Slocum and the Thunderbird (18 page)

Alicia reacted to his sudden appearance. She pressed against the far wall, then started for the door to get help from the marshal.

“Don't move,” Slocum said in a low voice that carried a steely edge.

“John?”

He moved closer. The dim light cast by the guttering lamp testified to how badly its wick needed trimming. He picked up the lamp and held it out so he saw her better. That worked for her to see him, too.

“I thought you were dead. Pa said you were in the wagon going to some town, but you'd died.”

“If the marshal comes back, I'll have to shoot him.”

“Hill? No, you can't do that. I—”

“I heard,” Slocum said. “Tell me what I want to know and you won't see me again.” He silently added that he hoped he would never see the marshal again either.

“About your friend?”

“Rawhide Rawlins. Were you lying so I'd get your family out of Wilson's Creek?”

“No, I wasn't. I saw a man like you described right after I got caught. They moved me around, but I saw him and half a dozen others being loaded into a wagon.”

“Going south?”

“No, north. I don't know why. You . . . you rescued me a bit after that.”

“Rawhide was all chained up?”

Alicia's head bobbed up and down. She cast a quick look toward the door. On the other side Marshal Hillstrom talked quietly to Linc Watson about his wife.

“What's the marshal think of your pa showing up with so much gold?”

“What?” Alicia took a step toward him. “I don't know what you mean. Papa said you were dead. He was bounced out of a wagon. He walked for hours until he found a horse all saddled up. There was blood on it and a Sioux arrow stuck in the leather.”

Concealing so much gold dust made sense if Watson didn't want to turn it over to the marshal as being stolen. Explaining how he had come by a hundred pounds would be difficult. That set Slocum thinking in different directions. Watson's legs barely supported him, and he was damned near blind. Lugging so much gold would be difficult for a fit man. He might have hidden it, though.

“What did your pa say when the marshal and his posse found you here?”

“He was relieved. All he wants to do is go back East with Ma.”

Truth rang in Alicia's words, but that didn't mean her pa hadn't hidden the gold somewhere, intending to recover it later. Marshal Hillstrom showing up changed everything, if Watson had the gold.

“Please believe me, John.” She looked distraught, shifting her eyes from him to the door, as she expected the marshal to return any instant. “That's all I know about your friend.”

Slocum put the lamp down on the floor and stepped back. He squeezed through the broken board as Hillstrom returned.

“Your pa's in worse shape than I thought, Alicia,” the marshal said. “He can hardly lift his arms. If he hadn't tied himself to the saddle the way he did, his body'd be along the trail out in the hills.”

Slocum slipped away and went to find the horses. The posse had left them unguarded, but it wasn't the horse Slocum wanted. It was the gear. He found a saddle with an arrow still stuck in the pommel, ran his hand all over it. He examined the skirt and cantle closely, put his nose almost against the leather. Only when he felt sure no gold dust had leaked out—or anything heavy had been strapped to the back of the saddle—did he go back to his own horse.

Linc Watson might be lying to his daughter and to the Halliday marshal, but Slocum didn't think so. He hadn't ridden with the heavy sack of gold dust. There wasn't any trace to be found.

He reloaded his six-shooter with the few rounds he had left. He had to avoid a protracted gunfight because he would surely die with only four rounds riding in the cylinder—all the ammo he had.

As Slocum rode straight into the canyons leading to Wilson's Creek, he mulled over everything he had been told and had seen with his own eyes. If Watson hadn't carried the gold back from the road to Overton, it was still out there somewhere.

And Rawhide Rawlins was working on Mackenzie's water diversion to the north of Wilson's Creek.

He had followed this trail often enough that he knew where to ride to keep out of sight, where the high spots were that Mackenzie might perform his deadly leaps wearing his thunderbird wings and, most important, the places the gang hid to trap anyone foolish enough to ride into Wilson's Creek. But this time Slocum kept an eye out for something more.

The spot where he, Alicia, and Rawhide had camped passed soon enough, but if she was right that Rawhide had been captured, he would have bought his way out using the bank money. While the gang might have stolen it, Slocum doubted they would try to double-cross their boss. Mackenzie held them all in slavery as surely as if they had chains on their legs by threatening them with the thunderbird's vengeance. If Rawhide hadn't bought his way into Wilson's Creek, he had hidden the loot somewhere along the trail.

Eliminating the spots too difficult to reach if he were being attacked, Rawhide had only a handful of suitable places open to him. As Slocum rode the trail, he saw rocks piled atop one another in a curious fashion. No amount of weathering or a random avalanche created such a hill. He dismounted and kicked at the rocks. They tumbled over, revealing a burlap bag. A quick tug unearthed it.

“I'll be damned,” he said softly. A quick glance in the sack assured him the money was all there.

Rawhide Rawlins had hidden the money rather than let it fall into the hands of outlaws. He had paid for that devotion with his freedom and maybe his life. Once he had entered Wilson's Creek and heard the rules, Rawhide could have offered up the money as his “rent” but he hadn't. The burlap bag Slocum held was mute testimony to that.

Slocum swung the bag over the rear of his saddle, mounted, and rode for the guard towers. He watched for a looming presence along either canyon rim, but Mackenzie never put in an appearance. As night fell, the towers turned darkly menacing on either side of the road. The other guard posts had already been abandoned, telling Slocum that Mackenzie still ruled the town with an iron talon.

As much as he wanted to put a bullet through the fake thunderbird's heart, Slocum skirted the town. His horse shied repeatedly at the burned smells drifting on the night breeze. Mingled with the burned wood came the scent of roasted flesh. Rather than burying the two fires' victims in a mass grave, Mackenzie burned their bodies. It had to be done for sanitary reasons, but Slocum felt his belly twisting into knots as he rode a little faster to put it behind him.

Before, he had headed for the mines. Now, he pointed his horse's face to the north, where the water project sought to bring fresh water to town.

When he left Wilson's Creek far enough behind to appreciate the clean, cold air, he felt better about rescuing Rawhide. A quick glance behind at the bag of money told him he had to set the man free. Glad that his initial belief was correct—that Rawhide would never cross him, not after all the time they'd spent working together and on the cattle drive, watching each other's backs and developing a real friendship—he concocted what ought to be a simple rescue plan.

Slocum had few enough friends. Knowing that Rawhide had not betrayed him or taken the money for his own gave him a certain amount of satisfaction.

He heard the sound of water gurgling before he saw the streambed. This creek flowed sluggishly, hardly wider than he could step across. He followed the ripples in the water farther north toward the foothills until he saw what Mackenzie had planned. A dam held back the flow.

It took a few minutes to get the lay of the camp. A dozen men slept at the base of the dam while two tents pitched farther away glowed with lamplight. The tents held the guards. Their slaves slept under the stars.

Slocum made sure the guards were intent on their card game in one tent and snoring loudly in the other before going to the dam. The water penned up behind the carefully positioned rocks and earthen filling would be released when the workers dug a deeper diversion channel to town.

Only after he had located the equipment being used for the construction and taken a hammer and chisel did he go to where the prisoners slept. They had threadbare blankets pulled up around their shoulders. Some, skeleton thin, shivered although the night wasn't that cold yet. Slocum saw that they suffered from a variety of diseases. Mackenzie might send the men with ague and other ailments here rather than have them infect his gold miners. The fresh air might heal the sick men, though Slocum suspected Mackenzie feared an epidemic spreading in the confines of his gold mine and wiping out all his most productive workers.

So why had Rawhide been sent here? Slocum had the cold feeling he was again wrong about finding his friend.

Carefully stepping over the sleeping men and pulling back the blankets covering their faces, Slocum finally found Rawhide Rawlins. The man looked the worse for wear. His face was a welter of half-healed cuts and in one place a new scar already angled from the middle of his forehead, over his eye to his cheek. The size and placement hinted at a pickaxe used on his head.

He put his hand over Rawhide's mouth to keep him from crying out as he shook the man awake. Eyelids flickered and finally opened. His eyes had clouded over, and Slocum wondered if he saw anything beyond the end of his nose. But his hand on Slocum's was strong and shoved it away.

“Havin' trouble breathin'. Don't cut off my air, Slocum.” He sat up, rubbed his nose, and then closed one eye to get a better look. “Never expected to see you again. Heard tell you was et by the thunderbird.”

“He couldn't stomach me,” Slocum said. “Get your shackles where I can see them.” He hoisted the hammer and chisel. “Cover the iron with your blanket. Don't want to make too much noise.”

Rawhide did as he was told. His hand shook. Slocum wondered if it came from excitement at being released or if some more tenacious malady clung to him that explained why Mackenzie had sent him here rather than using him in the mine.

A quick placement of the chisel followed by a sharp rap popped open the shackles.

“Best I felt in a week,” Rawhide said. He looked around at the other fitfully sleeping prisoners. “What are you gonna do 'bout them?”

“If I cut off the chains, can they run?”

“Most all can. Will,” Rawhide said. “Those what can't, the others will help. But they got the guns. We don't.” He lifted his chin and pointed Indian style toward the two tents filled with Mackenzie's gang.

“You know how to plant dynamite?”

“Been doin' that to blast rock for that damned dam.”

“Fetch the sticks you need, along with blasting caps and five minutes' worth of miner's fuse. That dam ought to be returned to pebbles.”

“Good as done, Slocum, good as done.” Rawhide got to his feet and teetered away, his legs barely working. He forced himself to take strides longer and more natural now that the chains had been cut off, but his progress was slower than Slocum had hoped.

He awakened the other eight men in turn, whispering what he expected of them, then removed the chains. The clank and snap of iron sounded like thunder with every stroke, no matter how he muffled the blow, but the guards paid no heed. When Slocum had all eight men together in a huddle, he spoke quickly and low.

“You light out. Don't much matter which way you go. But I ought to warn you that Wilson's Creek is half burned down and the gunmen left there are willing to shoot anyone they see.”

“We kin go on north. There's a whole mess o' canyons where we kin get ourselves lost,” volunteered a smallish man. “The army post is that way, too. Might be a patrol finds us 'fore we starve to death or die of exposure.”

“Get the cavalry down here to bust things wide open,” Slocum said. He remembered how Alicia had intended to report Mackenzie to the army. He doubted her resolve had lasted now that she and the marshal were getting on so well. “Me and Rawlins will make sure the guards don't come after you.”

“Gimme a knife,” said another. “I'll cut their throats while they sleep.”

“All of you, go,” Slocum said forcefully. “You stay and you're likely to get killed.”

Two of the men wanted to fight. The remaining six convinced them Slocum's plan had more merit. Between them, three being supported by others, they began the long hike to the cavalry post. Slocum doubted many would make it, not in their condition, but dying free was a whale of a lot better than being worked to death in shackles.

Slocum retrieved his horse and rode around to the rope corral fashioned between three trees. He saddled Rawhide's horse, then chose two others before cutting the rope and releasing the remainder. By switching off to the spare horses as they rode, Slocum hoped during the next day to put sixty miles or better between him and this goddamned prison Mackenzie had fashioned.

When the horses galloped away, the guards finally twigged to something wrong in their camp. Slocum galloped off with the three horses trailing him as the guards opened fire. The confusion spread when they discovered all their prisoners had disappeared. He rode straight for the rocky dam where Rawhide sat on a rock, looking forlorn.

“What's wrong?” Slocum called. “We got the whole camp coming down on our necks.”

“I ain't got a match. No way to light the fuse.”

Slocum fumbled in his pocket, then remembered all over again how he had given his matches to Erika for her arson. He glanced back and saw the guards running hard toward him since astride his horse he was the most visible thing in the camp.

“Get on your horse,” Slocum said. He waited for Rawhide to mount painfully, then whipped out his Colt, aimed, and fired straight into the blasting cap crimped down on a stick of dynamite.

The explosion staggered his horse, then set it running like its tail was on fire. Rawhide galloped right behind, bent low. His moans of pain sounded above the hammering hooves and the rifle fire from behind them.

Then a creaking sound like a huge giant rusty hinge opening filled the air. The dynamite had weakened the base of the dam. The water pressure behind finally won over the rock and burst out.

“That ought to drown the lot of 'em like rats,” chortled Rawhide.

Slocum slowed his headlong pace, and Rawhide did the same. Slocum passed over the reins to one of the spare horses.

“Switch off between your horses and you can put a lot of miles behind you.”

“You ain't comin' with me?”

“I've got business to attend to way south.”

“Slocum, it's been a pleasure. Don't rightly know how I can thank you fer gettin' me out of that jam.” He thrust out his hand and shook with more strength than Slocum expected. “Best I kin do is tell you where I hid the money from the Halliday bank. You know that spot—”

He stopped in midsentence as Slocum reached behind him and swung the burlap bag around. He handed it to Rawlins.

“You found it!”

“Keep it. All of it. You're about the best partner I ever had on the trail,” Slocum said.

“But you're deservin' of it. Half, I reckon, since Lee got himself kilt and all.”

“Don't flash it around, and don't go back to Halliday. The marshal's looking to make himself out a hero to a new sweetheart.”

“How do you know all this, Slocum? I swear, you keep yer ear to the ground better 'n anybody I ever did see.”

“The men back at the construction camp might be dead or they might be squealing for a posse of Mackenzie's henchmen from town. Get out of here right now and you'll be just fine.”

“Watch your back, Slocum.” Rawhide Rawlins gave him a sloppy salute, then wheeled about and galloped away, the bag of money flopping in front of him where he'd secured it to the saddle horn.

Slocum waited for him to disappear into the night, then got his bearings from the Big Dipper and knew he had to ride fast because of a storm brewing. Clouds obscured half the sky and the distant mountains were backlit by lightning.

A heavy rain might be just what he needed to cover his tracks as he headed toward the road to Overton. If Linc Watson hadn't been telling a tall one, a hundred pounds of gold dust waited for him somewhere along the side of the road.