Slocum and the Yellowstone Scoundrel

by Jake Logan

  “Let me go!”

  “Quiet down,” Slocum said, turning his pony and heading in the opposite direction. Another drop hit his hat brim with a loud splat!

  “I hate you. You can’t stop me from getting back to William.”

  “No way we’ll ever find them if we’re dead,” Slocum said. More raindrops. He rode faster.

  Hanging on to Marlene took more of his attention than he liked. Still, her rear end up in the air was an attractive sight. The thunderhead billowing up faster and faster in the afternoon heat, mixing with the water rising from the mountains, lent speed to his ride. After a while Marlene stopped fighting and only grunted whenever the horse hit a rough patch. The slope turned steeper as he rode. By the time he reached the top of the hill, the rain was falling in sheets.

  “We need to get to cover. You see a cave?” Slocum asked.

  “How can I? I’m upside down while you ogle my ass!” She sputtered and kicked angrily again.

  “A pretty one it is, too, but we need to get out of the storm. If the lowlands flood, we’ll be safer here than down there.”

  “Let me go.”

  Slocum did as she asked. He wanted to simply drop her but thought better of it, instead easing her down until her feet were planted firmly on the rocky ground. From astride his horse, he looked back where they had been—where they had parted from the wagon trail.

  “There they are,” Slocum said, pointing. “They drove around the hill and went down into a geyser field.”

  “I told you we should have gone after them. We’d have joined them by now if you hadn’t—”

  The roar drowned out the woman’s diatribe. Water rushed past, cutting deep ravines as it went. Slocum had chosen the rockiest section of the hill, and this saved them.

  “Where’d the water come from?” Marlene cried in horror. “That’s a tidal wave! It’s hardly raining here.”

  Slocum wasn’t exactly sure what a tidal wave was, but if such a thing existed, this was it.

  “When it rains in the mountains, it runs off rock. There’re a couple hundred square miles of rock that won’t suck up any rain. An inch of rain on a hundred square miles of mountain gives you a flood.”

  The roaring rivers on either side of their hill drowned out Marlene’s reply. Slocum dismounted and looked around for shelter. He had hoped to get deep enough into the foothills to find a cave. They hadn’t gone that far. The best chance they had to ride out the storm was a half circle of boulders around a sandy pit that might suck up water.

  “Do you have a slicker?”

  “No, you didn’t say anything about bringing one.”

  Slocum found one folded and crammed in his saddlebags. He let the wind snap it away to get the wrinkles out. Then he led the horses into the shelter of the towering boulders, found the lee side, and sat down. He waited for Marlene. When she didn’t move, letting herself be pelted with increasingly frantic raindrops, he pulled the slicker up over his head and held it out with his right arm to give her the choice. Join him or get very wet.

  A sharp crack of distant thunder and a new lightning bolt that blasted across the sky, almost overhead, made her jump. With some reluctance, she settled down in the sand beside him. He lowered the yellow slicker but didn’t let her pull it away from him.

  “We share or you get wet.”

  “Already wet,” she muttered. She sank into herself, arms tight around her body.

  She said something more but the crash of rain hammering down on the rocks around them smothered any words. Slocum found it almost impossible to think of anything but the incessant sound—until Marlene snuggled closer and drew the slicker down in an attempt to keep from getting wetter than she already was. Her warm body pressed into his, and Slocum slowly drifted to sleep, lulled by her nearness and the rain.

  He came awake with a start when the downpour slackened. Marlene still slept, but Slocum lifted the edge of the yellow raincoat and peered into the arena where they had taken refuge. His hunch had proven right. Not only had the rain turned into a dangerous storm, but the sandy area had soaked up the water and kept them from having to scramble for even higher ground. The horses were drenched, as was their gear, but Slocum counted himself lucky that they hadn’t been trapped out on the plains and swept away in the sudden runoff.

  Rearranging the slicker, he slipped out from under, leaving Marlene asleep. Pulling his hat down to protect his eyes from the continuing rainfall, he worked his way out of the protected area. Wind whipped at him, forcing him to grab the Stetson before it blew all the way to Nebraska. The twin rivers formed in the mountains still poured torrents of water on either side of the hilltop, but the speed had decreased.

  The flood had come before the rain began in earnest where they stood, so now the storm-fed streams were shrinking. The storm in the mountains had run its course. Slocum knew the one overhead would die down soon, too.

  “Can you see them? Or is the rain still too hard?” Marlene moved up behind him. Her arms circled his body as she pulled herself close.

  “Lightening,” Slocum said. “Storm’ll pass soon enough, but there’s no way to find them yet.”

  “You were right. We would have drowned if we’d tried to reach them,” she said. “Those rivers are moving too fast for even a horse to ford.”

  They stood there another few minutes as the storm finally broke and late afternoon sunlight slanted down across Yellowstone. They both spotted the darkroom wagon at the same instant.

  “The wagon is askew,” Marlene said. “Do you think it washed down off the hill?”

  “Looks to be the case,” Slocum said. The wagon was tipped on its side as if it had slid a ways downhill before toppling over. Hayden and Jackson had had the sense to seek higher ground, for all the good it had done them. Still, if they had stayed on the hill, they’d be wet but alive.

  “Can we start out now? I’m worried about them.”

  Slocum peered up at the sky. The lightning had stopped lancing across the sky. He didn’t hear any thunder, near or distant, and the rain was slackening. He nodded. In twenty minutes they picked their way down the hill where they had ridden out the storm, and in an hour they were struggling up the far side of the hill where they had seen the wagon.

  “They aren’t here,” Marlene said as they crested the rise. “They must have already gone to right the wagon.”

  Slocum didn’t voice his concern. If the men had been in the wagon when it began sliding down the hillside, they might be trapped inside. With all the noxious chemicals Jackson used as a photographer, they might have been burned or suffocated.

  “Stay here. It looks slippery from all the rain.”

  Marlene said nothing as Slocum handed her the reins, hitched up his gun belt, then turned sideways to brake his slide as much as possible. For all his preparation, he still lost his balance and went sliding downhill on his side. The ground was almost liquid from the rain. He suspected the constant downpour of sulfur and other chemicals from the nearby geysers had altered the earth, too.

  That mattered less to him than slamming into the bottom of the overturned wagon. He fetched up hard, then got to his feet using the wagon as support.

  “Jackson? Hayden? You here?”

  He heard a low moan and made his way toward the wagon. When he reached the back of it, he saw how Jackson had caught his leg beneath a wheel.

  “You break anything?” Slocum asked him.

  “It’s good to see you, too, sir,” Jackson said. He winced and tugged with both hands on his leg. “I cannot tell, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Where’s Hayden?”

  “He went the rest of the way downhill to find a limb or something to use as a splint. I fear that I will need it when I dig out from underneath this fiasco.”

  “You shouldn’t have tried to keep the wagon from sliding down,” Slocum said as he droppe
d beside the photographer and examined the man’s leg. He had seen his share of compound fractures. He had to get the man out from under the wagon before he tried setting this one.

  “How did you know? The rain had started. I felt the wagon shift and jumped out, thinking a shove against the down side would keep it upright.”

  “It toppled on you and all that kept you from getting crushed to death was the soft ground. You’re one lucky son of a bitch.”

  Slocum got his hands around the wheel and tested it. With a bit of back-and-forth he worried a space beneath the wheel, then heaved.

  Jackson saw what he tried and was ready. As Slocum lifted the wagon wheel a bare inch, the photographer threw himself backward and skidded a few feet before stopping. His howl of pain could have been heard in Saint Louis.

  Slocum controlled his own slide down and stopped by the man. The bone thrusting through Jackson’s flesh and pant leg gleamed whitely.

  “Going to set this right now. Bite down on your sleeve. This is going to hurt like hell.”

  Slocum put one boot against Jackson’s inner thigh, gripped the broken leg with both hands, and applied slow, even pressure. He wasn’t sure when the photographer passed out, but it let him finish the job. The broken bone vanished back under the cloth and into the skin. A distinct snap convinced Slocum the leg bone was back where it belonged. Depending on how clean the break was, Jackson might not even walk with a limp after it healed.

  “Mr. Slocum!”

  “I didn’t think he could wait for you to set his leg.”

  Hayden held up two sturdy limbs he had fetched for the splint.

  “I couldn’t get him out from under the wagon. I wanted to use these as a lever.”

  “Splint him up. He’ll come around soon enough and will want to walk.” Slocum flopped back on the muddy grass and stared into the still cloudy sky. It had been a hell of a day so far.

  “Dr. Hayden, is he all right?” Marlene rode up from the downslope. She hadn’t waited but had gone around the hill, where it was nowhere as steep as this side.

  “Mr. Slocum came to the rescue again. Set the leg as good as I could have.”

  “I doubt that,” Marlene said skeptically.

  “Help me bind him up. When he wakes, we’ll see how good the job actually was.”

  They carried Jackson to the foot of the hill, where Marlene tended him. A fire helped dry them out while Slocum and Hayden made their way back up the hillside to the wagon.

  “Anything dangerous get spilled?” Slocum asked.

  “I believe William had everything well secured. What are we going to do about the wagon?”

  Slocum looked downhill, kicked at the loose sod, and then said, “Push it all the way to the bottom. Can’t do any more harm than’s been done already. Where’d the team get off to?”

  “We had unharnessed them before the wagon began its unfortunate descent.”

  Slocum considered that a good thing. If they got the wagon back on its wheels, he didn’t cotton much to pushing it back to the expedition camp. His horse and Marlene’s would balk at being used as draft animals after being ridden.

  “Stay clear,” Slocum said, hunkering down and getting his shoulder into the top of the wagon. Straightening his legs and heaving got the wagon slipping a little.

  When Hayden added his weight, the wagon began sliding of its own accord.

  “Look out below!” Slocum called. “There’s no stopping it till it gets to the bottom.”

  He and Hayden slipped and slid down behind it. The wagon came to a halt at a perfect spot. Slocum needed only to dig at the soft dirt under the wheels on the down side. This added help might allow them to push the wagon up onto its wheels.

  It had seemed like a good plan, but Slocum finally hooked a rope around the top of the wagon and had Marlene lead both their horses away, pulling hard while he and Hayden got under and pushed until the wagon creaked and groaned upright on its wheels.

  “I’ll scout for the team. They wouldn’t have run far in the rain.” And they hadn’t. Slocum found both horses less than a mile to the east, near one of the noxious sulfur pools.

  He led them away, found sweet water, and let the horses drink. By the time he had returned to the wagon, Marlene had cleaned up the inside of spilled chemicals and Jackson lay propped on a blanket.

  “You’ve done me a great service, Mr. Slocum,” the photographer said. “We need to return to camp, but afterward you can do me another great service.”

  Slocum glanced at Marlene, who beamed.

  “What is it?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I want you to become the expedition’s official photographer.”

  Slocum had done about everything possible roaming the West. He had never been a photographer, however.

  “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

  “Miss Wilkes will show you.”

  Slocum heard a voice agreeing to the cockamamie plan, then realized it was his own.

  18

  “You’re catching on fast, John,” Marlene said, standing close behind him, her arms reaching around to adjust the camera.

  “It’s not that hard,” he said. Between Jackson and Marlene, he had learned how to operate the camera within a day’s time.

  The most difficult part was being careful with the photographic plates. The unexposed ones were fragile and susceptible to light leaking through the black paper and metal slides holding them. Once in the camera, the exposure wasn’t too hard to figure out, depending on the amount of sun. Taking care of the exposed plate required him to reverse the process.

  “You won’t have to develop the photographs. William is able to do that since he can sit on a stool while he works in the darkroom.”

  “I don’t see any reason not to spend the rest of the day taking photographs,” Slocum said, aware that Marlene had edged a tad closer to him. The feel of her moving against him was turning him hard in the crotch. There wouldn’t be much photography done, but all Jackson or Hayden needed was a photograph every few miles along the expedition’s route.

  Hayden used them for his survey work, and Jackson considered them artistry. Slocum wasn’t certain he held up that end of the chore, but with Marlene along, this was another thing that hardly mattered to him.

  They had traveled through some gorgeous country and were pushing into the northwesternmost section of Yellowstone. He had enjoyed the photography and the scouting. He had even found himself getting along with the fussy Gustav Leroq.

  The artist worried Slocum more than anything else. The Blackfoot trouble was long behind them, the rains had slowed in frequency and intensity, and the route through the geyser fields had proved easy. The terrain was now almost totally devoid of the bubbling springs or exploding fountains of steam and boiling water. But what should he do about Leroq? The artist had stolen Sean Innick’s property, and the ruby was long lost. From the furious pace Leroq worked, he must have gone through the entire jar of ruby dust by now and would begin using the amethyst soon to enhance his paints.

  He ought to be returned to Otter Creek and Marshal Smith’s jail for trial. But what would that accomplish? Leroq wasn’t a thief in any sense Slocum had run across before. The man thought he needed the precious stones to create art. He didn’t sell them to go on a bender or gamble away the price of the ruby. He didn’t even use the gemstone to dazzle a soiled dove. He used it for his work.

  That didn’t absolve him of the theft. And that worried at Slocum like a hunting dog with a treed squirrel.

  “We’re about done with the work for the day,” Slocum said.

  “Then let’s get the plates back to William so he can examine them. Dr. Hayden is anxious since we are so near the end of our trip.”

  “Near the end,” Slocum said, rolling the idea over in his head. What would he do after the expedition disbanded? Hayden and his crew wo
uld return to Washington with their fancy maps.

  “Yes, William and I are going to Boston. He has an exhibition scheduled for the finest of the photographs. Some of yours must be included, John. Come with us. Come back and you’ll be the talk of the town!”

  Slocum could imagine how he would be the talk of Boston high society. Marlene would fit right in. Put her in a fancy gown, and with her fine manners, she would charm them to death. Slocum doubted they would let him wear his Colt. That didn’t bother him too much. He had spent long nights gambling at the Union Club in San Francisco, decked out in a tuxedo. But there he had carried a derringer and a knife, just in case.

  He closed the case and handed it to Marlene.

  “I’ll get the tripod and camera.”

  She bounced about joyously, her dreams bubbling like one of the hot water ponds they had passed.

  “We’re not fifty miles from Montana,” Slocum said. “I saw it on one of Hayden’s old maps.”

  “We’re going to Missoula Mills, then we’ll start our journey back to the East.”

  “Hayden said that,” Slocum muttered. The expedition was nearing an end, forcing him to come to more decisions than what to do about Leroq.

  “Let’s not worry about that now. We still have a week or more. Much more if William wants to finish shooting all the plates. He was hoarding them, worrying that something even more scenic would come by. We can now afford to shoot with abandon.”

  “He ought to be doing it,” Slocum complained.

  “Nonsense, John. You’re doing a fine job.”

  Slocum knew that without her sharp eye for angle and composition, his photographs would have been worthless to Hayden or Jackson. If anything, Marlene was the real photographer, and he did little more than click the shutter when she told him to.

  They rode back to the camp where the expedition had stayed for several days. He saw that Leroq and his wagon were gone. He called to Fenwicke, “Is Leroq out drawing his pictures again?”

  “He said as much when he pulled out this morning. Wanted first light or something like that. Never could quite understand his exasperation at poor light. If you can see, it’s good light. Yes, that’s it, good light.”