by Jake Logan
But the gold was missing.
“You said the cannonball hit straight on the safe?”
“Couldn’t have been a better shot,” Holtz said. “Right through the roof, angled down and blew the top off the safe, and kept on going.”
“Could the impact have blown the gold all over the bank?” Slocum had never seen such a thing, but he was grasping at straws. He was positive Thompson had not spirited the gold away all at once. Had the banker stolen it one bag of coins at a time?
“Nothing but blood and dust inside,” Holtz assured him. “What was left of the insides, that is. Blew a huge hole in the floor under the safe.”
“Damn,” Slocum said. He lifted his field glasses and saw who was riding into town—and it was not a company from Fort Suddereth.
“I know. That’s why I’m gonna punish them!”
“Holtz, the riders aren’t soldiers. It’s a whole damn company of Texas Rangers.” They might be after Holtz, but they were definitely after him because he had shot Ranger Jeffers. He could have talked his way out of any charges the army threw his way. There would be no convincing the Rangers of anything short of them putting a noose around his neck and letting him swing.
“I hate them as much as I hate Bitter Springs!” Holtz pushed Slocum out of the way and barked orders to his men. They had wrestled the cannon back into the dirt pocket in the ground.
“What are you going to do?” Slocum asked. His gut turned into an icy fist when he saw Holtz preparing the cannon for another shot.
“I’m gonna send the lot of them to hell!”
“They don’t know you’re up here,” Slocum said. “Get away. There’ll be other banks, more gold, better chances to steal it.”
He wondered why he was arguing with Rebel Jack. The man’s eyes were glassy now, and all reason had fled. Slocum owed him nothing. They had ridden together for only a short time, and Holtz had never been a friend. If anything, he was the worst of those in the war and a type Slocum had come to despise.
“Is Slocum goin’ ta sight in for us?” asked the man nervously fingering the lanyard. Holtz furiously rammed wadding in and then stood back as his henchman rolled the twelve-pound cannonball down the barrel.
“We’re firing straight into the cliff on the other side of town,” Holtz said. “You ready? Pull the damned string!”
Slocum turned his back and clapped his hands over his ears as the cannon roared. He felt the hot blast of superheated gases on his back. A quick glance over his shoulder assured him the dented cannon had not bent or otherwise destroyed itself. Then the ground shook and the sound of tearing rock filled the air.
The screech rose until it almost matched the noise of the cannon report. Slocum did not need his field glasses to see the upper portion of the eastern cliff above Bitter Springs tumbling downward. The dust obscured his view for a moment; then he knew Holtz’s revenge was successful. Half of Bitter Springs lay crushed under the avalanche.
“The Rangers are at the edge of town,” Slocum said. He licked his lips and then chewed on his lower lip, wondering what the lawmen would make of the town’s sudden destruction. “They don’t know what to make of it. They might think it happened naturally. Rock slides are common enough in these mountains.”
“To hell with that. I’m gonna kill ’em all!”
Slocum swung about, thinking he should put a slug through Holtz to keep him from drawing the Rangers’ attention. Then he decided against it. The men with him were equally crazed. They had one last cannonball to fire. Slocum stepped far away, circled, and got onto his horse. Heading back to Bitter Springs was out of the question.
He turned his horse’s face down the steep western slope and began the long ride to El Paso—and away from Rebel Jack Holtz and his crazy ways.
He hardly flinched when the cannon roared again, but he did ride a mite faster.
19
Slocum wished he had ridden away from Bitter Springs better prepared for the trail. He hunted for water and found none. He skirted the dry lake, and finally discovered a watering hole with slightly alkaline water. Hesitant to drink of it, he knew he had no choice. His canteen was empty, and he had several hard days’ ride ahead of him, no matter which direction he went. Worse, he worried that his horse would get sick and die from the alkaline water.
“Just a drop or two,” Slocum cautioned, but it was all he could do to keep the mare from thrusting her nose down into the water and drinking until she bloated. After a minute or two, he pulled the horse back. The touch of alkali did not affect the horse any, as far as he could see, but Slocum knew such things might take a while.
He filled his canteen and satisfied himself with thrusting his head into the water. He wished he had a bandanna, but he had left that back in Bitter Springs. After his all-too-accurate shot, both the bank roof and safe, along with his bandanna, had been blown to hell.
This got him to thinking. Holtz would never have tried lying about the gold being gone. Slocum knew Rebel Jack too well to believe he would run a bluff. If he had the gold and could get away with it, he would have shot his three partners as soon as the gold was stashed in saddlebags. Returning to shoot the cannon twice more into the town was an act of crazy vengeance and a way to work off his incredible anger at the robbery going bad.
“Thompson, you were quite a banker,” Slocum decided. The actual way the banker must have carried off the gold coin was something of a poser, but he was the only one with a combination to the safe. Slocum wondered if the banker might have gotten wind of Holtz planning to rob the bank. It wasn’t as if Rebel Jack or any of his men were tight-mouthed when they got drunk. More than once, the entire gang had sampled the pleasures offered by the Bitter Springs saloons. For all Slocum knew, they had sampled pleasures of the flesh, too. A soiled dove might have sweet nothings whispered in her ear, including boasts about how her paramour of the minute was going to be fabulously rich soon. A drunk man with a willing woman beside him might spill his guts about robbing the bank.
If a particular friend of Thompson was the one hearing this, she could have told him to get the gold out of his safe. Slocum stretched in the sun, squinted at the sky, and figured he had another hour or two of riding ahead before he camped for the night. He would have been a whole lot more content if he shared his bedroll with some of that gold.
“Come on,” Slocum said, tugging on the horse’s reins. “I want to put some more miles between us and Bitter Springs before we rest.”
He had ridden all night and most of the next day without seeing any trace of pursuit. Still, Slocum was edgy about what had happened in Bitter Springs. If Holtz had succeeded in blowing up a goodly number of the Texas Rangers, the survivors would never stop until they had the culprit in their sights. Holtz would fight like a mad dog, but if they captured him, he would try to put the blame anywhere he could.
John Slocum was an easy name to give. There was no honor among thieves—or former army comrades.
He cut across barren land baked by the sun and sending up shimmering heat waves that cooked him. When his mare began to stumble, Slocum knew it was time to go to earth and rest. He found a deep arroyo and got down the crumbling bank. The shade offered by the westernmost side was little enough, but a mesquite tree cast a long enough shadow for the horse. Slocum settled down, his back to the side of the arroyo, and fell into a fitful sleep.
Sometime after dark, possibly near midnight from the look of the constellations in the cloudless night sky, he heard creaking and clanking of wheels near enough to wake him. Slocum got to his feet.
“We might be in luck,” he said, patting the patient mare’s neck. “That just might be a Butterfield stagecoach on its way over to Hueco Tanks. I can ride inside and you can trot along behind without my weight tiring you out.”
The mare only stared at him, one large brown eye un-winking.
“So, be a skeptic,” he said, scrambling up the bank and walking a dozen yards. He had missed the road entirely in his wandering through the deser
t. The tracks were distinct. Twin ruts had been cut down into the dry ground some time back, and maintained by regular traffic that prevented the restless wind from covering it with sand.
Slocum dropped to his knees and examined the ground. The dim starlight provided all the illumination, but he let out a snort of disgust.
“Not a stagecoach,” he decided. “The wheel marks’re too narrow. And one of them wobbles something fierce.”
Then Slocum brightened. The wagon that had passed by only minutes earlier was going west. The only ones likely to be out on the dry lake bed going in that direction were Preacher Dan and his lovely daughter.
Slocum returned to the arroyo, saddled his mare, and rode slowly along the road. In less than five minutes, he topped a rise and saw the familiar wagon rattling down the far side of the hill.
When he came even with the wagon, he found himself looking down the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun.
“What kind of reception is that for your handyman?” Slocum asked.
He did not hear what Preacher Dan said to Tessa, but she balked. She turned and argued with him a few seconds, then lowered the scattergun.
“You startled me, John. I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”
“Things heated up in Bitter Springs. I left in a hurry.”
“What things?” Preacher Dan leaned over and fixed Slocum with a cold stare.
“Seems somebody robbed the bank.”
“No!” Tessa exclaimed. She put a hand to her mouth in shock. “What’s been done about it?”
“Not much. Rebel Jack Holtz dropped a cannonball smack on the bank and blew the safe apart.”
“So this Rebel Jack robbed the bank?” Preacher Dan pulled back hard on the reins and lashed them around the brake. “Have the authorities caught him?”
“Seems likely they have—or have killed him by now,” Slocum said. He described the carnage after Holtz had fired the cannonball into the far cliff and crushed half the town under an avalanche. “Don’t rightly know how many Texas Rangers he killed either. He only had one cannonball left. Might have been effective. Even if he wasn’t, they would swarm after him because he could never have killed them all.”
“You seem to know a great deal about what went on, John.” Tessa looked at him with the same steely look her father used.
“I was on the mesa watching it all.”
“You helped this Rebel Jack Holtz person? You tried to rob the bank?”
“That about sums it up,” Slocum said.
“You are a far more dangerous man than I realized,” Preacher Dan said.
“Hope that doesn’t stop you from letting me ride along with you. Where are you heading?”
“El Paso,” Tessa said, though her pa tried to hush her. “Oh, Papa, he’s not stupid. Where else would we be going out here in the middle of the alkali plain?”
“You might be a lightning rod for trouble,” Preacher Dan said to Slocum.
“That shouldn’t bother a real preacher, should it?”
“What are you saying?”
Slocum swung in the saddle, hand going to his six-shooter. He did not draw.
“We’ve got a problem. A single rider’s coming up fast. It’s likely to be a Ranger.”
Tessa moved the shotgun so it was hidden by her skirts, and her pa shifted in the hard seat, as if reaching for a six-shooter hidden at his feet.
“He’s not likely to be alone,” Slocum warned. “An entire company rode into Bitter Springs. Even if Holtz killed most of them, there might be half a dozen left.”
“Hello!” came the greeting. “Texas Rangers.” The lawman rode up. Slocum saw three more dark shapes appear out of the desert flanking him.
“Evening,” Preacher Dan greeted. “What can we do for you? You look mighty parched. We got plenty of water, if you want to sample some.”
“Doubt you’d have any firewater,” the Ranger said, grinning. He had read the painted sign on the side of the wagon.
“Demon Rum,” Preacher Dan said piously, “will send a man straight to hell.”
“Expected you to say that. My pa was a minister down in New Braunfels. Never could understand why I preferred a nip or two instead of the sacramental wine.”
All the time the Ranger was exchanging pleasantries, he was taking in details of Slocum—and Tessa. Slocum had to appreciate how she subtly moved about, causing the top couple buttons of her blouse to pop open and show generous swells of her breasts. No man, not even a Texas Ranger hunting for a suspect, would pay a whole lot of attention to anything else.
“Whatcha found?” came the loud question from one rider who had remained at a distance.
“A preacher and his . . . daughter,” the Ranger said, grinning. “And what are you?”
“He’s my hired hand,” Preacher Dan said quickly. “Jethro tends the horses, does some carpentry work when we get to a town so I don’t have to preach from the back of my wagon.”
“He’s so useful,” Tessa said, turning so yet another button popped open. Slocum found himself staring more at her than the Rangers circling the wagon like vultures. He shook himself free of her undeniable spell.
As he did, his heart skipped a beat. Riding up was a familiar face. If it had been Ranger Jeffers, he would have gone for his six-shooter and tried to shoot his way free.
“You going to talk all night, Sergeant?” asked the young Ranger.
“Naw, we need to push on.” The Ranger who had done most of the talking tipped his hat to Tessa, then said, “Have a safe trip. There’s a lot of dangerous men out on these here plains.” With that he trotted off, the others going with him.
All but the young Ranger.
He rode closer and stopped, staring straight at Slocum.
“You didn’t have to let me go,” the Ranger said.
“Nope.”
“Thank you for not shooting me. I gotta admit, when I heard the shot, I thought you wanted to shoot me in the back. Then I saw what went on. If you hadn’t fired, Holtz would have come after me and I would be buzzard bait.”
“That’s about it,” Slocum agreed. “What happened to Holtz?”
The young Ranger grinned crookedly. “Rebel Jack got himself killed, along with two or three others in his gang.”
“All of them?” Slocum had to ask.
Ranger Heyward nodded, then said, “We’re huntin’ fer Apaches.”
“What about Jeffers?”
“What about him?” Heyward laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You didn’t kill him, thanks to his lucky stars and both a badge and a big belt buckle. Heaven knows I’ve wanted to shoot him often enough myself. He is one mean bastard.” Without another word, Heyward galloped after the sergeant and the rest of the Rangers.
“You two know each other?” Tessa asked.
“We’ve met.”
“Under what circumstances?”
“It’ll be fine. They’re not looking for you,” Slocum said.
“No, that one—the sergeant—was looking at me.”
“I meant,” Slocum said, watching both father and daughter closely, “they weren’t looking for who really robbed the Bitter Springs bank.”
“Whatever are you implying, John?”
“I’m not implying anything. You’ve got the gold from the bank in the back of the wagon.”
“A hidden compartment actually,” said Preacher Dan. “It keeps things more peaceable that way.”
“For casual searches. Tessa makes sure any search never gets too thorough.”
“Why, John, what an awful thing to say.” She let yet another button pop open, giving him a view of most of her breast and the dark nipple cresting it.
“You can ride with us to El Paso,” Dan Whitmore said. “We might need some help with the wagon.”
“The rear wheel’s wobbling a mite,” Slocum said. “I can fix that again, though getting the wagon jacked up might be hard with so much gold weighing it down.”
“You’re a clever man, John. You’ll figure
out how to do it.”
“I know lots of ways of doing it,” Slocum said, grinning at Tessa. “For a cut of the gold, I can probably think of ways of fixing the wheel, too.”
“What? You didn’t do a goddamn thing to . . .” Dan Whitmore’s words trailed off.
“Some preacher you are.”
“I am when it’s convenient. Other times, I’m a traveling mortician.”
“I can see that folks wouldn’t poke around a mortuary either, giving you plenty of time to tunnel into a bank, cut through the floor of a safe, and empty it.”
“What gave it away, Slocum?”
“The short wood beams. The planks. You dug the tunnel and supported the boards with the four-by-fours. I reckon your tunnel was not much more than a couple feet high, so you had to work on your belly. That’s hard going.”
“I’m experienced enough,” Whitmore said.
“I don’t doubt it. Tessa has plenty of experience getting folks in town to run you out, too. That makes for quite a diversion. ”
“We were ready to go when the crowd came to burn the church. I was quite vexed with you, John, for stopping them.”
“You set fire to it yourself?”
“I had to,” Whitmore said. “You put the fear of God into the crowd so they’d never get around to it any time soon.”
“The dirt,” Tessa said suddenly. “The dirt also gave us away. Isn’t that right, John?”
“It is. I couldn’t figure why so much got piled up. It all makes sense now.”
A silence fell between them. Then Tessa said, “Let’s find a spot to camp for the night and let the Rangers put some miles between them and us.”
“I hope you’re not intending to put any distance between you and me,” Slocum said softly. He wasn’t sure if her pa heard or not. It did not matter. They were partners now.
“No distance at all is the way I like it,” Tessa said.
John Slocum had to agree. The girl and the gold and what looked to be a free ride all the way to El Paso. What more could he ask?