Slocum and the High-graders, page 16
Then the foreman was off bellowing to his miners, chastising them for being so lazy and lollygagging in the middle of a shift.
“It’s quite a walk back to the Low Down,” Slocum said. “Are you up to it?”
“Of course I am,” Evangeline said. “I will not have Miles working for Papa one instant longer. Or Herk and Singer.”
“Even though Singer’s sweet on you?” Slocum tried to josh her, but she wasn’t having any of it. Evangeline stood, letting the tarp slip off her shoulders. This drew considerable attention from the miners waiting to take the elevator back into the bowels of the mountain. Slocum moved to block their view and hefted the canvas back around the woman’s shoulders. Evangeline was so mad she shook.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said.
“Oh, John, I’m so mad I could chew nails and spit tacks. Papa will have to fire them!”
Slocum said nothing. He wanted to do more than see the trio fired. If his Colt Navy wasn’t still wrapped up in his gear, he would have insisted that Evangeline remain at the Molly Magee and he would see to a bit of six-gun justice immediately.
“Should we get Marshal Young? What they did was illegal. They can’t kidnap me!”
Slocum aimed Evangeline in the direction of the road leading to the Low Down Mine and ignored her continuous ranting until they reached the bunkhouse. He started to fetch his six-shooter, but she grabbed his arm. With her bright blue eyes wide and imploring, she said, “No, not that, John. I don’t want anyone killed.”
“Even after what they did to you? I’m not as forgiving. If I hadn’t had more than a touch of luck, I’d be dead at the bottom of a pit. And you would have died of thirst all tied up.”
“I . . . I know. Let’s talk with Papa first.”
“You go find him.”
“You won’t shoot Miles or the others in the back, will you?”
“No,” Slocum said. Mentally he added, I want to see the fear in their eyes when I gun them down.
“I’m sorry. That came out so awful. You would never shoot a man in the back. You’re not like that.”
“Go on. You might want to get some clothes before you hike on up to the office.”
“I might find Papa at home. That’s a good idea, John.” She hesitated, then let the tarp slip a bit and moved close enough to give him a quick kiss as she brushed her nearly bare breasts against him. Evangeline gave him a wicked smile, spun, and hurried off. Slocum watched her go, wondering if he was making a mistake by not accompanying her. If Miles or his partners saw Evangeline, they’d know the cat was out of the bag. Killing her would be a quick way of keeping their high-grading going a little longer.
The best way he could guard the dark-haired beauty was to stop Lucas Miles. Permanently. He hurried into the deserted bunkhouse. All the miners were far underground working to pull low-grade ore from the mine while Herk and Singer worked the real mother lode.
Slocum rummaged through his bedroll and found his six-gun securely tucked away in its holster. He drew it out, spun the cylinder to be certain all six chambers were loaded, then pulled the gun belt tight around his waist and settled the ebony-handled six-shooter where it usually rode on his left hip.
“What’re you doing—”
Slocum swung about. Standing in the bunkhouse doorway and outlined by the bright sunshine was the very man he wanted.
“Don’t move, Miles,” Slocum said. His hand was moving for his six-shooter even as he spoke.
17
Slocum cleared leather and got off a shot, but it went wide. Splinters from the door frame blasted outward, causing Lucas Miles to flinch away. Before Slocum could fan off another round, Miles stumbled backward and pulled the door shut. The second bullet ripped through the flimsy door panel. Cursing, Slocum ran to the door and yanked it open, ready to use a third round and make this one bury itself in Miles’s vile heart.
The door slammed hard against the wall as Slocum flung it wide, but Miles had vanished like a ghost.
“Where are you, you lily-livered son of a bitch?” Slocum swung around to the left, then whirled right when he failed to spot Miles. He took three quick steps forward, knowing Miles had ducked around the side of the bunkhouse. But which way?
Slocum tried to remember the man’s outline in the doorway. Had Miles been wearing a hogleg of his own? He hadn’t gotten a good enough look to know for sure. And as angry as he was, it didn’t matter. Let Miles fill him with lead. He had gotten out of the pit and the mine and sucked down gas and climbed up a mile of ladders with Evangeline on his back. What were a couple bullets?
His hot anger faded as he neared the edge of the bunkhouse,and a cold fury replaced it. Slocum knelt, chanced a quick look around, and was glad he had become more cautious. Miles fired and missed because he expected Slocum to come around the corner standing up. Slocum fired twice more at the foreman, then slipped back to let a bullet sing past.
He needed to reload, but the remaining two rounds would have to do.
“Let’s do this like men, Miles,” he called. “You and me, face to face. We draw and fire.”
Slocum had no intention of giving the foreman the chance to ever get another shot at him. If Miles showed his face, Slocum would put a bullet smack in the middle of it. Rather than wait for an answer, Slocum ran past the front of the bunkhouse and around the other side, wary that Miles might try the same thing. Miles had more practice sneaking up behind men. To forget this would spell his own death. Slocum wasn’t going to stop until he had put Miles into the ground.
He got to the far side of the bunkhouse, hurried to the rear, and chanced a peek around.
Miles was nowhere to be seen.
Had he decided to make a flat-out frontal attack on where Slocum had been? That didn’t set well with what he knew of the foreman. Miles wasn’t the sort of brave man to launch such an assault. Drawing back, Slocum carefully studied the land behind the bunkhouse. It sloped downhill fast and disappeared into a rocky ravine that carried spring runoff from the higher elevations. That had to be where Miles had gone.
The man was running for his life and had no intention of shooting it out.
Slocum slid down the hillside and dug in his heels a few feet from the edge. Stones tumbled into the ravine, giving him away. He flopped on his belly and cautiously peered over the edge into the now-dry ravine. If Miles had come this way, Slocum couldn’t see him. There was no way that Slocum could track from up here—or maybe even in the ravine. The rock wasn’t likely to take much of a track. For several minutes he lay still, listening harder than he looked.
Finally stirring, he thought he heard faint sounds from farther down the ravine. Miles might have gone in the other direction, but Slocum had a fifty-fifty chance of being right. And there was that faint scraping sound. While it might come from anything or anyone, Slocum was willing to bet that Miles was trying not to be heard as he made his way to what seemed like safety for him.
“The stables,” Slocum muttered when he tried to get the lay of the land. He looked down into the ravine, then decided against jumping down and following Miles. The fist-sized stones littering the bottom would only turn his ankle. And around those larger rocks was a sea of pea-sized gravel. The going would be rough.
He scrambled back up the slope until he found a path leading to the outhouse behind the bunkhouse. From there he went directly to the stables. Slocum was panting harshly from his quick sprint. He lifted his six-shooter and aimed when he saw Miles bent low over the neck of a horse. Slocum’s hand shook a mite, but he was steady enough for a good shot.
The problem was that Miles had already ridden out of range.
He hurried into the stables. Miles was on his own saddle horse. All that remained were the two nags used to pull the ore wagon. Knowing he had no choice, Slocum found a saddle and bridle and worked to put them on the stronger of the horses. For his effort he had to avoid a hoof lifted and trying to kick him. The horse didn’t want to be ridden; it pulled loads and was too good to be carrying a rider.
Slocum prevailed. He swung into the saddle and channeled the horse’s ire into speed.
“Hey, Slocum, where ya goin’?” called a miner.
“Got to get me a sidewinder,” Slocum shouted back.
The answer was lost in the clop-clop of his horse’s hooves on rock. Slocum saw the Haining house set off to the side of the road and wondered if Evangeline had found her pa there. Probably not. Without allowing the horse to slow, Slocum glanced up the steep hill toward the solitary office perched on the crest. That was more likely where Morgan Haining spent his days. From what Evangeline said, he worried more about giving away his wealth than making it.
That level of charity made no sense to Slocum, and somehow he knew it was at the heart of the woes besetting the Low Down Mine. He turned back to the chase. From horseback he couldn’t see fresh hoofprints in the dust. Too many other horses and wagons had rolled along here for a single set to be prominent, but Slocum doubted Miles was going to leave the road. The way he galloped along, he wanted to put as many miles between him and the mine as possible.
Lucas Miles, Herk, and Singer. It made sense they were all high-grading the ore from the Low Down. But Slocum still had the gut feeling he missed something. He was pretty sure it had been Miles who slugged him, and Evangeline was certain that Singer and Herk had kidnapped her and left her to die in the abandoned mine. All that was undeniable, but something was missing and it gnawed at Slocum like a dog on a bone.
The draft horse wouldn’t go fast, but it kept up a steady pace that soon convinced Slocum he could overtake Miles. The foreman had pressed his horse and was exhausting it from galloping too long. If he had wanted to put the most distance between them he ought to have galloped, walked, trotted—changed the gait to rest the horse and let it prepare for the next all-out run. But he hadn’t.
When Slocum topped a hill in the road, he saw Miles ahead, leading his horse. The animal limped a mite, giving Slocum hope that the horse had either thrown a shoe or had pulled up lame. Either way, Lucas Miles was his for the taking.
Slocum slowed and finally drew rein. His horse snorted loudly, shook its head, and took the occasion to relieve itself. Letting the horse do as it pleased for a moment, Slocum studied the countryside. Juniper and scrub oak grew to one side of the road. Some distance on the other side rose a stand of pine trees, too far for Miles to reach easily.
Leaving the road, Slocum circled and came up behind the grove of juniper. From the other side of the curtain of vegetation came the sound of a man cursing a blue streak. A slow smile came to Slocum’s lips. He was close to his goal. Then the smile faded when he remembered he had not reloaded his Colt. At the very least he should have returned to the bunkhouse and gotten a spare loaded cylinder from his saddlebags.
“Two rounds,” he muttered. “Ought to be enough.”
He was going to confront a man who had tried to kill him more than once, with only two rounds in his six-shooter. He wished there had been a rifle with the saddle he had taken from the stables, but there was nothing under his right leg save for leather worn smooth from long, hard use.
Kicking his leg up and over, Slocum dismounted. The horse immediately tried to bolt, but he held it down. The reins slipped a bit in his hands, but he made certain the horse didn’t get away. He knew he ought to let the horse graze but wasn’t going to take off the bridle. The horse would gallop off for sure if he did that. Fastening the reins around a sturdy oak limb, Slocum made his way through the thicket toward the sounds of Miles struggling with his horse.
The last few yards were more difficult going because of the tangled blackberry thorns cutting at Slocum’s legs. He crouched down when he was close enough to peer into the small clearing. Not ten feet away stood Miles’s horse, but of its rider there was no sign. Slocum waited patiently, although the horse began pawing at the ground and giving signs that it had caught Slocum’s scent.
Or was it Slocum that it reacted to?
Slocum threw himself sideways and avoided a bullet in the back. The slug ripped through the bushes in front of him and then kicked up a tiny cloud of dirt. A second bullet followed, but it was no better aimed than the first.
Swinging his six-gun around, Slocum was aware that he couldn’t fire willy-nilly, not with only two rounds. He vainly hunted for Miles. The man had slunk back into the thicket, and from the sound of receding footsteps, he was running away.
Getting to his feet, Slocum went to the horse rather than after the foreman. He checked the horse’s left rear leg and saw a gash just above the hock going several inches across the fetlock. Given attention, the cut would heal, but Miles wouldn’t be able to return and gallop off on this horse. Slocum rummaged through the saddlebags and then moved to the right side of the horse. A grin crossed his lips.
He drew the Winchester from its saddle sheath and cocked it. The sound of a round chambering made his smile even broader. He shoved his six-gun back into its holster and knew he had a better chance now to bring down Miles. If he caught sight of him anywhere within a hundred yards, he would be dead within seconds. Slocum had spent the war as a sniper and had seldom missed his target. Although Lucas Miles didn’t sport the bright gold braid of a Yankee officer, he was broad enough of shoulder to afford a decent bull’s-eye.
Slocum itched to be after Miles, but caution sent him on a quick circuit of the clearing. He wasn’t sure what he hunted but didn’t want Miles circling and coming up on him from behind again. The foreman had already shown he was a better backshooter than he was a marksman.
Only when he was satisfied that Miles hadn’t already returned did Slocum head into the woods. The blackberry bushes gave way to other thorny impediments, but when he found a game trail, he walked with lengthened stride until he found a boot heel print. Fresh.
Slocum slowed his advance and kept an eye peeled for any movement in the woods. When he found a bit of Miles’s shirt caught on a thorn he knew the man wasn’t sticking around. He was hightailing it for the high country and leaving his limping horse behind.
The grove gradually petered out and a long open stretch led up into the foothills. Grass in the meadow clearly showed where Miles had gone. From the distance between the footprints, Miles was running as fast as he could. Slocum followed at a more leisurely pace. Miles had worn out his horse. He hadn’t learned. He would wear himself out as well.
The meadow gave way to another stand of trees, but these were sparser, and in less than twenty minutes Slocum saw Miles ahead. As he had expected, Miles had run himself to ground. From the way he dragged his leg, he must have turned his ankle. Knowing this could be a trap, Slocum carefully studied the ground Miles had already crossed. He spotted the tumble of rocks that had brought the foreman up lame.
Slocum lifted his borrowed rifle, considered the irony of using Miles’s own rifle, then squeezed off a shot. Miles threw up his hands and fell forward, screaming until he hit the ground. It hadn’t been a killing shot. Slocum had enough experience to know he had only winged Miles, but the foreman wasn’t going to be doing any running—or limping.
“Slocum, hold on. You got me. Don’t kill me!”
“Where’d I hit you? Felt like I hit you in the thigh. Left or right?”
“Left. My ankle was already startin’ to swell like a rattlesnake-struck dog. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I surrender.”
Slocum doubted it. The man had just tried to shoot him in the back.
Approaching slowly, a fresh cartridge under the rifle hammer, Slocum saw Miles give a single twitch and then lay still. He might have hit something real important. A man could bleed to death in less than a minute if the bullet nicked the femoral artery. But Slocum didn’t see that kind of blood pooling around Miles.
His caution paid off—and Miles’s impatience did him in. Before Slocum had gotten closer than twenty feet, Miles rolled over and opened fire. The last bullet stung Slocum’s left hand and tore the rifle from his grip. Fingers bleeding and rifle ruined, he drew his six-shooter. Two rounds remained.
He used the first one to hit Miles in the right shoulder.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Slocum said. “Except to the cemetery.” He cocked his Colt Navy and aimed.
“No, no, I give up. You can’t kill a man who’s surrendered.” Miles clumsily tossed away his six-gun. It landed with a dull thud some distance away. Even if Slocum hadn’t shot him in the leg and shoulder, he couldn’t have reached it.
Slocum walked to Miles, still wary.
“Why are you tryin’ to kill me?” the foreman asked.
“That’s about the damnedest, stupidest thing I ever heard,” Slocum said. If Miles was playing for time, this was hardly the way to do it. Reminding a man of the attempts on his life wasn’t going to save your own when you stared down the muzzle of a six-shooter.
But Slocum didn’t pull the trigger. He stared at Miles. The man was scared shitless. That was obvious. But he didn’t look as if he understood why Slocum was gunning for him, either.
“Look, Slocum, I don’t like you. Truth is, I hate your guts, but why kill me?”
“You dumped me in the pit to die, that’s why.”
“What pit?”
Slocum came closer to believing the man, but not quite.
“You slugged me when I was driving the ore wagon back from the mill. I didn’t get a real good look but I’m pretty sure it was you.”
“Of course it was me. I buffaloed you ’cuz you was sniffin’ around where you weren’t welcome.”
“I figured out how you were high-grading and stealing the gold. And how you were making Haining pay for smelting the ore you stole from him.”
“I don’t know what yer talkin’ ’bout.”
Again Slocum almost believed him. Miles was too frightened to lie this convincingly.
“You aren’t stealing from Haining? I saw Herk and Singer moving ore out of the mine shaft that undercuts the Low Down.”
“Them? I wouldn’t put nuthin’ past that pair. Mr. Haining told me to keep an eye on them but I never caught ’em doin’ nuthin’. I was always too busy with . . .”
