Slocum #422 (15 page)

The trio poured water from the train into the barrel, made sure the team had plenty to drink, and then Slocum stepped up into the driver's box. He cast a quick look up at the Pullman car, worrying about the way Sarah Jane had acted toward Marlene. Shrugging this off, he settled down, took the reins, and snapped them. The team began pulling.

He had gone barely a mile when he hit a rock that set the entire wagon to bouncing. He fought to keep control, then he went cold inside.

From the rear of the wagon came muffled curses. He touched his ­six-­gun, then remembered the Colt was empty. Reaching back, he found the knife he had taken off one of the men he had killed in the desert, then swung around, grabbed a mattress, and yanked it away. He thrust out the knife, ready to spit whoever was hiding.

He drew back as Sarah Jane looked up and smiled.

“It's about time you realized you had a traveling companion. Aren't you going to invite me to sit up there with you?”

Slocum fought to find words but couldn't. He sank back and shook his head in wonder. Taking the job to see Marlene Burlison safely to San Antonio was going to be the death of him yet.

“What are you doing? Don't go back. I forbid it!” Sarah Jane grabbed his arm and dug in her fingernails until she drew blood. Slocum pulled away.

“I just spent the past few days babysitting your mistress. That's not something I'm looking forward to doing with you.”

“Oh, John, really? This isn't a dangerous trip, is it? If it is, I'm sure you'll keep me safe and sound.” She snuggled close until Slocum felt their mingled sweat plastering his sleeve to his arm. “I got so bored sitting around, waiting, with nothing to do. I simply
had
to get away.”

“Miss Burlison needs you,” he said. “She's been through more than you can imagine.”

“Really? Then tell me about it. Every little detail. I want to hear it all! What did she say about me?”

Slocum wondered what kind of servant Sarah Jane was. She had lived it up in the Pullman car while her mistress almost drowned, got raped by a gang of savages, fought Indians, and was damned near shot by a bounty hunter. Then the elements had been brutal, offering too little water and too much heat.

“She can tell you.”

“I want
you
to, John. Now.”

He started to turn the team around, but Sarah Jane pouted and drew away from him.

“Oh, be like that. Why you won't tell me is a great mystery.”

“It's none of your business, unless Miss Burlison wants to tell you. Did you ask her?”

“I did. Her lips were too chapped and her tongue too swollen for her to speak.”

“All the more reason for you to be tending her and not riding to a ghost town with me.”

“I remember the town,” she said. “We passed through it a few times as the tracks were being laid. Hell on Wheels, they called it. Nobody would escort me into the town to see what it had to offer and . . . and Marlene refused to go. Such a spoilsport.”

Slocum had been in enough boomtowns to guess what a railroad ­town—­and a temporary one moving along with the tracks as they were ­laid—­could be like. It was no place for a lady and her maid, though he had been surprised at Sarah Jane's appetites in San Diego at the whorehouse and even more amazed that Marlene had allowed her to indulge them.

“Rough trade,” he said. “But if you passed through, tell me where the building crew stored its oil.”

“I don't know, but there were a couple big warehouses not far from the tracks. I saw them from the window of my car as . . . as Mr. Burlison did whatever business he had to at the main station house.”

Slocum doubted finding the storage area would be difficult. At most, only a few hundred people had occupied the town, and all of them were transients. A couple tent saloons, a hotel or two, and more likely bunkhouses, a company store, and whatever else the town needed to survive.

“All supplies were brought in?”

“By rail, of course, you silly goose. There wasn't any water, and who would raise cattle or grow crops out here?” Sarah Jane made a sweeping gesture encompassing the entire desert. Slocum saw that her nails had been perfectly manicured. Comparing them with the way Marlene's hands looked after a few days of roughing it made him a tad resentful.

“Did you get all the way to Deming and then return to find ­us—­to find Marlene?”

“Marlene, is it? You and she are on first name terms now? Was it charming out there, just the two of you? Under the stars?”

“Under the killing hot sun without water most of the time, and when we did have water, Marlene almost drowned after her Pullman car toppled into the Colorado from the trestle.” He felt a knot grow in his belly. “Jefferson died, too, trying to save her.”

“Oh, we picked up a new conductor in Yuma. I don't know a thing about him, but he is rather cute.”

“His uniform doesn't fit,” Slocum said. Why that bothered him had to be considered some other day. Ahead through the heat shimmer popped up a tall building. He pointed it out.

“That's a bell tower. I don't know why Mr. Burlison ever had it built. Such a waste of time and money.”

“Might be he likes bells.”

“Do you like belles, John? Of course you do. We spent a fine time together, and I am certainly a belle.”

“The belle of the ball,” he said.

“I hope I'm the belle of
your
ball.” She reached over and grabbed at his crotch. “I'd certainly like to ring these balls again.”

He caught her wrist and moved her hand away.

“There's someone else in town.”

“What? How could there be? This is railroad property. They're trespassing! You're just saying that to distract me. Who would be here? Other than the two of us?”

Slocum wondered at her outrage, but the solitary mule hitched beside the tumbledown hotel warned of at least one other man in town. The mule wore a double pack fastened with a diamond hitch the way a prospector would sling his gear. They drove past with Sarah Jane not even looking up to see the animal and what it meant.

“That the big warehouse where railroad supplies were kept?” He pointed to a ­two-­story windowless building down the street from the hotel.

“It was. Are you sure someone else is in town? What are you going to do about him, John? He can't stay. I won't allow it!”

“Why's it up to you to tell him where he can get out of the sun?”

“I am the representative of the S&P and as such must uphold the integrity of all property along the tracks. He might be stealing something valuable.”

“The only thing of value out here,” Slocum said, “is water. Right now, I'd swap him some for a small barrel of oil so we can get the Yuma Bullet rolling again.”

“Yes, I want that,” Sarah Jane said. “You track down that interloper and get from him what you need. Don't be afraid to shoot him either, if the need arises. If there even is someone else here. I feel so all ­alone—­with you.” She laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

“Now that's real kind of you to give me permission to kill a man.” Slocum shoved his feet down hard against the front of the driver's box and half stood, using his weight as well as his strength to halt the team.

Sarah Jane let out a tiny sound of disgust at having her headrest move so abruptly. She sat up and stared at the warehouse as if it had interrupted her doing something important. From the way she acted, Slocum doubted she believed him when he said someone else was roaming around the abandoned town.

The warehouse door had fallen off its hinges. Inside he heard small animals moving around, staying out of the fierce sun until the desert cooled off. There was no telling what else he might find inside.

“Stay in the back of the wagon,” he told Sarah Jane. Slocum hefted the shotgun, then jumped to the ground.

She protested but obeyed. He couldn't figure her out. She was too many contradictions all rolled up into one lovely package for him to understand. For all that, Marlene Burlison proved a mystery, too, but he found himself worrying about her back at the train more than he did about Sarah Jane's safety in what had been a ghost town but now was inhabited by at least one prospector.

It might be as easy as Sarah Jane said, though. After all, he had her permission to cut down whoever sought out a bit of shade in this fierce desert.

He stepped over the fallen door and pressed his back against the inside wall until his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light. All the tools had been taken as well as most of the supplies. A few crates had been spilled onto the ground. Picking up the contents must have been harder than replacing whatever had been stored. He gingerly picked his way through the debris, using the barrel of his shotgun to push away discarded junk. When he found a small ­gallon-­sized cask, he pounced on it.

Reading what had been written on the side proved difficult in the dim light, but he made out two letters: IL. He tapped the side of the cask with the shotgun butt and grinned when he realized the cask was full. Slinging the shotgun over his shoulder, he bent, grabbed, and lifted the barrel. It sloshed about a little, but when he carried it to the doorway, he saw the missing letter was a faded O.

He swung the cask up onto his shoulder and went to the rear of the wagon. Sarah Jane had stretched out on the thin mattress and slept peacefully swaddled by the heat. He lowered the oil keg and secured it in the wagon, then considered waking her. They had found what they needed. Returning to the Yuma Bullet as soon as possible would get the train steaming along to San Antonio.

But he wondered about the prospector. Other than alkali dust, there wasn't a whale of a lot to dig up in this area. Toward the southwest, Bisbee and Tombstone, was the place to hunt for silver and copper. He doubted this stretch of the Sonoran Desert yielded much in the way of coal or other minerals valuable to the railroad.

Slocum cursed under his breath as he touched the shotgun barrel. The few minutes it had been in the sun had heated it more than if he had been firing it steadily. He sucked on his burned finger, then realized this did little good when his mouth was dry. He took the time to swallow a dipper of water from the wagon's supply before setting out to find the man sharing the nameless town with him and Sarah Jane.

The mule stood patiently in the same spot. The shade made the wait for its master easier, but the sharp, hot wind whipping up over the desert made the spot less agreeable than inside the building, out of the wind and sun.

Slocum chanced a look around the door into the hotel lobby. He stepped inside quickly, then stood ­stock-­still to listen. The only sound he could hear was the whistling of the wind through cracks in the walls. Slocum continued his hunt through the empty hotel, thinking the prospector had come here to die. As many desert varmints as he saw, none of them were the scavengers that would be intent on a freshly dead body. From the look of the mule, the prospector hadn't been here very long.

He stepped out the back door and looked along the line of dilapidated buildings. A vacant lot littered with empty bottles gave mute testimony to where the saloon had been. Pitch a tent, drop a board over a couple sawhorses, and the ginmill was open for business. The building just beyond had likely been one of the whorehouses. A town like this could support more than one saloon and certainly more than one house of ill repute. Railroad workers got thirsty and horny, with little else to keep them distracted from their backbreaking labor.

He took a couple steps toward the whorehouse when he heard the sound of a shovel digging into hard ground. Slocum stepped back into the hotel and peered around the doorframe in time to see a short man with a huge handlebar mustache come out of the next building. The man walked fast, as if he was late. But late for what? He almost ran past Slocum and fetched the mule. By the time he led the pack animal back, Slocum had slipped deeper into the shadows to avoid being seen.

The prospector had found something but what it might be posed a question that burned at Slocum's curiosity bump as fiercely as the sun hammered down on his head. Matters got more complicated when the prospector led the mule away from the buildings. Slocum waited until he disappeared over a rise before following to spy.

He flopped onto his belly and peeked over the top of a sand dune to see the prospector kick down a whitewashed picket fence around a grave. The grizzled old man had gone to the town cemetery to desecrate it. He kicked and stomped, reached down, and pulled away crude grave markers and finally stopped when he reached an opened grave. Slocum froze when the prospector took a look around, to see if anyone watched his trespass.

Slocum almost laughed out loud. He wanted to stand and yell out that by the order of one Miss Sarah Jane Mulligan, the prospector was guilty of trespass and, as such, could be gunned down in the name of the S&P Railroad. Then Slocum stilled as he saw the prospector drop to his knees and begin hauling out leather bags that looked like those used by banks to transfer gold coins.

Three leather bags came from the grave to rest on the edge of the hole. Slocum had thought the prospector had found this grave already open, then realized from the look of the soil that he had opened it before going to the whorehouse to poke around there. He wanted a new hiding place ready before fetching these bags.

Slocum caught his breath when the prospector opened one bag and held up a gold coin, which flashed and gleamed in the sunlight. The man stuffed a handful of coins into a jacket pocket before lacing up the leather sack again. With a grunt loud enough for Slocum to hear it plainly, the prospector heaved the sack up and onto the back of the mule. The animal protested. Then it protested with an even louder braying when two more sacks joined the first.

Knowing where the man intended to go, Slocum backtracked and waited hidden inside the hotel. Less than five minutes passed before the slowly moving mule, led by its master, went directly to the side of the whorehouse. The wind whirled up tiny dust devils. Any tracks left by the mule's hooves would be erased in minutes.

The prospector transferred the three sacks inside the building. Slocum caught the sound of more shoveling, and twenty minutes later the prospector came out, looked around, then led his mule away, going due east. Slocum remained hidden for some time, thinking about what he had just seen. The prospector had somehow discovered the gold hidden in the cemetery and had done what he could to make it appear that vandals had desecrated the graves and had stumbled on the contents. Whoever had first buried the gold wouldn't believe that, but confusion had to be a valuable tool in the old prospector's arsenal.

He might have seen the robbers bury it or could even be one of the gang intent on ­double-­crossing the rest. Whatever the truth, Slocum wanted to see if all three sacks contained gold coins. With the sun sinking fast behind him, he went to the whorehouse and poked his head around to be certain it was as deserted as he believed. It was as empty as a whore's promise.

Walking carefully to avoid leaving boot prints in the drifted dust along the corridor opening into a dozen cribs, he hunted for any trace of the prospector. The sneak thief had covered his tracks well, but one crib caught Slocum's eye. Initials had been carved into the door long enough back for the wood to dry out and splinter. A greasy smear across the initials was fresh, as if the prospector had run his finger over them while he remembered better ­days—­or nights.