Slocum and the Rebel Cannon

by Jake Logan

  He stepped into the street and looked around. The cannonade would certainly send everyone in Bitter Springs scampering about like rats with their holes flooded. Then he looked at the church, and knew any mistake on his part would damage, if not destroy, the structure. Slocum walked to the shell of a church and looked around. Something struck him as wrong, but he could not put his finger on it. If Preacher Dan had built a berm against the tide of anger in the town, he could not have done a better job. The piles of dirt in front of the church were almost waist high and extended halfway around both sides.

  Slocum called out to the preacher, but got no answer. For whatever reason, they had not parted on the best of terms, though Slocum had only tried to save the church from being burned down.

  He kicked at some of the loose dirt and found another torch. The rag at the end had been dipped in pitch and something that smelled like coal oil. A single match set to it would cause a blaze that could bring down half the town. Why Preacher Dan kept the torches around, so handy for angry mobs, was something Slocum did not want to think about. He picked up the torch and sent it spinning far off to land in the dust.

  “Let them bring their own damned torches,” he muttered.

  Turning back, he took in the bank once more. This was likely the last time he would ever see it intact. Jumping into the saddle, he returned to the mesa carrying the thick wooden rod he intended to use as a tamping tool.

  Slocum saw Holtz and his four men arguing bitterly near the cannon. From what he could see, they had done as good a job as possible setting the howitzer up, bracing it, and preparing it to fire. To one side, they had stacked the four cannonballs and some wadding. Beyond that, they had placed the gunpowder. It might not be a military crew working the cannon, but they had done a good enough job.

  “What’s wrong?” Slocum demanded.

  “They say the gun’s gonna blow up on ’em when they fire it.”

  “Why?” Slocum asked. One of the men pointed to a long crack down the side of the barrel.

  “That’s gonna split wide open if we fire it. I ain’t standin’ near the gun when it goes off.”

  “You might be right,” Slocum said, running his calloused fingers over the crack. “Get the other cannon and—”

  “There’s no time,” Holtz said. “We got to act now. Now, Slocum.”

  “Another hour or so’s not going to matter,” Slocum said, thinking it might give Thompson time to close the bank. It was better firing on the bank when the customers and employees had left. It would be dark then, but he could get the cannon aligned before the sun disappeared behind him.

  “I want to take the other cannon down and use it on the back of the safe if this doesn’t work,” Holtz said. “You fire, we use the other one close up.”

  “You remember what damage a cannonball can do,” Slocum said. “You don’t have to shoot at point-blank range to blow the hell out of a target.”

  “Fire this damned cannon. If that doesn’t work, then we lug the other one down and shove it against the wall,” Holtz said.

  Slocum looked at the crack again.

  “It might just be a deep scratch. I can’t slide my fingernail in very deep,” he said.

  “See?” Holtz cried. “Do you see, you lily-livered cowards? You don’t want to be rich. Well, I do. Let’s fire this damned cannon!”

  Slocum instructed the men how to load the cannon and ram in both gunpowder and wadding. He connected a lanyard and handed it to one of the outlaws. The man took it as if Slocum had handed him a rattlesnake.

  “What do I do with this?”

  “When I tell you, turn away and pull real hard,” Slocum said.

  “You ain’t firin’ it yerself?”

  “I have to be sure it’s lined up properly. That means I have to stand on the edge of the mesa. The cannon is set up a dozen feet back so nobody in town can see it.”

  “I don’t want to fire it.”

  “Do it, damn you!” roared Holtz. “I swear, if you don’t do as you’re told, I’ll kill you here and now.” Holtz rested his hand on the stock of his scattergun. From the way his hand twitched, Slocum knew Rebel Jack would level it and fire at the slightest movement.

  “Oh, all right. But I want an extra share fer this.”

  “Don’t pull the lanyard till I give the signal,” Slocum said.

  “You ain’t the boss.”

  “Pull it when I give the signal,” Holtz said. “That all right with you?”

  “Sure, yeah, fine,” the man said sullenly.

  Slocum and Holtz went to the edge of the mesa and looked down into Bitter Springs.

  “I can see your bandanna flappin’ around. That going to be good enough for you to get the range and windage?”

  “I want to loft the cannonball over the church. It’s a good thing they don’t have a steeple on yet. Otherwise, we’d blow it clean off.”

  “The bank, Slocum, the bank. I don’t give two hoots, a holler, and a good goddamn about that church. Can you hit the bank?”

  Slocum said nothing as he lifted his field glasses and carefully watched the bandanna flutter about below. The breeze whipping down the main street was petering out. Moving the pole with the white flag on it around a little, Slocum got the trajectory worked out. With the two poles in a direct line with the barrel of the howitzer, all he needed to do was figure the arc the cannonball would follow.

  “Hurry up, will ya? I’m gettin’ antsy,” the man holding the lanyard whined.

  “We’re almost ready,” Slocum said. “The cannon is on target. I need to be sure it will arc up and come straight down on top of the bank. If I do that, the safe will be blown to hell and gone.”

  “Might be we should be ready to get into the bank as soon as possible,” Holtz said.

  Slocum could hardly believe the outlaw had overlooked such a detail. All the gang was up on the mesa.

  “Do we fire?” Slocum asked.

  “Hell, fire on the bank. It might take a couple shots to get everything right,” Holtz said. “That will keep them scamperin’ about like ants in a campfire.”

  Slocum stepped to the edge of the mesa again and watched the flag below. When it fell limp and unmoving, he would fire. He felt his heart hammering in his chest as he waited. He knew the men behind were equally as wound up.

  “Get ready,” Slocum shouted. The bandanna gave one last snap in the wind and then fell limply down along the pole.

  “Fire!”

  Slocum heard the man with the lanyard grunt with exertion as he pulled hard. The pin snapped out and the spark ignited gunpowder.

  That was all Slocum remembered as the blast from the cannon lifted him into the air and threw him over the edge of the mesa.

  17

  John Slocum had no idea where he was. He floated, he drifted, he fell. It took a supreme act of courage for him to open his eyes, and when he did he still was lost. His head hurt like a son of a bitch, but that was a good thing. Dead men didn’t hurt. At least he did not think so, and he had been close to death several times. When he had been shot in the gut by Bloody Bill Anderson, the pain had been excruciating at first. Then there had been a curious warmth and muzziness that enfolded his senses.

  Not now. He hurt. He hurt bad.

  As he reached out, his fingers brushed against something smooth before finding the sharpness of a needle. He yelped, but his voice was distant and muffled. Then he drew his injured hand in to him so he could stroke his own face. The bloody trail left behind brought more coherence to his thoughts.

  When he focused his eyes, he looked down the sheer face of the mesa all the way to Bitter Springs. Slocum held back the panic. Whatever had happened, he was in no danger of falling. Slowly, painfully, he examined himself. His finger had touched the spine of a prickly pear cactus growing on the ledge just below the mesa top. It took a few more seconds for Slocum to figure out he was lying on the same ledge where the cactus had scrabbled out its precarious hold on life.

  Groaning, he pulled
himself up. His feet dangled over the ledge, causing another flare of panic. He quelled it. Then Slocum began pressing his fingers into his body. Plenty of scratches and cuts marred his skin but nothing serious. Standing, he peered up at the edge of the mesa.

  “Holtz!” Slocum yelled again for the outlaw leader. No reply. Cursing Holtz and everyone in his gang, Slocum worked his way along the ledge, transferring to a higher one and then one still farther up on the face of the cliff. He finally tumbled out onto the mesa and sat up.

  He thought he was in a bad way. Slocum quickly corrected that. The man who had pulled the lanyard was cut in half. The bronze cannon barrel had split and blasted forth a huge sliver of metal that had cut through the man like a scythe cutting winter wheat. Another of the gang sat in the dirt a few yards away, his head in his cupped hands. From the amount of blood, Slocum knew he had a head wound.

  Slocum tried to stand, and his legs denied him. Crawling to the bleeding man, Slocum took off the already bloody kerchief and pressed it into the cut.

  “You’ll be all right. Press hard on your bandanna.”

  “It cut Rollins in two,” the man groaned. “Just like that, he was flyin’ all over the place.”

  Slocum tried to stand again, and found his strength had returned. A little. Holtz and the other two survivors in the gang were just standing, saying nothing, staring at the body of the artillerist. Slocum had seen plenty of men in shock during the war. All three of them would come to their senses in a while—or they would never be right in the head again. What mattered most to him right now was that he was still in one piece.

  “Jack,” he said. Slocum shook the outlaw hard and got his attention. “We should have used the other cannon.”

  “What do we do now, Slocum?”

  “You can put the other cannon in place and we can try it, but before we do that, I’d better get down into town and see if the commotion was noticed.” Slocum had no idea who might have missed an explosion of this magnitude. Even somebody passed out dead drunk would have been jolted awake.

  “Why not just go ahead?”

  “It’ll take you an hour to drag the second howitzer out of the ground and get it into place.” Slocum eyed the hole in the mesa dug by the exploding cannon. That might have been all to the good since the other cannon could be butted up against the compacted dirt caused by the recoil when the first howitzer barrel ruptured.

  Slocum saw that Holtz wasn’t thinking straight yet. He left the outlaw leader and mounted his horse. The mare shied and tried to buck him off. It took a few minutes to gentle the horse and convince her he needed to return to town. Once on the trail, the horse gave him no more problems, which was good since Slocum had a powerful lot of thinking to do.

  If he had an ounce of sense, he would reach the bottom of the trail and keep riding. Anywhere. But the closer he got to Bitter Springs, the more his nostrils flared. He swore he could smell the gold in the bank safe. A lot of it. Enough to make all his trouble worthwhile.

  As he rode through the town, the reaction Rebel Jack had predicted if their cannonball had landed was proving true. The citizens ran around, shouting and crying, not certain what to do. But Slocum turned grim when he stopped in front of Jensen’s pharmacy. The old codger looked downright smug.

  “What’s going on?” Slocum called.

  “Don’t know, but it ain’t right. Sent my boy to Fort Suddereth to fetch the cavalry. Anything that causes that much noise has got to be illegal.”

  “When?”

  “Not a half hour back. Loud as thunder, it was. Ain’t heard the like since Sibley’s detachment came through.” Jensen squinted at Slocum, then looked over at the brass plate on the rock. “You wouldn’t know nuthin’ ’bout that, would you?”

  “I meant, when did you send your hired man? Right after the blast?”

  “The debris hadn’t even stopped rainin’ down when I sent him skedaddling to the fort.”

  Slocum looked around and saw bits of debris that had been blown off the top of the mesa. He turned grim when he recognized a severed human finger in the litter. Rollins had been cut in half and his pieces had been strewn all over Bitter Springs.

  Without waiting to hear more from Jensen, he rode on to the bank. The debris had missed the bank building entirely. Some few bits of rock and dirt had fallen on the half-built church. Slocum wondered if Holtz might not have the right idea. Bring the other howitzer down, butt it up against the wall, and fire it point-blank. If it blew up, it would still destroy the wall and breach the safe. If it worked just fine, the result would be the same. The only problem Slocum saw with that was finding someone stupid enough to yank on the lanyard after Rollins had been killed.

  He was about ready to return to the mesa when he took a deep whiff of smoke. The debris that had rained down on Bitter Springs had been a mixture of dirt, rock, human flesh, and fiery hot metal. He had no idea what had happened to the cannonball, but it did not seem to have left the barrel of the howitzer. He turned in the saddle.

  His heart jumped into his throat.

  “Fire!” Slocum jumped from horseback and hit the ground running. “Fire! The church is on fire!”

  A piece of hot bronze must have landed in the middle of the construction. The fire lapped up at all four walls from inside. Slocum grabbed a bucket as he ran, dipped it into a watering trough, and, coming close to the front door before the heat forced him back, swung the bucket and sent the water flying. It turned into shining droplets in the air and immediately sizzled and hissed and disappeared in a cloud of steam. The fire had burned hot too fast for simple measures.

  “Fire!”

  This time, Thompson at the bank came out to see what the fuss was about. He bellowed out the same warning and in minutes, a dozen men ran to help Slocum. It did not matter what their beef with Preacher Dan Whitmore might be. If the church sent sparks into the air, the entire town would go up. The construction of Bitter Springs had been haphazard, and most of the buildings were like tinderboxes. The hot summer sun had added to the danger, turning everything bone dry.

  “Form a bucket line,” Slocum ordered. He was the only one who was keeping his head. The others milled about, mumbling, or tried to do ineffectual things alone. It took Slocum precious time to bark and snap and get the men working together, but he did.

  “You have a volunteer fire department?” he asked the man next to him in the line.

  “Nope, never had occasion. If a fire gets too out of hand, we just hitch up a team and pull the buildings out of the way.”

  Slocum had to admit this was an idea that had never occurred to him. But fire spread faster than horses could pull. The interior of the church was mostly empty, and that was all that saved Bitter Springs. The fire reduced the building to smoking embers, but they had prevented it from jumping to the bank and other nearby buildings.

  “Get men onto the roofs and soak the shingles,” Slocum said. “You, you, over there. You two, up on the top of the bank.” Seeing an unexpected opportunity present itself, Slocum added, “I’ll go with you. Bring buckets of water to put out any sparks or embers.”

  He jumped to the top of a rain barrel and then pulled himself up onto the bank roof. The two men he had ordered about as if they were green recruits reporting for army duty scurried around, sprinkling water on the few smoldering spots on the roof. Slocum walked around, gauging distances and seeing, now that the church was no longer an obstacle, how easy it would be to drop a cannonball straight down on the bank.

  Going to the edge, he called down, “Hand me that pole with the bandanna waving on it.”

  One of the firemen tossed it up to Slocum, who caught it.

  “What are you gonna do with that?” asked one man whose bucket was still half-filled.

  “You never been in a fire, have you?” Slocum went around tapping the roof with the end of the pole. He figured where the safe would be, then drove the pole down into the roof so hard that it stuck upright. When he returned to the mesa, he would have an exac
t spot to aim at. Drop the cannonball here and the safe would be destroyed.

  “Cain’t say that I have. Still don’t know what you’re doin’.”

  “Marking weak spots,” Slocum said. He had no idea what he would say if the man did not find this vague answer sufficient, but he did.

  “Good,” the man said. “Wondered if anybody would do that.” He poked his friend in the ribs with an elbow and asked, “How come you didn’t think of doin’ that? Ole Man Thompson woulda skinned us alive if we hadn’ta found the weak spots.”

  “It’s about time to belly up to the bar and have a drink,” Slocum said. “Are you buying?” Seeing their hesitation, he laughed and slapped them on the shoulder. “That’s all right. I’ll buy. You two run along, and I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

  Congratulating themselves on a job well done, the two dropped to the ground and hurried off to the nearest saloon. Slocum had no intention of buying them drinks or even getting a shot of whiskey for himself. He had a cannon to fire and a bank to rob.

  Slocum jumped down and went to get his horse. Before he mounted, he paused, thinking hard. He wanted to tell Tessa to clear out. With the church burned to the ground, there wasn’t much reason for her and her pa to stick around. Preacher Dan might want to rebuild, but it would be futile with no support in Bitter Springs for a new church. The way Tessa had gone after Reverend Gantt and how her father had left unpaid bills all over town had doomed any chance they might have had to make a home here.

  The town was settling down, but Slocum felt as if a cocked six-shooter had been put to his head. Jensen had sent for the cavalry. How long it would take them to arrive was a question he did not want to stick around to answer. A day? Less, was Slocum’s guess. But he had to see Tessa one last time.

  He entered the hotel’s side door and sneaked through the lobby. The clerk was dozing at the desk, snoring and then half-waking himself up so he could go back to sleep. He seemed to have missed all the excitement that had gone on through the afternoon.