Slocum and the Glitter Girls at Gravel Gulch (9781101619513) (14 page)

“Tell him yes,” Slocum said.

“Yeah,” Hack said.

“What the hell you doin’ way up here?” Cassaway yelled from the safety of the gatehouse.

“Tell him you caught me and Hornaday,” Slocum said.

“We got ’em, Cass,” Hack said. “We got Slocum and Hornaday.”

“Sure enough. Hell, that’s good news.”

A man stepped away from the little store.

It was Roddie Nehring. He walked toward Slocum and Hackberry.

Cassaway emerged from the gatehouse and sauntered toward Slocum and Hack.

“Hell, I was about to shoot you, Hack,” Nehring said.

Then he stopped.

“Hey,” he yelled, “that ain’t Boze. Who you got with you, Hack?”

Slocum stepped away from Hack.

“Both of you lighten your load,” Slocum ordered. “Drop those pistols and come here.”

“Shit,” Roddie said.

He turned and started to run back to the store.

Slocum thumbed the hammer of his pistol to full cock.

“You won’t make it, boy,” Slocum said.

They all heard the click of the cocked hammer.

Nehring stopped.

“Drop your pistol quick, son, or you’ll meet your maker,” Slocum said.

Nehring just stood there, his back to Slocum and Hack.

Slocum caught sight of Cassaway out of the corner of his eye.

The man was inching his hand toward the pistol on his hip.

Time seemed to stand still and hover for those few
seconds. The music from the saloon died away and there was a silence along Main Street.

Slocum faced two armed men.

He waited, giving them both a chance to make up their minds.

Hack began to shake all over as if he were gripped with a sudden fever. Slocum could almost feel the tenseness in the man next to him.

He wondered if his pistol held the power of life or death as his finger curled around the trigger.

It was their move and Slocum was ready.

Slocum knew that Nehring would have to turn around to draw his pistol and open fire.

Cassaway was the most immediate threat.

“You touch that pistol, Cassaway, and you’ll be stone dead before you clear leather,” Slocum said in an even tone of voice.

Nehring wheeled to face Slocum. He went into a fighting crouch and slapped his hand on the butt of his pistol. His palm struck the leather of the holster and made a loud sound.

Slocum thought fast.

First, he shoved Hack face first to the ground and swung his pistol around to cover Roddie.

As Roddie drew his own pistol, Slocum quickly adjusted his vision to account for the distortion of night. He squeezed the trigger as Roddie brought up the barrel of his pistol.

Slocum’s aim was true.

Roddie clutched his belly and staggered forward. His pistol slipped from his hand without being fired.

“You…you,” he growled.

Then, Roddie crumpled up and collapsed.

Slocum swung his pistol to bear on Cassaway.

Again he had to allow for the vision shift in darkness.

Cassaway pulled his pistol halfway out of its holster.

On the ground, Hack groaned and spit dirt and grit from his mouth.

Slocum’s pistol barked. Fire and lead streaked from the muzzle of his Colt .45.

The bullet caught Cassaway on his breastbone, shattering it. Splinters of bone shot through his heart and lungs.

Cassaway grunted, then pitched forward, his gun hand limp.

His pistol slid back into its holster as he fell, mortally wounded.

Slocum stepped over to Hack and came down hard on the small of his back with one heavy thump of his boot.

Cassaway spluttered, spewed blood onto the ground as the hole in his back gushed blood.

There was a stillness as the smoke from Slocum’s gun hung like wispy cobwebs in the air.

The smell of burnt powder was strong and Slocum heard the echo of his last shot fade away somewhere down the street in Gravel Gulch.

Hack groaned under Slocum’s boot.

“Are—are they both dead?” he asked.

“Nehring’s gutshot,” Slocum said.

He lifted his boot from Hack’s back.

“You can get to your feet, Hack.”

Hack pushed up from the ground and gathered his feet in a spraddle. He stood up, tottered for a moment, and then steadied as he regained his balance.

Nehring moaned from a few yards away.

Slocum prodded Hack with the barrel of his pistol and they both walked to where Roddie lay.

He looked up at them, but they could not see his eyes.

“Damn you, Slocum,” Roddie swore.

“I’d say you were the one who is damned, Nehring.”

Nehring sobbed as the pain shot through his belly and coursed up his spine.

“You—you won’t get far, Slocum,” Roddie said before he convulsed from the pain. He held a bloody hand to his belly, but Slocum could smell the stench of his intestines. They were bulging from his back like slithering snakes, oily and glistening in the dim light.

“He ain’t got long,” Hack said.

“He made his choice,” Slocum said. “It was the wrong one.”

“Go to hell, Slocum,” Nehring gasped.

“I’ve been there several times, Nehring,” Slocum said. “You’re on your way.”

Roddie twisted into a ball and struggled to breathe. His breath rattled in his throat as blood gushed up from his belly.

He spewed blood on the ground with his last expulsion of air.

He never drew another breath. He went into a final spasm and died, his mouth open like a beached fish.

“Christ,” Hack breathed.

“Let’s get out of here,” Slocum said.

Patrons poured out of the Wild Horse Saloon down the street. Some stood there in the center of the street and looked both ways.

Slocum prodded Hack over to the dark buildings adjacent to the one where Nehring had stood guard. He pushed Hack against one of them and hugged the place next to him.

Then he opened his cylinder and pushed the rod through
the cylinders with the spent shells. They fell to the ground. He slid two fresh cartridges into the emptied cylinders, shoved the cylinder back in place, then shoved the barrel into Hack’s side.

“You goin’ to shoot me, Slocum?”

“Not yet, Hack,” Slocum said. “We’ll wait until it quiets down, then make our way back to where we left your pard, Boze.”

“Some of the folks are walkin’ this way,” Hack said.

“Then we’ll walk the other way,” Slocum said.

He pushed Hack ahead of him to the gap between buildings and then toward the back, where they would not be seen.

Slocum took his time.

At each gap between stores, he stopped and they both saw people milling around.

They heard voices and then a shout as someone discovered the bodies of Cassaway and Nehring.

Slocum heard Mexican voices conversing in Spanish.

“You recognize any of those Mexicans, Hack?” Slocum asked.

“Yeah, a couple. I don’t understand what they’re sayin’, though.”

“They work for Canby?”

“Yep. One of ’em’s named Rodrigo, the other’n I think is Paco.”

The voices faded, but Slocum knew those two Mexicans were looking for him.

One of them mentioned the name
Salazar
and said they had to find him. The other spoke of someone named Ruben. He heard one man say the name
Machado
.

“Who is Ruben?” Slocum whispered to Hack.

“Ruben Machado. He works for Canby. Look, Slocum, all them Mexes are dead-aim shooters. If they catch up to
you, it won’t be like Cassaway and Nehring. Them Mexes grew up on bullets.”

“I want to show you something when we can get some light, Hack.”

“We ain’t goin’ to get no light behind these buildings,” Hack said.

They walked farther behind the log stores until they were opposite the saloon.

There, between two stores, there was a faint finger of light.

Slocum pushed Hack alongside one store until they were just on the edge of the street.

There, the lamps from the saloon beamed enough light so that he could show Hack what he wanted him to see.

Slocum pulled the flyer from his pocket. He unfolded it.

Then he held it in front of Hack.

“Can you read, Hack?” he asked.

“I had schoolin’. Yeah, I can read.”

“Read this, then,” Slocum said.

Hack was slow, but he read every word. He looked at the drawing a long time before Slocum snatched the paper away, folded it up, and put it back in his shirt pocket.

“Recognize anybody?” Slocum asked.

“That drawing looks a lot like Orson.”

“And there’s a bounty on his head.”

“Yeah, there is. Is Canby—”

“Yep, his real name is Collins.”

“You been huntin’ him?”

“A long time,” Slocum said.

“You ain’t never goin’ to catch him, Slocum. Canby’s too damned smart.”

“Maybe. We’ll see. Come on. Let’s see how Boze is doing.”

Slocum and Hack walked behind the rest of the buildings
to the end of Main Street, where it bled into the valley.

Boze was no longer there.

“He—he’s gone,” Hack said.

“Sure looks like it, Hack. Now the question is, what should I do with you?”

Hack turned and tried to see Slocum’s face. Tried to look into his eyes.

Slocum’s eyes were two black holes. His face was a mask.

“I—I don’t know,” Hack said. “Maybe let me go?”

“I could make you promise to ride out of Deadfall and not look back,” Slocum said.

“You could.”

“Trouble is, could I count on you to keep that promise?”

“I reckon you could. I’ve had my fill of Canby.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Slocum said softly.

“You got my gun, Slocum. If you killed me, you’d be the same as Orson, a murderer.”

“That’s so,” Slocum said.

He did not want to kill Hack. At this point, it would be tantamount to murder.

By now, Boze was probably spilling his guts to Canby.

Canby would have men combing the town and valley for both him and Hornaday. Especially for him.

Now that Hack knew the truth about Canby, maybe he wanted no more of a man with a price on his head. Or he might be loyal to Canby, no matter what.

Slocum weighed his choices as he stood there with Hack.

The choices were few.

“Where’s your horse and saddle, Hack?” Slocum asked.

The voices down the street began to die away, become more muffled and infrequent.

“I got a place in town,” Hack said. “A cabin with a lean-to shelter and small corral out back. It’s on the same street as the jail.”

“If we cross the street, somebody might see us,” Slocum said.

“They might.”

“Worth a try, though.”

“You goin’ to let me go?” Hack asked.

“I’m thinking about it. I could take you to your place, watch you saddle up, and ride off. But how far would you go before you turned back and started to hunt me again?”

“If I rode out of here, I wouldn’t come back,” Hack said.

“That’s what you say.”

“That’s what I mean, Slocum.”

Hack was a hired gun as far as Slocum knew. Nothing more, nothing less.

But, he wondered, was Hack a man of his word?

“Let’s put it this way, Hack,” Slocum said. “I’ll let you ride out. You take grub enough to get you somewhere else. That fair enough?”

“More than fair,” Hack said.

“But I have a promise to you, Hack.”

“What’s that?”

“If I ever see you in Deadfall again, I won’t ask questions. I’ll just shoot you dead. On the spot.”

Hack gulped empty air.

“You won’t never see me in Deadfall again if you let me go, Slocum.”

“I’ll even give you your pistol back once I unload it,” Slocum said.

“That’s right generous of you, Slocum. That pistol is my stock-in-trade.”

“Take my advice and take up another profession—shopkeeper, stage driver, or box loader.”

Hack did not reply.

They walked to the edge of the street. Slocum looked both ways. There were no more people in front of the saloon, the boardinghouse, or the hotel. There were men carrying the bodies of Cassaway and Nehring toward a building beyond the hotel.

Nobody seemed to be looking toward the end of Main Street.

“Let’s go, Hack,” Slocum said quietly. “Walk fast, but don’t run, to the next street.”

The two men walked briskly across the street and vanished into the darkness without being challenged.

It was a long shot, Slocum thought, but maybe Hack would be true to his promise.

Besides, he had more to do that night, and he couldn’t carry extra baggage.

What he had to do next, he had to do alone.

And it was, by far, more dangerous than anything he had been through that night.

Walt Bozeman was in the hot seat.

And he had a headache.

Orson Canby was hopping mad and for good reason.

“I gave you and Hack specific orders,” Orson said.

“Hack was supposed to be on one corner at the end of Main Street and Rodrigo on the other.”

“I know,” Boze said. “I couldn’t find Rodrigo.”

“You were supposed to patrol Main Street. Instead, you got whacked on the head. Hack is gone and now Cassaway and Nehring are dead. A hell of a mess.”

“I was fixin’ to find Rodrigo and set him where I was standin’,” Boze said. “I just kind of waited too long where I was.”

“Kind of? You waited too damned long.”

“I couldn’t find Rodrigo, Orson. But I figured he would come along, so I stayed put.”

“And now you got a headache,” Orson said.

“Hurts like fire, boss.”

“I don’t give a damn,” Orson said.

“Anyways, Slocum come out of nowhere, Orson. Crept up behind me and stuck a pistol in my back.”

“So he didn’t come from town,” Orson said. It was not a question.

“Nope. He sure had to come out of that valley, out of Gravel Gulch.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Orson said. “So he was holed up with one of those prospectors maybe.”

“Or maybe camped out in one of the mines.”

“Which one, I wonder,” Orson said.

“Take you, us, maybe two whole days to search along those buttes, Orson.”

Orson sat back in his easy chair. He had a bottle of whiskey and a half-filled tumbler on the little table next to him. There was a humidor filled with his cigars next to the whiskey glass and a box of lucifers within easy reach.