SLATER’S WAY
“Hey, boy! What the hell do you think you’re doin’?”
He turned to find Arlen Tucker walking up behind him. Tucker, a blacksmith and a prominent member of the vigilance committee, was no doubt instrumental in the hanging of Jace’s father. “I’m takin’ my pa for buryin’,” Jace answered.
“The hell you are,” Tucker said. “Nobody told you you could cut that murderer down. Now you can help me haul him back up that pole. I oughta give you a good whippin’ for pullin’ a stunt like that.”
Jace gave no thought to his response to Tucker’s threat. Tucker was just beside his father’s horse, and his face was no more than a foot from the butt of the Henry rifle riding in the saddle sling. Following his natural instincts, Jace pulled the weapon from the scabbard, cocking it as he brought it to bear on the surprised blacksmith.
“I wouldn’t advise you to try it,” Jace said. “You look like a pretty stout feller, so I reckon you oughta be able to lift my pa up across that saddle.”
“The hell I will,” Tucker responded. “Boy, you’d better put that rifle down! If I have to take it away from you, I’m gonna break it across your backside.” He threatened, but he made no move toward the determined boy.
“I reckon you could try,” Jace said calmly, “if you think it’s worth gettin’ shot over.”
SIGNET
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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
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Copyright © Charles G. West, 2015
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REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
ISBN 978-0-698-17644-7
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Excerpt from WRATH OF THE SAVAGE
For Ronda
Chapter 1
It was altogether fitting on this spring day in 1864 that the muddy streets of Virginia City were awash with a flood of water from a violent thunderstorm.
Nothing good can come of a day as dreary as this, Leona Engels thought.
The heavy dark clouds hovering over Alder Gulch erupted again late in the afternoon and threatened to continue their assault of thunder and lightning into the evening. The disagreeable weather had not been sufficient to keep John Slater Engels and his longtime friend and partner, Henry Weed, from their usual visit to the Miners Saloon. It was a ritual that John’s wife loathed, since the little bit of pay dirt her husband and Henry were able to pull from their claim in Daylight Gulch went straight into Gil Mobley’s pockets at his saloon, but she was too fearful to complain about it.
As darkness began to gather in the gulch, Leona became more concerned, for it was well past time when the two men usually came home for supper. She walked to the door of the rough cabin once again to peer out into the rain. There was still no sign of her husband and his partner. Finally she turned and called to her fifteen-year-old son, “Jace, come here, boy.”
John Slater Engels Jr. was originally called J.S. by his parents, but in a short time the initials evolved into the nickname of Jace, since the sounds were not that far apart. The boy carefully put the shotgun he had been cleaning aside and came from the kitchen.
“Ma’am?” he replied.
“I’m startin’ to worry about your pa,” Leona said. “Him and Henry are usually through with their drinkin’ and card playin’ by now. I want you to go down to Virginia City and tell them I’m gonna throw their supper out the door if they don’t get theirselves home.”
“Yes’um,” the stoic young boy replied.
With no sign of emotion, he turned and went to the front corner of the cabin, where he slept on a bedroll, and picked up his hat. It was not the first time he had been sent to find his father and his hard-drinking friend, and it was a chore that he didn’t much care for. It would be a year this month since they had come to the gulch in search of gold. And so far, it seemed the main thing his father had accomplished was to garner a reputation for himself as a drunk and a brawler.
There wasn’t much law enforcement in most parts of Alder Gulch. Outlaws and hell-raisers were ultimately dealt with by the vigilance committee, and Jace felt sure they were keeping an eye on Weed and his father. He was disappointed that his father lacked the backbone to resist the temptations of the lawless crowd. The family had fled Kansas after his father and Weed were identified by witnesses as the men involved in a bank holdup. That holdup had been Weed’s idea, and he had talked Jace’s father into it. It seemed as though every scrape his father found himself in could be traced back to some illegal scheme that Henry Weed had come up with. Mostly Jace was ashamed for his mother, and the abuse she sometimes suffered when his drunken father came home after a night of gambling and dallying with the fancy ladies at the saloon.
On this day, the rain had started in the morning and his father had said it was too wet to work their claim. But he and Weed decided it was not too wet to ride over to Alder Gulch for a drink of whiskey and maybe a hand or two of poker. When Jace had asked how the rain could hurt the gold they were looking for in the water, he received a backhand for his sarcasm. And then off they went, riding to Alder Gulch in the rain after a casual promise to be back by suppertime.
With his hat pulled low to help shield him from the rain, Jace plodded along the trail that led to Virginia City. His coat was soon soaked through, but he ignored the discomfort, concentrating more on what he would say to convince his father to come home.
When he reached the point where the trail ended at the main street that traced the length of Alder Gulch, he was immediately aware of an event going on beside the Miners Saloon. A sizable crowd had gathered to stand in the rain, ignoring the occasional flash of lightning and rumble of thunder. And when he came closer, he realized they were there to witness a hanging. As curious as anyone, he edged up through the noisy circle of spectators to see for himself. There was no tree next to the saloon, but it was not the first hanging that had taken place there. One single pole served as a gallows. Approximately fifteen feet tall, the pole had been notched near the top so that a rope could be tied and secured to support the unfortunate victim as he dangled at the noose end of the rope. With his
hands tied behind his back and his feet bound together, the victim hung motionless, his head cocked to the side by the heavy noose around his neck. In the darkness, it was hard to see the man’s face, but from the excited conversation he overheard around him, he learned that the man had been hanged because he killed a fellow he had argued with in the saloon.
Since he didn’t see him in the crowd of spectators, Jace decided he’d best look for his father instead of gawking at a dead man. So he had started to turn away and head for the saloon when he was startled by a sudden bright flash, followed almost immediately by a loud clap of thunder. In those few seconds, he was stunned to see the grotesque features of his father’s face, in the flash of lightning.
“That’s the good Lord saying thank you for riddin’ this world of troublemakers like John Engels,” he heard someone say. It was followed by a hardy chuckle from someone else.
Jace felt his body go numb, and his legs threatened to deny him support as he pushed blindly through the crowd of men standing around the pole. Confused and horrified by the terrible scene he had just witnessed, he didn’t know what to do. After making his way through the mob, he leaned against the wall of the saloon until he could think clearly once again. His father was dead, and that was the only thing he knew for sure.
Weed, he thought then. Where is Henry Weed?
He decided he should find him, so he left the side of the building and started searching through the crowd again. But Weed was nowhere to be found, so he went inside the saloon to look for him there, but to no avail. He was left with no choice but to return home as fast as he could to take the terrible news to his mother.
* * *
Running almost all of the two miles back to the camp, Jace was surprised to find Weed’s and his father’s horse standing beside the cabin. Weed had evidently started for home shortly before the boy arrived at the scene of the hanging, and had somehow circled back on the trail Jace had walked. Perhaps Jace would have seen him if he had not been walking with his head down in the driving rain.
So Ma already knows about Pa, he thought as he opened the door.
He walked into the cabin to find his mother sobbing in Henry Weed’s arms. When she heard Jace come in, she turned and beckoned to him. He went at once to comfort her. She put her arm around him and pulled him close to Weed and herself.
“Oh, Jace,” she wailed. “Did you see your pa?” When he answered yes, she sobbed again. “You poor boy,” she cried. “I’m so sorry you had to see him like that, hung on a post.”
“There warn’t nothin’ I could do to help him,” Henry Weed said. “He got into a tussle with some feller we was playin’ cards with, and before I knowed it, they was goin’ at each other with their guns. John was faster’n that feller, and shot him through the chest before he ever cleared the table with his six-shooter. Then a bunch of fellers that had been standin’ at the bar, drinkin’, took your pa down before he could get off another shot. They said they was on the vigilance committee, and they was fixin’ to put a stop to all the lawlessness in town. I got back here as fast as I could. You don’t have to worry, I’m gonna take care of your ma.”
“I reckon I can take care of my ma,” Jace said.
“Why, sure you can,” Weed said, “but I expect I’d best be the one to take care of both of you.”
Leona stopped crying then. “Henry’s right, Jace. He’s offered to stay with us and take care of us now that your pa’s gone. We’ll talk some more about it later on tonight.”
“What about Pa?” Jace wanted to know. “We’ve got to go get him down from that pole and bury him proper.” He looked at Weed, waiting for his answer.
“I don’t know if we can do that,” Leona said.
“Why not?” Jace asked.
Weed answered for her. “They ain’t likely to let us take John down from there for a while yet. They’ll most likely want him to hang there to let other folks know what happens to troublemakers in Virginia City.”
Jace couldn’t believe the indifference on the part of his father’s wife and his supposed best friend. “How can you just not care what happens to Pa’s body?” he charged. He turned to look into his mother’s eyes. “We’ve got to take care of Pa.”
“We can’t,” Leona said. “It’s best to just do what we can to carry on now without him. I knew it was gonna come to this. It was just a matter of time.”
“The hell we will!” Jace exclaimed.
“Now, don’t be gettin’ yourself riled up about this,” Weed said. “It’s over and done with. Your pa’s gone, and I reckon it was bound to happen—the way things were goin’ and all.”
Jace made no response other than the angry glare he cast in Weed’s direction. His pa wouldn’t be dead if he had never crossed paths with Henry Weed. After a moment, Jace shifted an accusing gaze at his mother, who was no longer crying, but stood wringing her hands in apparent distress. It infuriated the boy that Henry Weed was acting as if John Engels was the wild, hard-drinking troublemaker, and he was no more than an innocent bystander.
Some friend, he thought, glaring at Weed again.
He made up his mind then that he was going to cut his father down from that pole, no matter what his mother or Weed said. He had never had a particularly close relationship with his father, but he was his father, and he didn’t intend to leave him hanging as an amusement for the miners in Virginia City.
“I’ll put the horses away,” he volunteered, and headed for the door.
“That’s a good idea,” Weed said. “There’re some things I wanna talk to your mama about while you’re doin’ that.”
Outside the cabin, Jace paused to study the nighttime sky. The rain had slackened considerably as the thunderstorm moved across the gulch, though the clouds were as dark and thick as before. He led the two horses behind the cabin to the simple shelter that served as a stable for them and the two mules. Having already decided what he was going to do, he left the saddles on the horses, then tied a shovel to the saddle on Weed’s horse. Next, he checked the Henry rifle riding in the sling on his father’s saddle to make sure it was still there and had not suffered any from the rain. Satisfied that Weed would not likely take the trouble to check on the horses, he returned to the cabin.
When he walked in the door, he found the two of them standing before the fireplace, facing the door as if waiting for him. “We need to tell you somethin’,” Weed said. “We decided that the way things are, the best thing is for me and your mama to live together as man and wife.”
Jace recoiled sharply. Seeing his reaction, his mother tried to soften the shock. “Henry has been kind enough to offer to take care of us, now that your father’s gone. I know it’s kind of sudden, but I think John would approve of it. He and Henry were such close friends.”
Unable to speak for a moment while his brain spun wildly, Jace finally blurted, “Pa ain’t even in the ground yet! It didn’t take you long to jump into the bed together!”
“Jace!” Leona scolded. “You watch your mouth! It ain’t like that at all.”
“Your mama’s right,” Weed said. “It’s just the best thing to do. I’ve always had a fondness for your mama, and I intend to make it right when we can stand up before a preacher. We’ll make a new start. Me and John had been talkin’ about movin’ on anyway. We ain’t found much of anythin’ in the sluice box for a while now, so I think it’s best to leave our claim and head up to Helena. There’s a new strike at Last Chance Gulch and we can make a fresh start there—might have a little better luck. There ain’t no reason me and you can’t get along, as long as you mind your ma and me. Whaddaya say?”
“Sounds to me like it don’t make no difference what I think,” Jace replied. “You and Ma have already decided what you’re gonna do.”
Tired of trying to solicit the boy’s cooperation, Weed smirked and said, “That’s about the size of it, boy, so you might as well get used
to it.”
Anxious to avoid a conflict between Weed and her son, Leona spoke up then. “Let’s sit down and eat the supper getting cold on the table. No matter what’s happened, we need to eat.”
Jace still found it hard to believe his mother’s apparent acceptance of his father’s death and her immediate acceptance of Weed’s proposal—not much different from changing one horse to ride another when the first one gets tired. But he said nothing more. He sat down at the table with them and ate the supper she had cooked. When he was finished, he excused himself to make a final check on the livestock before going to his bedroll in the front corner of the cabin. “We’ll start a new day in the morning,” his mother said to him as he pulled the quilt that served as his bedroom wall across his little corner.
“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled.
He lay there on the thin pallet for what seemed hours, listening to the whispered conversation between his mother and Henry Weed. Finally the talking stopped. Even then he continued to lie there until he felt certain they were both asleep. As quietly as he could, he pulled the edge of the quilt back far enough to peek into the main room. Weed was sprawled on the pallet he had been using before, snoring lustily, the alcohol he had apparently consumed earlier finally rendering him unconscious. Jace slipped outside the quilt and paused to watch the sleeping man. There was no sound from the bedroom.
At least he ain’t already jumped in bed with my mother, he thought, and tiptoed to the door.
Outside, he went quickly to the stable and led the horses out, walking them up the path until certain he was away from the cabin without anyone aware of his departure. Stepping up into the saddle then, he headed back to Virginia City, his father’s cartridge belt around his waist, and his Henry rifle riding in the saddle sling.
The storm had spent its energy and moved on, leaving a dark and damp night. He had no watch to tell the time, but he knew the hour was late when he reached the ridge overlooking the gulch and the lusty town that never slept.
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