by Jake Logan
Slocum rubbed his grimy neck. He had come close to dangling before and had vowed to avoid that fate. Unless he came up with something brilliant in the next few minutes, that promise to himself was likely going to be broken—along with his neck.
He sat up fast when the office door slammed open and a gust of cool breeze whistled through. The bright sunlight outside turned the figure in the doorway into shadow. The man stepped back, motioned, and then made way for Lucas Deutsch. Slocum couldn’t mistake him for anyone else.
Behind Lucas in the doorway leaned his brother. Timothy stood partly bent over, but from the way he gripped a scattergun, he was miles away from being dead. Right now Slocum didn’t know how he felt about his earlier failure to kill the giant.
“Where’d they put the damn keys?” Lucas yanked out drawers and let them crash to the floor as he hunted.
“Middle drawer. Locked,” Slocum said. He watched as Lucas pried open the drawer and snatched the keys. With an expert spin, he sent the ring whirling and stopped it only when the proper key came up between his fingers.
“You do that like you have some experience,” Slocum said.
“Shut up. We were told to get you out. That doesn’t mean I got to like it one damn bit.” He tossed Slocum’s gun belt and pistol to his brother.
“Your pa wants me out?”
Lucas crammed the key in the door lock, inclined his head toward his brother, then turned the key. The cell door swung open easily. Timothy covered Slocum so he couldn’t jump his brother.
“You want to stay in there?” Lucas asked.
“No matter what you have in store for me, I’m not inclined to stay one second longer,” Slocum said, pushing past Lucas. Timothy had already gone back outside.
Slocum saw him knocking out the rounds in the Colt’s cylinder. Timothy shoved the Colt Navy back into the holster before tossing it to Slocum. It felt natural weighing down on his left hip, though he had to reload before that weapon mattered more than a hill of beans.
“Mount up. We’re getting the hell out of Taos now.”
Slocum’s Appaloosa pawed at the dusty ground, where it had been tied to an iron ring. A quick mount and Slocum was ready to ride. He caught sight of Rory Deutsch’s paint vanishing down a winding street leading toward the plaza. Before he could start after the man, he caught sight of both Lockes. Judge Locke worriedly watched his son stumbling along under his own power. About the time he spotted them, Byron Locke saw him and went for his six-shooter.
Faster than thought, Slocum reached for his six-gun, then remembered Timothy had unloaded it.
“Back to the ranch,” Lucas said.
Slocum bent low as the deputy marshal began firing. For a man in his weakened condition, Locke’s aim was damned good. The judge’s shouts faded, but the warning rang in Slocum’s ears for a mile down the road.
The judge had told his son to stop firing and to get the posse ready to hit the trail of “the goddamned road agents” again.
Slocum saw that Timothy rode ahead of him while Lucas brought up the rear. He slowed his headlong pace a quarter mile west of Taos and then began angling away. Lucas would have none of it.
“You ride with us.”
“Judge Locke’s getting a posse together to come after us. Even if he can’t prove you killed Tom Harris and his sister, you’re guilty of breaking a prisoner out of jail.”
“Never killed the bitch, though I wanted to,” Lucas said sourly. Louder, he called to Slocum, “I was told to keep you with us all the way back to the ranch.”
“Why does your pa want to see me again? After I tried trading him for the deputy, I’d think he would want to see me dead.”
“Don’t know what he wants. I know he’s pissed how you burned down his still and left him a cripple.”
That struck Slocum as curious. Again the gossamer touch of memory caressed his mind. Then it all vanished as distant gunfire sounded.
“Damnation, Slocum, you was right. They got a posse after us quicker ’n I thought possible.” Lucas came even with Slocum. “That doesn’t mean we’re splitting up. That’s not what I was told to do.”
“Your pa must want me mighty bad,” Slocum said.
When Lucas laughed like a hyena, he almost reached over and caught the man by the throat to choke answers out of him. Deutsch rode just far enough away so that wasn’t possible.
“We got a chain of command. Me and Timothy, we do what we’re told. It’s worked out real good up till now. Never shoulda killed that lawman in Denver. That’s what got the Lockes so hot for our hides.”
The distant report from rifles grew closer. Slocum heard the shrill whistle of a bullet ripping past. It was way high and no threat, but the rifleman would get in range soon enough.
“How are we going to get across the Rio Grande?” he asked.
“No way we can make the gorge bridge ’fore they catch up with us.” Lucas Deutsch pointed toward the southwest. “There’s a way down into the gorge I know. We can cross the river there and be on our way.”
“They’ll shoot us like clay pigeons,” Slocum said. All he wanted was the chance to get away from the Deutsch brothers. Clear of them, he could lose the posse, too.
Lucas stuck like glue to him, riding knee to knee. When he changed direction just a mite, Lucas cut him off and herded him back the way he had ordered.
“Ahead, Lucas, there’s the notch ahead!” Timothy waved wildly.
Whether the gunshot in the gut betrayed him or he just lost his balance, Timothy Deutsch toppled from horseback and landed in a heap on the ground. Lucas shot Slocum a dirty look, then galloped to help his brother.
Slocum saw the notch in the rocky terrain Timothy had headed for, but he turned his Appaloosa due south so he could ride parallel to the river. The river curled about ten or fifteen miles farther south. Slocum could decide to cross there or keep riding south toward Santa Fe. Whatever he did freed him of the Deutsch brothers and got him away from the posse. They had to split up when Lucas got his brother back on the horse and ran for their way across the river.
The handful of posse remaining wouldn’t be hard to lose once he reached the wooded area a couple miles off.
Only the posse didn’t split up as he’d expected. If the temporarily deputized lawmen had any sense, two-thirds of them would have gone after the Deutsch brothers and the rest after Slocum. He could lose four men unskilled in tracking.
Only they all kept after him as if he’d had a big red bull’s-eye on his back. He would never make the shelter of the woods and the diversion promised there. Cutting back east allowed the posse to cut him off. That left only one direction, and he hated to take it. Slocum rode west again, hunting for the rocky notch that marked the ford where the Deutsches intended to get over the Rio Grande. He couldn’t fight off a dozen men. If he led the entire posse back onto the Deutsches’ trail, the two outlaws would fight rather than surrender.
Slocum rode hard and felt his Appaloosa begin to falter from exhaustion. He slowed. By now the posse’s horses were tuckered out, too. If they had been fresh, he would have been lassoed within a mile.
He saw Lucas and Timothy disappear through the rocky vee in the canyon rim and knew he had spotted the retreat. Slowing a bit more rested his horse but allowed some of the posse to close the gap between them. His hand brushed over the ebony handle of his six-gun. Even if it had been loaded, shooting wildly wouldn’t have gained him anything. He was a sharpshooter, but riding a galloping horse, shooting over his shoulder—luck came into play far more than skill.
Right now his luck was wearing a trifle thin.
He chanced a look behind and laughed without humor. The two most aggressive in the posse had run their horses into the ground. The animals stumbled and then pulled up. They might be lame or just pushed past the point where they refused to be ridden one step more. Slocum didn’t care. He burs
t through the rocky doorway and saw the steep path down the side of the gorge.
The Deutsches had already reached the bottom almost a hundred feet down and fought the swift current to reach the far side. The gorge wall there lacked a path, but Slocum guessed the outlaws had only a mile or two ride along the river before the gorge petered out entirely and opened up on level land. They didn’t have to risk being shot off the far wall scaling a steep trail.
Slocum intended to overtake them—with a reloaded pistol.
He worked his way down the trail with more switchbacks than he could count. Every time he passed under the notch, he craned his neck up to see if the posse had come through. He gave the Appaloosa its head, letting it pick out the best track and pace so he could fumble in his saddlebags for ammunition.
Trying to reload as the horse swung to and fro on the narrow path proved a chore almost beyond his ability. More than one cartridge slipped from his fingers to tumble onto the rocky trail, but by the time he reached the riverbank, he carried a fully loaded six-shooter.
He started to cross the river when a shot rang out. Then another and another. Close. He looked up and saw three of the posse with rifles aiming downward at him. He pressed close to the gorge wall, cutting off their line of sight.
It was almost twenty yards across the river. With steady hands and sharp eyes, the snipers would cut him down before he got halfway.
He studied the bank going southward. It was rocky and would slow him, even if he got off and walked his horse. Those in the posse not waiting for him to cross would reach the gorge floor eventually and catch him. Any shoot-out put him at a distinct disadvantage. Alone against so many men, he needed a Gatling gun to fend them off.
He had scarcely enough ammo left to reload once the cylinder’s six loaded rounds were fired.
The riverbank north looked easier to ride. He knew he couldn’t get back up the gorge wall for five miles or better, but maybe the posse might hesitate long enough for him to get across the Rio Grande. As a last-ditch effort, throwing himself into the river and letting it buffet him all the way south offered itself up.
He began riding north, pressed against the rocky wall and listening to at least five in the posse make their way down after him. Slocum doubted he would get out of this alive, but surrendering so Judge Locke could hang him never entered his mind.
17
Slocum rode until he came to a slight bend in the river. The sheer gorge walls prevented anyone seeing him from the rim, and the turn gave a small amount of protection from the posse as they finally reached the bottom. He drew his six-shooter and waited. The rush of the river muffled the sound of his nervous horse pawing at the rocky ground, but it also hid the sound of the posse coming for him.
He forced himself to remain calm as the time stretched from seconds into minutes. When none of the posse came hunting for him, he found himself uncharacteristically anxious. Slocum secured the reins on a rocky outcrop and then edged around the bend to get a look at the base of the trail. What he saw made him jump in surprise.
“There’s no need to gun me down. In fact, if you tried, it would draw the entire posse back this way,” Marta Deutsch said. She stood with her horse’s reins in one hand, her other on a flaring hip. “Sounds carry up and down the river. Trapped by the high walls, you know.” She made a sweeping gesture, but Slocum kept his eyes fixed on her.
“Where’d you come from?”
“Why, I was with the posse. After I rode down the trail, I sent them scurrying downstream.”
“Why?”
“I happened to be in town when Judge Locke formed the posse and—”
“Why did you decoy them away from me?”
“You are a clever man, John,” she said. “You didn’t ask how I happened to know you hadn’t gone downstream or how I waited for you to come creeping out of hiding.”
“I wasn’t hiding.”
“No,” she said, smiling broadly. “You were laying an ambush. Not a good one, though it could have been worse.” She looked up at the steep trail. “The men with rifles could never catch you in their sights. Keeping close to the walls took away the advantage of them owning the high ground, but you don’t have much ammunition.”
He said nothing. Marta smiled even more broadly as she reached into a coat pocket and showed him a couple cartridges in her palm. With an easy smooth move, she tossed them to him. Slocum caught the bullets in his left hand. There was no need to examine them. They were the rounds he had dropped trying to reload on his way down the trail. She had not only found and retrieved them but understood that he ran low on ammo.
“Why did you send them on a wild-goose chase?”
“I don’t much like men in a posse,” she said. “Their intelligence is lowered to that of the stupidest man in it.” Tugging on the reins, she moved her horse around where Slocum got a better look at it.
“That’s your pa’s horse,” he said.
Her eyebrows arched. For the first time she found herself at a loss for words.
“It’s a paint, the one he rides,” Slocum said to spur her on.
“Why, yes, it is. My horse threw a shoe, and I took the one closest at hand in the barn. So to speak.” She mounted and pointed farther north up the Rio Grande. “There’s a ford a mile upstream. Once across, a trail winds up to the western rim.”
“You know the area pretty well,” Slocum said.
“I listen to what my brothers say about exploring the entire length of the gorge. This trail, the one you just came down, is the only way to the floor for miles on the eastern side, but there are any number of others on the west face.”
“Why?”
He watched her closely. The smile turned into a leer.
“The moment we had in the barn was good, John. Perhaps I wanted more.” She openly leered now. “No, that’s not true. There’s no ‘perhaps’ to it.”
“You spend all your time saving me.”
“From my brothers and the law?” She shrugged. “It looks as if it is my lot in life. I don’t mind the chore, if there is something big to reward me.” The way she looked at him, eyes meeting his, then dipping lower, just under his gun belt, made her intent clear as if her words hadn’t.
“How long will the posse hunt for me?”
“Not too long. There is a stretch that is several hundred yards long and straight as an arrow. Even the dimmest lawman will realize you couldn’t have ridden that entire length ahead of them and disappeared around the lower bend, but it will take another fifteen or twenty minutes for them to get there and twice that to return.”
She put her heels against the paint’s flanks and urged it past Slocum. He slid his six-gun back into its holster, looked at the two cartridges in his left hand, then slipped them into his coat pocket. With a single jump, he mounted and rode after her. Marta took special delight in pressing down hard into the saddle to give him the best view possible. He knew she did this on purpose because of the way she coyly glanced over her shoulder now and again.
As suddenly as she had appeared, she turned and splashed into the river. Slocum hesitated, watching as she and the horse fought against the powerful current. When she was more than halfway across, he saw that submerged rocks in the river broke the power of the water. This stretch wasn’t as deep either, providing a safer ford. He wasted no time crossing. By the time he reached the western bank, she had already worked her way higher on a trail made almost invisible by wind erosion.
It took the better part of a half hour to reach the western rim. Once there, Slocum chanced a look back down at the raging river. Only yards from the ford the churning river would have swept any rider foolish enough to try crossing. Of the posse he saw no trace.
“Oh, I am sure they have given up,” she said, seeing the direction of his stare. “They might think you were swept to your death. If they care, they might follow the river hunting for
your body or your horse’s carcass. My guess is that they won’t care.”
“Judge Locke won’t believe I’m dead.”
“Not without a body,” she said candidly.
Water dripped from Slocum’s clothing. He couldn’t help noticing that Marta’s coat and blouse clung tenaciously to every contour of her body. A slight wind evaporated the dampness and made it feel colder than it was. It didn’t take a sharpshooter’s eyes to see how her nipples hardened into tiny buttons from the chill. She made certain he saw by stripping off her coat and pulling her shoulders back. The blouse clung even more tightly to her body.
“We really do need to dry our clothes.”
“You’re wet,” Slocum said.
“Your eyesight is far better than I thought,” she said, “if you can tell from such a distance.” She reached down and pressed her hand to her crotch. “You’re right.”
She sawed on the reins, turned the paint’s face, and galloped away. Slocum wasted no time going after her. She angled away from the gorge, riding in the direction of the X Bar X. When he reached a wooded patch, he slowed, then halted to listen hard. He no longer caught the sound of hoofbeats ahead of him. The sound of wood snapping turned him in a new direction. Riding slowly, he reached a clearing where Marta had already cleared off a section of ground, scooped out a fire pit, and built a small tepee of dried branches.
“We need to get dry or we’ll catch our death of cold,” she said. Rummaging through her saddlebags, she took out a tin of lucifers, struck one, and ignited the wood.
Slocum dropped to the ground and began gathering larger pieces of kindling to add to the fire. In no time the blaze worked its magic on his coat, drying it. He still removed it and laid it out on the ground as Marta watched with interest. She grinned, dropped her coat next to his, then went on to strip off her wet blouse. A stick poking upright in the ground near the fire provided a way to dry it. Slocum slid off his vest, then his shirt.
