Slocum and the Thunderbird

by Jake Logan

  Pushing past into the sitting room would have drawn immediate attention from the bouncers. The working girls would have flocked over to a new customer, or maybe the madam selected the proper one for each potential patron and would keep a sharp eye out for anyone entering without being accompanied by a bouncer. Most men just off the range—or fresh from dodging a posse—didn’t care a whole lot about a woman’s looks. That wasn’t the point of feminine companionship here. As a result, they would put up with any indignity demanded of them by the bouncers acting as gateways to the feminine delights.

  He skirted the building, avoiding the bright light pouring from each window until he got to the rear of the two-story house. The back door was securely locked, probably barred inside. Even if he pulled the rickety hinge pins, the door wouldn’t open enough for him to squeeze through. Making too much noise and attracting the bouncer or madam didn’t enter his head. The drunks on the front porch had taken up a caterwauling song that drowned out most other sounds. When the distant coyotes began responding with their own lovelorn cries, Slocum knew no one would be paying attention to anything he did.

  Seeing the drainpipe at the corner of the building, he tested it. To his surprise, it felt secure. He gingerly put his weight on it, then began climbing until he reached the eaves and swung onto the roof. It sagged more under his weight than the drainpipe, forcing him to cautiously inch along to a spot directly above an open window.

  He gripped the edge of the roof, then lowered his head down enough to peer through the window. All he saw were white knees drawn up amid the bedclothes and a lusty bare-assed cowboy slamming away. Slocum straightened and got away from the window when the woman looked toward him. Even in the dim light from a coal oil lamp in the room, he saw her expression. She was bored and her eyes were bright and sharp. After her customer had finished, which seemed imminent, she would notify the bouncer of a Peeping Tom if she’d happened to spot Slocum.

  He edged along the roof to the next window. The room was deserted. Swinging down and agilely kicking at the last minute shoved his feet through onto a chair. He knocked it over and almost lost his balance. Toppling out the window to the ground twenty feet below would do him in. A quick grab on the window frame steadied him enough to recover. He slid all the way into the room, going into a crouch beside the bed. Slocum waited, heart hammering, when he heard heavy footfalls in the corridor.

  His hand went to his six-gun, but he didn’t draw. The door opened a few inches, stopped, then closed again. The footsteps retreated down the hallway.

  Three quick strides took him to the door. He opened it and saw the bouncer’s broad back vanishing down the steep stairs to the sitting room. Sounds of a new commotion told him he had a few minutes to prowl about to find Rawhide Rawlins.

  Easing into the corridor, he opened the door to the room opposite. His eyes had adapted to the dark, but this room was bathed in bright light from a pair of oil lamps. He squinted and took in the room’s occupant. Even with his willpower, he couldn’t help calling out.

  “Alicia!”

  The woman sitting on the edge of the bed, head lowered, looked up with listless, defeated eyes. She turned and hiked her feet to the bed, lifting her thin shift to expose herself.

  He went into the room and closed the door.

  “Alicia, you—” He stared. The scantily dressed woman looked like Alicia but wasn’t. Even discounting the hollow eyes and haggard expression, she was the spitting image of the woman he had met out in the canyons.

  “You don’t want me?”

  “You look so much like Alicia Watson that it surprised me. I wasn’t expecting to find her—you.” Slocum cut off his flow of words. His confusion boiled over and made him seem dimwitted. There was only one reason a man came into a room like this. She expected more than surprise out of him, even if she accepted it like a slave rather than a willing partner.

  “You know her? My sister?” The words came out all cracked and broken, like a mud flat dried up and curling in the hot sun.

  “She’s headed for a cavalry post to being back soldiers to clean out Wilson’s Creek,” he said.

  The woman blinked but otherwise gave no response.

  “You don’t want me? You paid already?”

  Slocum sat beside her on the bed, took her thin shoulders, and shook. For a moment the glazed expression vanished, replaced by fire such as he had seen in her sister’s eyes.

  “You can do that. Beat me up, but you got to pay more. Madam Catherine says so.”

  “Stop acting like a whore. Alicia is trying to get you and the rest of your family out of here.”

  “Ma and Pa? They’re here? They can’t see me like this.” She curled up and tried to hide her nakedness with the muslin shift. All she succeeded in doing was to tear new holes in the threadbare cloth.

  “Where are they? Your ma and pa?”

  “Mines. Mackenzie’s got them in the mines. I was lucky. He put me here.”

  Slocum’s fury grew that the woman was so cowed that she thought being a prostitute was being lucky.

  “You see a man who looked like this?” He gave a quick description of Rawhide Rawlins.

  “All of ’em. None of ’em. After the first week, I didn’t really see ’em anymore.”

  “You got clothes?” he asked. “Get dressed. We’re getting out of here.”

  The woman pointed vaguely toward a wardrobe. Slocum yanked open the door and saw a gingham dress hanging inside. Though it was torn in places and the buttons had been ripped off the front, it covered her better than the shift. He tossed it to her. As she dressed, he asked her again, “You see a man looking like I described?”

  “Heard of a man being called Rawhide,” she said, settling the dress about her thin frame.

  “Did he have a number painted on his forehead?”

  “Might have been a visitor. Those are mostly what I get here, four, five a night. Don’t mind them. Mackenzie’s men like to beat me up. Once, he even watched and mocked me, making noises like the thunderbird.” She shivered and hugged herself, arms tightly wrapped around her thin body.

  “You ever see this thunderbird?”

  “Heard it outside in the night. Saw how it killed.” She shivered more.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Loretta.”

  “Come on, Loretta. Let’s see if we can’t get your ma and pa free from the mines. I was just out there, so I know how to avoid the guards.”

  Slocum took her hand and pulled her along. She tried to resist, but she lacked the strength for any real fight. They went the length of the corridor to the back stairs. Looking down, Slocum saw they led into a kitchen. The back door would give them the best chance of exiting without being seen.

  He pushed Loretta ahead of him. She almost fell as she missed a step on the stairs. Slocum went for his iron. Coming up the steps from the sitting room, the bouncer returned to make his rounds. A million ideas blossomed and died in Slocum’s head. What would the man do when he found Loretta missing? Should Slocum gun him down if he got a chance, then make a run for it?

  Rather than creating a scene sure to bring everyone in the whorehouse out to see what was happening, Slocum hurried down the stairs to the kitchen, trusting that the bouncer wouldn’t discover a missing whore for at least a few minutes.

  To his relief, he saw Loretta was fighting off her lethargy. The woman struggled to pull up the locking bar, but it defeated her. Slocum reached over and yanked hard, sending the wooden bar crashing into the far wall. He waited a second to see if the bouncer showed up at the head of the stairs. When no one came, he crowded behind the woman and forced her into the night. Cold air stung his cheeks and bit at his lips. He couldn’t imagine how the increasingly frigid air affected Loretta, dressed only in the battered dress.

  To his surprise, the cold air invigorated her rather than stealing away more of her energy
.

  “That way,” she said, indicating the direction of the mines. “They’ve been there for a week.” Loretta wiped at a tear, another sign that shock was wearing off. “That’s more than enough time for them both to be dead.”

  “Let’s find out,” Slocum said. “If they are, their killers will pay for it.”

  She laughed until a touch of hysteria entered her voice.

  “How do you make a thunderbird pay? You can’t. That’s why Mackenzie is so powerful. He controls the thunderbird.”

  “How?”

  Loretta shrugged, then returned to her slump-shouldered stance. Slocum kept her moving at a quick pace. He had seen men during the war look like this. Defeated. Shocked from seeing too much death on the battlefield. Emotionally destroyed as their friends and brothers died around them, leaving them alive to carry on somehow. The only way to snap her out of it was to focus her attention on something positive.

  “After we get your folks free, do you know how to get away from Wilson’s Creek?”

  She looked up. Again a flash of determination came to her eyes.

  “I know how we came in. Blundered in, actually. We got separated from the others in the wagon train. Pa thought he could take a shortcut and catch up. Drove along a road ’til we saw wooden towers.”

  “Guard towers,” Slocum said, remembering how Mackenzie’s men had been stationed to protect the road.

  “They greeted us like long-lost relatives. Then they stole our wagon and belongings, clapped Pa into chains, and dragged Ma off.”

  “How did Alicia get away?”

  Loretta shook her head.

  “Don’t know. She was always the clever one. Mackenzie said it didn’t matter that she got away, that the thunderbird would eat her. They took me to the . . . to the . . .” Her voice broke, and she began to cry.

  Slocum worried that the sound would draw attention, but the night was empty. Even Mackenzie’s own men feared the thunderbird, and if Loretta cried enough, it might steel her resolve to get even. He wanted to see something take hold other than resignation to the fate Mackenzie had decreed for her.

  He kept her walking. Hesitantly reaching out, he put his arm around her shoulders. She shied away, and he didn’t pursue her, knowing why she didn’t want him—or any man—touching her.

  “There’s the building where I saw men sleeping,” Slocum said.

  “Must be another shift. Heard that Mackenzie works them twelve hours on and then twelve off.”

  Slocum had looked over the sleeping men and hadn’t seen Rawlins. He still thought his partner had used the bank loot to buy his way into this outlaw sanctuary. Mackenzie charged for such refuge, and Slocum had no idea how long Rawhide would be safe before being driven out. He caught his breath when he realized Mackenzie wouldn’t set anyone free who couldn’t pay for further protection.

  The clanking of chains as a new slave moved toward the mines foretold some poor soul’s fate.

  “Oh, my God, no!” Loretta cried.

  Slocum grabbed her to prevent the woman from rushing out to the shackled prisoner shuffling along toward the gold mine.

  She struggled but didn’t have the strength to escape. And then Slocum saw why she had reacted.

  The solitary chained prisoner was Alicia Watson.

  9

  “Alicia!”

  Slocum clamped his hand over the girl’s mouth and spun her around. They were a few yards from the bunkhouse. Any ruckus might rouse the men. Slocum hadn’t seen chains holding the sleeping men, but their outcry would bring guards. He knew at least three patrolled the area around the mine. If they saw him again, this time with a whore from town, he wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of getting ventilated unless he offered Loretta to them. That would set her off and betray him.

  “Please, I have to help her.” Loretta struggled as he picked her up and swung her about. “She’ll die in the mine!”

  “I know. Settle down, and I’ll rescue her. You don’t have to do anything but wait for us to come back.”

  He bodily carried her to a tool shed. Kicking open the door to reveal picks and other mining equipment, Slocum added Loretta to the pile. She fell over a wheelbarrow and tried to keep her balance. She ended up sitting in it, staring at him with wide, frightened eyes.

  “Everyone who goes into the mine dies. Please let me go.”

  “You stay here. Don’t make a fuss or the guards will come for you.” He bit his lip, then knew what it would take to keep her quiet. As much as he hated saying it, he told her, “The thunderbird will hear you and carry you off.”

  He felt lousy seeing how this fantasy cowed her. Stepping back, he closed the door and considered barring it on the outside. Slocum knew he might get killed attempting the rescue, so he left the door unlocked. Loretta could get away if he didn’t make it back. He hoped his luck held long enough that she stayed inside while he actually got to the mine or that tools weren’t needed and the shed door opened by the guards.

  Moving fast, he returned to the spot where they had seen Alicia being dragged along. Ore cart tracks curved around a bend and into the mine. Using piles of tailings pulled from the mine to hide his advance, he got within a few yards of the mineshaft without revealing himself to any patrolling guards.

  Sounds of digging came from deep within the mine. The notion that Mackenzie forced women to work with a pick and shovel caused a hardness in Slocum that he had felt before, which always ended with someone dying. Alicia was a pretty woman, but she hadn’t been as cruelly used as her sister. Until now.

  Slocum made sure his six-shooter rode easy in his holster, then did the only thing he could. He squared his shoulders and moved to the ore cart tracks. As much as he wanted to run, he forced himself to walk at a steady pace to the mouth of the shaft. Miners’ candles on a rock shelf at eye level gave him the way to explore deeper into the mine without worrying that he would fall down a hole. Sometimes blue dirt ran straight down and the miners tore at the floor hunting for lower ore veins.

  He lit a candle and held it at arm’s length as he went forward toward the sound of iron tearing at rock. The farther he got, the louder the noise became. He heard workers grunting, cursing, talking with others around them. A Y branch in the mine forced Slocum to decide which direction to go. Sounds echoed from each shaft. Flickering candlelight showed glints off an iron pick a few yards down the left tunnel.

  “You,” Slocum said, going to the miner with shackles on his ankles. The haggard man looked up. For a brief instant Slocum read the urge to use the pick on him, but it passed and the miner returned to his beaten look. “You see any new workers?”

  “Not here,” the man said.

  Slocum cursed. He had chosen the wrong branch.

  “Any women working in the mine?”

  “Women? Not diggin’. Whole passel of ’em work at the amalgam plant out by the river.”

  The life of anyone working with mercury to form a gold amalgam would be pure hell, maybe worse than pulling ore from the rocky walls of this mine. But Slocum had come too far to go running off without being certain Alicia wasn’t condemned to laboring underground.

  “How many miners are there farther along?” Slocum pointed into the darkness. Scraping sounds told him ore was being loaded into carts to move out. “Any chance a woman might be hitched up to the ore cart to pull it out?”

  “Like a donkey?” The miner laughed harshly. Again Slocum saw the man gauging his chances of getting away with a quick swing of the pick. “Naw, only men too banged up to use a pick or shovel get to pull the cart. They get to see daylight.”

  “It’s night,” Slocum said.

  The miner scowled and went back to pecking away at a vein showing quartz in the dancing light from his candle.

  Slocum backed off, then turned and hurried back to the fork. Less than twenty yards down the other shaft, he came
to a man swinging his pick with some strength.

  “You,” Slocum called. “Was a woman brought in here?”

  “For us? I’m married.” The man turned back to his work. “Go to hell.”

  “As a miner,” Slocum said. “Name of Alicia.”

  This caused the man to whirl about. He held the pickaxe with the intent of using it as a weapon.

  “You think that’s funny? You like tormenting me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My daughter’s name is Alicia.”

  “And your other’s named Loretta?”

  Slocum moved fast, sidestepping as the man lunged at him with the pickaxe. He tried to drive the point into Slocum’s chest but missed by a wide margin when his shackles caused him to lose his balance. Slocum let him fall past to land facedown, then stepped on the pick handle to keep it flat on the ground.

  “I’ll rip out your heart, you bastard!”

  The man threw his arms around Slocum’s knees and drove him hard against the wall. Rather than drawing his six-gun and slugging the man, Slocum shoved away from the wall and drove the man back down to the ground. His knees crushed down in the middle of the struggling man’s back.

  “Calm down,” Slocum said. “I’m trying to help.”

  “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you all!”

  Slocum grabbed a handful of shirt and pulled the man to his feet, then shoved hard and put distance between them. The fight built in the man rather than dying down.

  “I promised Alicia I’d do what I could to rescue her family,” Slocum said. “Loretta’s hiding just outside the mine, but we saw Mackenzie’s henchmen with Alicia in chains.”

  “You’re one of them. This is some new way of tormenting me.”

  “You’re Alicia’s pa?”

  “Linc Watson.”

  “Well, Mr. Watson, I’ll see to you, too, after I get Alicia away.”