Slocum and Little Britches

by Jake Logan

  “I’ll be glad when we get this gold to whoever and we can get off by ourselves.”

  He boosted her on the horse and smiled. “Me, too.”

  They rode all night to reach Denning. His eyes gritty and dry, he focused on the jacales north of the Southern Pacific rails. They crossed the double tracks at first light, weary and tired. He dismounted and entered the terminal depot with the sign WELLS FARGO FREIGHT AGENCY in black letters on the side.

  “Wells Fargo man here?” he asked the telegraph operator under the celluloid visor who was clacking on the key.

  The man wrote a message on a pad and then shook his head. “Rensaleer is his name.”

  “Can you get him word? I have a gold shipment for him.”

  “Bud! Get up here!”

  A sleepy boy of ten or so appeared. “Yes, sir?”

  “Go up to Milly’s Cat House and tell them to get Rensaleer down here. He has business to attend to.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t you dillydally around up there either. Your mother will bust both our asses.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Heinz.” With a big grin plastered on his freckled face, Bud left in a run for his destiny.

  “You can bring it inside,” the operator said.

  Slocum nodded. Each pannier contained four canvas bags of ingots and gold ore that weighted fifty to sixty pounds apiece. So he brought them in one at a time and put them on the counter. Little Britches had taken off the hitches and canvas covers.

  The operator raised his eyebrows as the pile grew. “You mine all this?”

  “No, bandits stole all this in Mexico and I got it back.”

  Heinz whistled. “Damned if I think I’d’ve brought it back. Must be paying you good.”

  “Well, you aren’t me.”

  “That’s for damn sure. I hope Rensaleer gets here soon. I’m getting nervous having all this out in the open.”

  “He should be coming, shouldn’t he?”

  “Yeah, Bud’ll bring him. His mother will probably wallop me if she hears about me sending him up there.”

  Slocum stopped in the doorway on his way back for another sack. “Guess he’ll find out about it sooner or later.”

  “She’d like it to be lots later.”

  When all the gold was piled on the counter, Slocum and Little Britches sat on the hard depot bench waiting for Rensaleer.

  Soon, a man in a rumpled suit and with a large mustache arrived clearing his throat. “What can I do for you?” He frowned at the canvas sacks. “This yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have an assay report and a bonded weight?”

  “I left four dead outlaws up north of here. I need this deposited in a Mexican bank for the owner.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Lucia Valenta.”

  “Never heard of her. You will need an assayer’s report.” He shook his head.

  “I want you to seal it and send it to the Bank of Sonora in Guaymas in the account of Lucia Valenta.”

  “I can’t be responsible for any loss when I have not substantiated the value.”

  “Let’s take the gold bars out, weigh them, and we can sack up the high-grade ore.”

  Rensaleer looked uncertain. “How did you get this gold anyway?”

  “Mister, I’ve rode my ass off from the Sierra Madres to here to get it back from bandits.”

  The man frowned. “Did you bring in the bandits?”

  “No. Some of ’em are dead up there. I left them for the buzzards. Two got away.”

  “There may have been a reward on them. The dead ones, I mean.”

  Slocum agreed. “I really only want this gold shipped.”

  “When we have the ore assayed, then we can establish a value.”

  This was not going to suit him. “Ship the damn bars to her bank. I’ll figure out how to send her the ore.”

  “Whatever,” Rensaleer said, “I will still need the bars weighed on an accurate scale. That’s the only way I can be certain of any loss in the event of robbery. You may say it weighs more than it actually does. Thus, the claim would cost Wells Fargo more than they should have to bear.”

  “All right,” Slocum said in surrender.

  He went back outside, where Little Britches was with the horses, to talk to her. “This is going to be a bigger deal than I ever imagined. Why don’t you take the stage to Dragoon Springs today? I’ll close this shipping business out here and come on. The stage ride will be easier and you can get a jacal ready for us.”

  She perked up at his last words. “You won’t have to run off?”

  “I said get it ready for us. I can’t stay forever. But I can for a while.”

  “You have a deal. When does the stage leave?”

  “I’ll find out—” His words were cut off by a shuttling locomotive’s whistle.

  She took the stage at ten o’clock and he kissed her good-bye, promising to be there as soon as he could.

  “Don’t be long,” she said.

  Parting with her stabbed his heart. Still, with Fine and St. John on the loose, he felt she’d be lots safer in Dragoon Springs than in New Mexico. Besides, the stage ride would be faster and more restful than the long hot ride on horseback.

  He and Rensaleer completed their business by dark that evening—faster than Slocum expected, moving the gold on a buckboard under shotgun guard to the Columbus Assay office for careful weighing, and then to the local bank’s safe.

  Bored to death, he wondered how Little Britches was making it. He decided to take the gold ore with him after Wells Fargo’s main office in San Francisco telegraphed Rensaleer that they would rather not ship it since its actual value was not verifiable.

  At last, he dropped on the hotel bed, weary of the whole business, and before he fell asleep, he regretted sending her on ahead to Dragoon Springs. He’d be a few days getting to her—sell the extra horses, take two great packhorses to haul the ore . . .

  He was short-loping the gray barb, grateful for the owner’s “contribution” of the fine horse. With his Remington rifle under his right fender skirt, he felt rested as he led the bay horses he’d chosen for pack animals and the roan he figured would make Little Britches a good saddle horse later. He planned to make Lordsburg by late evening on his fresh horses.

  It was past midnight when he arrived in Lordsburg, and the short main street was choked with a mob of people despite the late hour. He reined up the weary gray and asked a man standing by what was wrong.

  “’Paches struck a stage out by the playas—”

  He bounded off the horse. “What happened?”

  “They killed ’em all. Brought the bodies in an hour ago.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Undertaker’s, I guess. But from what they been saying, you won’t want to see them.”

  “Mister, I’ll pay you to watch my horses.”

  “Guess I can do that.”

  “Good.” Slocum handed him his reins, and began making his way through the angry crowd listening to some orator rant about the “sorry army” that couldn’t control the savages.

  He slipped in the undertaker’s door and removed his hat. He looked around, and a thin, drawn-faced man came out of the rear of the business. “May I help you?”

  “The victims?” Slocum asked.

  “They aren’t suitable for viewing.”

  “I need to know about a certain young lady that might have been on board.”

  The man shook his head. “There was a young woman in her twenties, I would say—”

  “I need to see if it is her.”

  The man’s clear blue eyes studied Slocum for a moment. “I shall warn you, you may wish you’d never seen her like this.”

  Slocum waved him on, and followed him to the back of the building down a hall that reeked of death.

  Four bodies were lined up on the table, each under a white shroud. When the man stepped to the second one in the row and pulled back the cloth, Slocum knew what he’d
dreaded was true. Little Britches was dead.

  20

  The sun bore down hard on Slocum. Four days in the saddle with Captain Brown’s company had them close to the Sierra Madres. Oppressive heat and afternoon rainstorms made the humidity unbearable. Ahead, the foothills promised some relief from the sweltering temperatures of the cactus and greasewood flats. The two Apache scouts were certain they had Kia-enta’s tracks.

  Slocum believed in their honesty and had stuck with Brown, who led one of of the several U.S. Army units criss-crossing northern Mexico in search of the lightning raid’s leader. Kia-enta had left the dead strewn about from Globe, Arizona Territory, to the border.

  At a midday break, Slocum sat on his butt in the lacy shade of a mesquite, hugging his knees and listening to Brown Boy, the younger of the two scouts, tell how Kia-enta drew the San Carlos Police away from the agency, then set fire to their haystacks and warehouse. The story was funny to the soldiers sitting about and the other scout. Little love was lost between the agency and the army. The army blamed the Apache problem on the agency’s mismanagement since they’d wrenched the overseeing of the Apaches from the military.

  Slocum agreed with that, too. The agency, like others, answered to the Tucson Ring, who furnished whiskey and guns to the Apaches to keep the war going—and were making millions off the army as well.

  Some upstart medicine man named Geronimo had paid two hundred dollars in gold Mexican coins apiece for new Winchester rifles. So Indians knew the value of money, and no longer poured it out on the ground to return it to the earth like earlier Indians did.

  In the late afternoon, as Slocum and the soldiers rode skyward, a cool breeze off a nearby thunderstorm swept Slocum’s whisker-stubbled face. He looked past the next juniper clump at the large billowing cloud in the southwest. More rain.

  When he looked higher up the steep face of the mountain they rode up, the two scouts were coming on their short-legged ponies. He pushed the gray up beside Captain Brown and his sergeant.

  Brown nodded to him. The scouts were coming, and that could mean word on Kia-enta.

  Brown Boy slid his bay pony to a stop, and his narrowed eyes showed he meant business. “That sumbitch is only a short ways up the mountain in a camp.”

  “Who’s with him?” Brown asked.

  “Two white men. They make trade.”

  “Captain, let me and a few men go up there?” Slocum asked, feeling certain they were either whiskey peddlers or gunrunners. He wanted Kia-enta for murdering Little Britches.

  Brown shared a quick look with his noncom.

  The rugged sergeant nodded. “Campbell, Young, and Martin.”

  “All right, I know what this means to you,” Brown said to Slocum. “But don’t foolishly risk my men. It could be a trap.”

  “I won’t.”

  The three troopers soon joined him, and the six, including the scouts, rode out, cat-hopping up the mountain on their horses. The two scouts were in the lead. Slocum knew the gathering thunderstorms might sweep in on them any moment. Towering cumulous cloud often rose to dazzling heights in moisture off the distant gulf, and then the rain, even hail sometimes, would pelt down. Up in the foothills, the air felt even cooler and caused goose flesh under Slocum’s once-clammy shirt.

  The first nearby bolt of lightning cracked like a rifle shot. It caused each rider to start and wonder for a millisecond if the battle had begun. Rain could make it impossible for Slocum to catch the Apaches in camp. Still, though with every lunge of his hard-breathing gray under him he knew his chances would be slim, hope rose inside him and fed his eagerness.

  They reached a flat stretch of land, and rode through some stunted pines. He and the troopers followed the scouts, who made head signals to indicate changes of direction.

  A whiff of wood smoke hit his nose. The Apache scouts had already dismounted. Campbell, a fair-skinned young man, was left in charge of their horses. With his Remington in his hands, Slocum hurried with the others uphill. Then he stopped beside the two Apaches as they looked down on a ranchero.

  Women worked and children played around the wickiups beside the small stream. Several ponies grazed close by—four mules under packs were hitched in the midst of the camp. Obviously, some trading was going on. Slocum sighted through the rifle as the troopers spread out and bellied down on the ridge. He saw some hats—familiar ones, Freddie Fine’s and Henry St. John’s—but they were moving around and not in a clear enough position for a shot.

  “Can you see them?” Brown Boy whispered to him.

  “Not good enough to shoot them.”

  “Shoot the mules.”

  Slocum frowned. “Why?”

  “They will soon know we are here and escape with them.”

  The youth had a point and knew Apaches. Killing the mules would stop them from having whatever those two had brought up there to trade.

  Slocum took out three cartridges from his vest pocket, set them close by, and then centered his sights on the closest mule. A shame was a shame. He squeezed off a shot, and the nearest pack animal crumpled. He recocked the rifle, flipped over the block, and extracted the shell from the smoking chamber. Another round in place, he drew down on the second mule, who acted skittish over the death of the first one.

  Down he went. Unload and reload. Women were screaming as children ran about. He saw Freddie Fine standing with his eyes squinted and cursing him. Slocum drew a bead on him in the long tube and squeezed off the trigger. Gun smoke swept over his eyes.

  The soldiers cheered, and Slocum decided his target was down. Rain struck his back as he reloaded. Large cold drops that felt like hail, though it had not formed yet. He tried to make one last shot—saw a spooked mule, took aim, and fired. It crumpled to the ground, and a curtain of hard downpour prevented him from seeing anything else.

  Ear-shattering thunder, flashing lightning bolts, rain that drenched him to the skin—he knew the hostiles would use this opportunity to escape. Which way would they go?

  “North or south?” He’d caught Brown Boy by the sleeve. For a second in the deluge, he wondered if the youth heard his shouting.

  “South maybe?”

  Slocum released him. He slid in slick mud, recovered on the run, and reached the horses. He was in the saddle. St. John and Kia-enta were still alive. He had no intention of either one escaping.

  The rain stopped. The sun popped out. Slocum came out of a copse of pine and into the open, and could see one rider streaking south through a sagebrush clearing. He stopped, dismounted, jerking the Remington free, and cocked it. Water blurred the sight some, but he could see the rider flailing his mount. He pulled the trigger and it snapped—nothing.

  His one good open shot—a dud.

  Reload over his leg, then snap the block back in place. When Slocum found him again in his sight, Kia-enta was going up a steep bank, his pony obviously having to strain. Aim—fire.

  The Apache’s arms went skyward when the bullet struck him. His horse reared and fell over backward. They spilled on their backs down the hillside, both the stricken rider and his mount.

  When Slocum looked away, Brown Boy was beside him.

  “Where did St. John go?” Slocum asked.

  The scout shook his head.

  He wouldn’t get far. Ready to cry, Slocum took the rifle by the barrel, strode to the nearest pine tree, and broke the stock against it. Then he tossed the barrel portion aside and dropped to his butt and wept in his hands. He should never have sent her on that stage.

  21

  The night in Agua Buena still held the day’s hottest air. Slocum stood in the shadows, his clothing soaked in his own perspiration. He dried his gun hand on the side of his leg. Henry St. John was supposed to be coming.

  At the sound of horses approaching, he nodded to himself. His man must at last be coming. No need to rush. Let them go into the cantina and he’d face him down in there.

  Somehow, St. John had missed Slocum’s traps up until this evening. He’d thought he�
�d had St. John up near the border, and like a fox the bandit had eluded him. The man’s days were numbered. All Slocum could do was listen to the crickets chirp and regret not killing St. John the night he got the drop on him months earlier.

  Before St. John killed Valenta, kidnapped Lucia—hell, Slocum’s life was full of regrets and all of them came from stupid things he’d done.

  The three riders dismounted and, talking in Spanish, went inside the cantina. One of them had to be St. John.

  Slocum started across the street, then slipped between the cantina wall and another building. In the alley behind, he stepped carefully around the discarded broken bottles outside the rear door. It was made of old wood and had several cracks that he could spy through.

  The light was dim and smoky. But he heard one voice ask in Spanish, “Where is he?”

  They’d been forewarned—again.

  He stepped back and slipped away. Let them fret. Whoever had informed them must be close to Slocum. He walked down the alley, and in few minutes was inside a dark jacal.

  “Is that you?” a woman’s sleepy voice asked.

  “Yes.” He toed off his boot.

  “Did he come tonight?”

  “It was a trap.”

  “Oh, who warned him?”

  “Someone that knows too much about me.”

  She was sitting up on the bed. Starlight filtered in the glassless window. He could see her teardrop breasts, and they reminded him of her fiery hunger. She swept the thick black hair back from her face and shook her head. “I have no idea who it could be.”

  “I’ll watch closer and catch them.”

  Undressed, he climbed in beside her. They kissed and she snuggled to him. With her firm breasts against his chest, her small hands groping him familiarly, they soon were one and he was hard at work. Then they exploded and fell apart on the bed, exhausted.

  The next day, Slocum tried to become aware of any sign of betrayal. St. John had come and gone the night before. Slocum had missed him, certain that a trap had been planned for him in the cantina. So the cat-and-mouse game would continue.

  No word of the bandit came for days. But Slocum felt certain he was still in the area. If St. John had left, then word would have come about that, too. For Slocum’s part, all was working well. St. John would grow more reckless— considering Slocum had not taken his bait. Slocum needed some bait of his own.