by Jake Logan
“Sarah June? Betty? Tabitha, Wilhelmina?” No answer.
He took a deep breath, then lowered his shoulder and shoved hard against the door. It creaked and then gave way as he forced himself into the shack. The women had braced firewood against the door.
“What’s wrong?” Slocum demanded. He looked around. Three women huddled together on the far side of the cabin. “Where’s Betty?”
“Th-they took her, John. They kidnapped her!” Sarah June came to him and threw her arms around him. “They took her! Don’t let them get us, too!”
Sarah June began crying as she clung to him. Then he found himself surrounded. Both Tabitha and Wilhelmina were clinging fiercely to him, also.
All he had to do was figure out what had happened to Betty and everything would be perfect. Somehow, he doubted the answer to that question was going to suit him.
5
“What happened?”
“Sh-she was taken,” Wilhelmina stammered out. “She goes for wood, gets kidnapped!”
Slocum looked to Tabitha and Sarah June for more information. Tabitha was closing into herself and would not even meet his eyes. He took Sarah June by the arm and got her to her feet.
“She was out looking for more wood. It was so cold in here,” Sarah June said. There was a catch in her voice. She found strength to let out everything Slocum needed to know in a single rush. “I saw her, they didn’t see me or they’d have nabbed me, too. Two men. Huge men dressed in shaggy fur coats.”
“Mountain men,” Slocum said. It was unusual for a mountain man to team with another, but the heyday of the Green River Rendezvous and making a decent living by trapping was long past. Times were hard enough that the reclusive men might have teamed up and taken partners simply to survive.
The notion of Betty being shared by two men who only saw civilized towns once or twice a year made Slocum go cold inside.
“They didn’t see me,” Sarah June said, “and I did nothing to keep them from taking her. They caught her neat as a pin. They came up from both sides, and she had nowhere to run.”
“They’re used to hunting dangerous game. Catching an unarmed woman would be simple for them,” Slocum said. His mind raced. It was already past sundown and the temperature was plunging. Trying to track two mountain men in the dark would be hard. In such temperatures, it could be deadly. Then he thought what the men would do to Betty. They were little more than animals.
“How long ago did they take her?”
“An hour, maybe less.”
“There’s food,” Slocum said. “Bear meat. Cook it up, if you want.”
“I . . . we aren’t hungry,” Sarah June said.
Slocum did not press the point. The smell of cooking meat might be a strong attractor for the men. He was surprised that they had not already found the cabin and wagon, with its team. Or maybe they had. They might think only four women were responsible for driving the wagon and intended to pick them off one by one. Enjoy one, throw her away, and kidnap another until they were all used up—and dead.
“Here,” Slocum said, thrusting the rifle into Sarah June’s hands. “Can you use that?”
“Yes,” she said in a small voice.
“Don’t shoot me if I come back. And if Betty gets away and returns, don’t shoot her.”
“Know my target,” Sarah June said, looking at him. “Shouldn’t you keep the rifle? You can kill them from a distance.”
“It won’t work that way,” Slocum said. The men would be in camp, probably with Betty close. In the dark the chances of him hitting her or missing them was too great. Whatever he did had to be done as close up as possible. If he could jam his Colt Navy into a belly and then fire, that would be the safest shot to take.
He bent and ran his fingers over the hilt of the knife sheathed in his boot top. Then he made certain his six-shooter was loaded.
“These will be enough,” Slocum said.
“Come back, John,” Sarah June said. She impulsively stood on tiptoe and kissed him full on the lips.
Slocum hardly noticed. His mind was already out in the snow fields, working on a scheme to sneak up on men who lived by their wits in dangerous territory. He left without a word, but he noticed the woman’s scent lingered for several paces, until he began following Betty’s tracks in the snow. He looked up at the sky and saw that the clouds had cleared. That made it likely it would get even colder, but he needed the starlight to illuminate his search.
Betty had made no effort to hide her tracks. Why should she? If anything, it gave her an easy means to find her way back to the shack when she didn’t know the terrain. Within ten minutes Slocum realized how easy it would be to get lost. The snow covered most landmarks he would normally use for navigation. The tracks curved toward a wooded area. Slocum grew wary when he spotted another set of tracks. Starlight caused the ridges to gleam like molten silver. He reconstructed the scene. That had to be where Sarah June had been, watching Betty.
It took Slocum less than a minute to find the other two sets of tracks. Sarah June had reported accurately what had happened. Betty was still slogging toward the woods to hunt for firewood when the two men, both wearing moccasins, had swooped in to grab her. The snow was all tamped down and mud below showed how Betty had struggled. The long strides of the men approaching and the shorter ones leaving showed how they had rushed her and how, after catching the woman, they had fought to hang on to her.
Along the way Slocum found bits of fur from the mountain men’s clothing. Betty was fighting for her life. A strand of brunette hair that must have been the woman’s showed that one man held on to her hair to control her. Slocum followed at a rapid pace because the mud beneath the churned-up snow had not yet frozen. With the temperature dropping fast, that meant they had come this way recently. Slocum had no good idea about how accurate Sarah June had been at guessing when Betty had been taken. She might have beaten him to the shack by only minutes.
Slocum’s nostrils flared when he smelled pinewood burning. A fire ahead warned him he was nearing the men’s camp. He stood stock-still and listened. A fitful wind blew through the snowcapped trees, but the snow muted the sound. He heard laughter and turned slowly until it was directly in front of him. The tracks he followed did not go in that direction, but they might have had their hands full with Betty. Slocum had to admit the woman would be more than a handful—she would be quite an armful.
He struck out directly for the sound. The starlight intensified and lit the ground to an almost dawn brightness. Slocum pressed on until he reached a gap in the trees and saw a curl of smoke lazily reaching for the sky. He followed the smoke down to earth, where two lean-tos were fixed against trees, the fire and three figures between them. From the dark silhouettes, Slocum figured the one on the right was a mountain man, but the other two were closer to the same size. He was glad he had not brought the rifle. Taking out the larger man might have let the other mountain man kill Betty.
Moving like a ghost, Slocum flitted from tree to tree. The snow crunched under his boots and occasionally a sucking sounded as he pulled free from clinging mud, but he was skilled enough to get close to the men. His eyes widened. He was even happier that he had not brought the rifle. The largest of the three turned out to be Betty, laden with heavy blankets against the cold. The two men wanted to keep her warm and alive. If he had assumed the largest was a kidnapper, he would have shot Betty by mistake.
“Me, Grubstake, me! I get to go first.”
“Shut yer tater trap. We bin over this, Kennard. You remember what we decided last time?”
“You cheated, Grubstake. You cheated. Them cards was marked.”
“You’re a damn fool,” the one Slocum pegged to be Grubstake snarled. The mountain man stood and shoved his companion, who rolled like a puppy dog and came to his feet. A knife flashed in the dim firelight.
Slocum saw this to be his best chance to rescue Betty. He didn’t know if she was bound, but he suspected they had her hogtied some way to keep from h
aving to chase after her repeatedly.
While the other two squabbled and then began to tussle, rolling around in the snow, Slocum made his move. He reached Betty’s side in a few seconds and pressed his finger to his lips to keep her quiet. To his relief, she nodded. There was no panic in her brown eyes.
He slid his knife from its boot sheath and slashed through the rawhide strips they had used to bind her ankles. She moaned as the tight bands were cut.
“My feet are numb,” she whispered. “They tied them damn tight!”
Slocum took her arm and steered her back in the direction he had come. Leaving tracks in the snow was unavoidable. Getting back to the shack with Betty hobbling along painfully would be a miracle. Slocum knew these experienced frontiersmen would be on them in a flash. He suspected they already knew every detail of the women in the shack and had been intent on working down through them one at a time. Whether they had counted on Slocum was something he would have to learn.
“Get on back,” Slocum said. “Find the tracks in the snow and follow them.”
“What are you going to do?”
He pulled her down into shadows at the edge of the stand of trees.
“No time to talk. I have to get rid of both of them. They won’t let you go easily. It’s not in their nature.”
“You’ll kill them?”
Slocum did not answer. He saw the set to Betty’s jaw and the way she shook all over. He wasn’t sure if it was from cold or pure rage.
“I want to do it. I want to cut their damn throats myself!”
“No time to argue the point,” Slocum said. He saw the two men still rolling about, but one had gotten his legs wrapped around the other and came up on top. He moved quickly for a schoolboy pin. “Might not have to do much,” he said, seeing the mountain man grab his partner’s head and begin banging it against the ground. “They might kill each other.”
“One’ll be left,” Betty said. “I want him!”
He looked her square in the eye and had to laugh. He admired her spunk. Betty glowered at him, and then a tiny smile crept onto her lips. She was laughing soon, too.
“You’re right, John,” she said. “I’ll be a good girl and go back to the others.”
“Keep them from getting too rambunctious,” Slocum said. “Be careful, also; I left my rifle with Sarah June.”
“I won’t sneak up on them.” Betty started to fade into the forest, stopped, and came back. She dropped to her knees in front of him.
“What is it?” he asked, thinking she had seen something to bring her back. Her answer startled him. She reached out, grabbed him by the ears, and pulled his face to hers for a nice, long kiss. She finally broke it off, licked her lips seductively, then silently got to her feet and vanished into the darkness. Slocum touched his lips. He wondered if Sarah June would mind sharing him with Betty.
Then he pushed such notions from his mind. He had some serious convincing to do, and it wouldn’t be as easy as shooting the bear had been.
He made his way back to the lean-tos and saw only the dark shape of the fallen mountain man on the ground. The other was nowhere to be seen. Slocum cursed under his breath, then made his way Indian style to see what condition the man was in. Blood trickled from the fallen man’s mouth, but his chest heaved up and down in a steady rhythm. His partner hadn’t killed him. Slocum was considering doing just that when he heard a roar of rage and looked over his shoulder.
Where the other man had gone, Slocum did not know or much care. But the mountain man had returned now and found his captive missing. Slocum knew what the man’s first thought would be—recapture Betty. Slocum shot to his feet and laughed as loud as he could. This got the man’s attention.
“Lose something, you sorry son of a bitch?” Slocum laughed harder, to rub salt into the wound. Then he lit out across the field as fast as he could plow through the knee-deep snow. He had not scouted this part of the mountainside but had a good idea what he was searching for. He angled downslope and then across the bottom of the snowy meadow. Bluffs began poking up on his left. Mostly he saw nothing but dark rock on the sheer face, but ahead he found what he wanted. A vast snow field stretched up the side of the hill.
“Come back and fight, you miserable wart,” cried the mountain man hot on his trail. Slocum saw that the man was catching up. All he had to do was follow Slocum’s tracks, and he did not have to plow through the snow if he stayed in Slocum’s footprints. Slocum touched the butt of his pistol, exhaled sharply, and then plowed on through the snow until he reached a spot where he could make a stand.
“You shouldn’t kidnap innocent women,” Slocum taunted. “You’ll come to a sorry end.”
“She wasn’t bein’ used by nobody.”
“Are you Grubstake?” Slocum saw how this stopped the mountain man in his tracks.
“How’d you come to know my name? I never met you ’fore.”
“Everybody in Colorado knows about a man called Grubstake,” Slocum said.
“Do tell? I never knowed I was famous.”
Slocum used the byplay to regain his breath and position himself a little better. He found a big boulder and maneuvered until Grubstake was in the clearing.
“Yeah, everybody tells how dumb you are.” Slocum needed the mountain man to come a little farther. And he did. There was no way any self-respecting man could tolerate Slocum’s insults. With a roar that started deep in his barrel chest and rose up like some unstoppable force of nature, Grubstake bellowed and came forward.
Slocum stepped out, six-shooter in hand.
“That little peashooter ain’t gonna stop me!”
“No?” Slocum shifted aim from the mountain man to a tree halfway up the side of the snowy mountainside. He fired. The tree shivered and dropped a considerable amount of snow to the ground. Not enough. Slocum fired again. Grubstake came closer, bent on vengeance. Slocum considered changing his tactics and seeing if he could drop the bull of a man. He decided he could risk one more shot uphill.
This one broke loose the packed snowbank and started an avalanche.
Grubstake saw he was caught in the middle of an exposed, steeply sloping area. He let out a cry that was more what Slocum would expect from a stepped-on dog. Then the white tide washed over the mountain man, picking him up and carrying him off as if he were no more than a flea on a dog’s back.
Slocum felt no triumph knowing the avalanche he had caused would sweep Grubstake over a cliff some distance downhill. The man had sealed his own fate by kidnapping Betty. The ground stopped rumbling under his feet, but Slocum still waited behind his sheltering boulder. There had not been enough of a snowfall to send the avalanche over him, too, but the bulk of the huge rock reassured him.
Looking around the edge, he saw some small streams of snow still flowing down from higher elevations. It might be hours before the last of the snow quieted down into a stable field again, but Slocum had no time to waste. He made his way across the occasional tumbles of snow and got to the far side. He had a long walk across the meadow once more, and he found himself growing more tired with every step he took. But the starlight shone brightly and gave him the sense that he was hiking in daylight. No time to sleep. He kept up his forced march until he got back to the mountain men’s camp.
For a moment, he tried to figure out what was wrong. The fire still burned cheerily. The lean-tos were undisturbed. Then he spun around and looked behind him.
Kennard was no longer flat on his back in the snow. Slocum took a few quick steps to make certain he was not missing the man due to shifting light caused by clouds crossing the sky.
“Damn,” he muttered. The ground was too cut up with frequent crossings for him to tell where Kennard must have gone, but Slocum thought he knew. He spun and plunged into the woods where Betty had retreated.
It took him less than a minute to see Betty on her knees. Her hands were behind her back. She looked up and made a curious choking sound. Slocum started forward, knife out to cut her bonds, but when he g
ot close enough he saw why she was making such peculiar noises.
Kennard had tied a strip of rawhide with cruel force across her mouth as a gag. Betty looked up, real fear in her eyes. She tossed her head and looked behind Slocum.
Too late.
The blow knocked Slocum to his hands and knees. His knife went flying and his head felt as if it would explode as he tried to keep from passing out. All that kept him conscious was the mocking laughter that built his anger.
Then even this receded as a second blow knocked him facedown into the snow.
6
“Lemme think. Should I jist cut yer damn throat so you’d bleed out in the snow, or maybe I kin do somethin’ fun with you?”
Slocum knew Kennard was talking about him, but he could not move. His arms and legs were paralyzed. He rubbed his cheek into the snow and felt the cold sting. Bit by bit his strength returned. Slocum lifted his head enough to see Betty still on her knees and bound. Her eyes were fixed on him. Her look of desolation changed to hope when she saw he was awake. Slocum was not sure he had ever been unconscious, but the heavy blows to the back of his skull had stunned him. He hoped Kennard was sure he had knocked him out.
Slocum shook his head to signal Betty not to do anything. Slocum took inventory. His knife lay some distance away, but his Colt Navy was still in its holster. Lying on his belly, though, made it hard to draw and fire. Worse, he felt mud all along his belly and upper thighs. The Colt was a precision instrument and if it got dirty, it refused to work. Slocum spent long hours while on the trail keeping dust and grit from the workings of the six-shooter. He might roll over, draw, and try to fire, only to find the six-gun clogged or jammed.
He would last about a single heartbeat before Kennard was on him, his hunting knife flashing across Slocum’s throat.
Slocum began to inch his legs up and turn slightly onto his right side so his holster was out of the muck. From the sucking noises, he knew he was covered in freezing mud. Without any choice, he swung over. His hand flashed for the ebony butt of his pistol. He drew and the gun slipped from his grip. The combination of mud and cold had turned his fingers too feeble and slick to properly hang on to the six-shooter.
