Slocum and the Yellowback Trail

by Jake Logan

  “How the hell did you see that?” Slocum asked as he picked the paper up and brought it closer.

  “I’m a businessman, John. If there’s anything we need to be aware of, it’s fine print.”

  “So what’s this fine print got to do with a notice bad-mouthing me to anybody who can see it?”

  “It’s the mark left by the man who printed this. Only reason I recognize it is because he does great work and for a lot less than the printers in Chicago. Come to think of it, I don’t even know if there are printers here. I suppose there must be, but . . .” Seeing the impatience building behind Slocum’s eyes, Terrance continued, “His name is Ian Carroll. Last I checked, he owned a shop in Braverly.”

  “And you think he’s the one who printed this notice?”

  Terrance spread the paper out on the bar so he could run his finger along the print at the bottom. “See this here? That’s the printer’s mark. I used Ian’s services for all of my advertisements during the Stamper’s grand opening and again for a few poker tournaments. It’s very important for each printer to sign his work, so to speak. Now that I take a closer look at this, it sure looks like his. See the quality around the edges of the picture?”

  Not too eager to look at that picture again, Slocum asked, “What if it’s not him? Do you think your printer will be able to figure out whose work this is?”

  “Oh, most definitely! Ian’s one of the best. If he didn’t do this piece himself, he’ll know who did. He may have even taught the person everything he knows about the craft. It’s not like anyone who buys the equipment can just start cranking out good work like this.”

  “What kind of records would a printer keep?” Slocum asked before Terrance got too far off on this tangent.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Figuring out who made this piece of trash is one thing,” Slocum said while slapping his palm against the rumpled paper. “What I really need to know is who hired him for the job.”

  Terrance was in his element. The longer he talked about anything related to his business dealings, the straighter he stood. Finally, he grasped one of his lapels like a mayor addressing his constituents. “He should keep records of who commissioned his services, although I couldn’t say for certain how willing he’d be to share that information with a stranger.”

  “He’ll do it when he’s properly motivated,” Slocum growled.

  That took a bit of the wind from his sails. “Sure,” Terrance said as he snuck a quick look at the Colt Navy hanging at Slocum’s side. “I suppose you could go about it that way.”

  “What else would you suggest?”

  “Approach him like a businessman, of course. In fact, I’ll vouch for you. We’ve done enough business in the past that Ian should respect my word on a matter such as this. At least, it could help grease the wheels enough so you won’t have to take more drastic measures with a good man like him.”

  Slocum didn’t truly have any intention of riding to a printer’s shop just to threaten some poor man with ink on his fingers. Of course, if that notion was enough to get a bit of extra help from Terrance, he was willing to let it ride. “Where’s Braverly?”

  “Only about two days’ ride south of here,” Terrance replied. “If you get an early start and ride fast enough, you could make it in about a day and a half. But I’m judging it on when I rode it, which was with a cart, so that could have skewed my estimate somewhat.”

  “You’re awful talkative today, aren’t you?”

  “Just anxious, I suppose. You don’t know what a relief it is to not see Bo behind that wheel of his. And since he’s dead without anyone laying claim to his spot, that wheel’s mine now. I could stand to make a real good profit.”

  “Perfect,” Slocum said. “What’s my percentage?”

  A good portion of the eagerness as well as some of the color drained from Terrance’s face. He let out a short laugh and patted Slocum’s shoulder. “Almost got me there.”

  “Don’t you think it’s fair for me to get a percentage of one table after the risk I took? You wouldn’t even have that table all to yourself if it wasn’t for me.”

  “I . . . suppose.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll settle for a good horse and some gear for the ride to Braverly.”

  “A good horse is worth a pretty penny.”

  “How much is it worth to you for me to swing by here again and make my presence known to discourage any other gunmen looking to fill Bo’s spot?” Spotting a hint of concern in the other man’s eyes, Slocum added, “You’re the one who told me about the dangers of leaving yourself open to enterprising gunmen like . . . well . . . like those men over there by Bo’s table.”

  Terrance turned so quickly that he almost made a spark with his boots scraping against the floor. The theater wasn’t full by any means, but there were several men in the place. Most of them were playing cards at their own tables and a few were talking to the girls working the main floor. Two, however, were idly circling the table where Bo’s roulette wheel sat under a white tarp. They talked among themselves and nodded, but were too far away for Terrance to hear them.

  “I can frighten them off before I leave,” Slocum said, “but after I leave . . .”

  “When you stop by again, stay for a week or so and you’ve got a deal.”

  Odds were that those men at the roulette table were simply talking about Bo’s messy departure from the theater. Before Terrance saw past his nervousness to realize that, Slocum extended a hand and said, “You’ve got a deal.”

  8

  BRAVERLY, ILLINOIS TWO DAYS LATER

  The ride from Chicago had taken even less time than Terrance had promised. The horse Terrance had given him wasn’t the finest in his small collection, but it was strong and young enough to have plenty of spirit in him. It was a fine animal with a tan coat and dark patches along his left side. As soon as it had put Chicago behind it, the horse had been reluctant to slow down. Slocum arrived in the little town too late to get a hot supper, but just in time to rent a room before the owner of the town’s only hotel stopped answering his door.

  Early the next morning, Slocum got started with a breakfast of watery eggs and burned toast. The food was just something to fill his belly, and he washed it down with enough coffee to do the trick. Unable to get any good information from anyone at the hotel, Slocum struck out on his own to explore Braverly. It didn’t take long.

  The town was arranged to look larger than it truly was. Whether this had been done on purpose or not, Slocum couldn’t say. What he did know was that the sharply winding streets made it difficult to see from one end to another. Carts had to be driven at a snail’s pace to navigate the turns, which slowed things down even more for the few folks who needed to use the streets. Because Slocum had put his horse up in a stable, he could cut across those streets, duck into alleys, and even cut through a general store to cover more ground. All that running gave him some exercise, but not a lot of results. In the end, he found the printer’s shop he’d been seeking purely by accident.

  It was a large structure that had the look of an old barn, on the outskirts of town. A sign hanging above the two large main doors bore Ian Carroll’s name. The doors, however, were boarded up. Slocum quickly spotted a regular-sized door that had been sawed into the wall near the corner of the building. It was propped open, by a bucket filled with broken printing tiles of all sizes, to let the stench of ink, grease, and wood pulp drift outside.

  Slocum knocked on the door and stuck his nose inside. “Hello? Anyone here?”

  “Yes,” someone called from deep inside the old barn.

  “Mr. Carroll? Are you here?”

  “Yes, yes!”

  Stepping inside, Slocum took in the sight of two large presses. Each machine took up a good portion of its half of the room. The sound of metal clanking against metal rattled up to the converted loft, but he couldn’t quite pin down its source. Slocum took a few more steps inside and asked, “Can I have a word with Ian Carroll?”<
br />
  “I told you—OW!”

  The exclamation was punctuated by the sound of something much softer than metal knocking against one of the printing presses. A tall, gangly man dressed in a blacksmith’s apron and a gun belt stood up next to the press on Slocum’s right. Seeing the holster at the other man’s hip, Slocum’s hand reflexively drifted toward the Colt Navy at his side. When the tall man in the apron staggered sideways while rubbing the top of his head, it became clear that there was no gun in his holster. Instead, several tools were stuffed in where a firearm should have been, and stayed put thanks to the stitching that sealed the bottom of the holster.

  “I’m Ian Carroll,” the tall man said. As he rubbed his head again, he winced and moved his hand down to get a look at the little bit of blood smeared on his fingers. “Oh, that’s going to sting for a while. What can I do for you?”

  Slocum walked forward and reached into his jacket pocket for a thin envelope. “My name’s . . .” Stifling the reflex to introduce himself properly, Slocum decided to skip over his name for now. Considering the nature of his visit, it may not be wise to be the man thought of as a cold-blooded murderer. “I’m here on behalf of Terrance Pinder.”

  “Terrance, eh? What’d you say your name was again?”

  “My name’s John. Here you go,” Slocum said with a smile as he handed the envelope to the printer. “This should explain things.”

  Ian took the envelope, opened it, and then unfolded the letter within. Slocum’s name wasn’t on that letter either, but Terrance had been careful to word it so as not to make that omission seem suspicious. Even so, Ian seemed more than a little suspicious when he shifted his bloodshot green eyes toward the man in front of him. “And who might you be?”

  Sighing as he weighed his options, Slocum decided the truth was his best bet. If anything, instilling a bit of nervousness in the printer might just shake something loose that he wouldn’t have gotten before. “I’m John Slocum.”

  At first, Slocum was glad to see only a subtle shift in the other man’s expression. Within seconds, it became clear that the shift was from a twinge of pain on the top of Ian’s head. When nothing else came of the revelation, Slocum became a little confused.

  “Do you recognize the name?” Slocum asked.

  “I think I do. Was it from one of the advertisements I printed up for Terrance?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, now I think I recall! It was for that banner I made for Mr. Corrington! You’ll have to excuse me. I knocked my head while tending to one of my sick girls over there, and my eyeballs are still rattlin’. Come on in and make yourself comfortable while I clean myself up.”

  Slocum followed Ian all the way to the back of what he could clearly see was indeed an old barn. Supplies were stored overhead in a reinforced loft. Machinery was sectioned off in what used to be animal stalls, and paper was stacked high in the same spot where hay bales would have been kept. In what may have been a horse stall or possibly a spot to park a small cart, Ian had set up an office. The polished desk and clean table looked mighty peculiar situated in a place that still smelled of manure. The tall man went to the desk, took a folded handkerchief from a drawer, and pressed it against his bleeding scalp.

  “Terrance wrote some nice things about you in that letter,” Ian said. “I assume this is for some sort of large job?”

  “More like for a job you’ve already done.” Slocum removed the notice from his pocket. By now, the paper was folded in several different spots and rumpled to the point of looking more like old cheesecloth. Ian gazed upon it as if he was looking at an illuminated manuscript.

  “Ahh yes. Just as I’d thought. You are that John Slocum.”

  Still prepared for a bad reaction, Slocum was now positively flummoxed. “So you do recognize this?”

  “Most definitely! I can’t speak for the quality of the material as depicted in the drawing, but printing several copies of such detailed work in such a short amount of time is quite a feat. You can see for yourself, it turned out very well indeed.”

  “Did you read what this is?”

  “Most assuredly. That’s not part of my job, but I read about everything I can get my hands on. It’s a love of the printed word, you see. Surely not much of a surprise for a man in my line of work.”

  “The man who carried this tried to shoot me,” Slocum explained. “He was a bounty hunter who thought I killed eight men in Fort Griffin.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Michael Harper.”

  Ian’s eyes rolled up, down, and around in their sockets as if his next thought was etched somewhere on the walls surrounding his desk. Since there wasn’t anything up there but cobwebs and the spiders that had spun them, he quickly looked back to Slocum. “Should I recognize that name?”

  “He’s one of the men who carried a notice that you printed. The one you’re holding, in fact.”

  “Where was he?”

  “He tracked me down from Chicago, but he could have come from somewhere else.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Ian said. “Chicago isn’t that far away. Now, if you’d told me he came from New York, or possibly overseas, with one of my pieces, that would be impressive. I don’t know if anything I’ve printed has ever made it that far.”

  “This thing you printed nearly got me shot,” Slocum snapped.

  “Really?”

  “Yes! It paints me as some kind of damn monster! Look at the picture for Christ’s sake! That’s supposed to be me standing over a pile of dead bodies!”

  Ian looked at the picture but didn’t seem to think much of it. When he looked at Slocum, he was shaking his head and allowing his mouth to hang open as if he didn’t know which words to form.

  “Who’s Mr. Corrington?” Slocum asked.

  Recoiling as if he’d been smacked on the nose, Ian blinked a few more times and sputtered, “He’s . . . he’s the one who commissioned the piece. That piece. The one you say . . . well . . .”

  “Ahh. Now we’re getting somewhere. Who is he?”

  “He wrote it.”

  “You already said as much. Why did he write it?”

  Now Ian seemed to be so confused that his brain actually hurt. Before popping a spring in his head, he went to his desk and sat on a little chair. Lowering his head allowed him to dab at the wound with his handkerchief before any more blood trickled down his face. “He did write the notice, but that’s not what I meant.” Quickly glancing down at the paper, he found one of the top lines and tapped it with his finger. “There. See? That’s what he wrote.”

  Slocum looked at what Ian had showed him. “ ‘Six-Gun Devil’? He came up with that?”

  “Along with the rest, but . . . Aww this is getting to be too much for me.”

  “Why’s that so special?”

  “That’s the name of the book.”

  That caused a rush of cold to roll beneath Slocum’s skin. “What book?” he asked.

  “The book right there. Six-Gun Devil. He wrote it.”

  “And you printed it?”

  “No,” Ian sighed. He kept his eyes closed while pressing the clean side of the handkerchief against them. That way, he could at least sit on his chair without wobbling. “That’s just an advertisement for the book. Did you even really speak with Terrance Pinder? Didn’t he tell you that I print advertisements?”

  “Yeah, he did tell me that, but I thought . . . Oh, never mind what I thought. You got another chair around here?”

  “Over there,” he said while waving toward what had definitely once been an animal’s stall.

  Slocum walked to the stall and could only find a milking stool. It seemed strong enough to support his weight, so he brought it closer to Ian’s desk and sat on it. “So Six-Gun Devil is a book?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of book?”

  “The kind folks buy and read. What sort of question is that?”

  “It’s a book about something that happened in Fort Griffin?” Slocum a
sked with as much patience as he could dredge up.

  “I guess so. He gave me a copy, but I haven’t read it.”

  Slocum leaned forward, rubbing his hands together. “You’ve got a copy? Can I see it?”

  “I suppose.” Ian stood up and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. After what appeared to be a bout with dizziness, he placed both hands on his hips and looked around with renewed vigor. “Where did I put that book?”

  “What about any records you have regarding Mr. Corrington? Can I see those?”

  “No, most certainly not. My records are my business.”

  Slocum let the matter lie. He could always come back to it later. Right now, it was more important to try and make a little bit of progress after all of the messing about he’d been forced to endure just to converse with the printer.

  Ian moved slowly at first, but quickly gained speed, until he was like a giant horsefly buzzing from one spot to another. Every so often, he would stand in one spot and toss some things around before muttering and buzzing somewhere else. Somehow, even after all of his rummaging, the shop didn’t look any messier. Slocum couldn’t make sense of all the machinery and supplies before, and he couldn’t now. After a while, Slocum couldn’t even stay angry at the other man or the situation. It was just too amusing to watch Ian dart about the converted barn, banging his knees against the presses, smacking his arms against various posts, and accidentally poking his wound while trying to scratch his head. The icing on the cake was that his entire tour of his own shop wound up with him about two steps away from where he’d started.

  “Just one more place to look, I suppose,” Ian grumbled as he began pulling open his desk drawers one by one. Of course, it wasn’t until he’d dug to the bottom of the last drawer that he triumphantly declared, “Found it!”

  The book wasn’t very big and its pages were all curled at the edges, as if it had been left out in the sun after a rainstorm. Taking it to get a look for himself, Slocum gripped the book so it was as flat as he could make it. That way, he could more easily see the picture on the front. While it wasn’t identical to the one on the notice, the depiction on the cover didn’t appear any more flattering for the man labeled as the Six-Gun Devil.