by Logan, Jake
But patience was not always a virtue when decisions had to be made quick—and right.
“Ross will bring up a team from the town corral, maybe mules or oxen, depending on how heavy the freight is.” He kept Melissa in his arms as he slowly turned in a full circle to better get an idea what was possible and what wasn’t.
“Up on the roof of the warehouse,” he said. “The freighter will bring the wagon around, probably to that door, where the supplies will be loaded. Then we drop down into the wagon bed.”
“We kill the driver and—”
“We try not to be seen.”
“I want them all dead!”
“Not until the driver takes us to the mine and your pa.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “I’m not good at thinking these things through.”
“Plan on how you’ll get even with Sally and Atkins.”
“Atkins,” she said, turning the name into a snake’s hiss. “I had forgotten about him. He sold me to her! He’s no better than a Southern slave owner. He—”
“Hush,” Slocum said, pulling her into shadows. He heard mules coming, their braying carrying through the mountain air and even drowning out the jeers and shouts from the saloon. From the noise the miners produced, the bare-assed hootchy-cootchy dancer had begun a new performance.
Slocum looked at Melissa and was thankful, as awful as her ordeal had been, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the woman on stage at the Nubile Nugget. It didn’t matter if that woman wanted to be there. The man taking up the collection kept the money she earned by exposing her and offering her to a long line of miners. Long after she was worn out or dead, her manager would be spending the money she had garnered.
“We have to hurry. If those mules are pulling a wagon—”
“They are. Listen hard.” Slocum heard the clanking of harness and the creaks of a wagon that had carried one load too many.
“We have to get onto the roof! We have to if we’re going to jump down.”
“Too dangerous now,” he said softly. “Just wait. Our chance will come. When it does, we have to be ready.”
She tried to protest, but he silenced her with a kiss. She fought him for a moment, then succumbed.
“You know how to get my attention,” she said, giggling. Then she sobered as Ross drove past in a heavy wagon, six mules hitched to it.
“We couldn’t get onto the roof to jump off. We may not have to,” he said.
“Do you think he’ll notice if we slip into the back of the wagon once he gets rolling?” Her brown eyes glowed in the dark as she stared up into his face. Slocum felt a pang of consternation. Her pa had trusted him, and it had landed him in Trueheart’s clutches. So far, he hadn’t done too much better with her and her brother.
“We can only try.”
Slocum held her close as Ross and three from inside the warehouse moved tools and tossed them into the back of the wagon. Then came the reason such a wagon had been sent. Case after case was moved, the workers carrying their loads gingerly.
“Dynamite,” she said softly.
Slocum had no fear of the explosive. He had worked with it enough to know its limitations and dangers. What worried him were the blasting caps. The fulminate of mercury caps could blow at the slightest touch. A fuse would set them off or a hammer blow or just looking cross-eyed at them.
“Get it secured,” Ross said. “Trueheart wants everything to be ready for the morning shift.”
“We that close?”
“Who knows? He don’t confide much in me. All I know for sure is that I got to get back to feed the mules up in the corral.”
“You and your animals.”
“I deal with you, don’t I?” Ross laughed. It took a few seconds before the others joined in.
“What if they watch him go? What’ll we do then?” Melissa sounded less afraid than she did excited. The thrill of danger brought color to her cheeks, and she trembled like a racehorse waiting for the starter’s gun.
“Begin walking,” Slocum said. The workmen stood in the warehouse doorway as Ross pulled out in the wagon. The mules protested loudly, braying and trying to kick. The driver proved adept enough to both calm them and get the team pulling in unison.
“What?”
Slocum took Melissa’s arm and started her on a course parallel to the wagon. As it rattled past, he shoved her to get her into the wagon bed.
The rough ride proved lucky for them. Melissa stumbled and almost fell, but the twisting of the wagon covered the sound of her jumping up onto it. Slocum quickly followed, turned, and sat with his legs dangling over the edge so he could stare back at the warehouse. If the trio that had loaded the wagon noticed the additional riders, they didn’t make a fuss over it. Slocum saw a tiny orange coal glowing in the dark. One had built a cigarette and smoked, possibly passing it to his partners. They wouldn’t be too interested in anything else.
“What do we do now?”
“Get under the tarp,” Slocum said, lifting the dusty cloth so Melissa could crawl beneath it. She hesitantly obeyed. Slocum followed and lay close to her.
She giggled again and reached down to put her hand on his crotch.
“This is more fun than I thought it would be.”
“Don’t get too distracted,” he warned.
“Me? You need to take your own advice.” She squeezed down harder, and he began to respond. He reached down, caught her slender wrist, and pulled her hand away. Thinking clearly now meant life or death.
“We need to guess when to jump off. We don’t want to get too close to wherever the wagon’s headed.”
“But we might not find my papa!”
“Not so loud,” he said. The rattle of the wagon, clank of the loaded tools, the complaining mules, and the creak of the harness all muffled her words, but her voice was high-pitched enough to catch Ross’s attention.
Slocum chanced a look out from under the tarpaulin but couldn’t figure out where they were. Ross had driven east but began following the curve of the mountain so, Slocum guessed, they headed north. It hardly mattered, but he needed to know how to get back to the town and steal enough mules to escape. The roadbed the wagon followed might be all he needed to retrace this route, but Trueheart was a crafty bastard and might have guards stationed along the way.
How long they drove, he couldn’t say. The motion of the wagon as it hit potholes and rocks kept him from nodding off, but Melissa pressed close and gave him a sense of invulnerability that proved dangerous.
The sudden halt threw Slocum flat. He fought to regain his balance, but the tools shifted and pinned part of the tarp down.
He kicked and slid backward, finding the edge of the wagon. His boots were exposed—and he heard a man growl deep in his throat like a dog waiting to attack.
“What’s goin’ on, Ross? What you got back here as freight?”
Slocum reached for his pistol as the tarp was yanked off him and Melissa.
14
Slocum didn’t fire but kicked out like a mule, both boots hitting the man squarely in the chest. After the whoosh! as air rushed from the man’s lungs came a thud when he landed flat on his back.
“Go hide,” Slocum said to Melissa. “But wait a second while I lead them off.”
He surged to his feet, swung his pistol around, and raked the front sight against Ross’s cheek. The driver yelped and grabbed to stanch the sudden spew of blood. He fell back and got his feet tangled in the driver’s box, going down hard.
Slocum vaulted the side of the wagon and walked away at a slow, deliberate pace, his Colt Navy at his side. This was his only chance to look around to see where he and Melissa had been brought. The mouth of a mine yawned wide and dark. He considered going in, sending a few bullets down the tunnel, then trying to get away. Any armed miner would return fire and create even more confusion, but he didn’t have the chance because Ross had regained his balance and fumbled for a rifle. Worse, the man he had knocked flat on his ass gasped like a blacksmith’s bell
ows and made funny gobbling sounds. It would be only seconds before he unlimbered his six-shooter and started firing.
When two armed guards came from the mineshaft, Slocum took his first shot. His bullet went high and brought down a cascade of dust and rock fragments on their heads, momentarily confusing them.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” The guard in the lead lifted his rifle and fired in Slocum’s direction.
He knew instantly luck still rode with him and not with the man who had discovered him and Melissa in the wagon bed. A shriek of agony went up, quickly followed by a gurgling sound.
“You damn fool, you done shot Gillespie!” Ross levered a round into his rifle, but Slocum wasn’t waiting around to become an easy target.
Dodging, ducking, and weaving, he fired a couple more times to draw fire. He didn’t have a chance to look back to see if Melissa had gotten free. If she headed for the far side of the road, she could find cover and wait for the fight to be over.
Slocum dived headlong and skidded along the ground, sharp rocks cutting at his belly as bullets kicked up tiny pillars of dust around him. He scrambled to lie flat behind a knee-high rock. It provided almost no cover but giving Melissa the chance to escape mattered more than his safety. A couple snap shots brought more shouts and the sound of men running to join the fight.
He chanced a quick look around the side of the rock to get a better idea of his predicament. It didn’t look good. Four more guards ran from the mine. This puzzled him. Why did Trueheart have so many men in the mine, all armed with rifles? A few miners wielding pickaxes made more sense.
The best he could tell, they had driven a long way around Desolation Mountain, coming down into a long, narrow valley like a knife cut into the rock. The pass lay far above and behind him, but where the goldfields lay wasn’t anything he could determine. Trueheart’s mine lacked most of the signs of a working mine.
No tailings dribbled out the mouth and down the mountainside, yet there were plenty of men in the mine. From all evidence, a considerable number of wagon loads of material had come to the mine. But for what? The dynamite on this trip meant Trueheart was blasting, but to what purpose?
More bullets cut off Slocum’s musing. The guards were finally beginning to coordinate their attack.
Time to move.
Slocum got his feet under him, then lurched and sprinted up the slope that would take him to a spot just above. He slipped and fell flat—and this saved him. A half-dozen slugs ripped into the space where his head had been an instant before. Lying still, he waited for the guards to start arguing among themselves over whether he had been hit, then got back to his feet and made his way upward.
Still being alive took them by surprise and allowed him to get a better spot on the hillside. He kept low and worked his way forward to a rocky ledge over the mouth of the mineshaft. The guards were out of position as Slocum looked down, hoping to see that Melissa had gotten away. Where she had gone, he couldn’t tell, but he carelessly kept his head poked up like a curious prairie dog too long.
A rifle bullet knocked his hat off and caused him to recoil. More by reflex than intent, he fired until his six-shooter came up empty.
“He got Ross. Son of a bitch killed Ross!”
Slocum took the time to grab his hat and reload, then edged forward again and saw two men dragging Ross’s body from the wagon. He started to fire, then sank back to the ground. They hadn’t seen him. If he took a couple easy shots, the other guards would know instantly where he hid.
“Search his pockets, see if he’s got any money. He owed me.”
Like carrion eaters, the guards swarmed around the dead driver and began rummaging through his pockets to rob him. Slocum wanted to turn this to his benefit but didn’t see how—until two men came from the mine.
“What’s going on?”
“Somebody killed Ross. We got him on the run. He’s in the hills up there somewhere.”
The man from the mineshaft spun and stared hard, but he couldn’t see Slocum in the darkness.
“There’s dynamite in the wagon. That’s mighty dangerous to be shooting off rifles that close to it.”
“These yahoos ain’t got the sense God gave a goose. You go check the explosives, Doc.”
The man called Doc went to the rear of the wagon and hoisted the tarp. From the way he stiffened, then stepped back a half pace, Slocum knew he had seen something unexpected. The tarp rose a bit, and Slocum knew what it was.
Melissa hadn’t been able to escape.
He shoved his six-gun into his holster, moved to a spot just to the right of the opening to the mine’s depth, and grabbed hold of a protruding beam. He swung down and landed lightly, staying in a low crouch. It was too much to hope that he could get the drop on the man who had discovered Melissa because the guards had finished rifling through Ross’s pockets.
“Don’t move!”
Slocum stood, hands in the air, considering his chances and how he could best give Melissa a few seconds to run. To his surprise, he saw Doc lift the tarp in such a way that he hid the wagon bed, then dropped it.
“Don’t shoot him. Hey, lower your rifles!” Doc moved forward but was shoved back by the man who had come from the mine with him.
“What’re you pullin’, Doc?”
“He’s with me.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“He rode out with Ross, that’s what I mean. He’s a powder monkey. I need help setting the charges.”
“Nobody came out with Ross,” the man said, but enough doubt rode with his words to give Slocum hope.
“I did. When we pulled up, one of them shot Ross.” Slocum pointed to the guards who had rifled Ross’s pockets.
“What are you goin’ on about?”
“If he said it, it’s the truth, Plover. He doesn’t lie.”
“We never shot Ross. Why’d we do that?”
“You robbed him, that’s why,” Slocum called.
Plover pointed at Slocum and said, “You shut up. I need to figure this out.”
“Nothing to figure out,” Doc said, moving close so Slocum got a good look at him. After he got a look at Doc’s face, he understood everything.
“Baransky hired me. You want me to give back the money, I can’t,” Slocum said, running a bluff worthy of a high-stakes game. The man Trueheart’s henchman had called Doc was the cause of all his trouble.
“He does know your name, Doc,” Plover said dubiously.
“Clement Baransky, that’s his name, isn’t it? I didn’t know he was a doctor.”
“I’m no doctor. They call me that because I know ’bout everything,” Baransky said.
“Shut up, Doc. You, too. What’s his name? Wait, don’t answer,” Plover said sharply. “Whisper it in my ear. And one of you thievin’ magpies, you go have him whisper his name in your ear.”
Slocum took a deep breath as one of the gunman came over.
“Don’t know what’s goin’ on. You kilt Ross and I want to see you dead.”
“You might have been the one that shot him,” Slocum said. Then he whispered his name, repeated it, and waited. The gunman gave him a sour look and went to where Plover stood with his six-shooter drawn.
“You boys kill him if the names don’t match.”
“What about Baransky?” Slocum called. He played for time so Melissa could get far away. If she was anywhere close and spying, she would rush back and get them all killed.
“We need Doc, but that don’t mean we can’t put shackles back on him like we did before.” The threat meant something to Baransky because he shivered visibly. Plover motioned his partner closer. “What’s the name he gave?”
“Slocum. He said his name was Slocum.”
Plover slumped a little, then straightened.
“Matches what Doc said. There was no way they coulda arranged this ’less they knew each other before.”
“How’d Doc have any time to hire anybody? Me and Aaron never let him out of our sight when we
was back in town.”
“That’s what you think,” Baransky said, laughing harshly. “You two left me in the warehouse while you went out to take a snort from that bottle in your hip pocket.”
This set off a long argument that ended with Plover kicking the man in the seat of the pants. Glass shattered and the sharp tang of whiskey momentarily filled the air.
“You didn’t have no call hiring anybody, Doc,” Plover said, dragging his boot back and forth in the dirt to get the whiskey off it. “You need something, you tell me. I’m the foreman, not you.”
“You weren’t around. Neither were they. I wanted to speed up the work. Slocum here came along, we talked, I liked what I heard.”
“I told Ross and he offered me a ride out. Then they shot him down like a rabid dog,” Slocum said, enjoying the new round of incrimination this sparked. Plover blamed Aaron and his partner, who insisted they hadn’t shot Ross. The argument turned around full circle with them indicting the other guards from the mine.
Baransky gave Slocum a broad wink.
“Shut up, all of you!” Plover fired into the air to get their attention. “The next round goes into somebody’s heart. I’d shoot you in the head, but I want to hurt you for causin’ this hash.”
“You sayin’ I don’t have no brains, Plover? I don’t take that off nobody!”
The man who had carried Slocum’s name to the foreman went for his rifle. Plover gunned him down before the barrel came up halfway to its target. The man dropped to his knees, then flopped back and twitched on the ground. Plover put a second and a third bullet into him.
“I’ve had it with you jackasses.” Plover faced down the others, who exchanged looks.
Aaron said, “It was all his doin’, Plover.”
“Get the wagon unloaded.” Plover motioned to Slocum. “You lend a hand, then we’ll have a talk.” He plucked Slocum’s Colt from his holster. Slocum moved an instant too late to stop him. Plover thrust the six-shooter into his belt.