Slocum's Silver Burden

by Jake Logan

  “Down the street. Keep riding another quarter mile or so. It’s the only one in town, but my boy’s a good farrier. If you need a shoe put on, he can do it for half what that thief Farnum’d charge.”

  “Much obliged.” Slocum picked up the pace and found the stables easily. The smithy already had his forge hot and hammered away at what looked to be a crowbar.

  “You in the market for some good ironwork?” The smithy held up the red-glowing crowbar almost hammered into workable shape. “I can fix you up with anything you need after I finish this off for the railroad. Rush job.”

  “My partner’s ahead of me. He said he left his horse with a man named Farnum, about the best blacksmith in these parts. That you?”

  “Is.”

  Slocum saw by the man’s expression he had greased the rails for his next question by establishing his bona fides.

  “Has Jones already ridden on?”

  “Jones? Your partner’s named Jones?” Farnum scratched his nose, spat into the fire, then went back to forming the crowbar. “Only one who’s rode on out today’s named Drury.”

  “Sorry, I was thinking of our other partner. Drury’s about your height, real pale, thin to the point of being a skeleton.” Slocum remembered something more that his nose had detected back at Lead Bottom’s to keep Farnum from thinking it odd a man didn’t know his own partner’s name. “He enjoys smoking a bit of opium now and then.”

  “That’s the one,” the smithy said, critically examining his work, then quenching it with a loud hiss. “Chasing the dragon’s been the ruin of more ’n one man. Them damned Chinee bring in the opium and sell it so cheap a man’s sore tempted to smoke instead of drinking booze.”

  “How long ago did he head south?”

  “You’re not a half hour behind him. He rode off, a bit out of kilter.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Staying in the saddle proved quite a chore. Stepped up onto his stallion just fine, but he got to leanin’ to one side and had a devil of a time righting himself. I couldn’t tell if it was from smokin’ or drinkin’.”

  Slocum snorted and said, “Both.”

  “My thoughts.” Farnum stared up at him. “You look like a decent sort. Steer clear of him. When a man gets to spendin’ time in them opium dens, he’s a lost cause.”

  “Thanks for the advice. Drury needs a bit of salvation in his life, that’s all.”

  “More than a bit, if you ask me.”

  Slocum touched the brim of his hat and trotted out onto the single road leading south. Drury needed more of the stolen silver if he intended to smoke more opium. Hiding his share of the shipment in San Francisco was foolish. There was so much, he’d need a wagon to cart it in. Better to leave it south or even around the end of San Francisco Bay back in the direction where the robbery had occurred. If Drury rode to meet another of the robbers, so much the better.

  Getting the hiding place from Drury would be easy enough but would take time. How much opium would he have to smoke before his tongue loosened? A second outlaw gave double the chance of finding the silver in a hurry. Slocum knew ways of making a man talk, but some took longer than others. And a few men kept their vow to die before revealing a secret. Drury had struck him as the kind to spill his guts right away, but not knowing him put Slocum at a disadvantage.

  Keeping a steady pace brought him to the spot in the road where he saw two riders ahead. There had been a few travelers out early in the morning, but they all headed north to San Francisco on obvious business. Two had driven empty wagons but had womenfolk riding beside them in the driver’s box. A half-dozen other men had the look of miners hunting for supplies. Slocum knew the golden gleam in their eyes brought by hope and greed. The only ones getting rich off their mining efforts would be the storekeepers selling them their supplies.

  The two ahead rode slowly but with some determination. As they turned east when the town of Fremont poked up on the far side of the Bay, Slocum spurred his horse to a gallop. He knew where these two were now. Let them vanish into a town and his job turned more difficult. He had poured too much rotgut down his throat the night before to repeat it anytime soon. More than that, his luck had run good. Flopping up and down at his side, he touched the pocket containing the silver bar. These men could tell him what Jackson hadn’t. He was going to be rich. He was going to keep it as payment for Collingswood insulting him, and then he would ride north to Oregon. Buying a spread on the ocean side of the Cascades where he could raise Appaloosas seemed a decent way to spend a few years of his life.

  He tried to keep his mare galloping, but the animal was tuckered out and not anywhere near the mount that those Appaloosas he thought on were. The horse began to falter, forcing Slocum to slow and finally come to a complete halt. Better to catch up with the outlaws in Fremont than to have the mare die under him now.

  Still, he fumed at being so close and letting the two slip through his fingers like this. Finally settling down, having confidence in his own tracking abilities—and buoyed by the weight of the silver bar in his pocket—he walked slowly into Fremont. Drury and his partner had beat him into town by better than twenty minutes. The sun had risen about halfway up in the brilliant blue sky. When his belly growled from lack of food and being abused with too much whiskey, Slocum considered what the two outlaws might do.

  Drury was in no better shape. The newcomer might have wolfed down a big breakfast, but Slocum doubted it. They would head for a saloon serving lunch.

  Or a restaurant. Slocum drew rein and stared through the plate glass window of a sizable restaurant. Drury and the other man sat just behind two women at the front table. He jockeyed his horse about to get a better view. It wouldn’t do now to mistake his quarry.

  He dismounted, intending to go into the restaurant and do what it took to take both of them prisoners. The pitiful whinnying warned him that his horse needed attention first. Slocum pursed his lips and considered his chances of finding both Drury and his partner still eating when he got back. From the way they both shoveled the food from their plates into their pie holes, he thought he had a fair amount of time.

  Slocum led his horse to a livery a block off the main street, paid for feed and tending, then returned as the two outlaws finished what looked to be their second servings of peach cobbler.

  He went in, took a chair at a small table where he could watch them from the corner of his eye. Drury might remember him as the drunk poker player who had taken his last two silver bars, but Slocum had to take the gamble if he wanted to find the silver they had hidden away.

  Sipping at weak coffee did nothing to bolster his strength, but it went a ways to clearing his head. Tackling the two inside the restaurant was foolish when a dozen other customers were working on their food. Bullets flying, the confusion, possibly innocent men and women being shot—any of that attracted the attention of the local marshal. Slocum wanted to avoid that as much as possible. Explaining the situation would land him in jail faster than the men he set upon.

  Drury looked pale and jumpy, eyes darting around constantly. Slocum knew the lack of opium wore on him. The only reason he had left San Francisco and the easy access to Chinatown where he could find any number of opium dens had to be lack of money. Even as he thought that, Slocum touched the bulge in his coat pocket and smiled.

  The man with Drury was stockier and dressed like a wrangler. From the look of it, he wasn’t much of a gunslinger. He wore his six-shooter up high on his hip in a soft leather holster. The man’s immense hands about swallowed up the coffee cup as he drained it before setting it down with a loud click.

  “We kin go, Drury. You’re looked mighty peaked.”

  “I’m all right, I tell you.” The man’s twitching hands put that to the lie. “We got to go back to Frisco. Gimme what I want and—”

  “No way. You got your share, I got mine. You want dope, you pay for it out of your own cu
t.”

  Slocum shifted a little in the chair to bring his hand around to the butt of his Colt. The two had given him all the assurance he needed that they were the train robbers who had worked with Jackson. It had worried him that Drury had stolen the silver bars from the actual train robbers or had come by them honestly. But the skeletal man and his chunky partner were the robbers.

  David Collingswood would give a small fortune to have these men in custody. Slocum was after a large fortune. They might not know where Jackson’s share was stashed, but between them, they had half the silver.

  His attention shifted to a pair of men in the doorway. Both carried rifles in the crooks of their arms. One nudged another and pointed at Drury and his partner.

  Slocum swung back to the outlaws in time to see them going for their six-guns. Then all hell broke loose. Drury fired wildly. His partner proved cooler under fire, in spite of the manner in which he carried his six-shooter. Every shot he got off went directly toward the men in the door.

  For their part, they wasted no time swinging their rifles around and firing as wildly as Drury. Shrieks from the customers were drowned out by the steady snap from the rifles. The plate glass window exploded into a thousand shards, and more than one saucer or cup crashed to the floor. From the kitchen the cook ran out, waving a meat cleaver. Slocum tried to shout a warning—too late.

  Drury caught the motion from the corner of his eye and made his one accurate shot. The cook stopped, stood up straight, looked curiously at his chest where a red splotch spread, then dropped his cleaver and followed it to the floor. He kicked feebly. Slocum doubted he was dead, but from the twitching, it wouldn’t be long.

  “Give up, you sons of bitches! You’re under arrest!”

  The two in the door had ducked back outside and fired past the doorjamb. Drury’s partner proved smarter than the men outside, who thought the thin wood walls protected them. He shot through the walls, drilling .45-caliber holes that let in slanting rays of daylight. One slug found its target. The rifleman yelped like a stuck pig and began cursing with increasing imagination. For his part, Slocum whipped out his Colt and tried to get the drop on the outlaws. He was driven down under the table as Drury flung a shot in his direction.

  He looked out in time to see the pair of robbers vault over the cook and vanish into the kitchen.

  “They’s goin’ ’round back!” someone yelled. “Head ’em off!”

  The two outside stopped filling the restaurant interior with wildly fired bullets and split up, one going in each direction around the building after the outlaws. Slocum considered what to do. It was more dangerous than he preferred, but he couldn’t let Drury and his partner escape. He stepped over the cook and chanced a quick look into the kitchen. Both outlaws had fled through the back door.

  He took a deep breath and went after them. A quick peek out showed him that the outlaws were gone, but the two who had started the fight were hard on their heels, running down a path toward the outhouse. Slocum pounded after them, only to be seen by one who lagged behind his partner, panting for breath and red in the face. When he saw Slocum, he lifted his rifle and got off a round.

  “Harry, there’s another of them. He’s behind us. They got us trapped ’twixt them, two up front and one behind.”

  The man levered in another round and got off a shot. The first had missed Slocum by a country mile. The second came disturbingly close. He returned fire more accurately but succeeded only in driving the man to cover behind the privy. Slocum found himself unable to get past to go after Drury without crossing the rifleman’s field of fire. He skidded to a halt and tried to spot the men farther along the trail. They had leaped across a small stream and vanished in a wooded area. The other rifleman was nowhere to be seen.

  “You grab some sky, mister. Throw down that six-gun of yours, and I won’t kill you.”

  The assurance did nothing to soothe Slocum’s ruffled feathers. Every second he wasted let Drury and his partner get that much farther away. He triggered a couple shots through the side of the outhouse and got an aggrieved cry from inside.

  “What in tarnation’s goin’ on? You quit shootin’ this second, or I’ll clap your worthless carcass in jail.”

  Slocum cursed when the door opened to a man sitting on the throne inside. A deputy’s badge gleamed in the sunlight.

  Then the man half stood, pulling up his pants. The slug that tore through the rear outhouse wall caught him in the back of the head. He snapped forward and lay facedown on the ground, half in and half outside the privy.

  “You killed a lawman,” Slocum shouted. “I’m empowered to take you in for aiding and abetting train robbers. Now I got to arrest you for murder, too.” It was a bluff, but he still had the papers Collingswood had given him folded up in his pocket. All he wanted was for the rifleman to hightail it so he could get after the two outlaws.

  The rifleman confounded him again by stepping out, rifle leveled.

  Slocum sighted in for a killing shot until he felt the hot muzzle of a recently fired rifle press into the back of his head.

  “Drop it or I’ll blow your damned head off.”

  10

  Slocum didn’t drop his Colt but lifted his hands, holding them out level with his shoulders. The man in front of him came into full view from behind the outhouse. He never glanced at the deputy he had shot from behind. He clutched his rifle so hard his hands shook.

  “I wanna kill him, Harry. Don’t you go blowin’ off his head. I wanna do it.”

  “Shut up, Riley,” said the man behind Slocum. “You done enough damage for one day. Did you shoot the deputy?”

  “I don’t know what . . .” His voice trailed off as he looked around and saw the dead lawman. “Sweet Jesus, it musta been this varmint.”

  “That’s a rifle hole in the back of his skull,” Slocum said.

  “You shut up.” The man behind him poked his back with the rifle.

  Slocum shifted slightly to his left and then spun to his right as fast as he could, swinging his pistol around in a broad arc that ended at the man’s temple. His target went down to his knees, stunned. Keeping up his spinning motion, Slocum knocked the rifle from the man’s hands and then brought his six-shooter up, centered on the deputy killer’s heart.

  “Don’t shoot, mister. Don’t! You kilt Harry!”

  “He’s not dead,” Slocum said. “You will be if you don’t drop the rifle.”

  “You mean it when you said you was a lawman?” He carefully placed the rifle on the ground, as if laying an offering on some pagan shrine.

  “I was deputized by the Central California Railroad to go after train robbers. That gives me the power to arrest you.” This was the last thing Slocum wanted to do. Drury was skedaddling away with the location of the stolen silver locked in his head. Every minute he ran put him that much farther from Slocum getting to be a rich man.

  “Fancy that,” Riley said. “Me and Harry are, too. We got papers from Mr. Collingswood up in that fancy office on top of a big San Francisco building. You want to see?” He started to reach into his coat pocket. Slocum cocked his pistol, ready to shoot.

  “W-wait,” came Harry’s weak voice. “You buffaloed me good and proper, but you don’t have to kill Riley. He’s not always right in the head.”

  “You really work for the Central California Railroad?” Slocum asked.

  “Yup, the both of us.” Harry pressed his hand against the cut on his scalp oozing blood. “Who recruited you?”

  Slocum knew his chances of finding Drury were sinking fast. Enlisting the help of these two blundering fools might make it worse tracking the outlaw, but Slocum knew he had no way of getting rid of them short of gunning both down. Trying to explain to the town marshal how the deputy came to get a bullet in the back of his head would give Drury an even greater head start.

  “Underwood,” Slocum said. He held up his r
ight hand and showed only index finger and thumb.

  “He’s the one,” Harry agreed. He got to his feet, wiped the blood from his head wound on his coat, and thrust out his hand. “Reckon we’re on the same side, after all. Me and Riley took you to be one of the gang.”

  Slocum shook the bloody hand and resisted the urge to wipe the blood off on his coat.

  “We’d better clear out. A dead lawman’s going to bring out the whole town.”

  “This here’s a deputy’s badge,” Riley said, poking the corpse with his rifle barrel. “That must mean a marshal is likely to take offense. You know what we gotta do, Harry.”

  “We ride. The varmint went that way. You with us, mister?”

  Slocum nodded. He was reluctant to let these two hear his name. They’d be caught eventually for murdering the deputy, and the first words out of their mouths would be how John Slocum had put them up to it. He cursed his bad luck when Harry slapped his thigh and declared, “You must be that Slocum gent. Right? That’s you? Underwood described you good enough if we ran into each other.”

  Slocum reluctantly acknowledged, then said, “We’re wasting time standing around here.”

  “Then let’s ride!” Riley let out a whoop and headed back toward the restaurant.

  Slocum skirted the building and got his horse. The mare looked the better for the quick grooming and some feed and water. Slocum wished he’d had time for the same. What little he had ordered in the restaurant hardly filled him up.

  The trio rode past the deputy’s body and farther along the trail Drury had taken. Slocum kept a sharp eye out for tracks, but the dirt path carried a considerable amount of both foot and horse traffic, making it impossible to find a single set of boot prints. When the trail curved back downhill, Slocum drew rein and studied the area.