by Logan, Jake
“His partners,” Mirabelle said, her eyes glowing with excitement. “I knew I’d done the right thing coming to you, Mr. Slocum.”
Slocum hesitated then, not knowing what to do. He finally moved around the bed to the opposite side, sat, and kicked off his boots. By the time he had his gun belt off and hanging on the brass post, Mirabelle had shifted around and sat with her hands in her lap, staring at him with her wide brown eyes.
“You can go or stay. Doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“I snore,” Slocum said, stretching out. He rolled onto his side, his back to her. It took a few minutes but the bed finally sagged as Mirabelle stretched out.
Before Slocum fell asleep, her arm draped over him, he heard her sob quietly and then finally begin to snore louder than he ever could. Wondering what he was getting himself into, he finally drifted off to sleep.
* * *
Slocum came awake with a start when he felt cold, wet air on his face. He had his Colt Navy half out of its holster before he realized Mirabelle had opened the tiny window and stood staring out. From the pale light silhouetting her, it was just barely sunrise.
He yawned, stretched, and sat up. She turned to him.
“When is the funeral?” she asked.
“Can’t imagine the undertaker—O’Dell’s his name—will be in any hurry to plant the body.”
“I . . . I want to come with you. I didn’t see the others all that good. It was dark, but I think I’d know them.”
Slocum understood. Sometimes going with a feeling in the gut proved better than waiting for hard evidence. Mirabelle might be able to identify the men just by their attitude, the way they walked, or the set of their bodies, even if she hadn’t seen their faces.
Then a worry came to him.
“They see your face?”
“No, no, I was hid. Ike rushed in and got himself killed, but he protected me. They don’t even know anyone escaped.”
Slocum wondered if that was right but didn’t press the matter. Any of the killers who showed up at their partner’s funeral and recognized Mirabelle would give themselves away. That was risky, but Slocum felt sure he could handle any no-accounts who would slaughter men and rape women as those did.
“Let’s make our way out to the cemetery. You know where it is?” Slocum asked.
“We never came to town. Leastwise, not me. Lucas Sennick came in and got drunk, but he’s dead and—”
“All right,” Slocum interrupted, seeing that Mirabelle was starting off on a wild tangent. From the set to her shoulders, she was ready to break. “Might be better if you stayed here and let me go.”
“I want to,” she said, but Slocum saw how she hunted for a plausible way out. She wanted to bring the outlaws to justice—at the end of a rope or maybe in front of a six-shooter she held—but her courage was fading fast.
“I only have my horse,” he said. “We’d draw attention if we rode up together on it,” he said. It sounded lame but gave her an excuse. She nodded.
As he pulled on his boots, she came to him and reached out timidly. Her hand shook as she touched his shoulder.
“Thank you.”
“Being paid for it,” he said, touching his vest pocket. He stood, strapped on his gun belt, and finally shrugged into his coat. It surprised him when Mirabelle helped settle it down so it wasn’t wrinkled.
He looked at her. The fear was receding but her doe eyes made her appear especially vulnerable.
He left the room without another word. It took fifteen minutes to get to the livery stables, get directions, and saddle up. He rode slowly along the road. Keeping to the shoulder proved easiest since the mud and ice mix in the deep ruts would slow his horse. He didn’t want the icy shards to cut his horse’s legs. Keeping away from the worst potholes let him crunch through unsullied ice.
Slocum reached the cemetery by following the signs. They were freshly painted and each carried a small advertisement for O’Dell’s Funeral Parlour. Slocum wondered if the cadaverous undertaker had any competition or if this was simply his way of feeling important, seeing his name on every signpost on the way to the town cemetery.
The burial ground had a low stone wall running parallel to the road. A cast iron arch had begun to rust, but once under it, the rows of graves were well kept. Some had headstones and even the ones marked with wooden crosses were maintained. Whether this was something O’Dell did, too, Slocum couldn’t tell.
At the back of the cemetery, O’Dell stood supervising two men hauling a pine coffin from the back of a wagon. Slocum dismounted, tethered his horse on a wooden cross, then walked slowly toward where an open grave yawned. He looked around. Other than the undertaker and his two assistants, no one else had shown up for the burial.
“Come to pay your respects, Slocum?” O’Dell spoke slowly and his voice had lowered to a rumbling bass appropriate for mourning.
“Seemed like the decent thing to do since I was the one who put him in the ground.”
“Well, yes,” O’Dell said, his professional sorrow momentarily disturbed.
“That his marker?” Slocum pointed to a flat stone in the wagon.
“It is. I need to get the stonemason to chip in the name and date but thought it fitting to lay him to rest and take care of such details later.”
“Cost a pretty penny,” Slocum said.
“It isn’t that expensive.”
“Who paid for it?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I found an envelope with adequate money thrust under my door with instructions.”
“You ever get his name?”
“I have, sir,” O’Dell said stiffly. “That was information included with the money. Mr. Rupert Eckerly.”
The name meant nothing to Slocum. From the way the undertaker spoke, it meant nothing to him either.
“You have anything to say over the grave, Mr. Slocum?”
“Get on with it,” Slocum said. He watched the two assistants lower the coffin into the grave.
O’Dell reached into his pocket and took out a Bible, thumbed it to a page, and began reading sonorously. Slocum considered taking off his hat, then decided not to since that would be hypocritical. When he had cut down Eckerly, he had only been defending himself. It wasn’t until later that Mirabelle Comstock had indicted the man in brutal killing and rape.
As O’Dell read on, Slocum turned slowly and looked across the cemetery to the rusty arch. A man sat astride a horse there, a bandanna pulled up over his face. Chilly wind blew off the mountains and across the cemetery, but the cloth wouldn’t do much to protect the man’s face. Slocum decided he wasn’t interested in being identified.
As O’Dell rambled on, Slocum turned and walked back to his horse. The undertaker sped up to conclude the ceremony now that he had lost his only audience. Swinging into the saddle, Slocum rode toward the road.
The other onlooker had already hightailed it.
Slocum wondered if the man would have come to the graveside if he hadn’t been there. Finding out would go a way toward answering questions that piled up.
The muddy road didn’t hold tracks well, but the rider had cut across the road and plowed through open field. One set of tracks came toward the cemetery, another went away. Slocum didn’t have to be much of a tracker to know where the man had come from and where he returned. He put his heels to his horse’s flanks and trotted across the snowy terrain.
The man had made a hasty retreat, daring to gallop his horse where Slocum felt secure only in a trot over the hidden, frozen land. But there was no hiding the trail as it meandered up through the foothills toward a canyon angling away sharply.
The tracks led deeper into the canyon. Slocum slowed his advance and looked around. The stillness came from the snow damping the sound. Slocum played on t
his to keep after the fleeing rider without fear of being overheard.
As he followed the trail close to boulders, he stopped. The tracks changed. He didn’t dismount as he deciphered their message. The rider had halted, wheeled his horse around, and then continued along the trail.
Slocum stiffened. The rider knew he was being trailed. He must have spotted—
Before Slocum could finish his thought, a rock crashed down on his head, knocking him from his horse.
4
Slocum struggled in the snow and mud, trying to get to his feet. He hit a slippery patch and fell facedown. The shock of icy water against his nose and mouth brought him fully alert. His head throbbed from the rock that had bounced off his crown, but his hat had robbed the missile of some power. That didn’t make his situation any less perilous.
He rolled to the side as another rock crashed down from the top of the boulder he had passed. Standing atop the huge rock was a masked man—not the one he had followed.
When the man saw he wasn’t getting anywhere with his rain of rocks, he went for his six-shooter. Slocum kicked hard, skidded along the ground, and slid on his back. He reached for his own six-gun, but the metallic sound of a hammer cocking froze him faster than the icy ground ever could.
“You’re a dead man if you draw that hogleg,” came a muffled voice.
Slocum craned around and saw another masked man sighting down the twin barrels of a shotgun. He slowly thrust out his hands—without filling either with the butt of his Colt.
“What’s going on? You road agents?”
“Shut up!” the man atop the rock called down. Slocum turned his attention upward, something gnawing at the edge of his brain. Then he blacked out entirely when the shotgun-toting outlaw clobbered him on the side of the head with a hard, cold metallic barrel.
When he was again aware of pain, he forced himself to keep his eyes shut. Let them think he was still knocked out. But something betrayed him. His eyelids might have fluttered or he could have moaned. Slocum wasn’t sure what it was, but a hard blow to his jaw snapped his head to the side.
“Why you followin’ me?”
Slocum winced as new pain assaulted him. The man used his pistol to beat him. The barrel smacked into his temple. Bone didn’t break but blazing white stars danced about. Then the man used the butt on his chin again. Slocum was quickly reaching the point where he wouldn’t be able to speak, even if he wanted to. He felt his lips swelling from the blows, and the ringing in his head made hearing something of a chore.
He squinted to try to focus his eyes. Four men stood in a half circle around him. All wore heavy tan canvas dusters, hats pulled low almost to their eyes and bandannas up over their noses. Trying to figure out how tall they were didn’t work. There wasn’t anything to judge height by. All he could do was say one was taller or shorter than the road agent standing beside him.
“Shoot him and let’s get outta here.”
“Tell me!” The pistol swung, and Slocum sensed rather than saw it coming. He jerked hard at the last possible instant, robbing the barrel of its power. He flung himself across the trail and halfway over the edge of the embankment. Below him lay the canyon bottom with a river partially frozen over. That was clearer than his images of the outlaws.
He grunted as a boot crashed into his ribs.
“We got to get outta here. Kill him, will you? Or I will.”
They argued over whether to keep questioning Slocum or kill him outright. From the pain lancing into his ribs and through his head, he wasn’t sure which he preferred. He half rose up. He grunted as the boot came swinging for his belly, but he didn’t let it connect. He grabbed the foot and twisted, using his weight more than his strength to throw the outlaw off balance.
They crashed down together. Slocum was ready, if injured, and swarmed up to grab the man’s wrist. He forced the gun away from him. Anger erased his pain for a moment; the owlhoot used Slocum’s own gun to pistol-whip him.
Fingers wrapping around the ebony butt, he tried to turn the muzzle around so he could end the son of a bitch’s life.
He heard the report, but it took a second to realize that he hadn’t fired. Another of the outlaws had. The warmth of blood spread on his side. Then pain blotted out the world. Slocum half rose, then toppled over, rolling down the embankment to the river’s frozen banks. Water splashed against his face, as excruciating as the pulsing pain in his ribs and the strange tingling in his legs.
Fiercely gripping his six-shooter, he tried to roll over to get a shot at the men above him along the trail. Nothing worked. Arms refused to move. His legs felt like lead. His vision faded. He sank back, his cheek in the sluggishly flowing ice water.
He never quite passed out but couldn’t move. Listening to the water rippling past, the sound of birds high above, the occasional crack of ice breaking free to fall into the river, John Slocum focused on not feeling pain. Soon enough, the cold stole away the worst of the pain, but in a far-off corner of his brain, he realized he was freezing to death.
A moment’s panic that he was going blind galvanized him to roll over and sit up, the six-gun still in his hand. His trigger finger was too numb to draw back, but there was no need. And he wasn’t blind. The sun had dipped behind the canyon walls, plunging the riverbed into twilight.
The movement caused some pain but not as much as before. In a sitting position, he pulled back his coat, vest, and shirt. The bullet hadn’t even penetrated his chest but had skipped along a rib. That didn’t make it hurt any less, but not having to worry about lead poisoning buoyed his spirits.
He was going to live. He was going to put all four of the road agents in graves alongside Rupert Eckerly.
This thought fixed in his head, he got to his feet. It took several tries before he got his Colt holstered. Then he began the treacherous climb up the slope to the road. Loose rock made it difficult. His battered condition added to the time and effort it took, but he finally reached the trail where he had been ambushed. To his surprise, his horse stood nearby, waiting for him.
A wild thought raced through his mind that the road agents wanted him to step up so they could shoot him from the saddle. Then he realized he was a touch feverish, and it wasn’t likely men such as those who had waylaid him would wait for him. They’d plug him from the road. Chances were good they thought he was dead.
He had to climb onto a rock and then flop across the saddle to mount. He took the reins and aimed the horse back along the trail toward distant Grizzly Flats.
The horse took him to the livery stable around midnight.
* * *
He came awake with a start. Something was wrong, very wrong. He reached for his six-gun but it wasn’t at his left hip. He groped about and finally realized he wasn’t even dressed. The darkness hid everything, but he was warm and not drowning in the icy river.
“Calm yourself, Mr. Slocum. Lie back.”
“Where am I?”
“In your hotel room.” Mirabelle’s voice was soft and her breath warm in his ear as she whispered to him. “I can light the lamp, if you like.”
“No need.” Slocum lay back and tried to relax. His left side was stiff. He gently explored where he had been shot and found he had been bandaged.
“I patched you up best I could. That was a nasty scratch on your side.”
“I was shot,” he said. “But not good enough to kill me.”
“You are truly a hard man to kill,” she said.
He felt the bed sag as she sat. Her rump pressed into his thigh as she moved back so she wasn’t hanging on the edge of the bed.
“Men have found that out,” he said. And died for the oversight, he silently added. There’d be four more when he got his strength back.
“I got some broth into you. Are you thirsty?”
“I’m all right.” He shivered under the
covers.
“You were running a fever, but that went away a couple hours ago.”
“What time is it?”
“Close to sunrise,” Mirabelle said. “The stableman didn’t know who to tell about you, so he came to the hotel, figuring the clerk might know. He said he’d’ve told somebody named Beefsteak but the saloon was closed.”
“My boss. The owner of the Damned Shame,” Slocum said.
“The two of us, the stableman and me, we got you up here. He gave me some clean bandages, too. I didn’t put any of the horse liniment on since it was so vile smelling.”
Slocum stretched and felt the bruises stiffening. He would have been better off if she had held her nose and applied the stinging liniment, but he said nothing. She had done the best she could, and he was alive.
He was alive and mad as hell.
“I saw a man at the funeral and followed him,” Slocum said. “He ambushed me. Him and three others.”
“Three? But the one you killed . . .”
“Could there have been five men at the massacre?”
“I only saw three, but I wasn’t thinking straight. They might have had others strung out ’round the camp as sentries. Watchin’ their horses? I just don’t know!” Her voice turned shrill, and she came close to hysteria.
“Don’t much matter if these gents were there or not,” Slocum said. He tried to remember every detail about them but getting hit so hard had rattled him and knocked loose a few memories. He remembered dusters and hats and bandannas and not much else. “I might have shot one of them.”
“Kill him?” The vitriol in Mirabelle’s words sharpened his senses.
“Don’t think so.” He shivered.
“You’re real cold. All the blankets in the room are piled on top of you.”
Before he could say anything, the bed sagged again and he felt her stretch out beside him—under the covers. She snuggled closer, her body pressing warmly into his. Somehow, the bruises didn’t seem to bother him quite so much. He moaned when her hand began moving over his muscular belly and then worked lower.
