Slocum and the Thunderbird

by Jake Logan

  But it had been all right since Holman was going to pay for a successful drive.

  That thought angered him anew. He looked around for Rawhide Rawlins but didn’t see the man. Rawhide had the money to buy his way into an outlaw hideout. He hadn’t seen another saloon, so that meant Rawhide likely was in a whorehouse or at the hotel down the street—likely both a hotel and whorehouse with a bar.

  The jovial barkeep came over and stared straight at him. Slocum worried that the man knew the regulars and would raise an alarm over a stranger. That didn’t happen.

  “What’s yer poison, sir?”

  The politeness startled Slocum. He couldn’t afford even a nickel beer but to say so would draw attention.

  “I understand you have a way of getting liquor in exchange for—” He’d intended to say “work,” thinking he could trade a shift or two as a bouncer for whiskey. The man nearest him interrupted and kept him from being the butt of jokes—or worse.

  Such an armed camp had to be under Mackenzie’s tight control. Anything that drew attention also drew danger.

  “He’s challengin’ you fer that free bottle of hooch, Axel! Hey, boys, we got a challenge!”

  Everyone in the tent fell silent, then the piano player dumped the pretty saloon girl off his lap and began banging out “Camptown Races.” The crowd sang along at the top of their lungs as they crowded around Slocum and pushed him forward to bang against the bar. Glasses and mugs rattled the entire length of the plank.

  “Challenge, challenge!” the men chanted as the piano player finished his song and came over to get a better view.

  “You got the look of a man who can win,” the piano player said.

  “What do I have to do?” Seeing the man’s face flash confusion, Slocum hastily added, “Exactly. I don’t want to violate any of the rules.”

  “Simple enough. You put a slug through Axel’s nickel, you win a bottle of whiskey.”

  The barkeep took a coin out of his vest pocket and held it between thumb and forefinger. Without hesitation, Slocum drew, cocked his Colt, and fired.

  The crowd gasped. Axel grabbed his hand and rubbed the fingers used to hold the nickel.

  “You damn fool. I was jist showin’ the crowd the coin. You was supposed to shoot it after I stuck it to the wall.” The barkeep pointed to a spot behind him where a half-dozen holes in the canvas let in fresh air from outside.

  “You only git one shot,” the piano player said. “Too bad. You got to pay up. A hunnerd dollars.”

  “That’s a mighty lopsided bet,” Slocum said, the six-gun still in his hand.

  “Mr. Mackenzie says otherwise. You better pay up or you’ll be tossed out of Wilson’s Creek right now.”

  A shudder passed through the camp. Men began whispering. The fear this simple punishment caused among hard-bitten men made Slocum wonder what the hell was going on.

  “Hey, Axel, this here’s the nickel. I found it in the dirt.” A burly man at the far end of the bar held up a shiny coin. “Drilled it fair and square. You’re the one what gots to pay up.”

  The coin made its way down the bar, passing from hand to hand until it fell to the plank in front of Slocum.

  “He ain’t no winner. The bet’s to cut the middle out of the nickel. His slug tore off part of the rim. Got to see the hole surrounded by nuthin’ but metal.”

  The piano player picked up the coin and ran his thumb over the rough spot where the bullet had torn the rim and left a small gap.

  “You’re damned lucky he didn’t miss and blow off yer fingers, Axel. I say he won the bet. Don’t you all agree? All of you?” He held up the coin with the hole through it so everyone in the saloon could see. The cheer that went up gave Slocum a touch of hope he might get out of this without shooting any of the customers.

  The barkeep brushed dirt off his mustache, grumbled a mite, then put a bottle of whiskey down on the bar with a loud clank. Slocum held his breath. There was deathly quiet in the tent, and he knew why.

  “What’s that?” he demanded of the barkeep.

  “What you won, dammit.”

  “I want shot glasses for everyone here,” Slocum said. The deafening cheer told him he had said the right thing. Everyone crowded close to get a shot of free whiskey.

  Slocum hung back. The tarantula juice would go a ways toward cutting the taste of trail dust, but it was more important to keep the men from gossiping about him. Let them say they had drunk a free shot, and nobody else in town was likely to ask more than that. If he had denied them their bounty, word might have spread like lightning.

  He finally got a shot from the dregs. The liquor burned like a branding iron all the way down to his empty gut, where it threatened to sear away at his flesh the rest of the night.

  “You’re mighty good with that hogleg, mister,” the piano player said. “Ain’t seen you around. Mr. Mackenzie jist bring you in?”

  “Just got into town,” Slocum said.

  He didn’t understand why the piano player reached out and pushed up Slocum’s hat until his forehead was exposed any more than he did what the piano player said next.

  “Sorry, sir. Didn’t mean nuthin’ by my impudence.” The man backed off and even put a protective arm around the woman who had been occupying his lap earlier.

  They cast quick, fearful looks at Slocum and returned to the piano. In a thrice, the music started again, the man playing and the woman warbling off-key. But no one in the saloon thought twice about it. They had their free drinks.

  Slocum had some questions he wanted to ask, but there wasn’t anyone to answer. He settled down in a chair and quickly had the table all to himself. The patrons avoided him just as the piano player had, sometimes casting a quick look in his direction, as if to be sure he wasn’t swinging his six-gun into action against them.

  This set Slocum to thinking. None of the men in the saloon wore sidearms. More than a few carried knives sheathed in boots or at their side, but he was the only one wearing a gun. That struck him as unusual but not to the point of them shunning him.

  He looked up when a new customer came into the tent, standing for a moment holding the flap and them moving in quickly. Slocum sat a little straighter in his chair when he saw the man had a number 10 whitewashed on his forehead. He wore a six-gun slung low, tied down, and moved with the easy grace of a natural shootist.

  The others in the tent subtly edged away from him, too. He got a drink, turned, and saw Slocum. A look of relief passed quickly, replaced with a touch of fear that made no sense in a man who likely made his living killing others with the pistol at his side. He came over.

  “Mind if I set myself down, sir?”

  Slocum indicated he could.

  “I swear, them varmints treat me like I was the Grim Reaper himself.” The words had hardly escaped when he looked up, eyes going wide with more than a touch of fear. “Didn’t mean nuthin’ by that, sir.”

  “Ten?” Slocum asked, tapping his own forehead to indicate the number painted on the man’s.

  “All I could afford. A hundred a month’s mighty steep, but worth it,” he added hastily, as if criticism might offend Slocum.

  “How long you been in town?”

  “Got in jist ’fore the end of last month. Shoulda hung around and waited, I know, but payin’ the extra money was worth it to git free of a federal marshal. When my time’s up, I reckon he’ll have given up on a cold trail.” He reached for the number on his forehead, then drew back as if the paint might burn his fingers.

  “So you get to stay until the end of October?” Slocum asked.

  “Of course. I paid fer it! You ain’t gonna tell Mackenzie no different.”

  “Settle down, partner,” Slocum said. “I’m looking for a man who just blew into town in the last few days.” He described Rawhide Rawlins. From the outlaw’s expression, he hadn’t seen Rawhide.
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  “Might be with the newcomers, if he didn’t have ’nuff for the entire month.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Slocum realized he had crossed a line and asking a question that might bring Mackenzie and his henchmen thundering down on him. Likely, everyone in Wilson’s Creek knew where the newcomers were stashed.

  “Better turn in fer the night. Good night, sir.” The numbered man stood and backed away, wary of Slocum shooting him in the back. In a flash he was outside the tent.

  Slocum considered waylaying the man, then getting the information he needed. But how big could Wilson’s Creek be? He left the tent saloon. A collective sigh of relief gusted from inside, then the gaiety he had heard before he’d entered returned. They thought he was someone he wasn’t, possibly one of Mackenzie’s handpicked killers.

  The raucous laughter from the hotel down the street continued unabated. That had to be the head honcho’s digs. Slocum veered away, cutting between tents and buildings until he reached the perimeter of the town. Again he wondered at the lack of guards. Why post them during the day but not at night?

  He retrieved his horse and rode slowly around the edge of town until he saw lights some distance away, toward the hills to the west. Feeling bolder, he trotted about a mile to a deeply rutted road, then followed it toward a smaller version of the town. The namesake stream gurgled past this encampment before heading in the direction of Mackenzie’s domain. Slocum slowed and looked at the arrangement of the buildings.

  This looked more like a prison than most he had seen. If Rawlins wasn’t in town, he had to be here. Slocum saw no way his partner in bank robbery could have avoided the guard towers on the road to the east. He wished he knew what had happened back in the canyon when Alicia had hightailed it. Had Rawlins been captured or had he bought his way into town?

  He got within a hundred yards before deciding not to foolishly remain in the saddle. Again he left his gelding and crept forward on foot to scout. The sound of machinery drew him. A dozen men bent over sluices, working them back and forth as water from the stream raced down to separate gold from dross. Two men with shovels filled barrows. The men pushing the barrows disappeared on the far side.

  Slocum took a deep whiff and choked. He had worked enough mines himself to recognize the pungent odor of mercury. The gold-bearing sand was treated with the mercury to form an amalgam, which was easily separated from gravel. The gold-mercury combination was then heated. The mercury fumes were captured and turned back into liquid metal while the gold was poured off into small ingots or left in pans to form pure dust. From the mercury odor and the roar of a fire blazing just out of sight inside a big building, he recognized a full-fledged mining operation.

  And guards with rifles patrolled endlessly to keep the men working. Mackenzie had himself a considerable slave labor workforce.

  Alicia had been right about this, at least. Slocum wondered which of those men might be her family members. Or if they toiled at the far more dangerous mercury extraction vats.

  He watched long enough to know Rawhide wasn’t among these men—these slaves. Slocum drifted through the buildings, hidden by heavy shadows. He found a bunkhouse filled with sleeping men and loud snores. Rawlins might be here. He started to lift the latch and enter when he heard the metallic click of a rifle being cocked behind him.

  “You’re a dead man if you so much as twitch toward that gun of yours,” came the cold command. “Get those hands up and turn around.”

  Slocum did as he was told and saw he was in a worse predicament than he’d thought. Not one guard but three had caught him. He might throw down on one and hope to escape, but three? No way in hell was he going to shoot his way out of this.

  8

  “Put those rifles down,” Slocum snapped. He began lowering his hands slowly, watching to see if the command had any effect. He had been a captain in the CSA and had learned how to make green recruits obey. It looked as if he had kept his skills ordering men around.

  The guards looked from him to the man who had told him to reach for the sky, as if asking what to do. Slocum kept up the bluff.

  “I was sent to find Rawlins. Mackenzie’s getting antsy because this Rawlins fellow was supposed to show up an hour ago back at the hotel and didn’t.”

  “Hotel?” The guard with the rifle still aimed at him wavered at the mention.

  “You know the place,” Slocum said with enough sarcasm to turn green leaves brown. “In town, at the end of the street. Two-story place with the hotel sign dangling in front of it. Headquarters?” Slocum took a shot at saying the hotel was Mackenzie’s HQ. From the men coming and going, he decided this wasn’t too big a risk.

  “’Course I do,” the guard said uneasily. The muzzle dipped lower. If Slocum wanted, he could throw down and get at least two of the guards.

  There wasn’t any call for him to throw lead.

  “He wants Rawlins right now. He’s going to be pissed if I don’t get this galoot back.” He let the outlaw reach his own conclusion that anyone standing in Slocum’s way was going to be in dutch with Mackenzie.

  “Don’t know this Rawlins. He one of the visitors?”

  Slocum would have been at a loss if the guard hadn’t moved unconsciously to touch his forehead. The men with numbers painted on their foreheads were called visitors. Slocum suspected they were called other things, but out of earshot. While Rawlins might have used the loot from the bank to buy his way into Wilson’s Creek, Slocum took a shot in the dark that he hadn’t.

  “Naw, one of them.” He pointed toward a line of men shuffling along with bowed heads, their legs shackled.

  “What’s he want with a slave?”

  Slocum didn’t hear what the guard farthest to his left whispered, but his partner snickered.

  “Ain’t no call joshin’ ’bout that,” the man Slocum faced said uneasily. “The thunderbird gets fed enough.”

  “Maybe Rawlins has already been fed to the . . . thunderbird,” Slocum said, forcing himself to keep a neutral tone. The contempt he felt for anyone believing such hog wallow built inside him, but if he used it to find what he wanted without shooting it out, that was fine.

  “Ain’t been no one in Wilson’s Creek fed to the ’bird in weeks. Heard tell a lawman out in the canyon got et, but nobody here in town.”

  “The ’bird can git mighty hungry in a hurry. Remember a month back?” The other two guards crowded closer. Slocum saw how they were spooked just talking about the thunderbird. They made nervous glances up at the star-packed sky as if expecting the thunderbird to swoop low on them at any instant.

  “That fat peddler what thought he could call out Mackenzie? He was warned ’bout how Mackenzie can call down the thunderbird.”

  “Bones. Bloody shreds of skin and gnawed bones,” the third guard said, shaking his head as he remembered what was left of the peddler.

  Slocum wanted to hear more about the thunderbird and if any of the men had seen it with their own eyes, but finding Rawhide mattered more.

  “Mind if I check the slaves?” He pointed in the direction of the men still walking toward the dark mouth of a mineshaft.

  “Won’t do you no good. All them slaves been here long ’nuff fer me to learn their names. None of ’em is named Rawlins. That right, boys?” He looked over his shoulder at his two partners.

  “Right, Hank. Nobody new’s come onto this shift since the first of the month.”

  “You have any notion where I can find him? Don’t want Mackenzie getting mad at me.”

  The three exchanged a fearful look. Slocum might have read their minds. He knew what worried them. The longer he lingered here, the more likely Mackenzie was to send out his deadly thunderbird to gobble him up—and anyone standing nearby.

  “The whorehouse. If this Rawlins fella’s a visitor and had his fill of that rotgut whiskey served at the saloon, he’d want to dip his wic
k. Plenny of ways to do that at the whorehouse.”

  Slocum nodded knowingly. If he asked where the cathouse was, he’d betray himself as newcomer. He had to keep the three guards thinking he was on a commission from Mackenzie.

  “Thanks,” he said. Slocum turned to walk back toward town, wary of where the guards’ rifles pointed. None of them made a move to shoot him in the back.

  He lengthened his stride and took the first chance to fade into the shadows that came along. Slocum let out a deep breath of relief. Finding that Mackenzie’s henchmen feared the thunderbird so much that just mentioning it caused them to break into a sweat told him a great deal about how Mackenzie kept the town under his thumb. Reveal the thing causing such fear as a hoax and the gunmen would turn on their boss. Being made a fool of never sat well with outlaws and men used to being top gun.

  Returning to town, Slocum waited impatiently outside the tent saloon. Several men, all with white numbers on their foreheads, stumbled out and pointed in several directions before deciding to head away from the hotel where Slocum thought Mackenzie lurked. Like a flock of geese, they formed a vee that spread wide enough to range them from one side of the street to the other. From their loud boasts, Slocum knew they were heading for the place he wanted.

  For a moment he considered peering into the saloon again, but his notoriety from the first trip inside held him back. The last thing he wanted was a second display of marksmanship. The customers might get drunk enough to forget someone had won the barkeep’s challenge. Even knee-walking drunk, they wouldn’t forget a second time. He was in no mood to either fire and drill another nickel or miss. Discussion of his marksmanship either way would slow him down and increased his risks.

  “Tha’s the place. See the red light? Jist like Nawlins,” the lead drunk said. It took a man on either side to support him all the way up the steps to the porch.

  Slocum hung back and was glad he did. A bouncer came out and stopped the men. The madam didn’t take kindly to rowdies, he said, but if the men wanted to set outside a spell, liquor would be served. Slocum had to admire such salesmanship. Rather than filling a soiled dove’s bed, these men would be served high-priced drinks. The establishment would make as much off that and still have their girls active.