Slocum and the Thunderbird (14 page)

Slocum sat astride his horse, studying the guards in the two towers. They showed more attention to their chore than previously. Mackenzie must have put the fear of the thunderbird into them. What Mackenzie thought had happened to his town gave Slocum pause. How he went after Linc Watson, Erika, and Rawlins depended on how loco Mackenzie was.

Finding Watson alive didn't come up with high odds no matter how he played the cards. Slocum considered leaving the man, but he didn't know if he had died in the mine explosion. Digging him out would take more effort than a single man could muster.

Slocum considered that Erika might figure out where Rawhide Rawlins was being held, even if her direct knowledge was limited to places where Rawlins couldn't be. But she had been carried off by Mackenzie's men after being attacked by the thunderbird. Mackenzie wasn't the kind of man to show mercy. If he thought Erika had anything to do with burning down his “nest” and most of his town, her body would be drawing flies by now and the real birds—the buzzards—would be feasting.

Swinging his leg over the saddle horn, he dropped to the ground and found a patch of chalky rock mixed in with the more colorful strata. He licked his finger, rubbed it on the chalk, and then carefully drew a number on his forehead, hoping he hadn't gotten it backward. He had lost track of the date, so only a guess and a prayer guided his finger in the number 10. He wished he had a mirror or a running stream to examine his reflection, but he didn't.

It was a quick ride to the guard towers but felt like an eternity because he saw the rifles trained on him the entire way.

“Hello!” Slocum waved when he came to a spot midway between the towers. “I been out of town.” He pushed his hat back to show his forehead. “I need to get back. There's a posse back in the canyons after me.”

“When'd you come in before?” The question echoed. Slocum waited until the last faint sound had died before answering.

“A week ago. What's happened? I smell burned wood. You have a fire?”

“You have been gone, ain't you?”

“I said so,” Slocum said, putting a touch of irritation into his words. He wanted to seem subservient to Mackenzie's rules, but if he showed himself too servile, bullets might fly in his direction.

“Had a fire last night. You're good to the end of the month. Go on in.”

Slocum tried not to show his relief. He had chosen the right month. If he had drawn the numeral 9, his “rent” would have been due.

“The saloon burn down? I got a big thirst.”

“Naw, it was away from the hotel.”

“I'll stand you a drink when you get off duty,” Slocum said. He urged his horse forward.

The hair still stood on the back of his neck as he imagined the rifle muzzles following him, but a quick look over his shoulder told the tale. The guards had already returned to watching the road into town, maybe soon to be filled with a posse.

He wiped his nose on his sleeve as he neared Wilson's Creek. The stench from the burned buildings made his eyes water, too. As he rode slowly toward the tent saloon, he took in the destruction. Erika had done a good job. Not only had she destroyed the hotel and the block of buildings surrounding it, but she had damaged most of the roofs in town. A heaviness settled on him as he dismounted a few doors down from the saloon. Going in there again after he had presented himself as a guard meant he would be found out right away.

Slocum went into a general store and poked around, waiting for the two men talking to the shop owner to finally leave. Even if Slocum had had money, there wasn't anything on the shelves he wanted. Not only was merchandise sparse, but the quality was poor.

“Help you, mister?”

“Just signed up here. Found the saloon just fine but need a restaurant for some grub.”

“Ain't gonna do you any good. Whole town's short on rations after the fire. Burned up the supply depot on the far side of the hotel.”

“Some drunk fall asleep?” Slocum edged toward what he wanted to find out. The store owner gave it to him on a silver platter.

“Naw, the barkeep over at Mackenzie's done it. Got pissed off at him, I reckon. Nobody's sayin' much 'bout it, but she always was a fiery one.” He laughed at his little joke.

“With so much reduced to ashes, she went up with it, I reckon,” Slocum said.

“Mackenzie has her in the jailhouse. Not sure what he intends doin' with her. Givin' her over to his gang to have their way was one suggestion, but most folks want him to let the thunderbird take her. Serve her right, destroyin' everything we worked so hard for.”

“The thunderbird,” Slocum said, almost to himself. Mackenzie kept her alive for some reason, and Slocum thought he knew what it was. Louder, he said, “Staking her out for the 'bird's fitting punishment. When's he going to do that?”

“Never can tell with him. He's so plumb loco, he—” The man clamped his mouth shut and went deathly pale. “Didn't mean that. I meant he's so
mad
that he'll take his time doin' the proper thing. Didn't mean that neither. He's
angry
. That's what I meant. He's angry mad.”

“In the jailhouse? Where's that?”

“Down the street two blocks and over three,” the man said, his words tumbling out. He wanted nothing more than for Slocum to leave and forget his slip of the tongue. Anyone turning in a citizen critical of Mackenzie could save himself from the thunderbird while watching his victim ripped apart.

“I'll be back in a spell,” Slocum said. He gave the shopkeeper a hard look. The man's guilty conscience and abject fear of being called an enemy would ensure he never mentioned that Slocum had ever been in the store.

As thirsty as he was, Slocum avoided the saloon. He could win himself another bottle of whiskey, but that was too risky. His fingers went to his forehead and traced over the numeral there. He'd sweat enough to make the chalk begin to run. From the few men with numbers he had seen, whitewash had given their “rent” dates more permanence. As he walked along the main street, avoiding the still smoking debris piled waist high in places, he wondered where a newcomer forked over his money and received his number. A robbery there would put a considerable wad of money in his pocket, money he could use for bribes and maybe even to buy Linc Watson's freedom.

Even as the idea came to him, he discarded it as too dangerous. Mackenzie kept tight control over the mines and the gold taken from the crushed ore and rock dust. Leaving only one or two of his henchmen to collect such a lucrative toll into the city amounted to an impossibility. More than this, any robbery would be discovered quickly. He had to keep a low profile until he'd rescued all three of the people in town he had come for.

The jailhouse roof had been damaged. Holes had been patched with nailed-down planks. The bars in the back window were sooty except where a prisoner had gripped down and left clean spots. Slocum kicked over a crate and slid it to the high barred window, stepped up, and found himself face to face with Erika.

“You came back,” she said, shaking her head. In spite of the soot smudging her cheeks and turning her fingers to black roots, she was still lovely. “What did I do to deserve this?”

“You hid me in the hotel.”

Erika laughed. “I hid a bit of you somewhere else while we were both in the hotel. I can't believe a quick tumble made you come to rescue me. You are rescuing me?” The apprehension in her eyes made Slocum laugh.

“I'm not about to leave you for the thunderbird,” he said.

“I saw pictures of wings that strapped onto a man's arms. I never believed it was possible to fly around like Mackenzie does, but he has the shoulders and arm muscles to flap all the way to the moon.”

“He swooped down on you, more like a bird floating high in the air than using his wings to stay aloft.”

“So he glides,” she said with a touch of bitterness. “It still landed me here. He knocked me down and clawed me up some so I couldn't get away from his men.”

She turned. Slocum saw how her back had been gouged by the iron claws. He held his anger in check. Mackenzie had plenty to answer for. This was only another outrage in a very long list.

“When is he planning on feeding you to the thunderbird?”

She shook her head. “Anytime now. The men need something to boost their morale after having half the town burned around their ears and the mine collapsing.”

“They dynamited the mine to keep the slaves from escaping.”

“That figures. They are as brutal as Mackenzie is loony.”

“You see any trace of a man calling himself Rawhide Rawlins?”

“Keep asking and I'll keep giving the same answer. Can't say I have. Mackenzie has a lot of projects scattered around. North of here he put a couple chain gangs to working on a diversion project to bring drinking water into town since he poisoned Wilson's Creek with tailings and mercury.”

As she spoke, Slocum examined the iron bars. The mortar holding them had begun cracking.

“If you have a head start, is there somewhere you can hide?”

“Give me a half hour and I can burrow down in the hills where nobody will ever find me. You want to know where?”

“No,” Slocum said.

Her eyes got wide, then she said, “You don't think you're going to get away, do you? If I tell you, you don't want to spill your guts where I am.”

“Something like that. I'll be back in a few minutes. Get ready.”

“There's a guard in the office,” she said. “Mostly he stays drunk. You can go in and—”

Slocum jumped down and walked away while she spun her escape plan. He had other ideas. Something told him that gunning down the jail guard would play into Mackenzie's hands. The only reason to keep Erika alive was to use her as bait.

Slocum had no choice but to grab for it, but he intended doing it on his own terms. With any luck, both he and Erika could get free. With half that luck, she would find her hidey-hole, wait out any pursuit, and escape.

He returned to his horse, mounted, rode slowly down the street until he found a saddled horse, and then unfastened the reins from the iron ring at the corner of the building. He reached over and drew out the rifle from the saddle sheath, tucked it into his empty one, and then walked back to the jailhouse, where Erika still clung to the bars.

The rope fastened on the horse's saddle quickly looped around the bars. Slocum secured the free end to the saddle horn, then set the horse to pulling. It had been trained as a cowboy's pony and understood to keep the rope taut. Only two quick tugs caused the bars to come grinding out of the rotted mortar and bang on the ground.

Slocum dropped the rope and led the horse back to the window. Erika had wasted no time forcing herself through the small opening. She left bits of her dress behind, revealing delightfully bare skin. She left some of that on the mortar frame, too. Then she scrambled about, got her seat, and looked hard at him.

“You come for me.”

“I'll track you down,” he said. “Count on it.” He slapped her horse's rump and sent it rocketing away.

This was the simplest part of the escape. Slocum cocked his head to one side and heard a distant cawing. Mackenzie had been watching the whole time from some high perch still left standing in town. Slocum didn't worry about the man showing himself by flying down, not in broad daylight. That would take away the fear he had built so carefully surrounding the myth of the thunderbird. Whatever he planned would be more direct.

That meant Slocum had to be even more direct.

He rode to the saloon, dismounted, and went inside. Faces turned toward him, but he threw them into instant confusion by yelling, “The thunderbird's killing men in the street! Run! Run for your lives!”

He stepped aside as the customers rushed out—whether to heed his advice or watch others being ripped to shreds hardly mattered. Even the barkeep had fled. Slocum walked behind the bar and began smashing whiskey bottles against the bar and then splashing the fierce booze around. He took a good nip from a bottle that had a label on it. The liquor burned all the way to his belly and gave him the strength to keep going.

When he had sloshed as much around as he could, Slocum drew his six-shooter and fired. The muzzle flame ignited the alcohol on the bar, then spread rapidly. He left, yelling, “Fire!”

The pandemonium increased. Mackenzie had foolishly continued making his bird noises. The best Slocum could tell, Mackenzie was high up in a church steeple overlooking the main street. From there with field glasses, he could watch everything happening in town—and at the jailhouse. The flames from the saloon caught, sending oily black smoke from burning canvas and tarred roofs into the air.

Whatever scouting vantage Mackenzie had in the steeple disappeared. Slocum mounted and rode from town, heading north. He intended to swing around to see what condition the mines had been left in after the dynamite collapsed the shaft. If nothing else, he could rob the mercury-gold amalgam plant of enough gold dust to make his insane rescue trip back to Wilson's Creek profitable. He was still of two minds about Rawhide Rawlins. If the man had taken all the loot from the bank, he was welcome to it if Slocum carted off enough of Mackenzie's gold.

The notion caught in his craw that Rawhide had double-crossed him. He had ridden with the man long enough to get a feel for his real character. Rawlins might steal pennies off a dead man's eyes, but he'd cheerfully give them to a friend in need.

Riding fast, he left behind the town and found himself in country that might have been accommodating with a bit of rainfall. Sere grass all around hinted that grazing a herd would pay off in wetter years. Somewhere in this direction Mackenzie had a crew working to divert another creek, which meant higher in the Badlands enough rain fell or bubbled up from the ground to feed a decent stream.