by Jake Logan
“You need to see inside the house?”
Slocum heard the warning in the man’s voice. Poking about inside would upset his wife even more by reminding her of the theft, and that was the last thing in the world he wanted.
“Show me the window of the room. Bedroom?”
Innick nodded and started around the house. The soft earth compressed with every footstep Slocum took. He was glad there hadn’t been any rain for a couple days. There might be a chance he could find a decent boot imprint. He reached out and grabbed Innick’s arm, stopping him before the man could stand directly under the window. The mill owner bristled, then realized why Slocum had touched him.
“You don’t need me pawing around on the ground, ruining the tracks. Sorry.”
The apology surprised Slocum. He realized then how serious the matter was to Innick—or more likely, his wife. Approaching the area directly under the window with the utmost caution, Slocum saw how the grass had been crushed and broken. Deep indentations showed that someone had jumped from the window ledge and had landed hard. He ran his forefinger around the print.
“What can you tell from doing that?”
“The gent wasn’t wearing spurs but had boots. And there’s a large notch in the right heel. He might have stomped down on something sharp and cut it out or the boot might be so old the sole is starting to fall off.”
“Why can’t you tell?”
Slocum looked up and tried to keep the contempt from his voice. This man had offered him five hundred dollars. And a funeral.
“The dirt shows the cut, not the age of the boots.” He pushed back some of the bent grass and showed Innick what he had found.
“Find a man wearing a boot with a notch cut in the right heel and you got your man. Very good, Slocum. You’re a hell of a tracker.”
Slocum already paced alongside the tracks. A blind man could have followed them to where a horse had been tethered. From here it was an easy ride to the road leading to town. While the thief might have hightailed it, Slocum doubted that had happened. Gold jewelry wasn’t worth much unless it could be sold or melted down. Either of those might be available in town but not on the trail. If he had stolen the jewelry, he would have wanted to get rid of it as fast as he could.
“I’ll have Tomasson saddle your horse and bring it around. You think you can fetch it back? The jewelry?”
Slocum nodded.
“Good. I’ll have your money waiting for you.”
“I’ll want a decent tombstone on the grave,” Slocum said.
“This dead fellow, Reese. He was your partner?”
“No,” Slocum said, then turned away. He didn’t want to explain that doing the right thing ought to be second nature. For him it was. For Innick, not so much.
2
Slocum rode slowly into the town of Otter Creek. The first time he had gone down the main street, he felt as if everyone eyed him, knowing he didn’t have two nickels to rub together. Now he was sure rifles were trained on him, the thief ready to kill him from ambush. He tried to shake off the paranoia as an aftereffect of seeing Joe Reese die so suddenly and spectacularly.
He wasn’t sure that was all. Being a bounty hunter didn’t set well with him, but the lure of enough money to ride on and leave behind the sawmill and the petty tyrants like Tomasson appealed to him.
Drawing rein in front of the saloon, he looked inside to see a half-dozen men bellied up to the bar. They paid him no attention. A slow look around the street showed nobody paid him any heed. He stepped down, wrapped the reins around an iron ring mounted on a post, and went into the saloon. Finding out who the likely thief was required him to gather information. Men drinking heavily provided the easiest way of doing it—and didn’t require him to skin his knuckles beating the information out of anyone.
“Beer,” he said.
“You’re off work early,” the bartender said. She was a short, stout woman of indeterminate age with graying hair pulled back in an unattractive bun that bristled with a comb and silver spines, making her look like a human cactus. Slocum figured she didn’t want to be too appealing to her customers since she wasn’t a bad-looking woman.
“Need to find a varmint who was working out at the mill,” he said slowly.
The barkeep’s dark eyes hardened.
“Do tell.” She drew the beer and slid it in front of him.
“He stole damned near ten dollars from my saddlebags. Took a photograph, too. Meant the world to me.” Slocum lied easily, staring into the thin ring of white foam on the amber beer. He saw that a claim of stealing money meant nothing to the woman, but the photograph struck a chord.
“Family?”
Slocum nodded.
“Some folks’ll steal anything that’s not nailed down, and if it is, they’ll steal the nails, too. What’s the thief look like?”
“Somebody just passing through town, I reckon. Not even worth telling the marshal.”
“Wouldn’t do much good to bother Marshal Smith anyway. Son of a buck’s never sober.” The way she said that caused Slocum to perk up.
“Sober enough to ride?”
The woman laughed ruefully and shook her head.
“Falls out of the saddle. Haven’t seen him astride a horse in months. Hemorrhoids, he says. I don’t think there’s a horse in all of Utah that’d let him set across its back and not protest the weight.”
She let out a tiny snort and called, “Your ears burnin’, Marshal? I was just tellin’ this fellow how good a lawman you are.”
Slocum looked up behind the bar into the mirror. Reflected was about the fattest man he had ever laid eyes on. From the scene of the robbery and how the thief had gone through a window, agilely jumping down and then briskly walking away, this wasn’t his man. Slocum had tried to guess the thief’s weight by the depth of the boot impression and couldn’t. If this man had dropped from the window ledge, the imprint would have gone halfway to the center of the earth. Marshal Smith waddled to a table and dropped into a chair, puffing from the exertion.
“Shut up, Maggie, and fetch me a beer. My feet are burning and my throat’s all parched.”
“I’ll take it to him,” Slocum said, intercepting the beer mug. “Got to talk to him anyway.” Slocum and the barkeep’s eyes met. She relented. It was obvious Maggie didn’t care one whit for the marshal.
Slocum set the mug down on the table and saw how the marshal had hiked his feet onto a chair. He cast a quick look at the heels. They were worn but otherwise intact. He doubted Smith had a second pair with a notch cut out of one heel he used only for thieving purposes. From the look of his clothing, the marshal wore all he owned, probably not even having Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.
“You the new bouncer here?”
“Just passing through,” Slocum said as he settled down into the chair opposite the lawman.
From behind the bar, Maggie called out, “He was robbed. Up at Innick’s sawmill. Some son of a bitch stole a picture of his family.”
Smith looked at him with bloodshot eyes. He obviously wanted to be somewhere else so he wouldn’t have to listen to news of any crime, but the lure of the beer proved too great. He grunted as he bent forward and snared the mug. He lifted it to his lips and drained it in one noisy gulp, then clicked it back to the table. Beer foam turned his greasy brown mustache momentarily white. Then it soaked in to join the rest of everything the marshal had eaten and drunk that day—or maybe for the prior week.
“No value to a photograph,” the marshal said. “You’re outta luck.”
“Some money was taken, too,” Slocum said, “but the picture was special. You come across any sneak thieves the past day or two? Ones that might have hightailed it from town?”
“Well, now, let me ponder on that subject.” Smith made a production out of licking his lips and wiping his mustache, looking from the mug to Slo
cum and back.
Slocum took the hint and bought the lawman another beer, then settled back down in the chair opposite. Smith knocked back the second beer as fast as he had the first. This time a loud belch accompanied the slurping.
“Now that you mention it, there was one gent acting real squirrelly. Came to town from the direction of that no-account Innick’s mill.”
Slocum got the message that the marshal and Innick weren’t the best of friends, which verified the mill owner’s story as to why he hadn’t bothered notifying the marshal of the jewelry theft. Even a shot of whiskey in way of a bribe wouldn’t budge his fat ass to investigate a crime at the mill.
“What’d he look like?”
“Didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. Looked like a weasel. Eyes always darting around, like somebody was dogging his steps. Saw a gambler like that once. Somebody was after him. Shot him in the back.”
“Which way did this weasel ride from town?”
“North, no west,” he hastily corrected. “He went west. Thought that was strange since he cut across country and didn’t look to be following the road that’d take him to Logan. You haven’t missed him by more ’n an hour. Two. Hung around, like he was waitin’ fer somethin’.”
Slocum considered that the marshal might be sending him on a wild-goose chase, then asked, “Did he try to sell anything in town?”
“Why’d anybody want a damned picture? What was it? One of them blue photographs of a dancing girl? All nekkid or maybe not wearing too much? I can see why you’d want to steal a picture like that. I can understand why Innick would have one. You ever see that harridan of a wife he married? Ugly as sin.”
“Thanks, Marshal,” Slocum said, getting to his feet.
“You get that there picture back, you let me look at it, won’t you?”
Slocum left without so much as a backward glance. He went into the street and slowly studied the stores, then set out for the general store. The wizened man in an apron behind the counter looked up.
“Afternoon, son. What can I get for you?”
“You sell jewelry? Real special gold jewelry?”
“Well, now, can’t say that I do,” the man said, scowling. “Funny you should ask. Not an hour back a man came in trying to sell me some necklaces and bracelets and the like. No market for that. I suggested he try selling them in Salt Lake City. More women folk likely to appreciate such baubles.”
“He didn’t say anything about wanting to melt them down?”
“He didn’t. Nobody in town could do work like that. Maybe the blacksmith but he’s out east of town. His wife’s ma was serious sick, so he drove the missus over in the buggy a couple days back.”
“Thanks,” Slocum said.
“Don’t know what his partner thought.”
“His partner?” Slocum looked harder at the storekeeper.
“Gaudiest peacock of a man I ever did see. Brocade vest, all gold and green. His coat looked to be velvet. Purple, it was. Couldn’t see his trousers too good, but they had a silky look to ’em. He didn’t come into the store with the fellow peddling the jewelry, but I knowed they was together. They talked for a few minutes after I turned him down.”
“He didn’t come in with the one who looked like a weasel?”
“You know him, then. That’s perzactly the way he looked. Like a weasel. Not even a decent marmot or other rodent. A weasel.”
“Rode west when he left? Both of them?”
“Can’t say about the clotheshorse. The man with the jewelry went west, as you said.” The storekeeper cocked his head to one side, closed an eye to better focus on Slocum, then asked, “You a lawman? That varmint—the weasel—had the look of a sneak thief. Who’d he steal the gold from?”
When Slocum didn’t answer, the shopkeeper went on. He sniffed once, then nodded, as if everything was explained.
“I do think he stole the jewelry from Sean Innick’s wife. The man who owns the sawmill. I smell fresh-cut wood on your clothes, so you’re likely one of Innick’s boys. Mrs. Innick always goes on about how much her jewelry cost. She must have saved it for special occasions and nobody in town’s never gonna be special enough to see it.”
“Did his partner ride with him, you think?”
“As I said, don’t know that. The peacock didn’t look like he was a horse-riding man, not in them fancy britches.”
Slocum left, wondering what he ought to do. A second man so opulently dressed would be easier to find, but he had never been seen with the weasel, who had tried to sell the stolen jewelry. For all the clerk knew, the dandy had been asked for directions and had no other connection. But Slocum didn’t believe that. He couldn’t.
He swung into the saddle and rode straight from town, going west. At first he thought his hunt would be futile, then he saw how the sloping land funneled down to a large ravine. Anyone leaving town likely came this way rather than fighting to ride along either rocky bank.
After less than an hour of riding, Slocum spotted fresh horse dung. Luck stayed with him as found tracks in the ravine bottom that couldn’t have been more than an hour old from the sharp impressions around the horseshoe print. Wind and sun would have baked them until they began to crumble within a few hours.
When the rider he pursued left the ravine, heading southward, Slocum had a trail so obvious that a blind man could follow it. As he trotted along, he drew his Colt Navy and made sure it was loaded. Then he pulled an old Henry rifle from the saddle sheath and checked the magazine. The tubular magazine was filled with sixteen rounds of the .44-caliber rimfire ammo. Slocum was ready to take on an army.
From the description of the man he pursued, he doubted anything more than the threat of being shot would be necessary to learn what he wanted and maybe even get back the stolen jewelry.
As dusk settled like a cool blanket, Slocum slowed, then dismounted to keep the tracks in view. A rocky patch forced him to use a bit more of his skill, but not too much. Bright scratch marks here and there on the rock left by the steel horseshoes proved more than enough to keep him moving.
By the time he sniffed the air and caught the pinewood smoke and a hint of coffee brewing, he knew he had found his quarry.
The dancing flames showed through a screen of underbrush ahead. Slocum considered how best to approach the man. He didn’t know for certain if he had the right trail, but he thought he did. Riding in, gun drawn, might be advisable, but he didn’t want to spook the man into fighting.
Slocum found a game trail and walked forward slowly, stopping at the edge of the clearing where the man had made his camp.
Slocum called out, “Howdy! I’m traveling through and don’t mean you any harm.”
The man jerked up, his hand reaching for something shoved into his belt. Slocum made a mental note of that. No holster, but the man was armed. Probably his weapon was a smaller caliber than a .44 to rest easy in the waistband of his pants.
“Mind if I share some of my grub with you? I can swap some fresh beef for that coffee. That smells mighty fine, by the way.”
“Come on over,” the man said, shifting so his hand was hidden under his coat. Slocum had no doubt the man gripped the handle of his pistol so tight his hand might be shaking soon enough.
“Been on the trail since before sunup,” Slocum said. “You see the Indians?”
“Injuns? What Injuns?” The man turned and faced Slocum. Even if Marshal Smith and the shop owner hadn’t branded the man as a weasel, the thought would have taken immediate form and been foremost out of Slocum’s lips.
His face was narrow, eyes deep-set and dark. Huge bushy eyebrows and greasy strands of hair almost hid his forehead. His angular face turned into a snout as the campfire light flickered.
“Here you go,” Slocum said, tossing over his saddlebags.
The man grabbed with both hands. Slocum stepped over and snared the pi
stol thrust into the man’s waistband. As he had guessed, it was a small pistol, hardly worth the name. At close range it was more likely to set a man’s shirt on fire than to kill him, but it was the sort of pistol Slocum expected from such a man.
“You cain’t rob me!” the thief whined. That grated on Slocum’s nerves enough to make him consider shooting the man with his own gun. Instead, he merely cocked and pointed it between the man’s eyes.
“Where’s the jewelry you stole?”
“H-How’d you know?”
“The man you stole from is powerful pissed off. You’re lucky I found you and not one of the others.”
“The others?” The man’s eyes went wide. “What others is that?”
“Why, Innick’s got a dozen men hunting for you. All of ’em work at his sawmill and promised Innick they’d run you through the blades, one piece at a time, unless you returned his wife’s jewelry.” Slocum wanted to scare the thief enough to get what he wanted without having to resort to more drastic measures.
“You ain’t one of them lumberjacks?”
“I prefer other work.”
“Me and you, we can split the—” The man blanched when he saw Slocum’s expression as he tried to dicker. Up until now Slocum had been inclined to let the man go if he just forked over the stolen goods. Seeing he was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, Slocum knew the man deserved to be in jail.
“Where is it? In your saddlebags?”
Slocum didn’t look at the worn leather bags but kept his eyes on the man. The small twist to his body, the quick dart of the eyes, and then a return as if he realized how he betrayed himself, told the story.
“You bury the goods?”
“Just for the night. Don’t want no sneak thief robbin’ me whilst I slept.”
Slocum said, “You can’t cheat an honest man.”
This brought forth a loud snort.
“Hell, them’s the ones with the most money. Till I get done with ’em.”