Slocum's Four Brides

by Jake Logan

  Slocum smiled grimly. This was close to being gallows humor. He opened and closed the door a few times to draw more fire. He cared less about the flying splinters than he did about emptying the owlhoot’s six-shooter. Trying to keep track of how many shots had been fired and from what direction was a fool’s errand. When he thought the last slug was fired, Slocum got his feet under him and charged.

  He fired as he ran and flushed the outlaw. Rather than waste more lead, Slocum dived and brought the man down in a clumsy tackle. The gunman tried to kick Slocum in the face but only ended up with his leg trapped in Slocum’s arms. Slocum had wrestled more than one dogie to the ground in his day. He flipped the man over onto his belly and dropped. He heard a knee break. For an instant there was utter silence, then the outlaw gave out with a caterwauling that could be heard all the way to Denver.

  “Want me to do that to your other leg?”

  “No, no, God, I never felt such pain.”

  “Why were you shooting up the cabin?”

  “Gold,” the man said. “We figgered to kill the miner and jump his claim.”

  “That’s about equal to stealing a man’s horse,” Slocum said.

  “My leg, oh, damn, it hurts.”

  “Want me to fix it for you?”

  “Do it, do it.”

  “I’ll do it just like I would if my horse busted his leg.” Slocum drew his six-gun and fired once. The man stopped screaming. Slocum felt only cold rage at an outlaw who would blindly fire into a shack to kill a mine owner. That it had been when Edwin was getting to know the woman he was going to marry put Slocum in a choleric mood. He had never much taken to Tabitha, but what this outlaw had done shouldn’t have ever happened.

  A new sound came that put Slocum on guard. It took him a few seconds to recognize the sound of a scattergun action closing.

  He headed back to the shack in time to hear the shotgun roar out its throaty death song. Then there was a flurry of cloth and silence.

  Slocum ducked back into the shack and looked around. Edwin lay on the dirt floor. A quick check showed that Tabitha had tied two twenty-dollar gold pieces over the bullet holes. Slocum shook his head. He would never have thought of that, but Tabitha had. And it was working. Edwin was pale, but his eyes were open and focused.

  “She went after them. Get her, Slocum. Get her. Don’t let her die.”

  “She’s a hotheaded woman,” Slocum said. “Was that your shotgun she took?”

  “Not enough shells for it. Only a few left. Use it for birds.”

  “Christ Almighty,” Slocum said, staring at the wounded man. “You mean she’s firing bird shot?”

  All he got in way of response was a weak nod. Slocum grabbed a dipper and filled it with water. He put it to Edwin’s lips and let the man drink a little.

  “Keep sucking on that. Don’t move around any more than you have to and you’ll be all right. Tabitha’s stopped the bleeding.” Slocum had no idea what damage had been done inside the man. There was no pink froth on Edwin’s lips, so he might have avoided a punctured lung. Even so, he was in bad shape.

  “Love her,” Edwin croaked out. “I love her. Don’t let her die.”

  “You rest up. We’ll be back before you know it.”

  Slocum took time to reload again, then slipped from the shack and found Tabitha’s tracks in the snow. She might not know she was shooting bird shot, which was seldom deadly to a human unless the shotgun bore was pressed right up to the face. Tabitha might not even know there was a difference between hunting for birds and hunting for buck. To her, one shell might be the same as another.

  Slocum knew she faced at least one wounded gunman. There might be more—unharmed. As he made his way along her trail, he veered in the direction of a stand of aspens. Something dark smeared the trunk of the white-barked tree. At the base, arms around the trunk, was a dead man. This had to be the one Slocum had plugged during the first minutes of the gunfight. He sucked in his breath, then let it out slowly. White plumes danced on the faint wind stirring through the forest. Tabitha was after another outlaw. An unwounded one.

  Finding the trail again was easy, but Slocum found himself going slower and slower as the tracks wended through the forest. It was darker than the inside of a grizzly bear’s belly under the tree branches. At times he was almost reduced to going to all fours and feeling for the footprints in the snow. The feeling of impending doom weighed more and more heavily on him, but Slocum refused to hurry. To lose the trail now and have to search for it anew meant Tabitha would end up dead. Her only hope was for Slocum to stay on the trail and finish the man she so inexpertly hunted.

  Slocum heard laughter from ahead. He froze, wondering what it meant. Had the outlaw already caught Tabitha and was having his way with her, or did he lure her into a trap? If that was the case, Slocum would be a damn fool to blunder into it, also. He clutched his six-gun and pushed through the undergrowth as silently as he could.

  “Go on, little lady. Shoot me. Go on, go on!”

  Slocum saw a shadow dart from behind one tree and disappear around another. He slowly changed his position and saw another shadow. This one wore a white blouse and carried a shotgun.

  “Come out and fight. You’re so big, shooting people from ambush.”

  “Hell, missy, I’ll shoot ’em any way I can. I prefer to shoot ’em in the back. They’s not as likely to shoot back!” More laughter. Slocum knew the outlaw was taunting Tabitha to get a response, but the words carried a ring of truth. Claim jumpers were more inclined to gun down their victims when no one was looking—including their victim. It was the lowest of the low when it came to thievery. Slocum was not above a little robbery himself. Banks. Stagecoaches. Cavalry payrolls. But he had never jumped a claim, nor had he shot a man in the back.

  Slocum winced when Tabitha fired her weapon. He heard the action opening as she ejected two spent shells and thrust in new ones. By now the outlaw had figured out she was shooting only bird shot and knew it might sting like fire but wouldn’t be deadly if he got hit.

  “Here. Is this better? You got a good shot at me. Go on. You have the nerve, missy?”

  The outlaw stepped out from behind a tree, arms held out at shoulder height to show he wasn’t aiming at her. But Slocum saw the pistol in the outlaw’s left hand. As the owl-hoot turned, Slocum saw that the man was left-handed.

  “You might have killed Edwin!” Tabitha lifted her shotgun and fired both barrels. The recoil staggered her, but she kept her feet.

  “That’s all you git, missy. Now it’s my turn to show you my gun.” He reached down with his right hand to unbutton his fly as he pointed his pistol at her.

  That was when Slocum braced his hand against a tree trunk, took careful aim, and fired. He had a clear shot and seldom missed. The bullet caught the man in the head. The outlaw jerked to one side, half turned, and then sank to the ground as if all the bones in his body had turned to water. Once he hit the ground, he did not move.

  Tabitha let out a shriek of pure anguish.

  “I killed him!”

  Slocum quickly came up behind her and grabbed the shotgun from her trembling hands.

  “I killed him, not you. You wouldn’t have even hurt him with bird shot.”

  “What?” Tabitha looked at him with anguished eyes. “I wanted to, John. I wanted to kill that low-down—” She began sputtering in her confusion and anger.

  “You didn’t have to. I did it,” Slocum said. He had cut down three men in the span of twenty minutes and felt nothing. It was like burning the garbage. These three were worse than anything Tabitha could call them and had gotten their just desserts.

  “What’s happening, John? I never wanted this. I just wanted to spend my life with Edwin. He’s a good man. He is!”

  Tabitha clung to him and cried. He put his arm around her awkwardly and steered her away from the dead outlaw. When her shuddering sobs died down a little, he forced her down onto a stump.

  “Wait here a minute. I want to see if I
can find out who that son of a bitch was.”

  Slocum went to the man, took a few paltry dollars in scrip from the man’s pocket, then found a folded Wanted poster. Holding it high, he peered at it in the dark. The clouds came and went, but he was treated to enough starlight to see that the likeness on the poster matched that of the dead man.

  “A lousy twenty-dollar reward,” Slocum said. It was hardly worth claiming. The outlaw had been a petty criminal in all aspects of his thieving life. Slocum crumpled up the poster and tossed it onto the snow by the man’s head. Without the body, no lawman would pay the reward. Slocum was not inclined to lug the body through the forest and back into Braden to load into the wagon. The women would not cotton much to riding with a corpse, and Slocum didn’t want to deal with the flies and buzzards trying to dine off the bounty. Even if they reached Aurum with the corpse, he wasn’t sure where he would find anyone who could pay the reward.

  He returned to where Tabitha fought to regain control of her emotions. Bright tears glistened on her cheeks as she looked up forlornly at him.

  “He won’t be bothering you or Edwin again,” Slocum said. He hesitated, then asked, “Are there a lot of claim jumpers out here?”

  “I don’t know,” Tabitha said. “Edwin never mentioned any, but we didn’t talk much about things like that. There just wasn’t time.”

  “Come on,” Slocum said, putting his arm around her and guiding her back toward the shack. The closer they got to the cabin, the more he worried about what they would find when they opened the door.

  Tabitha had to be thinking the same thoughts. Her hand trembled as she pushed against the door, now shot to flinders.

  “Edwin?” she called timorously.

  Slocum heard movement inside and hoped it was not some bold coyote come to have an early breakfast. He pushed Tabitha aside and went in, hand on his six-shooter. He relaxed when he saw that Edwin had gotten off the floor and collapsed onto the cot. The man’s eyes fixed on Slocum.

  “Can’t offer much in the way of hospitality,” Edwin said, “but what’s mine is yours.” A tiny smile crept onto his bloodless lips. “Except for Tabitha, of course.”

  “Of course,” Slocum said. He found himself shoved out of the way as Tabitha rushed to Edwin’s side.

  “What do I need to do to make you all better?” Tabitha asked.

  Slocum did not hear what Edwin said, but it made Tabitha laugh. Whether the man survived or she had to bury him wasn’t something Slocum could predict. He hoped everything went well for them.

  “John, wait,” Tabitha called. She went to where he stood in the doorway. “I really don’t know how to help him.”

  “Keep him warm and in bed, feed him soup, and keep the wound clean and bound up. Other than that, there’s not much anyone can do.”

  “Is there a doctor in Braden?”

  “If there is, I’ll have him come out.”

  “Thank you,” Tabitha said. She hesitated, looked a bit shy, then kissed him on the cheek. “You are much better than any of us deserved.”

  Slocum took better than a half hour tracking down his horse. He checked to be sure it had come through the gunfight without any injuries. Finally satisfied the horse was in top condition, Slocum mounted and headed back down the hill for Braden. It would be dawn soon, and he would find out if there was a sawbones in the town. He would send the doctor out, then he could get back onto the trail with the three remaining mail-order brides.

  It was a chore Slocum wanted over as quickly as possible.

  11

  “Do you think he made it, John?” asked Sarah June. She moved a little closer to him on the hard bench seat as the wagon hit a large rock in the road.

  “Who? Edwin? Can’t say,” Slocum replied. It had been two days since they had left Braden, and the weather had been good. Clear, cold, no snowstorms to slow their progress—he could not have asked for more. Even the snow-packed road had been in remarkably good shape. Slocum had come through Douglas Pass more than once when even riding a horse was dangerous. Drop-offs on the side of the road tended to be precipitous fifty-foot and hundred-foot drops. The poorly kept road often collapsed, sending unwary travelers to their deaths. He had seen more than one spot where wagons had gone down and riders had died and left mute testimony to their last minutes on earth. He had not bothered pointing them out to the three women.

  “You must know. You’ve seen wounds like that before,” Sarah June pressed.

  “There was one ray of hope in all that,” Slocum said. “Braden didn’t have a doctor.”

  “Why is that good?”

  “Because the town veterinarian had to go. I’d as soon have a horse doctor working on me than a drunk surgeon.” He had seen too many doctors during the war hack off arms and legs and move on while the patient bled to death. He had never seen a vet fail to struggle to save even obviously terminal equine or bovine patients. Moreover, he had come across only one drunk vet. More often than not, liquor was only one of a medical doctor’s vices.

  “That sounds odd.”

  “Remember it. You’re going to Aurum. I doubt there’s a town doctor, but there has to be a veterinarian somewhere around.”

  “You think I’m foolish, going to a town like Aurum, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re running from,” Slocum said.

  “I might be running to something, John,” Sarah June said. “Something I need to do.”

  “Selling yourself to a man you’ve never even met doesn’t strike me as much improvement over what you had back in Salt Lake City.” Slocum felt the woman tense and move away from him. She gripped the edge of the driver’s seat so hard her knuckles turned white. Sarah June looked away from him, but he saw the tension in her shoulders and the set to her jaw. A pulse in her temple throbbed.

  “You don’t know, John. You don’t know.” Sarah June crossed her arms over her chest.

  Slocum turned slightly to hear the chattering between Wilhelmina and Betty in the rear. Betty had stopped lording it over the others that she had slept with Slocum, and the three women were again friends. The main topic of discussion was Tabitha and what her future would be like. Betty thought Edwin would die, while Wilhelmina and Sarah June were sure he would live and Tabitha would live a glorious life of riches and ease, possibly owning a fine house in Denver or even Boston.

  Slocum hoped that was true, even if it made trouble for him. He touched his coat pocket where the bag of gold dust rode. When he got to Aurum, he had to find Tabitha’s would-be husband and buy him off. That would not go well, but depending on the man’s financial condition, the extra gold dust might go a long way toward easing the pain of not having a bought woman in bed next to him on cold winter nights. If the miner had a wildly profitable claim, he would simply forget the matter and find himself another woman. The worst case would be a miner whose claim was moderately successful. He would feel he had been slighted and might have the stones to try to collect more than Slocum had to offer.

  Someone would die in that case, and Slocum knew it would not be him.

  “How long will it be, John? Before we get to town?”

  Slocum glanced over his shoulder. Betty stared at him with her brown eyes wide and innocent. He knew she was anything but innocent, and there was a hint in her words that she wanted to linger long enough to have another all-night session with him. She was still counting coup on the other two, though she was not as outspoken about it now, and Slocum saw that it worked especially well with Sarah June. The woman had been withdrawn and sullen toward Slocum before. Now she was positively icy. Wilhelmina looked perplexed. She caught the undercurrent between Sarah June and Betty, but her English, as good as it was, failed her when it came to cattiness.

  “A few miles. That’s the slope leading up to Book Plateau,” Slocum said, pointing. The road curved this way and that as it made its way up a steep hill. Atop the mesa were any number of mining towns, but the only one that interested him was Aurum. Not only would he be able to let
the women go out on their own to find the husbands who had bought them, he could locate Lemuel Sanders and collect the money due him.

  The thought of money turned him to something that had not been discussed; the wagon and team were worth something. Back in Salt Lake City, Preen had probably paid close to a hundred dollars for them. But in Aurum, Colorado, the oxen and wagon might go for a considerable bit more. Nothing had been said about what Slocum ought to do with wagon and oxen when his duties were discharged. He might be able to pocket another two hundred dollars, depending on the market.

  “Lagniappe,” Slocum said softly.

  “What’s that?” Sarah June glanced over her shoulder. Her blue eyes were still like chips of ice.

  “Nothing,” Slocum said. He began whistling, which irritated her even more. If she could have left the wagon and kept up by walking, she would have. Somehow, Slocum no longer cared.

  They camped at the base of the road leading up onto the plateau and reached Aurum by sundown the next day.

  As they drove in, Slocum studied it. He had the feeling he had been there before. In a way, he had—all boomtowns looked the same. He counted nine saloons along the main street and saw several more on side streets. Aurum was prosperous, as such towns went. Gold flowed out of the mines surrounding it and kept a lively trade going. A quick count showed no fewer than three general stores and two restaurants. That kind of wealth meant a steady commerce between Aurum and Grand Junction, although that city was more than fifty miles away. The wagon and team would fetch a mighty fine price, he believed.

  Coal oil lamps were being lit, and the saloons started filling with miners hunting for some surcease from their backbreaking work. The pop skull served in these fine drinking emporia undoubtedly dulled the physical pain and offered a false sense of optimism for the next day’s hard work.

  “Where do we stay?” Sarah June asked. “Can we find our . . . husbands?” There was a catch in her voice that surprised Slocum. She had hardly spoken of the man who had purchased her, but now he heard an excitement. That shouldn’t have been unusual. The woman was going to see her betrothed, but it still set Slocum on guard.