Slocum and the Three Fugitives

by Jake Logan

  The man dropped to his knees and began praying. Slocum eased back the hammer, holstered his pistol, and rode away, aware that the Lockes had called out their posse a lot sooner than he would have thought.

  This sent him thinking along other lines. Maybe it was the deputy or even his pa that had killed Annabelle. Byron Locke had showed up mighty fast after the fatal shot. What Slocum couldn’t fathom was the reason. The father-son team had him dead to rights and locked away in the town calaboose. Why release him to go after the Deutsches, only to loose a posse on his heels right away?

  Everywhere he looked, men glanced in his direction. He rode faster to get out of town, though his haste was due to misgivings about the Lockes’ motives rather than any of the pueblo’s citizens seeing him with a wanted poster pinned on his chest. Heels kicking harder against the Appaloosa’s flanks, he reached the outskirts of Taos and headed into the higher slopes, west toward the X Bar X.

  Getting in with the Deutsch gang would be easier if Judge Locke had killed Annabelle. This gave him a perfect reason to hunt for allies. Who better to recruit than the man who owned or controlled almost all the saloons in town? Even if Lucas Deutsch had been the one who’d shot Annabelle in the back, that made a plausible story. Rory Deutsch might think of ways of using Slocum before trying to double-cross him. As long as Slocum watched his back, he could poke around as a member of the gang.

  He had convinced himself that was reasonable by the time he reached the Rio Grande Gorge and started over the rickety bridge to reach the western side. It became even likelier when his horse reared and tried to twist around. Slocum spotted four riders galloping hard for the bridge, and he doubted they were in a hurry to get across.

  They were the leading deputies of the posse sent to drag him back to jail.

  “Easy, boy, keep a steady gait.” He guided the Appaloosa onto the bridge and started across. There might be room for two riders abreast to come after him, but not if he reached the far side. He could hold off an army from that position, though there’d be scant reason to try. Better to saw through the ropes supporting the bridge and force them to go miles up- or downstream to come after him.

  His horse tried to rear as the bridge swayed in the strong winds blowing along the 800-foot-deep gorge. He leaned forward, using his weight on the horse’s shoulders to hold it down. The Appaloosa calmed—but the posse recklessly charged onto the bridge.

  From the way it sagged, Slocum doubted the bridge could hold the combined weight of the posse and him. He brought his mount to a trot in spite of the uncertain footing. The instant he reached the solid rock anchors on the west side, he kicked free of his horse and pulled out his Winchester. Cocking it and making a show of bringing it to his shoulder had the desired effect.

  The lead deputy slowed and stopped midway across the bridge. It promised to be a turkey shoot if he kept after Slocum. The men behind him had to come to a stop. This caused the bridge to sway, straining the ropes from both the weight and the amplitude of the swing.

  “Go on back to Taos,” Slocum called. “If you don’t, you’ll be picking fish out of your teeth down below.”

  “You wouldn’t shoot,” the man said foolishly.

  Slocum snugged the stock to his shoulder. If he fired, four men and their horses died. His bullet wouldn’t be responsible. The huge fall wasn’t anything a man—or horse—could survive.

  “All right, wait, don’t shoot. We give up.” The deputy argued with the three crowded close behind. Getting a horse to walk backward was a challenge at the best of times. Doing it on a bridge that might give way at any instant added to the danger.

  Slocum waited until the four were safely on the far side. He considered cutting through the ropes and sending the now empty bridge plunging into the river. He had a better idea.

  Spare rope had been coiled beside the anchors sunk into the stone. He pulled some of it over and piled it at his feet, then pulled out the tin holding his lucifers.

  “I’m setting fire to the ropes. You come across again, and you won’t get halfway.” He struck the match and set fire to the coil of rope. It burned brightly, thick black smoke curling upward to be caught in the gorge updraft. The fire would keep the posse at bay, but without applying a match to the actual ropes holding the bridge, it would remain in place.

  By the time the posse figured out their passage was safe, he could put quite a few miles between him and them.

  He rode away with the posse screaming at him for destroying the bridge. Replacing the rope required someone climbing down into the gorge with a length of rope at least as deep as the canyon, then scaling this side. Once the new rope was in place, other cables could be pulled across until the bridge was repaired.

  Slocum wanted only to hold the lawmen back, not destroy a bridge that had taken weeks to install.

  He cursed when he started up a long slope going deeper into the mountains. The posse had caught on to his trick and one had ridden across to stamp out the fire. As much as Slocum admired such courage, he cursed it, too. He had eight men after him now, others from town joining the posse.

  The mountains twisted about and rose to dizzying heights. Slocum kept to paths that let him make the best time through canyons, though he constantly looked for a path leading to a rim. If he reached the upper wall of any of these canyons, he could lose the posse. Nothing showed that wouldn’t expose him to rifle fire if the posse got close enough.

  Using every trick he knew to throw off pursuit, Slocum found himself riding into a broad mountain pasture that would be his death if the posse spotted him before he reached the far side. Rather than risk the gallop across the broad grassy expanse, he backtracked.

  Immediately he saw he had made a poor decision trying to find another rocky canyon that would conceal his trail. The lead riders pushed their horses to the breaking point. From the lather sloughing off the flanks, the flaring nostrils, and whites around the eyes, these horses approached exhaustion.

  He realized that was part of their strategy. A few men ran him down, slowed him, let the rest of the posse on less spent horses come up and arrest him. Or string him up, depending on how pissed they were at the pursuit. While Byron Locke might be part of the band so aggressively chasing him down, he dared not count on that as his salvation. More than once he had seen a bloodthirsty posse take the law into their own hands.

  Posses turned to lynch mobs mighty easy.

  Too late to make an escape attempt across the meadow, Slocum angled back away from the canyon mouth hunting in the fringe of trees in the foothills for any place to hide. The pines and junipers provided some cover, but the land was stripped clean, telling him cattle grazed in the woods. This might be X Bar X land or belong to someone else. It was all Spanish land grant territory, ensuring someone laid claim to it thanks to some distant Spanish king’s generosity.

  He wove in and out through the trees, keeping his Appaloosa to the patches littered with pine needles. They crushed but did not show hoofprints the way leaves did. A careful tracker had no trouble following him, but he counted on the posse being townspeople bent on collecting a quick reward, not experienced trailsmen.

  His horse struggled up a steep slope. The trees grew closer together here, providing cover but making it more difficult for him to ride faster. He suddenly burst out on the crest of a low ridge.

  He cursed his bad luck. A steep, rocky slope in front of him went to a river. Going either way along the ridge gained him nothing.

  And behind he heard the eager shouts of a posse closing in on its prey.

  10

  Shooting it out meant death. Slocum had no qualms about putting a few holes in the men so doggedly pursuing him, but he saw no way to avoid being killed if he fought. He slid off the saddle and stood at the top of the steep slope. It came close to being a cliff, falling some thirty feet away to the river below. He took a last look through the woods and saw flashes of color
, from the men’s bandannas and glints of sunlight off their weapons.

  He swatted the Appaloosa on the rump and sent the already spooked horse galloping away down the ridge. Slocum wished there had been a ghost of a chance of escaping that way. As it was, he needed the horse as a diversion. If he had stayed astride it, he would have been caught within minutes.

  A deep breath, then he stepped off the rim and fell. He clamped his jaw tightly to keep from calling out or biting his own tongue when he hit. The impact almost knocked him out. The rocks slashed and cut at his back, forcing him to partially sit up. But this proved worse. The rocky slope tore at his jeans. And then he plunged into the river. The sudden cold stole away his breath.

  He sucked in a lungful of water and sputtered, gasped, and floundered about as the swift current carried him from the spot where he had fallen in. He tried to blink and clear his eyes. Only blackness swirled about. His strength faded and the current felt more powerful around him. Slocum knew he was drowning. When he smashed hard into a rock, he gasped and took in even more water.

  For a moment all he could do was wish for death. Then the pain hit him, forcing him to flop about like a fish out of water. His thrashing was weak. It took almost falling off a water-smoothed rock back into the water to make him realize he had been washed out of the river and was safe. He gagged and vomited up water.

  He tried to push away from the rock but a strong hand held him flat. Slocum tried to draw his Colt, but the leather thong on the hammer prevented it. Coordinating his efforts became his only goal, and he failed.

  “Lay still. You need to get more water out of your lungs.”

  He cried out as the hand shoved down hard on his back, crushing into his shoulder blades. More water gushed from his nose and mouth, but this time he felt better. Rather than fighting, he remained draped over the rock, waiting for something more to happen.

  “You can get up. You’re strong enough. I know it.”

  The hands moved over his back, tracing out the bones in his spine, kneading his muscles, moving him off the rock. He scrambled to get his feet beneath him and flopped forward onto the grassy riverbank. Only when he felt strong enough did he roll over and look up at his savior. The sun blinded him, but he squinted and turned away, looking out of the corner of his eye.

  “Damn,” he said.

  “You could be more appreciative,” Marta Deutsch said. She put her balled hands on her flaring hips and glared at him. “You have no sense of payback.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you came on me bathing in the pool, I was buck naked. Here you are, sloshing around in the river completely dressed. Really.”

  Slocum squeezed out as much water as he could from his coat and then shucked it off to work on his vest. The woman watched him like a hawk eyeing a rabbit.

  “Keep going.”

  “You’re enjoying this too much,” Slocum said, getting to his feet. He took off his vest and wrung out the water. Even so, his soaked shirt and pants weighed a ton, but the warm sun worked to dry the clothing.

  “Why not?” Marta said, coming closer. She ran the palm of her hand over his chest. Streams of water ran down to his belly. With a movement quicker than a snake, she leaned over, licked up the water, then turned her face up to his. Her bright blue eyes danced. “You can’t stay here.” She backed away after stating what, to Slocum, was obvious.

  Slocum wondered how much she knew, and if he ought to spin his yarn. She could pass it along to her father and brothers. That might make it sound a bit more verdad.

  “What do you know?”

  “Well, Mr. Slocum,” she said, “I know your name. From the condition of your jeans and your coat, you slid down the cliff back at Suicide Hill. The only reason you would do that is if you were thrown. Now, unless I miss my guess and I don’t think I am in this case, you are too good a horseman for that.”

  “So?”

  “So you went down willingly. How many men in the posse almost cornered you?”

  “Six, eight. I couldn’t tell exactly.”

  “The trees. That’s quite a stand of mixed conifers—those are pine trees.”

  “I know all about pinecones.”

  “I am sure you do. And piñon, along with spruce, fir, and other needled trees.”

  Slocum got a chance to study her more objectively now. She almost burst out of her crisp white blouse, and the jeans she wore looked as if she had been born in them. The pants were tucked into the tops of ornately tooled boots. Depending on where he rode, this style meant one of two things. Cowboys going into town on Saturday night to whoop and holler wanted to show off their fancy boots. This hardly fit Marta. The other explanation was a rich rancher asserting his authority over his hands. Wearing the pants legs so they showed off the expensive boots rather than protecting the tops showed she wasn’t out on the range where they could get scratched and cut up on thornbushes or rocks.

  She stood close to five-foot-five and had her long blond hair tucked up under a broad-brimmed hat. At her slender waist she wore a S&W Model 3, up high and difficult to draw fast. He doubted she needed to slap leather, but wondered how accurate a shot she was.

  “Very,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “I prefer the .38 because it doesn’t have the recoil of heavier models like the Peacemaker. Your Colt has been rechambered for cartridges. I believe that is a .36 caliber?”

  “Did you see the posse or were you guessing they were after me?”

  Marta laughed and said, “You have a delightfully one-track mind, Mr. Slocum. May I call you John? Yes, I saw them, though I did not witness your descent at Suicide Hill. That was all conjecture.”

  “Is there someplace to hide until the posse leaves?”

  “Why, yes, the X Bar X is filled with such places. I’m sorry but I cannot direct you to them.”

  “I’m on foot. Anywhere I go has to be close, or they’ll catch me wandering around.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Come along. Oh, don’t be so shy, John.”

  She took his hand after he pulled away from her. He let her lead him away from the river, up over rocks carried from higher in the mountains to a rocky ravine. During spring runoff it ran full, but this late in the year it was dry.

  “You caught my horse?”

  “And I brought it with me. I deduced you were in the river. I know the entire ranch, at least along the rivers since I bathe often, and knew you had to wash past this point.”

  Slocum went to the horse and patted its neck. He saw that the rifle was still in the sheath but the saddlebags had been removed, then replaced. The leather cords had been retied, but not as he had done before leaving Taos.

  “Thanks,” he said. He dropped his coat and vest across the cantle, then stepped up.

  Marta smiled up at him, pleased as punch with herself.

  “You owe me, John Slocum. Perhaps you owe me twice over since peeking at me back at the pond pleased you so.”

  “I got the feeling you enjoyed being watched then,” he said.

  She grinned.

  “I’m sure you got a feeling, but that wasn’t it.” Her smile melted away as she said, “You’d better go now. The posse will have reached the far end of the ridge and, not finding you, be working its way back in this direction.”

  Slocum took in the lay of the land. The ridge ran southwest. That had to be where the posse hunted for him, coming this way looking for his tracks.

  “If I follow this arroyo east, how long before the banks drop down low enough for me to ride my horse out?”

  “If you start now, you’ll find out soon enough. Good day, John.”

  She clambered up a hillside. He watched as her jeans tightened even more, her slender legs pumping to keep her moving up the slope. It took only a couple minutes for her to stand atop the ridge. She waved to him.

  Something about th
e way she did so reminded him of what she had done back at the pool. She had shrugged, smiled, and silently apologized as she screamed for her brothers to rescue her.

  He barely rode a dozen yards when he heard Marta calling to the posse. He looked back over his shoulder to see if she sent them in his direction. This time she decoyed his pursuers away.

  That was likely the difference between explaining to her brothers why she allowed a stranger to ogle her naked and a posse coming on her clothed. More than this, she could have let him drown in the river if she had meant him any harm. Slocum rode faster and found a break in the sandy bank a hundred yards farther. Scrambling up the crumbling wall, he came out on a broad, grassy stretch with a hiding place promised on the far side.

  He galloped across the expanse and entered another wooded area. The hilly region provided plenty of cover. Unless the posse got lucky and found his hoofprints in the meadow, he had reached safety.

  Or had he?

  He inhaled deeply. His lungs still burned from the recent water in them, but he coughed for a different reason. The pungent odor caught in his throat and choked him.

  Slocum had smelled this before. A slow smile crossed his lips. The Deutsches’ still wasn’t far off.

  His horse shied from the heavy odor, but Slocum kept riding. When he came within a hundred yards of the still, he saw curls of white smoke twisting skyward. The source of Deutsches’ Taos Lightning was close at hand. He dismounted but did not advance to scout the still. Instead, he worked his way back through the woods to watch his back trail for close to a half hour. He didn’t want the posse surprising him at the still. Making moonshine wasn’t illegal, but the deputies would partake of the whiskey, get shit-faced, and be more likely to hang him just for the hell of it.

  He doubted Rory Deutsch would deny them the Taos Lightning or their pleasure stringing him up. If anything, Deutsch would take real pleasure in furnishing the rope and even in tying the noose.

  Nose twitching, Slocum began the long, slow circuit of the hill where the still churned out the potent liquor. He found a trail leading off to the south. He had gotten turned around a mite when the posse chased him, but he thought the dirt path led to the X Bar X ranch house a couple miles away.