by Jake Logan
“You want us to guard the gold, Jesse?” Frank James rode closer to his brother to talk without shouting. Slocum cursed under his breath when they whispered. Whatever Jesse said made Frank angry. It took several minutes before they parted as amiably as Jesse had from the Comanche war chief. Frank and the other four headed toward Santa Fe but Jesse angled to the northwest, possibly riding for Las Vegas.
Slocum was sure Zeke was driving due north. There weren’t any caves in this direction—that he knew of. It surprised him that Jesse trusted a newcomer like Zeke with so much gold. He must think he had the young man wrapped around his little finger with promises of power and authority. The way Zeke had talked about being a governor of an entire state told Slocum a great deal about the youngster. He needed to feel important more than he did rich.
Slocum was sure that Jesse had stressed how a clever man could levy taxes and become rich—but it all flowed from exercise of political power. With the proposed renegade cavalry troopers to back him up, a governor could get by with about anything, as the history of New Mexico under the Spanish had shown.
Slipping away down the ravine, Slocum backtracked to where he had left his horse. He heaved a sigh of relief. He hadn’t thought his scouting mission through properly. Frank and the other four men had passed close enough to see the horse tethered in the arroyo. That would have brought them down on his head like an avalanche.
He gripped the saddle horn and pulled himself up, taking one last look around to be sure the outlaws weren’t spying on him. A short, low laugh escaped his lips. If Frank James had been anywhere within gunshot, a bullet would have robbed Slocum of his life by now. Frank struck him as far more realistic than his brother when it came to practical matters. Jesse was a dreamer fantasizing about being the ruler of an entire country. Frank was grounded in robbing trains and staying alive.
Slocum rode due north after Zeke. The gold drew him as surely as a compass needle pointed north. Twenty minutes riding brought Slocum to a rockier area well away from the Sangre de Cristos. To his surprise the rocky ground yielded spots that might well hold small caves.
The road Zeke followed hardly took tracks. The ground was sunbaked and hard. When it turned to rock, Slocum had even less trail to follow and relied on the young outlaw not leaving the road. He urged his horse to greater speed, thinking he might change his plan and just steal the wagon, too. He could reach Raton Pass in a day and then consider how best to continue. The wagon team of two horses might be used as pack animals in the higher altitude where breathing became harder. Leave the wagon behind, put the gold on the team, get into Colorado, and disappear.
The longer he rode, the more perplexed Slocum became. It was as if Zeke had simply vanished off the face of the earth.
The hilly terrain hid the road in many places, but when Slocum topped a rise and failed to see the wagon either ahead of him along the road or pulled off anywhere behind, he started to get mad. He wasn’t going to be denied the gold!
Slocum pulled his field glasses out and slowly scanned the entire terrain in a full circle. He finally saw what had to be Zeke’s trail ahead where he had pulled off the road and headed directly west into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The wagon was nowhere to be seen, but the side road provided the only chance for a heavily laden wagon to elude his direct view.
As he lowered the binoculars, a cold knot formed in his belly. Something was wrong. He brought the lenses back to his eyes and saw a horse. Riderless. But the blanket was distinctively patterned with the U.S. Army insignia. As he watched, a soldier came up and mounted. Two more soldiers came into view and then he saw a rider with gold stripes on his arm. Less than a mile behind Zeke rode a squad of cavalry.
No matter who they were, it was bad news for Slocum. If they were some of the soldiers Jesse claimed to have bought off so they would support him when he attacked larger towns, they would guard the gold. And if they were either honest horse soldiers or those riding under Simon Berglund, they’d want to seize the gold. Berglund would keep it, but any other soldier might return to Fort Union with it.
No matter how Slocum cut it, he lost.
He stashed the field glasses in his saddlebags, then rode across country using the hilly countryside to hide his path as he tried to cut off the soldiers and find Zeke and the gold-laden wagon first. He doubted he could convince the young outlaw to split the gold with him and head in different directions, each with his own share. That would confuse any pursuit since Slocum doubted Jesse wanted to divide his forces yet.
And if Zeke didn’t want to steal the gold for his own, Slocum could deal with that, too. He hated the idea of shooting it out with Zeke, but he would. The outlaw had been blinded by the lure of power.
Slocum kept his mare moving fast and sure through the hill country, across the road between Las Vegas and Santa Fe, and then toward the mountains. He spotted Zeke struggling to get the wagon up an incline. Just crossing the main road but on the outlaw’s trail came the squad of cavalry troopers.
He made a quick decision. Slocum turned away from the wagon and the gold and galloped straight north, kicking up as much fuss as he could. With such a sudden and explosive run, he had to be sighted by the soldiers. And he was. He heard the sergeant’s bellowed command and the squad came after him. It was a desperate ploy that kept them from looking in Zeke’s wagon and finding the gold.
Slocum considered riding parallel to the road, cutting back and trying to reach Las Vegas. When the soldiers chased him, effectively cutting off that path for him, he turned into the mountains. His mare began to tire, allowing the soldiers to gain on him.
“Stop! Halt!” The sergeant bellowed more, probably curses, but Slocum couldn’t hear too clearly since he had found a path between two low hills that cut off all but indistinct echoes.
He looked around constantly as he rode and knew he could never outrace the soldiers. When he saw a Y fork, he galloped up the right branch, then carefully backtracked and took the other route going deeper into the mountains. Slocum jumped from horseback when he heard the sergeant shouting orders, hunkered down, and let his horse rest while he waited and worried about the soldier’s skill in tracking. The sergeant stopped at the Y fork, then went to the right.
Only then did Slocum get back into the saddle and ride, hoping he hadn’t picked a box canyon. He hadn’t. The shallow canyon widened and then fanned out into more level land as he headed back southward. With luck the sergeant would keep his squad riding away long enough for Slocum to entirely disappear. Only he didn’t want to disappear, he wanted to find Zeke and take the Comanche gold for his own.
An hour later, he had circled back to the spot where he had last seen Zeke fighting to get his team pulling hard enough to reach a high point in the road. Slocum saw only one place where the wagon could have rolled and headed straight for it. A smile came to his lips when he saw the wagon pulled behind a boulder. The smile died when he realized the team was missing. Riding closer, he saw that the gold in the wagon was also gone.
He jumped to the ground, drew his six-shooter, and went hunting Zeke and the gold.
The dark mouth of a cave opened unexpectedly.
“Zeke?” he called. “You in the cave, Zeke?” When he heard nothing, he advanced cautiously. Slocum expected to see the gold stacked inside, possibly hidden by a pile of rocks. What he found made him mad all over again.
Zeke and the gold were nowhere to be seen, but scratched in chalk on the wall were new symbols. Wherever Zeke had gotten off to with the gold was encrypted in the symbols and numbers.
Slocum didn’t have any idea what the ciphers meant.
13
“The wagon’s empty. That must mean the gold’s in the cave.”
The words froze Slocum in his tracks. At least two men were outside near the wagon, and there wasn’t anywhere he could run. He looked at the chalk marks on the wall and thought about erasing them, then decided it wouldn’t do any good. If those were members of Jesse’s gang, they could always ask Zeke to replace the co
de. And if they weren’t, their chance of reading the cipher was as good as his.
None.
Slocum slid his six-gun from his holster and pressed himself against the cold, rocky wall. If he went to the far cave wall, he would run the risk of being pushed back and blunder into the pit. This way he knew he could follow the wall if he had to and miss the pit. A narrow ledge on this side skirted the deep shaft.
“In here, Sarge.”
Slocum caught his breath. Berglund and his squad! He raised his pistol and waited for the inevitable. When the face of one of the soldiers he had saved earlier poked around the bend in the cave, Slocum fired. His aim was a little off and the bullet ricocheted against the cave wall, but the effect was just as good as if he had hit the man squarely in the forehead. Rock shards ripped his face and got into his eyes, blinding him.
“He got me, Sarge. Some son of a bitch got me.”
Slocum stepped out to the middle of the cave floor and fired twice more. One slug ripped into a soldier’s chest and caused him to simply sit down. Slocum knew he was dead. But the other shot missed Sergeant Berglund by inches. He cursed his bad luck and moved forward, ready to fire again. He couldn’t let himself be trapped in the cave.
“Fire!”
The command echoed forth an instant before somebody opened up with a rifle. From the muffled report Slocum knew the fourth soldier was firing at him using his carbine. The short rifle barrel caused every shot to be softer, mushier sounding than that from a longer barreled rifle like his Winchester. The thought of his rifle made Slocum wish he had the rifle now. He could blast his way out of this rocky trap.
But he didn’t. He got off a couple more shots, hoping to hit Berglund. All he did was send the short, stocky sergeant scampering away to take cover in the rocks near the abandoned wagon.
“My eyes. I’m blind. I can’t see nuthin’!” The soldier moaned repeatedly and clawed at his face.
Slocum retreated into the cave and knelt beside the bluecoat. He grabbed his arm and shook until the soldier stopped caterwauling.
“You want to live? You’ll do as I say.”
“I’m blind!”
“You’ll be fine. All you need to do is wash your eyes out with some clean water. But being blind’s the least of your worries if you don’t do as I say. You’re going to be dead otherwise.”
“You tried to kill me.”
“If I’d meant to shoot you, I would have,” Slocum said, lying through his teeth. He had meant to kill the soldier and only the darkness in the cave had spoiled his shot. Hastily reloading, Slocum knew he had only seconds before he would never get out of the cave alive. Unless he kept Berglund jumping and guessing, he would never survive a siege.
“I don’t want to die,” the soldier sobbed out. Slocum knew if the tears kept flowing, the rock dust and shards would eventually wash out on their own. When the man’s vision returned, he would be more than a handful. If he didn’t coerce his cooperation now, he wasn’t going to be able to get it later.
“On your feet,” Slocum said, pulling him upright and spinning him around. “You get on out there and tell your sergeant you’re all right.”
“You’re letting me go?”
“Get moving.” Slocum shoved him, crouched low, and followed the man as he stumbled forward.
“It’s me, Sarge. Don’t shoot!”
Slocum knew one of two things would happen. Either Berglund would shoot down his own man or he would be decoyed away from what Slocum intended. It took only an instant to find out what the treasonous sergeant would do. A shot caught the blinded soldier in the middle of the chest.
Slocum caught him up, supporting him with his left arm as he leveled his six-shooter over the collapsing soldier’s shoulder. Two quick shots. Berglund and the other soldier fired. Slocum felt the slugs hit the man he held as a human shield. Getting his feet under him, Slocum bent his legs, then heaved, sending the now dead soldier flailing away. The momentary diversion was all he had and he made the most of it.
Feet driving hard, Slocum ran for the cover of a rock a few yards away from the cave mouth. He hit the ground hard, came up, and got off three fast shots that wounded Berglund’s surviving partner. The soldier grunted and sat down, clutching his belly. This was all Slocum needed to get off a couple more shots at the sergeant.
“Get back. Retreat, dammit. We have to stop him. Head for higher—”
“Sarge, my gut’s on fire. Caught a bullet in the belly.”
Slocum might have charged and taken Berglund when the man ripped away the soldier’s blouse to expose the wound in his belly. Instead, he wended his way through the rocks and got to his horse. He was out the gold. Wherever Zeke had been told to take it, the lovely metallic coins were probably far out of his reach by now. All Slocum wanted was to get away from Berglund without catching a slug or two.
He swung into the saddle and, riding low, trotted through the winding path until he reached a part of the path that was straight enough to gallop. He expected a few shots to follow him but nothing came. Berglund either was content to tend his wounded man or had gone into the cave, thinking to find the gold. Whether he could decipher the code didn’t matter to Slocum now. He rode with the wind and had escaped without catching so much as a sliver of a bullet.
If he stayed on this trail, he would end up back on the road leading to Las Vegas. Zeke had not come this way. If he had, Slocum would have passed him and the two horses laden with the Comanche gold. He swung around to the south and angled back into the foothills. There had to be another path through the rocks, one too narrow for the wagon to traverse.
From the direction of the cave Slocum heard shouting and then a single gunshot. He doubted the private had shot Berglund but the sergeant killing his man because he had botched what ought to have been an easy kill was within the realm of possibility. Whether Berglund tried to hide the bodies or would simply leave them there and explain to Jesse James what had happened didn’t bother Slocum unduly.
Jesse could tell when a man was lying—most of the time. He might need Berglund to worm his way into the underbelly of Fort Union and leave him alive for that reason alone, but the day had to come soon when the outlaw no longer tolerated the double-crossing sergeant. Slocum had seen Jesse get rid of a man or two simply because they displeased him. And those killings had been when Jesse was much younger and less experienced in the ways someone might try to steal his gold.
As if by magic, the trail appeared. Slocum almost missed it in his deep thought about what Berglund was doing and what Jesse would do. A quick glance at the dirt along the rocky path showed recent passage of at least one horse. The hoofprints went in the right direction so Slocum followed. He would overtake Zeke soon enough.
Or so he thought. He spent an hour on the trail before he encountered the young outlaw—riding back toward him.
“Slocum,” Zeke said, sadness in his voice. “I didn’t believe it would be you.”
“What are you talking about?” Slocum was taken unawares when Zeke lifted a shotgun from across the saddle in front of him, leveled it, and fired. The range was too great but one of the 00 buckshot managed to graze Slocum and knock him from the saddle. He landed hard, momentarily stunned.
He heard Zeke riding closer.
“Jesse told me to shoot anybody coming along the trail because he knew they’d be after the gold. I didn’t think I’d find anybody, and certainly not you.”
“You got it wrong, Zeke. I don’t know what you mean about gold.” Slocum shook his head but the loud buzzing refused to go away. The fall more than the pellet had discombobulated him.
“He promised me I could be mayor of the city promised to whoever I found. You were gonna be mayor of Santa Fe, weren’t you?”
“Take it. I can ride off. Don’t . . .” Slocum feinted right and rolled left in time to avoid another blast from the double-barreled weapon. He went for his six-shooter but froze when he found himself looking down the barrel. It seemed large enough for him to r
each his hand into and grab the shell chambered at the far end.
“I thought me and you was good friends, trail companions, Slocum. I was wrong.” Zeke lifted the shotgun. Slocum went for his pistol, knowing he could never beat the young outlaw. A shot rang out but something sounded strange about it. Then Zeke slumped forward, twisted to one side, and tumbled from his horse. The animal reared and lashed out with its front hooves, then galloped off in fright.
Slocum sat half propped up, his six-gun still in the holster. He pulled it all the way out when he heard another horse approaching from the direction Zeke had come.
“Are you all right, John?”
“Audrey!” The lovely woman was the last person he expected to see on this trail. She held a rifle, smoke still curling from the muzzle. “You pulled my fat from the fire.”
“I don’t know what Jesse James told him, but I lost track of the gold. I couldn’t follow Jesse because he had a half-dozen men with him, including his brother.”
“The gold was lashed to two horses.”
“I know. When I couldn’t go after them, I decided to see where this one was heading since he’d brought the gold to Jesse.”
“A good thing you did.” He stared at her. Audrey Underwood didn’t seem too perturbed that she had just killed a man. “You going to turn him in for the bounty?”
“Not sure there is one on his head. He just joined up a few days back. He wasn’t even dry behind the ears.” She shoved her rifle back into the saddle sheath, the stock pointing backward as if she went through heavy brush and wanted to keep the weapon from catching on bushy limbs. There was more about her than he’d thought.
“You really are a bounty hunter, aren’t you?”
“And a reporter,” she said, smiling. “I might try to write this up for a penny dreadful. Such fiction has become quite popular back East, especially in New York City.”
“We might as well head that way,” Slocum said. “It’s getting mighty dangerous around here.” He quickly explained what had happened at the cave after he’d found Zeke’s new symbols.
