Slocum and the Hanging Horse

by Jake Logan

  “Could it be so? You said you felt something too. Is he dead? Could those buffoons actually have murdered him?”

  “The marshal and his posse?”

  “Who else? I worried that they might chase him off with their blundering about, but what if they did find him and gunned him down? A vital chapter—more!—in my book will be gone. I must prepare for any eventuality. What if he is no more?”

  “Come, sit down, Ambrose. We can think of something.” Amy patted the bed, but he took no notice.

  “We can still have the funeral, of course. And pictures of the body. I need those.”

  “You might be worrying over nothing,” she said. “A nightmare, nothing more. You have no proof anything’s happened to Jeter. Why, he might have killed everyone in the posse. Think what a chapter in your book that will make.”

  “But he must be brought in for trial.”

  “Perhaps Mr. Slocum will capture him,” Amy said. The sudden mention of John Slocum slipped from her lips and had a curious effect on her. She was already damp in the nether regions, thinking of what it would be like to lie with Ambrose. He was so close. But Slocum was so uncouth and brutal. Not like the far more cultured and educated Ambrose Killian.

  “I did not think too highly of him when you told me about him, but perhaps you are right. There might be a core of steel under that filthy exterior, but who would win in such a match? Jeter or Slocum?” Ambrose kept pacing, then stopped suddenly in front of her door. For a heart-stopping instant she thought he was going to lock the door and come to her. Instead, he opened the door and spun into the hallway, talking to her as he went.

  “That might make a far better chapter. Maybe the posse didn’t even find Jeter. It must have been Slocum. Man against man, drifter versus vicious outlaw. Who will win? Who will be triumphant? Yes, if Jeter is dead, this will make a perfect chapter between description of his crimes and pictures of his funeral. I must see that Slocum is given a huge reward. His type appreciates such a gesture.”

  “Ambrose!” Amy called to a shut door. She heard his footsteps fade out as he entered his room across the hall. The creaking of the floorboards did not cease, though. She knew he was pacing to and fro in his room, hands clutched behind his back as he worked out a new chapter for his damned book.

  Amy threw herself facedown on the bed and wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come.

  21

  There wasn’t a joint or muscle in Slocum’s body that didn’t hurt like fire. He rolled, reached out, and felt nothing but thin air and came instantly alert. He opened his eyes to a forty-foot drop. His heart leaped into his throat, then slowly descended to its proper place as he carefully inched away from the precipice. Once safe, Slocum sat up and examined himself. He had come by all the aches and pains honestly. He was covered with scratches and deep cuts that turned him into a bloody mess, but he was able to stand. At first he was nauseous, and then he held down his gorge long enough to get used to the sensations rippling away at him.

  “Jeter!”

  The name was almost ripped from his throat. He looked around, then examined the puddle of blood on the stony ledge. He hadn’t lost this much blood—Jeter had. Slocum reached down to his boot top and found the empty sheath there.

  “I knifed him,” Slocum said, memories flooding back now. He had driven his blade into the outlaw’s side while Jeter was squeezing the life from him. Slocum gingerly touched his neck and winced. The bruises there were tender and throbbed with a vitality of their own. But he was alive and Jeter wasn’t. He couldn’t have lived. Slocum went to the edge and looked down into the darkness below, trying to make out where Jeter’s body must have fallen.

  His heart leaped back into his throat when he realized Jeter’s stallion was missing. Slocum wasted no time getting down the stone staircase to the small corral. He saw patches of blood all the way down, and marveled that Jeter was able to walk. But the horse was gone and the evidence made it look as if Jeter had been the one riding away.

  “Damnation, what’s it take to kill that son of a bitch?” Slocum drew his six-shooter and checked the cylinder. Fully loaded. He shouldn’t have tangled with the outlaw in a hand-to-hand fight. Find him, wait for him to turn his back, and shoot him. That was what he should have done.

  Slocum followed the horse tracks to the floor of the canyon, saw the turn to the right and the sudden reversal. There was no reason for Jeter to have headed directly toward the posse’s camp unless he had become confused. That made Slocum think the outlaw was in worse shape than ever before. This was the best chance he had of catching him and getting him back to San Esteban for trial.

  As he walked, following the obvious trail, Slocum saw other hoofprints on the ground. He sucked in his breath. Marshal Eaton and the rest of the posse must have come after Jeter when Billy went to fetch them. In a way, this surprised Slocum. He hadn’t thought the marshal had enough command of the men riding with him to muster them all in the middle of the night after their drunken debauchery. It was almost idle speculation on Slocum’s part when he pictured Luke riding along with them. The barkeep had been knocked out and in no condition to stand, much less ride.

  “Might be Luke’s horse is still back at the camp,” Slocum thought aloud. He could catch up with the posse faster if he rode. But backtracking would waste another hour. He needed to keep moving, to find Jeter and settle accounts with him before the posse found him.

  And he knew they couldn’t find their own hats if they were squarely atop their heads.

  By sunup he smelled fire. Slocum walked a little faster in spite of being footsore and more exhausted than he could remember being. The fight with Jeter had taken the starch out of him, and only the thought of facing Jeter again kept him putting one foot in front of the other. Every time Jeter’s leering face flashed through his brain, he reached over and touched the cold butt of his Peacemaker. Six rounds might not be enough when he caught up with the road agent.

  The odor of cooking meat made his belly growl and his mouth water. Slocum heard the men laughing and joking long before he actually spotted them or their fire. The posse made no attempt to hide their position or keep their voices down. Slocum reckoned that was due to working hard all night long on the prodigious amount of booze they had packed in their saddlebags.

  “Mr. Slocum!” Billy jumped to his feet, stared at Slocum for an instant, and then rushed forward to embrace him in a bear hug. “I thought you was dead!”

  “Takes more than Les Jeter to do me in,” Slocum said. He looked around at the men. They all had shit-eating grins on their faces.

  “Have somethin’ to eat. We got plenty. I shot a couple rabbits and we made some biscuits and—”

  “Where’s Jeter?”

  Billy’s eyes went wide and he started to speak, but no words came out of his mouth, no matter how much his lips moved.

  “He met his Maker, that’s where he is,” Marshal Eaton said, coming over. “You look a fright. Truth is, you look worse ’n Jeter and he’s dead.”

  “You shot it out with him?”

  “Not exactly,” Eaton said, looking uneasy.

  “He surrendered, Mr. Slocum. He surrendered and they hung him.” Billy looked aggrieved at this.

  “We saved the taxpayers of Jeff Davis County a few dollars, that’s all,” the marshal said. “Why bother with a trial when he was in such sad shape he wasn’t likely to survive the ride back to San Esteban?”

  “You hung him without a trial?” Slocum didn’t know whether to be outraged at being cheated or to laugh.

  “I tole them it wasn’t the right thing to do,” Billy said.

  “He’ll grow some fur round them balls of his one day,” Eaton said, glaring at Billy. “We done what we had to. He was dyin’ from his wounds.”

  “So you hung him before he could die?”

  “Something like that. Justice was done.”

  “Is this here knife yours, Mr. Slocum?” Billy fumbled around in his bedroll and pulled out Slocum’s knife.
“I found it at the base of the cliff. That’s what caused him to be so weak and all, I reckon.”

  “But he had other wounds. A nasty one in his ass,” said another of the posse. “Don’t know how he rode with that one. Soaked his entire leg in blood, just like that knife wound in his side did to his shirt.”

  Slocum took the knife and slid it into his boot sheath.

  “Where is he?”

  “Still strung up ’bout a quarter mile that way,” the marshal said, pointing. “None of us had the heart to cut him down. Seemed fittin’ fer all the men he killed to let him swing in the wind till the crows finished with him.”

  “I have to find him,” Slocum said. He turned to go, but Billy stopped him, his hand strong and sure on Slocum’s quaking arm.

  “Ain’t nuthin’ you kin do for him, Mr. Slocum. He’s dead.”

  “There’s nothing I want to do for him,” Slocum snapped. “There’s plenty I want to do to him. He stole my watch and I’m going to get it back.”

  “This one?” Marshal Eaton fumbled in his side coat pocket and pulled out Slocum’s watch. “If you claim it’s yours, I’m not gonna argue. Any of you boys?” A sea of shaking heads answered the lawman. He handed over the glittering gold watch.

  Slocum took it as if it were the most precious item in the world. And for him it was. His brother Robert lived as long as the watch ticked away. He tucked it into his own pocket, where it had ridden since the war. It felt good.

  “Thank you,” Slocum said. Heads turned toward him. They all heard the sincerity in his voice.

  “Uh, you walked from back there, Slocum?” The marshal jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the canyon where Slocum had fought Jeter.

  “My horse is dead. You know that, Marshal. Jeter shot it out from under me.”

  “You want another horse to replace that one?”

  “Who got killed?” Slocum looked around the camp, counting and trying to remember the men’s faces. Everyone, including Luke, was here. Luke’s head was bandaged and he stared off into space as if he was thinking hard.

  “Not Luke, but he’s in a bad way. I had a cousin who got kicked in the head by a mule who acted like him. Luke might not be right in the head again,” Eaton said almost gleefully. Slocum guessed most of the posse felt about Luke the way he had.

  “If everyone is still all right, then what horse are you offering me, Marshal?”

  “One nobody wants,” Billy said. “The one Jeter was ridin’ when he was hung.”

  “He’s right, Slocum. Not that we’re superstitious or anything, but none of us wants to ride a hangin’ horse.”

  Slocum heard Jeter’s stallion neighing loudly from the rude corral they had made some distance away. He had admired the horse’s vitality and heart. It seemed only fair that he take it since Jeter had killed his.

  Slocum didn’t even care that a man had died astride it, a rope around his neck. If anything, that made receiving the horse all the more attractive.

  22

  “Mr. Killian, here they come!” Amy Gerardo leaned out the hotel window and looked around the edge of the building and down the dusty street. She saw the sunlight glinting on the marshal’s badge and nearly a dozen men trailing behind.

  “Successful? Do they have Jeter?” Ambrose pushed past her, and she didn’t mind the feel of his body warmly pressing into hers. She just wished he noticed it as acutely as she did. He was oblivious to all but the posse returning from their manhunt. “I’ve got to get down and see. Hurry, girl, hurry. Bring your notebook. We’ll need notes! And I should get my camera too. There’s a man in a litter. That must be Jeter. They wounded him and brought him back.”

  Amy wondered if any tornado had ever whirled through Texas faster than Ambrose just did as he left her room and rummaged about in his own across the hall, getting his camera and fresh photographic plates. She picked up her notebook and a pencil, then closed the door behind her. As quickly as she moved, Ambrose was faster. He was already down the stairs and outside.

  She followed at a more sedate pace, wondering what the future would bring now that Ambrose’s obsession with Jeter was about at an end. The outlaw would rob no more. His trial couldn’t possibly last longer than a few minutes after being so expertly orchestrated by Ambrose.

  The heat crushed her like a hammer smashing a fly. Amy let out a tiny sigh and squinted against the sun as she went into the street to stand behind Ambrose and hear his conversation with Marshal Eaton. The lawman looked as if he had been pulled through a knothole backward, but so did the rest of the posse. Their chase must have been long and difficult. Amy smiled. This would please Ambrose and give him yet another chapter in his book.

  “Is he badly injured, Marshal?” Ambrose edged around the lawman’s horse and stood on tiptoe to peer at the man sprawled on the litter. “He’s hardly moving.”

  “Oh, he’s alive. He’s a tough one,” Eaton said. “We got to get him on over to the doc’s office.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, he hit his head and—”

  “Go on, tell him what really happened, Marshal,” said an angry young man.

  Amy looked at her list of names of those in the posse. She leaned forward and whispered to Ambrose, “His name’s Billy Cassidy.”

  “Is there a fact Mr. Cassidy knows that you don’t, Marshal? Or are you trying to hide something?”

  “It’s a mite embarrassin’, that’s all. Slocum swung and hit him when he called him a, well, let’s say he called him somethin’ no man wants to hear.”

  “Slocum was with the posse?” Amy perked up.

  “Yup. He drew that Peacemaker of his faster ’n I ever seen a man move; then he swung the barrel and caught Luke across the cheek with it. He fell back and—”

  “Luke? You mean Jeter, don’t you?” Ambrose looked shocked.

  “No, no, Luke, the barkeep from the Drunk Camel. He brought along too much tarantula juice and was drunk. He deserved what he got, but he hit his head on a rock when he fell and ain’t been right since that.”

  “Luke? What about Jeter!” Ambrose rushed around and stared down at the litter. Amy pressed close behind and saw the man with a ruined mouth and a bloody patch on the back of his head larger than a silver dollar. Although Luke’s eyes were open, they stared like he was blind.

  “Well, I suppose I oughta tell you ’bout that, Mr. Killian,” said the marshal, dismounting and swinging his reins around a hitching post. “Like you wanted, we caught him.”

  “Where is he?” Ambrose was turning frantic as he went from one posse member to the next looking for Les Jeter. “He’s not here!”

  “Of course he ain’t, Mr. Killian. He was so banged up when we caught him, we knew he’d never make it back alive, so we hung him.”

  Ambrose Killian stared at the lawman as if he had sprouted horns.

  “You did what?”

  “Hung the son of a bitch, just like we’d of done after a trial here in town. Only, Jeter’d never have made it back so—”

  “Where? Where’d you hang him?”

  “From an oak tree. Real sturdy one too.”

  “I don’t care about the kind of tree, you idiot! Where’s Jeter now?”

  “Still swingin’ in the wind, I suppose, ’less the coyotes and buzzards got to him.” Marshal Eaton looked increasingly angry at Killian. “I don’t like the tone you’re takin’, Mr. Killian. You tryin’ to back out on payin’ that reward you put up?”

  “I wanted Jeter!” Ambrose screamed so loudly that Amy went to him and tugged at his sleeve.

  “Sir, please, you’re making a scene. The marshal’s getting mad too. There’s no telling what he’ll do if he—”

  “I want the goddamn body!”

  “You settle down there, Mr. Killian,” said the marshal. “You’re raisin’ too much of a ruckus. I wouldn’t want to fine you fer disturbin’ the peace.”

  “I want the body!”

  Amy took a firm hold on her employer’s arm,
in spite of him trying to pull free, and steered him back in the direction of the hotel. She spoke quietly and rapidly to him.

  “We can find out where the body is. This isn’t a loss, Mr. Killian, it’s a boon. Think of the drama in the situation.”

  “I wanted a trial.”

  “But you heard the marshal. Jeter’s body is still out there. You can take pictures. And Mr. Slocum had a part. He would make a fine hero pitted against the evil Lester Jeter.”

  “I’m the damned hero, not this Slocum.”

  Amy saw that Ambrose was settling down and recovering his usual good nature, although very slowly as the reality of missing out on the outlaw’s trial sank in. She motioned to Billy Cassidy to come over since the young man stood uneasily a few yards away, paying more than a fair share of attention to Ambrose’s temper tantrum.

  “Ma’am, Mr. Killian,” Billy said. “I heard what you said to the marshal.”

  “So?” Ambrose was turning petulant now. Amy found she wasn’t too inclined to like this aspect of his character that had not been revealed to her before, but she knew how to coax him back to his usual good nature.

  “I think Billy wants to tell us he can take us to where Jeter was hanged. Isn’t that it?”

  “Oh, sure, ma’am, that’s easy enough. But I wanted to say that the marshal, well, he don’t spread around the praise too much. I think the reward’s blindin’ him to the fact that we’d never have caught Jeter if it hadn’t been for Mr. Slocum. Him and me, we lit out of camp on our own and tracked Jeter. Mr. Slocum had a right good idea where that son of a gun might be. And he was. I went to fetch the rest of the posse from camp and Mr. Slocum tangled with him all by his lonesome.”

  “Is Mr. Slocum all right?” Amy found herself asking with a touch of real concern.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am, he’s right as rain. Well, he got banged up a mite, but he’s not hurt. Fact is, he got Jeter’s watch and took his horse as reward.”