by Jake Logan
Miss Maggie stood in the door flap of her saloon, a smoking six-gun in her hand. “Get that varmint, boys. You heard him say he murdered Frank Decker. No need to trouble the marshal or call in the circuit judge, now is there?”
Slocum started to protest. He hated lynch mobs, having been on the wrong end of their ropes too often for comfort. But he slid his six-shooter back into its holster and let the half-drunk crowd carry the wounded Cletus Quinn away, intent on stringing him up as part of Scorpion Bend’s festivities.
“He was a bad apple, Slocum,” Miss Maggie told him. “I overheard him say he’d killed Frank Decker. Decker was a wastrel, but he didn’t deserve to be murdered, not by the likes of Cletus Quinn.”
“Reckon Quinn’s boys will be moving on real quiet-like,” Slocum said. He saw a pair of men he recognized as having ridden with Quinn arguing between themselves. Then they mounted and rode off—in the opposite direction of the lynch mob.
“It’s always more peaceful after the race,” Miss Maggie said. “You stayin’ or you goin’?”
Slocum dickered with her for Black Velvet, and ended up paying her five hundred dollars for the sturdy stallion.
“I’m gonna miss your ugly face around here, Slocum,” Miss Maggie said. “There’ll be someone else who misses you too.”
Slocum stared in the direction of the Decker farm. He had not realized Miss Maggie had known about his involvement with Rachel.
“She rode real good in the race too. If you hadn’t been astride Black Velvet, she’d’ve won.”
“You know about everything, don’t you?”
“It comes with the territory,” Miss Maggie said, grinning broadly. “ ’Fore you ride on, wherever fortune takes you, stop by and tell her good-bye.”
Slocum touched the brim of his new Stetson and rode off. He heard the loud neigh of a horse and a dull snapping sound. Quinn wouldn’t ruffle anyone’s feathers in Scorpion Bend again.
It took longer to reach the farm than he thought, possibly because he rode so slowly. Slocum had no idea what he wanted to say to Rachel, but knew he had to say something.
“Wondered if you’d be by, John. Thought you might,” said Rachel’s soft voice. He turned and saw her sitting under a thick-boled tree by the road, enjoying the sunset as she waited for him to ride past. He wondered if she had been sitting there long. Probably since the race.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked. “For a while?”
Rachel patted the ground next to her. She watched him as he dismounted and tied Black Velvet to a fence post.
“You bought Black Velvet?” she asked.
“Seemed the thing to do after I lost my sorrel,” he said, sitting beside Rachel. The sunset was spectacular. And he knew what he had to say.
“I’m heading up to Bozeman,” he said. “There’s not much more around here for me.”
“No, I suppose not,” she said. Silence fell between them, interrupted only by songbirds and the soft whisper of the warm breeze twisting this way and that down the road.
“I paid off the mortgage,” Rachel said eventually.
“I know.”
Rachel’s eyebrows rose. Then she nodded, as if reading his mind about what he had tried to do for her.
“I suspected something of the sort,” she said finally.
“Thank you, John, but the money came from an honest source. Kind of honest, at least. Miss Maggie paid me almost four thousand dollars off a bet Frank had laid on the race.”
“What?”
“Seems he was drunk, which figures, and he bet on the wrong rider. He put everything on you. Miss Maggie figured I, being the only one left in the Decker clan able to use the money, deserved it.” Rachel took out a bulging envelope and handed it to him.
“What’s this?”
“The money from the two tickets you gave me—to hold for you until after the race.”
“You have enough?” He took the envelope. Their fingers touched. Then Rachel drew back. She bit her lower lip and nodded, as if her thoughts were a hundred miles away.
Slocum wondered if Decker had been killed by Quinn because of the bet—or if there had ever been a wager. Knowing Miss Maggie, there might not have been one. She was a good person, deep down.
“Glad things are working out for you,” Slocum said.
Rachel heaved a deep sigh. “My pa’s no better. No worse either. I can’t leave him and I’m not going to move him.” Another long silence followed. Rachel continued. “I can’t expect you to stay either. As much as I want you to.”
Slocum thought of a thousand reasons to stay, but none of them matched the need to keep riding, to find the distant horizon and to see what lay beyond it. He couldn’t ask Rachel to abandon her duty to her pa—and he wasn’t up to helping her.
“I ought to stay,” Slocum said.
“Yes, you ought to,” Rachel said, staring at him, her brown eyes wide. “But you can’t. I know it, and you know it.” She bent over and kissed him lightly. “Come back soon. Things might be different then.”
He kissed her back, then mounted Black Velvet and rode off. It was hard not to look back. Slocum knew he could never ride on if he did.
The road was a little lonelier than it might have been, but it was his road.