by Jake Logan
“The saloon?” Killian frowned as he considered the merits of such a venue for the wake. “That might be best. Twenty sounds so limiting.”
“Sir, I don’t know if it would be appropriate for me to go to a saloon, even when reserved for this particular affair,” she said.
“What’s that? Oh, don’t worry, Miss Gerardo. If you don’t feel up to it, I am sure your services wouldn’t be needed. They no doubt have pretty waiter girls who can serve the libations.”
“But I’ve supplied so many pieces of his life. The spur—”
“We’ve been over that, Miss Gerardo,” he said sharply. “The spur was not a legitimate object d’ Jeter.”
O’Dell eyed them like a vulture waiting for its meal to die.
“Sorry, sir,” she said contritely, but angry fire still burned within. She had risked her life to retrieve that spur. She had done everything possible to make certain it was a legitimate artifact, and Ambrose had discarded it out of hand. Worse, he’d derided her for the effort. Amy wondered if it would matter if she took Ambrose to speak directly with Paco Rodriguez and his crazy friend Bernardo.
“How many people do you expect to attend this special . . . service?” O’Dell asked. He folded his hands in front of his belly again and leaned forward, making him look even more like a buzzard with his hooked nose. His black eyes shone liquidly.
“We’ll invite the entire town. And why not? After the trial and execution, everyone will be relieved that such a violent man no longer preys on them. Why not have a party for everyone?”
“At the saloon, sir? The women—”
“The women can go make a quilt to commemorate the occasion. Or go to the church for a social. I don’t care. What’s important is the pageantry. And how many pictures I can take. May I inquire about the cemetery, Mr. O’Dell?”
“All prepared, though it seemed a little premature to dig the grave. The wind fills the hole quickly enough, making it necessary to redig the grave site if it stands open longer than a week or two.”
“I’m sure,” Ambrose said, a distant look on his face.
“What of the tombstone, sir?” Amy asked. “Have you considered what sentiments to put on it?”
“‘Here lies the most dangerous outlaw in Texas history’ sounds like a decent epitaph.”
“That would require more than a simple tombstone like those on other graves,” O’Dell said. “For such an extensive message to eternity, you would need something more like a monument. Perhaps that is what you have in mind?”
“What’s a little more expense?” Ambrose said airily. “Of course. A large monument towering above the grave. Make certain it mentions my part in its erection. I’ll let you know the exact wording.”
“It will require shipment of granite slabs from Austin,” O’Dell said. “Freighting such heavy slabs here might take a few weeks, even if I ordered them today.”
“Do it. Miss Gerardo will take care of your monetary needs for this too. Down payment now, the balance on completion.”
“Very good,” O’Dell said, rubbing his hands together like a miser contemplating his gold. Amy realized that this might well be the same for the undertaker. Never in his career would he have such an opportunity to rake in tons of money.
“I’ll see to the saloon,” said Ambrose. “I can use the opportunity to wet my whistle.”
“But, sir, I shouldn’t go into the saloon. It’s not a fitting place.”
“I didn’t ask you to accompany me, Miss Gerardo. What’s gotten into you?”
“The excitement, sir,” she said. “I hoped we could go back to the hotel. You and me. We could . . . discuss the unresolved details.” Her heart beat faster at the thought of returning to the hotel with Ambrose, going to his room, having him undress her slowly, and then—
“Later, my dear. There’ll be plenty of time later. Now, I’ll have a few shots of whiskey and speak with the owner about rentals. No one in West Texas, from San Antonio to El Paso, will ever forget the trial, execution, and celebration of that prince of thieves, Lester Jeter!”
Ambrose left abruptly, going down the street to the saloon. Amy looked uneasily at O’Dell, then bade him good-bye and returned to the hotel and her room.
Alone.
17
Slocum went ass-over-teakettle when the single shot killed his horse. The reliable old nag put its head down and somersaulted, taking Slocum with it. He hit the ground hard. The impact jarred him so much, he lay dazed and only vaguely aware of the horse’s massive body pinning his leg to the ground. He blinked through the pain and stared up at Jeter.
The outlaw had his six-shooter aimed directly at Slocum’s face. Slocum reached for the pistol that had been thrust into his belt, and discovered it was missing. This brought him around, struggling hard to get out from under the deadweight holding him to the ground.
“Good-bye, Slocum. Burn in hell!”
The outlaw’s six-shooter misfired. Slocum fumbled to get his own six-gun out, but it was under his body, grinding into his left hip. As he fought to get it out, Jeter rode over. He was still securely tied to the saddle, but had somehow freed his hands. In a flash Slocum saw a multitude of things. The outlaw’s hands were bloody from the ropes and a stream of blood ran down his left leg, soaking his pants, and turning his saddle a gory red.
And Slocum saw the road agent swinging his pistol. Ducking fast, he got out of the way so the gun barrel only knocked off his hat and not his head. Slocum kept trying to get his own gun free, but couldn’t. His left leg was turning cold from lack of circulation, and if he didn’t get it free quickly, he might as well cut it off. There was no pain, but the immense weight of the horse was slowly killing his leg.
As Jeter intended to kill him.
“You’re the luckiest son of a bitch I ever seen, Slocum,” Jeter called. The outlaw rode closer and swung again, missing Slocum’s head again. Being tied into the saddle limited how far he could lean, and again saved Slocum a busted head.
Slocum felt his strength fading fast. He should have killed Jeter when he had the chance. Only some misguided notion of getting the man to San Esteban for trial had stayed him. Had he wanted Ruth to know the full extent of her husband’s evil ways? Or had he wanted to prove to Jeter—and himself—that he was the better man? Nothing mattered now.
Slocum reached for the knife sheathed in his right boot top, but his fingers were inches shy of it.
“Damn you, Slocum, you aren’t gettin’ away with this.” Jeter furiously tore at the ropes holding him to the saddle and managed to pull free. He left blood-soaked strands behind as he jumped to the ground. He almost collapsed as his weight bore down on his left leg. Slocum saw the outlaw was in almost as bad a shape as he was. Whatever had injured his hip still caused a steady flow of blood.
Slocum doubted Jeter would bleed to death before he killed his helpless foe.
Jeter fell to his knees and scooted over to Slocum. His bloody hands batted Slocum’s away as he dived down to the vest pocket holding the watch. Jeter pulled it free and let it spin, as Slocum had, to torment him.
“Got it, Slocum, got it back. And it’s gonna stay mine this time. No way you’re gettin’ it back!”
Jeter swung again with his pistol. Slocum caught it in both hands and tried to wrench it free. If the fight hadn’t been so deadly serious, Slocum would have laughed. Neither of them could have fought a kitten and won. Jeter realized the same thing, and fell backward out of Slocum’s reach.
“Enough of this. You’re gonna pay for everything you’ve done, you kidnappin’, rapin’ owlhoot!” Jeter began fumbling at his gun belt to pull free a cartridge to reload. His hands had turned to nerveless lumps.
Slocum pushed and shoved and worked to get to his own six-shooter. And then his luck rushed back to save him.
Jeter had dropped a second cartridge when he looked up, head turning slowly. His nostrils flared like a horse ready to rear and flail out with its hooves.
“You’re a dead man,
Slocum. And I’ll be the one sendin’ you to hell!” Jeter forced himself to his feet, put his fingers to his mouth, and whistled. His powerful stallion came trotting up. Painfully swinging into the saddle, Jeter bent low and brought his horse to a quick trot, disappearing from sight in seconds.
Slocum kept fighting the deadweight on top of him, to no avail. He sagged back, caught his breath, and started working again. Then he heard what Jeter, with his keener hearing, already had. Hoofbeats.
“Here, I’m over here!” Slocum shouted until he was hoarse. He almost cried when he saw five men gallop up. The lead rider wore a marshal’s badge pinned on his coat.
“Got yerself a tad of a problem, don’t ya?” the marshal said, pushing back his hat and looking at Slocum’s dilemma. “How’d you come to shoot yer own horse? Heard the shot and came to investigate.”
“Jeter did it—the man who robbed the San Esteban bank.”
“Now ain’t that coincidence,” the marshal said. “He’s just the owlhoot we’re lookin’ for. Got good evidence agin him too. Which way’d he go?”
“Get me out from under here,” Slocum said. “I’ll be more ’n happy to show you.”
“He ain’t the one we’re lookin’ for, is he, Marshal Eaton?” asked a rider alongside the lawman.
“Don’t look nuthin’ like him. You heard that Killian fella. He gave a real good description, after askin’ round town ’bout those who seen Jeter runnin’ from the bank.”
“Get me out from under this pile of horse meat!”
“What? Yeah, ’spect we’d better do just that.” Eaton took the lariat off his saddle and tossed it to the man who wasn’t sure if Slocum was the outlaw they were hunting. “Loop that around the horse’s neck so’s I kin pull it off. You stay down there, boy, and help him out from under. What’s your name?”
“Slocum.”
“You help Mr. Slocum if’n he cain’t wiggle free on his own. Saw a man crushed to death when a horse fell on him. Ugly sight. Blood and bones pokin’ out.” The marshal shook his head sadly. “Didn’t even want to touch him to bury him, but there wasn’t no choice.”
The rope was fastened around the dead horse, then to Eaton’s saddle horn. The pulling began in earnest. Slocum saw that Eaton’s horse had been trained for such things, making Eaton more of a cowboy than a lawman. As the weight lifted from Slocum’s leg, he didn’t care if Eaton was the devil incarnate. The relief he felt was almost enough to make him pass out. The deputy on the ground grabbed Slocum under the arms and tugged him free.
“You stand up on your own?”
“I can, Marshal. Thanks,” Slocum said. “You Marshal Benbow?”
“’fraid not. Marshal Benbow got wind of Jeter and his doin’s and kept on ridin’. He didn’t have a bunch of friends to help him track the varmint down like I do.”
“What’s the reward?” Slocum knew this was the only way more than one or two men could be glued together into a posse.
“We each get thirty dollars for lookin’. Twice that if we catch Jeter.”
“Is Killian putting up the reward?”
“Surely is,” the youngster next to Slocum said. “He’s a real civic-minded fella.”
“Time’s a’wastin’,” Eaton said pompously. “Which way’d he go? You sure it was Jeter and not some other lawless element?”
“It was Jeter,” Slocum assured him. He pointed in the direction Jeter had taken. “He shot my horse, stole my watch, and rode off before he could finish the job of killing me. You pulled my fat out of the fire, Marshal.”
“That’s my job,” Eaton said even more self-importantly. He puffed himself up, let out an earsplitting whistle, and yelled, “We got the trail, men! This way!”
Slocum looked at his dead horse and shook his head. Without even the slow-moving but steady mount under him, he had no chance of catching Jeter. He wanted personal satisfaction for all the outlaw had done to him, but having the posse catch him was about as good. But Slocum had seen firsthand how expert Jeter was at hiding his trail. He didn’t have much of a head start, but these cowboys weren’t what Slocum would call accomplished trailsmen. They would lose Jeter the first time he rode across a rocky patch.
“You know these mountains?” Slocum asked.
“What’s that?” Eaton waved some more to draw the attention of the rest of his posse. Seven more men slowly rode toward the marshal. “I only been in West Texas a couple months. Worked a ranch down south. Heard they might need hands up here. Didn’t. I was gettin’ set to go back to Beeville when I got myself appointed marshal of San Esteban. Never thought I’d be wearin’ a badge.” Eaton ran his finger around the circular badge.
“I can track him. He’s good, damned good, and you’ll likely lose him. Jeter’s memorized every single rock in the Davis Mountains.”
“You tryin’ to horn in on our reward money?” demanded the young man who had helped Slocum out from under the dead horse.
“Keep the money,” Slocum said, forcing himself to keep a lid on his boiling anger. “I want my watch—and to see Jeter brought to trial.”
“You don’t want no money?”
Slocum’s cold look caused the boy to wilt like a delicate flower in a blue norther.
“You can’t keep up with us on foot,” Eaton observed. “You could ride double with Billy there.”
Slocum looked at the youngster and then his strawberry roan. The horse was strong enough to carry the pair of them, but not fast and not all that far. He would have to make good on his claims about tracking Jeter within a day or the horse would simply give out under him and Billy.
“Let me get my saddlebags,” he said, pulling them free from the dead horse. “Let’s go. Time’s not on our side as long as Jeter is riding.”
“Dunno if the horse kin stand our weight and your saddlebags too,” Billy said, looking skeptical about sharing his horse with anyone. Slocum understood. He also knew that they had to quit quibbling and get after Jeter right away.
“I’d buy the roan from you, but I don’t have that kind of money,” Slocum said. “Jeter’s taken about everything of value I have.”
“Real mean son of a buck,” Billy agreed. “Well, I reckon we kin both get on there. But your saddle’s gotta stay here.”
Slocum had already decided that. His few remaining possessions were stowed in his saddlebags. He took a few minutes, got out spare ammo, and made sure the cartridges were stuck into the loops along his gun belt. In a fight with Jeter, he would need every single round.
“Let’s ride,” he said. Billy mounted, and Slocum swung up behind.
“Don’t you go gettin’ too fancy with them hands of yers,” Billy said a little nervously. Then he hiccuped, and Slocum smelled the booze on the young man’s breath. When the roan trotted after Eaton and the rest of the posse, Slocum heard sloshing coming from Billy’s saddlebags.
“Going after a dangerous man like Jeter’s not something you do half-drunk,” Slocum said. “You need Dutch courage?”
“Aw, quit funnin’ me,” Billy said. “Thass another reason I joined up. Luke at the Drunk Camel gave us all a couple bottles of his prime whiskey. The reward’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but free booze? How kin anyone pass up that?”
Slocum said nothing. He hadn’t realized the rest of the posse was all likkered up too. They were more dangerous to each other in a gunfight than they would be to Jeter. If the outlaw figured that out, he would rack up another half-dozen murders and let the rest of the posse shoot one another.
“Where are we headin’, Slocum?” called the marshal. “We got ourselves a Y canyon comin’ up real soon. Left or right?”
Slocum saw that the split in the canyon was the kind of thing Jeter would relish. A less experienced lawman would split his posse, making it easier to kill whichever half came after Jeter. Looking down at the ground, Slocum saw the muddled tracks Jeter had left intentionally, but there had to be something the road agent had done that wasn’t quite as intentional. He was only a short dista
nce ahead and didn’t have the luxury of hours to lay a fake trail.
Jumping down, Slocum walked alongside Billy.
“Keep a ways back, will you? I don’t want the trail muddled up more than necessary.”
“Hell, Slocum, there’s no way you can track him across that!” Billy pointed to the rocky stretch extending from the mouth of one canyon halfway across the other. “No horse is gonna leave hoofprints on solid rock.”
Slocum studied the ground and had to agree. Whether Jeter had turned lucky or had known of this spot and then come here directly wasn’t something Slocum wanted to ponder. Jeter had given them two choices.
“We can split up,” suggested Eaton.
“No! That’s what he wants. Half your men would be riding into an ambush. That means Jeter’s not up to taking you all on.”
“All of us? Hell, man, even with six in each party, he’s up against a damn army!” Eaton looked around, and the men with him cheered. Slocum saw a couple of them raising almost empty pint bottles in salute to their courage and skill.
“Yeah, let’s split up and go after him. The ones what get to that snake in the grass first gets all the reward!” someone shouted.
Slocum saw this was an increasingly popular decision because the men were too drunk to realize the full impact of what they were up against. Soused, they saw only the reward Killian had offered and a single outlaw on the run. If they thought about it, they would remember a dozen or more murders during the past weeks, the deadly robberies, including their town bank being burned down, and Jeter’s ability to keep from even being seen until recently.
With a deliberate step, Slocum paced across the rocky flat and saw shiny marks left by a horseshoe. Dropping to his belly, he caught the sunlight just right off one scratch, and decided which way Jeter had traveled when he left it. But not a dozen feet away was another, going in the opposite direction. Slocum considered the spacing, then turned and went to the right canyon.