by Jake Logan
“You don’t mind me saying so, though, it’d be a whole lot safer if that key was not even on the train.”
“But it is, Mr. Slocum.”
“Yes, indeed. It is. And call me John. Am I allowed to see just what the chest contains?”
She shook her head no.
That confirmed little for him, except that it was obviously valuable.
“Then am I allowed to know who you are?”
“Certainly. You had only to ask.”
That’s what I thought I had been doing since I got here, thought Slocum.
“I am Mr. T. Augustus Barr’s daughter, Augusta Barr. And the chest? It goes wherever I go.”
Slocum looked over his shoulder at the chest. “You’ll pardon me, ma’am, for saying so, but that trunk is not only locked tighter than Dick’s hatband, but from the looks of it, it’s also bolted to the floor.”
“You are astute, Mr. Slocum.”
“Don’t know about that, but it does beg a question—”
“If the chest isn’t likely to move from this car anytime soon, am I?”
“That’s about what I’m wondering, yes.” Slocum sipped his coffee and waited for her answer.
“I should think that’s obvious, Mr. Slocum. I’m not leaving this car for the duration of the trip.”
“Well, now, if that chest isn’t leaving this car for the next week or so, and you’re not leaving this car because the trunk’s not leaving the car, and I’ve been hired to make sure that trunk makes it all the way to wherever it is we’re going, then that must mean—”
“Yes. We’ll be spending quite a bit of time together, Mr. Slocum. Which reminds me.” The young woman handed Slocum a different key. “To the doors, front and back, of this car.”
Slocum accepted it with a nod. “Anyone else have one?”
“You, me, and Mr. Ling, my chef and good friend.”
The Chinese chef appeared beside the table as if from thin air, and bowed with his shoulders, his keen eyes fixed on Slocum.
The lean cowboy returned the greeting with a nod, then changed the subject. “That lock mechanism on the chest, it’s not like any I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s because it was made specially by a German lock maker. The lock is the box, and the box is the lock. It’s an integrated unit, if you see what I mean.”
“I think so. Enough to let me know that it’s relatively safe anyway. Unless someone decides to steal it.”
“That might happen, naturally, but it doesn’t mean that the thief could ever open it.”
“Oh”—Slocum leaned back in his chair—“I’m not so sure. In my experience, any box will open up wide…with the right amount of persuasion.”
“We shall see, Mr. Slocum. We shall see.”
He stood and flipped open his pocket watch. “I thank you for the bite, ma’am. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’ll be leaving the station soon, and I’d like to investigate the rest of the train, see that there aren’t any surprises.”
He grabbed his hat from the chair by the stove, where he’d set it when he came in, then he turned to face her. “By the way, ma’am. That fellow who tracked me down and delivered the letter from you father? Mr. Mulford?”
“Yes,” she said, her smooth brow wrinkling. “What of him?”
“Well, that’s what I’m wondering. You hear from him since then?”
“He wired the night he finally found you.”
“But you’ve not heard from him since then?”
“No. Why, has something happened to him?”
Slocum turned his hat in his hands, wondering how much to tell the young lady. Might be a better matter to discuss with her father. Pretty little thing like this, she might not understand the ways of greedy men intent on killing. Nor was she likely to know much that might shed light on who the big dry-gulchers were.
“Mr. Slocum, I can see on your face that you have some information you are withholding. I must inform you that as an employee of The Barr Corporation, you are obliged to share information that is potentially useful or damaging to us. Now, has anything happened to Mr. Mulford?”
“Not that I know of, ma’am. The last I saw of him was when he left the saloon where we’d discussed this matter.” He waved his hat in the direction of the locked chest. “I figured he was staying at what looked to be the best hotel in town. I chose a different one. Before I retired for the evening, I happened to see two men outside the place, looking for all the world like they should have been some other place.”
“That’s your reasoning for suspecting something might have happened to Mr. Mulford?”
“Sounds to me like you’re not just a pretty face.”
“Mr. Slocum, if that’s what you thought, good. For that’s what I intended you to think. But I can assure you, I am much more than the daughter of a wealthy businessman. I am his representative on this journey, and as such, I expect to be accorded the respect and equality and solicitude that he would be granted were he traveling with us.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth, eyed her a moment. “Fair enough. Answer me this: Why would two rather large men in buffalo coats dry-gulch me on my way here?”
“I am sure I don’t know. I would guess that a man in your line of work must have made his fair share of adversaries. Perhaps you can call up in your mind an enemy or two—”
“I can indeed.” He turned to go, then looked back at her. “Did I mention they looked to be twins? And had the darnedest red hair you ever saw.”
If he had pulled a snake out of his coat pocket, she and Mr. Ling couldn’t have looked any more surprised. The high flush of color in the girl’s cheeks evaporated, leaving her face looking cold and blanched. She and Ling exchanged the briefest of glances, then he set to work on clearing the breakfast dishes. Within seconds, she regained her rigid stance and turned her back to him.
“Redheaded? Are…are you sure, Mr. Slocum?”
He waited for her to turn and face him. He wasn’t done reading her face. There was much she wasn’t telling him. “Sure as I can be about such things. It’s not something a man is likely to forget.”
“You said they tried to…”
“Dry-gulch me, yes, ma’am.” He saw the confusion on her face. “It means they tried to kill me. From a distance. With guns.”
Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh my, are you hurt?”
“No, not especially. But I’d say those two big boys have seen better days.”
“Oh?” She leaned forward. “Where are they now?”
“Probably lining the gut of a wolf or two.” He could tell that one went over her head as well. He cleared his throat. “I, ah, did not take kindly to their murderous advances, and sort of disposed of them.”
She nodded, as if it were something expected of her.
“They’re dead, ma’am.”
“Oh, oh, I see.”
Then she smiled. It was a faint one, but he saw it before she hid it. Then her eyes rose in alarm once more. “So you think that they might have hurt Mr. Mulford?”
“It’s just a guess on my part.”
She nodded, but didn’t look at him.
The porter’s voice called out his last call to board and Slocum opened the car’s door. “I’ll be back soon. I have to check on my horse—and the outsides of these fancy cars. Keep this door locked, ma’am.”
“We transported the cargo here just fine before you arrived, Mr. Slocum. I doubt a few minutes more of your absence will matter.”
Slocum’s jaw tightened. He’d just about had enough of this little rich girl. A real beauty or no, he knew he had to state his case plain. “Maybe so, but I’m on your clock now. I was hired to do a job and that makes me the one in charge. You have a problem with that, little lady”—he poked a finger in her direction—“then take it up with your daddy. ’Cause he’s the one who hired me.”
He slammed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock, before descending the stairs and heading up the length of the train al
ong the tracks, mumbling and thinking all the while. What sort of mess have you roped this time, John Slocum? He tried, yet couldn’t come up with an answer that would suit him. But he would have to, and soon.
6
From the looks of it, the Appaloosa was already having a damned sight better time than he was. The horse had a box stall all to himself, a bait of feed the likes of which he’d not seen in a long while, plenty of fresh, if cold, air, an attentive caretaker, and a few other horses that looked like they might hold a conversation should the opportunity present itself. He patted the Appaloosa’s rump. “All right, boy. Mind you don’t get wind of any spirited fillies. You and I both know how that ends up. I’m here to tell you, it’s rarely pretty or worth it.”
He hopped down from the car and breathed in a few deep draughts of crisp air, more unsure with each step on the gravel bed beside the train just what he was doing there. Money, he thought. Money and nothing but. He loped down the tracks to Barr’s fancy rail car and walked along, scrutinizing it from every angle, the green-painted sides gleaming with the day’s first rays of sunlight, the black underneath—no hidden doors, no secret ways in or out, that he could tell.
Just then, the train’s slow, low breathing, as if it were a dragon sleeping, rumbled and coughed into a higher level of wakefulness. He knew the stokers were building up the fire banked in the firebox for the night. It wouldn’t be long before the porter would shout, “All aboard!” and they’d be rolling.
His breath plumed behind him, mixing with the steam and smoke as it drifted down from the increased churning of the engine. He climbed up the steel ladder leading to the top of the car. The roof also appeared clear of anything unusual. Cold as it was, he knew he had to climb up and give it a once-over. His boots clanged off the steel steps, the cold metal singing in the frigid air.
“Got to be warmer ways to make a dollar, Slocum,” he said aloud, wishing he had grown a thick woolly beard for the winter. He stepped gingerly, crouched low, lest he step on a tender spot on the wide, slightly curved surface of the car’s roof. All the low, conical vents, the stovepipe, and square louvered vents appeared normal, nothing a man could fit down. But then again, they were of the size that someone could stick an arm in, drop something lethal down, or in the case of two vents, if ripped apart, they could accommodate a man’s head and perhaps a shoulder. A small person might squeeze through, with luck and a maybe a little butter slicking his sides.
He returned to the ladder. All in all, it seemed this roof was in decent order. He was ready to get back to the warmth of the parlor car. The porters would be yelping for last boarders anytime now, judging from the rousing chuffing sounds of the engine.
As he descended the ladder, his teeth chattering and his nose beginning to drip, his eye caught movement at the far end of the next car up, a passenger car toward the front of the train. Something wide, but it disappeared from sight almost as quickly as he’d seen it.
It was far too cold to investigate what he knew would turn out to be little more than a shadow. He hopped to the track bed just as the porters were leaning out of the ends of the cars, giving a last look-see up and down the track. Slocum sighed and grabbed the steel handrail to swing himself up on the train landing. He caught sight of someone inside the car, two windows up, staring at him. A big someone, possibly in a buffalo coat and with a head full of what very well could be red hair…
No, he thought. Can’t be. It’s the early morning light reflecting off the smudged window glass. Or your frozen mind playing tricks. Nothing more. Still, his hand dallied unbidden atop the butt of his pistol, nested in its cross-draw holster. He leaned beside the door as the engineer, far in the distance, opened up the whistle for a series of shrill blasts that split the dawning day like an egg cracking. Smoke and steam swirled around him, and the sound of cold steel on cold steel peeled the day wide open. Porters shouted up and down the line, and the train began to roll forward.
He toyed with the idea of heading straight into that passenger car, setting his mind at ease immediately. But his thoughts turned to the girl and her chest. If someone on the train wanted to harm her, he’d deal with them soon enough. A man tossed from a moving train was a damn-near dead man, even if he was as big as the buffalo whose skin he wore. Then Slocum smiled at himself—odds were it was his mind playing tricks on him. He was too jumpy by half.
With a last glance at the door behind him, Slocum turned toward the Barrs’ car and the warmth waiting there. He might have left the young Miss Barr in a frosty manner, but her parlor stove would soon make things right. And he could figure out how he was going to protect her, scout the train, and not spend the next week regretting every second of the trip.
He stepped into the outer entryway of the plush coach, rapped twice with his knuckles, then keyed in, saying, “It’s Slocum.”
He closed and locked the door behind him, and as he stepped from the passage kitchen into the parlor car, he came face to face with the business end of a Wesson’s two-shot purse pistol. And the hand that held it trained on him did not shake in the least, even though Miss Barr’s eyes were misted and reddened with the trace of recent crying.
Poised at her side, Mr. Ling, the Chinese chef, had dropped into a light crouch, his loose-fitting white garments barely concealing the tensed muscles of the man. His small hands, Slocum knew from past experience with those who practiced what he’d heard called the “martial arts,” could well be deadly.
“What is all this, then?”
“I’ll take that pistol, Mr. Slocum.”
“Like hell you will. You may have gotten the drop on me, but I’ll be damned and shot, too, before I give up my Navy without a fight.”
For a brief moment, the three eyed each other, and not a sound could be heard but the steady rocking of the train, slowly rolling westward, its gentle swaying motion in contrast to their tensed, rigid forms.
Then Slocum shook his head and sighed. He raised his shoulders as one might stretch after a long nap, hoping for just enough split-second distraction as he palmed his Colt. He skinned it from its cross-draw holster and thumbed back the hammer, all in one easy, practiced motion. At the same time, he drove his boot tip upward toward the unwavering snout of the woman’s pocket pistol.
But something blocked his boot just before he could knock the pistol free of the lady’s grasp. All Slocum saw was a flash of white, heard a brief, soft rustle. Ling had blocked his kick with one quick snap of his own slipper-clad foot, and at the same time attempted to push away Slocum’s pistol.
The girl’s startled gasp caused Ling to glance her way briefly. That was all the distraction Slocum needed—he dove in tight beside the coiled spring of a little man and delivered a hard, sharp punch to the man’s lower gut, an often-crippling blow to most adversaries. But on Ling, it seemed to do nothing but raise his top lip in a sneer.
Well, at least I’ve stirred up some sort of emotion in the man, thought Slocum, steeling himself for a menacing attack from the little Asian dynamo. And it wasn’t long in coming. Slocum had just enough time to see that the girl had lowered the little pistol and backed to the table to watch the blossoming scuffle.
He thought he saw the beginnings of a grim smile on her face before a locomotive bigger than the one pulling the train slammed into his chest, followed by a slicing feeling at his throat, quickly followed by a pink blur snapping at his face. He slammed into a floor-to-ceiling cabinet, rattling whatever was held inside, before recovering enough to see Ling take one step backward and stand beside the young lady, his hands folded before him.
“Triple Tiger,” said the serious little man.
That was the first time Slocum had heard him speak. “Kind of harsh,” he said in a wheezing voice that didn’t sound like his own, not knowing where to rub first, his chest, throat, or mouth.
“You hit first,” said Ling.
“Always try to.”
“I hit last.”
Slocum nodded, slid his Colt into its cross-draw hols
ter. “Sound plan. I’ll keep it in mind.” He shifted his gaze to the smirking young woman. “You wanna tell me what this is all about? I’d beat it out of you, but something tells me I’d have to pack my dinner, ’cause it might take me all day.” He glanced at Ling.
The Chinaman’s steady, serious gaze never wavered from Slocum’s face.
Miss Barr set the small pistol on the table behind her and nodded to Ling, who returned the nod, and slipped out of the room, carrying away with him yet another silver tray with a recently opened letter on it. “After you left to ‘check on your horse,’ a porter slipped a telegram through the mail slot to the right of the door. It had been received at the station just prior to our departure. Any idea what it might say, Mr. Slocum?”
He dragged the back of his hand across his bleeding mouth, licked the blood from his lips. “Judging from your sudden change in attitude toward me, I’d guess someone told you something about me that you find isn’t to your liking. About like that?”
“Somewhat, Mr. Slocum. It said that Mr. Clarence Mulford was found dead. Murdered in his hotel room in Pearlton, on the very day you were seen to leave that town.”
He straightened. “I suspected as much. And if you recall, I tried to tell you so.”
“Yes, Mr. Slocum, and it was very clever of you to do so, in your weak attempt to deflect the blame from yourself.”
“I’m not sure you believe that, Miss Barr.”
“How do you figure that, Mr. Slocum?”
“Call it intuition, call it a sixth sense. Hell, call it anything you’d like, but I saw how flustered you got when I mentioned those redheaded fellas.” He scrutinized her face as he said it, and sure enough, her left eye twitched. “There, just like that. I’m the one should be throwing down on you, demanding to know just what I’ve gotten myself into. But I reckon there’s time enough for all that.”
“Should you decide to leave my employ, I’ll understand. I would consider the amount you were advanced to be yours, no questions asked.”
“That’s mighty generous of you, Miss Barr, but hardly a possibility. I committed to seeing this job through, so we’re stuck with each other ’til the end of the line.”
