by Jake Logan
“Slocum, you tell ’em what provoked Silas to rob the bank.”
“Try to rob it,” Lou Underwood said. “Thanks for keeping the money where it belongs—all safe and sound.”
Before anyone else could pipe up, Flora Cooley asked, “There a reward? You paying something to show how valuable it is not letting robbers steal from you?”
“Why, uh, I—” Underwood looked like a frightened deer, eyes wide and darting around to find an escape route. The notion of paying out reward money scared him almost as much as the idea of a robbery.
“Give my share to Cooley’s widow,” Slocum said. “Mrs. Cooley deserves something for the way the deputy performed his duty so well.”
“Well, uh, yes, his duty. You see, Deputy Cooley was only doing what he was already being paid to do. Keep the town safe,” Underwood said.
“Lou, you old skinflint,” said Radley. “You’re gonna be filthy rich when the railroad comes through. You would have lost their trust if that money had ridden outta town in Silas’s saddlebags.”
“True, but the deputy—”
“I’m not a deputy. I’m no lawman,” Slocum said. “Give her the reward.”
Slocum spoke with such steel in his voice that Lou Underwood bobbed his head up and down fast and mumbled that he’d do so. There wasn’t likely going to be any reward forthcoming, but Slocum guessed that Flora wasn’t the kind to give up either. The clash of personalities would have been fun to watch—if he’d intended to stick around town.
“They’ll back an assault on the wall,” Radley said unexpectedly. “You know all about Top of the World and Galligan. You can get ’em through to rescue my nephew.”
“Nephew?” Slocum blinked. His head was still hurting but the buzzing noise had died down. That didn’t mean he thought clearly yet or understood what he did hear.
“Marshal Menniger is his sister’s boy,” the banker said. “They trace back to the early days when Thompson was settled. Menniger just came back after Comstock lit out.”
“Me and Henrietta came here with our folks. Ma and Pa died quick, Henny married Sam Menniger, and had three children. Two moved on, one of them became the marshal up in Montana ’fore comin’ on back here to do the same job. Couldn’t be prouder of him if he was my own son.”
Slocum wondered if any attack on Galligan’s empire was possible.
“It might be best if you let the railroad executive negotiate for the route over the pass. They got money, they got railroad police if Galligan tries to steal from them or break a contract.”
“My nephew’s up there now,” Radley said forcefully. “These gents are the power in Thompson. They’re willin’ to back you up if you lead.”
“How many men can you muster?” Slocum remembered how quickly the armored wagon had been dispatched by Galligan’s guards. Armor plating a wagon and using a Gatling gun had been good ideas, but a handful of men against a fortified position was a sure way to die. Cooley was gone, though his death was only a bit related to all Galligan had done.
Nevertheless, Menniger and his two deputies were still prisoners. And Beatrice. Slocum remembered how she had sacrificed her own freedom so he could escape. He couldn’t help comparing the time he’d spent with her, albeit briefly, and with Flora Cooley.
“Menniger’s not likely to be alive,” Slocum said. “Galligan thinks up new tortures all the time to please himself and feed the town’s bloodlust.”
“Three days,” Radley said. “I reckon my nephew’s got three more days. Galligan’s celebration of the anniversary of taking over the pass is a big one. He really puts out a spread and kills the fatted calf then. Has for the past two years. Him celebratin’ the deal with Bannock and the railroad, fightin’ off the law from here, who knows what else will mean he’s got to have a big show for his men.”
“You think it’ll be Menniger and the others who are the main attractions?” For an instant, Slocum’s hope flared that Beatrice might be alive. Then it felt as if the weight of the world crushed him down, buckling his knees. If Galligan had left her alive, it was to be used as part of that celebration. Beatrice was a lusty woman, but Galligan was inclined to give her out as a favor to his men.
All of them.
“He might pick and choose among his own men, but having Silas defect like he did is gonna prick his pride. He’ll see it as a betrayal—and it was, by his lights. Galligan will want something special, and using men already in Top of the World as showpieces ain’t likely to work well.”
“There are hundreds of them,” Slocum mused. Galligan could abandon one wall and put all his men on the other to defend the town. If another town the size of Thompson had been built at the base of the pass on the other side, right where Corpse River drained into the foothills, attacking one side would work. Draw all the firepower through Top of the World and across the pass, then attack where the guards weren’t. But Thompson didn’t have a counterpart on the far side. An attack on this side would be met with overwhelming resistance.
“You need a field piece,” Slocum said. “Lots of rifles and maybe another Gatling.”
“Don’t know where Menniger got that,” Underwood said. “I certainly didn’t give him the money to buy it.”
“That’s military hardware,” Slocum said. “Is there a cavalry post around here? Let them lead the charge.”
“Miles off and I suspect Galligan is buying off the post commander.”
“Galligan lets military supplies through the pass without collecting a toll,” Flora said.
Galligan’s position was unassailable without heavy firepower and Slocum told them so.
They grumbled and finally Underwood said, “You find those weapons and we’re with you, Slocum.”
The men filtered out, still complaining among themselves. Slocum wasn’t sure if they were disappointed that there wasn’t going to be a full assault right away or if they weren’t likely to have anyone else to hang.
“There might be some military ordnance around,” Flora said.
“How’s that?” Doc Radley looked hard at her. “I never heard of any such thing, and as Lou said, the cavalry commander’s snug in Galligan’s vest pocket. He won’t stir off his fat ass fer love nor money. None that we could give him anyway.”
“Gus mentioned seeing a cave up near the played-out mines. He danced around saying what he found there, but it sounded important. He was going to mention it to the marshal but never got around to it, I suspect.”
Slocum watched her, wondering what raced through her mind. She thought of a dozen things, no doubt, but were any of them of her dead husband? He couldn’t tell.
“Where’s this cave?” Radley asked.
“I’m not exactly sure, but I bet we could find it.” She turned to Slocum. “John, me and you could go and hunt for it.”
Again he felt a twinge of wanderlust—or was it simply self-preservation? This wasn’t his fight. Leading a posse of ill-trained hotheads against Galligan’s battlements looked to be the quickest way into a grave alongside Silas and his men. Getting Beatrice free might be better done hiking over the mountain and coming down the far side, perhaps near the lake that fed the river Galligan used to get rid of his bodies, and seeing what he could do alone. He had been a captain during the War and had led men into battle who were untrained and lacking in arms. Something told him this foray would be worse than his most horrific battle when it came to counting casualties.
“I got a horse. You, too?”
“Gus has his stabled at Jackson’s Livery,” Flora said.
Slocum recalled that the lawmen had been in a mulepulled wagon, so that meant horses were left behind without owners now.
“They’re alive, Slocum,” the doctor said. “Believe it. Here.” He tapped Slocum’s chest just above the heart. Slocum winced at the pain from his injured rib. Radley took no notice of that. “When you give up hope, you’re givin’ up everything.”
“Get your horse,” Slocum told Flora. “We can hit the trail and be in t
he hills by sunrise.”
“I don’t know, John,” Flora said, agitated. “One canyon looks like another, and I’ve never actually been out here. I’m trying to remember what Gus said, but there are so many lightning-struck stumps and abandoned mines.”
In his day, Slocum had tried to follow such directions himself, usually without success. He lifted his leg and curled it around his saddle horn, staring down into a long canyon filled with tailings from played-out mines. From what he could tell, silver mining had run its course after no more than a year. A quick examination of the ground revealed nothing important. Twin ruts showed where heavy wagons, laden with ore leaving the canyon and going into the canyon with supplies, had traveled on a regular basis. Weeds overgrew all but the most pronounced parts of the road.
“Nobody’s been here in a spell,” he said.
“I don’t know why Gus would come here either,” she said, dejected. “It sounded so good. I wish I remembered more of what he said.”
Slocum checked the angle of the sun, got his bearings, and looked at the towering mountain between him and Galligan’s empire. Straight through he’d find the waterfall-fed lake with the river bearing the corpses down the far side of the pass. Somewhere over his right shoulder and a half-dozen miles straight through solid rock would be Top of the World.
“There!” Flora stood in the stirrups and pointed. “That rock outcropping looks like an old hag.”
“So?”
“Gus mentioned that.”
Slocum tried not to laugh. Any hunk of rock could be turned into an old woman or a cow or just about anything a lonely cowboy’s imagination could conjure.
“There’s a tree growing up into the nose. Gus thought that was about the funniest thing ever. And above it is the cave.”
“Caves are all over. If somebody hid rifles in the cave, they had to get there . . .” His voice trailed off when he spotted a road wide enough for a large wagon that led up along the face of the mountain. Without a word to Flora, he swung his leg back over and trotted in the direction of the path. He came to a halt and looked up. The grade was steep but not so steep that a laden wagon couldn’t be pulled up by a determined team. He snapped the reins and got his horse moving up the road at an easy gait. Going slowly allowed him to study the tracks, the roadbed, and the mountain itself.
The road climbed higher until it ended just above the stone hag. Looking over the edge of the road showed where the post oak tree had grown upward, seemingly into the stone woman’s nostril.
More interesting was the mine shaft leading straight into the bowels of the mountain.
“Doesn’t look as if any mining’s been done here in quite a spell,” he said.
“Maybe they took it all out?” Flora suggested.
“No tailings. There aren’t iron rails in the mine to run ore carts. And the mine supports are flimsy.” He dismounted and examined the wood holding up the roof. Whoever cut this shaft had used green wood. It sagged ominously as far into the mine as he could see.
“It must go a hundred yards,” Flora said. Her voice shook a bit with emotion. “I . . . I don’t like dark places.”
“Here,” Slocum said, handing her a miner’s candle he found on a high ledge just inside the mouth of the mine. He took down another, used a lucifer from his stash, and got two guttering flames to cast pale light.
He didn’t wait for her. He advanced slowly, checking the floor to be sure there weren’t any pits coming up suddenly. Miners were a crazy bunch and followed ore veins wherever they led. If it was straight down through the floor, they would dig until their fingers bled. Falling into such a pit could be deadly.
But the dust on the floor showed no sign of anyone coming inside in months. He thought he saw faint boot prints maybe made by Cooley some time ago, but animals—probably coyotes from the size of the paws—had obliterated most evidence with their own comings and goings. Holding the candle about waist level, he made his way deeper into the mine.
“Careful, John, you’ll bump your head.”
He had already discovered the low roof over his head. Rather than keep it at a constant height, the miners had let it drop inch by inch until Slocum was walking stoop shouldered and would eventually have to duck walk.
He stopped suddenly.
“What is it? A bear?”
“Look to either side of the tunnel,” he said. “Be careful where you put your candle.”
“Blasting powder,” Flora said in a low voice. “There’re kegs of it.”
“Not blasting powder. Gunpowder. For that. For those.”
He pointed out two mountain howitzers slid into crannies carved from the rock wall. He examined several more of the nooks and found shot, the swab, and everything else necessary to fire the small cannons. The wheels off the carriages were stacked in other alcoves. The 150-pound cannons could be moved from the mine shaft and the limber assembled outside.
“This can throw a twelve-pound ball almost nine hundred yards,” Slocum said. “We get closer than that to Galligan’s gate and it’ll be blown to pieces with a direct hit.”
“These boxes,” Flora said, excited now. “Ten of them. Each has eight rounds in it.”
“Careful. That’s gunpowder packed in there with them.”
“Two of them. How’d they end up here?” she asked in a small voice.
“They’re brass so they’re not from the Tredegar Iron Works.”
“Is that important?” she asked.
“Iron barrels don’t hold up like brass ones.” More than once Slocum had seen one of the cast iron barrels rupture during firing, killing the gun crew and sending shrapnel deadlier than anything the Federals delivered through the CSA ranks. “A cannon’s good for a thousand firings, or so goes the warning.”
He examined the smooth bore but could not tell how heavily used either of the howitzers had been.
“John, listen. Do you hear something?” Flora clutched his arm, breaking his concentration. He started to scold her for letting her imagination run wild, but then he heard it, too. Candle held high, he explored deeper into the mine. The shaft took a sharp turn to the right. In his mind he mapped this out as heading toward Galligan’s territory on the far side of the mountain.
“The walls are wet,” Flora said, crowding close behind.
Slocum placed his hand on the rock face and felt distant vibration. He pulled back. His hand was damp.
“It sounds like a river,” she said.
“Let’s get out of here.” Slocum wanted to return to town and get some of those willing posse members to drag the howitzers out into sunlight, where he could examine them more closely. Whoever had stashed them in this mine had done so for a reason. Where the cannons had come from or what use they were intended to perform was beyond him, but somebody in Thompson might know.
If the howitzers were in good condition, blasting into Galligan’s empire would be a piece of cake. A bit of rifle fire first would draw more of the emperor’s men to the wall and then the cannons could be used. With luck, they might take out most of his small army and not have to fight their way into Top of the World.
Radley had said Galligan’s big celebration would happen in two days. That didn’t give much time to assemble the howitzers, drag them into position, and begin what would be a bloody, dangerous battle.
Slocum stepped out into bright sunlight and took a deep breath. The musty air in the mine stifled him. Slocum turned and helped Flora climb over a few large rocks in the mouth of the mineshaft.
“I’m so glad to be out of that terrible place. But we can use the cannons and—”
He clamped his hand over her mouth. Flora struggled but he was too strong. He whispered, “Quiet.” Walking as if the ground had turned to eggshells, he went to the point looking past the stone hag to the canyon floor below.
Four men led their horses along the trail, following his and Flora’s tracks. Slocum recognized the leader as Gadsden, the man he had stood guard with the first day on Galligan’s toll r
oad. He had been taciturn then but now he was shouting at the three with him as if he was accustomed to giving orders rather than taking them.
“What’ll we do, John?”
He didn’t know. It wouldn’t be long before the tracker found the road leading up to his mineshaft. There wasn’t anywhere to run, and Slocum wasn’t sure he could outgun four of Galligan’s henchmen. They were boxed in and waiting to be captured—or killed.
12
“What are we going to do, John? They’re on our trail!”
Slocum’s mind raced forward, choosing and discarding ways out. Simply waiting for Galligan’s men to find their hoofprints and come up the road was a sure way to die since the road was a dead end at the mine. He toyed with the idea of dragging one of the mountain howitzers out and using that when the four men were on the road, but such defense took time—and he knew it would be only minutes before Gadsden found them. He had not been impressed with the man when they stood guard duty at the eastern wall, but the outlaw was so taciturn that Slocum had gotten little to really create anything but a bad opinion of him.
For all Slocum knew, the man could be the best tracker in the Grand Tetons.
They couldn’t stay where they were. There was nowhere for them to run or hide. The ledge in front of the mine shaft was too narrow for much more than the roadbed and a spot for horses to stand, waiting for whoever explored the mine. A quick glance up the side of the mountain convinced him it was too steep a climb to ever get away. The sheer rock face above the mine would leave them sitting ducks even if they could climb it.
“We’ve got to get to the base of the road before they start up. There’s no way I can outgun them,” Slocum said.
“Give me your rifle. Together . . .” Flora stopped when she saw his grim expression. Slocum tried to put on a better face, but there was no way to swallow this medicine with a spoon of sugar. It was a bitter fight coming at them fast.
