by Jake Logan
“What description?” Slocum asked. He got a pistol barrel laid up alongside his head. He felt all the strength go out of his legs as he collapsed to his knees. The world spun in crazy circles, and pain filled his head.
“Don’t go doin’ that, George,” Sheriff Bernard snapped. “He done surrendered. It’s up to us to keep him that way until the trial.”
“You reckon he’s got a price on his head? Other than for the robbery?”
Slocum didn’t know which of the deputies asked the question. He went cold inside.
“My horse died. I was just going to—”
“Get him in irons,” the sheriff said. “And if he keeps yammering like that, gag him.”
Slocum felt cold metal cuffs snapped around his wrists. He was yanked to his feet and shoved along to the road. A rope was looped around the chains holding his wrists together. The ends were fastened around a deputy’s saddle horn, then they all turned their horses’ faces and started back north toward San Francisco.
If the drunk identified him as the one who stole his horse and buggy, Slocum knew they might just string him up. Stories of vigilance committees were rife in San Francisco. But the sheriff seemed one of the rarities, a peace officer who actually enforced the law and didn’t permit his prisoners to be mistreated. Or at least Slocum hoped that was true of Sheriff Bernard.
To his surprise, they didn’t follow the main road back into San Francisco but took one angling off west toward the ocean. Slocum heaved a sigh of relief at this. The longer he stayed away from where the prison guards might hunt—in San Francisco, most likely—the better his chances of getting away. Whatever the posse thought he had done, he could alibi his way out. After all, he had been in the area only a few hours. Conchita would sweet-talk them.
Or would she? They hadn’t parted on the best of terms, and he had no idea what her brother and father had been up to. They had hightailed it from the house in a big hurry once José had returned.
Slocum slogged along, keeping up the pace the best he could. If he flagged, he suspected he would be dragged along and wasn’t sure Bernard would much care about that. The sheriff and two deputies rode some distance ahead, chattering like magpies.
Footsore and about ready to collapse after making it through a low pass and to a level spot where he could see the Pacific Ocean, Slocum considered trying to engage the deputy so intent on keeping him moving in some conversation. The more he found out, the more improved were his chances of getting away.
It would be better if he could talk his way out of whatever the sheriff thought he had done.
“What town’s that? Down on the coast?”
“Miramar,” the deputy answered before he realized he wasn’t supposed to talk to the prisoner. “Shut up. No yammering.”
“Whatever you think I did, I didn’t. Never been to Miramar. Didn’t even know the name.” Slocum slipped and slid down the steep road, pebbles causing him to stumble repeatedly.
“Shut up.”
Slocum found it almost impossible to talk and keep up when the rider put his heels to his horse’s flanks and picked up the pace. By the time they arrived at the tiny jail on the outskirts of town, Slocum was half past dead.
“Inside,” the deputy ordered. He jerked hard on the rope, and Slocum fell facedown in the dirt.
“None of that, Jess,” the sheriff warned. “We want him presentable when he goes up in front of the judge.”
“Damned stinkin’ bank robber.”
“Bank robber?” Slocum looked up in wonder. “I haven’t robbed any bank. Why do you think I have?”
“Witness. She saw you galloping like the wind, carrying the canvas bank bag filled with the gold coins.”
“She?” Slocum knew who this witness was.
“On the road not a couple miles from where we nabbed you. Right pretty young thing, she was.”
“If I was riding, where’s the horse? Where’s the money?”
“Now, those are matters we’re going to determine,” Bernard said. “Get him inside, boys.”
Strong hands dragged Slocum into the jail, his toes dragging in the dirt. They threw him into one of two cells before removing the shackles on his wrists. He rubbed where the iron had chafed the skin raw and bloody. He hardly winced when the sheriff slammed the cell door with a loud clang and turned the key in the lock.
“Find the money,” Bernard ordered his posse. “He musta hid it somewhere along the road. It wasn’t more ’n a mile or two between where we caught him and the spot where the girl saw him.”
“She was a real looker, even if she was a Mexican,” said a deputy.
“Git your worthless asses out there and find the money. Hez Galworthy’ll have a conniption fit if you don’t.”
“Think he’ll give us a reward if we find the money?”
“Hez is like most bankers. Tighter ’n a snake’s asshole when it comes to money, but he just might. Now git!”
The deputies left. The sheriff heaved a sigh and sank down behind his desk. It had been positioned so he could stare into the cells, leaving his back to the doorway.
“Tell me about the robbery,” Slocum said. “How many men robbed Galworthy?”
“You know, it might just be that something different ’n I thought happened out there on the road. There were two of you. Might be you had a falling-out. Your partner take the money and your horse? You might as well come clean, especially if he double-crossed you. What do you owe him anyway?”
Slocum considered his options. He might confess to being a bank robber just to implicate José Valenzuela. He had no doubt at all that José had been the robber, and that his sister had been the one who had put the posse on Slocum’s tail. But if he did that, he might get revenge on Valenzuela but would also end up in jail for years.
The memory of San Quentin caused him to set his jaw in determination not to return there as a prisoner. He owed Valenzuela. He would deliver justice himself—at the muzzle of his six-shooter.
“We got witnesses enough to know your partner’s some old geezer.”
Slocum’s mouth fell open. He snapped it shut and tried to put on a poker face. He wasn’t sure how well he succeeded since the sheriff watched him like a hawk. Barely had José Valenzuela returned when he and his pa had ridden out to rob the Miramar bank. The elder Valenzuela hadn’t been near death at all. Conchita had duped him into believing her pa was dying, but all she wanted was for the old man and José to get back to what was likely their profession: robbing banks.
“You have other robberies done by the same two men?” Slocum asked.
“I haven’t looked, but that’s a mighty good idea. I might convict you of more ’n one in the area. Of course, the money from them’s likely to be gone, isn’t it? Otherwise, why would you be so brazen about committing a daylight robbery?”
“Anyone shot?”
“Now, you know the answer to that. Lot of lead flyin’’round but nobody was hit. Scared the hell out of old Hez. Probably the most excited he’s been in years.” Bernard laughed and shook his head. “You’d have to see his wife to appreciate that. I swear, she’s uglier than a mud fence.”
Bernard kept shaking his head and chuckling as he opened a drawer in his desk, took out a stack of wanted posters, and began leafing through them. Slocum considered distracting the sheriff but knew that wouldn’t work. Aching from so much walking, he dropped back on the cot and stretched out, staring at the ceiling. Bits of concrete had come loose, exposing iron bars. Some were rusty, but it would take hours to scrape through them, and he knew Bernard would never allow that much work.
Slocum closed his eyes intending to only rest for a moment, he came awake with a start when he heard a loud argument getting more intense. He sat up and saw a blue-uniformed back between him and the sheriff. His heart almost exploded when the man turned slightly to expose sergeant’s stripes.
“He’s mine. He’s an escaped prisoner by the name of Jasper Jarvis.”
“Now that may be, Sergeant
Wilkinson, but he’s my prisoner right now. You can have him after the trial. I got him fair and square for bank robbery.”
“He’s a prisoner what belongs in San Quentin since that’s where he was when he busted out.”
“Do tell,” Sheriff Bernard said dryly.
“You don’t believe me. I don’t like any man callin’ me a damn liar.”
“Never said you were lying, Sergeant. Just saying he’s staying put until he stands trial. That might add on years to his sentence. What was he in for? You called him Jarvis?”
“He’ll be in for five more escapin’ the way he did. Him’n three others. We caught one of them right away. The other got away, prob’ly with Jarvis.”
“Mighty interesting and irrelevant,” Bernard said, his voice hardening. “He’s my prisoner right now.”
Slocum had never wanted to be in a county lockup as badly as he did now. If Wilkinson prevailed, he would not only be back in San Quentin, he’d be in the hole again. The dark. The cold. The isolation.
“I can git me a San Francisco judge to issue the order,” Wilkinson said.
“Be my guest. That’ll take you a few days, if you can sober one up that fast to scribble his name. By then we’ll have this varmint indicted and on the docket to stand trial. The local justice of the peace is a man devoted to his community. That means he knows robbing the Miramar bank takes precedence over returning him to San Quentin.”
Wilkinson pounded both quart-jar-sized fists on the sheriff’s desk so hard the desk jumped off the floor to crash back down.
“You ain’t listenin’ to me, Sheriff.”
“Can’t help but listen, you talking so loud. Why don’t you get on out of here and find that other prisoner you lost? This here Jasper Jarvis isn’t going anywhere.”
For a moment Slocum thought Wilkinson was going to hit the sheriff, then he saw how Bernard sat at his desk. If the prison guard had moved a muscle and tried to touch the lawman, he would have gotten a bullet to the belly. The sergeant grunted and left, growling like a grizzly as he went. Only then did Bernard stick his six-gun back into its holster.
“You know some mighty unpleasant people, Jarvis.”
“Name’s not Jarvis,” Slocum said.
“Doesn’t matter. Sergeant Wilkinson there thinks it is.”
“He’s wrong. And you’re wrong about me robbing that bank.”
“That’s the beauty of the law. I don’t have to be right. If a jury convicts you, it doesn’t matter what I think. I might be wrong about you and Hez’s bank. Won’t be the first time I made a mistake, if I am. But I don’t think so. There was no reason for that pretty girl to put me on your trail the way she did unless she saw what she said she did.”
“Might be she was in on the bank robbery,” Slocum said, testing the water with the truth.
“She wasn’t the man who did the actual robbery and she sure as hell wasn’t the old man waiting with the horses to make the getaway. I know a hawk from a handsaw, and I know a curvy señorita from a man all crippled up with arthritis.” Bernard laughed. “I’m getting a better class of liars these days. You, at least, can make me laugh when you proclaim your innocence. Most of ’em I throw in that cell don’t even try to alibi themselves.”
Slocum knew when to give up. He was digging his own grave and had to find another way out of this jail. If it came down to a trial, he might get away from the bank robbery charges but would never convince the authorities that Sergeant Wilkinson shouldn’t be given back an escaped prisoner.
He slowly studied the bars, the floor, the walls, everything in the cell without finding a possible way out. The iron had rusted but would require too much noisy work to break through. That left the lock since he saw no way to pry off the hinge pins on the cell door.
Slocum felt a growing anger at himself for getting into this predicament. He should never have agreed to such a cockamamie idea as breaking José Valenzuela out of San Quentin, much less letting Conchita dupe him so thoroughly.
“Dying pa,” he snorted.
“What’s that?” Sheriff Bernard looked up from the book he was reading.
“Nothing,” Slocum said. “Just thinking out loud.”
“Not speaking to you.” The sheriff turned his book upside down on the desk to mark his place and reached for his six-shooter. The door slammed open and caught Bernard’s arm, knocking him off balance. The six-gun went skittering off the desk and hit the floor. The hammer crashed down on a cartridge and sent a slug ricocheting around the small jailhouse.
Slocum was on his feet, hanging on to the bars. A masked man surged in and slugged the sheriff. Bernard collapsed across his desk. It took a few seconds for the masked man to find the keys to the cell, but Slocum wasn’t cheering him on.
“You don’t think much of letting the law take its course, do you, Wilkinson?” Slocum asked. The San Quentin guard pulled down the mask and sneered.
“I think it ought to, which is why I’m takin’ you straight on back where you belong, Jarvis. This hick sheriff ain’t gonna prevent justice from happenin’. You might just waltz on out of his courtroom, and they would never bother tellin’ me.”
Slocum backed up when Wilkinson motioned him away from the cell door with his six-shooter. He waited for the opening that might come when the guard got the key in the lock. There would be an instant when Wilkinson would be distracted. And there was.
The prison guard looked down when the key refused to turn easily. The lock finally snapped open with a metallic clang. Slocum launched himself at the same instant, hitting the door with his shoulder and driving it back into Wilkinson. The pistol went off. Slocum felt its hot breath across his cheek but ignored the sting. He lashed out with his fist and caught Wilkinson on the side of the head, further driving him away. Losing his own balance, Slocum fell atop the guard. His knee crushed down into the man’s belly.
“Jailbreak!”
The cry startled Slocum. Sheriff Bernard had come to and fumbled in his desk drawer for another gun. Slocum rolled, came to his knees, and slammed his palm hard against the desk drawer, smashing the sheriff’s hand. Bernard cried out, this time in pain.
A quick yank opened the drawer. Slocum grabbed his Colt Navy and stumbled to his feet. On his way out he pulled his gun belt from a peg and tumbled out into the warm California night. The lack of moon hid him within a few yards. He ducked down low, darted for cover, and worked to strap on his gun belt as he ran.
Behind him in the jailhouse came several gunshots. Wilkinson and Bernard were shooting at each other. Slocum hoped both lawmen were good shots.
He plunged into the sultry night, wanting as much distance between himself and the Miramar jail as possible.
7
Slocum settled down to catch his breath. He needed a horse if he wanted to get the hell out of the clutches of two different lawmen. At least he considered the San Quentin guard as a lawman. Wilkinson obviously had the authority to take an escaped prisoner back to the prison without going through the court.
Thoughts of San Quentin made Slocum simmer and almost come to a boil. How Conchita had duped him! All she wanted was her brother’s release so he and their father could go on a bank-robbing spree. He had thought he might actually love her, but her words had been lies even as her body spoke to his. Slocum tried not to get involved like that. Thinking always worked better for him in the long run than responding emotionally, but Conchita had been different. He thought she had been different.
He sat up a little straighter when he heard the steady clop-clop of a horse’s hooves against the dry ground. At this time of night it wasn’t likely to be a traveler. He dived off the main road, and this part of the countryside showed no sign of cultivation or mining. Nobody homesteaded here so the only rider was likely to be Wilkinson or Sheriff Bernard.
He slid his six-shooter from his holster, glad that he had grabbed it from the sheriff’s drawer. Fighting either of the lawmen with his bare hands wouldn’t have kept him from jail.
&
nbsp; Poking his head up, Slocum chanced a look toward the road and saw the dark silhouette of a big man astride a horse. From the movement in the darkness, he knew the rider was tracking him. It was damned near impossible without a light, but the sudden flare of a lucifer so the rider could see the ground and Slocum’s track also revealed Wilkinson’s ugly face.
Slocum leveled his six-gun and sighted in. He considered simply shooting the prison sergeant but didn’t squeeze down on the trigger, fearing Wilkinson might have brought the sheriff along with him. The gunfire as he escaped the Miramar jailhouse made it unlikely the two had thrown in together, but Slocum couldn’t tell. He didn’t want a murder rap added to all the rest of the charges against him.
A rueful smile curled his lips. If he killed Wilkinson, that would be the only crime for which he’d be truly responsible. The rest were trumped up or lies concocted to get him into San Quentin. He wasn’t Jasper Jarvis, and he sure as hell hadn’t robbed a bank. Not in these parts, and not recently.
For a moment, this got him thinking in different directions. If the Valenzuelas had the bank money, robbing them would be easier than stealing from the bank itself. He deserved something for all they had done to him. Then he realized Conchita’s lies had stung him worst of all. He didn’t like being played for a fool.
Wilkinson’s horse neighed and drew Slocum’s attention back to the prison guard. The bulky man bent low, still in the saddle, and lit a second match. Whatever he saw pleased him because he snuffed out the match quickly and sat straight in the saddle. Again Slocum considered pulling the trigger, but in the dark the shot was difficult. The range worried him, too. If he had a rifle, he might have attempted shooting the horse out from under Wilkinson.
The guard rode straight for where Slocum hid.
From the way Wilkinson advanced, he didn’t know how close he was to his quarry. This settled the matter for Slocum. He twisted about, crouched down behind the log where he had taken his respite, then waited. The horse passed close to him, snorting and trying to turn at the smell of the man Wilkinson hunted.
