaped out into the dark, he fired. Once, twice, a third time. He waited, but there wasn’t any sound, no additional rifle fire. Nothing. He poked his hat up to draw fire. When a round didn’t come to put a new hole in it, he scooted along the gully, got to his feet, and warily approached the tumble of rocks where the rustler sprawled on his back, raising sightless eyes to the beauty of the rising moon.
Slocum nudged him with his toe and got no response. He picked up the man’s rifle and held it in the crook of his left arm as he searched the pockets for any hint that the rustler had lied earlier about knowing Pendergast. All he found was a sweaty wad of greenbacks totaling four dollars.
Having eliminated one threat, Slocum went up the hill, senses straining to find out what had happened to Garvin. He expected to find him with a bullet in his chest—smack through where his heart actually resided.
Choking sounds drew him to his left. Just on the other side of the small rise stood a tree. The moonlight glinted off the silver in Garvin’s rope as it snaked over a limb and out of sight.
“You all right?” Slocum brought the rifle around when the gurgling sound suddenly stopped.
The rope slid back as the silhouette of a limp body swung into view.
“I roped ’im jist like I said I would, Slocum. Got the bastard!”
Garvin had dropped the loop over the man’s neck, then used the tree limb to hoist him. Rather than having his neck broken cleanly by a knotted noose, the outlaw had strangled to death.
“Let him down.”
“Why? He’s for certain dead.” Garvin released the rope. It made a slithering sound as it snaked over the limb and coiled itself atop the rustler’s body.
Slocum dropped to one knee and pressed his fingers against the man’s chest.
“Don’t worry on that score, Slocum. He’s dead.” The boast in Garvin’s voice almost made Slocum lash out at him. But he held his tongue. They had been in a fight for their lives. There wasn’t call to braid down the cowboy for surviving. If anything, he had fought against a man who ought to have killed him easily.
He went through the dead man’s pockets but found nothing but a nickel and a dime. He rocked back and sat heavily on the ground, watching the moonlight illuminate more of the corpse’s features. As he had thought before, this wasn’t one of Pendergast’s men and nothing in his pockets had shown him to ride with the outlaw. But what would he have found to prove that? Outlaws weren’t like lawmen. None of the rustlers riding with Pendergast wore badges proclaiming who they were.
Slocum felt suddenly tired, both physically and mentally. The outlaw had him by the balls so he saw the evil hand in everything that occurred.
“You want to split what I found?”
“What’s that?”
“I got everything worth takin’ from the other two, the ones you and Jonesy shot.”
“You took time to rob them?”
“Ain’t robbin’ when they don’t need it no more. All they had ’tween ’em was a pocket watch and eighteen cents.” Garvin held it out in the palm of his hand.
“Keep it. You earned it,” Slocum said bitterly.
“Don’t need your permission to do that. And I want what was in this one’s pockets. I kilt him fair and square, so it’s all mine by right.”
Slocum stood and tossed the two coins at Garvin’s feet.
“Your blood money,” he said. Without saying anything more, he started back to find his horse. He wanted this trail drive to be over as quick as possible so he wouldn’t have to ride with Tom Garvin another mile.
13
“Another day, maybe two,” Slocum said to Jonesy.
“You sound like you’re glad it’ll be over.” The cowboy laughed. “Don’t we all! I wanna get paid and laid, yes, sir, and a bottle. I want a bottle of popskull and am gonna get knee-walkin’ drunk.”
“It’s good to know where you’re headed,” Slocum agreed.
“What you gonna tell the boss ’bout him?” Jonesy looked at Tom Garvin, who rode some distance away.
“What’s to say? He’s done his work so he ought to get paid like everyone else.”
“You ain’t sayin’ a thing about that stampede or the rustlers?”
Slocum knew the cowboy doubted the wisdom of this, but he had decided. Garvin had settled down over the past week and h
ad pulled his weight. More than once, his quick lariat had saved them all a passel of trouble. Roping a steer and wrestling it to the ground when it started to lead another stampede was as close to suicidal as Slocum had ever seen, but Garvin had pulled it off. He and his lariat had been just what they needed to make the rest of the trip to the rail yard safe and sound.
“Cain’t believe he wrestled a steer like that. Hell and damnation, I bulldogged for a spell and threw my back out of place with a calf a quarter the size. He’s one lucky son of a bitch.”
“Seems to go in spells,” Slocum said. “Shooting himself was pure bad luck. And there’s been about as much bad to go with the good.”
“Still alive, still in the saddle, that makes him a winner, I reckon,” Jonesy said. “I’d just as soon ride a different trail.” He paused, then added, “But with you, Slocum, I’ll sign on any time. You know the country, you know the herd. It’s ’cuz of you we got through this quick.”
“Not so sure we’re through yet,” Slocum said, eyeing the sky. Heavy black clouds blew in from the northwest, the usual storm track this time of year. The clouds even crackled with lightning.
“Rain’s no problem, ’less we get flash flooding.”
“Might do just that,” Slocum said. He studied the terrain ahead and worried about how flat it was. The deep ravines had been cut by rapidly flowing water—like that promised by the storm moving their way fast enough that he saw the clouds sailing along. As he watched, the sun vanished behind a cloud heavy with rain.
“We kin outrun it,” Jonesy said.
Slocum doubted that was possible. A tiny raindrop already splatted against the brim of his hat, rolled about, and then dripped wetly onto his saddle. The smell preceding a heavy rain filled the air with a curious sharp scent. A sudden bolt of lighting too near for comfort caused his horse to rear. Slocum got it under control, then looked around for higher ground.
“We need to bed down for the storm. No way we can keep the herd moving. This is going to be a real frog strangler.”
“If you say so,” Jonesy said skeptically. “Wrong time of year for big rain. This’ll blow over in an hour. Been dry so far, so why’s it gonna catch up now?”