by Jake Logan
“Damn shame, Pete gettin’ kilt like that,” the deputy said. “I always liked the son of a bitch.”
“You only liked him ’cuz he bought you drinks.”
The deputy snorted and nodded. “You only liked him because he paid for all the drinks. He was a generous one, but then, them Brits spend money like water flowing through their fingers.”
The two stopped talking when a commotion at the graveside caught their attention. Slocum reached for his six-shooter, but he had left it in his saddlebags. Other than the deputy, nobody at the funeral was packing iron, out of respect for the dead.
“What’s goin’ on?” Mac demanded.
Slocum figured it out before the barkeep. Abigail threw her hands up in the air and cried out as she tumbled backward into the preacher’s arms.
“Give us room. The lady’s fainted dead away. Give her some air.”
A thousand things ran through Slocum’s head. With the barkeep and the lawman pushing forward to Abigail’s side, Slocum dared not go to her also. Turning tail and running wasn’t in him, but the only way he could help her was to avoid getting thrown in the Virginia City jail again.
He walked slowly to where he had tethered the horses outside the cemetery. He’d started to mount when he heard her clarion call. “John, please!”
All eyes turned in his direction.
Even worse, the deputy’s six-gun was turned in his direction, too.
“Three aces,” Slocum muttered as he took his foot out of the stirrup cup and put his hands up over his head.
14
“We don’t need a trial. He killed my brother. String him up now!”
“Hush, Mac. You know what the marshal says about wild talk like that,” said the deputy. “We’ll have a trial and you can tell your side and let him say his piece. That’s what the law says.”
Slocum clung to the iron bars and watched the deputy and the barkeep dancing back and forth as the argument ebbed and flowed. From what he could tell, the deputy wasn’t as inclined to enforce the law as he made out. If it came down to free drinks at the Mountain of Gold Saloon or actually holding a trial, the deputy would be mighty drunk mighty fast.
“Renfro wasn’t worth the powder it’d take to blow him to hell,” Mac said, “but he was my blood. I’m not lettin’ that sidewinder get away with killin’ him over a poker game.”
“I know how you feel, Mac. Me and Renfro wasn’t always on the best of terms,” the deputy said, “but he didn’t deserve to die, even if he was cheatin’ at cards again.”
“He didn’t cheat!”
“Now you just pipe down,” the lawman said. “Ain’t nobody in all of Virginia City what knows Renfro wasn’t above slippin’ a card or two into the deck when it suited him. Even so, killin’ him was wrong.”
“I’ll get this trial movin’ fast,” Mac vowed. He left the small office, making a point of slamming the door hard behind him.
“I didn’t kill him,” Slocum said. “If I’d known he was a card cheat, I wouldn’t have gotten into a game with him.”
“Nobody asked you. I find myself agreein’ more with old Mac than I ever could with a stranger,” the deputy said.
“Thanks for the honesty,” Slocum said bitterly. “I didn’t kill him. There wasn’t any money on me when Mac got the drop on me. The real killer robbed him, not me.”
“I don’t know about such things,” the deputy said, dropping into the desk chair and hiking his feet to a comfortable angle. “That all’s for a jury to ponder.”
“A jury all likkered up by the dead man’s brother,” Slocum said.
“Makes justice go a mite faster, don’t you think?” The deputy tipped his hat over his eyes, and in a few minutes was softly snoring.
Slocum knew better than to pace the cage hunting for a way out. It hadn’t been here before and wouldn’t be now. Sitting on the bunk, he thought hard about what he might do. His plans kept crashing to dust because he couldn’t get Abigail out of his head. Why she had wanted to see the dead freighter was beyond Slocum, but fainting as she had and then calling out his name as she recovered had been the last straw. Even if he’d had his Colt Navy slung at his hip, he couldn’t have shot his way out. The mourners, save for the deputy, had been unarmed. Shooting any of them would have been out of the question.
“Damn you,” Slocum said harshly, and he wasn’t sure who he meant. William Cheswick, Abigail, Pete, or whoever had killed Renfro. All of them. He had been in a tight spot before, but not like this. The deputy would keep a lynch mob at bay for as long as it took to open the jail door and step aside. He might not participate, but he wasn’t much of a bulwark against vigilante justice.
Slocum couldn’t get out, he couldn’t prove his innocence, he was stuck in a cell and on his way to the gallows. Dejected, he stretched out and tried to sleep.
Somewhere around midnight, somebody banged loudly on the office door. The deputy stirred and dropped his feet to the floor. Complaining the whole way, he went to the door and opened it to a small, mousy man. Slocum peered around the corner of the door frame to get a better view, but wasn’t able to see anyone else with the midnight caller. He worried about a mob coming for him, but this wasn’t it.
“What do you want, Jonesy?” The deputy rubbed sleep from his eyes.
“Got a bad fight goin’ on down at the Bucket. I declare, somebody’s gonna get kilt if you don’t break it up.”
“You’d think I was the law in this town or something,” the deputy said. He took a quick look in Slocum’s direction and then stepped out into the night.
Slocum went wild, shaking the bars, trying to spring the lock, anything. He was as securely held as if an eagle had come down and grabbed him with its powerful talons.
He hoped that Abigail would again come rescue him, but when the door opened about ten minutes later, it was the deputy bringing in a drunk. The lawman had the miner by the scruff of the neck and the seat of his britches. He slammed him hard into the bars so he’d fall to the floor.
The deputy drew his six-gun and aimed it at Slocum. “Get on to the rear of the cell. You move a muscle and I swear, I’ll drill you.”
Slocum backed into the far corner as the deputy opened the cell door and kicked the miner inside. The cell door clanked shut and locked with a sound that Slocum knew had to be his death knell.
“Don’t do nuthin’. I’ll be back with this jasper’s partner.”
The deputy left again, grumbling as he went. Slocum dropped beside the drunk miner and shook him.
“They’re killing your partner,” Slocum said. “Then they’re going to kill you.”
“Wha? Who?”
“You know who,” Slocum said. “The man who brought you here. He killed your partner and is bringing the dead body to torment you.”
“Got torment enough,” the miner said, sitting up and putting his head in his hands. “My head feels like it’s gonna blow like a can of Giant blastin’ powder.”
“Never thought I’d hear that you let your partner die and not avenge him.”
“Grogan? Grogan’s dead?” Eyes slightly out of focus moved around, and finally spotted Slocum through the alcoholic haze.
“Yup. Here he is now. To taunt you with the carcass.”
Slocum pointed to the office door as it slammed back against the wall from the deputy’s kick. He dragged in an even burlier miner and let him fall facedown on the floor.
“You know what to do, Slocum. Get yourself to the back of the cell.”
“Dead,” Slocum whispered to his new cell mate. “You’ll be next.”
The miner stared up at the deputy but said nothing. Slocum saw how the lawman ignored the miner and kept his pistol aimed at Slocum’s chest. He knew where the danger inside the cell was.
He thought he knew, but he was wrong.
The instant the cell door opened, the miner launched himself forward, falling against the deputy more than leaping at him. Strong hands clamped around the lawman’s gun hand and forced
the six-gun toward the floor. The deputy found himself trying to fight a drunk miner—then he had his hands full with two. Grogan had recovered enough to see the deputy fighting with his partner, and let out a roar as he charged like a wounded bull.
The deputy got caught between two husky miners and went down underneath them. Slocum stepped over the writhing pile of weakly fighting flesh and kicked the six-shooter from the deputy’s hand.
“Into the cell with him or he’ll be on your asses,” Slocum bellowed. One of the miners obeyed by picking up the deputy and tossing him into the cell as if he were a sack of flour. He crashed into the back wall and slid down, leaving a bloody smear on the brick.
Slocum slammed the cell door and locked it.
“Hightail it or you’ll spend the rest of your lives in a cage,” he told the miners. They knew something had gone terribly wrong and they were part of it. They cleared out, blaming each other for whatever it was that had gotten them into this fix. Slocum rummaged through the desk, and found his Colt Navy and strapped it on. Its comforting weight made him think he could get away scot-free.
“Wha hit me?” The low groan from the jail cell warned that the deputy was coming to sooner than Slocum had expected from the whack he had taken to his head. He touched the ebony handle of his pistol, then knew he couldn’t kill the lawman in cold blood. For all that he thought of the deputy, he had not been turned over to Mac for hanging. The lawman deserved some consideration for that small attention to duty.
Slocum left quickly, stepping into the cold night air. He headed for the stable and found his mare asleep in a stall. The horse turned an irritated eye on him when he hastily saddled her and led her from the stall. Vaulting into the saddle, he headed south out of town. He would have preferred to go north, but any direction out of town suited him. Somewhere north, Cheswick and Abigail must have their camp. He wanted to square things with them—and as he rode, he tried to figure out what that meant.
Abigail had been foolish wanting to see Pete’s corpse. That still made no sense to him. But her brother had vanished into thin air. The base camp in the mountains where his servant probably still tended the fire and waited for his employer’s return was an obvious rendezvous. But Slocum wanted to get as far away from them as he could. He still had a few dollars in his pocket to help him along his get-away trail.
Better than that, he didn’t have any fatal rope burns around his neck.
The road turned eastward, and he began the long descent from high in the mountains. Virginia City had not proved to be his kind of town after all, but then no town was. He got along better living off the land a hundred miles from the nearest human.
By dawn, he was too tired to go on. His mare began faltering, and this convinced him to rest. He had put only a few miles between him and the gallows, but it would have to do.
He dismounted and let the mare graze at some grass alongside the road. Barely had he spread his bedroll when he heard approaching hoofbeats. Slocum grabbed for his Winchester, then slid it back into its saddle sheath. The rider came from the east, not from Virginia City.
He flopped down and put his hands under his head so he could watch the road. With luck, the rider would pass by and never spot him. It was too late for him to get out of sight, so luck on his part and inattention of the early morning rider had to do.
The rider was not inattentive, and Slocum still had no good luck.
“Howdy, mister,” the rider called. He hooked his leg around the pommel and leaned forward. “You got any coffee brewing for a tired pilgrim?”
“Nope, don’t,” Slocum said. He sat up and moved to get his hand closer to his six-shooter.
“Well, sir, if you’ll get a fire going, I’ll share my coffee with you. How’re you fixed for food?”
“I’m all right in that regard,” Slocum said. He had supplies left from Cheswick’s camp, but what he wanted most of all was for the rider to ignore him. If the man continued to Virginia City and happened to be questioned by the deputy, a posse with fresh horses would be on this road in nothing flat.
“You’re lucky, getting a good night’s sleep,” the man said. He stepped down and began working through his saddlebags for coffee. “Me, I been ridin’ all the livelong night. I’m so tired, I’m close to fallin’ over asleep.”
“Do tell.” Slocum gathered firewood and made a small pit. The man watched him closely.
“You spend the night?”
Slocum nodded as he scraped away dirt to make a pit deep enough to hold his firewood.
“Come from Virginia City?”
“Not much else along this road,” Slocum said. He got out his box of lucifers and started a fire. He fed in small twigs and got them hot enough to ignite larger ones. Soon, he had a decent fire blazing that would boil coffee.
“You didn’t have a fire last night when you stopped?”
“Is that all you do? Ask questions?” Slocum looked up and saw the man’s coat pulled back to reveal a star.
“It’s one of the hazards of my job, I reckon. I’m Ethan Dinks, marshal up in Virginia City. I’ve been huntin’ for a renegade Injun.”
“You didn’t find him,” Slocum said.
“Not unless I got me an invisible prisoner,” Dinks said. He chuckled. “I declare, he might as well have been invisible out on the trail. Best damn woodsman I ever encountered.”
“Paiute?”
“You must be headin’ south from way up north,” Dinks said. “We got a half dozen bands of Northern Paiutes kickin’ up their heels and feelin’ their oats.”
“Saw some,” Slocum said since this was a safe enough topic. “They had women with them but I didn’t see any children.”
“They’re always on the move. Entire villages pull up stakes and move. Damn hard keepin’ track of where they’re goin’.” The marshal put his coffeepot on the fire, filled it with water from his canteen, and then tossed in coffee. “Need a few eggshells in the pot to keep it from gettin’ too bitter. You ever try that?”
“Still tastes bitter if the coffee’s boiled too long,” Slocum allowed.
“True,” Dinks said. They sat in silence as the coffee brewed. Slocum held out his tin cup for the marshal to pour. He was feeling relaxed now. The marshal would find out soon enough about the trouble in his town, but by then Slocum could be another dozen miles down the road. If he spotted a likely area, he’d leave the road and cut across country. In such mountainous terrain, tracking him would be nigh on impossible.
“You make good coffee, Marshal.”
“I tell you, I need this. Otherwise, I’d have to prop open my eyelids with toothpicks.” The marshal downed his coffee and poured himself a second cup. “What’s your business?”
“Looking for a job tending cattle,” Slocum said.
“You might go on into Virginia City. There’re a couple spreads in the area what supply beeves to the miners. One owner’s a friend of mine. I could put in a word for you.”
“That’s mighty neighborly, Marshal,” Slocum said, “but the cold’s getting to me. I’m headed for warmer, lower country.”
“Get far enough south and you’ll wish you were back where it isn’t a hundred degrees in the day and zero at night. The south desert’s a man killer.”
“I’ll take my chances. Arizona is more to my liking now anyway.”
“Wish you luck,” the marshal said. He tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire, stood, and drew his six-shooter before Slocum realized what was happening. “I think it might be a better idea if you and me moseyed on back to town just for a spell.”
“What’s going on?” Slocum judged his chances of throwing down against a veteran lawman who had his six-shooter pointed squarely at his chest. From the steady grip and the steely look, Slocum realized his chances were zero.
“Now, that’s what I want to figure out. You camped for the night, but it looks from your lathered horse that you just arrived not long ’fore me. You certainly didn’t fix any food. No matter how tired a m
an gets on the trail, food’s a consideration. And if you’d spent the night with only that thin blanket, you’d have built a fire or froze.”
“You’re jumping to some wild conclusions.”
“You just might be right. If you are and nothing’s amiss in Virginia City, I’ll apologize, buy you a decent meal, and put you up in the finest hotel in town.” The marshal gestured for Slocum to pack up his gear and mount. “And if I’m not, well, then, I can offer you lodging in my jail.”
Slocum knew all about those accommodations.
15
“Bugger me cross-eyed, look at what the marshal’s bringin’ back!”
Slocum glowered at the mousy man the deputy had called Jonesy. He sat outside the jailhouse, cleaning his fingernails with a short knife, but seeing Dinks riding in with a prisoner brought him to his feet.
The outcry brought half the town running, or so it seemed. They all talked at once, making the marshal scowl.
“Hush up, y’all,” Dinks bellowed. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”
“Why, Marshal, you brung back the varmint that killed Renfro and Pete—you know Pete? The freighter fella. You brung back an escaped prisoner, and we didn’t even know you was on the trail!”
“Escaped?” Ethan Dinks looked hard at Slocum. “You escaped from my jail?”
Slocum said nothing. By this time, the deputy had come running and skidded to a halt a few feet away. He had his six-gun out and pointed at Slocum’s head.
“You caught him, Marshal! I thought he was gone for good. He bashed in my skull and got away.”
“You had him?”
“Me and Mac, we caught him at Pete’s funeral. He was there to gloat over what he’d done. He blowed half of Pete’s fool head off!”
The crowd all began shouting at once. Dinks put his fingers in his mouth and cut through the din with an ear-piercing whistle.
“Pete’s dead? And Renfro?”
“He’s the one what done it, Marshal,” explained Jonesy.
He pointed his skinny knife at Slocum and said, “We knows he’s guilty ’cuz he ran.”