Slocum and the High-graders, page 17
Miles’s words trailed off. Slocum’s mind had begun turning over what the foreman was telling him and had been lulled into believing the wounded man wasn’t dangerous. His six-shooter came up and he fired his last round just as Miles managed to pull a derringer free from his pants pocket.
Miles’s shot went wide. Slocum’s hit the foreman smack between the eyes.
“You poor bastard,” Slocum said. The pieces were all falling together in a way that meant a world of woe. He turned and left, nursing his wounded left hand. It was going to be a long ride back to the Low Down and what he had to do there.
18
It was past sundown by the time Slocum got back to the Low Down Mine. His horse hadn’t minded the slow walk since Slocum had been on foot but had occasionally balked because Slocum was leading the horse Miles had ridden. The cut on the rear leg had to hurt the saddle horse something fierce, but Slocum wasn’t about to abandon a good mount. Some liniment, a bandage, and a week of oats and rest would put the horse back into riding condition again. Slocum saw no reason why the horse didn’t belong to him now, in way of payment for all Miles had done to him.
Whether to leave Miles’s body for the buzzards and coyotes had been a harder decision. Slocum had finally slung the body over the ore wagon horse’s back and had walked himself, knowing Miles’s horse could never handle weight beyond the saddle on it. He was almost as footsore as Miles’s horse, but he had done the right thing. Bury the son of a bitch out in the potter’s field. He didn’t deserve more. But from what Slocum had figured out, he didn’t deserve much less, either.
“Glory be, Slocum,” the stable hand said, eyes wide when he saw the mine foreman draped over the horse. “What happened? Did Miles run into them road agents?”
“He ran afoul of me,” Slocum said simply. The stable hand swallowed hard and looked like he wanted to be somewhere else—anywhere else—rather than spend another second with a killer. “You take real good care of his horse. I don’t know how that fetlock got cut, but the cannon bone’s in good shape. The pastern’s not damaged, either.”
“Nope, just a deep gash. I kin fix it up.” The stable hand looked up and started to say more but thought better of it.
“Do that.” Slocum unsaddled the ore wagon horse and patted its neck. While not the usual ride he was accustomed to, the horse had done all he had asked of it. Now it could go back to pulling heavy loads of gold ore down to the mill.
“Uh, Slocum, whatcha gonna do with Miles? Or what’s left of him?” The man’s curiosity had finally tipped the scales back into talking to a man he knew to be a stone killer.
“I ought to take him up to the office. Is Haining there?”
“Don’t rightly know. What’d the boss want with a corpse? It’s already startin’ to smell.”
“Miles never did anything else,” Slocum said. He un-lashed the cords he had used to fasten Miles’s wrists and ankles, bent and heaved, getting the dead man over his shoulder. After the long miles he had walked, Slocum was a mite wobbly, but he got his feet under him and left the stables. He heard the stable hand muttering to himself as he began tending the horse’s leg.
Slocum looked around, then turned for the mine head-quarters and hiked uphill. He was winded by the time he reached Haining’s office. With a quick twist, he dumped the body down against the wall and went inside. Nobody was going to steal a corpse.
Morgan Haining looked up, startled.
“I didn’t hear you, Slocum. What can I do for you? I’m very busy.”
“Got Miles outside.”
“Well, tell him to get inside. I need to give him some orders. New drift opened. Randolph thinks he has found anothernew vein of considerable assay. That’s two in a week, the one you uncovered and a new one.” Haining’s eyes glowed, but it came from tiredness, not excitement at the gold he would pull from his mine.
“Miles isn’t in any condition to talk right now.”
“Drunk? I warned him. I warned him. If he’s drunk, tell him he’s fired. I can’t abide by such behavior. It’s a bad example for the men, and with Evangeline spending so much time around the mine, I can’t take any chances.”
Slocum considered his options. He could tell Haining straight out that Miles was dead, but another idea came to him.
“I’ll let him know. I don’t think he’ll put up much of a fuss over it.”
“Good,” Haining said decisively. Then, with a touch of doubt in his voice, he asked, “Can I ask a favor of you, Slocum?”
Slocum waited.
“I need someone trustworthy to take, uh, envelopes into town.”
“To the bunkhouse you own and let the injured miners use?”
Haining looked at him sharply. “I had asked Evangeline about you, and she seemed impressed. I have been struck by your diligence and integrity, also. Yes, I help those unfortunates who were injured in my mine.”
From the way Haining ran his fingers over the fat envelope on the desk in front of him, Slocum guessed it was harder and harder for the mine owner to fulfill what he thought were his charitable obligations.
“When do you want me to deliver the money?”
“I, uh, in a few days. I need you to drive another couple of loads of ore to the mill first thing tomorrow morning, if you’re able. From the look of your arm, it’s healing, but you do seem to be under the weather. Will you be able to do this small chore for me?” The mine owner chewed on his lower lip and looked away.
Slocum nodded and left when it became obvious Haining had run out of words. Closing the door behind him, Slocum looked down at Miles’s body and knew he had to move the foreman before he rotted any more. The time wasn’t right for Haining to know what had happened. The stable hand would undoubtedly spread the word among the miners, but Haining had little contact with them.
Grunting, Slocum hefted the body and went back down the hill, sorry now he hadn’t left Miles for the coyotes. It wouldn’t have been too hard to simply keep on riding, but he still had a score to settle. If not on his own account, then for Evangeline. Herk and Singer had kidnapped her. They were likely to do something desperate when she popped up again.
Miles had a small shack some distance from the main bunkhouse. Slocum kicked open the door and dropped the body onto the cot. He stepped back and looked around, hoping to find some evidence of where Miles had hidden the gold he had stolen from the Low Down. After fifteen minutes of poking into corners, Slocum gave up the hunt. Miles and his cronies had undoubtedly stashed the gold and had no reason to make a map. If he looked hard enough around the mine where they had burrowed under the Low Down’s mother lode, he would probably find more than a few gold bars.
He closed the door behind him and looked to the office where Haining still toiled to find another few dollars to support his injured miners, and then to the man’s house. Lights blazed in the front window. Slocum wanted to talk with Evangeline again but knew it wasn’t a good idea at the moment. He changed his mind when he saw two dark forms approach the house’s porch and vault over the railing rather than go up the front steps.
Slocum hurried to the house, his hand rubbing the cold ebony butt of his six-shooter. Again he had misjudged. He carried an empty six-shooter when he might need a fully loaded one.
He neared the house, then crouched down and duck-walked until he was under the parlor window where he could eavesdrop. Slocum’s hand gripped his six-shooter even tighter when he heard what was being said inside.
“You’re utter fools, both of you!” Darleen Haining’s anger snapped like a blacksnake whip. “You can’t do the simplest chore!”
“Aw, Darleen, it ain’t like that,” Singer said. “Not at all.”
“She’s alive. She’s alive! You were supposed to get rid of her, and she waltzes back into the house as if nothing had happened.”
“We, I mean, Singer, he got cold feet,” Herk said. “Wasn’t my fault. It was all his. He’s sweet on her and couldn’t kill her like you wanted. I was going to kill her like you wanted, but he couldn’t do it.”
“You both make me sick.” Darleen crossed her arms and glared at her henchmen.
“Don’t make you sick when we bring all that gold outta the mine,” said Singer. “Don’t make you sick when we take those invoices you do up and collect twice from your husband fer supplies. Don’t make you sick when—”
“I didn’t say you were useless,” Darleen interrupted, her voice softening. Slocum rose and chanced a quick look inside the parlor. Morgan Haining’s wife reached out and lightly caressed Singer’s cheek. Then her arm tensed and she raked her fingernails along the cheek she had just stroked so lovingly.
“Ow, that hurts!”
“Maybe you’ll remember how much it hurts when you disobey me.”
“You want we should get rid of her now?” Herk looked eager to please. If Singer lusted after Evangeline, it was clear that Herk had his sights set on her mother. From the way Darleen cozied up to him, Herk might well have been getting his lust sated as a way of keeping him in line.
“No, you idiot,” Darleen snarled. “I have to find out how she got away. What did you do with her, anyway? You certainly didn’t kill her and hide the body like I wanted.”
“We—Singer—tied her up and we left her in the old mine. There’s no way she coulda got free. We tied her up real good. And she’d never find her way out of the mine. We lowered her, made sure she was all trussed up and tied to an ore cart, and then we pulled the rope back up the shaft. There’s no elevator or nuthin’.”
“You didn’t even dump her down the mine shaft,” Darleen said, marveling at how foolish her henchmen were.
“Well, no, Singer thought . . .”
“Singer never had a thought in his life. Neither have you,” Darleen said savagely. “I’ll find out how she got away and if she has any clue that you two were responsible.”
“No, she couldn’t,” Singer said fast. His voice was pitched too high, telling Slocum that he lied. Darleen heard the lie, also.
“Good,” she said. “You’ve done that much right. What about Miles?”
“Ain’t seen him all day.”
“I haven’t see him, either. I ought to . . . talk with him.”
“Why?” Herk asked. “He don’t mean shit to you.”
“No, he doesn’t, my darling,” Darleen said. Herk cringed when the woman stroked over his stubbled cheek. He expected the same raking nails that his partner had got. She took pleasure in the fact that she controlled him so easily. “He’s never meant anything to me, but he’s useful. Dear Lucas never once questions the extra loads of ore you furnish because I ask him ever so nicely.”
Slocum turned and pressed his back against the wall of the house. Miles had been a bigger fool than he had thought. The foreman wasn’t collecting the gold from the mine—he was taking out his payment from what Darleen had obviously offered freely in exchange for looking the other way and ignoring the blatant high-grading.
“He might be taking Slocum far, far away.”
“You think so, Darleen?” asked Herk. “It was kinda surprisin’ when we saw Miles slug Slocum like he did.”
“I told him to. There was no way Slocum would not find out about how the mill was being billed for all the smelted ore. He had a nasty habit of asking too many questions.”
“We coulda got rid of him,” Singer said.
“You tried, you failed. As you have too many times. I got tired of waiting, so I asked Miles to do what he could for me.”
Slocum had his six-gun halfway out of his holster before he remembered he was carrying an empty cylinder. All his brushes with death down in the mine had been caused by these three, not Lucas Miles. Except that last plunge down into the pit. That had been Miles’s doing, and the lying son of a bitch had died for it.
Like Herk and Singer would die. Slocum wasn’t the least bit inclined to turn them over to Marshal Young, if the man would even concern himself with anything that happened outside town. But what should he do with Darleen? The woman had as much as admitted she had ordered her own daughter’s death. Slocum couldn’t believe any mother would so coldly do that.
And for what? Her motives made no sense.
Slocum wasn’t in much of a mood to figure it all out. Why Darleen Haining did what she did wasn’t important. She had ordered her own daughter killed. Lucas Miles had been sent on a similar mission to get rid of Slocum since he was finding out too much about the high-grading.
Darleen had to know she couldn’t keep stealing from the Low Down forever, but greed drove her to try for just a few more ounces of gold. Or was that bars of gold? With the vein Slocum had found and the new one unearthed by Randolph, it might be more than that. Although he had pushed away the notion of figuring out the woman’s reasons, they still gnawed away at the edges of his mind. All she had to do was ask Morgan Haining. The man owned the mine.
Slocum went to the front of the house in time to see Herk and Singer hurrying away. They were swallowed by the darkness within seconds, leaving Slocum to stew in his own juices over what to do.
He glanced at the front door of the Haining house and knew Evangeline was on the other side. So was her mother, but from what Slocum had overheard, Evangeline was safe enough for the time being. Later, that might not be true, but for the moment she was safe. He returned to the bunkhouse, his mind working furiously on what he could do to even the score.
“You sure two’ll be enough?” Randolph looked skeptically at the team Slocum had hitched to the ore wagon. “Not strong.”
“They’ll do me just fine,” Slocum said, remembering to face Randolph so the man could read his lips. He glanced behind at the load of ore ready to be taken to the mill. To one side a tarpaulin had been thrown over the rest of his cargo.
“You be on watch,” Randolph said. “More gold later.” The giant of a man pointed to a huge hill of ore brought up from the mine by the eager miners. They all scented bonuses for their work, and Slocum didn’t blame them. If anything, the new vein Randolph and his son had discovered looked as if it would assay out even higher than the other. There might be fifty or sixty ounces to the ton, and the miners were bringing up several tons a shift.
“I wish the freight wagon had been found,” Slocum said. There hadn’t been enough men hunting to retrieve the wagon or the supplies Slocum had lost earlier on his way back from Cripple Creek. Since then, he had been too preoccupied staying alive to track down the solitary road agent.
“Two much better,” Randolph said. Then he waved for Slocum to get moving. Jawing wouldn’t get the ore smelted.
Slocum got the two horses pulling. They weren’t as strong as the ones he had used before, but they were up for the early morning task. Slocum’s arms felt better, and he used both hands on the reins. Some weakness remained in his left arm, but anticipation kept him keyed up and feeling strong.
He maneuvered the wagon out onto the road and then down into the valley, where the mill was already in full operation. Humming to himself as he drove, he did as Randolph had bid. He kept an eye peeled for Herk and Singer. The men had failed at too many deadly tasks set by Darleen Haining. They would do everything possible not to fail again.
As he passed the old mine, Slocum had to look up at the mouth. He hoped to catch a glimpse of the men, possibly working to steal the ore out from under Haining’s nose but more likely laying in wait to ambush him. The wagon clanked and rattled past the pile of newly mined high-graded ore and down the steeper slope into the valley without Slocum once spotting the men. He tugged with increasing strength on the reins and slowed the horses. The wagon rolled to a stop in front of the door leading to the crusher.
The mill foreman waved to Slocum.
“How long’ll it take to unload this time?” Slocum asked.
“You in a big hurry to get back?”
“Got this much more to haul down,” Slocum said. “If I don’t bother with a noon meal, I can bring a third load.”
“You’re makin’ me a damn fortune,” the foreman joked. He waved to half a dozen men, who set to unloading the cargo. Slocum cast a quick glance at the tarp but said nothing, standing at the side of the wagon nearest it. He began working to untie the tarp.
He swung around when he heard someone coming up on him from behind.
“We got the drop on you, Slocum. Don’t turn around,” Herk said.
Slocum glanced over his shoulder. He had been careless. He had no idea where Singer and Herk had been hiding, but he had failed to see them.
“You going to shoot me in the back with all these witnesses?”Slocum pointed to the men moving the ore from the wagon.
“We don’t want to kill you at all,” Singer said, “but we got orders.”
“You’re both fools,” Slocum said.
“You son of a bitch. You take that back,” growled Herk.
“Don’t get so riled,” Singer advised his partner. “He wants to get us to thinkin’ ’bout somethin’ else, that’s all he’s doin’.”
“Come on. We’re gonna mosey over to the grinding wheels,” Herk said.
“I got a proposition,” Slocum said. “I’ve thought up a scheme to make a fortune high-grading the Low Down ore.”
“Oh, yeah?” Herk laughed harshly. “Why should we listen to you?”
“I can make you rich. The scheme’s foolproof. Nobody’d ever know what was going on. I can guarantee you each a hundred dollars a day.” Such a princely sum would have provoked some reaction in an honest man. Both Herk and Singer laughed.
“What? You don’t want to get rich?” demanded Slocum. “I tell you, I know how to—”
“We don’t care to hear no scheme, Slocum,” Singer said. “We’re already makin’ twice that a day. Each.”
“You’re high-grading the mine? You’re stealing gold from Mr. Haining?”
“You ain’t stupid, Slocum. You know we are.”
“That’s what I was afraid I’d hear,” Morgan Haining said, rising up from under the tarp. He threw it back and leveled a sawed-off shotgun at the men. “You boys drop those six-shooters.”
