by Jake Logan
“I can handle it, Sarge.” The young man began choosing his help, and soon rode out with them as Lane, McCoy, and Wakely went inside.
Slocum lingered a moment before going inside and thought about Sue Ellen. She’d probably found someone else to entertain her. Then he went inside, too.
McCoy was having little success interrogating the belligerent Pony Boy. Slocum stood back and watched the tough noncom ask Pony Boy why he was off his reservation without a permit.
Surly and scowling at all of them, Pony Boy said, “I have no reservation.”
“You damn sure do, and you know you’re not supposed to leave without approval and a pass,” McCoy said.
“This is the land of my father. Why should I ask stupid white men where I can walk and camp?”
“The treaty says—”
“What treaty—one a white man wrote?” Pony Boy raved on.
At last, shaking his head, when the Sioux did not cease shouting at him how he was going to kill all of them and clear the whites off his ancestors’ land, McCoy ordered the gag put back on.
“McCoy, lend Wakely and me some troopers. There’s something we need to go and see about south of here,” Slocum said.
After he explained their concern for the woman and children, McCoy agreed and ordered five troopers to go with them to the cabin. Lane offered the men fresh horses, which they accepted. In ten minutes, they were loping south. They had two hours before sundown, and Slocum felt the sun would be down before they reached the cabin.
“Keep your eyes open,” Slocum told them as they hurried southward.
They reached the cabin in the twilight, and the soldiers all assumed defensive positions while Wakely and Slocum rode up to the dark structure.
“What do you think?” the deputy asked in a low voice as they dismounted.
“Don’t like it. Keep your senses. This could be a trap.”
Slocum stopped at the door. Then he eased it open with his cocked Colt in his hand. Nothing but a dark void and the strong copper smell of ripe death. He struck a match, saw the woman’s dirty bare feet swinging off the floor, and stopped in his tracks. The match burned to his finger as he stared at the body hanging by the neck. When the flame burned his finger, he dropped it quickly.
“This ain’t pretty,” he said, and moved to light a candle on the table.
“Oh, damn,” Wakely swore. “What happened here? Oh, no, the children, too.”
The three children were hung in a row off the same center beam beside her. Slocum shook his head. “You know one thing, Indians sure didn’t do this.”
“No, but did she do it or him?” Wakely asked, taking off his hat and scratching his head.
“Oh, this is bad,” a soldier said, standing in the doorway.
“We’re looking for clues for who did it,” Slocum said, noting the kids looked cleaner-faced than before.
“She leave a note anywhere?” the soldier asked.
“Yeah, there’s one on the table.” Wakely picked it up.
“Let me see that,” Slocum said.
He read the note.
I luv my husbn. My kids Kant stand it chere. Berta
“He killed ’em,” Slocum said.
“Why and how do you know.”
“She told Rory and me that she couldn’t read or write.”
“This hasn’t been written by a genius,” Wakely said.
“She wasn’t that either. How did those kids get strung up that high? I think they were knocked out and pulled up there.”
“They sure are all in a row neatlike,” the soldier said, and went to coughing on the stench. He went outside.
Slocum, fighting nausea, pointed to a chair turned over on the floor. “Turn that up and put it under her feet.”
“Huh?” Wakely asked.
“Go ahead.”
“Why, hell,” the deputy said, righting it. “That’s a foot under her tiptoes even. She didn’t hang herself, did she?”
Slocum shook his head, still struck hard by the grave scene.
Kerchief over his nose, Wakely climbed on the chair and examined each child. When he finished, he stepped down and began coughing. At last, he shoved Slocum toward the doorway. “They were clubbed all on the head. I can see the bruises.” He went outside in the growing darkness after Slocum. “Bad deal is all I can say.”
Outside, inhaling the fresh night air, Slocum agreed with him. “I think he came back here and killed them, then tried to cover it up as a suicide.”
Wakely agreed. “They’ve been dead for several days. Still don’t make sense.”
“Desperate times make for desperate people.”
“But to kill your own. Damn, that’s bad.”
“What can we do?” the soldier asked.
“We need to bury them,” Slocum said as Wakely bent over coughing again.
“I guess,” the deputy finally gasped. “They’re way too far gone to take to town.”
“They can go in a single grave,” Slocum said, and the trooper went off to get help.
The bodies were wrapped and finally buried. When the single grave was covered, Slocum said a prayer over them. Then the group rode back in the starlight to the ranch and the wagon train camp. It was past midnight when they rode in. Some women in the circle were still up, and fed all of the riders.
No one mentioned the deaths to them. The soldiers, Wakely, and Slocum sat around glum-faced and bone-tired, eating without appetite. Every bite of food was tasteless to Slocum’s tongue, and he knew the women had purposely waited for them—keeping it warm.
He did not see Sue Ellen among them. With effort, he thanked the two women and refused their offer of more food.
“It must have been a hard trip down there. No one is talking. You all look taken aback. Something bad happen?” a gray-haired woman asked him privately.
“It was—real bad.” He looked around at the grim faces in the firelight, scraping their tin plates and eating mechanically. “A man had murdered his family.”
She gasped, then composed herself. “I’m sorry I asked.”
“Bad deal.”
“They said we will leave at eight in the morning,” she said.
“Yeah. I better get some sleep.”
“Slocum, thank you. I don’t think we’d ever have lived to get this far if you hadn’t gotten Sergeant McCoy and his men.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“I know, but we thank you,” she said, and the other women agreed.
He took his bedroll and found a place outside the wagon circle to unroll it. It was the ring of the triangle that awoke him the next morning. When his bedroll was bound tight again, he went off to find some breakfast. The women were busy cooking. He soon had coffee, hot biscuits, gravy, and oatmeal. He thanked them for the food and went off to the side to eat.
McCoy joined him. “O’Day told me what you found last night down there. Pretty grim, huh?”
“Bad deal. I appreciated all your men did to help us.”
“No problem. Where’s this Black at?”
“Ogallala, I guess.”
McCoy shook his head as if to get the notion gone. “Couldn’t do anything bad enough to a bastard like him that killed his own wee ones.”
“It was a terrible crime,” Slocum said, and blew on his coffee, which was still too hot to drink. “I’m going to ride on to Ogallala today and wire my boss. So I guess this will be where we part, amigo.”
“I can ever help you, let me know,” McCoy said.
“You have. Give the captain my regards, too.”
“I sure will. Keep your head down.”
“I’ll try.” He finished his meal, put his plate and utensils in the hot wash water, and went for Turk.
Lane came to the corral where he was saddling Turk.
“Tell your boss I’d take five thousand for the three sections of deeded land, corrals, and headquarters. I’m taking the cattle up there with me and the machinery, too.”
“That land include
s the creek bottoms that you mow?”
“Yes, that’s why I bought them.”
Slocum nodded. “He should send an answer back.”
“I’d like to move on up there this summer.”
“Aren’t you afraid of them taking revenge on you up there?” Lane dismissed his concern. “No, Pony Boy is just one of them.”
“I hope you know your business.”
“You think I shouldn’t have taken him prisoner—alive?”
“They turn him loose, I sure won’t sleep much if I lived in his backyard.”
The man nodded. “I’ve been living among these people for ten years.”
“Even tame dogs can turn and bite their owners.”
“I know that. I’ll be watchful, Slocum. You know I wouldn’t sell this place except because of Woman and that dumb law.”
Slocum nodded and thanked him before he mounted up and went for his bedroll.
“I’m going with you,” Wakely said, looking still half-awake and hurrying along beside Turk in the predawn darkness.
“I’ll wait for you.”
“Good. Can I eat something?”
“You better. I don’t have much in my saddlebags to feed you.”
“Good. Good. I’ll hurry.” He half-ran for the campfire.
Slocum dismounted and tied Turk to a wagon wheel. He turned at the sound of soft soles coming behind him.
“I waited as long as I could for you to come back,” Sue Ellen whispered.
“It was late when we got back.”
“I see you’re leaving again.” She motioned to Turk.
“I’ve got business in Ogallala.”
“I hope we meet again.”
“Maybe we will. Later,” he said to her.
“Yes, later.” She smiled and, carrying her dress, headed for the activities around the campfire.
Later—he smiled to himself over her promise, recalling her naked lithe body and their brief fling in his bedroll. Looked like Wakely was through eating. Time to get mounted.
12
Ogallala’s lights were a welcome sight. Slocum and Wakely had pushed their mounts hard, and even Turk was snorting wearily in the dust.
“I’ll buy you a drink in the Lucky Chance,” said Wakely. “First, I need to find the town marshal and have him round up that damn Black.”
“Lucky Chance got food?”
Wakely blinked over at him. “No, but the café does.”
“Right now my belly’s eating a hole in my backbone. Let’s eat.”
They stopped at the livery and left their horses with orders to rub them down, water them, and later feed them so they didn’t colic. Then Slocum and Wakely washed up at the pump out front. They took turns handling the pump handle, and each ducked his head under the spout. Smoothing back his wet hair, Slocum felt wider awake, and so did Wakely.
They found Town Marshal Acuff on the boardwalk, and Wakely told him to locate Black and jail him for murder. The man nodded as Wakely explained the grim scene at the cabin.
“Are the bank robbers still in jail?” Wakely asked him.
Acuff laughed. “In them chains, they ain’t going anywhere.”
“Don’t ever trust them. Even in irons they could be dangerous,” Slocum put in, and they parted with Acuff promising to bring in Black.
In the café, they ate roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, fresh green peas, and hot sourdough bread with cow’s butter. The two of them were busy with their heaping plates, and telling the owner, Sonny, all about the problems they’d found up the trail, when the pop of several shots was heard.
Wakely bounded up. Sonny put him back in his chair. “Sit down. Only some Texas cowboy making more holes in the sky. Acuff’ll cool him down. Eat your supper, man. You two have missed enough meals.”
Slocum agreed. He enjoyed the food as he ate. He could not understand why the food the night before had done nothing for him. Must have been the depressing scene in the cabin. This food tasted especially good. He had forked another bite in his mouth as a man burst into the near-empty café.
“Wakely, come quick. They’ve shot Acuff.”
“Who?” the deputy shouted, standing up at the table.
“Some drunk behind Minnie’s Saloon.”
The deputy shared a frown with Slocum. “Black” formed on each of their lips at the same time.
“Get the word out,” said Wakely. “I think the shooter must have been that guy Black. I want him brought in—alive, too. Be careful. He shot Acuff, he’ll kill someone else.”
“I’ll tell everyone.”
“I’ll have more food for you two,” Sonny said after them.
“I’m going over to the Lucky Chance Saloon and borrow a shotgun from Lacy,” Slocum said when they rushed out the door into the night.
“Good idea. Minnie’s is just up the street.”
“Meet you there.”
“Someone’s shot the marshal,” Slocum told the bartender in the Lucky Chance. “I need to borrow your shotgun.”
The man nodded, went to get it, and put it on the bar before him. “It’s loaded and here’s four more shells.”
“Thanks, I’ll be careful.”
“How’s Marshal Acuff?”
“Shot is all I know.”
“Get the killer. We all liked Acuff.”
Slocum signaled that he’d heard him. With the brass shells in his pockets, he rushed out the batwing door with the sawed-off 12-gauge Greener in his right hand. On the run, he moved though the curious onlookers with authority.
A doc was beside the fallen lawman, and Wakely looked serious when Slocum joined him.
“Everyone get back,” Wakely ordered.
“He talk to you?” Slocum asked.
The deputy nodded. “It was Black all right. Acuff said he was certain he’d shot him, too. So he could be wounded.”
“Which way did he go?”
Wakely indicated the west and then lowered his voice. “Acuff’s been shot twice.”
Slocum acknowledged he’d heard him. “I’ll start checking things out that way.”
“I’ll be along in a minute. Doc wants him taken up to his office.”
“Who done this?” someone shouted.
“Hang him,” another in the crowded alley shouted.
“Hold it,” Wakely said. “We’ve got law here. Me and my deputy will arrest the shooter. The rest of you go back inside. Now I said move, as we might shoot you by mistake.”
Slocum nodded in approval. The man had really taken charge—up and until then he had not taken Wakely too seriously as a lawman. But in this case, facing down a large mob, he’d shown his authority and they were listening.
Two men packed the wounded Acuff off, with the doctor giving them instructions to be careful. Without a word, Wakely took the left side and Slocum the right, and they advanced down the alley scattering stray cats into the inky shadows. Behind the stables, Wakely tried a side door, and when it came open he nodded to Slocum.
“Be careful,” Slocum said under his breath, then checked up and down the alley.
Wakely slipped inside. Slocum followed. The only light was coming from the front of the barn. Hay dust tickled his nose along with the wine smell of horse piss. The sound of snoring horses carried to him as he took care to look over the row of horses at the tie racks. There were a dozen places a fugitive could hide, especially a desperate man who might be wounded.
But they found nothing in the livery. They woke the swamper sleeping in the office and told him to be on the lookout. The grizzly-faced man, trembling from the d.t.’s, swallowed his Adam’s apple. “He-he been in here?”
“We didn’t find him, but he might try to steal a horse,” Wakely said.
“I’ll—I’ll sure, ah—watch fur him.”
“Good.”
The two left the livery and continued searching the alley. Out in the inky night, some big tom had his super dick up some virgin feline’s pussy, and she was screaming bloody murder. The attached pai
r was scrambling through the piles of beer bottles, and his yawling added to her higher-pitched cries made Slocum smile.
“He must be having fun,” Wakely said as they searched around some crates.
Slocum chuckled. “Kind of a tough bed, though, to do it in.”
“Worse than crumbs on the sheets anyway,” Wakely said, sounding amused as they stopped at the end of the street.
“I’ll go ahead into this next alley,” Slocum offered, checking the Big Dipper for the time. Near midnight, he decided.
“I’ll look over on the next street,” Wakely said. “Watch yourself. This is my job.”
“And you do a good job at it.”
Wakely stopped. “I consider that a real compliment.”
“I meant it for one.”
He nodded and went on. Slocum switched hands with the shotgun and rubbed his whisker-stubbled upper lip. Then he dried his right palm on the side of his pants, before shifting the shotgun’s smooth wooden stock back to his gun hand. No telling how far Black had gone in the last thirty minutes since the shooting. Slocum drew in a deep breath and entered the dark alley.
Less light shone in the confines between the dark buildings, save for some starlight, and he strained his eyes for any movement or shadow. His footfalls sounded loud over the crickets. His ears strained for any telltale sound that might reveal Black. Under his chest, the beat of his heart thumped hard. Where was the man?
At the end of the alley, Wakely joined him, shaking his head. “Nothing.”
“Nothing in there either.”
“Where’s he gone?”
“I think we need to go looking in daylight.”
“Sleep might not hurt either of us.” Wakely swept off his hat and wiped his forehead on his sleeve.
“He won’t go far if he’s wounded.”
“I hope not.”
“What about finishing that supper?”
“Good idea.”
They went back to the café and Sonny greeted them. “I kept the food warm. Guess you all didn’t get the shooter?”
Both shook their heads and dropped in the chairs. The food somehow had lost its flavor for Slocum. After the meal, he parted with Wakely and took a room at the hotel. Sleep came troubled, and he woke in a cold sweat twice. Something was wrong and he needed to do something about it. Either Rory was in trouble or Wakely or Lane, and he had no idea which one. But he played his hunches—they were usually right.
