Slocum #396 : Slocum and the Scavenger Trail (9781101554371)

by Logan, Jake

  “There’s one outfitter in town,” Slocum said, remembering how the merchant had duped Hawkins. That wasn’t going to happen again. “Let me do the dickering.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Stephen said coldly.

  Brother and sister started toward the merchant’s tent, letting Slocum bring up the rear. It was a pointed insult showing that they considered him little more than a servant who could trail behind his betters, but Slocum didn’t mind since he got a chance to watch Melissa walk from behind.

  “You, sir, a word. We would make a few purchases,” Stephen called out. The merchant wiped dirty hands on his equally filthy apron and graced the Baranskys with a broad smile that died when he saw Slocum.

  “I need a mule and gear,” Slocum said.

  “What’s happened to—” The merchant bit off his question since it didn’t matter. Let Slocum buy everything. Who he sold to was less important than the amount he got for his goods.

  “I need a sturdy mule,” Slocum said, then detailed the rest of the supplies. A week on the trail would be all he required. Either he found Clem Baransky by then or he didn’t and would return to tell his children the man was dead.

  “Got a few good ones out back. Let’s go take a look at ’em, eh?” The merchant jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Slocum noticed the Baranskys let him lead the way down the muddy alley to the corral out back.

  “That’s all you have?” Stephen asked.

  “Don’t need a lot, son, when you got the best. And that’s what these are. The best.”

  Slocum went to the corral and stared at the nearest mule.

  “This one’s the best you’re likely to find,” Slocum said.

  It was the same mule Clement Baransky had left town riding.

  4

  “Who sold you the mule?” Slocum asked. He moved along the corral fence to be certain this was Baransky’s mule. It was. A peculiar white star off-center on the face was identical, as was a long brown mark on the right front leg.

  “Nobody around here has a name. Why should they?”

  Slocum glanced at the merchant and knew he was lying.

  “Want to buy some more but going straight to the breeder next time will save time and money,” Slocum said. He got a short, barking laugh as reply.

  “You ain’t cuttin’ me out no deal, mister. No way. Besides, the gent what sold me these mules ain’t a breeder. He just happened to come into them.”

  “Inherited them,” Slocum said in a neutral voice.

  “Why aren’t we pressing on with this negotiation?” Stephen Baransky glared at Slocum. “Time is of the essence.”

  “An hour, more or less, isn’t going to matter,” Slocum said. He walked around the corral, ostensibly to study the other mules. He saw several distinctive boot prints. Someone with a deep V cut in the right heel had walked through the mud recently since the prints hadn’t yet disappeared from a welter of mules and other people crowding in.

  “I like the youngster’s conviction on this. Time’s slippin’ away fer us all. Strike while the iron’s hot.”

  “I’ll take the mule. That one.” Slocum pointed to the one Baransky had ridden from town on.

  “Now you’re talkin’.”

  “Do we get a bill of sale?”

  “Little lady,” the merchant said condescendingly, “next thing you’ll be wantin’ me to sign a paper sayin’ I got title free and clear to this animal.”

  “Don’t you?”

  The merchant looked at Slocum, then laughed.

  “You kin tell her how things’re done out here, mister. Either give me one hundred dollars or find another mule.”

  “Here,” Slocum said, peeling off the greenbacks from the roll in his pocket.

  “Wait, sir, I said we would—” Melissa started to open her purse, but Slocum grabbed and closed it. He caught the merest flash of a lot of money inside. It wasn’t smart flashing that kind of scrip around a boomtown—or any town. How she had survived in the world without getting killed for her money was something of a poser.

  “I’ll collect that, too, when I get back.”

  “No, I won’t hear of it.”

  “Let him, Melly. We need to conserve our cash.”

  “Listen to your brother,” Slocum advised her. To the merchant, he said, “I’ll be back in an hour. Have all the gear ready for me then.”

  They dickered a bit more over the price and what was available, then Slocum took both the Baranskys by the arm and steered them away.

  “You find a place to stay until I get back in a few days. It might take a week, but if I’m gone longer than that, bet money I’m not coming back at all.”

  “You mean you will have discovered gold?”

  At first Slocum thought the woman was joking, then saw her solemn expression.

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  Stephen Baransky obviously caught Slocum’s jest and looked around.

  “I need to get some directions first, then I’ll be off.”

  “But,” said Melissa, “all you need do is ride up that trail. It is quite well defined and easy to follow. I can tell that from here.”

  “The trail gets rockier higher up the slope. Getting through Desolation Pass is something of a gamble at the best of times, and spring storms make the way deadly right now.”

  He tipped his hat to her, exchanged looks with her brother, then headed for the nearest saloon. Stephen made a slighting comment about men who couldn’t go without liquor, but Slocum ignored it. He still had a powerful thirst, but whiskey wasn’t what he sought. A thief who had just sold a stolen mule would likely wet his whistle before heading back up the mountainside.

  And he was likely to head for the nearest gin mill.

  Slocum stepped into the saloon and was immediately engulfed in smoke, stale beer odors, and soaring dreams. A half-dozen prospectors pressed against the bar, all talking excitedly about how much gold they would find and what they were going to spend their first million on. He dismissed them out of hand because the owlhoot he sought knew a better way to getting rich.

  Three men played cards at a back table and another shot pool at a table propped up with a rock and a few wedges of wood. Slocum moved to the poker table, drawn by the click of chips and soft swishing of cards being dealt, but he turned and stared when the man at the pool table leaned forward to make a difficult across-table shot.

  His boot heel was deeply notched in the same way as the print he had discovered at the corral. Slocum dropped into a chair and watched as the man shot and repeatedly missed, then flung the cue onto the table and loudly proclaimed, “Damned table’s not level and them balls ain’t round neither. How you expect a man to play a proper game with defective equipment?”

  “Leastwise the table’s got balls. That’s more ’n I can say for you,” called out the barkeep. “You gonna pay what you owe me or are you gonna just take up space?”

  “To hell with you.” The man fumbled in his pocket and drew out a thick wad of greenbacks. He peeled off a large number of bills and dropped them on the pool table. “That’ll take care of the lot of us.”

  “You want a bottle of the special to take back with you?”

  “Why not? But it had better be real Kaintuck bourbon and not that trade whiskey you boil up. Trueheart ain’t gonna put up with it.”

  “Tell him he’s welcome anytime he’s in town. You, now, you son of a bitch, clear out.”

  The two men’s animosity boiled over. The pool player went for his six-gun, but the barkeep had a scattergun out and pointed. They stood frozen for a moment, then the man at the pool table stalked out the back door. Slocum shot to his feet and went outside, waiting for the man to come into sight. When he didn’t round the building, Slocum went hunting.

  Behind the saloon he found only heavy mud that was too deep to take decent tracks. It looked as if the entire 2nd Infantry from Camp Coeur d’Alene had marched across it. Nowhere did he see the man from the saloon. Slocum went back through the rear door
and to the bar, where he caught the barkeep’s attention.

  “I wanted to send a message to Trueheart,” he said, “but the gent who was just in here left before I could talk to him.”

  The barkeep stared at him as if he were made of smoke.

  “Don’t know nobody named Trueheart,” the bartender said. “And you’re the only one who’s come and gone. What are you drinkin’?”

  Slocum left without another word. He was getting hot under the collar but understood what was going on. Trueheart had a gang working the trail leading over the mountains, and everyone in town was beholden to him. The merchant bought and sold stolen equipment many times over and the barkeep made a steady income off profits.

  He returned to the corral, where the merchant had dropped a pack and supplies into the mud. Slocum wiped off the filth, carefully packed, making sure he had everything he needed, then lashed the pack down onto the mule’s rump. With a jump, he was over and astride the animal, much to its displeasure. It took a few seconds to convince the balky mule he wasn’t getting down. With some reluctance, the mule turned of its own accord to the trail leading to Desolation Pass and began walking.

  It had been this way before—many times before. Slocum wondered if it had ever gone the entire way.

  Going over the same terrain proved easier the second time. Slocum had a good memory for roads he had traveled, and this was no exception. He passed the turnoff where he had insisted the original party camp for the night and pressed on to the rocky gap. Clem Baransky had made it this far. But how much farther along the road had he traveled before being dry-gulched?

  Slocum realized he might never find the exact spot—or Baransky’s body. It had been pure accident that he had found Hawkins after he had been killed. If the road agents had taken more time and tossed his body over a cliff, the carrion eaters would have reduced Hawkins to skeletal remains within a day or two. The best Slocum could hope was to find where Baransky had been waylaid and maybe bury what was left of him.

  He found himself not wanting to upset Melissa Baransky more than necessary. The sight of her pa’s half-decomposed body slung over a mule’s back would be a shock he could sidestep with a judicious lie. Slocum reached into his coat pocket and drew out the envelope so he could hold it in the fading sunlight. The copper tint the setting sun lent the writing might have been mistaken for blood.

  The letter was simply addressed “Father.”

  What brother and sister felt was so all-fired important that they had to leave their fancy-ass society and come to Idaho after their pa might be in the letter. Slocum had a passing curiosity about it, but mail was as sacrosanct as a man’s word. He would pass it on to Baransky if he found him alive or, more likely, return the unopened letter to Melissa after he gave up hunting for the corpse.

  As he swayed along, the surefooted mule hardly missing a step as the road increasingly sloped upward, he found himself almost asleep. The dangers were great and he ought to remain alert, but thoughts of Melissa Baransky kept crowding out attentiveness. She was quite a looker. He reached into his coat pocket and fingered the edge of the envelope, wondering what she had written to her pa and why she had traipsed across the country to this godforsaken edge of nowhere.

  It was a mystery but not one Slocum was willing to solve by opening the envelope and reading the letter. Considering how both brother and sister had acted, there might be nothing at all inside. It might be a trick to see how trustworthy he was.

  Such thoughts led to ruin. Slocum had no reason to trust them nor did they have any reason to trust him. He was surprised the merchant hadn’t mentioned Slocum leading an earlier party out, but chances were good he didn’t want to jinx another sale. More than this, Trueheart might not be the only outlaw working the trail. Slocum might have been mistaken for another thief and murderer who could bring immense, immediate wealth to the merchant in return for his silence.

  The road reached a plateau and leveled off. Marmots poked their heads from burrows and watched him warily. Enough prospectors had come past for the small rodents to know they might end up as dinner in a stewpot if they weren’t careful. Slocum took the opportunity to look down and see where earlier travelers had gone along this stretch. Most followed the path but enough veered away that he wondered if Baransky had done so only to find himself in an ambush amid a stand of trees. There were still plenty at this altitude. The tree line was another fifteen hundred feet higher on the mountain.

  Slocum reared back and looked up at the summit of Desolation Mountain on his right. The saddle pass formed between it and the mountain to the left was at least two thousand feet higher, well above the timberline. It was deceptive, he knew. Two thousand feet was nothing—only this was straight up and his lungs already strained just a mite to suck in air. It would be far worse by the time the pass opened up to spill gold seekers onto the far side of the mountain.

  “Where might he have gone?” Slocum asked the mule. The long-eared head turned and a big brown eye fixed on him. Slocum had no better idea, so he dismounted and gave the mule its head. It might go after a tuft of grass or hunt water, but it might also remember the trail it had traversed before with Clem Baransky on its back. Slocum had no better way of tracking.

  The mule kicked and tried to free itself of its load. When it realized Slocum had cinched the supplies down too securely, it settled down, turned back to the road, and then started walking at a brisk pace that forced Slocum to lengthen his stride to keep up. He doubted the mule would continue with him on its back, but it seemed content to go along without a rider.

  He only hoped this was the same track taken by Baransky.

  His hope flared when the mule suddenly veered off the road and went to a small, grassy meadow. It positioned itself near a clump of grass and began eating. Slocum examined the grass and saw it was already half eaten, whether by this mule or some other creature he couldn’t tell. But the mule had shown considerable memory before. This might be a safe place for it to eat because it had done so before.

  As it grazed, Slocum began circling the area, his search spiral widening until he found footprints. The grass here was crushed as if several men had milled about—or maybe fought. He thought about what he saw and constructed a small stage play of what had happened.

  Baransky had let his mule graze, then walked in this direction. A shallow ravine still held spoor where several men had hidden. Or Slocum thought that might be what had happened. Baransky had approached for some reason, then he had been jumped. The scuffle was brief but fierce enough to kick up the thin mountain dirt and grass growing on it.

  From here they all headed toward the far side of the meadow.

  Slocum lost the tracks because of a rocky patch, but he reckoned that the kidnappers walked straight ahead since Baransky wasn’t putting up a fight any longer. Here and there Slocum had found double ruts in the dirt that showed where a man was dragged along facedown, his toes digging into the ground.

  As he crossed the rocky patch, he heard a moan. His hand flashed to his Colt Navy, but he did not draw. Flopped on his back a dozen yards away stirred a man. He tried to push himself up on his elbows and failed, to collapse back to the ground.

  Slocum hurried over.

  “You all right? What happened? You get robbed?” The man was short and squat. Not Clem Baransky. But if he had been dry-gulched recently, he might have seen where Baransky went—or where he had been taken.

  “Help me. Head. Hurts. Hit me.”

  Slocum hurried over, then whipped out his pistol and got a shot off at the man on the ground. He recognized him as one of the road agents who had killed Young and Niederman. His bullet went wide, then all hell came crashing down around him. From shallow ravines on either side of the road agent boiled three more men, their guns blazing.

  Slocum felt an instant of sharp pain, threw up his hands, and knew his six-shooter went flying through the air. Then the world turned black, and he knew nothing more.

  5

  Flies buzzing. Ho
t sun burning his face. Slocum moaned and tried to bat both away. The fly might have been scared off by his feeble swatting but the sun still cooked his flesh. He dropped his hand to shield his eyes and slowly opened them. Sun filtered through his fingers. For a few seconds, it annoyed him, then he realized what it meant and he rejoiced.

  He was still alive.

  Trying to roll onto his side proved harder than it should have. Tightness along the side of his head turned to utter pain when he moved. He stopped screening his eyes and traced the long, narrow crease left by a bullet. The pain he caused pressing into the wound focused him and brought everything rushing back.

  Ignoring the discomfort, he sat up and squinted hard to keep his eyes in focus. He lay in the grassy field where he had thought to be a Good Samaritan and rescue another victim of the scavengers. Instead, he had fallen prey to them.

  “That’s how they got Baransky,” he said. His voice was raspy, hoarse, his lips chapped and feeling like old dried-out rubber. “One decoyed him close and the others grabbed him.” Slocum tried to stand but wasn’t up to it yet. He sat heavily, regaining his strength. “Why’d they kidnap him and not kill him on the spot?”

  The answer trickled through the barricades that pain threw up in his brain. They had thought he was dead. The dried blood on his head and face made it look as if they had blown his brains out.

  Every instant of the brief gunfight rushed back. He reached across to his holster. Empty. Swinging around, he hunted for his Colt and found it twenty feet away. When he had been shot, he had thrown up his hands and sent it spinning far enough away that the road agents hadn’t wanted to take time hunting for it.

  And why should they? They had—again—stolen the mule Baransky had ridden and put close to a week’s worth of food into their larder. It was a profitable and safe robbery. Who would notice if a few prospectors never reached the area with the most recent gold strike? Even if someone awaited them, they’d think news had come of a bigger, richer strike. And many would never make it across the pass, even in the better weather promised by springtime. The way to the other side of Desolation Mountain was treacherous at the best of times.