by Jake Logan
Another pile caught his eye. He had seen enough of the rectangular cases in his day to know that they contained close to fifty carbines. The U.S. Army seal stenciled on the side told him how busy the miners had been. They had stolen an arms shipment. With the army so touchy about Indians making off with stolen firearms, half the soldiers in the territory must be hunting for the weapons. The miners either didn’t realize that or didn’t care.
From their huge numbers, Slocum thought they just didn’t give a good goddamn.
He had started to walk over to another pile that might have been heavy canvas moneybags when he heard a twig crack behind him. Spinning, he drew his six-shooter and pointed it. His heart leaped into his throat. All three of the men had sneaked up on him and he had not heard—he had been too engrossed in figuring out what he could steal.
“Son of a bitch. Who’re you?”
“The gent with a six-shooter pointed at your gut,” Slocum said. He motioned with his Colt Navy where he wanted the trio to move.
They charged with bull-throated roars that drowned out the first two reports from his six-gun. The .37-caliber pistol wasn’t heavy enough to stop the man nearest to him. For that, Slocum thought he would have needed a buffalo gun. Both of his slugs hit the man square in the center of the chest, but never slowed him.
With a deep growl, he threw his arms around Slocum and squeezed. Slocum grunted as his arms were clamped to his sides. He pulled the trigger a third time. This got the miner’s attention. Slocum staggered back when he was suddenly released from the crushing embrace.
“He shot off my balls!” The man grabbed his privates and bent over.
Slocum got his balance, judged distance, and launched a kick that drove the toe of his boot into the point of the man’s chin.
He had removed one of the three. The other two were going for their guns. Slocum emptied his six-shooter into the one closest to getting his hogleg out and into action. One bullet took the man in the temple, ending his life instantly.
Slocum ducked under wild fire from the third man, dived, and rolled. He frantically grabbed for the second man’s fallen pistol. Somehow, he came up with it. His accuracy was far better than the remaining gunman’s. A hunk of hot lead ripped out the miner’s throat.
Already, he heard an outcry from other miners only yards away. Slocum threw down the pistol he had taken and made tracks for the pine tree he had used to survey the stolen property. He stiffened and tried to fold himself entirely behind the tree trunk as the others rushed up. Slocum caught sight of bright sunlight glinting off meat cleavers and knives.
If he tried to stay hidden, he would be quickly found. Slocum forced himself to walk slowly away to not draw attention.
“Did them damned fools kill each other?” demanded a gruff voice.
Slocum got deeper into the woods, then broke out in a dead run. The time had passed for him to try to remain quiet. He thrashed about, then stopped and listened hard, hoping he would hear nothing behind. He took off at top speed again when he heard several of the miners coming after him. They were not trackers and blundered about, but there were enough of them to form a line and come through the woods, so someone would see him.
Gasping for air, Slocum found his horse. The gelding looked up at him, white rims around its brown eyes.
“I got to admit, I’m scared, too,” Slocum said, swinging into the saddle. The horse reared when a bullet splatted into a tree trunk not three feet away. Slocum kept control and wheeled the horse about, staying low and urging as much speed as possible.
The branches cut and lashed at his head, but Slocum knew the penalty for slowing now. More slugs whined through the air. None came close, but the mere act of firing on him would alert others in the gang.
And there were a lot of them, from what Slocum had seen.
“This way! He went this way! A spy! Fifty dollars to the man who gits him!”
Slocum doubted the offer would be taken back if they happened to kill him. If anything, there might be a bonus in the reward for his dead carcass.
He hit the road at a full gallop. His horse was strong, but could only run this fast for a few miles.
Slocum hoped it would be enough.
4
He felt rather than heard the bullet. Slocum jerked away as a new hole appeared in the brim of his floppy felt hat. Bending lower so that his head was almost pressed into the gelding’s neck, he kept the horse running hard. If any more slugs sought him out, they were too far away for him to notice or care.
As the horse began to falter, Slocum reluctantly eased back and slowed to a walk. Even this was more than the horse could handle. Slocum dismounted and led the horse off the road into a draw where he hoped he could hide if the outlaws came after him. He sat on a rock, chewed his lower lip, and wondered what the hell was going on. Poking around in the camp for only a few minutes had shown him the Pennsylvania miners had been busy as beavers robbing anything and everything in the territory. The cowboys he had seen the day before trying to move the herd of cattle were others in the gang who had been out rustling.
“Rustling, stealing equipment and stagecoach shipments, they aren’t missing anything,” Slocum mused. His horse turned a tired brown eye in his direction. He caught the look and read almost human resignation into it. “I know, I know,” he said. “This is none of my business.”
Seeing the marshal and his posse slaughtered had put him in a precarious position. Luther and any number of others in Sharpesville knew his face. When the marshal’s remains were found, he would be the likeliest suspect.
If the body parts were ever found. No one would believe he slaughtered a lawman and six deputies, but as antsy as the marshal had been to string up someone—anyone— Slocum knew anything as simple as the truth was not likely to mean much. The people of Sharpesville wanted a spectacle, and he knew why now.
The wayward Pennsylvania miners, those butchers, had to make life a living hell for anyone living nearby.
Slocum found himself caught between the two factions. The townspeople wanted to put an end to the thieving, and the gang—Slocum was starting to mentally call them the Butchers—wanted him dead, too.
Mounting up and riding like hell was the only way he could see to stay alive. Still, the memory of watching the Butchers hack up the marshal and his posse lingered. During the war, Slocum had seen vicious things, completely cruel and inhuman things. He had ridden with William Quantrill, who had not been a kindly man, driven by utter hatred as he had been, and yet Slocum had not witnessed anything like the scene back in the meadow. Quantrill had ordered his raiders to go into Lawrence, Kansas, and kill every male over the age of eight. Children had been cut down where they stood.
That had been the low point of the war for Slocum, but such savagery paled next to burly men wielding meat cleavers and skinning knives on other humans. Even the Apaches at their most vicious could not compare.
Slocum stood, then froze, one foot in the stirrup. From out on the road came the steady beat of horses’ hooves against the hard-packed ground. Somewhere, Slocum had lost his rifle, but he still carried his trusty Colt Navy. He mounted and headed the horse away from the road, following the gentle curve in the draw to get even farther away. Then he drew his six-shooter and waited.
The sound of the horses faded as the riders kept on riding. If they were after him, they had missed his trail when he left the road to rest. Although he had tried to hide his tracks, a good scout would have followed him here.
Slocum snorted in disgust. Those miners might be brutal killers, but they weren’t cowboys and they weren’t trackers. All their skill came in hard-rock mining—and killing.
Getting his horse out of the rocky draw proved easy enough when he found a segment of the bank that had eroded. He rode straight south now, keeping away from the road. If the Butchers patrolled there, he had no chance of ever getting away without cutting across country. By varying the speed from a trot to a slow walk, Slocum got the most miles possible out of hi
s gelding before it tired too much to go on. He was happy enough with his progress as the sun sank into the west. While he wished it had been a hundred miles, he had probably covered almost fifteen. Unless the Butchers were more determined to hack him apart than he thought, he was safe from them.
It took him the better part of a half hour to make a small fire and bank it so the flames could not be seen from more than a few yards away. He constructed a crude lean-to, more for camouflage than shelter, and only then did he spread out his bedroll. He lay down, found the rocks beneath and tossed them aside, then scooped out the soft dirt at shoulder and hip to make a halfway comfortable bed. Within minutes exhaustion overtook him, and he was sound asleep.
He awoke, hand going to his ebony-handled six-gun as reveille sounded.
Slocum rubbed sleep from his eyes and saw the faint pink tint to the clouds on the eastern horizon. He thought he had been dreaming of his days in the CSA, and then he heard the trumpet sound assembly.
“Damnation,” he said, getting to his feet. He made certain his horse was still properly hobbled and cropping grass before he went exploring. After walking for almost ten minutes, he got to a hill overlooking a lush valley.
Smack in the middle of that valley stood an army fort.
He turned to go to his camp, only to find himself staring down the barrel of a rifle. Slocum followed the metal line of the barrel back to the coppery hand wrapped around the stock. A jet-black eye was open while the other squinted at him.
“Mighty hard to miss me at this range,” Slocum said. The Indian sighting the rifle at him stood only a few yards away. Slocum judged distances and knew he would be a dead man a couple times over if he tried to run or attack. His only course of action was to find out what the man wanted. “You’re Sioux,” Slocum said.
He got no answer. Changing tactics, he spoke what few words of Sioux that he knew. This produced a reaction. The closed eye opened so the Indian could stare at him. Slocum tried a few more words.
“I’m not Oglala,” the warrior said in English. “And your accent is terrible.”
“Your English is mighty good, though,” Slocum said.
“Went to mission school. They sent me back East.”
“To Pennsylvania?” This produced an unexpected jerk. The Sioux pressed his cheek back into the stock. Slocum saw the man’s trigger finger whiten as it tensed.
“Why’d you ask that?”
“Came across a passel of men from Pennsylvania, that’s why. Barely got away with all my parts.”
“How’s that?” The Indian remained vigilant.
“I saw a dozen of them, all dressed in leather aprons, use meat cleavers to kill the Sharpesville marshal and a posse.”
“You’re not from Pennsylvania.” The Indian spoke with a flat tone.
“If you went to school there, you know I’m not. Georgia’s where I hail from.”
The Sioux nodded slowly as he lowered the rifle.
“You on your way to Fort Walker?”
“That’s Fort Walker?” Slocum jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the army post. “Didn’t know the name.” Slocum avoided answering directly. “Think they can do anything about the Butchers?”
“You know their name?”
This surprised Slocum. “That’s what I called them when I saw how they killed the marshal and his men. Just like a slaughterhouse.”
“Most of them were miners back in Pennsylvania. That’s what the major’s found out. He calls ’em the Schuylkill Butchers since that’s where they hail from and that’s what they do most.”
“Fought around there. Leastwise, to the southwest of Schuylkill Haven,” Slocum said. The memory of that bloody fight still burned bright after all the years.
“Gettysburg?”
Slocum shrugged. The Sioux knew a great deal about the area—and he was a good enough scout to come up behind Slocum without alerting him.
“What’s your interest in the fort? You a scout?”
“Ever since the Schuylkill Butchers moved into Montana, the major’s been sending out scouts to locate them. Not easy. They might be butchers and miners, but they’re sneaky. I’m on patrol.” The Sioux almost spat the words out.
“Nobody likes being on patrol duty,” Slocum said. “Are you going to escort me down to the fort? Or just shoot me on the spot? If you do that, be sure to tell the major where the Butchers are.”
“You know?”
Slocum nodded. All he had to do was backtrack on his trail and he would be smack in the middle of the Butchers’ camp. Missing all those rustled beeves and stacks of stolen goods would not be easy. The dangerous part was riding through all the outlaws to get there.
“Let’s get on down then,” the Sioux said.
“You got a name?” Slocum locked eyes with the man.
“Do you?”
“John Slocum.”
“Little Foot.”
Slocum glanced down and saw the source of the name. The man’s right foot was oversized, or so it seemed at first glance, next to his left. Slocum guessed Little Foot’s left had been broken and part of it amputated at some point.
“Frostbite. It gets cold in Pennsylvania,” Little Foot said simply. He gestured with his rifle.
“No need to keep me covered,” Slocum said.
“Nope, no need,” Little Foot said, but the rifle did not waver from its bead squarely on Slocum’s body.
They walked back to where Slocum had left his gelding. Little Foot let him mount, and then indicated the direction to go in, to where a paint had been staked out. The saddle and other equipment showed that Little Foot was an army scout—or had stolen the gear from the army. Riding in the direction of Fort Walker convinced Slocum he had been caught fair and square by the Sioux scout. Behind him, Little Foot signaled to guards walking sentry duty at the corners of the three-foot-high fence. It kept in poultry and provided a spot for soldiers to crouch and fire if attack came. Otherwise, there wasn’t a whole lot of protection for the fort other than the few artillery pieces lined up along the parade ground.
“The major’ll want to hear what you have to say,” Little Foot said.
“Think he’ll keep a gun trained on me, too?”
As if only realizing what he had done for so long, the Sioux scout grinned slightly, lifted the muzzle of the rifle, and motioned for Slocum to go into the commanding officer’s office.
Slocum slid to the ground and went to the door, knocked, heard “Enter!” and pushed on inside.
The room was like a hundred other offices he had seen on army posts. It was small, dominated by a single desk in the center of the room, and had a closed-in stench to it. At least there was no trace of anything dying. Slocum had been in some forts where the officers shot the rats from their desks and then left them to rot.
“Who’re you?”
“Slocum, and you must be Major Zinsser,” Slocum said, reading the name on the desk plate.
“I got work to do. Spit out your business and then get the hell out.”
“Little Foot escorted me to the post,” Slocum said. He paused when he saw this altered the major’s attitude. While not one of respect, at least it was a more polite attention. “I had a run-in with a gang of outlaws he called the Schuylkill Butchers.”
“You lived to tell about it? How’d that happen?”
“They were so busy hacking up the marshal and his posse from Sharpesville that they missed me.” Slocum felt his jaw tense and his belly knot up. Just mentioning the Butchers sent a thrill of danger throughout his body.
“You know where they are now?” Major Zinsser tried to keep his excitement in check, but failed.
“Little Foot said you’ve been trying to catch them for a while.”
“There’s a reward. Hell, I’ll pay you out of my own pocket, if that’s what you want. Where the hell are they?”
Slocum considered such enthusiasm.
“Who’d you lose?”
Zinsser rocked back in his chai
r and stared hard at Slocum. “You think a powerful lot, don’t you?”
“Keeps me alive. Family?”
“Both of my nephews. My sister Anne sent them out here to become men. They enlisted, and I was supposed to look after them. The Schuylkill Butchers killed them and the rest of a patrol filled with veteran soldiers.” Major Zinsser took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I found the bodies. The parts of the bodies. I never told my sister.”
“Here’s a chance to bring them to justice,” Slocum said, “but you’ll have to commit a goodly portion of your men. I wasn’t counting, but there must have been a hundred of the murdering bastards.”
“I’ve got four companies. One is on patrol down south. Where’d you come from?”
“North about twenty miles.”
“A day’s hard ride for two companies.”
“You’d get there all tuckered out. Better to make it in two.”
“You were a cavalry officer? You’ve got the look and judgment.”
“Not in your army.”
Zinsser snorted. “With that Georgia cracker drawl of yours, I didn’t think you were in the Ninth Maine Infantry.”
“You with them when they caught General Johnston?”
Zinsser nodded. “I watched him pass over his sword to General Butler.”
“This is going to be a worse fight than Cold Harbor. The Butchers don’t have any property to defend. The cattle they’ve been rustling can be given up in the blink of an eye if it means they can kill an extra soldier or two.”
“Dammit, Slocum, I know that. I’ve tried to catch them ever since they came into this part of Montana.”
“What are they after?”
Major Zinsser shook his head, then pushed back from his desk and went to a map on the wall.
“There’s a spur of the Montana Northern going into Sharpesville. At least, it’ll go there if the countryside’s pacified. I flushed out the last of the hostile Indians months back, and that’s when the Schuylkill Butchers showed their ugly faces.”
