by Jake Logan
Zoe watched in horror as the gunman dragged Morrisey into the middle of the street and threw him facedown in the mud. The crippled man sputtered and tried to sit up, but a heavy boot to the back of his neck caused him to blow bubbles in the mud puddle. She almost rushed to his aid. He would drown in the mud if he wasn’t allowed to breathe.
Zoe stopped beside her horse when she saw Calhoun and the rest of his gang converging. It was like ants to a picnic and they had found the chocolate cake.
“So you know where the rest of them have gone, eh? Where?”
“I got paid to—” That was all Morrisey got out before being forced back into the mud. Calhoun’s intent was clear. Either Morrisey told him what he wanted to know or he would die in the middle of Jubilee Junction’s main street.
Zoe looked around for a lawman, but saw no one. The foul weather and the promise of more rain had driven everyone indoors. Quietly, she led her horse away, and mounted only when she thought none of Calhoun’s gang would see her. She walked the horse toward the western edge of town, stopping only when she saw the town marshal’s office. A growing apprehension spread within her. She knew that Morrisey would eventually tell Calhoun what he wanted to know—he might have already done so. It would be only a matter of time before the gang got horses, either by in timidation or outright theft, and rode west to the crossroads.
Where John Slocum would be.
Zoe was still irked at him for leaving her the way he did, but she had no wish to see him injured. He had, after all, saved her from being shot from ambush. It wasn’t as if she owed him anything, because she hadn’t asked to be saved, but he had done it at risk to his own life. Big Thom might have seen him and turned the rifle on him.
She owed him. But she wasn’t going to write about him and make him famous. She still had some pride left.
Swinging her leg over the saddle, she dropped to the ground and sloshed to the door of the town marshal’s office. She pounded on it until a sleepy-eyed man with thinning hair and a potbelly that drooped over his gun belt opened the door.
“What’s wrong? The whole town ain’t burnin’, is it?”
“They’re killing him. Poor Mr. Morrisey! They are killing him in the middle of the street.” Zoe pointed so the still sleepy marshal wouldn’t get too confused.
“Who the hell’s Morrisey? Ain’t nobody by that name lives here.”
“He . . . he’s a famous land speculator from St. Louis,” she said, amazed at how easily the lie came to her lips. “He’s going to offer everyone in town a huge amount of money for their property, but Sid Calhoun wants to steal it all. Oh, please, save Mr. Morrisey, Marshal. Hurry, before it’s too late.”
“Land speculator? Buy land? I got land outside of town that’d be worth a young fortune to the right buyer.”
“Then you won’t want to see him injured. He might change his mind if he’s too badly beat up.”
“Consarn it, nobody whales away on visitors from St. Louis, not in Marshal Caleb Wright’s town!” He hitched up his gun belt and waddled away, so bowlegged Zoe got a good view of the ground between his knees.
She waited a few seconds to make sure the marshal wasn’t going to reconsider, then mounted and rode from town as fast as she could go.
After a couple miles, her horse began to flag. Zoe slowed to a walk, knowing time was of the essence. Ten miles, the owner of the millinery shop had said. She had to reach the spot and figure where John Slocum had gone from there.
Then she drew rein and sat as still as a statue. Behind her, Sid Calhoun and his gang would be riding out anytime now. But ahead, she saw a dozen Sioux, all painted up for war and riding out of a ravine onto the road she followed. She was sandwiched between two bands of savages and had nowhere to run.
10
“Don’t they ever stop arguing?” Harry Ibbotson huddled in on himself, wet and angry. “They’re driving me crazy.”
“As long as they argue, they aren’t bothering us,” Molly said. She strained against the ropes binding her hands behind her back, but the strands had gotten wet during the rain and were now drying and tightening on her wrists. She flexed her fingers to get circulation back, but this didn’t work as well as she had hoped.
“You mean they haven’t killed us yet because they want to kill each other more.”
“That, too,” Molly said. “How many keys do they have?”
“Ours,” Harry said. “I think a couple others.”
Molly looked around. The sun had set hours earlier, forcing the three men who had kidnapped her brother to huddle closer to the fire. They left their prisoners some distance away to shiver in the dark. For the moment, Molly was glad to do just that. Being closer to the fire meant being closer to the trio. She finally flopped onto her back, in spite of the way this tortured her hands and shoulders. The stars should have told her the time and where they were, but she knew nothing about such things.
“That’s the Big Dipper,” her brother said. “When we left that abandoned town, we rode northwest.”
“They’re keeping us alive because we know something.”
“They weren’t on the train. I heard one say they were riding back from Jubilee Junction, intending to find people like me who got thrown off the train.”
“That’s not too bright,” Molly said. “Anyone getting thrown off the train would have their keys stolen first.”
“They aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, Molly. Listen to them.”
“They’ve got us all trussed up. So who’re the stupid ones?” She wiggled about and found what she wanted poking into the small of her back. The sharp-edged rock buried in the ground proved exactly the tool needed to cut the ropes on her hands. It took a considerable amount of doing, and her shoulders felt as if they were ready to pop from their sockets, but the sudden pain in her hands told her that blood had rushed back.
Rolling onto her side, she let the circulation return. She didn’t tell Harry right away she was free. He would blurt out something that would bring the kidnappers down on their heads, or try some fool stunt that would land them in even worse trouble. She knew. She had spent her life bailing Harry out of jails and paying off his debts to men who would kill him.
“We got three of the damn letters,” one kidnapper complained. “They’re all different. What do we do?”
“There’s three of us. Split up,” suggested the quiet one sitting on the far side of the fire. Molly watched him the closest since the other two had their backs to their prisoners. This was the one who might have an ounce of brains and was in the best position to see that she had escaped.
“We agreed when we teamed up. All or nothing,” said the third.
“Afraid I might get the gold and not share it?”
“Damn straight! I don’t trust either of you as far as I can throw you!”
“We don’t have to trust each other, just get the gold and divvy it up.”
“There’s still the three different sets of instructions,” pointed out the thoughtful one. “What do we do about that? We can’t pick one, and all of us follow the directions.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a better chance one of the other two we didn’t pick was right.”
“Then we should pick one of them!”
The argument flared, but Molly caught the gist of it, and realized why she and Harry were still alive. The three owlhoots had learned that Jubilee Junction had the first set of directions, and had gone directly there and found the various instructions. Somehow, they thought she or Harry knew which set was right.
“They’re gonna kill us, I know it, I know it,” moaned Harry.
“Hush up. They need us, but we can fool them. You follow my lead and don’t contradict anything I say.”
“Molly, you can be such a bitch.”
“Quiet!”
The three men came over, one lightly prodding Harry in the ribs with his toe.
“You awake? We got to know something.”
“What?”
Molly asked. “And why should we tell you anything? You’ve got us all tied up and kidnapped us.”
“Wouldn’t have taken you if you hadn’t come along after him.”
“Which of the three instructions is right?” demanded the thoughtful one. From the deep frown creasing his forehead, he was not happy with the other two men.
“Why do you think we know?” Molly asked.
“Not you, him.” The man prodded Harry with his toe. “We heard things ’fore we left St. Louis, and he matches the description.”
“What description?” Harry asked.
“You was the only one on the train wearing a brown coat.”
“There was another—” Harry grunted when Molly kicked him.
“What’s he supposed to know?” she said loudly to drown out Harry’s protests at her behavior.
“All three of these directions can’t be right. The colonel didn’t have that kind of preparation, so he set all but a third of the racers on the wrong trail. I think he doesn’t want anyone to win. He wants everyone asking around the countryside and stirrin’ up interest in his damned company. Might be he has a shill waiting to claim the prize when everyone is all lost and turned around and confused.”
Molly bit her lip as she considered this. It made sense. Why would any businessman offer $50,000, no matter what publicity he got, when he could keep the money for himself by having a confederate claim it?
“How do you know there even is any gold?” she asked.
One man came to her and started to rear back and kick her, but the thoughtful one stopped him.
“Easy. We saw the money. The colonel loaded it on a train headed west a couple weeks ago. We tried to steal it, but he had it too well guarded, so we decided to win it fair and square.”
“Only you don’t know which trail to follow,” Molly finished for him.
“Something like that.”
“How’d you learn that Harry knows?”
“Molly!” Harry Ibbotson was outraged at her words.
“We overheard the colonel talkin’ with somebody wearin’ a brown coat. Didn’t see him, but this one’s got to be him.”
“You’ll have to tell them, Harry, so they’ll let us go.”
“No.”
“Harry, remember what I said?” To their kidnappers she said, “Show him the three letters so he can be sure.”
“Just tell us.”
“I . . . I have to see them,” Harry said, finally getting the idea. “Put them into my hands so I can feel them, read them, and choose which one’s right.”
The trio argued some more, then cut the ropes on Harry’s wrists. Molly wanted to laugh in glee, but held back her triumph. The three men circled Harry, eyes on him alone as he held up the sheets of paper and read by starlight. From the way his lips moved, Molly knew he was actually reading the different instructions.
“Which is right? You know. The colonel told you.”
Harry shook his head and fumbled with the papers some more, turning away from his sister. This gave Molly the chance she needed. Her quick fingers lifted the nearest kidnapper’s six-shooter from its holster. The man was so intent on what Harry had to say about the three letters that he never noticed. Molly moved fast now, coming to her feet and reaching out just as the smart one turned. She shoved him hard, lunged, and got his six-gun from its holster before he could regain his balance.
She tossed one pistol to her brother and leveled the other.
“Move a muscle and I’ll kill you,” she said. Her tone of voice told the outlaw she was not joking.
“It’s hard to shoot a man in cold blood,” he said. “You up to it?”
The recoil from the .44 knocked Molly back a pace, but it killed her target. She spun, fired, and winged the still-armed third outlaw. He yelped like a stuck pig and scuttled off into the darkness. She fired three more times, holding back with the final round in case she needed it.
Harry still had the drop on the remaining outlaw.
“What do we do with him?”
“Look, mister, lady, this wasn’t nuthin’ personal,” the man babbled. “We just wanted the money. That’s a powerful lot of gold to tempt men as weak as us.”
“Shoot him.” The words hardly cleared her perfectly formed lips when Harry squeezed the trigger. The round caught the man in the heart. He let out a tiny grunt as he died, and then there was nothing. The only sound was a slight wind and the distant rumble of thunder as another storm threatened.
“What about the one that got away?”
“Let him go,” Molly decided. She pawed through the pockets of the two dead kidnappers and found a pair of keys.
“He might have more,” said Harry.
“I doubt it. The one I drilled was their leader. The others spent all their time blowing smoke, but this one had some deep thoughts.” She searched him a second time and took a few dollars in greenbacks from him. Harry had already finished with the man he had gunned down, and had a palm heaped with silver coins.
“Not much,” he said. “We should go after the other fellow.”
“No,” Molly said. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry. Show me the letters.”
Harry had dropped them. It took a minute to recover the three sets of instructions. He and Molly went to the fire to better see the contents.
“You watch for the one that lit out,” Molly said, “while I study these.”
Harry muttered something about being nothing more than a hired hand, then positioned himself where he could get off a shot if the survivor returned to take some vengeance. After a few minutes, he asked his sister, “What do you think?”
“They might all be real,” she said. “One says we ought to go to a crossroads and look for a tree that’s been hit by lightning, but another sends the rider to an army fort.”
“No!” Harry said forcefully. “I don’t show my face there.”
“You think the army cares about deserters?”
“I’m not taking the chance.”
“No, no need for that,” Molly said thoughtfully. “This one directs the reader to a town named Benedict. From what I remember, the town is placed about right to be reached by either of the other two locations. It might be the colonel wanted his racers scattered about on small side trips but always close to one spot.”
“Benedict?”
“It looks like our best bet,” Molly said. “If we ride hard, we can reach it by morning.”
“You sure about that?”
“Here’s a map they spread out and marked. If this is the ghost town where they caught me, then Benedict isn’t more than a half dozen miles off.”
“We can go to Jubilee Junction and see if there are other letters,” Harry said.
“Benedict,” Molly said firmly. “That’s where we’ll head. Right now.”
11
Slocum looked around the crossroads, keeping his horse from crow-hopping on him as he twisted about. A signpost pointed south toward an army camp and north to a town named Benedict. Straight ahead, the road stretched as straight as an arrow until it vanished in the mist a couple miles away. He looked all around for a stump burned down by lightning, but saw nothing.
He fleetingly considered simply continuing west. The race was a foolish idea and too many had died already. Thoughts of Molly Ibbotson and her brother flashed through his brain, and he felt some qualms about simply leaving them to their fate, but he saw no way to track them across the Missouri plains. Once he had lost their tracks in the muddy ground, their kidnappers could have taken them most anywhere.
Leaving Zoe Murchison behind in Jubilee Junction also wore a bit on him, but not as much. She was in no danger, and would eventually give up on her notion of reporting on the race.
“Which way?” His horse turned about and then headed south. Slocum didn’t stop it because this was as good a direction as any. The army camp might provide some diversion since the post sutler always held a poker game for the soldiers. Slocum had yet to meet a private or corporal who
knew odds. If he stayed out of games with sergeants and officers, he could add to the poke he had gained since leaving St. Louis.
He had ridden less than five minutes when he tugged on the reins and brought the horse to a halt. His sharp eyes fixed on the twisted tree a dozen yards off the road. Standing in his stirrups, he looked around to see if anyone else had discovered the lightning-struck tree and now galloped toward it.
No one.
Riding within a few yards, he dismounted and let the reins drag so the horse wouldn’t run off. The tree had once stood tall and proud, but now lay in burned pieces. The trunk had exploded when the lightning bolt had struck, maybe a year back from what Slocum could tell of termites chewing at the wood, and had sent boiling sap in all directions. The grasses had long since grown back, but the slower-growing bushes were hardly ankle high, making it appear as if someone had scraped clean a large circle.
He went to the tree, and immediately saw a metal cylinder stuck into a crevice. It took some doing to yank it free and unscrew the cap. Inside was a single sheet of paper.
Stone cairn. To the north.
Slocum held the paper up so the sun shone through the page to be sure someone hadn’t altered the message. This appeared to be the original message, although he held out the possibility that the original note had been replaced. A gut feeling told him that probably wasn’t so.
He considered taking the note, but it appealed more to him to send anyone else finding this on a wild-goose chase. Carefully tearing the paper, he left it with the cryptic message:
Stone cairn.
He crumpled up the part he had torn free and stuffed it into his pocket before carefully replacing the remaining part of the note into the cylinder and putting the cylinder back in the crevice. A quick vault into the saddle, and he headed away from the army post and back to the crossroads. From there, he trotted on, wary of someone lying in ambush. He finally realized how nervous he had become, and for what? If it had been Colonel Turner’s intent to send out fifty men to kill one another, he had a ways to go before he succeeded. If he wanted them all jumping at shadows, he had succeeded with John Slocum.
