Slocum and the High-graders, page 11
Working the team, he pulled up behind the general store and jumped down after clumsily fixing the reins around the brake.
“Looks like you got bunged up somethin’ fierce,” the shopkeeper said. He scratched his chin. “You workin’ out at the Low Down, I reckon.”
“The foreman said you had supplies ready to take back. I won’t be much help loading,” Slocum said, “but I’ll do what I can.”
“Not with that gimpy arm; you’d be more in the way than any help,” the man said. “I heard about the other boy, the one who was here a couple days back. Damned shame about Billy.”
“Yeah,” Slocum said.
“You go on over to the Oriental or one of them other saloons, and I’ll see to gettin’ things loaded for you. I got to finish puttin’ the flour into bags, so it’ll take me a goodly hour or more.”
“Sure I can’t do something?”
“Nary a blessed thing, son. Git on over there. You’ll have your hand full drivin’ this team.” The shopkeeper laughed at his small joke, pointing at Slocum’s bad arm. Slocum nodded his thanks and went around to find a decent place that served a free lunch along with a beer. His belly was always complaining because the Low Down had such quick turnover in cooks. Mostly, the men taking the job did so out of desperation rather than experience. Slocum was no cook, but he knew he could do better than most of the food wranglers working at the mine.
As he climbed the steps to go into the Oriental, he paused and looked across the street at the Gentleman’s Delight Drinking Emporium. He could see Herk and Singer had been in town longer than he had, because they were both roaring drunk. They jostled each other and hardly fit through the double doors, bouncing off the walls as they tried to get inside. Slocum changed his direction and followed them inside.
Miles’s assistants had found themselves a table at the rear of the saloon and were already working on a full bottle of whiskey. The pile of money on the table between them made Slocum’s eyes go wide. Flashing so many greenbacks like that usually meant somebody ended up unconscious—or dead—and robbed blind. Since it was the middle of the day, the saloon patrons were few and far between; besides three others, Herk, Singer, and Slocum were the only customers.
“Beer,” Slocum said, situating himself so he could watch both men in the mirror behind the bar. “You got any food to go along with it?”
“For a dime I can give you a sandwich.”
“It’s a deal,” Slocum said, dropping in front of him a nickel for the beer and a dime for the food.
The two men, for all their obvious intoxication, kept their voices low as they worked on their bottle. Slocum ate slowly, drank another beer, and was about to return to the mercantile for the supplies when both Herk and Singer shot to their feet. They grabbed the half-empty bottle and walked unsteadily from the saloon.
Slocum hunched over his beer, not looking up. They paid him no attention. But when they had finally succeeded in getting through the door, only hitting the doorjamb a couple times in their drunken hurry to get outside, he turned and followed. They had been so closemouthed that he figured they were up to something.
Both men took turns with the bottle, knocking back healthy swigs as they staggered down the street. Slocum followed them to the wheelwright’s shop. His spirts sagged a mite when they went around back to where the smithy worked on his forge. Pressing himself against the side of the wheelwright’s shop, Slocum peered around.
“Over there, gents,” the smithy said. “You need anything else?”
“Nope, this is it,” Herk said.
Slocum held his breath waiting to see what they had been so secretive about. Then he let it out when Singer and Herk hefted an axle for a freight wagon up onto their shoulders. It was heavy enough to make them stagger—or was that the effect of the booze they had been swilling? Slocum thought it must have been a little of both.
Seeing them heading in his direction, Slocum beat a hasty retreat. He watched as they made their unsteady way down the street in the direction opposite of where he had to go. Slocum was disappointed. He had expected to uncover something more nefarious than two men fetching a replacement axle for an ore wagon.
He went around to the rear of the general store. The shopkeeper sat on a rain barrel, slicing up an apple and popping the wedges into his mouth with the precision of a machine.
“You got a good sense of timin’,” the merchant said. “Just this minute finished with loadin’ your supplies.”
“Much obliged,” Slocum said. “I had lunch along with a couple beers. Almost makes it worth getting my arm all cut up.”
“You got enough food loaded here for a small army. You didn’t ruin your appetite now, did you?” The shopkeeper laughed, knowing the situation at the Low Down when it came to cooks.
“I’m as likely to eat the flour straight out of the sack,” Slocum said. He climbed into the wagon, spent a minute wrapping the reins around his right arm, and then snapped them to get the tired draft horses pulling. They had enjoyed their respite from real work, but now they had a fully loaded wagon to contend with. They protested until Slocum found the proper pattern of snap and yell that got the pair moving.
He drove out of Cripple Creek, keeping a sharp lookout for Herk and Singer. The two men and their spare axle were nowhere to be seen. By the time he was on the main road heading back to the mine, he had given up his hunt for them. Wherever they had gone, it wasn’t back to the Low Down. Slocum fell into the rattle-and-clank motion of the wagon as it bumped over rocks in the road, and almost drifted to sleep.
He came awake suddenly when he saw a masked man in the middle of the road, pointing a six-shooter at him. Slocum tried to reach for his six-shooter but was thwarted not only by the way he had the reins twined around his right arm, but also because he had left his Colt back at the bunkhouse.
“Draw rein or I’ll shoot!”
Slocum stood and tugged on the reins. It didn’t take much persuading to convince the horses to cease their pulling.
“Get down. Get down or I’ll drill you, I swear!”
Slocum saw how the road agent swung his six-gun around wildly.
“You new at this?”
“Shut up. Don’t give me no backtalk or I’ll kill you. I swear I will!”
Slocum knew the sound of a man talking himself into doing something. He silently fixed the reins and jumped down.
“You drop your gun,” the road agent ordered.
“I’m not packing,” Slocum said, turning first left and then right to show the outlaw.
“What’s that on your arm?”
“Bandage.” Slocum held up his left arm the best he could.
“Oh, yeah, I see now. Get over there.”
“All I’ve got in the wagon are supplies. No gold. I’m driving back to the mine.”
“Shut up, shut up!” The road agent was almost screaming. When the robber cocked his six-shooter, Slocum did as he was told and backed away. As het up as the owlhoot was, he might shoot an unarmed man in the back. If he started throwing lead, Slocum wanted to see it so he could maybe dodge.
The masked robber came up and started to climb into the driver’s box. Slocum moved like lightning, crossing the distance between them, reaching up and grabbing the man’s gun belt, and pulling hard. The man flew through the air and landed in the road, but he still clung to his six-gun. He fired at Slocum. Slocum straightened, felt pain lance through his head, and then the world went black.
12
Slocum was footsore by the time he got back to the mine. Most of the miners were in the mess hall. The clatter of spoons and forks and tin plates mingled with boisterous laughter as they blew off a little steam after a hard day deep underground. Slocum ignored them and headed directly for the office perched on its hill, where a single light still gleamed in the window.
Knocking on the door, Slocum waited until he heard a gruff, “Come on in. Door’s always unlocked.”
Entering, Slocum saw Morgan Haining at his desk. The man looked gaunt and on edge, but he pushed aside the stacks of paper to peer at Slocum. He adjusted the small lamp on the desk beside him, giving them more light.
“Good God, man, you look a fright. What’s happened to you now?”
“Robbed,” Slocum said, sitting heavily in the chair opposite Haining. He had held up well all day, but it felt as if all his energy vanished in a rush now that he had told the mine owner.
“Going to town or returning?” Haining sucked in his breath and held it. Slocum knew why. He gave him the bad news.
“On the way back. One road agent, but he got the drop on me. I hadn’t taken along a six-shooter or a rifle, not that it would have mattered much.”
“Your arm. How you could drive the wagon was something of a mystery to me when Lucas told me he’d sent you.”
“I don’t think the robber did this as a rule. He was mighty edgy.”
“Bad times in Cripple Creek. There’s a passel of gold being taken from the mines but so little of it makes its way down to the ordinary citizen.”
“It did this time. Worse, he drove off in the wagon.”
“We have another,” Haining said, “but you’re right. This reduces the amount of ore we can haul to the mill by half.”
“How long before you have the other wagon fixed?” Slocum asked.
“Fixed? What do you mean? It’s broken down?”
“I thought so.” Slocum hesitated, then changed what he was going to say. “Isn’t its axle cracked?”
“I’ll have to find out, but I am sure I saw it return from the mill just before sundown. No one mentioned anything about it being out of service.”
“Must have been wrong,” Slocum said, thinking about Herk and Singer lugging the heavy axle out of the wheel-wright’s shop.
“It’s tragedy enough losing those supplies. I can ill afford to buy more, but I must. And use the remaining wagon for the supplies rather than in hauling ore tomorrow.”
“I’m pretty fair at tracking. Give me a horse and I’ll find the robber before sunrise.” Slocum tasted bile on his tongue when he made the request. When he had ridden into Cripple Creek, he’d been the owner of a good horse.
“No, you’ll do nothing of the sort. This is a matter for the law. When you go into Cripple Creek in the morning, you’ll notify the marshal and let him handle this.”
“Folks in town don’t think much of the marshal,” Slocum said.
“Who ever does?” Haining smiled weakly. “That’s the nature of the beast, I suppose. He arrests them when they’re getting drunk and having fun. No, you will notify him and not do anything as foolish as tracking down this desperado.”
Slocum wasn’t sure the road agent was that big a desperado but said nothing. He was too tired to do much more than find his bunk and turn in for the night.
He had left Haining to his work, found the trail in the dark, and started down it when he heard someone call his name. Slocum froze, again wishing he had his trusty Colt Navy at his hip.
“John?” This time the voice was softer, more feminine.
He turned, expecting to see Evangeline Haining. His eyebrows rose when her mother came from the shadows. Even in the dim light cast by the stars above, it was easy to see where the younger woman got her beauty. Darleen Haining was in her early forties, moved with the easy grace of a hunting mountain lion, and stopped just a few feet away. Slocum caught the scent of her seductive perfume and couldn’t help staring at her cleavage. She wore her blouse with the top three buttons unfastened, giving a clear view of firm, white breasts.
“Good evening, Mrs. Haining,” he said.
“We’ve never been formally introduced, but—”
“I’ve seen you around the office,” Slocum said. “You obviously took the time to learn my name.” He wanted to say more but wondered why she had stopped him, unless it had to do with her daughter.
“Why, yes, I asked after you. It’s not often a man such as yourself comes to work at the Low Down.”
Slocum still had no idea what she wanted. Her words could mean anything. He kept quiet, knowing she would eventually get around to telling him why she bothered to speak to him rather than letting her husband do so.
“You’re quite the hero. Saving men like you did. And that terrible accident.” She reached out gingerly and brushed her fingers along his bandaged forearm. For a momentSlocum thought she was going to let those fingers work on up to unbandaged arm. But she drew back.
“It’s been a long day, ma’am. Mind if we continue this conversation later?”
“It won’t take long,” she said, stepping even closer. Slocum felt the heat from her lush body and again had the feeling she wanted to do more. Kiss him?
“I want to know what you said to my husband. Just now. Before you came out of the office.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Because I’m asking you, John,” she said. Her hand stroked over his stubbled cheek and lingered for a moment on his chin before slipping away like a thief in the night.
“I was robbed on the way back from town. Mr. Haining wants me to go back in the morning, tell the marshal, and then get more supplies.”
“Robbed?” Darleen Haining’s tone changed. “Why were you robbed?”
“He had a six-shooter and I didn’t,” Slocum said, thinking that was a strange question to ask. Why did any man rob another?
“The week’s supplies are all gone?”
“Reckon so, unless the marshal can track the man down and find them. The road agent lit out with the wagon and everything in it.”
“The wagon?” Now Darleen Haining’s words carried midwinter frost with them. “You let the wagon be stolen?”
“Can’t say I allowed it,” Slocum said, resenting the implication that he was a party to the theft. “I wasn’t armed and he had the drop on me. You’d prefer I’d ended up dead trying to stop the road agent?”
“You could have—” She cut off her words, stepped back, and glared at him, then swung around and flounced off, leaving Slocum alone on the path. He heard her skirts softly whispering long after she disappeared from sight. Only her pungent perfume remained to remind him she had been there. Slocum tried to figure out what that was all about but couldn’t. He went directly to the bunkhouse and turned in, but his sleep was disturbed by odd dreams of Darleen Haining and Lucas Miles pointing at him, accusing him of some unknown crime—and then shooting him.
Ira Randolph sat silently beside Slocum on the wagon’s hard seat. The young miner looked around apprehensively, knowing he was along to keep Slocum from being robbed again. But Miles had neglected to give Ira a weapon and Slocum had left his own six-gun back at the bunkhouse when he found out that Ira could not drive a rig.
They reached Cripple Creek without incident, but Slocum hadn’t thought there would be trouble on the way into town. Who would want to steal an empty wagon? He pulled up in front of the marshal’s office, secured the reins, and jumped down.
“Be back in a flash,” he told Ira. The young man nodded and looked even more uneasy that Slocum was abandoning him to guard the wagon by himself.
Slocum went into the small office and found the marshal sitting at a small desk, whittling at a piece of pinewood. Shavings went everywhere as the lawman worked furiously on it.
“You Marshal Young?”
“Nope.” The man kept whittling. Slocum went closer and peered at the badge pinned on his tattered vest.
“Then you’re his deputy.”
“Yep.”>
“Talkative cuss, aren’t you?” This brought the deputy’s head up from his work. He glared at Slocum as if he had just announced he was going to rob the bank.
“I ain’t got time for the likes of you. You a miner?”
“Right now I’m a citizen that’s been robbed.”
“You and every other miner that’s ever come to Cripple Creek. What is it? Cheated at a poker game?”
Slocum started to say something about that, then decided it would only muddy the water. He positioned himselfdirectly across from the deputy so the man had to look at him if he ever took his eyes off the piece of wood he attacked with such zest.
“I was taking a load of supplies to the Low Down yesterday afternoon when a road agent held me up. Stole the supplies and the wagon.”
“The Low Down? That’s the one Morgan Haining owns, ain’t it?”
“The supplies and wagon belong to Mr. Haining,” Slocum said. “He’d be real grateful to get it all back. Barring that, he would probably give a reward to whoever caught the robber.”
“Where’d it happen? On the road to the mine?”
“A couple miles outside Cripple Creek,” Slocum said, getting angry.
“Ain’t our concern. Marshal Young’s the town marshal, not a federal marshal. You want to report this to the Teller County sheriff.”
“Where’s he?”
“Don’t know. Maybe Florissant. Or Divide. Might even be at Victor. He gets around.”
“And you don’t give a damn.”
“Nope.”
“Where’s Marshal Young?”
The deputy looked up and started to say that he didn’t know and didn’t care. The fire in Slocum’s eyes made him recoil and drop his pinewood. He moved the pocketknife around as if this might keep Slocum at bay.
“H-he’s down at the Oriental. Th-there’s been some trouble there.”
Slocum left without saying another word. He didn’t trust himself to.
“We’ll get the supplies, then I’ll find the marshal,” Slocum said to Ira as he clambered into the driver’s box. His arm hurt and he was furious at the deputy, but there was nothing to do about the lawman that would matter. He would get the replacement supplies and then find Marshal Young. Somehow, he doubted the marshal was likely to be any more accommodating.
