by Jake Logan
Riding across the toll bridge, he stood in the stirrups and reached inside his waistband to solve the itch in his privates. Drawing his hand out, he wrinkled his nose at the stink. Whew! That bitch Henny sure did need a bath.
5
Slocum left town long before dawn, headed for Minnie Farley’s ranch headquarters. Buck acted spirited in the cool morning air. His rest and the grain he’d been fed had restored his liveliness. Earlier he’d come close to bucking when Slocum swung his leg over him in the street outside the stables.
The evening before, Leta had been involved with some of her investors, so Slocum had spent the night in a livery bunk. Rising early, Slocum had caught a fast breakfast before mounting Buck and swinging north.
Midmorning, he dropped off the rise and could see the low-walled ranch house, corrals and outbuildings. From Garner’s map, he knew it was Farley’s place, all right—but there was no wood smoke coming out of the chimney. Something was badly wrong. He drew his .44 Colt out of the holster and checked to be certain it was ready. Then he cut across the slope to make sure he wasn’t riding into a trap. From there he could see in the distance that the front door stood wide open. Not a dog barked. Only a Jersey cow bawled like someone had forgotten to milk her.
He edged the dun downhill. Some horses in the corral whinnied at Buck, who answered them softly. The first stock dog he spotted had been shot several times and was lying in the dirt near the front door. There were lots of fresh tracks from horses churning up the yard. He dropped heavily out of the saddle. The skin on the back of his neck itched as he looked all around. Overnight something terrible had happened at this place.
His .44 in his fist, Slocum edged to the doorway and tried to adjust his eyes to the room’s darkness. A naked woman was tied to the four corners of the bed with torn sheets.
He holstered the six-gun and stepped closer. There was no doubt in his mind; she had been repeatedly raped and then left bound there by her attackers. Was she even alive? He felt for her pulse in her closest wrist. There was some throbbing.
From his belt, he swept out a knife and cut her hands and feet loose, moving around her, slicing the bindings and then holstering the knife.
Her eyelids fluttered open. “Who—who are you?” She sat up and quick-like reached for a sheet to cover herself.
“I’m not looking at you. Who did this?” He covered her with another flannel sheet and she hugged it, coughing deep. Feeling deep sympathy for her, he clapped her arms to reassure her.
“Where are your ranch hands?”
“Oh, my God, they may have killed them all—” She tried to scoot off the bed, but he caught her.
“Easy. I’ll go find them. You rest. I’ll be right back.”
“Oh—if they’re dead—”
“Stay right there,” he said, using both hands to force her to remain on the bed, and she fell back limply.
Satisfied that she was too weak to argue with him, he backed out and then hurried out the door to get a breath of fresh air. His lungs needed it. He rounded the corner of the house and had to catch himself so as not to trip over a body. A hatless dead man who looked to be in his thirties lay on his side, shot three times in the chest. Damn, who were the gun-crazy wild bastards who did this?
Where were the other ranch hands? He raised his gaze to the log building that looked like the bunkhouse. What would he find in there? In long strides he crossed the open ground and stopped in the doorway.
Two men were strung up between the bunks. Their hands were tied on the top post and they hung from their bound hands with their legs wide apart. The younger man raised up his face and said, “Oh, thank God.”
In seconds, Slocum cut him down and eased him to the floor. “Sorry. I better get him down too.”
“Sure. Is Roy over there alive?” The youth began rubbing his wrists, no doubt trying to get the feeling back in his hands.
“I think so.” After cutting the older man’s bindings, Slocum set him up against the bed, and the man acted somewhat recovered.
“I’m Denny,” the boy said, stripping the rest of the bindings off his wrists.
“Slocum is my name.”
“What about Mrs. Farley?”
“She’s alive.”
“Oh, my God. They—they—did they—?”
Slocum nodded. “Yes. And much more, I am certain. But she’ll recover.”
“You seen Calvin?”
“There’s a man who was shot down beside the house. They shot the dogs too. Who were they?”
“Drovers, huh, Roy?”
“No-good sonsabitches.” The man got onto his knees, bent over the bed and folded his hands to pray aloud. “Dear God, help us catch them and make them pay for what they done. I know I ain’t worthy of much, but give me the strength, Lord, to find them and make them pay for this waste and destruction they’ve done here. Amen.”
“Roy, did you know any of them?” Slocum asked.
Head down in defeat, Roy shook his head. “They were drovers, all right. Crazy, like mad dogs turned loose by someone.”
“What else do you recall about them?” Slocum waited for Roy to answer.
“Mexican spur rowels on their boots. They were all acting rabid. One they called Mike. Another they called Lester.” Roy pounded his fist on the floor. “Horace. They called the fat one Horace.”
“Bridges was the boss,” Denny said and rubbed his jaw. “Mean sumbitch busted me with something in his fist.”
“Probably had a roll of coins in his fist. Four of them in the gang that you saw?” Slocum looked from one to the other. “Four, huh?”
“There might have been another.” Roy looked across at Denny. “Do you think there were five of them when they rode up?”
Denny dropped his chin. “I ain’t sure, Roy. That Bridges hit me and the lights went out for a long while.”
“Think hard, boys,” Slocum said, anger rising in his chest over this whole attack. “I’m going to run them down in the ground, and if there were five here last night, I want the last one too.”
Looking done in, the two nodded at him.
“I’ll go see if Mrs. Farley’s dressed.” Slocum rose to his feet. “We’ll fix some food. That cow needs to be milked, and the horses need some hay tossed to them.”
“We can handle that,” Denny said. Roy struggled up to his feet and agreed.
“I’m sorry. I should have come yesterday.”
“Chances are if you had, you’d be like Calvin—dead,” Roy mumbled.
At the house, Slocum found Mrs. Farley dressed, making coffee and breakfast. He stopped in the doorway. “I’m Charley’s friend Slocum.”
She turned and then nodded. “I thought so. Come in. Are they—?”
“Roy and Denny are going to be all right. Calvin’s dead.”
“Thank God those two are all right, at least. Roy was so upset. I feared for him. They shot the dogs—they shot Calvin—” She broke off and began chewing on her lower lip.
Slocum was beside her and hugged her shoulder. “Easy. We’re alive. They’ll pay for what they did.”
“I know. I know, and I hate it.”
“No, God has a plan for you.”
“I sure hope he does. I’ve been considering suicide since they left last night. I’d at least be with Charley and Calvin.”
“Don’t talk like that.” He pulled her around and she buried her face in his chest. “People care about you. They need you. Charley never gave up.”
“If only he was here.”
“How can I help you with breakfast? Those men are starved. We’ll have the chores caught up here shortly.”
“Oh, Slocum, Charley said you were the man we needed.”
“I know. I know. I couldn’t have come any faster.”
“Oh, I don’t blame you—”
“The boys are coming. I hear them.”
“We can talk later.”
He agreed. The fury inside him boiled. Who were these bastards? Who had made this r
aid? They’d rue the day they ever rode into that place.
Barr sat up in bed. It was the middle of the night. Who was outside shouting? He glanced over at Erma, who was in a fetal position beside him and shaking in fear.
“Get out here, Barr!” someone in the yard shouted.
Who was doing the shouting? “Hold your damn horses.”
“We’ll hold your horses. Get your ass out here.”
His pants on, he strapped on his gun belt and started for the front door.
“Oh, be careful,” Erma moaned after him.
Dumb girl. He opened the front door and peered out into the night. Two steps more and a gun muzzle stuck him in his back. Someone jerked Barr’s own six-gun out of the holster.
“We need more money for that job we did on that widow. We’re going to have to shag out of here.”
“What job?”
“That Farley bitch you wanted run off.”
Had they killed her? “How much more?’
“Five hundred apiece.”
“Hell, I don’t have that much money here.”
“Open the gawdamn safe and count it out or you’ll be answering to the law with us.”
“What happened down there?” he asked the man behind him who’d taken his gun.
“We had to kill one of her men.”
“Oh, hell. I told Doss I didn’t want anyone killed—”
“We can’t help that. But we raped her ass off like you said.”
With the gun barrel in his back, he was forced to go inside. Where was Doss? Would he come to Barr’s aid?
“Open the safe. We ain’t got all night,” the leader ordered as he came busting inside the house to take charge.
There was a loaded .30-caliber pistol in the safe. If Barr could get his hands on it, those two would be dead. He intended to send them both to hell. All he had wanted was for them to rape her ass off. They said they shot one of her men? They had really botched a simple deal, and he needed to be rid of them.
On his knees and shaking, Barr soon dialed the safe’s combination. When it was unlocked at last, he turned the latch in the flickering candlelight and drew the thick door open. It swung toward the bossy one, the guy they called Bridges. There on the shelf, Barr could see the small, polished walnut grips of the .30-caliber Colt. All he had to do was draw it out, cock and fire the muzzle in Bridges’s face.
But when he reached for the revolver, Bridges used his boot to slam the thick door shut hard, smashing Barr’s right arm. The last thing Barr remembered was the two outlaws cursing and beating his head in with their pistol butts.
6
The burial of Calvin Howard at sundown was not an easy one for Slocum. They laid both stock dogs in the grave with him since they said he liked them so much. Supported by her two ranch hands, Minnie Farley took the loss hard and cried through the entire service. Slocum tried to make the ceremony short and comforting, but she’d been through so much there was no raising her above her sorrow.
“Dear Lord, take this man, Calvin Howard, in the palm of your hand and protect him. He was an honest man who gave his life for the others here. In Jesus’ name ... amen”
“Amen.”
“If you don’t mind, Slocum, I’ll cover him up. Calvin made a ranch hand out of me,” Denny, the youth of maybe eighteen or so, said. “Be my way to pay him back.”
“You handle it.”
Minnie kissed first Denny on the cheek, next Roy by squeezing his face in her palms, and then she took Slocum’s arm and, lifting her skirt hem in the other hand, they went back to the house. The sun had bled itself down in the west, and twilight had turned the world to gray. Somewhere a coyote howled. Another answered. Nighttime and the crickets set in.
“You can’t ever replace men like Charley or Calvin. They didn’t make many of them. My first husband, Ethan, was killed down in Colorado in a horse accident. I knew I’d never find another man like him. Charley came along and filled his boots, but—it wasn’t the same.” Wet-eyed, she looked over at Slocum. “I loved Charley Farley and miss him to this day, but he never was Ethan either. Good as he was to me, it’s never the same is it?”
“No. You can look and search, but they’ll all be different. Have different points you like, but they’re all new patterns.”
“You have no wife?” She swept inside the house, blowing her nose.
“Never married.”
She turned to look back at him. “No roots either?”
“Severed them all years ago, what with the war and other things.”
“Charley told me you had a past that haunted you, and he wondered if you could come.”
“That letter finally ran me down.” Even through her ravaged face, red from her sorrow and past trials, he saw the beauty in Minnie’s strong features that no doubt had attracted a dedicated bachelor like Charley. Her head-high posture and the way she carried herself, even to the twist of her honey brown hair that fell to her shoulders, made her an attractive woman. A swift brush had restored the shine to her hair since he’d had his first sight of her.
“I’m sorry I came too late.”
“That’s ridiculous. How could you know what happened out here or who planned it?” She busied herself rattling dishes and plates, taking them from the table. At last she turned with her backside against the dry sink and her hands behind her on the tabletop, bracing herself.
“You know what that damned Bridges told me last night? That if I didn’t sell out and leave, he’d be back to do it all over again.”
“Who wants you out of here that bad?” Slocum sat astraddle a high-back kitchen chair and studied her for the answer.
“Udall Barr.”
“This Bridges ever mention Barr as the one who sent him?”
Her breasts rose and fell under the dress top as she breathed harder. “No, but who else wants my place? He sent that weasel from the bank, Toothacker, out here to offer me twenty bucks a head for my mother cows and two thousand for the land. Damnit, I own four sections of this land. That’s not even a dollar an acre.”
“You won a water suit in court against Barr?”
“Yes, we did, and the son of a bitch shot Charley—or had Charley shot—over it. I hated that.”
“Not your fault. Charley knew what he was up against.” Slocum’s forehead dropped to rest against the top rung of the ladder chair. “They simply caught him off guard is all.”
“Still, they shot him in the back.”
Slocum raised his forehead off the ladder chair and looked at her. “Minnie, would you move into town until this is settled?”
“No, I’m not going anywhere, except to see those four and Barr get what they’ve got coming.”
He’d figured as much. But Denny and Roy would be no match for the likes of this Bridges and his men if they returned. And the rapists certainly could ride back that evening and do it all over again and leave no witnesses. A no-win situation.
Minnie used both of her hands to carry the large kettle from the range and pour the steaming water into her dish-pan. Then she shaved some soap off a bar into the hot water and began scouring her dishes and utensils with a rag.
Slocum rose, refilled the kettle from the well bucket and set it back on the stove top. Using a lid lifter, he looked inside and then fed the low fire some fresh kindling. Kettle in place, he folded his arms over his chest, still in a quandary over what he should do about her safety.
“This sure ain’t your first job at cooking.” She laughed. A melodic sound he’d not heard before from her, almost like a teenage girl all wound up at a dance.
“I’ve done my share. Lost a camp cook one time going to Kansas with a herd. He drowned crossing Crooked Hammer Creek. We tried five different drovers at being the cook, and before my hands all quit out there on that prairie and went back home, I put out the grub the rest of the way.”
“I can just see you in a white apron ringing the triangle.” She shook her head as if to clear it and laughed again. “I’ll remember if
I ever need a camp cook to call on Slocum.”
“I may be hard of hearing by then.”
He went to the doorway and listened to the night, which had fallen while he and Minnie had talked in the kitchen. The sound of Denny’s shovel rang each time he scooped up more dirt and gravel. Slocum could see the glow of Roy’s roll-your-own when he drew on it as he squatted close by the grave-filling operation.
Then the shoveling stopped and Denny took out a mouth harp and began to play. Roy took up the shovel and went to using it. The strains of Denny’s harmonica filled the night with “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”
As Denny played the hymn, Slocum mouthed the words that he knew so well from his youth sitting on the church pews. Then he heard Minnie join in.
“Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee! E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me, still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee. Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee.”
Before they finished the hymn, Minnie came over to stand beside him and squeezed his arm.
“That was sweet and dear,” she said. “Calvin’s been properly laid to rest tonight.” With a knot in his throat that he couldn’t swallow, Slocum agreed with a nod.
By the time they got him close to North Platte, Barr felt that his wild ride to the doctor’s in the back of the buckboard was worse than the beating at the hands of the gang. His foreman, Doss, and Erma lathered the team hard making the run. Lying on his back in a bedroll on the floor of the buckboard with his bloody head wrapped in torn-up sheets, Barr was tossed and bounced until at last he told them to slow down.
Strong arms carried him up the stairs to the doctor’s office. After being placed on an examining table, he watched the doctor hook his gold-framed glasses behind his ears, and then Barr fainted.
He roused again briefly just in time to hear, “. . . he’s going to lose half his left ear....”
“Will he live?”
“Of course he’ll live. He’s a stout individual. He simply won’t be as pretty.”