Slocum #396 : Slocum and the Scavenger Trail (9781101554371) (2 page)

The snow-capped peak disappeared as he turned his eyes down the main street of Almost There. Boomtowns came and went, sometimes in days, and this one wasn’t going to be different. The news of the gold strike had spread fast, pulling con men like the merchant still busily selling Harry Hawkins equipment he didn’t need. Slocum wanted to point out that Hawkins had to carry every pound of it up the mountain slope but held his tongue. The greenhorn would shed his worthless equipment pound by pound as the going got harder.

“We ’bout ready, Mr. Slocum?”

He turned and saw the other three in the party. Clement Baransky spoke for the others with some authority. Slocum had never asked but thought Baransky might have been a lawyer or politician of some sort before getting bitten by the gold bug. From the look of his hands, he wasn’t a farmer or any profession requiring hard work. In spite of this, Slocum thought Baransky of all the men paying him a hundred dollars apiece was most likely to find his pot of gold. He wasn’t the kind who ever quit, and he hinted at knowledge of rocks and gold the others lacked.

The other two, Young and Niederman, never stopped yapping about what they were going to spend their money on when they struck it rich. Niederman looked to be a farrier from the size of his forearms and the power in his hands. Telltale burns on his face and fingers told of molten metal spatters. While he might have been hit by shrapnel during the war, he didn’t look old enough to have seen the horrors Slocum had.

Young was just that, young. Hardly eighteen, he was likely the son who wasn’t going to inherit his papa’s farm and had to venture out to make his own fortune. The few stories Young had related around the campfire told of a big family, but he had never come right out and said where he fit in among the three sisters and two other brothers.

“Still time to back out,” Slocum told Baransky. He watched the man’s thin lips curl slightly into a hint of a smile.

“Always time to back out, but I want to go on.”

“You’re wrong,” Slocum said. “There might not be any way to stop once we get going. It’s spring but the altitude makes for nasty snowstorms year ’round.”

“I see the snow up there,” Baransky said, nodding. “I’ve got a heavy coat and decent wool socks.”

Slocum laughed, then called to Hawkins to get his ass in gear. The man struggled with the box of dynamite, the pick, the shovel, and other equipment sold him by the clerk, who’d grinned from ear to ear at a job well done. Hawkins had hardly stepped into the mud when the merchant moved in on another prospector to sell more of his used equipment.

“Give me a hand, will you? I can’t carry all this.” Hawkins almost dropped the crate of dynamite. Only Slocum’s quick reflexes saved it from landing in the mud.

“You get the fuse with this? And blasting caps?” He looked into the crate and saw a few feet of waxy black miner’s fuse but nothing else save for the dynamite.

“Blasting caps? What’s that?”

Slocum shoved the box back into Hawkins’s arms, causing the man to stumble and go to one knee in the mud.

“You’ll find out when you try to set off a stick or two,” he said. Without another word, he slogged through the mud, heading for the edge of town, where they had camped. Behind him he heard Baransky explaining how dynamite needed the volatile blasting cap to detonate, that the fuse didn’t set off the dynamite directly but rather the cap, which
then set off the dynamite. Hawkins grumbled about being rooked, then started in on how Slocum should have given him better advice.

Baransky was soon walking alongside Slocum.

“You tried to stop him from buying all that,” the tall, whipcord-thin man said. “I heard.”

“You always so attentive?”

“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” Baransky said hurriedly. “It’s just that I’m a greenhorn, at least when it comes to gold prospecting. I want to learn as much as I can, and you sound like a man with considerable experience.” His eyes dropped to the worn ebony handle of the Colt Navy thrust into Slocum’s cross-draw holster.

“Good way not to make the same mistakes,” Slocum allowed.

“They talk a good game and they look the part, I suppose, but none of them really knows what they’re doing, do they? None of us do.” This rueful admission caused Slocum to look at Baransky.

“Then why the hell are you risking your life searching for a will‑o’-the-wisp? You’re an educated man.”

“Nothing gets past you, does it?”

“More ’n I can say for you. Those three know nothing about prospecting. If I had to bet on it, you’d be the one with my money on his name to strike it rich.”

“Why’s that?”

“You take the time to think things through. You’re not impulsive like them. Might be greed is gnawing at your guts, too, but you hide it better. And I don’t see you quitting when your first bite off the mountain doesn’t glitter with a solid gold nugget.”

“It’s a good thing I don’t play poker,” Baransky said. “You’d clean me out real quick.”

“For a while I might come out ahead. Reckon you would learn fast to gamble just like you’re going to learn to prospect for gold.”

Baransky laughed and smiled almost shyly.

“You make me think I might actually succeed.”

Slocum started to ask what drove the man, who otherwise sounded sensible, to pursue such a dream. Hawkins interrupted him.

Huffing and puffing, Hawkins demanded, “When we gettin’ outta here? There’s still light.”

“Yeah, we need to get on the trail.” Young looked around anxiously at the other parties forming.

From what Slocum could tell, no one else was within a day of starting the long uphill trek. Most needed to buy supplies, get water, and find pack animals. He had taken care of those details for his small knot of prospectors already.

“If you’re game, we can put a few miles behind us before sundown.”

They were.

After they started up the trail, Slocum began to think he should give back the money and let them go on by themselves. Their constant chattering like magpies disturbed the quiet, but more than this, their boasts about striking it big and what they’d do with the money galled him. All except Clem Baransky. He kept his head down and silently plodded along, conserving his strength because he of was the only one of the lot who had seen how steep the road turned in a very short time.

The grade increased and even the surefooted pack mules Slocum had purchased began to strain. More than this, Slocum felt his lungs begin to burn as if he sucked in cheap whiskey with every breath. The altitude robbed him of air. The only good result came with boastful words replaced by harsh breathing.

“Let’s camp here for the night,” Slocum said, finding a clearing with a small pond of sweet water in the center. From the debris and sooty fire pits, more than one expedition had also used this site.

“We kin go on. Another couple miles.” Hawkins gasped out the words. His face was redder than a beet and he might explode at any instant. But he wanted to press on.

“We camp here.”

“We only been walking a few hours. How long ’til we make the pass?” Hawkins grasped the pack on the nearest mule for support. The animal turned, ready to kick out. Hawkins sensed what was happening and transferred his weight to a gnarled oak. Even this bent slightly under the load he placed on it.

“There’s no reward for getting to the pass first,” Slocum said.

“There is, too!” Hawkins shot bolt upright. “If any of those thieves in town reach the goldfields ’fore us, they’ll steal our gold.
My
gold!”

“T’ain’t yer gold, ’less you find it,” said Niederman. “But you got a point. We get there first, we kin find the best places to hunt.”

Slocum let them argue among themselves as he began setting up camp. He was spending the night here. The climb had been only a thousand feet but it felt as if it were miles because of the steep grade.

“Gentlemen,” said Baransky, “we’re not the first up there, so the easiest claims have been made. No matter when we reach the goldfields, we are going to have a real search ahead of us. A day or two isn’t going to matter.”

“Yeah,” Slocum said, dropping a pack to the ground. “Richard King already hit the biggest strike.”

“King? Who’s that?” asked Young.

Niederman and Baransky turned when Hawkins cleared his throat, then pulled out the pick with the
RK
initials cut into the handle. Slocum half listened as Hawkins regaled them with the bogus tale of the king of the gold mines as he laid a fire and got coffee brewing.

He looked up when Baransky came over.

“I can do some of the cooking. Learned when I was on the trail,” the man said.

“Not going to argue. My cooking’s so bad even the coyotes puke it up.”

“Doubt that,” Baransky said. He began opening a pack and working on fixing a mess of beans.

“Why are you risking your life?” Slocum asked. “You don’t look the type. Not like them.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the other three, still playing one-upmanship as to who’d find the most gold. None of them considered they might all fail to strike it rich.

“I have my reasons.” Baransky got a far-off look and fell silent. Slocum had seen this before. Some men played it close to the vest. Whatever brought Clem Baransky out here was going to stay his own business. He could respect that since he didn’t cotton much to anyone prying into his affairs.

The beans were edible and the coffee washed them down. A can of peaches each completed the meal.

“When we headin’ out, Slocum?” Young asked. “I got a feelin’ we’re in a race. Them others, the ones in town, they all had a haunted look to ’em. Hollow eyes and flushed cheeks and they all looked like they’d been in a race just to get to Almost There.”

“Reckon who’s the hungriest to be rich wins,” Slocum said. “We’ll be out of here at sunrise.”

He tethered the mules and then prowled the perimeter to be sure nothing was creeping up on them. He didn’t worry about bears, not yet since they were just stirring from hibernation, but coyotes and wolves and maybe even cougars this close to town became scavengers living off what scraps men carelessly left behind.

After making his rounds, he found all four men sound asleep and sawing wood. Their snores echoed loud enough to keep away any animal. Slocum spread out his own bedroll and lay staring at the stars for a while. The others were
already exhausted. The going would get worse. In a few minutes he, too, drifted to sleep.

When he awoke in the morning, he sat up and looked around uneasily. It took a few seconds to figure out what was wrong. Harry Hawkins was gone.

“Anybody see what happened to him?” Slocum stood, stretched, and then began a slow circuit of the camp to read the signs in the dirt. The others all denied knowing anything, and he believed them. From all he could tell, Hawkins had left just before dawn. One deep cut in the grass left by his boot heel showed condensation that wouldn’t have been present if he had snuck from camp later.

“Maybe he was kidnapped,” suggested Niederman.

Slocum shook his head. He found only Hawkins’s tracks.

“If road agents had come to rob us, they would have taken all our mules. Only one’s missing.”

“A good point, Mr. Slocum.” Baransky followed him as he pieced together Hawkins’s last minutes in the camp, learning what signs were important and which weren’t.

His presence annoyed Slocum, but he said nothing. The man didn’t get in his way, and the more he learned about tracking now, the easier it would be for them all higher on the mountainside.

“Then why’d he go if he ain’t been kidnapped?” Young scratched himself as he spoke.

“Dummy,” said Niederman. “He lit out to get ahead of us, that’s what happened. He’s gonna beat us to the gold! Ain’t I right, Slocum?”

“Looks about right to me.”

“Why’d he go and do a fool thing like that? In the dark and all alone?”

“Because he doesn’t know what he’s getting into,” Slocum said. There was nothing but trouble ahead for Hawkins trying to make it on his own. Their first day on the trail had been easy compared to the steep climb ahead.

“That man don’t have the sense God gave a goose.” Young scratched himself some more, hinting at crabs dining on his flesh. “What’s fer breakfast?”

“Chow down,” Slocum said. “I’ll find him to be sure he’s all right.”

“Do you think he’s in danger?”

Slocum looked at Baransky and shrugged. When a man like Hawkins took it into his head that even his traveling companions were out to steal his gold, there was no telling what trouble he could get into.

“You want me to come along?”

“No need. I don’t think I’ll be gone all that long, one way or the other.”

Baransky stiffened when he realized what Slocum meant. Either Hawkins would be brought into the fold or he was gone, maybe dead, maybe rushing headlong up the mountain to find his fortune.

Slocum began the arduous task of hiking up the road. He had asked in town and decided that horses were out of the question for this climb. The road, such as it was, amounted to little more than a rocky path in places, and what they had already traversed was the best traveled and easiest. The steepness made riding impossible. Why lead a horse the entire way rather than riding it? Slocum saw no reason. On the lower levels such as the one he trudged up now, a horse with rider could make better time, but a day farther up the
mountain that would change. Even mules would be challenged by the precipitous climb.

Slocum kept his eye on the rocky path and saw plenty of signs that Hawkins had come this way. When he came to a branch, he stopped and frowned at what he saw. For whatever reason, Hawkins had not continued directly up the trail to the pass but had taken the fork to the left.

A quick look ahead caused Slocum to guess that Hawkins had been cowed by the narrow passage between the rocks. He might even have tried to get through and had his mule balk. Unaccustomed to working with pack animals, he had thought the fork edging off at a gentle slope was a better way to go, an easier route to riches.

Grumbling, after more than an hour and not overtaking the prospector, he began to worry. Unless Hawkins had left camp far earlier than he had thought and showed more stamina than he had the day before on the relatively easy climb, something was wrong. Bad wrong.