Slocum and the Yellowstone Scoundrel

by Jake Logan

  “You see which way he went with the wagon? He was driving, wasn’t he?”

  “He was, too, and doin’ a fair job of that. He might be decked out as a dandy but he was mighty skilled. Even said he would have made the crates himself but there wasn’t time. Drove off in a hurry.”

  “North?”

  “You know this gent? Likely he was headin’ for Sage Creek Junction since there’s not a whole lot else thataway. You tell him I’ll be glad to make more of them crates anytime he wants. Paid good.”

  Slocum left the carpenter’s shop, the sound of the wood plane sliding over the plank fading as he walked down the main street toward the jailhouse. He had learned about all he could.

  It was time to keep his promise and break a sneak thief out of the calaboose.

  4

  Slocum watched the jailhouse door carefully for any sign that Marshal Smith was moving about inside. When it opened and the portly lawman came waddling out, Slocum slid back into the shadows, waiting to see what would happen. As earlier, the marshal walked across the street, went into the saloon, probably knocked back a quick beer, and came out to be sure the jail was undisturbed. Knowing the routine, Slocum hadn’t moved a muscle.

  This time the marshal didn’t return to the jailhouse but went farther down the street to a restaurant and went in. Considering the man’s girth, he was likely going to be a while. Slocum walked quickly to the door, pulled up on the latch, and slid inside.

  “You came for me! I thought you was lyin’!”

  Slocum made a sour face. That was the same as calling him a liar, but if their positions had been swapped, he wasn’t sure if he wouldn’t harbor the same suspicions.

  “What you said about the dandy was true.” Slocum rummaged through the desk hunting for the keys to the cell.

  “He takes the keys with him,” the prisoner called. “You’re gonna have to shoot off the lock.”

  “Like hell. He’s only a few yards down the street. Any commotion would bring him running,” Slocum said.

  The prisoner laughed.

  “At top speed, that’d still give better ’n an hour to get free.”

  Slocum knew he joked. He had nothing to back up his suspicion, but he guessed Marshal Smith had a mean streak a mile wide. He was more likely to kill an escaping prisoner than recapture him. That was tidier and didn’t take near as much effort.

  Slocum went to the cell and examined the lock, then looked up.

  “Can you jimmy it open if I get something to pick the lock?”

  “I ain’t that kind of thief.” To emphasize the point, he rattled the bars.

  Slocum stepped back, saw how sturdy the jail was in spite of the slovenly marshal, and shook his head. For an instant he considered blasting off the lock, but he’d never had much luck doing that with any but padlocks that swung free on cash boxes. More likely, the lead would spatter throughout the lock and make it impossible to ever open.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Slocum said.

  “Wait, you can’t leave me!”

  Slocum slipped back through the door, saw that the marshal had taken a table in the front window of the restaurant and worked furiously to shovel in food. Every now and then he’d glance up to be sure his jail was intact, then he’d return to devouring his meal.

  Slocum got his horse and another he had bought for the robber. Leading them around to the rear, he got back up on the crate and slipped a rope around the bars in the window.

  “When I yank ’em free, you get on out.”

  “I don’t know if I can jump that high.”

  “That’s your problem. There’s a horse waiting for you on this side of the wall.” Slocum looped the other end of the rope around the saddle horn on the robber’s horse and got it pulling.

  The horse strained, balked. Slocum kept it pulling hard. Then he heard a tearing sound as the bars ripped free of the masonry wall. When the horse surged forward, he had to make a wild grab to keep it from running off. The bars crashed to the ground with a sound loud enough to wake the dead. He paused, every sense alert. How the marshal could have missed such a racket was beyond him, unless that restaurant served up a mighty mean peach cobbler for dessert.

  The next sound he heard was a boot scrabbling against a rock wall. The robber’s arms came through the window, then his head and shoulders. He flopped about, belly over the ledge, feet in and torso out. With a mighty heave, he fell out, landing on his head. He sat up, rubbing his temple.

  Slocum rode back and tossed him the reins to the horse.

  “There’s some vittles in the saddlebags, too. I don’t advise you stopping to eat, though, until you’re a good long ways off.”

  “Much obliged.” The robber swung into the saddle and turned the horse’s face northward.

  “Not that way,” Slocum said. “Any way but north.”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t want to ride with me.” Slocum rested his hand on the ebony handle of his Colt.

  The robber’s head bobbed up and down like it was on a spring, then he galloped off westward. That direction suited Slocum since the wagon with the specially made crates had gone north. He wasted no time getting on the trail himself. Marshal Smith wasn’t going to take kindly to losing a prisoner—or anyone who had helped the prisoner escape.

  * * *

  He rode slowly through the night along the double-rutted road, figuring a man driving a wagon wasn’t likely to veer off anytime soon. This seemed especially true since the dandy driving the wagon with the crates wasn’t from these parts. The carpenter had no idea what the crates were for, yet the man ordering them had precise dimensions and requirements. The clerk at the mercantile likely knew everyone within a twenty-mile radius of town, and he hadn’t seen the dandy prior to a week earlier.

  As Slocum trotted along, the morning sun poking up over the trees, he considered that the man he sought had come up from Salt Lake City. The lure of the Innick jewels might have attracted him, but Slocum thought it was more likely he had spotted Mrs. Innick wearing the fancy pendant with the ruby inset. But why hadn’t he kept more of the loot? A generous thief was a contradiction Slocum couldn’t wrap his head around. If the dandy planned the robbery, he should have taken more than the single ruby as his due. Instead he had given the rest of the valuable loot to the robber now likely halfway across the Wasatch Mountains.

  A crime of convenience? Of circumstance? Why did the robber want the crates and only the ruby? Slocum wondered if this crook knew the Innick family and had a special animus toward them. Mrs. Innick had said the ruby was a wedding present for her daughter. Robbing her of that gift might hurt her more than stealing the rest of the jewelry. Slocum even wondered if the gussied-up thief wasn’t inclined to taunt the family that he possessed what they no longer had.

  He glanced over his shoulder, estimating where the sawmill was to the east and south. It would take him a day at most to return and find out if a ransom had been requested for the stolen gem. Then he looked at the weeds alongside the road and saw how they had been crushed down recently by a heavy wagon traveling north. The thief had kept the stone.

  “Five hundred dollars,” Slocum repeated over and over. He had spent close to a hundred of the first part of his reward on horses, gear, and supplies, not to mention a bribe to grease the storekeeper’s memory, but it had been worth it.

  Not only was he on the ruby thief’s trail, but he had supplies enough to last weeks so he wouldn’t have to take time to hunt. It would be only a matter of time before he overtook the wagon, recovered the stolen ruby—and got some answers. If anything, he was as anxious to find out what this was all about as he was to return the ruby to Innick for the next five-hundred-dollar reward.

  In gold.

  By late in the day he passed riders going southward. He hailed them and asked, “What’s ahead?”

  “T
own, not a mile farther,” came the answer.

  “You seen a man driving a wagon?” It irked Slocum that he got a loud laugh in response. “Well, have you?”

  “Mister, wagons is ’bout all we’ve seen these past two weeks.”

  Before he could ask, the riders rode on. He considered going after them and finding what that cryptic answer meant, then realized a better way to find what he wanted to know lay a mile on up the road. A trot brought him to the town within fifteen minutes.

  The town sat in a bowl at the edge of the mountains. He wasn’t sure but thought he had crossed over into Wyoming, and these mountains were part of the Tetons. From experience, he estimated a small town like Sage Creek Junction boasted no more than two hundred residents. He hunted for the wagons the riders had mentioned but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Not sure if they had been making fun of a stranger, he rode down the center of the main street.

  This might have been any of a hundred towns he had seen while drifting throughout the West. It was large enough for three saloons but not so big that it needed more than a solitary bank. A telegraph line ran toward the southwest, possibly linking the town with Logan or even Salt Lake City.

  He dismounted, secured the reins, and went into a saloon. On a small stage two skinny girls danced, flouncing their skirts up high enough to be daring but not so high as to expose anything worthwhile. The piano clinked out a tune Slocum could—almost—recognize. But what did draw him was the promise of a beer and a free beef sandwich.

  “You got the look of a man in serious need of wetting his whistle,” the barkeep said. The man was short and, as he moved, limped just a mite. His hands never slowed from restless movement, as if he was slowly shaking himself to death.

  “Food, beer, those are what I’m in need of.” Slocum placed a five-dollar bill on the bar. As the barkeep reached for it, Slocum kept it pinned with his trigger finger. “And some information.”

  “The first two you can pay for. The gossip’s free, if it’s about local folks. But secrets? Ain’t for sale at any price. I got to live in this town.”

  “Fair enough,” Slocum said, taking change from for the scrip and starting to work on a sandwich filled with tough meat and a smear of mustard. He washed down chunks of it with beer and then ordered another. When the bartender slid it to him, Slocum said, “I’m not much for gossip, but two gents riding out of town said there were a passel of wagons here. Don’t see them anywhere.”

  “That’s what you wanted to know about? Hell, mister, just ask anybody. Them folks spread money around like there was no tomorrow. We was all sorry to see them leave.”

  “When?”

  “This morning, with the cock’s crow. Twenty-four wagons. I know since I counted ’em as they rolled out.”

  “One loaded with new crates?”

  “Hell, all of ’em was loaded down with crates and equipment. It was a gov’mint mapping expedition, headin’ toward Yellowstone.”

  “There a jeweler in town? Somebody who deals in jewelry?”

  “Got a fellow from Germany what repairs watches. You mean something like that?”

  “Reckon so.” Slocum finished his beer and sandwich, got directions to the watchmaker, and made his way through the almost deserted town to the shop.

  The sounds of cuckoo clocks signaling the hour greeted him as he went inside. A man with a magnifying eyepiece mounted on a pair of spectacles looked up. For an instant his eye looked ten times its real size. Then he took out the magnifying piece and asked, “What is it I can do for you, sir? A fine pocket watch? Repair?”

  “You buy jewels?”

  “That is an odd question, but I do.”

  “You buy a ruby recently?”

  “What is the purpose of this questioning?” The watchmaker, a stocky man with muttonchops and thick hands at odds with the fine work he performed on the watch spread out on his worktable, stood. He reached for a rag on the side of the table.

  “No need to get all het up,” Slocum said. The outline of a small pistol under the rag hinted at gunplay if he didn’t calm the man fast. “I’m looking for a man who might have sold you a ruby.”

  “A ruby? Pah!” The watchmaker pressed his hand down near the rag hiding the pistol but made no further move to grab for the weapon. “I buy hundreds of gemstones. Rubies are best for my mechanisms.”

  “You use rubies in a watch?” Slocum frowned.

  “At friction points, yes. It reduces wear, does away with need for constant oiling, makes the watch last tens of years rather than one or two. Metal on metal wears out too soon.”

  “The ruby I mean would be about this big.” Slocum put thumb and forefinger into a circle to indicate the size of the stone removed from Mrs. Innick’s pendant.

  “My rubies are this big!” The watchmaker pressed his thumbnail against his pinky finger. “Smaller! They are no more than the head of a pin. See?” He lifted a small glass jar and rattled it. The light reflected off dozens of red specks so small Slocum almost missed them.

  “You have any need for a ruby as big as the one I’m looking for?”

  “Not even that horrific Big Ben in London uses such. The English horologists needed good Teutonic advice to build such a mechanism, but they chose Denison and Airy. Pah!” The watchmaker made a dismissive gesture.

  Slocum had no idea what he meant.

  “Did a dandy offer you a ruby for sale?”

  The man shook his head, then shrugged.

  “I have no use for such things. My wares are available for any to see.” He made a sweeping gesture taking in the small shop.

  Slocum glanced around. The man sold watch chains but no other gold jewelry.

  “You talk to any of them in the mapping expedition?”

  “I did,” the man said. “The leader, Dr. Hayden, appreciated my work and bought five fine timepieces. He said they were to be used in the mapping.”

  Slocum turned the name over in his head, but he had never heard of anyone named Hayden. That meant nothing, but he knew who to ask after now. He thanked the watchmaker and stepped out into the street. If he rode hard, he could overtake the expedition before sundown.

  * * *

  The warm sun on his back cast a long shadow in front of Slocum as he rode slowly toward the mountain meadow where the large expedition had camped for the night. As he approached the wagons, he did a quick count. Twenty-four. The barkeep knew his arithmetic.

  More than counting the wagons, he hunted for one loaded with the crates Dillingham had built. Most of the beds were still hidden by tarps. The few that exposed their contents carried food for the expedition. A chuck wagon at the far side of the meadow had a sizable number of men gathered, while others lugged parcels from the wagons for the cook to use in preparing the meal for what must have been several dozen men.

  He reached the last of the wagons before anyone hailed him. A man dressed in a prissy suit that was too small for him and a bowler hat that perched atop his head like the knob on a mushroom stepped forward. He held a rifle in the crook of his left arm but didn’t seem too anxious that a stranger entered his camp.

  “Howdy, you with the expedition?”

  “Just riding past and saw you camped here,” Slocum answered. “This the Yellowstone mapping expedition I heard about?”

  “Sure is. You fixin’ to join up? You got the look of a scout. We got two already but kin always use another, I reckon.”

  “Not sure. Where can I find Hayden?” Slocum’s question put the sentry at ease. The watchmaker had remembered the leader’s name for Slocum to use.

  “Chowin’ down, I reckon. Go on over. Might be you can get a plate of beans, too.”

  “Sounds like just the thing to finish off the day’s ride,” Slocum said. He touched the brim of his hat and rode slowly, taking a meandering course through the wagons. He saw nothing that matched the descript
ion of Dillingham’s crates.

  Try as he might, Slocum couldn’t figure out what those crates would be used for on a mapping expedition, yet the trail led directly to this meadow and these men. As he dismounted a few yards from the chuck wagon, he began searching among the men for the dandy in the purple velvet coat and silk trousers. While many were strangely dressed, like the sentry, he saw no one that stood out in purple and gold.

  “I don’t recognize you, sir. I am Dr. Ferdinand Hayden, leader of this expedition.” He canted his head to one side as he studied Slocum, then added, “We are authorized by the government of the United States.”

  That held no particular cachet for Slocum.

  “I saw your camp and thought I’d stop by. Looks like a big expedition.”

  “Mapping, sir. We are fifty strong.”

  “Good work,” Slocum said, nodding.

  “Have you ever been part of such an expedition?”

  “Done some surveying in my day,” Slocum allowed, “but I’m more comfortable scouting.” He cursed the words that slid from his lips when he saw how Hayden brightened.

  “We are in sore need of another good scout. Are you familiar with this area? The indigenous natives?”

  “The Indians?” Slocum sucked at his teeth and thought hard. “Haven’t heard of any trouble brewing with the Crow or Arapaho. Don’t reckon you’ll have problems on that score.”

  “Our third scout found himself in jail. Drunkenness is not to be countenanced in this party.”

  Slocum wanted to ask about the crates the carpenter had made but saw no easy way to pose the question and seem other than a drifter passing by.

  “Can understand that. You don’t want to map the same terrain over and over,” Slocum said. Hayden did not take it as the joke Slocum had intended.

  “You are welcome to share our evening meal, sir.”

  The implication was that Slocum had to leave immediately after. He wanted to look under more of the tarps hiding so many of the wagon beds’ cargo, but it might be better if he did ride away, then return to prowl around when the camp bedded down for the night. He doubted Hayden would post adequate guards, not the first night on the trail.