Slocum and the Gila River Hermit

by Jake Logan

  “When’s the next train going south?”

  The agent glanced toward the pendulum clock on the wall.

  “Any time now, I reckon. They been havin’ trouble out west with Indians. Mostly, they’re within an hour or two, then spend some time takin’ on water and some coal.”

  “Which direction?”

  “The railroad? Head on south. You can’t miss the tracks. From there turn left and you’re at the station.” The station agent began to relax when Slocum didn’t make a grab for the ebony-handled Colt Navy at his hip. “You kin ride that noisy, cindery train, or you can get a ticket on the Butter-field line. We go through Franklin and then on down to San Antonio. We’re not as fast but we’re a durn sight cheaper. I kin sell you—”

  He spoke to empty air. Slocum had heard all he needed. He spun and ran from the office, vaulted into the saddle, and got his tired horse moving toward the south. Finding the tracks proved as easy as the stagecoach agent had said. Within minutes Slocum was on the railroad platform, pressed up against the ticket window.

  “Has it left yet?”

  “ ‘It’? You mean the danged train? Won’t be here for another few minutes. The telegrapher told me it had just passed the way station a mile out of town.”

  “Have a young woman and her old husband bought tickets?”

  “How the hell should I know, mister? I just came on duty a couple minutes back. Even if I knew, why’d I want to tell you?” The station agent glared back as Slocum scowled. He was not going to be intimidated.

  “I need to know. It’s worth a few dollars to me to know.” Slocum slid some of the sweat-soaked greenbacks he had gotten from Edna across to the ticket agent.

  “You bribin’ me? That’s agin’ company policy.” Slocum added a few more bills. They vanished as if they had never existed.

  “Nobody answerin’ to that description’s bought tickets, but like I said, I just got here. Day shift, well, Cinders mighta sold ’em.”

  “Cinders?”

  The agent laughed.

  “Joe Sinclair, but he’s been ’round railroads so long, he’s burned black like a cinder. And his name sounds like cinders if you’re drunk enough.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “Gettin’ drunk somewhere. His favorite waterin’ hole’s Rosita’s Cantina down the road a piece. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got work to do. That’s the train steamin’ in.”

  Slocum heard the shrill steam whistle and the screeching as steel wheels slid across the tracks to bring the heavy engine to a halt. He considered going to the cantina to find the day agent, then decided against it. If Edna and Rolf had tickets, he would spot them getting onto the train. If they were heading south on the stage or had bought a rig and were driving, he could overtake them in a day or two. He pressed himself against the station wall in shadow and watched as the engineer and conductor worked on the engine and cars, oiling wheels and checking to be sure everything was still attached.

  He did not see the two people he was hunting for.

  Slocum walked slowly to the rear of the train, peering into each of the passenger car windows. The few people who had remained on the train were slumped over asleep or engaged in a game of cards. The engineer climbed back into the cab and got his fireman working to stoke the boiler. Steam hissed and the conductor called for all to board. Slocum stood on the station platform, watching intently for Edna or Rolf.

  Just as the train began to move, he saw dark shapes darting from the far end of the station, crossing the yard, and jumping to get onto the train. Slocum cursed and began running to catch up with the train. It built speed, but his fingers closed around the cold iron railing at the rear. He grabbed hold and let the train pull him along, almost stumbling, then kicked hard enough to get onto the rear platform. Panting with the exertion, Slocum wiped the sweat from his forehead, then settled himself and went into the rear car.

  The conductor walked along, collecting tickets. He looked up when he saw Slocum and reached for a gun under his coat. Then he saw Slocum hold out a few greenbacks and he relaxed.

  “How far you goin’, mister?” the conductor asked.

  “El Paso.”

  “That’ll be a dollar.” He took Slocum’s money and handed him a punched ticket before leaving to go into the next car forward. Slocum followed. He stopped just inside the rear of the car and studied the backs of the heads of all the passengers. There were only a half dozen, including the card players.

  He moved to the next car. It was empty save for the conductor—and Rolf and Edna Berenson.

  Slocum fingered his six-shooter, then walked forward. The conductor punched their tickets and went to the first car in the train, where most of the passengers had congregated. Slocum settled into the seat behind Edna.

  “We need to discuss the matter of Rolf being returned to Texas,” Slocum said. Rolf turned to face him, but Edna did not stir. Slocum reached out and shook her shoulder. She toppled to one side. Rolf pushed her back upright.

  Slocum came around and settled into the seat across the aisle. At first he thought Edna was asleep, then he saw the spot of blood on her side. Rolf had stabbed her with something long and deadly.

  “A splinter I found,” Rolf said in a curiously neutral tone. “Only chance I had was when we sat down. She has a gun, you know.”

  Slocum took her purse and opened it. Sure enough, a derringer rode inside. He took it and stuffed it under his gun belt before tossing the purse back into the dead woman’s lap.

  “You sticking to the story that you didn’t kill your brother?” Slocum asked.

  “I told you. I don’t have a brother. Had a sister once, but she died when I was seven. Not sure what happened but I think she fell into the cistern and drowned.”

  Slocum stared hard at Rolf. There was no guile in his answer. If anything, he appeared too drained of energy to lie.

  “Why did you kill her?”

  Rolf looked at Edna, then turned so he faced straight ahead in the clanking, rolling car.

  “She was poisoning me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She wanted me dead, but I couldn’t die just anywhere. It had to be where everyone could see that she wasn’t responsible. Arsenic.”

  Slocum knew that a lunatic could think all manner of things that were not true, but the simple way Rolf stated it lacked the wild-eyed fury of a madman. Slocum took Edna’s purse again and poked through it. He found a small bottle of white powder. He was no chemist, but he had found enough arsenic pools in his day to know the look of arsenic when it was dried out in the sun on the ground. He ran the powder between thumb and forefinger. It had the same feel. This meant nothing, because it might have been just about anything. He tucked the bottle in his coat pocket, then tossed Edna’s purse back. She had carried quite an arsenal, if this was poison.

  “What were you going to do after you stabbed her?”

  Rolf shrugged.

  “Did you intend to ride all the way back to San Antonio with a corpse beside you?”

  “Hadn’t thought on that,” Rolf said.

  “Come on,” Slocum said suddenly. “We’re getting off the train.”

  “Edna? Should she come along?” Rolf started to lift his dead wife.

  “Leave her. There’ll be hell to pay when the conductor discovers her.” But Slocum was not so sure of that. The conductor would hardly notice until the train reached El Paso del Norte. Then nothing might be done, since it would delay the departure. If the conductor found her prior to reaching the next station, he might just toss the body out and let the buzzards feast on her.

  Slocum wasn’t sure Edna deserved any better.

  He grabbed Rolf’s scrawny arm and pulled him along to the rear of the car. Slocum cast one look back at where Edna was slumped over, now leaning against the window. Truth was mighty slippery sometimes, but he had come to believe she was not the grieving wife of a missing lunatic that she had pretended.

  “What do we do now?” asked R
olf.

  Slocum pushed him through the door onto the small metal platform between cars.

  “The sooner we get off, the shorter the walk back to Mesilla.”

  “What’s there?”

  “My horses.” Slocum hooked his arm around Rolf’s waist and jumped, carrying the skeletal man with him. As they jumped Rolf let out an animal howl that rolled across the desert and disturbed the coyotes in the distance. They hit the ground hard and rolled. Slocum let go of the other man and came to his feet. Rolf remained on all fours, baying at the sky. The moon wouldn’t rise for many hours in the direction of the Organ Mountains. That didn’t stop Rolf from scampering about, howling and snuffling like a dog.

  “Come on,” Slocum said, wondering if he ought to let Rolf walk along like a dog or force him to get to his feet. The man solved the problem by popping to his feet and bouncing along as if he had grown springs.

  Slocum walked along the railroad tracks, keeping an eye on Rolf Berenson. The man had reverted to his former lunatic self once they were off the train. Slocum patted the bottle in his pocket, wondering if it contained poison or if Rolf had imagined it. There was no telling until Slocum could get the powder to a chemist. Anyone working in an assay office could tell in a few minutes. The chemicals that detected gold and silver were equally useful in determining other minerals.

  “What’s it like in Texas, old-timer?” Slocum asked, wanting to keep Rolf from barking at the moon now rising to cast its silvery glow on the desert. It was waning, and so was Slocum’s patience.

  “Don’t like it, but it’s home. Lived there all my life. Most of it,” Rolf said. “My folks settled there from Ohio. They died. So did my sister.”

  “You mentioned that.”

  “I don’t even remember her name. Should I give her a name so I can remember her?”

  Slocum clamped his mouth shut as Rolf rambled off on a long diatribe about nothing in particular. If there had been any doubt that the man was a lunatic, the way he was rambling eradicated it once and for all. Slocum decided Rolf had his moments of rationality, but they were few and far between. Being with Edna had brought him back, at least enough to pick up a stake and ram it through her heart.

  Slocum kept Rolf in view as he considered how easily the man had killed his wife.

  “I wouldn’t want to go home. Not unless . . .”

  Rolf’s words trailed off, and Slocum felt a flicker of sense return.

  “Unless what?”

  “There’s somebody I’d like to see again.”

  “Mary?”

  Rolf whirled around and faced Slocum.

  “Don’t speak of her. She was my wife, and I loved her. I never loved Edna.”

  “Sorry,” Slocum said, continuing to plod along. The train had not been going very fast along this stretch of land, but it took almost an hour for them to reach the station. Slocum was pleased to see his horses still tethered where he had left them.

  “That Edna’s horse?” Rolf looked fearfully at the horse.

  “First, we get some shut-eye. I’m tuckered out from walking, I need some food, and there’s no reason to hurry.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Slocum had turned that over and over in his head until he had reached a conclusion. It all depended on the bottle in his pocket.

  “I need to see a man first thing in the morning. Depending on what he says, I’ll see you back to the Gila Wilderness and you can live there if you want.”

  “I like the caves,” Rolf said, his eyes going crazy again. “The Indians left things.”

  Slocum took Rolf Berenson by the arm and led him away. He still had plenty of the money Edna had given him. Renting a room at a decent hotel was not going to deplete the bankroll much, but Slocum let Rolf sleep in the bed while he sat in a chair by the window, hand on his six-gun all night long. Even so, he woke in the morning feeling better. The only thing that would make him feel best of all would be the result only a chemist could give.

  He shook Rolf awake.

  “Come on, old-timer. We’ve got an errand before we head back to the Gila.” Slocum hoped that would be their destination. If the powder proved anything but a poison, he had to turn Rolf over to the law. Slocum didn’t cotton much to that, but a man who murdered a woman, crazy or not, deserved to have his neck stretched for the crime.

  They wandered the streets of Mesilla until Slocum saw a land office. He grabbed Rolf’s arm and steered the man inside, then pushed him down to squat in a corner. The assayist looked at them curiously, but Slocum figured he had seen stranger in his day.

  “What can I do for you gents?”

  “Tell me what this is,” Slocum said, putting the brown bottle on the counter.

  “Hmm, I suspect I know what it might be, but sometimes I’m fooled,” the chemist said, rubbing the powder between brown-stained thumb and forefinger. “Might be something else, though. Wait a minute.” He went to the desk behind the counter and put a pinch of the white powder in a dish holding a thin sheet of copper. Humming to himself, he selected a beaker of a clear liquid and splashed it into the dish, then used tongs to pick up the copper and hold it in a flame from a burner. After a few minutes, the chemist pulled the copper from the flame, held it up, and peered at it closely.

  “So?”

  “So I’d say this here black smear shows it’s arsenic. At least, the Reinsch test says so. Put some hydrochloric acid on copper and any arsenic will show up as a dull black. If it had been shiny, it’d be bismuth, but this is arsenic.”

  “Thanks,” Slocum said. “That makes everything a lot clearer.” He paid the chemist four bits and pulled Rolf to his feet. “Come on, Berenson. We need to get on the trail.”

  “I’m going home?”

  “You’re going back to the Gila,” Slocum said, at last feeling right about his decision.

  17

  The longer he was on the trail with Rolf Berenson, the surer Slocum was that he had made the right decision. Edna had been poisoning her husband, for whatever reason not killing him outright but intending to keep him with one foot in the grave. Mayerling being buzzard bait gave Slocum a warm feeling of accomplishment because of the man’s past and what he had tried to do to Berenson. Slocum glanced to the side of the trail where Rolf rode along, muttering to himself. He drifted in and out of being a complete raving lunatic. Slocum doubted any doctor could help him other than to lock him up. Better that Rolf roam freely in the Gila Wilderness, if he could be convinced not to set traps for those passing through. Not everyone going through that country was after him.

  Five days on the trail had brought them to the edge of the area where Rolf had lived after escaping Edna and his fate down in Texas. Slocum sucked in air and tasted the pine, fir, and spruce. This was country worth living in.

  “I reckon you can go on and find your way from here,” Slocum said. They had stopped in a pass leading down to the Gila River valley. Another day’s ride would take Berenson to the cliff dwellings where he had made his home.

  “What about the tracker?”

  “Tracker?” Slocum fixed his hard stare on Rolf. “What are you talking about?”

  “Past two days. A man’s been on our trail. He wants to kill me.”

  “Deutsch!” Slocum had forgotten about the gunman in the dustup with Mayerling and Edna Berenson being killed. He had focused too much on Rolf and getting the man where he belonged and not enough on watching his own back trail.

  “Must be,” Rolf said. Slocum hoped the man would not vent a howl. Instead, he slumped in the saddle and looked forlorn.

  “What’s he want? The same as Mayerling? The reward on your head?”

  “Deutsch is good,” Rolf said.

  “He’s quite a charmer,” Slocum said, remembering how Deutsch had convinced Arlene Castle to go with him not once but twice. The second time he had used her as bait in a trap that had almost worked.

  “He’ll catch me real quick,” Rolf said. “I can’t hide from him for too long. He’s good
.”

  “I’m better,” Slocum said, looking around. He jumped to the ground and pulled chamisa bushes free. It took him another ten minutes to cut lengths of rope and tie the leafy brush to it, then string it behind both horses. As the horses walked along, the brush erased their hoofprints. A little.

  Slocum silently motioned for Rolf to precede him. He followed, doing what he could to eradicate all trace. Deutsch would know they had remained on the trail—or so Slocum hoped.

  “That way. Cut off the trail and cross the rocky patch.” He followed Rolf, studying the rock to be sure no shiny scratches from the steel horseshoes gave away their ploy. Twice he had to drop to the rock, lick his finger, and smear dirt on it to paint over the scratches. As he worked, Rolf kept riding. He maintained a steady pace that Slocum appreciated. Faster would leave more trace, slower would mean he would have to hustle the crazy man along to keep Deutsch from overtaking them. They reached the woods. Slocum changed direction again, meandering through the trees, hunting for the thickest carpeting of pine needles to further mask their passage. After almost an hour, he cut out of the forest and skirted a meadow with a small brook running through it.

  “We water the horses,” he said. Rolf did not reply but made odd gobbling sounds like a turkey. “Do you hear anything?” Slocum was still irked that Rolf had realized someone tracked them when he hadn’t. The man had lived in this neck of the woods long enough to know all the sounds and which ones were not normal. But Slocum had let down his guard, thinking it was all over with Mayerling and Edna both dead.

  “I hear the moon and the sun. They’re arguing,” Rolf said. “When that happens, there’s always a big black cloud that wins.”

  Slocum shielded his eyes as he peered into the cloudless blue sky. Storms built fast, but he saw no hint that was happening. He shrugged it off. Watering the horses was more important than deciphering the ranting of a madman.

  Slocum found a deep cut and led the horses into the ravine, where they would be hidden should anyone happen by. He had a good feeling that he had masked their tracks well, but after the number of times he had been wrong in the past couple weeks, he wasn’t taking chances.