Slocum #422 (12 page)

“They're fixing the track, aren't they?”

“Yes, sir, they are, but they got to go slow. On foot and check every rail, every spike, to be certain.”

“How far away are they working? They can back the Yuma Bullet up to that point and we can join them there.”

“Might be an idea.” Ned worked on the key and finally deciphered the return code. “More 'n ten miles away. Might be closer to fifteen.”

“We can all go, John. You have a third horse now.”

Ned looked curious at where the horse had come from but shook his head.

“I'm not leaving my post. Don't feel like enduring the desert just to have some doctor say I'm fine and then the company sends me back and I'm better off staying here in the first place ­and—”

“I get the idea,” Slocum said. He took Marlene aside and spoke in a low voice. “He's going to be all right. Do you want to ride to the crew? They'll have the tracks inspected in another couple days.”

“There might be more Apaches out there,” she said. Her face screwed up in thought. Then she said, “Let's go right away. Ten or fifteen miles is only a ­half-­day's ride.”

“Let's get what water we can and get on the trail,” Slocum said.

He didn't want to return Marlene to her people this fast, but that was selfishness on his part. Ned had sent the message that she was unharmed. Morgan Burlison might want to have her in the hands of his railroad employees without delay.

The two of them rode from the way station, not speaking but occasionally glancing at each other knowing this was going to be the last time they had together. Slocum wanted to ask her to ride north with him and to hell with San Antonio and her family, but he knew this was selfishness on his part. And he had his duty. He had been hired to see her safely home. No matter what he felt for her, that had to be his first concern.

It still hurt like hell.

“John, there's someone lying in the dirt. Up ahead, by the tracks. Do you see him?”

Slocum snapped alert. He had been riding along, dozing. The heat wore him down and stole away his senses. Every drop of sweat on his body found a spot to sting, making him wonder if he had any inch of skin left intact. A quick swipe of his bandanna took the sweat off his forehead and let him focus on the ground. Silver shimmers masked the tracks, the heat rising from the cinders used as ballast to hold the rails in place. To touch the black cinders or the steel rails meant a serious burn.

“It's a man, and he's moving. He's waving to us!”

“Stay here,” Slocum said. “The Apaches might be using him as bait.”

“Don't be ridiculous. I don't see anything else alive out there. The land is as flat as an ironing board.” Marlene sniffed. “And twice as hot, I daresay. Where would Indians hide?”

Slocum wasn't inclined to argue with her, but the Apaches could disappear into desert like this better than a lizard. A small rise could conceal a ­half-­dozen braves, and the mirages caused by heat boiling up off the tracks hid all details close to the ground. An Apache or two could lie there and never be seen until a rider came on top of them. He slipped the leather thong off his ­six-­shooter's hammer and trotted forward, ahead of the woman. If any shooting started, he wanted to be a shield between her and the worst of it.

The nearer he got to the man, the less likely an ambush seemed. The ragged man tried to stand, then fell back when his legs refused to hold him. Slocum had seen good actors in his day. No one faked weakness this well.

“I'll give him some water.” Marlene rode past and slipped to the ground, carrying a canteen they had taken from Ned Fisk.

“Ma'am, please, dyin' here. Need water. Need it bad!”

She sloshed some on his ­dust-­caked, dried lips. The man greedily grabbed for the canteen but Marlene agilely avoided him.

“Not too much too soon. You'll cramp up if you do.” She gave him a little more. When she finally allowed him a bigger drink, she had to fight to pull it from his grasp.

“You're strong enough,” Slocum said, looking down on the man. He had ridden around so he and his horse cast shadows over the man. Being out of the burning sun revived him as much as the water. “How'd you get out here all by your lonesome?”

“You're not one of the railroad repair crew,” Marlene said. “They have a distinctive . . . odor.” She sniffed and recoiled. Even from his perch atop the horse, Slocum caught the same odor. It was bad enough to gag a maggot.

“Nope, me and my family, we was headin' on north.”

“Through the desert in the middle of the day?” Slocum wondered about that.

“We bought a map down south. The feller what sold it to us said this was safe, easy. We paid him ten silver pesos for it.”

“How did you end up in the desert all alone?” Marlene asked, concerned.

“Reckon that was all my fault. I was settin' in the back of the wagon and dozed off. Musta fell off and nobody noticed.” The man rubbed the back of his head, where a knot the size of a hen's egg poked through his thinning hair. He had sunburned on his bald pate and the back of his neck.

Slocum knew he would have been a goner in another hour if they hadn't come along. But he looked down the tracks and felt uneasy about everything. The locomotive or the repair crew ought to have been in sight by now. The man added a new problem he wasn't too keen on solving, but Marlene obviously had other ideas.

“We can give him the spare horse, John. He can catch up with his family.”

“Ma'am, I appreciate that. Don't know how to thank you.” He took a step forward and collapsed.

Marlene knelt at his side in an instant. She looked up, and Slocum knew what she was going to say before the words burned his ears.

“We can catch up to the wagons and get him back to his people. It won't take long, John. We have to!”

“Better to keep him with us and find the repair crew.”

“He might never be with his family again! And you know that map is bogus. So do I. We can tell them they've been rooked.”

“I owe it to your pa to get you back safely and not go running off on ­wild-­goose chases.”

“They can't be more than an hour ahead. He would have died in that time.”

Slocum saw a dust cloud not a mile to the north and gave in to the inevitable.

“It might be dangerous. You stay and I'­ll—”

“You'll need my help. Why, you can't just drape him over the horse and ride with him like that.”

Slocum had intended doing that very thing.

The man moaned and settled the matter. Slocum dismounted, heaved the man over his horse, then rode behind him, arms circling the man's body to hold him upright. The horse protested against the double weight, but Marlene assured him they would switch to the spare pony when the burdened one began flagging.

Slocum fumed. It wasn't his job to take care of anyone but Marlene. The way she insisted on this act of charity made it impossible to deny her, though. Slocum slowly began to wonder if he had the wrong idea about rich girls and their fathers. Morgan Burlison seemed anxious about his daughter's safety, and Marlene certainly cared for ­others—­including a stranger she'd found half dead in the desert. Slocum couldn't get it out of his head how she had asked after Sarah June when her own life had hung in the balance as she was almost swept away in the Colorado River.

“John, ahead! Do you see it?”

He glumly nodded. The dust kicked up by wheels obscured the wagon and team pulling it along. He shifted, touched his Colt, and got a groan from the man propped up in front of him on the saddle.

“You spot 'em? They in sight?”

“Get down. You can walk the rest of the way.”

“It . . . it's not far, is it?” The man landed on his feet and walked along, stronger than he had appeared while weighing down Slocum's horse.

Slocum rested his hand on his Colt but did not draw. Something didn't set right with him.

“They're sure as hell gonna be surprised to see me come walkin' up like this. Them fools think I'm still settin' on the back of the last wagon.”

“I doubt that,” Slocum said. “The trailing wagon's not got its rear gate down. You weren't sitting there.”

“They done switched positions in the line then,” the man said. “The one wagon that's in front now. Thass the one where I was.”

Marlene listened to the byplay. She swung in the saddle to ask the question that had already been answered in Slocum's head. He was drawing his ­six-­shooter when the man reached up, grabbed his gun arm, and yanked hard, unseating Slocum. When he hit the ground, the ­six-­gun discharged, but the man swarmed over Slocum, pummeling him with bony fists. One connected, but not before Slocum got off a second shot, better aimed than the first. The man grunted but kept coming after him until another punch landed on the side of Slocum's head, knocking him senseless.

He gripped hard on his ­six-­shooter, but the man pried it loose and stumbled away, clutching the captured iron in both hands. Dazed, Slocum shook his head to clear his vision. When he did, he faced the scrawny man, who held the ­six-­shooter in steady hands. The pistol's small bore might as well have been a .45 from the way it looked to Slocum. All he saw was death pointed at him.

“Gotcha now, you son of a bitch. You ain't gittin' the better of Cantankerous Jim.” The man steadied the pistol, then cocked it, and squeezed the trigger.

For a ­heart-­stopping instant, Slocum thought he was a goner. But the hammer fell on another punk round. A tiny
pop!
sounded as the slug made its way from the barrel but got no farther. With a spring like a cougar, Slocum launched himself and came up under Jim's arms. Still woozy from the blow to his head, Slocum failed to knock over his foe.

Jim hit him on the back with the pistol butt, but in doing so he lost his footing. They went down in a thrashing pile, neither doing a good enough job of damaging the other to end the fight. Several heavy strikes from the pistol butt landed on Slocum's shoulder, sending sharp pain rocketing through his body. Rather than slowing him, this burned away the fog in his head and made him a fiercer fighter.

His arms circled Jim's body but failed to gain an advantage. Slocum's feet slipped and slid on the dry, sunbaked earth. In the distance he heard Marlene screaming and then her cries suddenly choked off.

“Stop that there fightin' or I slit the filly's throat.”

Slocum took advantage of Jim's surprise at hearing the threat. He knocked him to his back, scrambled around, and pulled the man upright to use the scrawny man as a shield. With his arm circling Jim's throat, Slocum got a better look at the problem.

A man who might have been Jim's pa held a knife to Marlene's throat. The threat of a quick slash was all too real.

Slocum tried to gain the advantage.

“I'll break his neck if you don't let her go.” He tightened his grip and forced a gasp of pain from Jim.

“Now, boy, that ain't no kinda threat. I was the one what slugged the son of a bitch and throwed him off the wagon.”

“Pa, don't let him kill me!”

“Why the hell not? She's purtier than you, and you was stealin' from me. You was stealin' from your whole damn family!”

“I kin explain!”

“John!” Marlene jerked as the blade pressed into the side of her throat.

“What we have here is a Mexican standoff,” Slocum said.

“Don't see it that way a'tall. I got nuthin' to lose if you kill that piece o' shit son o' mine. You got this purty girl's life to lose. And then what you gonna do? You cain't fight the lot of us.”

For the first time Slocum tore his gaze from the knife at Marlene's throat to the other three men watching. They laughed and swapped money, betting on the outcome. If everyone died, they would get as much enjoyment from it as a weekend drunk in a whorehouse.

“Let her go, I'll let this one go, and we'll be on our way.”

“Now that don't look like a good deal to me. I gotta give up this bitch, and I don't wanna do that, no siree.” The man's eyes flickered toward the horses.

“I'll throw in a horse. You can use another horse,” Slocum said, realizing he had to resolve this fast. The longer it went on, the less likely Marlene was to escape with nothing more than a shallow cut on her neck. The men he faced were as crazy as bedbugs.

“One horse? Thass all? Two!”

“Release her and I'll give you two. Your choice.”

“Them's Injun ponies.”

“I took them from an Apache war party.”

“Thass right brave of you, sneakin' up in the middle of the night and rustlin' their horses.”

“I killed their riders,” Slocum said harshly. He gave Jim's neck a crank and got a frightened cry he hoped would deter the others from doing anything too extreme with the knife held to Marlene's throat.

“Deal,” Jim's pa said. “You gather up them reins and walk the horses over to the back wagon, tether 'em, and me and you'll release our prisoners at the same time.”

Slocum dragged Jim around, forced him down onto his knees, and then plucked up the Colt. It might have misfired but it had fired a couple rounds before. One of the remaining cartridges might serve him. After all, his luck had to change sooner or later.

“Get the reins,” Slocum said, manhandling Jim. With all three horses being led forward, it became harder to hold on to the man.

They reached the trailing wagon.

“Go on 'n' tie up them horses.” Jim's pa loosened his hold on Marlene and took the knife from her throat.

Jim fumbled and dropped the reins. Slocum kept Jim between him and the other men. “Pick up the reins,” he ordered.

“John! Look out!”

From the corner of his eye, Slocum saw movement. Images blurred together. A hand. A black frying pan. A faded gingham dress. Then the iron skillet struck him smack on the top of the head with enough force to drive him to the ground. He tried to hang on to the ­six-­shooter, to fire it, to get one round into Jim's ­good-­for-­nothing gut, but he had been too battered and beaten to keep his grip.

A second blow knocked him flat. He felt Jim snatching the gun from his grip again. This time came a woman's voice to go along with the humiliation.

“I beaned the son of a bitch right proper, didn't I, Pa?”

“You surely did, Ma. And now we got ourselves a ­brand-­new member of the family. Say howdy to your new ma, girl.”

Slocum heard Marlene's cry of pain before he blacked out.