Slocum's Silver Burden

by Jake Logan

  He swung around and reached for his pants.

  “Oh, no, don’t dress. Come here and put on my shoes.”

  He considered for a moment, then went to her. Dropping to his knees, he stroked up her leg, paused at her inner thigh, then moved higher. She gasped as his finger entered her. When she closed her eyes and pleasure began to take over her features, he backed away.

  Her foot fell heavily to the floor as his unexpected departure unbalanced her.

  “You’re a big girl. Put on your own shoes.”

  A moment’s anger flashed on her face, then she smiled ruefully. “As long as you promise to undress me again later.”

  He pulled on his longjohns, climbed into his jeans, and worked to get shirt, vest, and coat on. When he strapped on his gun belt, he felt dressed—or as dressed as Tamara. She remained barefoot and so did he.

  “How did you meet Jackson?”

  She sighed in resignation and began working her feet into her tight shoes.

  “At the bank over on Market. I had to post a payroll for the office workers and saw him loitering about. Mr. Collingswood had hired me a few weeks earlier, and the temptation of stealing so much silver from a Virginia City shipment had burned itself into my imagination. I could get the information but had no way of acting on it.”

  “Jackson was casing the bank?”

  “I thought so. He never said as I approached him, but he had the look of a real desperado.”

  “You convinced him to forget the bank and rob the train?”

  “It took very little persuasion. I told him of the huge amounts of silver shipped from Virginia City but had no idea how much would be in the shipment he and his gang stole.”

  “He’s not going to tell us about the silver. Who are the other three in the gang?”

  “I don’t know. He had already recruited them for the bank robbery and only went in himself to be sure when there’d be the most money in the vault. I never saw them, much less met them.”

  Slocum pulled on his boots, turning over each detail in his head. He settled his feet securely, then leaned back in the chair, watching as Tamara buttoned her shoes. She bent over, exposing the tops of her breasts. Forcing himself to think about the stolen silver rather than her took some willpower.

  This sparked caution in him. She could kill a man as easily as he could, only her weapon was softer.

  “It’s safe to say he didn’t frequent the Union Club.”

  “Mr. Collingswood does, but you’re right, Jack would have been more at home along the Barbary Coast.”

  “That’s where I’ll start looking for the others in his gang,” Slocum said, standing. Tamara shot to her feet and started to leave. He took her arm and swung her about. “I’ll go alone. If you showed your face in the Barbary dives, there’d be more trouble than information gathered.”

  “Take Underwood, then. You need someone to watch your back.”

  Slocum trusted Underwood as far as he could throw him, but he refrained from telling her. He had the feeling she and the two-fingered man were closer to being partners than he was with her.

  “Can you use that pistol you carry?”

  “Of course I can. I can shoot the eye out of a rat at ten paces.”

  “Where we’re going, there’ll be a lot of rats, none of them four-legged.”

  She smiled wickedly, as if the idea of killing someone pleased her. She fetched her Colt New Line, checked the cylinder to be sure it carried all seven rounds. She held up the octagonal-barreled weapon so it pointed at the ceiling and struck a pose, her other hand balled and resting on a cocked hip.

  “I’m ready.”

  “Put the gun away where nobody can see it, but you can get to it.” He waited for her to slip it into a pocket in her skirt. “You might keep your hand on it, but don’t put a finger on the trigger until you have it aimed at someone you want to kill.”

  “I won’t shoot myself, John. You worry so.” She gave him a light kiss on the cheek.

  He wondered if she had ever shot anyone with the pistol. Or had she killed someone? She was a vision of loveliness, but it was the same deadly beauty he found in diamondback rattlesnakes: sinuous and harmless unless provoked.

  The sun sank into the Pacific Ocean just beyond the Golden Gate. Slocum stopped and watched as either side of the portal into San Francisco Bay turned from natural to metallic. Chiu Jin Shan—the Old Gold Mountain, the Chinese called it. The sun vanished completely, and a chill wind picked up off the harbor, bringing with it the smell of floating garbage and rotten fish.

  Slocum told himself the hunt for Jackson’s partners could turn from golden to deadly as quickly as the sun disappeared. The laborers along the Embarcadero finished the last of their chores and drifted away to the bars. He tried to imagine where a man like Jackson would wet his whistle. Not with the sailors. Jackson was a landlubber, and unless he saw a reason to frequent the seamen’s dives, he would keep away from the waterfront.

  “Where do the men drink who aren’t sailors or stevedores?”

  “Underwood would know. Don’t you trust him?”

  “I have no reason to. If he gets involved in this, he has to choose between two masters.” Slocum considered this, then amended, “Between Collingswood as his master and you as his mistress.”

  “Why, John, I’d never be his mistress.”

  Slocum knew Tamara could get Underwood to jump around like a flea on a hot griddle, because she so easily did that with everyone else in her life. David Collingswood would believe her to be loyal despite strong evidence to the contrary, even if Slocum hadn’t provided much more than his observations as proof of her part in the robbery. Jackson had gone along with her when he likely preferred robbing a bank to a train. And Slocum knew he had to be careful not to fall under her spell. To do so might mean his life.

  Right now he preferred to find the silver and ride off with it because of the way Collingswood had treated him. The railroad owed him for not trusting him when he had given his word. And the railroad vice president had come right out and called him a liar without examining the evidence.

  Such an insult had to be met with the proper punishment. Slocum heard desperation in Collingswood’s every word and knew the higher-ups in the Central California Railroad would fire their vice president in a heartbeat if the silver wasn’t recovered. Or did they even know? Collingswood had gone out of his way to keep the theft quiet. Sending out an army of specials was risky, giving more credence to Slocum’s guess that quick recovery would be more than appreciated—it had to be necessary to keep Collingswood’s head from getting chopped off.

  Depending on the president of the railroad and his directors, that might be an actual description. Collingswood might not be fired but instead be left floating facedown in the Bay.

  “What are you thinking, John?”

  “There are saloons down around Mission Dolores. That’s where a man riding into town from the south would spot a watering hole. Drovers and other cowboys coming to town would ride in there.”

  “I am sure Jack wasn’t a sailor, but he never said anything about being a wrangler either.” She caught on to what Slocum was saying. “He doesn’t have to be a cowboy. He could be a stagecoach robber or anything else on the other side of the law, but he would ride in and find cowboys more to his liking.”

  “If Jackson had ever been to San Francisco before, he’d know how dangerous it was for anyone to drink along the Barbary Coast.”

  “Good thinking, John, but this town is filled with gin mills. How do you find the right one? And how do you ask after the rest of his gang?”

  “It’s about time we had some luck.”

  Slocum knew they’d need more than some. They’d need a passel. He got it after downing almost a full bottle of whiskey one shot at a time.

  * * *

  His vision blurred from too much
cheap whiskey. Even tossing more than one shot onto the floor of each drinking emporium where he lingered took away only a small portion of his inebriation. Tamara chided him constantly, but Slocum knew if he didn’t knock back a shot or two when he was being watched by everyone in each saloon, he would find out nothing. Until he came to Lead Bottom’s Saloon, all he had to show for his diligence was a head that threatened to explode and a belly that churned like the storm-tossed Pacific.

  But his patience finally paid off. He stared at three men playing poker. Two were in cahoots cleaning out the third. The sucker had no idea how he was being hoodwinked because the two worked together so expertly. The pair let him win a few small pots and took the bigger ones by signaling each other and, twice that Slocum saw, trading cards. What caught his eye was the way the sucker bet.

  He used small silver bars instead of cartwheels or greenbacks. He had begun with a half dozen and had only two left. Slocum wanted to get a better look. To do that meant he had to be in the game.

  “Mind if I sit in?” He dropped his paltry few dollars onto the poker table, then sat down without waiting for an invitation, glad to take the load off his aching legs. He wobbled just a bit, and not all of it was show to let the two working in tandem know he was an easy mark, too. Even so, they started to object. They needed to win only two more of the silver bars to finish cleaning out the man next to Slocum.

  “We got a private game, mister,” said one of the cheats.

  “Aw, let ’im set in. We can use fresh blood. I need a player I can whomp up on ’fore you gents take me for every last cent I have.”

  “Thanks,” Slocum said. He eyed the silver bars. The other two weren’t likely to put up the ones they had already won since they had piles of scrip and smaller coins.

  He played carefully for a couple hands, worrying that the man with the silver bars would lose. The two let him and Slocum win a few pots. Seeing how they cheated gave Slocum a good idea how to win. When he was dealt two pair, jacks and queens, any reasonable man would draw one. Instead, he threw away the jacks and dross card. From the way the man dealing acted, Slocum knew he had done the right thing. He cleared his throat and stared hard at the man.

  “Deal. Fair and square. Off the top.” Slocum forced the man’s hand down so he had to give him the first three cards.

  Slocum glanced at his hand. Three aces, two queens, full house. Even better, they had set up the gent with the silver, giving him a full house, too. The fourth ace likely rested in the one’s hand who should have received the triplet of aces.

  “I can’t let the best hand o’ the night go to waste,” the man said. “Here. I’m puttin’ in both bars.”

  Slocum saw the anger building on the other men’s faces and knew who had the best hand. He pushed in all his money, including the small winnings from earlier pots.

  “Got to call you.”

  Both the men folded, leaving Slocum in the pot with the suspected train robber.

  “You have to beat tens full of kings.” The man beamed proudly as he laid down the cards.

  “I’ve a better spread,” Slocum said. He shifted to get his gun hand over near the ebony butt of his Colt in case anyone disputed the cards.

  To his surprise, no one did. The two gamblers grumbled about their own bad luck, and the man who had lost both silver bars laughed, scratched himself, and declared, “Damn my bad luck. As if it wasn’t bad enough losing to them, I got to lose to you, too. That cleans me out.”

  “You’re taking it mighty well,” Slocum said, but he watched the other two.

  “It’s only money. I can get more, whenever I want.”

  “It must be nice to be rich,” Slocum said.

  This sparked caution. The sallow man realized he had said too much.

  “I got a rich uncle, that’s all. Come next month, yeah, next month, he’ll give me more.”

  Slocum picked up a silver bar and looked at it. From the description David Collingswood had given him, this was one of the bars stolen from the Central California Railroad.

  “Least I can do, cleaning you out like that, is to buy you a drink.” Slocum wanted to loosen the robber’s tongue. Otherwise, finding the remainder of the stolen silver could be a drawn-out quest.

  “Had enough for the night. I’ll want a chance to win back my silver some other time, gents.” The robber got to his feet and left before Slocum could even stand.

  When he did get his shaky legs under him, a strong hand grabbed his wrist and pulled him back down. He sat heavily and pulled free. He locked eyes with the gambler next to him.

  “We were the big winners. Let us buy you a round.”

  “He had the right idea. Time to grab some sleep and—”

  “You refusin’ to drink with us? We ain’t good enough for you?”

  “Who am I to turn down a free drink?” Slocum said, but he seethed at the delay. He hoped Tamara had enough sense to follow the train robber—losing the man now would make for more difficult tracking later. He had gotten lucky noticing the silver in the poker game. Even better luck would be finding where the robber had stashed his share of the silver.

  “Hey, Lead Bottom, bring us a round,” the gambler who hadn’t spoken so far bellowed. “The special bottle.”

  Slocum tensed at this. Every drinking emporium along the Embarcadero had a “special” bottle laced with Mickey Finns. The chloral hydrate knocked out the fool swilling it to make him easy prey for the shanghaiers. They were a mile from the docks and farther from the ships gently wallowing at anchor in the Bay, but that didn’t mean the knockout drops weren’t available here, too, south of town where cowboys rather than sailors drank.

  The barkeep came from behind the long plank propped up on two sawhorses. Slocum almost laughed. Lead Bottom’s jeans hung slack in the backside.

  “I got my butt shot off,” the barkeep said, seeing Slocum’s reaction. “I still got a half pound of lead in me. Don’t take kindly to anyone makin’ light of my affliction.”

  Slocum almost knocked back the drink set before him to stifle a comeback. There weren’t many men who told the truth about such things. Lead Bottom might have sat on a hot stove and done the damage to himself as easily as getting in a colorful gunfight and being first the hero and then the victim.

  “Drink up,” the nearer gambler said.

  Slocum saw how both men sat, one hand under the table. His attention had strayed as he thought on the barkeep’s predicament. That gave both of his adversaries the chance to slip out pistols. If he failed to drink, they would cut him in half before he could reach his own six-shooter.

  “Bottoms up,” Slocum said, upending the glass and letting the burning fluid slip smoothly into his mouth.

  9

  Slocum swilled the liquor around in his mouth. His eyes went wide, and he fell facedown onto the poker table. Chips and money went skittering away as he slid off and fell onto the floor.

  “Damnation, never seen anybody knocked out that fast,” Lead Bottom said.

  “Keep yer damn hands off the silver,” growled the gambler who had been next to Slocum. “That’s ours.”

  “You owe me a cut. You ain’t been payin’ up like you should have been. I seen how you varmints steal from my best customers.”

  The three men argued for a spell, then one gambler kicked Slocum in the ribs.

  “Why’d you do that for?” The barkeep sounded genuinely perplexed. “He ain’t goin’ nowhere. That’s ’bout the most powerfulest Mickey in the whole of Frisco.”

  “Just checkin’. You got our winnin’s, Joe Bob?”

  “All tucked away,” said the other gambler.

  “My cut,” said the bartender. “You owe me my cut fer tonight and all of last week. You cleaned out two of them railroad men what stopped in here. I remember it plain as day.”

  “What do you want?”

  “One
of them silver bars ought to do it.”

  They haggled a bit more, then Lead Bottom subsided.

  “You’re a crook,” a gambler said.

  The barkeep laughed and said, “You should talk. Them’s the slickest, fastest fingers I ever saw deal a second.”

  “If you could see it, I’d be a mighty poor dealer.”

  “Come on, Joe Bob. We want to see what the action’s like over at the Lost Virtue.”

  Slocum opened his eyes just enough to see two pairs of boots scooting across the floor and then vanish through the door. A cool blast of air hit him in the face, but he didn’t need it to revive himself. He hadn’t swallowed and, when he hit the floor, had spit out the doctored whiskey. What giddiness he felt came from all the drinking he had done earlier.

  When Lead Bottom grunted, reached under his arms to heave him to his feet, the barkeep got the surprise of his life. Slocum surged upward, stared the startled man in the eye, then delivered a short punch that ended on the man’s temple. The bartender’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed to the spot where Slocum had lain only seconds before.

  Slocum resisted the urge to deliver a kick to the man’s ribs. His own ribs hurt, but it had been the gambler named Joe Bob who had assaulted what he thought was an unconscious man. With a deft grab, he took the silver bar from the bartender, then scrounged around and found what money had been missed by the departing gamblers. They were as efficient in their hunt for loose change as they had been in fleecing the train robber.

  With the bar weighing down his coat pocket, Slocum stepped out into the dawn and looked around for Tamara. Not finding her meant nothing. If she had any sense, she followed the train robber. He walked along the dusty street and found himself heading south for no good reason. Slocum stopped and let the cold morning air clear his head of the last cobwebs draped over his brain.

  He thought about possible places the robber might head. The robber had been cleaned out but wasn’t worried. He had a mountain of silver stashed somewhere, but was it nearby? Slocum doubted that. Still, he must have a horse stabled nearby. Slocum fetched his, noting that Tamara’s wasn’t hitched up alongside anymore. He snapped the reins and got the mare ambling along. When a merchant stuck his head out to see if he had a customer so early in the morning, Slocum called out, “Where’s the livery stable?”