by Jake Logan
“How many cattle has Devereau stolen from Sam?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t ever bring them to the ranch. He drives them up in the Indian Nation and hides them there.” With a tug, she pulled up the shift to cover herself again.
“Makes sense.”
“What does?” she asked.
“Oh, he doesn’t bring stolen stock to his ranch, so it can’t be traced to him.”
“I guess. What else you figured out with all your thinking?” she asked, peering at her rice in the pot. “You do lots of that thinking.”
“Knotts is trying to make money off others’ troubles. He’s been stirring up those big ranchers so they keep Sam in check and so Devereau can steal her cattle. Then he gets a cut of the stolen cattle.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“First I’m going to eat some of that rice you’re cooking and then get me some sleep. Tomorrow, I’m riding for a telegraph and wiring the Texas Rangers.”
“But I thought you were wanted by the law.”
“The Rangers don’t want me. Texas ain’t honoring no Jayhawker warrant. Besides, this matter is Texas business.”
With the shiftfront bunched up in her left hand to hold it in place, she shuffled across the room, hampered by the hem that was too long, and finally set the kettle on the table with her right hand. “There’s your rice.”
“I hate to tell you, but that dress is too big for you, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t touch my sore butt, and I promise you I will make it smaller before I wear it again.”
He nodded as he stood up and dished out the snowy rice on his plate. He sprinkled salt and pepper on it, and tried not to look over at her as she fought to put some on her plate and keep the dress up. Determined to contain his amusement at her plight, he busied himself eating.
“I may go naked,” she finally said, sounding out of patience with her gown.
“Do whatever,” he said, without looking up at her. The starchy rice filled a big hole in his empty gut. Come first light, he’d set out and find the next telegraph office down the line from Black City.
He glanced up and saw that her dress front gaped open so it only covered the dark nipples on her pear-shaped breasts. Some things he could handle, others he couldn’t. It was time for the Rangers.
18
He sat the dun that Teo had saddled for him that night before. The gelding had a good running walk. Slocum considered him a handy short-coupled mount. At dawn he’d ridden him west to the first place he suspected there might be a telegraph station on the wires that fed through Black City. The small community that he now studied contained a few saloons and maybe a store or two. It hardly looked like anything at all, but he could see that the shiny wire that stretched pole-to-pole ran right through it.
He rode up to the office marked “Telegrams” in black letters on the front, and dismounted, drawing only a few yellow curs to herald his approach. The street was empty, with no horses at the hitch rack. He stepped inside the office, and the pale-faced young man under a green celluloid visor looked up from his place at the desk where the key sat.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“I need to send a wire to Austin. Captain Bryan Spencer of the Texas Rangers.”
“The line’s open now, mister. Say it out loud and I’ll send it.”
“Come to Black City at once. Corrupt sheriff, rustlers, and range war.”
The young man clicked the keys and Slocum listened. He recognized the letters as the telegrapher sent them out on the wire.
“How should I sign it?” the telegrapher asked.
“Slocum. S-l-o-c-u-m.”
“Cost you fifty cents, Mr. Slocum.”
He slapped the money on the counter. “Thanks. Did it get through?”
“I think so. The wire was clear.” The young man listened to the repeat transmission and then nodded. “Captain Spencer should have it on his desk in a few hours. It depends on the messenger boys. Most of them in Austin have those new bicycles and, mister, they can outrace a horse.”
“Yeah,” Slocum agreed to save an argument. Hell, anytime a man could pump pedals and beat a fast horse he wanted to see it. Those wobbly things looked like a wreck about to happen.
Filled with satisfaction that the message was on its way, Slocum walked out into the heat of the day. A familiar blood bay was hitched down the street. He shook his head as he considered the good horse. Where had he seen that gelding before?
“Don’t move a muscle, gunman,” Taylor ordered as he stepped from beside the clapboard wall of the telegraph office with a Winchester at his hip.
Two other men on horseback rode around the other side of the building. Slocum recognized Ira Martin from his bowler and brown suit. The third burly man was unfamiliar until he spoke.
“Lucky us coming this way, huh, Boss?” Buster McCurdy, the man he had heard in the dark, said to Taylor.
“Ira, go stop that telegraph. Now!” Taylor said with a grim set to hard set mouth as he stared at Slocum.
Martin dismounted in haste and rushed inside. In a minute, he stuck his head out and shouted, “We’re too damn late. He’s done sent the message and called for the Rangers to come up here, Dayton.”
“Never mind, the governor can call them back. Wire the governor and tell him I said it was a mistake and the man that sent the wire was crazy. Tell him I said so.” Then Taylor smiled as if he had accomplished something, but his cold gray eyes never flickered as he glared at Slocum.
“You been kind of hard to find, gunman.’ ”
“You ain’t looked in the right places.”
“Yes, we have.” Taylor gave his burly foreman a nod, and the big man took hold of Slocum’s arms.
“This is your last lesson,” Taylor said as he stepped in and drove the butt of the Winchester into Slocum’s gut.
“You better clear out of here after this, Slocum, or we’ll kill you for sure.”
His breath driven out of him by the battering-ram blow to his solar plexus, he struggled with the foreman’s hold on his arms until the gun butt struck his cheek. The blow sent a bolt of lightning to his brain, and then it all went dark. From a far-off dim place, he felt the deep drive of their boot toes to his ribs and sides. Then he lost consciousness.
“Mister, can you hear me?” someone was shouting in his ear.
On his hands and knees, he spat the acrid dirt and horse manure mixed with the copper taste of his own blood from his mouth. With his tongue, he tested the deep cut that had split his lip and was the source of the blood.
“I can hear you,” he finally managed.
“You going to make it?” the telegraph operator asked.
“Help me up,” he said, and closed his eyes to all the pain in his side and ribs as the young man struggled to get under his arm.
“Don’t worry now, mister. I’ve wired the sheriff at Black City and he’s on his way here right now.”
Slocum closed his eyes. I’ll bet he is. Where was his horse? He had little time to get out of this place in his condition. The vision of the telegraph office did a flip, and he sagged on the boy’s shoulder. Then, with forced determination, he straightened his buckled knees.
“Get me on that horse,” he said, taking lots of his precious energy to even speak.
“Mister, you ain’t in no shape to ride anywhere.”
“Yes, I am.” He reached for the stirrup, and the boy helped him put his toe in it, and then he found the horn and with the young man pushing him, he pulled himself up in the saddle. “Get my reins, boy.”
“Mister, I am telling you that you won’t ride ten feet and you’ll pass out.”
“No.” Slocum gasped for his breath. “I’ve got to leave.”
“You sure are stubborn. The law will be here soon and I’ll tell them it was Dayton Taylor and Ira Martin and Buster McCurdy did this to you.”
“Forget it. Say you didn’t know who did it. You’ll only get hurt.”
“Yes, sir.”
Slocum tried to straighten, but the spear in his chest and brain left him shaken. He had to ride out of there. No matter that he could hardly see past the horse’s ears. He had to get out of there. He jerked the dun around and set out. Was he even going the right way? Damn, was there nothing he could do right?
“What will I tell Sheriff Knotts?” the boy shouted as he ran alongside his stirrup.
“Tell him you don’t know who did it, boy. Tell him they were masked. They’ll come back and kill you. Savvy?”
“I don’t understand, Mr. Slocum.”
“Forget who did it!” he shouted in his cracked voice, and whipped the dun with the reins to force him to lope. He could never stand a jarring trot, so he cracked the dun again and sent him on a long gallop. Rocked back and forth in the saddle, he held the saddle horn in a death grip, hoping to stay aboard until he was out of sight of the village. Damn Taylor anyway, he’d get his in the end.
When the dun began to heave for breath, he let him walk for a long while, and then, between fainting spells, he tied himself in the saddle with his lariat. How many miles had he gone? His eyes failed him. He couldn’t see more than ten feet. Nothing else to do but simply trust the dun to take him somewhere. He spat blood from his sore mouth, and then he forced the gelding into a long running walk.
He awoke delirious. How long had the dun been grazing? He knew the horse’s head was down, and he could tell it was forcing grass between the bits.
“Gidup!” he shouted, and then fainted. He awoke for a few moments and before he could get his bearings, slipped away again. He’d awaken, then pass out over and over again. He didn’t know where he was. Once, he became conscious and thought he had lost his legs. The tie in the rope had cut off the circulation to them and they felt filled with pins and needles. He decided to cut the binds, but his world went out before he could find his knife.
“Slocum! Slocum, wake up! Oh, my God, who did this to you?”
A woman was talking to him. He braced himself up using the fork of the saddle, and then he smiled for her. His mouth hurt too much for him to smile, but he smiled anyway. He tried to see her, but it was dark and he couldn’t make out her face. Gawddammit, if she was an angel and she’d come for him, why couldn’t he see her?
19
“This is going to hurt,” she warned with the rag soaked in whiskey in her hand. He could barely make out the outline of her standing above him as he lay on the cot. He could smell the sour mash. Thank God all his senses weren’t gone.
“Knotts is coming,” he mumbled.
“Let the sumbitch come,” she said. “I’ll cut his balls out this time. Did he do this to you?”
He shook his head in reply. She was no anget—damn, it was Red Feather. How did he get back there? The dun had brought him back somehow. Then he felt the cold whiskey on her rag touch his face, and then find the cut in his lip; the alcohol set him on fire.
“I know it hurts, but it needs to be cleaned out.”
He agreed, but the fiery sensations of the liquor on the exposed nerves made him stifle a scream.
“It needs to be stitched up,” she said, lifting the cloth and looking at him with a critical set to her brown eyes.
“Do it.”
“It will hurt worse than the whiskey. I don’t know if I can.”
“Sew it.” He closed his eyes. Sam might need some help by this time. He should be riding. Should be seeing about her roundup in case Taylor had tried something. In his shape, he’d be lucky not to fall off the cot. No telling what trouble she was in.
“ ‘Did you notice?” she asked as he felt her weight on the edge of the couch.
“Notice what?” Why couldn’t he see anything?
“I fixed this gown to fit me. Hold still. This will hurt you.”
“Yeah, it looks real nice,” he said as she took hold of his lower lip with her fingers and rolled it back. The prick of the needle felt like a spear going through into his mouth, and he clenched his sore jaws and tried to be still for her.
“I know this hurts.” She went on talking, drawing the thread through and cinching the split cut together in stitches that she pulled tighter than he imagined they needed to be.
“You’ll have some kind of a scar out of this. Going to swell too. You may not even be able to speak for a couple of days.” She chuckled at the notion as she repoked the red-hot needle back inside and drew her thread in after it.
“I’m hurting you, aren’t I?”
He shook his head.
“Liar.”
In the late afternoon, he sat on the straight-back chair on the porch, his mouth swollen to twice normal size, his tongue sore from testing the row of stitches inside his lip. One thing he felt grateful for, his vision had returned. Despite the aches and pains in his ribs, side, and face, he knew he would live.
“I shot a jackrabbit with that pistol you gave me, so I’m making rabbit soup for you. Can you smell the smoke?”
He tested the air and then shook his head.
“I am cooking in the yard out back. The Cheyenne know how to make a small pit fire to cook on without any smoke and plenty of heat.”
He didn’t try to talk. He simply nodded. Red Feather— he wondered what her real name was. She’d said her father was Spanish.
“You asked me about finishing school?” she said, and brought out a keg to sit on beside him. She put a blanket pad down to cushion her seat before she gingerly sat on it.
He nodded.
“Those women were very haughty at Mrs. Beasley’s. They had a flat stick and they would slap you on the hand if your fingernails were not spotless. For each one that was not clean, you got a hit. I learned to clean my nails, but not before taking many hits.
“I wanted to run away. My name then was Angelica Morales. The other girls called me Angela. The women who ran the school, they called me Miss Morales.” She looked aside at him, and he nodded that he had heard her and she should continue.
“They also called me a heathen and a little barbarian. I wondered what a barbarian was for a long time. Then I found it in a dictionary. It meant I was a rude, coarse, and brutal person. I also thought that meant that I belonged to a tribe called Barbarians, and I longed to find them so I could be with my own people.
“At night I would lie awake on my belly in bed and look out the window at the starlight and wonder where my people lived and what they wore.
“At last I graduated and they put me on the train. I was going to meet my father in Santa Fe. Oh, I was so excited. I had so many things to tell him and show him.” She grew very quiet and stared into the distance.
He cleared his throat. “Then you got off in Dodge,” he managed to mumble with his swollen lip. He reached over and squeezed her hand.
“Why is my whole life—” She snuffled, and he glanced over as great tears ran down her smooth cheeks. “My whole life was ruined that afternoon by some damn horny cowboys. I hate them!”
“You . . . got to . . . put it behind you,” he finally managed to say. “You can’t change it. You got to forget it.”
“But how?” she asked in tears.
He shook his head. There were things from his own past that woke him up at night. Things that he could never forget. He’d seen cavalry soldiers running their swords through pregnant Indian women and laughing about how they’d killed two at one time. Men who’d been hung by their heels over small fires by savages and their brains cooked. Children raped by madmen—all sorts of cruel, brutal things. But to live in his own world he had to put them aside and try to stop them from happening again, whenever he had the power.
20
He could hear the drum of fast hoofbeats. A rider was coming hard. He jerked the Colt out of the holster hanging on the peg and in a sweeping movement with his arm, motioned for her to get back. Whoever was riding in was sure pounding the ground hard. He could hear shouting in the distance. He frowned as he listened; it sounded like Sam’s voice.
�
��Slocum! Are you here?” Sam shouted, and bailed off the lathered horse before it completed its skidding stop at the porch.
“What is it?” he asked from the doorway.
“Oh, my God, what happened to you?” Her eyes flew open in disbelief at the sight of him. She caught herself with a porch post and blinked at his face.
“Hell, I’m better now. You should have seen me two days ago. What’s wrong?”
“They’ve shot Ray.”
“Who has?”
“I think rustlers. He was checking on the outer edge.”
“He hurt bad?”
“No, but that leaves me short-handed and that no-good Franklin is arguing over every damn calf that we brand.
My God, who is she?“ Sam’s eyes flew open wide at the sight of Angela.
“She’s the one that stitched my lip. Angela Morales, meet Sam Cottrel.”
“Very nice to meet you,” Angela said. “He has said much about you. Does this Ray need some medical attention?”
“Are you a doctor?” Sam looked at her in disbelief.
“No, but I have treated many men.”
“I’m sure. No, I mean, he does need someone to clean his wound, I guess.”
“She saved my life,” Slocum managed to get in. “Your Sheriff Knotts is tied in with those rustlers. He probably would have dumped me in the Red River as catfish bait if she hadn’t stopped him. Then I went to wire the captain and ran into Taylor.”
“He did that to you?”
“Yes, caught me off guard, I guess.”
“I’m sorry about your beating, but I told you Knotts was no good from the start. I didn’t know what to do. Ray’s been a big help to me. I’m upset about how this roundup will work without him.” She removed her hat and then shook her head. “I don’t know how long Lopez and the others can hold on. Could you—if you thought you could—well, help me out? I may kill that damn Franklin before this is over.” She shook her head in disgust. “I know he’s following Taylor’s orders and just trying to stall us.”
