by Jake Logan
Slocum swung around and tried to get his rifle lined up, but his awkward position prevented it. He dropped his Winchester and then jumped, landing hard and rolling. As he came to his feet, he had his Colt out and ready to shoot.
Quenton was gone.
“I don’t want to kill you,” Slocum called, not sure he was telling the truth. Quenton might have been the man who pulled the trigger and killed Big Ben London. If not, he was still guilty of a powerful lot of crimes against No Consequence and John Slocum.
“You killed Beal. You killed my partner!”
“Did Rafe Ferguson desert you? He won’t split the loot with you.”
“He already did,” Quenton called. “Damned fool didn’t get hardly anything from that hick town.”
“The banker cleaned out the vault. I reckon he and Rafe Ferguson rode out of No Consequence with at least a hundred fifty thousand dollars. Did you get your cut, Quenton?”
“You’re a liar, Slocum. He didn’t get anywhere near that much.”
Slocum’s harsh laughter infuriated Quenton and flushed him. The outlaw came rushing from where he had taken cover, both six-shooters firing. Slocum took aim and squeezed off one round that caught Quenton in the middle of the chest. The phony railroad director straightened and then collapsed bonelessly to the ground, both six-guns clutched in his fists.
Wary of a trick, but feeling in his gut he had made a good shot, Slocum approached the body sprawled in the dirt. He kicked one six-gun away and pried the other from Quenton’s lifeless fingers. The lone shot Slocum had taken had gone right through Quenton’s foul heart, killing him instantly.
Slocum searched the man and found only a few hundred dollars in scrip. He went into the trading post kitchen and found Beal dangling over the edge of the upturned table. Another quick search dislodged another hundred dollars in greenbacks.
“You sorry fools,” Slocum said without rancor. Quenton and Beal had paid for their crimes. He stared at the pitiful handful of paper money taken from their corpses and knew it wouldn’t make a dent in what the town of No Consequence owed the railroad. Slocum went back and searched the bodies again for any hint as to Ferguson’s whereabouts.
He was sure that if he found Rafe Ferguson, he would locate the bulk of the money. The bodies yielded nothing. He turned to the men’s saddlebags and found small scraps of paper among Beal’s possessions. Slocum held up the paper and painstakingly made out the faded ink and the date. The hotel receipt had gotten wet, which had partially destroyed it, but Slocum was heartened by the date.
Beal and Quenton had to have ridden straight to the Omaha hotel from setting fire to No Consequence. He tucked the scrap into his shirt pocket, along with the scrip. It wasn’t much of a clue, but it was better than nothing.
18
Omaha had gotten hotter and dustier since Slocum had been here a couple weeks earlier. But he reflected on how much had happened in that short time. He rode slowly past the rail yards and then his curiosity got the better of him when he saw a line of flatbed freight cars being loaded with steel rails and wooden ties. The men cursed and shouted and toiled in the hot sun as if they were slaves, never stopping for fear of offending their masters.
“Where’s all this heading?” Slocum asked the foreman. The man was stripped to the waist and sheened with sweat on his leathery skin. He wiped his forehead as he looked up at Slocum.
“You lookin’ for a job? We still need a gandy dancer or two. If you can swing a hammer and lay rail, we pay top dollar.”
“Who signs the checks?” asked Slocum, but in his heart he thought he knew the answer.
“Mr. Davis, of course. You’d be swingin’ steel for the Central Kansas and Nebraska road.”
“Not the Platte and Central Plains?”
The man wiped away more sweat and laughed. “You could call ‘er that, too. Mr. Davis, he thinks up more names for his lines than you can shake a stick at. This one’s been under wraps for a spell but now we’re movin’. Good to get this miserable lot of slackers off their collective asses and back to work. They been havin’ it too easy in Omaha.”
“Got the right-of-way problem taken care of out near No Consequence?” asked Slocum.
The foreman shrugged, obviously uninformed about such things. “You want a job or you just wantin’ to waste the time of men who have ’em already?”
“Much obliged for your time,” Slocum said, snapping the reins and moving on. Nowhere else in the sprawling rail yards were men working to get rails ready for transport. Speaking with the foreman had confirmed what he’d feared was true. Crandall Reed Davis was a legitimate railroad owner and the spur line was going through No Consequence, whether the town paid for it or lost all their surrounding land in the process.
Slocum looked around for Will Mason but the man had moved on. He wished him well and hoped Mason had a decent job again that’d keep him in fine Kentucky bourbon. Slocum fumbled in his pocket and drew forth the receipt he had taken from Beal. Holding it in the bright sunlight gave him a name and an address. He rode from the railyards and hunted up and down cobblestone streets lined with hissing gas lamps. A new trolley car rattled and clanked past to let him know how far removed he was from the sleepy, dusty town of No Consequence. After an hour of searching, Slocum found the address.
He drew rein in front of the Excelsior Hotel and let out a low whistle. Slocum was used to flophouses or possibly hotels where he didn’t have to arm wrestle the bedbugs more than half the night. The Excelsior was a first-class establishment.
“Who says crime doesn’t pay?” he muttered as he jumped to the ground and led his horse to a watering trough in the shade at the side of the hotel. He brushed off dust from the trail and then gave up when every whack brought forth new clouds of brown Nebraska prairie. It would take more than a few pats to get clean enough to be presentable in a place like this.
Slocum went into the lobby and drew immediate attention from several bellhops and the well-dressed clerk behind the registration desk. The people in the parlor looked askance at him, but Slocum walked steadily to the desk.
“I’m sorry, sir, we have no vacancy,” the clerk said before Slocum got out a word.
“Not looking for a room,” Slocum said, to the man’s immediate relief. “I want information about one of your former guests. Maybe several.”
“I’m sorry, we do not give out names.” The clerk peered down his nose at Slocum and started to gesture to the bellmen to throw Slocum out.
“It sounds like you’re sorry about a lot of things,” Slocum said, “but you’ll be sorriest of all if you want to start a ruckus.” He stepped back a half pace and made a show of taking the leather thong off the hammer on his six-shooter. The worn leather, the hard-used Colt Navy and Slocum’s cold green eyes caused the clerk to swallow hard.
“I’m sor—I mean, what can I do for you?”
“Sir. That’s ‘what can you do for you, sir.’ ”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”
“Two gents stayed here several days back named Beal and Quenton.” Slocum pulled the receipt out and made a show of studying it. “Beal was in Room 223.”
“Why, uh, yes, sir, that’s true. I remember him. He claimed to be a railroad director.”
“Claimed?”
“I know all those gentlemen,” the clerk said haughtily. “He neither acted nor dressed like one. The other one— Quenton, you said—said very little. He had the adjoining room.”
“What about the other three men with them?”
“Others?” The clerk got a shifty expression that changed to pure greed when Slocum pulled out the wad of greenbacks he had taken from Beal and Quenton. The clerk never noticed the bloodstains on the money as he made a quick swipe that hid the bills from sight.
“The others,” Slocum said.
“Ah, yes, I remember them, sir. A banker and a politician.”
“And the other one who went by the name of Ferguson.”
“Yes,” the clerk said, as if h
e had bitten into a tart persimmon. “They held their meeting over there at the large table in the parlor. They parted on amiable enough terms but ...”
“But what?” prodded Slocum.
“There appeared to be some suspicion among them. They were friendly but not friends.”
“Where’d they go? Or are they still here?”
“Oh, no, no, sir, not at all. But there was somewhat more bonhomie among the three after the two directors departed.”
“Where did they go? Ferguson and the other two?” Slocum rested his hand on the ebony butt of his six-gun to reinforce his question and to insure an honest answer. The clerk had already been bribed, but Slocum didn’t think he had the look of an honest crook—he wouldn’t stay bought.
“I am sorry but I don’t know. That’s the truth, sir! I think I heard them mention something about a campsite out on the Platte, but I might have been mistaken.”
“When did they leave?” Slocum asked, a sinking feeling in his gut. He had come so close, but if Ferguson and the other swindlers had almost a week’s head start on him, there was no way of tracking them down.
“Why, you missed them by only a few hours.”
Slocum perked up at this. “Anything else you can tell me? Where along the Platte?”
“Waterloo? I don’t know why that town sticks in my mind. Perhaps I happened to overhear it and didn’t know I had. Sorry, sir, but—” The clerk talked to empty air. Once more his lobby was returned to its usual sedate, pristine condition.
The Platte River flowed to the west of Omaha. This time of year it was down a considerable amount but still a force to be reckoned with. The town mentioned by the clerk was more of a dock than a town, providing some barges for moving freight up and down the river when it was fuller with spring rains.
Slocum doubted he would find anything worth mentioning in Waterloo, but it gave him a place to cross to the other side. Rafe Ferguson and his gang had returned to Omaha for some reason and then had gone their separate ways. Where Ferguson headed now was a mystery, but one Slocum would solve. He doubted the swindler intended to go back through North Platte or anywhere near No Consequence, but crossing the river meant Ferguson had some destination to the west in mind.
Or the south. Slocum heard the mournful whistle blow on a freight train heading down toward Kansas and wondered if Rafe Ferguson might not be going into Texas eventually. While he couldn’t rightly remember, Slocum thought he had heard that Ferguson had family down around San Antonio.
The trip across the river went quickly on the small ferry, and Slocum soon found himself riding southward, wondering if he were on a wild goose chase—until he spotted three men riding along the flat bank of the river not a mile ahead. Slocum sucked in his breath and held it, worrying that they weren’t the trio he sought.
Then he began to worry that they were Ferguson and his partners. Not much grew along the flat banks of the river to hide him should any of the men look back, and tackling the three of them would prove more than he could handle alone. Slocum slowed the pace and let the hot sun hammer him and his horse all afternoon long. When twilight came, he picked up the pace, although it was scarcely cooler. By the time he spotted the campfire, he knew he had found his quarry.
Ferguson sang boisterously, not caring if anyone overheard. Slocum would have recognized that voice anywhere.
“We done it, we really done it, boss,” spoke one man. Slocum moved closer to watch them. When they unrolled their blankets and drifted off to sleep, he would strike. He could get the drop on them and escort them back to Omaha and the law.
Slocum touched the wad of worthless bonds he had taken from Carleton’s bank and knew Ferguson and his cronies had a lot to answer for.
“I can’t believe Westfall was so dumb,” Ferguson bragged. “We’ll have the money tomorrow morning and be on our way south.”
“I can’t wait to get to Fort Worth,” the other gunman said. “I got me a filly there who’ll help me spend all that money. How much was it, Ferguson?”
“Almost a hundred thousand dollars,” Rafe Ferguson said. Slocum heard the change in the man’s voice. The other two didn’t. “Why don’t you go on down to the river and get us some more water. This coffee’s too strong and I want to dilute it.”
“Coffee’s fine,” the man said. Then he saw the way Ferguson glared at him. Grumbling, he grabbed a pot and started for the Platte River gurgling loudly some fifty yards distant, leaving Ferguson with the other man. The way the man hobbled a little on his way to the river told Slocum this was the one he had winged before the North Platte saloon.
Slocum had intended to get the drop on them together, but this gave him a better chance. He slipped away and hurried after the man intent on getting water from the river.
As Slocum came up behind him, his Colt Navy drawn and ready to make the challenge, a shot rang out back at the camp. Startled, the man with the pot half-stood, turned and lost his balance when his gimpy leg failed him. His feet shot out from under him on the slippery mud and he fell heavily. The dull crunch as he hit his head on a river rock wasn’t as loud as a gunshot but it was certainly as deadly.
Slocum hurried to the man and checked. He was as dead as surely as a chicken when a farmer wrings its neck. Searching the man’s pockets yielded nothing. Then Slocum faded into the night when he heard footsteps rapidly approaching.
“Jase!” Ferguson called. “Jase! Something terrible’s happened. Your brother’s dead.” Ferguson stopped and stared at the silent, dark body, then lifted the six-shooter he had carried hidden at his side and looked around.
“Who’s out there? Did you kill him?”
Slocum moved like a ghost through the night, returning to Ferguson’s camp. Sprawled on the ground, a bullet in the center of his back, lay Jase’s unfortunate brother. Ferguson had sent one man to the river so he could back-shoot the other. Then he stalked Jase, intending to finish him off. The two brothers wouldn’t be around to divvy up the loot from No Consequence.
Slocum had been wrong about Rafe Ferguson. The man was a murderer as well as a swindler. Or had the lure of so much money been too great? Ferguson had lied to his partners about the amount stolen from the bank. Beal and Quenton thought it was only a few hundred dollars—and they had been content. Slocum wasn’t sure if Ferguson had sent them on their way with vague promises of rendezvousing later, or if they had lit out for territory they knew.
However it was, they were dead by Slocum’s hand.
Slocum wondered what had happened to Westfall and Carleton. From what he had witnessed so far, he doubted they had fared any better than Ferguson’s other partners.
A quick search of the camp, however, failed to unearth the stolen money.
“Slocum. I might have known,” came Rafe Ferguson’s cold words.
Slocum spun and fired at the same instant Ferguson did. A hammer blow struck Slocum in the chest and knocked him back, but he didn’t feel the hot slug rip through his chest as he expected. He looked down and saw a burned hole in his shirt and an outward paper explosion from the bonds he had shoved inside. The thick wad of bogus bonds had stopped the bullet.
But Rafe Ferguson didn’t have any such luck. Slocum’s bullet had caught him squarely in the right shoulder. The man had turned and started to run, only to trip over his partner’s dead body. He clumsily tried to stand but by then it was too late.
Slocum towered over him, Colt Navy cocked and pointed at the back of his head.
“I ought to blow your stinking head off,” Slocum said. “Give me a reason not to.”
“The money!” cried Ferguson. “I’ll split the money with you. There’s almost one hundred fifty thousand dollars! You ever see that much in your whole life, Slocum? It’s yours. Don’t kill me! I’ll give it all to you!”
“Where is it?”
“Those fools from that hick town went along with everything I said. It was too easy swindling them. I told them we had to hide the money for a spell until nobody was looking fo
r it any longer. We ... we buried it. Real close to here, on our way from No Consequence to Omaha.”
“So you and your two partners—the two you just double-crossed-were going to dig it up and keep on riding,” Slocum said.
“I didn’t kill Jase. He—You killed him, Slocum. You’re as much a murderer as I am!”
Slocum’s finger trembled on the trigger. If it hadn’t been for the money, he would have ended Rafe Ferguson’s foul life then and there.
“Where’d you bury it?”
“Jase and Pete, they didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. We’re almost sitting on it. I told them we had another couple miles to go. We can dig it up, you and me, Slocum, just us!”
“Show me.”
Slocum stepped back as Ferguson rolled over. The man’s shirt and coat were soaked in blood from the profusely bleeding wound. Ferguson was so excited he hardly noticed, but Slocum didn’t want him dying—yet.
“Let me patch you up,” he said. “Any tricks and you’ll be with your partners in the Happy Hunting Ground.”
Slocum stripped Ferguson’s jacket back but left it around his waist, the man’s arms trapped in the sleeves. He tore away part of the shirt and used strips from it to bandage the wound. Slocum had shot up something important inside Ferguson from the way it refused to stop bleeding, but a little pressure finally let the bullet hole crust over.
“Damn, Slocum, I’m light-headed,” Ferguson complained. From the way he wobbled and walked, Slocum doubted the swindler was faking. “But I know where the loot’s buried. That tree yonder? See it? It’s a sweet gum, just like down home.”
Together they went to the large tree. Ferguson sat down, before he fell over, and pointed to a pair of protruding roots. The dirt between them had been freshly turned.
“There it is. What a sweet haul it was, too. All ours, Slocum. Yours and mine. Go on, dig it up so we can count it.”
Slocum watched Ferguson out of the comer of his eye, but the man grew lethargic from lack of blood. A few quick scoops cleared away the dirt covering a large money bag.
