by Jake Logan
“Not that easy after last night’s rain,” Slocum pointed out. “But they might not have buried it in the way you think.” He pointed to a dilapidated windmill.
“That’s about the right spot for the gold,” Audrey said. “But why would Jesse leave anything at such an obvious spot?”
Slocum dismounted and let his horse work on eating as much of the juicy grass as possible while he went to the windmill. He looked up and saw that several rungs nailed to one leg were broken off.
“Up there?” Audrey followed his gaze skyward. “That seems crazy, but the rungs were broken off recently. See how the exposed wood on the leg isn’t as weathered as spots above and below?”
Slocum tested the structure. It was rickety but strong enough to hold his weight. Working his way up the wooden leg, taking advantage of the strongest rungs and avoiding putting his weight on those likely to give way, he finally reached the splintery platform next to the windmill blades. The gears were broken and the assembly wouldn’t turn to track the wind, but he saw how the long shaft down to the well was bent.
“Is it there?” Audrey called up.
Slocum looked at the broken boards and saw no place for gold to be hidden, yet someone had crawled up here recently. He stood and looked around. From here he could see the outskirts of Encantado. Maybe Jesse had sent one of his men up here to act as lookout while the gold was hidden elsewhere. Hanging on to the blades, Slocum looked down to where Audrey shielded her eyes to peer up at him.
“Nothing, John? Nothing at all?” She sounded vexed.
Slocum lowered his gaze from the horizon to the area around the base of the windmill, near the spot where the shaft had gone into the ground to pump up water from the well below.
“To your left,” he called down. “There are rocks that’ve been moved recently. “More. Go farther. There!”
He watched as Audrey hastily began moving the rocks he had spotted. The dirt around the stones had been cut up not too long back. From ground level it wasn’t as obvious, but from up here he saw the difference in color of the soil immediately. Leaning farther out, he saw Audrey take the final rock from the cairn. Her shoulders slumped as she sat back on her heels.
She looked up and shouted, “Empty. Nothing here.”
Slocum worked his way down the leg and dropped the final few feet. He pulled a few splinters from his callused hands as he went to the hole in the ground where Audrey had returned to paw around in the mud at the bottom. She found something and held it up.
Gold glinted through a coat of mud.
“One coin. One coin!” He thought she was going to cry in frustration.
“That means more had been hidden here but were taken out.”
“So fast? There wasn’t time for anyone to see what Zeke had scrawled. We would have seen evidence! We would have passed them.”
“Might be that’s only one place telling where to find the gold. Jesse might be advertising this particular place all over.”
“Could be,” Audrey said morosely, turning the coin over and over in her hand. She wiped off the mud and stared at the shining coin. “You want it?”
“Pay for your boardinghouse,” Slocum said.
“What do we do now?”
“Things are likely to move pretty quick,” Slocum said. “If we wait, we’ll be in the middle of it.” He was afraid he was all too right about that. Jesse knew that he had to move fast once he began his rebellion. The longer he waited, the sooner the Army would send troops in from the rest of the country to crush his uprising. The more territory he controlled, the less likely the U.S. government was to try to pry him loose. If he commanded a significant number of troopers from Fort Union, that made his seizure of New Mexico Territory all the more dangerous.
“I’m not the kind to sit and watch,” Audrey said. “I ought to go after Jesse.”
“You’ll end up dead,” Slocum told her. “He’s got a body-guard around him all the time. I doubt Frank leaves his side, and tangling with Charlie Dennison is a damned sight more dangerous than dealing with a tenderfoot like Zeke.”
“Zeke had you dead to rights.”
“Dennison is worse,” Slocum said harshly.
“Oh, all right. I’ll go back to Las Vegas. Will you be there anytime soon?”
Slocum considered what he could do and finally said, “A few hours after you. If I can find Jesse, I’ll settle scores with him.”
“That won’t stop the rebellion.”
“I know, but a snake without a head isn’t quite as dangerous. Frank James is a clever outlaw but he’s not as devious as Jesse—he doesn’t have the skill getting men to follow him on crazy missions like this.”
“You don’t get yourself killed, John.” She kissed him quickly, then mounted and headed back over the pass through the hills on her way to Las Vegas.
Slocum watched her go, worrying that she might run into some of the gang. Then he decided whatever was going on right now would command all of Jesse’s attention. If Jesse was involved, the rest of his gang was, too. He poked about in the hole hunting for more dropped coins but found nothing. Replacing the stones over the hole gave him time to think. When he’d finished, he knew what he had to do and where to go.
He rode south to Encantado, entering the town like his head was on a spring. He tried to look everywhere at the same time, worrying about snipers shooting him out of the saddle. The cantina Jesse had used as a headquarters looked empty. For all that, the entire town was eerily quiet. He dismounted and poked his head inside. Cigar smoke and stale beer made his mouth water. He needed a drink and he needed a smoke, but he called out to the barkeep seated at the back of the long, narrow room.
“Where’s Jesse and the rest?”
“Dunno. Gone. They drunk up all my best whiskey, then they rode out a couple hours ago.”
“Where’d they go?” Slocum saw no amount of questioning was going to pry the answer from the bartender. It might well be that he didn’t know since Jesse had no reason to share such information with a man who did nothing more than pour liquor and draw warm beer.
He went outside and caught sight of a couple people sneaking a look at him from behind curtains. Slocum swung into the saddle and rode south another mile before he found the road curving up from Santa Fe. Here he looked in the direction of that town and then twisted around and tried to make out the tracks in the road. The rain had done too good a job of wiping away any old tracks and the new were indistinct.
Having to choose between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, he decided upon Las Vegas, wondering if Audrey being there had anything to do with his decision. He hoped not. She was still a burr under his saddle and would be until he figured out if she was intent on turning him in to Sheriff Narvaiz for any reward on his head.
He rode slowly, letting his horse pick its way past mud puddles and deeper potholes in the road. After a couple miles he urged his horse to greater speed because he saw more evidence that a large number of riders had passed this way recently. Jesse was making his bid. Slocum knew it.
When he came within a half mile of the outskirts of Las Vegas, he heard gunfire. He galloped forward and saw buildings on fire. Then came a curtain of gunshots that took him back to the war and all-out battles.
Jesse James had launched his war to create a breakaway country.
15
Slocum rode into the tumult, aware that he was a sitting duck in the middle of the street. More than one bullet tore past him, but none came as close as the buckshot pellet that Zeke had fired his way. Smoke from burning buildings toward the plaza made his nose wrinkle and eyes water. He pulled up his bandanna, then worried this might make him more of a target from the townspeople as they rushed out. He didn’t want to look like an outlaw, even if Jesse James thought he was riding with his gang.
More shots echoed from ahead as Slocum caught sight of Charlie Dennison riding at a full gallop, firing left and right until his six-shooter came up empty. Like Quantrill’s Raiders had done years before during the
war, he shoved the empty pistol into his belt, drew a second six-gun, emptied it, and repeated with yet a third pistol. In only a few seconds, Dennison had unleashed eighteen shots. Then he turned down a crossing street and disappeared from sight. Slocum followed the reports from a fourth six-shooter and then any more shooting from the outlaw was drowned out from three others charging toward him.
“Slocum!”
He lifted his six-shooter but held his fire. He could shoot Jesse James from the saddle, but the men with him would cut him down before he could get off a second shot. The wild expressions and way they sweat told of their excitement—their fanaticism. They were in a killing frenzy and wouldn’t slow down until they ran out of ammunition.
“You started the revolt,” Slocum called. “Why did you do it now?”
“Time was right. We hold Encantado, so we had to keep moving on. Glad you could make it. Where have you been?”
“Somebody killed Zeke,” Slocum said, thinking this might explain his absence since he didn’t want to tell Jesse he had been looking to steal his gold.
“Damnation, I wondered if that boy had run off. He didn’t seem the type I need for work like this.”
Work. That word burned through Slocum’s brain. That was all Jesse James thought of shooting up Las Vegas. The deaths, the destruction, none of that mattered because it was only a way toward prying loose the territory. If he wasn’t stopped, he would cause even more misery.
“What’re your plans?” Slocum asked.
“We’re driving back the peons with rifles and burning their houses. If they give up, they’re safe from us.”
Putting this to the lie, one outlaw with Jesse turned and fired several times into the chest of a man coming from an adobe house with his hands above his head. Jesse paid no heed.
“You have enough men to occupy the town?”
“More every hour, but we got problems right now.”
“Jesse,” Frank James called. “They got themselves a cannon.”
The words were hardly out of the man’s mouth when the familiar roar of cannonade rumbled down the street and almost knocked Slocum from the saddle. He clung to the saddle horn as his horse staggered. He was partially deafened but heard the cries of fear and shrieks from small children and women as they fled.
“We got—”
Frank James’s words were drowned out by a second shot. This time Slocum had turned his back to the blast, and it only sent his horse scuttling along a few paces.
“We gotta take them out or we’re gonna get pushed back,” Frank concluded.
“Come on, Slocum. I remember you were good at frontal assault.” Jesse wheeled about, waited to see if Slocum was joining him, then tore back down the street toward the plaza. Riding full tilt into the mouth of a cannon was crazy, but so was Jesse James. Slocum followed, aware that Jesse’s flanking gunmen were right behind him, with a half-dozen pistols crammed into their belts and bandoliers. Their firepower exceeded his own. Even if he managed to shoot one out of the saddle, the other would take him. As they rode, Slocum waited for a stray shot to kill one or the other of the outlaws behind him. That would make his own response easy—just one to shoot.
Lady Luck betrayed him. Through the smoke and death they rode unscathed.
“There they are,” Jesse said, pointing with one of his pistols at a small knot of men struggling to load and turn the cannon against the outlaws. “You think we’re up for it? Remember how we hit them bluecoats along the Centralia road? We swarmed ’em before they knew we were there.”
“This gun crew knows where we are,” Slocum said. He put his heels to his horse to duck down a side street as he saw the man with the lanyard put a hand over the ear closest to the cannon and yank hard with the other.
The blast knocked Slocum’s mare to its knees. He urged the horse to get back up and looked behind him, hoping the shot had removed some of his woe. The angle had been wrong and the shot had gone high, above the gang’s heads and into a two-story building that once had been a hotel. Now it was nothing more than blown-apart wood frame that fitfully burned here and there where the cannonball had ripped through.
“Come on, Slocum, we got them now!”
Jesse and the others charged, firing as they went. Slocum followed more slowly but still saw how the outlaws gunned down the three-man crew on the cannon.
“We got the cannon now and can use it ourselves. We can control the plaza.”
Slocum took a shot at Charlie Dennison but the man ducked. Slocum saw that the missed shot struck a man trying to lift a long-barreled goose gun. Dennison looked from the man writhing in the street to Slocum and back. Dennison made quick work of the fallen man. Slocum lifted his Colt again to take out Dennison but the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He fired twice more. Both empty. Unlike the gang, he had only the one six-shooter. He cursed the soldier who had stolen his other six-gun. That would have doubled his firepower and allowed him to take Charlie Dennison out of the saddle.
He reloaded, but by the time he was ready to fire again, Dennison was nowhere to be seen.
Jesse and Frank were on the far side of the plaza driving back a small crowd armed with nothing more than ax handles and hammers.
Slocum’s mare reared and turned about, letting him look back down the street at stolidly marching soldiers, four abreast and at least a dozen in rank behind the leading men. They had their rifles lowered and bayonets fixed. He waved to them. Then his heart sank when he saw Sergeant Berglund on a horse trailing them, barking orders and forcing them to press on to the center of town.
“Jesse, we got company. Hell, we got a whole company!” Charlie Dennison had appeared from a side street. He laughed uproariously and Slocum knew these soldiers were ones bought and paid for using the hidden gold. If Berglund had given up trying to steal the gold from the outlaws, he might have decided he could profit by throwing in with them.
Whatever Berglund’s reasons, he kept his men marching at a quick step until they spilled into the plaza. Half went in one direction and rest marched counter until they had the few fighters surviving in the plaza surrounded.
“Go on, General,” Jesse bellowed. “Have at ’em!”
“Fire!” Berglund’s command was instantly obeyed. Forty rifles fired and the half-dozen trapped citizens died. “Advance and use bayonet.”
The soldiers exchanged looks now, as if they hadn’t expected this. Then they began closing the ring and moving to the plaza center. One or two made stabbing motions but most of the soldiers passed by the bodies. Either they spared the lives of the wounded—or there weren’t any wounded to spare.
“We got ourselves a town, a big one now,” Jesse chortled. “See, Slocum, see what a little gold’ll do?”
Slocum fell back rather than let Berglund see him. For all he knew, the sergeant thought he was dead and buried out on the high desert. He tried to pick out any of the four soldiers he had saved what seemed an eternity ago but couldn’t find any of them. They were the ones most likely to recognize and betray him.
“This way, Slocum,” Jesse yelled. “We got ourselves a powerful lot of town to subdue.”
“It’s different occupying it rather than just shooting it up,” Slocum called to the outlaw. Jesse only laughed and started firing through windows as he rode. There wasn’t going to be a pane of glass intact within a mile of Las Vegas after the James Gang finished this day.
Slocum fell farther back and was glad because someone had organized a few men with rifles. They lined both sides of the street and caught Jesse and his bodyguards in a blistering cross fire. Two of the gunmen at Jesse’s side collapsed and fell to the ground, but Jesse was leading a blessed life today. In spite of the hail of bullets, he rode past unscathed.
Slocum saw the marshal step out and knew where the organizing had bubbled up from. The lawman began shooting methodically at Jesse. Again the outlaw’s luck held. Not a bullet even made him flinch.
“So you’re the one responsible for this?” Jesse motioned.
A half-dozen men appeared from down the street to back his play. “Burn the buildings to the ground.”
“You son of a bitch. You won’t get by with this!” The marshal fired until his six-shooter came up empty. He began reloading, then turned, and looked over his shoulder. “You’ll pay now, you no-account snake! That’s the Army come from Fort Union to rescue us.”
Slocum didn’t see who shot the marshal. It might have been Jesse or any of his men. More likely it was a soldier in the front rank marching down the street.
“Burn ’em out. You bluecoats know how to do that. You did it enough times during the war,” Jesse called. He laughed, then continued down the street, firing as he went.
“Don’t,” Slocum said, riding to the corporal dispatching a half-dozen men to carry out Jesse’s orders. “He was just shooting off his mouth. He wants you to secure the plaza. There’s another attack planned there.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Jesse’s right-hand man,” Slocum said. When the corporal wasn’t buying that, he added, “Right after Frank, of course. He’s family.” This caused a small seed of doubt to grow. Slocum might have sent the soldiers on their way back to the plaza but some brave soul in the building in front of them thrust a rifle through a broken window pane and started firing. One soldier went to his knees, clutching his leg. The rest swung around like the well-drilled military unit they were and fired until the clapboard wall turned to dust and the roof sagged down far enough to eventually collapse on anyone inside.
“Don’t pay no nevermind to him. Do as Mr. James ordered. Burn ’em out!”
Slocum raised his pistol and shot the corporal. That produced a moment where the world froze around them. The soldiers didn’t know what to do, and those still willing to fight hiding inside the buildings were similarly confused. They had an ally that rode with Jesse James and called him by name, yet was trying to save them.
The muzzle blast of the cannon in the town square broke the spell. Two soldiers swung their Spencer rifles around and opened fire on him. Slocum had no choice but to beat a hasty retreat, trying not to get his hide filled with Union lead. Somehow, this time was no better than when he had fought in the war. He ducked low, kept his mare running, and finally turned a corner into a quiet street where heavy black smoke hung like a choking fog. The only salvation here was the lack of bullets flying toward him.