by Logan, Jake
“Slocum!” Young half turned. “Help me. Niederman’s dead. They shot him!” He held up the Colt and stared at it. “I took this from him, but I’m out of ammo.”
A bullet whined past the man’s ear, making his eyes go even wider in fear. He sat down fast to get out of sight.
“What happened?”
“I dunno. They snuck up and started shooting. Never gave us no warning or anything!”
“Why’d you leave camp when I told you to stay?” Slocum sat beside Young, pried the Colt from the man’s hand, and saw that it was empty. Hunting for ammo on the dead Niederman or locating his gear and finding a box of cartridges was out of the question. A new barrage tore at the trees all around, sending splinters and sap flying in all directions.
“No reason to wait. There’s gold a’waitin’ us up there.”
“All you’re going to find is a grave,” Slocum said. He chanced a quick look around and knew his worst fear had been realized. The sudden increase in lead filling the air meant at least one road agent was intent on keeping them pinned down while another—others—circled to get behind.
“They’re sneaking up on us, probably coming from both flanks,” Slocum said. “You got more ammunition for that old gun?”
Young lifted the G&G and stared at it as if he had never seen it before in his life.
“Reload and try not to get your head blown off.”
“Wait, Slocum, you can’t go. You—” Young gasped as a bullet ripped through his shoulder, sending a red spray out into Slocum’s face.
He shoved Young back. The man gasped in pain.
“They shot me!”
“They’re going to kill you like they did Niederman unless you fight. Don’t give up. Try to surrender and they’ll cut you down where you stand.”
Young’s mouth opened like he was a fish washed up on a riverbank. No words came out. Slocum saw that he had read the man’s mind perfectly. It sounded safe to Young to give up. Drop his pistol, throw up his hands, the outlaws wouldn’t shoot at him anymore.
“You understand? They’re not going to leave any of us alive. They are going to kill you and steal everything you have.”
“I … I’ll give it to them! They don’t have to shoot me again!”
Slocum reached out and drove strong fingers into the shoulder wound. Young screeched in pain.
“Why’re you hurtin’ me, Slocum?”
“To force some sense into your head.” He squeezed again and forced Young to thrash about and pull away from him. “It’ll hurt a whole lot worse if you surrender.”
Young nodded once, turned, and rested his old six-shooter on the top of the rock where he crouched and squeezed off a shot.
It went high, but Slocum didn’t care if Young was a marksman. Flinging lead kept the outlaws honest—a little.
He left Young and went into the woods to intercept whoever tried to sneak up from behind. Only a dozen yards into the woods, he saw a man dressed like a miner in canvas pants and a black-and-red-checked shirt moving in fast. He carried a sawed-off shotgun like he knew how to use it.
Slocum took careful aim and fired, then cursed. His bullet had struck a twig and deflected just enough to prevent a killing shot. The outlaw yelped and fell forward but wasn’t permanently out of the fight.
Or out at all.
Knowing he had no time left to lay another ambush, Slocum pushed forward with reckless abandon. He made as much noise as he could as he yelled, whooped, and hollered.
“Charge, boys, get ’em. There’s only the one! We got ’im outnumbered!”
He didn’t care if the outlaw believed his shouted lies. All he wanted was a moment of hesitation. And he got it.
The outlaw came to his knees and looked around. As he looked into the woods to his right, Slocum came on from his left. Another shot broke the man’s wrist. Then Slocum swung his Colt Navy as hard as he could. The barrel crunched into bone. The outlaw keeled over, out like a light.
Slocum scooped up the shotgun and waited to see if the felled outlaw had a partner.
He heard nothing but the sporadic shooting from behind him. Then came another flurry of gunfire.
And then nothing. The silence was so great that it hurt Slocum’s ears.
Finally an unfamiliar voice crowed, “Got the son of a bitch. Blowed his fool head right off. Let’s get his gear and clear out.”
Slocum clutched the shotgun, wondering what he ought to do. Then it was decided for him.
3
“Where’s Weasel?”
“He was goin’ ’round to come up from behind,” said a second outlaw.
Slocum flinched when a third voice rang through the forest.
“Weasel! Git yer ass over here right now. We got work to do. Don’t want you out there communin’ with nature.”
Three men laughed uproariously, warning Slocum that they’d hunt for their partner when the joke wore off. They’d come out mad at him, or maybe they were crafty enough to think he had run afoul of someone with Young. He backed away, careful to keep from making much noise. His palms began to sweat, and the shotgun turned slippery in his grip when he heard them coming.
They moved as silently as he did, no joshing around now. He might get lucky and kill them one by one. More likely, he could drill one of them before the other two closed in on him and shot him as dead as they had Young and Niederman.
He lifted the shotgun, mind racing. His thumb stroked over the hammers, then he moved fast. There wasn’t much time, and he doubted it would work, but he had to try something. He knelt beside the man he had buffaloed, grabbed the limp hand, and curled a finger around the trigger. Pulling hard, he raised the body far enough to position the shotgun so the muzzles rested under the man’s chin.
He pulled the trigger. The roar was muffled by the outlaw’s brains. The top of his head disappeared in a red mist, but Slocum had ducked back to avoid having much spatter him.
“That’s Weasel’s shotgun,” one called to his partners.
Slocum was startled. The voice came from nearby, closer than he’d expected. He started to dart in the other direction, then took the time to move the dead man’s boot so the toe tangled up in an exposed tree root. Only then did Slocum crouch and duck walk away from the approaching outlaw.
He barely found shelter behind a rotting log. Stretched out behind it, he hoped the outlaw now standing over the dead body wouldn’t notice. Slocum yanked off his hat and crushed it down, then tried to melt into the ground. The side of his face pressed into sticky pine needles, he saw through a hole in the log as the outlaw dropped to one knee and rolled the dead man over.
“The clumsy bastard,” the outlaw said, looking up. Two men stepped from shadows to join him. “He tripped and blowed his own damn head off.”
“Might be that kid we killed got him?”
“See?” The man who had found Weasel reached down and tried to pull the tangled foot free. Slocum heard bones break as the man jerked hard in his fury and frustration. “He always was clumsier than a drunken rooster peckin’ ’round for corn on an outhouse floor. Did him in.”
“We got to bury him?”
“Let him rot,” the man beside him said, standing.
“More for us. But you think the boss ought to be told what happened?”
“It’ll make the boss think we done up and kilt him,” said the third man. “I say, we tell the boss he got careless and a prospector got in a lucky shot.”
They argued for another minute, finally agreeing that Weasel had been cut down in the heat of battle. They walked away without so much as a backward look—after stripping the body of its weapons, a pocket watch, and a small wad of greenbacks.
Slocum was willing to give them their booty in exchange for getting the hell away alive. He lay behind the log, tense with every sense alert for a hint that they had discovered him. Sounds from the direction of where Niederman and Young had died told him they had the pair’s mules. The two dead prospectors were probably stripped of the sc
ant belongings carried on their person, then distant sounds of animals walking away made Slocum hope he was well rid of the killers.
He still remained in hiding for another half hour before standing. Making his way through the woods, he found the bodies of the dead prospectors. His approach scared away a coyote. The snarling animal stood a few yards in front of him, considering how difficult it would be to claim its dinner from a living human.
Slocum didn’t want to take the time but felt the obligation. He had taken money from these two for a safe passage across the mountains. Lacking a shovel or any of the other tools that had been stolen, he made a rude grave of stones piled atop the two bodies. Scratching names on a rock using the tip of his knife seemed a poor grave marker, but it was more than the pair would have received if he hadn’t come along.
He dropped the marker stone onto the larger pile, then began walking.
It had been a hell of a day. He’d had three of his party murdered and robbed, and he didn’t have good feelings the same hadn’t happened to Clem Baransky.
* * *
The boomtown was even more crowded than when he had left with his four charges. Slocum didn’t draw any attention. Nobody remembered faces. Looking around at the hard cases, maybe some of them took money from eager prospectors and murdered them up on the road across the mountain. Nobody would care if the money got spent in Almost There on booze and hookers.
Slocum dropped into a chair at the back of a long, narrow tent with a crude plank over two sawhorses serving as a bar. A touch of the whiskey on his tongue made him gag. He sucked in a deep breath, then knocked back the shot and let it sear its way to his belly. It might have been the thought of losing all four in the party or it might have been a lack of decent food but the liquor churned and boiled and made him sick to his stomach.
He downed another shot.
This time the alcohol worked to numb him, in both body and mind.
If he drank enough, he might even forget the faces of the men he had signed on to guide.
If he drank more than enough, even the ugly hookers might not look so ugly and would help him forget.
“Sir?”
Slocum looked up but nobody was close to him. A moment’s panic seized him as he thought the dead men were speaking to him. Then the voice came again, softer and sweeter than anyone he knew.
“Please, sir, may I speak with you?”
Slocum craned his neck and almost fell from the rickety chair. A woman held up the edge of the tent, staring right at him. For a moment, he thought he recognized her. Then the feeling faded a mite.
“What do you want?”
“A moment of your time, that’s all. Please. Can you come outside? Out back of this … of this place?”
Slocum took another shot, thinking this desert mirage would go away, but it didn’t. She was as pretty as any woman he could remember. Her soft brown hair caught the sun and revealed auburn highlights. Eyes of melted chocolate stared at him from behind impossibly black eyelashes. A hint of rouge gave her cheeks a blush. Or did she use makeup? The rosy color might be natural. Her finely boned cheeks, bow-shaped lips, and strong chin gave Slocum a reason to duck under the tent flap she held for him.
He found himself facing not only the woman but a slender man, perhaps a year or two younger, who was the spitting image of Clem Baransky. Slocum paused as the woman dropped the tent flap and stared at him, as if appraising a prize heifer.
“You will do,” she said.
“Pleased to hear that,” Slocum said. “Now I’ll get back to my drinking.”
“One moment!” She reached out and touched his arm, then drew away as if she had touched a hot stove. “My brother and I require your services.”
“Gold prospecting is dangerous, too dangerous for the likes of you.”
“We have no desire for that,” she said. “I am Melissa Baransky and this is Stephen, my brother. We want to hire you to find our father.”
Slocum shouldn’t have been surprised since the son was the spitting image of his pa, and there were hints of the man reflected in the woman’s features.
“I’ve been doing some thinking on that,” he said. Letting Clem Baransky go off on his own was a foolish thing, but losing all four of the men he had been paid to guide to the goldfields was even worse. He knew three were dead but had no idea if Baransky had survived. Getting through Desolation Pass was hard but fighting off road agents intent on stealing equipment and animals added to the threats.
He owed Baransky more than he had delivered.
“I beg your pardon?” Melissa looked at his curiously.
“Why’d you pick me to hunt for him?”
Melissa and her brother exchanged glances again. Slocum noticed that Stephen put his hand in a pocket that already bulged. A small gun hidden there might be fired through the coat. Slocum ignored the motion. These were city slickers and uneasy being surrounded by rough characters. This made him wonder about the Baransky family since Clem had shown himself to possess toughness that wasn’t apparent in his children.
“We have asked around and no one else seems … likely.”
“You mean honest?”
Melissa’s lips thinned to a line. She nodded once.
“We know our pa came through only a few days ago, but no one in this town—it doesn’t appear to have a name—admits to seeing him.” Stephen Baransky looked peeved at this.
“A hundred men a week come through here, maybe more,” Slocum said. “And they call the town Almost There, because it’s the last town before the gold strike.” He could think of other reasons but doubted the Baranskys wanted to hear them.
“You guide them to the goldfields?” Melissa looked at him without guile.
“I just got to town myself,” Slocum said, still wondering if they knew he had been hired to guide their pa and were setting him up for an ambush. Even in a wide-open, no‑holds-barred boomtown like Almost There, killing in the streets was frowned upon. He hadn’t seen a marshal but that didn’t mean a vigilance committee couldn’t form at the drop of a hat—or the knotting of a noose.
“So you are not skilled enough to do this?”
“Miss, I need equipment. The trail’s mighty steep and would require a mule rather than a horse.”
“We can afford to outfit you. And … and guarantee payment when you return with our father.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then you must bring us his body,” Melissa said, trying not to cry. She didn’t quite make it. A tear glistened at the corner of her eye, but she turned slightly to prevent Slocum from seeing it.
“What’s so all-fired important about dragging him away from his prospecting?”
“We—” she began.
“That’s none of your business,” Stephen said, anger touching his words. A wildness in his eyes banked as suddenly as it appeared. “Will you go after him? For fifty dollars?”
“And the supplies?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Melissa said. “We can place your money in the bank, in escrow.”
“No need. I trust you.” Slocum smiled grimly. “Don’t think there is a bank in town. None of the merchants reckon to stay here long enough.”
“But you said a hundred men a week pass through,” said Stephen. “I don’t understand. Why isn’t there a bank?”
“Folks don’t trust bankers and rely on their own six-shooters to protect their poke. And a boomtown like this might be a ghost town in a month. A week.”
“All the gold will be found so everyone moves on?” Melissa asked.
He wondered if she had any idea how rare it was for any prospector to find enough gold to make the dangerous hunt worthwhile. She acted as if it were a foregone conclusion that every man who reached the goldfields struck it rich.
She shared that notion with her pa and every other man trying to get across the mountains to the Promised Land.
“The real gold’s made selling the equipment.”
“We know our father depart
ed a few days ago. We were close to reaching him but our wagon broke down and we only recently arrived here.” Melissa seemed anxious to explain why they were unable to find their father in time to stop him. Slocum had only passing interest in what was so all-fired important that both brother and sister had to make the effort.
“I don’t know how long it’ll take,” Slocum said. “Might be a few days to find him and that many to return. That’s assuming he wants to come back with me.”
“Oh, yes, I understand that,” Melissa said. “It might be construed that you were attempting, on the behalf of others, to keep him from his goldmine. I have taken care of that.” She fished around in a clutch purse and withdrew a small envelope. “This will convince him to return here.” She held it out, then pulled it back when Slocum reached for it. “Can you read?”
“Does it matter?”
“The letter is personal. Family business,” Stephen said brusquely. “We don’t want the information bandied about.”
“Who am I going to tell that’d be interested?”
Melissa extended the letter. Slocum tucked it into his coat pocket without even glancing at what was written on the front. He supposed it was her pa’s name.
“We’ll get you outfitted, if the contract is acceptable to you.”
“It’s a deal.”
“You won’t use this opportunity to go hunting for gold on your own, will you?”
“Don’t outfit me if you’re worried.”
“That’s no kind of attitude, sir,” Melissa said, outraged.
“You either trust me or you don’t.” He watched emotions play over the woman’s lovely face and knew it hardly mattered what she decided. The Baransky family could get him the supplies needed, or not. He was going after her father because he owed it to the man. Abandoning him on the mountainside was nothing short of dereliction of duty.
“Very well,” Melissa said. “We will outfit you.”
“Melly, please, let’s discuss this.”
“No, Stephen, we need to move quickly. This gentleman is going to aid us.”