by Jake Logan
The crowd stayed just far enough away to prevent any such grab, even when Slocum saw a man with the familiar ebony-handled Colt Navy stuck in his belt. Slocum knew that he’d die someday—and it was looking as if it was today—but having that owlhoot steal his six-gun rankled more than he cared to admit.
They shoved him along, back to the open square with the pile of logs where Galligan sat on his pathetic throne. He had his gold crown pulled down squarely on his head now. As Slocum watched, the sun poked up over a mountain peak and the first rays caught the crown. If it wasn’t pure gold, it was close enough so that it didn’t much matter.
“You have offended Emperor Galligan. For that I have sentenced you to the pit.” Galligan stood and looked over the assembled crowd. “Is it ready?”
“Never been readier!” cried the man with Slocum’s six-shooter thrust into his belt.
“Everybody got their bets laid?” Galligan asked. A roar of approval and agreement went up. “Then throw the son of a bitch into the pit! By your emperor’s order, throw him in!”
Slocum was swept off his feet and carried along on upstretched arms. And then he was sailing through the air to land on his back in a seven-foot-deep pit. As he crashed down, a hideous squeaking sounded. Slocum felt wet spots on his back where he had crushed something small and hard. Then he jerked away as a rat bit his arm. Another and another fastened their teeth into him and began gnawing off his flesh. He swung around and sent the rodents flying, but the pit was ankle deep in them.
“They been starved fer purty near a week, waitin’ for yer tender flesh,” called down the man with Slocum’s pistol. “I got a bet as to which of ’em pukes up your putrid meat first.”
Loud catcalls and exchanges circled the pit as Slocum began stamping on the rats. Some of the live ones turned on their wounded or dead brothers. But there were too many famished rats for a few bodies to sate their voracious hunger. Slocum, however, provided an ample meal.
After his first flash of revulsion, he settled down and methodically stamped on the rats, caught them and broke their necks, and otherwise began decimating the population. A hush fell over the crowd. Slocum was bit and bleeding from dozens of wounds, but he was making significant headway toward killing the rats and making the ones he did not destroy cower around the edges of the pit.
“He’s beatin’ ’em down,” came a choked gasp. “How’s anybody gonna win the pool if—”
The man didn’t get a chance to finish. Standing at the edge of the pit, now towering high over Slocum, stood Emperor Galligan. He pointed at his prisoner and called, “This round is over. Begin round two!”
For a moment there was deathly silence. Even the chittering rats fell silent. Then the crowd roared its approval. Slocum waited to see what new menace would be introduced to the pit. Two men struggled with a box. They kicked the box a couple times, then upended it. A half-dozen mountain rattlers slid from the box into the pit.
For a few seconds, the snakes hissed and slithered about, then saw an incredible amount of food. They started working on the rats Slocum hadn’t entirely killed. Seeing the snakes going after the rats and not the human, the crowd began to protest. Slocum wasn’t going to wait for round three. That might mean facing a hungry mountain lion. He bent, grabbed a snake by the rattles, and swung it around in a wide arc. The men crowded around the lip of the pit were perplexed. Then Slocum used the rattler like a whip, casting it out toward the owlhoot with his six-shooter thrust into his belt.
The snake’s fangs sank deep in the man’s hand. He turned, tried to fling off the rattler, lost his balance, and toppled into the pit. Slocum had to step back to let him fall all the way. It took only an instant to whip his pistol from the man’s belt. Slocum kicked the son of a bitch in the head, then yanked the downed man’s Smith & Wesson from its holster so he’d have more firepower.
Pistol in each hand, Slocum looked up. Both guns were cocked and aimed at Galligan. The two men locked eyes. Galligan’s pale blue eyes sparkled in amusement. Slocum’s were emerald chips, hard, cold, unyielding.
“Get him out of the pit. He’s earned a pardon from me. Emperor Galligan proclaims that this gent is free!”
For a moment, no one moved. Slocum straightened his arm and sighted along the barrel. A single shot would put a slug in Galligan’s head.
“I said, get him outta the pit!”
Frantic hands reached down. Slocum tucked the Colt Navy into its holster and kept the captured six-shooter pointed at the emperor. With his free hand, he let a burly man pull him up.
“What about him?” Slocum asked, tipping his head in the direction of the pit but never taking his eyes off Galligan.
“The bets that were on your head are on Zamora’s now,” Galligan said. A round of grumbling died down as Galligan glared at the men. “Now put down your six-gun. You’re a free man. You can go anywhere in Top of the World you want.”
Slocum started to ask if he could leave, but he doubted that was in the cards.
Screams from the pit died quickly as the man succumbed to the rattlers’ bites or maybe the rats. Slocum wasn’t much interested what it was that had caused the sudden silence. The crowd muttered in disgust at the quickness of the death, though a couple hooted and hollered that they had won by betting on less than five minutes between the time of entry to the pit and death.
“You got spunk,” Galligan said, looking Slocum over carefully. “I need men like you.”
“For the work gangs?”
Galligan looked exasperated and shook his head. The crown dislodged slightly. Up close and in the sun, now up entirely over the mountain peak, the gold circlet looked pathetic once more. He pushed it squarely back on his brow.
“Don’t go trying to josh me. Ask any of my boys. I don’t have a sense of humor.” Galligan glanced around. A full dozen men exchanged looks, shook their heads, and then became frightened when Galligan bellowed, “Tell him I got a great sense of humor!”
The men chattered like magpies, each offering up a story showing how funny Galligan could be.
“Shut up,” the emperor of Top of the World said, making a dismissive gesture with his hand.
Slocum wondered what would happen if he just gunned down this pretender, then he took a quick look around. Atop three nearby buildings stood riflemen, all attentively watching their leader. He couldn’t tell but he thought a couple more snipers were positioned at street level. Their bullets might have to cut through the crowd before reaching him, but Slocum saw that this wouldn’t pose a problem for Galligan or his sharpshooters. He might put a bullet in Galligan’s forehead, just under the rim of the crown, but he would never get more than a couple paces before he was cut down for such a public service.
“They know their place. And I’d like to offer you a place, too, mister.”
Slocum noticed that Galligan never once inquired as to his name. To the emperor, all his subjects were little more than blobs of animated flesh, kowtowing to him. Names were for those who mattered.
“You’re offering me a job? Doing what?”
“Guard. I always need men with keen eyes on the wall watching the road. You do a good job, and in a month or two, you might be collecting the tolls.” A gasp went up in the men surrounding Galligan. Slocum took this to mean toll collector was a prized job.
“How much would I be allowed to steal before I passed it along to you?”
This honesty about dishonesty startled Galligan. Then he laughed.
“As much as you think you can get away with ’fore I decide to toss you back into the pit. The next time, it won’t be rats or snakes.”
“The bear,” called someone in the gathered crowd. “We ain’t had anyone against a bear in a long time.”
Galligan said nothing. He smiled crookedly.
“Reckon you got yourself a guard,” Slocum said, thrusting out his hand.
Galligan stared at it as if Slocum had offered him one of the rattlesnakes from the pit. He actually stepped away.
&nb
sp; “The emperor don’t shake hands. He don’t like being touched a’tall,” said a man at Galligan’s side.
“Well, then let me look around your town and get settled in,” Slocum said.
“Be on the wall at noon,” the emperor said, stepping away and then walking off haughtily, head high, crown blazing in the morning sun.
Slocum fingered the pistol in his hand, then checked the snipers. He was still in their sights. He waved to them, tucked the S&W into his own belt now, and walked away from the pit. The man’s dying gasps were history now. Slocum wondered how they would get the pit cleaned out. Before he reached the main street running through the middle of town, he heard shovels working on the dirt. He turned and saw a half-dozen men, shackles on their ankles, using shovels to fill in the pit. Slocum hesitated, trying to identify any of the men as the ones he had shared the jail with, but he didn’t recognize them.
The emperor probably had more than one chain gang hard at work around his town.
That notion didn’t set well with Slocum. The War had been fought, the South had lost, and slavery ought to be a thing of the past. In Top of the World it obviously wasn’t, no matter what the slaves thought about their fate being working long hours supposedly to earn release. They would never be free again.
The corpses floating down the river told Slocum what he needed to know about how Galligan disposed of unwanted bodies. Those were probably the men he claimed had been freed and had gone on their way.
As he walked slowly down the street, he was amazed at the variety of stores and how the entire town bustled with commerce. If Galligan’s heavy hand rested on any of the shopkeepers, it wasn’t apparent from a casual inspection.
Slocum stopped in front of the saloon and looked inside. Nothing fancy, but all he wanted was to wet his whistle. His only problem was lack of money. Even if he had his horse and gear, there weren’t two nickels to rub together. He turned to go, but the barkeep yelled to him.
“Hey, mister. Wait. Come on in.”
Slocum went inside. An upright piano stood in one corner. It was too early in the day for anyone to be banging away on the keys. A billiards table was shoved up against the wall, making it damned hard to play, but he didn’t see any cue sticks and there was only one ball on the table. A bar fight or two had probably used up most the equipment necessary for a real game. Two tables were set up for faro and a half-dozen more had poker chips carelessly stacked on them. He and the bartender were the only two in the place.
“You want a drink?” The barkeep was already reaching under the bar for a bottle.
Slocum shook his head. “Can’t pay for it.”
“This one’s on the house. You made me a pile of money this morning. I saw when they drug you in last night that you wasn’t a run-of-the-mill drifter and had fight in you.”
“What was your bet?”
“That you’d climb out of the pit. I got five hundred to one odds.”
Slocum blinked, then had to ask, “How much’d you bet, even with odds like that?”
The barkeep grinned. He had a gold tooth in front just under a split lip that wasn’t quite hidden by a thick mustache.
“Ten dollars. They thought I was stupid, but I know a good bet when I see one.”
Slocum took the shot of whiskey, then downed it.
“Glad you won.”
For a second the barkeep stared, then he laughed.
“You got a sense of humor, too. Can’t say that’d much help in a hole filled with rats and rattlers but it surely does go a ways outside.”
“What are you going to do with all that money you won?” Thoughts raced through Slocum’s head of stealing the money, then getting downhill to the town he’d heard mentioned. Thompson.
“Done spent it. Paid off my mortgage on this here place. It’s mine, free and clear. I got a monopoly. The only saloon in town.”
“Wise move, business like this.” Slocum gestured to the empty saloon. He saw two men step aside as he looked out the door. He started to ask to use the back way, but without a horse he was stuck in town. What he needed was a ticket out of here and the only one he could think of was Galligan. Put a gun to his head, have the emperor order his men back, and Slocum could ride on out untouched.
“Thanks for the drink. It cleared my head some.”
“You do look like a man whose destiny is plain enough for everyone to see,” the barkeep said.
Slocum left the saloon and looked around. Four more men ducked down alleyways, then peered back to see if he had noticed them. He tried to ignore the lot of them as he walked down the middle of the street, getting the lay of the land and deciding that the fancy hotel at the end of the street was likely where Galligan held court.
Turning suddenly, he ducked down a narrow gap between the bakery and the apothecary shop. He heard rapid bootsteps trying to keep up with him. He got to the rear of the bakery, jumped, and caught a drainpipe to pull himself up to the roof. He flopped down as three men rushed out and looked around. They argued where he might have gone so fast, but none looked up. They split into two groups, one man going east and the other two west. For some reason they never considered that Slocum might have kept going due south. He reared up and tried to see what lay to the south of town, but early morning fog still clung close to the ground.
He dropped back to the alley and returned to the main street. For the moment he had eluded his followers, so he headed directly for the hotel. Before he could go inside, he saw a well-dressed man enter, his top hat brushing the top of the door frame. The man stopped just inside. Slocum saw past to where Galligan stood in the lobby.
Slocum touched the butt of the pistol in his belt, then went to get himself a shield so he could ride on out of town. Galligan wasn’t much, but he would have to do.
Barely had his foot touched the first step up to the broad porch around the hotel than movement out of the corner of his eye drew his attention. Two of the men who had been trailing him hurried forward. A quick glance in the other direction showed three more. There had been six and he had only succeeded in losing one. Bad odds.
He looked into the lobby but both Galligan and the fashion plate had vanished.
“Where you goin’?” demanded one of the men.
Slocum smiled crookedly and said, “Reckon the emperor’d want to hear me declare my allegiance to him before I went on duty.”
The five men stood in a fanned array around him, saying nothing.
Slocum shrugged. “Another time. I got to get to work.”
The one he’d pegged as their leader pointed toward the east.
“Much obliged,” Slocum said, turned and walked away, their eyes boring holes in him the entire distance down the road. Even when he left town and walked the quarter mile to the wall, he felt he was being watched. Galligan might have set him free, but he had only traded a cell with iron bars for one with a bit more elbow room. That would have to change. Slocum wasn’t the kind to stay locked up for long.
4
“We shoot anybody who doesn’t pay?” Slocum asked. The other guard in the iron-clad tower shrugged. Gadsden wasn’t much for small talk.
Slocum looked out the loophole and saw he had a good range of fire. He sighted down the rifle barrel and lined the front bead on the spot where he had first stopped on the road to study the wall and the massive gate protecting the toll road. The wall and fortifications had been designed well, except the portion of the wall Slocum had gnawed his way through. He wanted to ask if the hole had been fixed, but knew he wasn’t likely to get much of an answer from his new partner.
“Mind if I stretch my legs?”
The man grunted. Slocum didn’t know how to interpret that, so he figured it meant it was all right for him to explore. He left the small, stifling hot tower room and saw that a walkway along the wall above the gate afforded a way to the other guardhouse. He looked down the fifteen feet to the ground, then studied the locking mechanism on the gate. From this vantage point he couldn’t tell much othe
r than the bar holding the gate shut would resist about any attack that could be mounted. A single rider trying to force his way through had no chance at all.
“You, what are you doing away from your post?”
Slocum looked across the walkway and saw a short, stocky man pointing at him.
“You the boss?”
“As far as scum like you’s concerned, yeah. Get on back to work.”
“Nobody on the trail to stop,” Slocum said. “Mind if I go see how the sentry out along the trail’s doing?”
“You stay where you’re supposed to. You end up on the other side of the wall and I order ’em to shoot you.”
“Unless I can pay the toll?”
This stopped the other man’s tirade. He stared at Slocum, eyes going narrow.
“You got money?”
Slocum didn’t answer. The sergeant of the guard—that was how Slocum had to think of him—looked around, rubbed his hand over his mouth, then turned back and motioned. This time he wasn’t ordering Slocum back into the guardhouse but rather to come across.
Walking carefully on the narrow beam, Slocum went over and saw his guess about the man’s height was right. Slocum was tall, about six foot, and the top of the man’s head hardly came up to his shoulder.
“You gamble?”
“On duty?” Slocum laughed contemptuously. “What’d Galligan think about anybody doing that?”
“He never comes out here. Hardly anybody moving west. All the travelers come up from Thompson on the other side. They keep tryin’ to trade, to get a route for free through Top of the World, but the emperor don’t want no part of it. ’Sides, Gadsden back there’d tell Galligan if anything was goin’ wrong, that son of a bitch snitch.”
“When you’ve got the best hand, you don’t have to bluff,” Slocum said. His casual reference to poker had the desired effect.
“Come on inside.” The guard ducked as he went into the wooden structure. Slocum had to bend almost double to enter the small door. A quick glance showed this was where the boss stayed. There were two stools and a low table. An empty whiskey bottle stood on the knee-high table along with a worn deck of cards laid out in a solitaire fan.