Slocum and the Gila River Hermit

by Jake Logan

  He could never catch them on foot, but that wasn’t his intent. When the trail reached softer ground, Slocum dropped to his belly and studied the imprints closely.

  “Three of them,” he said. “Two and that murdering son of a bitch, Mayerling.” He returned to his own horse, satisfied that he had removed a third deputy from any future ambush. Slocum mounted and got back on the road, warier now of possible ambushes. He didn’t think Mayerling was clever enough to ride only a mile or two and set up another one. More likely he was running like a scalded dog and wouldn’t stop until his horse died of exhaustion under him.

  Slocum thought he saw fresh tracks in the road from time to time. The length of stride convinced him he was right. Mayerling and his two henchmen were riding hard to get away.

  Or were they? Slocum frowned when he turned off the road and saw Mayerling’s tracks heading into the Gila. They had tried to kill him, now they were trying to outrace him into the Gila Wilderness? He grunted in disgust at Mayerling. The deputy sheriff thought he would get into the mountainous region ahead of Slocum and capture— kill—Rolf Berenson. The ambush had undoubtedly been laid to kill him, but Slocum saw that it had served a different purpose. It had slowed him considerably as he rode along, alert for a new attack.

  Mayerling might be as much as two hours ahead by now. Possibly more, if he didn’t mind running his horse into the ground. And remembering the skirmishes they had fought during the war, Slocum knew Mayerling was not averse to killing a horse under him just to get the hell away from a real battle.

  The only advantage Slocum had over Mayerling now was knowledge of where Berenson had been a few days earlier. If the crazy galoot was on foot, he couldn’t have ranged farther than twenty or thirty miles, and Slocum suspected he had not gone anywhere near that far. When he had led the Castle wagons through the Gila, he had seen Berenson on the canyon rim. If Slocum had to lay a wager on it, he would put his entire poke on Berenson having a camp somewhere along that wagon train’s route and quite probably along the Gila River. Berenson had spotted them and had spied on them because he didn’t want people intruding on his territory.

  Slocum held down a rising tide of anger at Mayerling, not only for trying to kill him but also for the trouble he could cause trying to find Berenson. If the crazy hermit got too spooked and went deeper into the mountains he might be impossible to find. The way he had stolen Slocum’s food and not left a single footprint told of incredible skill—or maybe utter fear that someone would spy on him.

  Slocum camped for the night, fuming at the way Mayerling was going to confuse everything. The deputy wanted Berenson dead so his ranch would be seized for taxes. Slocum ate slowly, ruminating on that. Caleb Castle had run afoul of the law in about the same way, fighting the mayor over his dead brother’s land. A few dollars to pay back taxes should have solved the matter, but when valuable land was at stake, killing might be an expected and respected way of settling the matter.

  Being careful to keep his fire fed with dried wood to hold down the smoke curling upward, Slocum lay back and stared at the stars. Somehow, in spite of Mayerling and Rolf Berenson, his mind wandered to Arlene. With memories of her drifting across his mind, he slipped into a light sleep only to awaken an hour before dawn. What it was that brought him out of his slumber he couldn’t say, but he sat upright with his six-gun in hand and every sense straining.

  It was too dark to see much in the woods, but he took a deep whiff and caught the heady blend of pine and decaying matter from the forest floor. There might have been a scent of animal, too, but he couldn’t be certain. Wind blew fitfully and made it difficult to hear movement. He rolled over and came to his feet, homing in on the sound and “feel” that had awakened him. Advancing slowly, he reached the first trees. This time he caught the scent.

  Human. Unwashed human.

  “Berenson,” he muttered. The wild man had been spying on him with the skill of an Apache but had made the mistake of being upwind. Slocum took a few steps into the forest and then stopped. He knew better than to blunder about after getting caught in the man’s snare. Reluctantly returning to his camp, he dropped back into his bedroll but could not get back to sleep. By the time dawn thrust pink fingers into the gray clouds far to the east, he was as nervy as a broken tooth.

  A quick, cold breakfast—and no coffee—put him in a foul mood. He went into the forest and warily followed a game trail. In the dark, Berenson had left telltale spoor. Slocum slowed in several places when he discovered new snares cunningly laid. Whether for unwary humans or bigger game he could not say, but the size of the rope used and the power of the saplings bent and held precariously as triggers showed that Berenson was not setting the traps for mere rabbits.

  Slocum sidestepped several of the dangerous traps and then stopped dead in his tracks. A new scent caught on the wind and caused his nostrils to flare.

  Blood.

  He had become inured to it on the battlefield, but in this pristine wilderness it came as a shock. Slocum moved with all the skill he could muster as he slipped away from the game trail and pushed through the tangled undergrowth.

  Ahead he spotted a flashing light. He knelt and watched for several minutes, trying to figure out what he was seeing through the veil of vegetation. The flashing stopped. Slocum advanced slowly, six-shooter in hand, to see what lay ahead. He doubted Berenson would be this careless. Slocum’s breath left his lungs in a huge gust when he saw the cause of the light. Dangling upside down was another of Mayerling’s deputies. A snare like the one that had so easily caught up Slocum was around his ankle, and his arms dangled downward.

  The difference came not in the bright deputy’s badge catching the sunlight as he twisted but in the man’s throat. It had been slit. His had bled to death slowly from the look of it. His shirt and face were entirely drenched in now-dried blood. Unable to cry out, he had thrashed about futilely until he died.

  Slocum felt no remorse for him but saw how this added a new dimension to hunting Rolf Berenson. The crazy old coot had a savage streak in him that had not been obvious when he had Slocum at his mercy.

  Circling the body, Slocum looked for sign that Mayerling and the remaining deputy in his small posse had been anywhere nearby. He saw the dead man’s footprints going up to where he stepped into the trap. The pool of blood under the body had seeped down into the ground and was almost invisible now, but the flies were buzzing around. Before long the stench of decaying meat would draw other carrion-eaters. Dangling under a tree probably saved the deputy from having his bones picked clean by buzzards. But coyotes and wolves were not dainty eaters. They would be here before Slocum could cut the man down, dig a grave, and put him in it.

  He didn’t cotton much to fighting off the predators while he dug a grave for a man who had tried to kill him the day before.

  Slocum left him dangling.

  It took him some time to figure what to do next. Returning to his camp had advantages. On horseback he could cover more country, but he had the feeling he was close to Berenson’s hideout. Somehow Mayerling and his men had ridden straight here. As he passed the body, Slocum reached out and ripped the badge free of the man’s chest. He tucked this badge in his pocket to go with the one he had already collected. Before the day was out, he reckoned he would have a complete set to send home to some Texas sheriff to let him know it didn’t pay to hire killers rather than lawmen.

  Not that Slocum had seen there was much difference in most marshals and sheriffs from cold-blooded killers.

  He stayed off the game trail and made his way slowly through the forest. The undergrowth here turned sparser and allowed him to walk faster. Even a man as suspicious as Rolf Berenson would not set traps there. There was just too much land to cover. Besides, the likelihood of anyone not following the game trail was mighty slim if they were hunting a man.

  Noises ahead made Slocum freeze. He recognized them immediately, and a cold knot formed in his belly. The ripping, tearing sounds of flesh being pulled free o
f a carcass were accompanied by snuffling, barking noises. A pack of animals worked on another body. Slocum didn’t have to make too big a guess that it, too, was a human.

  His lip curled when he saw he was right. From the edge of the forest, across a mountain meadow not ten yards away, he saw four coyotes work at their noon meal. Muzzles bloody and gobbets trailing from their jaws, they caught Slocum’s scent immediately and turned toward him, growling.

  He gave them plenty of room after he found a bloodied vest with the deputy’s badge on it. This was added to the other two.

  “But you’re still out there, Mayerling,” he said to himself. “Too damn bad.” He had wanted a closer look at the coyote’s repast to know whom he still faced, but the badge told the story. If it had been the former member of Quantrill’s Raiders, the remaining member of the posse would get the hell out. But with Mayerling still alive, Slocum had work to do.

  Or maybe Rolf Berenson did. The old hermit had somehow managed to kill two men intent on hog-tying him. And had done it without resorting to sniping from ambush as Mayerling had tried with Slocum earlier.

  “It’s a sure thing that Berenson’s ways are better than Mayerling’s,” Slocum said with a humorless chuckle. “He got two of your men already. And you tried to kill me and couldn’t. Berenson snared me without even breaking a sweat.”

  Slocum looked across the meadow, trying to decide where the deputy had been heading. Since Mayerling had not tried to save him—there would have been gunfire if he had—Slocum could only figure that Mayerling had been so contemptuous of Berenson that he had split his men in an attempt to herd the crazy man.

  Slocum crouched down to think, not wanting to present more of a target to Mayerling than necessary while he worked out a plan. It was hard to think with the loud, ugly gnawing and rending going on behind him, but he had endured worse. Somewhere to the west, Mayerling must have spotted Berenson and ordered his men to go to either flank. The one whose bones were being gnawed clean now had died first. The other was only drawing flies.

  From this Slocum determined where Mayerling must have gone. He cut across the meadow, angling back to the far side of the trees lining the area. He felt no sense of triumph when he discovered another game trail and heavy boot prints. From cuts made in the dirt, the man ahead of him wore spurs. Mayerling.

  “You don’t have a clue what you’ve gotten yourself into,” Slocum said softly. At every turn in the trail he expectedto find a helpless—and dead—Mayerling. But this trail had not been set with snares like the other. Slocum made his way a couple yards off the dirt track, though, to be on the safe side. Let Mayerling underestimate his opponent. Slocum had firsthand knowledge of how cunning Berenson was. And two dead men back on the trail showed that cunning could turn into deadly intent.

  What amazed Slocum the most was how Berenson moved like a ghost around his victims. In neither spot did Slocum find so much as a scuff mark showing Berenson had been there.

  Slocum moved under the forest canopy into increasing darkness until he was measuring each step and depending more on hearing than sight. He kept the game trail to his left. If anything attacked from that direction, his right arm would be protected by his body long enough for him to get off at least one shot.

  After what seemed an eternity, Slocum heard the distinctive sound of a rifle cocking. The metallic snick as the cartridge rammed home into the chamber and the click of the lever returning to position warned him that Mayerling was close by. Slocum turned in a full circle to be certain no one was out in the forest behind him, then advanced slowly toward the spot where the sound had emanated.

  A smile came to his lips. He saw the back of Mayerling’s head. The man had shucked off his hat and let it dangle behind him on its chin cord so he could more effectively hide in the bushes. What he laid in wait for Slocum could not tell. He suspected Berenson was coming.

  This caused him a moment’s indecision. He wanted to see Mayerling breathe his last for trying to gun him down as he had, but he also wanted to capture Rolf Berenson and return him to his wife. It became obvious he could not do both.

  Mayerling rose slowly and lifted the rifle to his shoulder, sighting carefully. Slocum wasn’t above shooting a man in the back, especially one who had already tried to do just that to him, but his shot went wide. The slug might have hit a small twig and deflected or Slocum might have been too rushed. Whatever the reason, Slocum failed to make a killing shot on Mayerling.

  The man whirled around, wide-eyed.

  “Slocum!”

  Slocum got off another round and hit Mayerling in the side. He saw part of the man’s coat dance away from his body, followed by a spray of bright red blood. But it was hardly a nick. Mayerling got off his shot and forced Slocum to dive for cover.

  “He’s mine, Slocum. He’s all mine. You can’t get the reward. You had your chance to throw in with me.”

  “With you and your posse? Where are they, Mayerling?”

  “You killed Strauss.”

  “What of the other two? Wonder where they are?”

  “You get them, as well? You murderous snake.”

  “Not me,” Slocum said. “Berenson. He lured them into traps and slit their throats.”

  “Go to hell, Slocum.” Mayerling fired at him, then whirled around and fired again, probably at Berenson.

  This gave Slocum the opening he needed. Like a charging bull, he crashed through the bushes and smashed into Mayerling. The man flailed about, and his rifle went sailing away. Slocum ended up straddled over the fighting mad lawman. He reared back and swung his Colt Navy, catching the side of Mayerling’s head with the barrel. Mayerling jerked and then lay still.

  Slocum stood and went to find Berenson. He could deal with Mayerling later.

  “You are not going to catch me. Ever,” came the mocking cry from deeper in the woods.

  Slocum caught up Mayerling’s rifle to keep it out of Berenson’s hands, then set off after the man.

  “I don’t want to kill you. I only want to get you to a doctor,” Slocum called, hoping to provoke a reply.

  “They wanted to kill me. All of them.”

  “Not me. If you hadn’t killed the other two, I would have. They ambushed me yesterday. And I’m not sure what I will do with the one I buffaloed. You want him?”

  The offer went unanswered. Slocum hesitated to pursue Berenson at a dead run, and his caution paid off. He would have blundered into a dead fall designed to drive wicked spikes into his chest. Skirting it, he hunted for any trace left by the crazy old man. He found nothing.

  Cursing his bad luck, Slocum returned to finish off Mayerling.

  It wasn’t his day. Slocum had failed to capture Berenson and now Mayerling had hightailed it. Somehow, it didn’t surprise him when he returned to his camp to find all his supplies gone once more. Rolf Berenson was going to eat high off the hog—on Slocum’s grub.

  9

  Slocum considered not returning to Silver City at all. He had such a poor record of finding Berenson that it embarrassed him, although it was less galling now than it had been the prior time he had returned. Two men dead at Berenson’s hand showed how difficult and dangerous the chore of capturing him was. It was one thing having a grizzled old man like Berenson capture you. It was something else having your corpse left for the coyotes to pick clean.

  Slocum was working over what he would tell Edna Berenson, when he saw a tight knot of men by the land office. They looked up when he rode past. One pointed and the rest whispered. All eyes followed him as he rode toward the saloon. Slocum was in desperate need of some whiskey after having had his first bottle stolen by Berenson. He dismounted and went into the saloon, only to have half a dozen of the men from the land office trail him inside.

  “A shot of whiskey,” he told the barkeep. “And some information.”

  “I try to please,” the man said. He ran his fingers over the needle-sharp tips of his huge handlebar mustache.

  “What’s with them tagging along beh
ind me when I rode in just now?” Slocum inclined his head in the directionof the saloon door. The men had gathered like a swarm of bees but none had entered.

  “Well, now, I don’t think that’s my place to say,” the barkeep said, turning uneasy. “You was the scout with the Castle wagons, weren’t you? Yeah, I thought so,” he answered his own question, not giving Slocum a chance to even nod. “That’s why they’re starin’ at you.”

  “That’s a relief,” Slocum said. “I thought I’d grown a third head and they were looking for a sideshow attraction.”

  The bartender smiled weakly, stopped twirling his mustache, and hastily began cleaning glasses at the far end of the bar. Slocum knocked back the whiskey and let it settle in his belly. The fierce liquor took away some of the aches and pains he had accumulated hunting for Rolf Berenson, but it did nothing to give him Dutch courage to tell the man’s wife that her husband was still roaming the Gila Wilderness. For that he’d need more than a single shot. Before he could order another, he heard the rapid approach of someone behind him. The curious clicking made him turn and look.

  Caleb Castle had pushed past the crowd and come inside, intent on Slocum. He used a cane to get along but otherwise seemed none the worse for his dunking in the river when his wagon was capsized.

  “We gotta talk, Slocum.”

  “Do we now?” Slocum signalled the barkeep for another drink. The man poured in a flash, then left the bottle. For that Slocum was grateful. Having anything to do with Caleb Castle and his distasteful demeanor required a man to get roaring drunk.

  “Please, Slocum, this is damned important.” Castle grabbed his arm. Slocum looked down, then pulled free. He had been through too much in the past few days to take much from the man, even if he had been stove in and walked with a cane now.