Slocum and the Trail to Tascosa

by Jake Logan

  As the remaining outlaw teetered on the keg, Slocum stepped over to deliver the same justice to him. But Horace stepped off before Slocum could kick the barrel away. Horace’s neck snapped and he went still, hanging there.

  “Let’s get to the horses. Barr and his bunch can’t be far behind.”

  Woodenly, she nodded and looked back at the two swinging silhouettes from the doorway. “They won’t rape anyone else now.”

  “No, they won’t, but we’ve still got Barr and Doss to worry about.”

  Without another word, they hurried off under the stars. Mounted at last and leading the packhorse, they rode into town under a sky full of stars. Two more killers were gone. They needed to get some supplies and then head out. Slocum had no urge to talk to any lawman about the executions.

  Only Barr and Doss remained. Slocum intended for them to return to Nebraska. The law could deal with them up there. Slocum himself was the bait. All he had to do was get them to follow him back up there.

  21

  Daylight strengthened, and Barr woke up. He’d been feigning sleep, listening to his two companions talking. Was Erma planning to run off with Kittles? He’d wondered for the past few days about her loyalty to him. That damn drawling hick was surely trying to steal her away from him. If Barr wasn’t so weak, he’d shoot the bastard and leave him for the buzzards. But he depended too much on the both of them.

  And also, he wasn’t sure they were even close to Tascosa. There was nothing out here but more dry rivers, jackrabbits, scorpions and rattlers. He was dead broke—maybe he could wire his banker in North Platte and get the man to wire some money to him.

  “Any sign of those four?” he asked Kittles.

  “No sirree. I ain’t seed them, but we’re close to that town.”

  Erma brought him some coffee and a tin plate of food. Then she apologized, “That’s all we have to eat.”

  He looked hard at the fistful of fried potatoes. Then he nodded that he understood.

  “I guess we’re going to have to shoot us some jackrabbits today,” Kittles said, squatting in his knee-high boots. “I ain’t seen no deer or even an antelope in days, and then they was too far off to shoot.”

  Barr nodded. What had the two of them eaten for breakfast? Ate all the good stuff, probably, and left him the potatoes.

  “I see one today I’ll damn sure be ready to shoot him. Yes sirree. I’ll drop him in his tracks. By wilikers, it’s getting tough out here.”

  “No sign of Doss either.”

  “I don’t know where that feller went to. I’m positive we ain’t on his tracks anymore. He just went poof, like smoke. No sirree, he ain’t close to us.”

  Where was his foreman at? Had he caught up with Slocum by this time? Maybe he’d even found Bridges and got his money back. The fried potatoes and gyp water coffee made his guts roil.

  At last they were on the road. Erma was getting slower and slower about breaking camp. He ought to leave her ass out here somewhere—but she drove. He felt too weak to even sit up and at last made her stop and he got in the back and tried to sleep, but the buckboard ride was too rough.

  Then the report of a rifle shattered his attempt to sleep. He bolted upright. “What is it?”

  “I think Maynard shot an antelope.” Erma reined in the team.

  Barr sat up and blinked at the sight of Kittles far out on the prairie getting off his horse and reaching for his belt knife. Might be a good thing that Barr hadn’t shot him after all. They could stop and cook some of the meat.

  Erma drove the buckboard slowly out toward the hunter and his kill. When they arrived, Kittles had the antelope’s belly split open and was hacking off some raw liver. He shoveled strips in his mouth with both of his hands.

  She quickly joined him on her knees and started in on the feast.

  “Good as we need,” Kittles mumbled with his mouth full of liver.

  “Yes.” She gasped, with her face full like a pocket gopher.

  “Stop! Stop!” Barr screamed at both of them.

  She froze with her mouth full. Fresh blood ran off her chin. “You don’t know. You were sleeping.” She took a deeper breath. “You were the only one who’s been eating for the last two days.”

  He collapsed on his butt. They’d been protecting him for two days. Doing without anything to eat. He threatened to vomit up his entire guts; then he choked up bile from his own sour stomach. It gagged him hard. Then he passed out.

  When he awoke he smelled the chip fire and heard the meat sizzling. His stomach was so sour he wasn’t sure he could even eat a well-done piece. The stench of the sour guts and butchering made him look over the side of the wagon for another place to throw up.

  “Listen, listen,” Kittles was repeating to him. “You’ve sure got to eat or you’re going to die. She gave you all the food we had ’cause we knowed you was the weakest of us three.”

  Bleary-eyed, Barr nodded. “You have any idea where that gawdamn town is at?”

  “Not rightly. But I’ll sure find it. I ain’t never been in this country before. I made two trips from South Texas to Kansas before with herds, but this ain’t on that road. Why, we’re way west of it.”

  “How’re you going to find it?”

  “Soon as I find something, I’ll let you know.”

  Downcast and shaking his head in disbelief over this entire episode, Barr slid off the tailgate of the buckboard. Leaning on his elbows for support, he sighed. “These are some of the worst days of my life. I can’t think for the headaches I have. My stomach must have an ulcer big as my hat. And I’m out here with you two.”

  “You wanting us to leave? Right now?” Kittles acted affronted.

  “No... no. But I don’t know what to do—how to handle all this. . . .”

  “Well, you jest sit back. Me and Erma’re going to take care of you.”

  “I need a doctor. I need—oh, shit, I need so many things.”

  She brought over a pan of browned meat and set it in front to them on the wagon floor.

  “Better eat this. I’ll cook you some more.”

  “Mighty nice of you, missy,” Barr said. “Mighty nice.”

  Back half-asleep, Barr heard her say, “He never ate much. . . .”

  22

  Early the next morning, Slocum had already dickered for his supplies and an extra packhorse. He and Meagen were loading it all in front of Supinosa’s General Mercantile when suddenly he told her to duck, and she obeyed. A whiskered rider on a paint horse alongside a buckboard being pulled by a calico team and driven by a young woman went by them.

  “What’s happening?” she asked in a whisper.

  “They’ve stopped at the sign that says ‘Doc’s Office.’ They have a passenger in the buckboard. Must have gotten hurt.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I’m guessing, but I’d say it was Barr.”

  A man who Slocum imagined was some kind of doctor started down the stairs, and the bearded ranch hand with the peaked hat shouted to the physician. “Hurry, Doc. Mr. Barr is close to dying.”

  “Hold your horses. I can’t fly. What’s wrong with him?”

  Slocum couldn’t hear their conversation as he watched the doctor use his stethoscope to check Barr’s heart.

  “What are they doing?” she hissed.

  “Just checking him. He must have beat Doss getting out here. Let’s lead these ponies up the street and then around the corner before we mount up.”

  In a few minutes they were headed north, but Slocum was scoping the country for any sign of Barr’s gun hands coming.

  “What do you think happened to the rest of them?” she asked.

  He smiled at her and shook his head. “I have no earthly idea. But I don’t want to be around here when they start asking questions about the hangings.”

  She laughed, and the meadowlarks called to them as they short-loped away from the town in the waving grass. They’d have frost before they got back to Meagen’s place in Kansas.

  D
uring the next few days, the question ran through Slocum’s head: did she plan to stay on her ranch? He wasn’t planning to press her for an answer. She’d come a long ways since Bridges’s gang had left her naked and sore in the soddy, with her dead husband blocking the doorway.

  “You want to check on your place when we ride through there in a few days?” he asked her late in the afternoon.

  Chewing on her lip, she shrugged. “Do I have to tell you today?”

  “No, but you need to decide soon.”

  They reined their horses down to a walk. “We’ll be in Dodge tomorrow night,” he said to her.

  “So soon. I will have to decide, won’t I?”

  He gave her a sharp nod.

  “I know I can’t have you, but will you come by and see me sometimes?”

  “You can’t tell where or when I’ll show up.”

  “That makes it hard. I could simply ride where you go.”

  “But you need to eat and have a roof over your head. Women are made like that.”

  She agreed. “But it has been a nice honeymoon for the most part with you. The one that Carl and I had never took.” Her chin bobbed. “So I’ll have good memories anyway.”

  “Don’t make it sound so much like punishment.”

  “Damnit, Slocum, I don’t have to like you leaving me. All right, we’ll get my team and some supplies in Dodge.”

  He nodded that he’d heard her.

  Things went smoothly. At her sister Karen’s place outside of Dodge, Karen’s husband, Arthur, hired Meagen a dependable ranch hand named Lyle. He was to join her on the place in two days, driving up her team of Belgian draft horses and bringing the supplies she needed out to the ranch.

  Her plan was to have Slocum by himself for the next two days, then she’d return to her role of ranch owner. Wrapped in their slickers, they made it through driving rain to her place. The wind driving the storm came out of the northwest and made them put their shoulder to it. Despite her protests, after they unloaded the packhorses, he sent her to the house to build a fire while he put the horses up.

  The house’s interior had begun warming from the potbellied coal stove when he came inside out of the hard-driving rain and stood on the rag rug while he took off his slicker. The rubber coat and his soaked hat were hung on wall pegs.

  “Winter just blew in,” she said and laughed. “Coffee is about ready. I’m making eggs, fried potatoes and biscuits. That be enough?”

  He came over and bear-hugged her. “I’d eat bread crumbs to be with you.”

  “That would get quick.”

  “Wish we had time to try it.”

  “Oh, Slocum.” She cupped his face in her palms and looked him square in the eye. “There’s lots and lots I’d like to do to you.”

  He pushed her away to go work on the food.

  “Where are you going next?” she called out.

  “Despite all Barr’s losses he will go back to North Platte. It’s where his ranch and livestock are at. So in time, if he doesn’t die, he has to come back. I’m going to meet him and his henchmen up there and even the score for Charley and Minnie.”

  “What about the boy with the older woman?”

  “I’ll stop by and speak to Denny and Mrs. Looper.”

  She winked knowingly. “They may not need company.”

  “Surely they can take a little time off.” They both laughed.

  The second morning, after waking up before dawn to the sound of ice pecking on her roof, Slocum and Meagen had a pleasure-filled session under the covers. She didn’t want to let go of him, but in the end, she hurriedly dressed and made him breakfast. After that they languished in each other’s arms for a long time before he left for the Looper place with one packhorse trailing him. In the wet wintry blast, he wondered if he could find her outfit. When he located the spring-fed creek, he rode up to the head of it. He found a small new sod house with a temporary canvas roof tied on it. The wind was slapping it around, and when he shouted at the front door, Denny came to answer it in his britches and long underwear top.

  “Slocum.” He waved and called, over the roar of the nature’s forces, for him to come in. His horses hitched at the new rack, Slocum ran inside the structure with Denny.

  “How did it go?”

  “Bridges and Horace ain’t with us anymore.”

  “Good.” Denny took his hat and slicker and hung them up.

  Mrs. Looper came out from behind a Chinese folding screen, adjusting the hem of her blouse. “Good day, Slocum. We—we weren’t thinking about anyone finding us, I’m afraid. But we’re very pleased that you came by.”

  The blush on her face amused him when he said, “I’m going back to North Platte, so I won’t be staying long.”

  “What about Barr?” Denny asked.

  “He has too much up there not to come back for it. I’ll be waiting for him. I want him hung in North Platte, so folks can see what happens to SOBs like him.”

  “You know, his hired killers shot my best friend when they raided her place.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Are you going to need help arresting him?”

  Slocum smiled at the cloth ceiling popping overhead on the fresh cut rafters. “You have enough work here.”

  Mrs. Looper and Denny both laughed. “Guess you’re right.”

  The next morning, Slocum prepared to leave under a clearing, cold sky after shaking hands with both of them. Mrs. Looper announced, before he left, that they planned for Slocum to attend their wedding the following June first. He agreed to be there and rode off with his breath making large clouds of vapor.

  Staying overnight with farmers and others along the way in the more populous farm country, he swung north toward North Platte. He arrived in the river city two days after Thanksgiving.

  He picked up Sheriff Garner at his office. They went for lunch and found the cook still serving leftover turkey meat in the restaurant. Over their plate lunches of turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing and cooked carrots, Slocum told him that Bridges and Horace were no longer in circulation. That satisfied the lawman, and he didn’t dig any more. Then he told Garner that the other two outlaws in the gang were not going to be counted on the next census either.

  Garner looked over at him. “What about Udall Barr?”

  “He was real sick when they took him to the doctor down in Tascosa, but if he lives he’ll come home. I’ll be waiting for him.”

  The lawman nodded. “Guess you’re right about that.”

  “When he comes home, I’m going to face him down. He hired Bridges and brought all this on.”

  Garner nodded. “Folks owe you another thank-you. I don’t know another man who could have tracked down those killers. You need my help, let me know.”

  “I’ll count on it.”

  They parted after the meal.

  Next he took a bath in the Chinese bathhouse. After a shave and haircut with the sweet-smelling tonic filling his nose, he secured Buck and the packhorse from the livery and rode out to see about Leta Couzki.

  Snow was melting and the ride was a slushy one. The bright reflection off the melting white stuff made his vision hurt riding out there. When he came up the swale, splashing through several inches of water rushing downhill, Leta came out of the tent and used her hand to shade her eyes.

  “That you, big man?”

  “It ain’t St. Nick.” He laughed.

  “Boy, are you a great-looking break from my boredom up here. I’ve been going crazy.”

  He stepped down and she gathered her dress to rush to him. In a great sweep he took her up in his arms and went sideways, ducking under the peak of the tent door. She kissed him hotter than fire with her tongue like a branding iron before he eased her down.

  Whew! He swallowed hard, looking at her from head to toe. What lay ahead had him trembling with excitement. They looked at each other with knowing grins and then began stripping off clothes as fast as they could. In seconds their cool skin was in contact, and they were
piled in the bed under a mountain of covers.

  He felt well situated on top of her. With his rising tool nested between her legs, the two of them moved their hips to find entry. Impatient, at last she stuffed him inside her and then let out a cry. Her arms wrapped around him, she hunched her butt toward him and buried his throbbing dick deep into her hot cunt. From there on it was a free-for-all, with each of them searching for their own relief, striving to reach that peak and fly away.

  When he at last exploded inside her and sagged down on top of her in relief, they twisted to lie side by side. His hand kneaded her top breast and she pushed it at him—smiling. “Nice homecoming, hombre. You got ten more like it?”

  “Maybe a dozen.”

  She laughed aloud at him. “Even you don’t have that many in you, stud horse. I heard you went to Texas. Did you?”

  “Yes, great country.”

  “Well, my house is going up much slower than I thought, and I’m afraid I’ll be in this drafty tent all winter.”

  “Can’t you find a cabin or house to live in? This tent is going to be real cold this winter.”

  “So far, not much luck.”

  “It’s why I like San Antonio for Christmas.”

  She laughed. “You were just down there.”

  “I was as far away from San Antonio at Tascosa as it is from Nebraska.” Then he squeezed her breast and she reached over to kiss him.

  Her hand went deep and found him. “Let’s try this again. I’m sort of liking it—your way.”

  He shook his head, scrambling on top again. “You like it any way.”

  “Well.” She raised her eyebrows. “I guess I do.”

  They spent the day talking, napping, fucking, sleeping and having sex again. Eventually, he got up and dressed to go see about his horse. With Buck unsaddled and both of their horses fed hay in her small corral, he looked over the gray, cloudy sky. More winter weather coming.

  23

  “Bridges is dead?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Barr, sure enough, they found both of them hung in a hay shed this morning.” Kittles was beating his leg with his hat.

  “Who did it?”