Slocum and the Rebel Cannon

by Jake Logan

  “For a couple days. That’s all I’m asking. Things are . . . happening.” He knew how lame this sounded and how unconvincing it must be.

  “After I get the church finished. Or is that going to be too late to avoid whatever problems you see coming to Bitter Springs?”

  “Think on it. You look as if you could use a rest.”

  “Tessa, too?”

  Slocum did not answer, and finished his steak in silence. It sat heavy in his belly, but it was a welcome feeling. Not often enough in the past few days had he had enough to eat.

  “Should I come by the church later to help?” Slocum asked.

  “No need. Things are quiet at the moment.”

  Slocum thanked Preacher Dan again for the breakfast, saw how the waiter watched him coldly, then left. If he could not persuade the father, then he would try the daughter. He went down the street to the hotel in time to see Tessa inside arguing with the clerk. Slipping in, he eavesdropped. She wanted an extension on paying their bill and the room clerk insisted on at least a token payment. It appeared that the Whitmores, for all their fund-raising, were running up bills they could not pay.

  “In a few days. I can pay you then,” Tessa said.

  “One more night or I throw you into the street,” the clerk said. Then he leaned closer. Slocum could not hear what he said to Tessa, but the intent was clear. She could work off her hotel bill by spending the night in the clerk’s bed.

  Her reaction was not what Slocum expected from a preacher’s daughter. If she had slapped him or told him how insulted she was, that would have been normal. As it was, she only smiled and shook her head. Lifting her skirts, she spun and saw Slocum for the first time.

  “Why, hello, uh, Jethro,” she said loudly. “I see you’ve come to escort me.”

  Slocum glared at the clerk, who cowered back behind his counter. Extending his arm for her, Slocum led Tessa outside. The sun was barely above the mountain and already it was getting hot.

  “Looks as if I came along at the right time.”

  “You are such a gentleman to escort me like this,” Tessa said. “He was being awful to me.”

  “Sounds as if everyone in town is looking to get paid. You and your pa scraping the bottom of the money barrel?”

  “Everything is going into the church. It is so costly, you know.”

  “You said you had a sizable poke in the bank. Thompson also said you could have a loan if you needed it. Why not take his money?”

  “It is against our principles,” Tessa said glibly. Slocum heard the lie in what she said.

  “Get out of town,” he urged. “I warned your pa, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “What? Before we get our congregation? The church must be finished. It is our duty!”

  “There she is. Get her. Make her pay!”

  Slocum looked past Tessa and saw four men come out of the general mercantile. The owner was sending his three helpers across the street to collect whatever Tessa and her pa owed.

  “Stay back,” Slocum said, putting himself between her and the men. “What can I do for you gents?”

  “Outta the way, drifter,” snarled the largest of the men. “The boss said she has to pay up or—” The man grabbed for Tessa. Slocum’s punch traveled only a few inches, but connected squarely with the man’s jaw. His head snapped back and his eyes turned glassy before he toppled to the ground.

  “Who’s next?” Slocum asked in a level voice. He didn’t lift his fists. He stood with his stance wide and his hand resting at his right hip. From his relaxed stance, it was obvious to the other two men he could draw his Colt Navy from the holster and be firing before they had taken so much as a step toward Tessa Whitmore.

  “Look, mister, Mr. Denbow told us to come over here. We don’t want no trouble.”

  “Then help your friend back to the store. Mr. Denbow will get his money soon,” Slocum said.

  “How soon?”

  Slocum glared at the slight man asking the question. Without another word, the two men grabbed their friend’s arms and started dragging him back across the street.

  “Things are heating up in Bitter Springs,” Tessa said, “and I don’t mean only the temperature.”

  “Let’s go,” Slocum said. Denbow yelled at his employees, berating them for cowardice. Slocum was tempted to go to the store owner and talk personally to him, but he suspected Denbow’s courage extended only to employees he could browbeat.

  “Not to the church. Somewhere else, please,” Tessa said. She smiled her wicked smile and said, “The clerk wouldn’t stop us going back to my hotel room. We could see how much we could get the temperature to rise in the room.”

  “Come on,” Slocum said, taking her arm and steering her toward the church. She resisted for a moment, then gave in and accompanied him. Along the way, just in front of the café, they ran into her father.

  “What’s going on?” Preacher Dan asked. “You look so solemn, both of you.”

  Tessa tried to pass off the run-in with the store owner, but Slocum insisted on giving the preacher the full story.

  “You need to pay some of your bills, or you’ll end up making more enemies than converts,” Slocum said.

  “Gantt is behind this,” Tessa said. “He has opposed us from the moment we said we were going to form a new church. Gantt does not like competition.”

  Slocum snorted. Competition between ministers for the souls of their flocks was hardly anything new, but he saw nothing of Gantt’s hand in this.

  “You didn’t do a good enough job feeding rumors to the newspaper editor,” Slocum said. Tessa looked surprised, but it was feigned.

  “Come now, Slocum, let’s not squabble among ourselves, ” said Preacher Dan.

  “Doesn’t look as if squabbling will be limited to just us,” Slocum said. He pointed to a small mob moving down the middle of the street. “You have run up some big bills from the look of it.”

  “Papa,” Tessa said, clutching her father’s arm. “Maybe we should go, as John suggested.”

  “No.”

  Slocum was startled at the vehemence of the denial.

  “You might end up at the end of a rope. That crowd doesn’t look friendly.”

  “I’ll fight for my church,” Preacher Dan said. The determination of only a few seconds earlier had changed subtly. Slocum tried to find the truth in what the preacher said, but couldn’t. Then time ran out.

  Denbow had found his courage, with a dozen men at his back. The small bulldog of a man shoved out his chin belligerently and shouted, “You pay up. Now. We want our money. You owe damn near everybody in this town.”

  “I don’t owe any of the saloons,” Dan Whitmore said softly. “Do you?”

  Slocum wondered if he was intentionally angering the crowd. Without actually saying, he’d accused them all of being drunks who wasted their lives drinking bad whiskey.

  “You pay up, preacher man!” The shout came from the back of the crowd, as it usually did. Slocum wondered if confronting Denbow alone would work, or if he needed to stop more than the store owner.

  “Why don’t you all write up invoices and give them to him?” Slocum stepped in front of Preacher Dan. If he could derail the crowd, he could get the Whitmores out of town. Then he could tell Rebel Jack he had found the cannon, and they could get on with their bank robbery. Right after he had found the two cannons, Slocum had worried about shots going astray and damaging not only Preacher Dan’s church but the town. Now he was less concerned with what happened to the businesses in Bitter Springs.

  “He knows what he owes. And we don’t need to talk to you!” Denbow rushed forward. Slocum punched him, but the man fell forward onto him and knocked him to the ground. The rest of the crowd tromped over Slocum as they rushed to get to the minister.

  Slocum rolled onto his belly and covered his head with his arms as he was repeatedly kicked. Then the crowd rushed down the street after Dan Whitmore. Finally able to force himself to his feet, Slocum ached in every muscle.
Before, he had been peeved at the crowd and their way of letting one man think for all of them.

  Now he was mad.

  Slocum ran after the crowd just as Preacher Dan got up on a huge pile of dirt and tried to talk sense into them.

  “Please, this is a house of God. Don’t burn it down.”

  “Pay up, preacher man. You owe us!”

  “You won’t get the money by sinning,” Whitmore said. To Slocum, this was as odd a note as accusing the men in the crowd of being drunks. Rather than slowing them, it gave impetus to their need to take revenge.

  “Run him out of town on a rail! He’s been spreadin’ lies about Reverend Gantt!”

  “Not him, his whore daughter! I seen the way she makes eyes at anything wearin’ pants. She’s the devil’s daughter!”

  “Don’t burn my church. Please,” Preacher Dan said.

  This gave the notion life. Whether it was Denbow or another, Slocum could not tell, but someone lit a torch and ran toward the half-finished structure. Slocum drew and fired in one smooth motion. His bullet hit its target, though not exactly where he had intended. The man brandishing the torch let out a cry of pure pain and clutched at his right wrist. The torch fell harmlessly to the dirt.

  “I been shot!”

  “I was aiming for your head,” Slocum said. He fired again as the crowd spun in his direction. “Get out of here. Mind your own business.”

  “He owes us! He owes us plenty!”

  “Then make him pay. Don’t burn down his church.” Slocum aimed his six-shooter directly at Denbow. The store owner got the message.

  “We’ll collect soon,” Denbow said. “Come on, men. Let’s get to plannin’ on how to collect what’s our due!”

  The crowd followed its leader. Slocum slammed his six-gun back into his holster, then went to stamp out the torch. It sizzled and popped and filled the air with acrid smoke.

  “How’d the torch happen to be so handy?” Slocum asked.

  “You shouldn’t have meddled,” Tessa said, pushing him aside and throwing her arms around her father. The two of them left without another word. Slocum stared as they went, trying to figure out what was going on. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought the torch had been left there intentionally.

  16

  “You’re lyin’,” Rebel Jack Holtz said. He glared at Slocum. “What kind of deal are you tryin’ to pull?”

  “It’s the truth,” Slocum said. “I found the cannon. Fact is, I found two of them.”

  “Where? Not in that cesspit we were digging in,” Holtz said.

  “I went back to the mesa. That had to be the spot where the gun crew hid the cannon. Nothing else made sense. I dug a bit and found it—them.”

  “Two?”

  “Two,” Slocum agreed. “If we want to blow open the safe, we’d better get to work. There’s a powerful lot that has to be done. I need gunpowder, wadding, a tamping rod, and most important, I need a few cannonballs.”

  “You didn’t uncover any?”

  “There might be some hidden, but I was all alone when I was digging.”

  “What size?”

  “These were mountain howitzers with about four-and-a -half-inch bores. I seem to recall they fired twelve-pound balls.”

  “That’s about the size of mine!” Rebel Jack laughed at his own joke as he grabbed his crotch and began dancing around.

  For two cents, Slocum would have shot off Holtz’s balls, but he needed the man’s help getting the cannon aligned and ready to fire.

  “Can you get the cannonballs?” Slocum asked. Holtz settled down and looked glum at this prospect.

  “I was counting on finding the caissons. There’s no trouble getting gunpowder. We’re in the Guadalupe Mountains after all, and there’s not a hill taller’n my head that’s not been chewed on or blasted by some prospector. I can get the powder.”

  “The wadding and tamping rod are easy to come by. How many times do we have to fire the cannon?”

  “That important?”

  “It is,” said Slocum, “if you intend to fire more than a couple times. I’ll need a bucket of water to cool the barrel.”

  “Won’t be necessary unless it takes you more than that to get the range.”

  “Howitzers were good up to nine hundred yards or thereabouts. All I need to do is calculate the proper elevation and drop the ball straight down on top of the safe.”

  “That shouldn’t take but one or two shots,” Holtz said optimistically. “Let’s get our carcasses up to the mesa and do some more digging.”

  “I left the shovels there,” Slocum said. “What about the cannonballs?”

  “That’s why we’re going to dig up that entire damned mesa and make it look like prairie dogs have gone loco. No true Southerner would leave a cannon and not give us the shot to feed it.”

  Slocum wasn’t so sure, but said nothing. Holtz rounded up the four men in his gang and they rode back through town. As they passed the church, Slocum saw no one working on it. If anything, it looked more like a mausoleum than a church. He hoped to catch sight of Tessa, but she and her pa were nowhere to be seen.

  Slocum kept his head down as they rode south out of Bitter Springs. Only when he had passed the last building did he lift his head up.

  “You get into some trouble in town, Slocum?”

  “Jack, you’ve got no idea how happy I will be to see the last of Bitter Springs,” Slocum answered. He led the way up the trail to the top of the mesa, and came out near the hole he had dug. He caught his breath when he thought somebody might have stolen the guns away. As he rode closer, he saw that the sides of the pit he had dug had crumbled, partially covering the howitzers again.

  “Don’t that about make the purtiest sight you ever laid eyes on?” Holtz jumped to the ground and slid into the hole. He brushed away the loose dirt with his hands. Slocum squinted as sunlight caught the bronze barrel.

  “It’s not made of iron,” Holtz said, looking up. “Is that all right?”

  “Better than all right. It’s as fine as frog’s fur,” Slocum said. “Bronze doesn’t rust.”

  “Then we’re sure to have a pair of usable cannons!”

  “Maybe not. Bronze does corrode. That would weaken the barrel. There might be other problems. These have been buried away in the desert for nigh on seventeen years.”

  “To hell with you,” Holtz growled. “Everything’s going to be just fine.” He got his men digging until the air filled with sand and choking grit from around the two cannons. As they worked, Slocum took the opportunity to look for another spot where the caisson with the cannonballs might have been hidden. He doubted the soldiers doing the work of burying the cannon would want to go too far afield. Just west of the nexus on the rocky X, he found a likely spot and began digging. It took him only minutes to strike something hard and metallic.

  “Found it,” Slocum said. “I hope it’s not another cannon. We’ve already got one more than we can use.”

  “Help Slocum dig,” Holtz ordered. Slocum saw that the outlaw leader did very little of the hard work himself. If he provided the gunpowder, Slocum would forgive him for that.

  Less than ten minutes later, they unearthed the caisson with four twelve-pound cannonballs packed away in a crate.

  “We got the fixin’s,” Holtz gloated. “It’s time to do some rollin’ and then we can smoke!”

  “We can get one of the cannons moved to the edge of the mesa,” Slocum said. “That ought to give me a good idea of range.”

  As Holtz’s men struggled to move the bronze cannon over to the edge, Slocum got an idea.

  “I need to make sure the first shot or two is right on target. For that I need to mark the bank with a flag.”

  “Windage,” Holtz said, nodding. “You get on down there and do what needs doing, Slocum. Me and the boys’ll get the howitzer all set up.”

  “You have the powder?”

  “Powder, balls, and wadding. We’re all ready.”

  “The r
am to get it all tamped in properly,” Slocum said. “I’ll get something when I’m in town. Put up a pole right in front of the cannon with a white cloth on it. I’ll sight in on that when I get below.”

  “Don’t just stand around jawing,” Holtz said. “The sooner we get the cannon set up and firing, the sooner we will all be rich.”

  Slocum said nothing as he swung into the saddle and guided his mare back down to Bitter Springs. By now the horse knew the way, allowing Slocum to think hard without concentrating on the trail.

  He took the back streets to avoid being seen by any of the crowd he had dispersed earlier, and dismounted behind the bank. Across the street he saw Preacher Dan’s church, looking lonely and abandoned. Slocum pushed that from his mind. He had tried to help the Whitmores and had not gotten too far. Neither Dan nor Tessa had been the least bit appreciative when he had kept their creditors from setting fire to the church.

  Slocum walked to the side of the building and looked up to the top of the mesa. A thin pole bent in the wind, a white cloth flapping wildly. He cursed. With such wind, even the short shot down to the bank would go astray unless he corrected exactly for it. He felt confident in his skills, but it had been a considerable number of years since his stint on the artillery battery.

  He took off his bandanna and looked around for a pole to mark the range and give him an idea of windage. There were some across the street. Slocum hurried over and found one suitable to hold his bandanna, and another, thicker pole to use as a tamping rod on the cannon. He tied the bandanna at his head level, then worked to figure out where to stick the pole in the hard ground so it was on a line with the safe inside. He knew a few measurements would give him the best chance of sighting in on his target.

  The bank would sustain incredible damage. A twelve-pound cannonball would blow the building apart—and anyone inside. Slocum wondered if he ought to fire one shot above the bank to scare patrons and tellers out. He didn’t much care if Thompson stayed inside. He could imagine the banker throwing himself over the top of the safe to protect it with his own body.

  Finding the right place, Slocum stuck the pole into the ground and made sure it wouldn’t fall over. With this to use as a sighting device, he was sure he could drop the shot directly into the bank.