by Jake Logan
Jed looked around, grabbed the first horse he saw, and lit out, riding hard and never looking back. Slocum watched him go, wondering if matters were as grim as the former barkeep thought. He guessed they were. Miss Maggie would lose more than she could afford. She’d probably given fantastic odds to get people to bet. If Quinn won—and she didn’t seem the kind to bet on what had to have been a sure thing until Slocum showed up—she was ruined. She was always aiming for the big odds, he suspected.
“Got to hurry if I want that horse back in time for the race,” Slocum said to himself. He saddled his sorrel and mounted, considering the ease of following Jed out of Scorpion Bend and even Wyoming. He had been on the run when he blew into town. There was no good reason he couldn’t be on the run from the law in both Colorado and Wyoming.
And Miss Maggie.
He left the stable and headed out of town, not sure where to go. He needed information the woman could give him, but he wasn’t going to tell her Black Velvet was gone. Not yet. There was plenty of time until the race. He hoped.
Slocum found himself out on the road leading to the Decker farm. He wondered if he had something hidden away in his mind or if this was only coincidence. The road was on the proper side of town. He hadn’t taken a back trail or unusual route to get there. But he had ended up at Rachel Decker’s place.
He sat in the saddle and simply stared at the cabin door. It was a pathetic place. The farmland was good enough, but without her father and brother to do the physical labor—if Frank Decker had ever done it—there was no reason for her to stay there.
“John, hello. I wasn’t expecting you,” she said, coming from the barn. She was dressed like a man, which surprised him. But he saw she had been working in the barn, apparently mucking stalls, and from the hay caught in her long brunette hair, she had been feeding the livestock also.
“Wasn’t expecting to come out until after the race,” he said.
“Come on in. But please be quiet. Pa is sleeping more natural-like than I’ve seen him in weeks.”
“That’s all right. I’m not even sure why I stopped by.”
She stared at him, her brown eyes appraising. “You make it sound like you’re leaving.”
“Don’t know. Depends on how good a tracker I am, and how much I can find out from you.”
She glanced toward the barn, then back at Slocum. Rachel seemed nervous now.
“What do you mean? Are you tracking someone?”
He dismounted and sat on the second step leading up to the cabin door. Wiping sweat from his face gave him a few more seconds to consider what he wanted to ask of her—what he needed to tell her.
“I’m in a powerful lot of trouble back in Scorpion Bend,” he said.
“You killed someone? That’s awful, but I can hide you here and—”
“Worse,” he said.
“The race. What about the race? They disqualified you? What of the others? Zachary and Bloomington and ... Pilot?”
“Quinn stole Black Velvet. If I can’t find the horse and return by race time Saturday morning, I’m disqualified. Miss Maggie can’t afford to pay off all the bets, and I suspect the entire town is going to be mighty angry at the man causing that—and it’s not going to be Quinn they’ll be gunning for.”
For several seconds, Rachel said nothing. Her lips moved as if she were reading to herself or figuring out some hard problem. She turned to Slocum and took his hands in hers.
“Four riders and it looks as if Quinn will win,” she said. “I don’t know for certain, but I think Zachary and Bloomington are in cahoots with him. That’d be three riders against Pilot, if you weren’t in the race.”
“You got money riding on Pilot?”
Rachel started to say something, then nodded quickly.
“You bet everything on Pilot so you could save your farm,” Slocum said. “That wasn’t too smart.”
“It was all I could do, John. Frank was, well, you know how he was. And with Pa laid up the way he is, I don’t want to move him.” She sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I want to bury him on his own property. He worked hard to build this farm. It’s not much, but it’s all he has left.”
“Move on,” Slocum suggested. “Don’t pine away on this hunk of rocky landscape.”
“Move on where? With what? The little money I had left, Frank took. If I don’t win, I’m broke. Broker than I am now, at any rate. I’ll lose the farm and everything on it.”
“Even if I’m in the race doesn’t mean Quinn won’t win—or that Pilot will,” he said. “If I win, you’re still out the money you bet, and the farm goes to the bank. I heard you and the banker talking the first night I rode into town.”
“If you win, my bet might not pay off, but everyone else in town’ll be broke too. Most all of them are betting on Quinn. After all, he’s won two years running. If the bank gives any of them extra time to pay off what they owe, then I can get it too.”
Slocum didn’t want to tell her a banker would foreclose in the wink of an eye on everyone in Scorpion Bend. Every banker he had ever seen had long since exchanged his heart for a vault where he kept spare change but not a tot of benevolence.
And Slocum didn’t want to face himself over why he had come out here. He considered asking her to ride away with him and to hell with the race and Miss Maggie and Scorpion Bend. He opened his mouth, then clamped it shut hard. The words didn’t quite take shape.
“What is it, John?” Rachel looked nervously from him to the barn and back.
“Do you have any idea about Indians in the area?”
“They’re all over here,” she said, frowning. “Why do you ask?”
“I think Quinn might have sold Black Velvet to a band passing through. This one would have squaws, maybe a handful of warriors but not enough to scare him off.”
“He’s a coward,” she agreed. Rachel frowned. Slocum studied her profile as she thought about what he had asked, and he almost asked her again to come with him. He jumped when the loud cries came from inside the cabin. Rachel jumped as if she had been stuck with a pin, and raced inside.
Slocum followed. She wrung out a towel and laid the cool cloth on her father’s forehead. He subsided and soon slept again.
“Is he any better?”
“Yes, maybe, I don’t know, John. I just don’t.” Rachel heaved a deep sigh. “I want to do more for him, but Dr. Marsten says there isn’t anything I can do. Nothing he can do either.”
Slocum looked at the fitfully sleeping man, and knew Rachel would never leave the farm as long as her pa lived and needed her. That was what members of a family did, care for one another. It was his curse that he didn’t have anyone, certainly no one like Rachel Decker.
“A few days ago,” she said suddenly. “An Arapaho band. A few women, several children, and perhaps a half-dozen old men. I didn’t see any warriors. I thought they were out raiding, but I didn’t get close enough to ask anyone.”
“Where?” asked Slocum, knowing this was a long shot but one he had to take.
“On the far side of the farm. There’s a pasture where I ... I go,” she said, strangely reticent about what she did there. “Follow the stream to the big bend and then go due north. I don’t know if these are the Indians you want, but—”
“Thank you, Rachel,” he said. He went to her and they kissed, perhaps too long. The longing he felt grew. Then she broke off and pushed away from him.
“I’ve got so much to do, John. I hope you find Black Velvet. It’s such a noble horse.”
“If I don’t get back, bet everything on Pilot,” he said. Rachel looked as if he had shot her. Her brown eyes went wide in surprise and her mouth opened. He quickly said,
“I’m sorry. I know you don’t have any money, especially any to bet on a long shot now.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out two of the tickets he had bought on himself. He handed them to her.
“What do you want me to do with these?” she asked.
“Get into S
corpion Bend and find someone who hasn’t heard about Black Velvet being stolen. Sell the tickets, get as much as you can. They ought to fetch at least a thousand each.”
“But that’d be dishonest,” she said, staring at what might be her salvation.
“Not if I get back in time to start the race,” Slocum said.
“I’ll hold the money for you,” she said.
“Keep the money. Use it for medicine for your pa,” he said. He wished he could tell her to use the money to buy her way free of the mortgage on the farm, but he suspected it amounted to a lot more than two thousand dollars.
“You’re a generous man, John,” she said in a small voice. “I’m a fool to let you ride out.”
“I have to,” he said. “And you have to watch after your father.” Slocum didn’t trust himself to say any more. He mounted his sorrel, touched the brim of his hat in Rachel’s direction, and galloped off, finding the stream she had mentioned and following it.
As he rode, something worried at the fringes of his mind. When he came to the big bend in the stream and turned north, he finally realized what it was. The soft ground had been cut up by a dozen horses’ pounding hooves. Or maybe one horse traversing the stretch repeatedly.
Before Slocum could figure out why this bothered him, he came into the pasture Rachel had told him about. A smile came to his lips. He’d hoped it would be this easy. On the far side of the meadow he sighted a half-dozen tipis. This might just be the band of Arapaho Quinn had given the horse to.
He sucked in his breath and let it out slowly. Then again, the man he had gunned down in the livery stable might have been lying through his teeth. Quinn might not have given the black stallion to Indians, but kept it for himself or even shot it and left its carcass for the buzzards.
Quinn might have done any of those, but in his gut Slocum thought Quinn’s henchman had told the truth because it would hurt the most. And it sounded like something that would appeal to Quinn’s twisted sense of humor. As he rode to victory in the Scorpion Bend race, he would be thinking of the only horse that could beat him straining to pull some Indian’s belongings from one campsite to another.
Slocum rode slowly, giving the Indians plenty of time to recognize him as posing no threat. When he came to a spot twenty yards away, Slocum stopped, hooked his leg across the saddlehorn, and pulled fixings out of his pocket to roll a smoke. He studied the camp, hunting for any sign of Black Velvet. He didn’t see the horse, but that didn’t mean much.
When the last of the cigarette vanished into smoke, Slocum exhaled and let the final puff escape his lungs. It was probably time to enter the camp. More than one child had stared at him for several minutes, then turned and walked away. He wouldn’t be startling anyone.
Dismounting, Slocum walked into the camp. An old man, older than dirt from the way his face was lined, squinted at Slocum as if everything he saw was dimmed by time, and shuffled up.
Slocum exchanged greetings in Arapaho, which was about all he knew of their language.
“I speak some of your language,” the old man said.
Slocum exchanged a few more pleasantries, although he was seething inside with need for action. To rush the conversation now would be to turn off the spigot that would pour forth what he needed to know.
He finally found the right place to slip in his request. “I see few horses in your camp,” Slocum said. This caused a small stir in the Arapaho, who quickly settled back into an impassive expression.
“We have few. The ones we have are scrawny and not good.”
“I look to buy a stallion, but one that is special to my people.”
“Your people?” the Indian said, coming close to laughing.
“It must be a powerful stallion, a black stallion,” Slocum said. “I would pay well for it.”
“Look at this horse,” the old brave said, motioning. Two youngsters rushed up, leading a dun horse. From the look of it, the horse was older than the Indian offering it for sale. “A good horse. It will carry you far.”
“No, no, it must be black,” Slocum said. He took a moment to look over the horse being held for his examination. “And a stallion, not a mare.”
“This is good. It will serve you. One hundred dollars.”
It was Slocum’s turn to stifle a laugh. This refugee from a glue factory wouldn’t bring half that from a blind man who had no idea what a horse was good for.
“A special horse. This is what I need. Do you know anyone with a black stallion? I have heard a powerful chief rides one, which is why I have come to you.” Slocum had no qualm about buttering up the Indian.
“We have nothing like that,” he said. One of the small children began whispering to the other. Slocum couldn’t overhear what was said, but he had an idea it was exactly the information he needed.
“I give this to you as a present,” Slocum said, handing the old Indian his pouch of tobacco. “And I hope you find a buyer for this noble horse.” He patted the dun horse and turned to go. As if suddenly remembering, he turned, reached into his pocket, and took out lumps of sugar intended for Black Velvet. Slocum gave several cubes to each of the boys.
“For your horses,” he said. He cast a sidelong glance toward the old Indian, who worked to build himself a smoke. Slocum asked in a lower voice, “Where’s the black stallion? Who has it?”
“Big Stump’s squaw got the horse,” the boy said.
“But Big Stump came back from hunting and took it for his own.”
“Who gave the horse to the squaw?”
The boys fell silent. They stared at him, as if the question meant nothing.
“Who brought the horse to your camp to give to Big Stump’s squaw?” he asked, trying a different way of getting the information.
“A man from your town. The one who trades for silver from the south.”
Slocum reached into his pocket and pulled out the concho he had found in the room near where Frank Decker had been killed. He held it out for the boys to examine.
“He wore silver work like this?”
They agreed. “We get it from the Zuni and Hopi,” one said. “We have nothing to do with the Navajo. They would kill us for our horses.”
Slocum nodded toward the boys and mounted his horse. Big Stump was out on a hunt. Asking when he might return would only lead to a series of frustrating questions without decent answers. Slocum knew the hunter’s return depended on how good the game was. He also knew a brave with a new horse might want to stay out longer to get used to riding it.
A horse like Black Velvet would make any brave feel like a king. Getting it away from Big Stump was going to be difficult, Slocum knew. More than that, he had to find the Indian before the race Saturday morning.
He had a lot of searching ahead of him and had no idea how he could rush it.
13
Slocum rode around the meadow with its ankle-high juicy grass, studying the ground illuminated by the bright morning sun, trying to track Big Stump, probably part of an Arapaho hunting party, through the greenery. The more he studied the bare patches of ground, the more confused he became. Along the stream leading to the meadow were dozens of hoofprints. Back and forth across the entire breadth of the pasture land were other hoofprints, as if a cavalry troop had ridden through recently. Examination showed the horses had been shod, which only made matters worse for Slocum.
He wanted to find unshod Indian ponies—except for Black Velvet, who had had new horseshoes put on a week earlier to get ready for the race. Slocum sought a mixing of metal shoe print and plain-hoofed horses, and wasn’t finding it.
“Where would an Indian go hunting around here?” He had to think like an Indian or he would wander aimlessly. Slocum looked around at the tree-covered hills surrounding the grassy area, and saw no way to figure out where the Arapaho might head. He didn’t even know what game the Arapaho hunted. Probably deer this time of year, but possibly bear also. If the latter, the party would go higher into the mountains, and he would have no chance o
f ever finding Black Velvet before the race.
“Got to believe Big Stump is nearby hunting deer or other small game,” he said to himself. “Where would I go if I wanted venison for dinner? If I were out hunting for deer on a strong, new horse, where would I head?”
Slocum sat on a rock, felt as if he was missing something, then knew what it was and wished he hadn’t given away his tobacco. He pulled up a stalk of grass and sucked on it while he thought. Every time he made a complete circle around the meadow he came back to one wooded area to the west. It led up into low foothills where deer might go. And something about it told Slocum this was the spot he would go if he wanted to ride a powerful horse and learn how to control it.
“Let’s hit the trail,” he said to his sorrel. The horse looked at him and canted its head to one side, as if telling him the grass here was good and why look for another horse that wasn’t even his. Slocum mounted and rode at a brisk gait toward the wooded area he kept staring at. A smile came to his face when he saw the first trace of an unshod horse in a soft patch of soil.
He made his way through the woods, trying to keep to the track but losing it often. The Indian had made no effort to hide his track. The pine needles and other detritus forming a mat on the ground masked any real trail, however. Slocum finally dismounted and walked on foot, as much to avoid the low branches in juniper and other low-growing trees as to better see the trail.
He came to the far edge of the wooded area and stopped. A smile came to his lips. Echoing across the rocky, open area in front of him were pounding hoof-beats. Slocum swung into the saddle and started for it, wary of spooking an Indian hunting party. That was a good way to end up with a bullet in his head or an arrow in his back. He had crossed half the rock-strewn field when he slowed. The rider ahead had already vanished, probably working upslope. But something didn’t seem right to Slocum.
Standing in the stirrups, he tried to catch sight of the hunter. Nothing. Slocum turned slowly, studying the horizon. He grew increasingly uneasy and didn’t know why.
Then he found out.
The bullet and the report from the rifle both reached him about the same time. Slocum jerked to the side, got his feet out of the stirrups, and fell heavily. He moaned, then bit his lip to keep from making any more sound. Playing possum wasn’t his way, but the slug had passed close enough to his head to stun him.
