Slocum's Silver Burden (10 page)

The two outside stopped filling the restaurant interior with wildly fired bullets and split up, one going in each direction around the building after the outlaws. Slocum considered what to do. It was more dangerous than he preferred, but he couldn't let Drury and his partner escape. He stepped over the cook and chanced a quick look into the kitchen. Both outlaws had fled through the back door.

He took a deep breath and went after them. A quick peek out showed him that the outlaws were gone, but the two who had started the fight were hard on their heels, running down a path toward the outhouse. Slocum pounded after them, only to be seen by one who lagged behind his partner, panting for breath and red in the face. When he saw Slocum, he lifted his rifle and got off a round.

“Harry, there's another of them. He's behind us. They got us trapped 'twixt them, two up front and one behind.”

The man levered in another round and got off a shot. The first had missed Slocum by a country mile. The second came disturbingly close. He returned fire more accurately but succeeded only in driving the man to cover behind the privy. Slocum found himself unable to get past to go after Drury without crossing the rifleman's field of fire. He skidded to a halt and tried to spot the men farther along the trail. They had leaped across a small stream and vanished in a wooded area. The other rifleman was nowhere to be seen.

“You grab some sky, mister. Throw down that six-gun of yours, and I won't kill you.”

The assurance did nothing to soothe Slocum's ruffled feathers. Every second he wasted let Drury and his partner get that much farther away. He triggered a couple shots through the side of the outhouse and got an aggrieved cry from inside.

“What in tarnation's goin' on? You quit shootin' this second, or I'll clap your worthless carcass in jail.”

Slocum cursed when the door opened to a man sitting on the throne inside. A deputy's badge gleamed in the sunlight.

Then the man half stood, pulling up his pants. The slug that tore through the rear outhouse wall caught him in the back of the head. He snapped forward and lay facedown on the ground, half in and half outside the privy.

“You killed a lawman,” Slocum shouted. “I'm empowered to take you in for aiding and abetting train robbers. Now I got to arrest you for murder, too.” It was a bluff, but he still had the papers Collingswood had given him folded up in his pocket. All he wanted was for the rifleman to hightail it so he could get after the two outlaws.

The rifleman confounded him again by stepping out, rifle leveled.

Slocum sighted in for a killing shot until he felt the hot muzzle of a recently fired rifle press into the back of his head.

“Drop it or I'll blow your damned head off.”

Slocum didn't drop his Colt but lifted his hands, holding them out level with his shoulders. The man in front of him came into full view from behind the outhouse. He never glanced at the deputy he had shot from behind. He clutched his rifle so hard his hands shook.

“I wanna kill him, Harry. Don't you go blowin' off his head. I wanna do it.”

“Shut up, Riley,” said the man behind Slocum. “You done enough damage for one day. Did you shoot the deputy?”

“I don't know what . . .” His voice trailed off as he looked around and saw the dead lawman. “Sweet Jesus, it musta been this varmint.”

“That's a rifle hole in the back of his skull,” Slocum said.

“You shut up.” The man behind him poked his back with the rifle.

Slocum shifted slightly to his left and then spun to his right as fast as he could, swinging his pistol around in a broad arc that ended at the man's temple. His target went down to his knees, stunned. Keeping up his spinning motion, Slocum knocked the rifle from the man's hands and then brought his six-shooter up, centered on the deputy killer's heart.

“Don't shoot, mister. Don't! You kilt Harry!”

“He's not dead,” Slocum said. “You will be if you don't drop the rifle.”

“You mean it when you said you was a lawman?” He carefully placed the rifle on the ground, as if laying an offering on some pagan shrine.

“I was deputized by the Central California Railroad to go after train robbers. That gives me the power to arrest you.” This was the last thing Slocum wanted to do. Drury was skedaddling away with the location of the stolen silver locked in his head. Every minute he ran put him that much farther from Slocum getting to be a rich man.

“Fancy that,” Riley said. “Me and Harry are, too. We got papers from Mr. Collingswood up in that fancy office on top of a big San Francisco building. You want to see?” He started to reach into his coat pocket. Slocum cocked his pistol, ready to shoot.

“W-wait,” came Harry's weak voice. “You buffaloed me good and proper, but you don't have to kill Riley. He's not always right in the head.”

“You really work for the Central California Railroad?” Slocum asked.

“Yup, the both of us.” Harry pressed his hand against the cut on his scalp oozing blood. “Who recruited you?”

Slocum knew his chances of finding Drury were sinking fast. Enlisting the help of these two blundering fools might make it worse tracking the outlaw, but Slocum knew he had no way of getting rid of them short of gunning both down. Trying to explain to the town marshal how the deputy came to get a bullet in the back of his head would give Drury an even greater head start.

“Underwood,” Slocum said. He held up his right hand and showed only index finger and thumb.

“He's the one,” Harry agreed. He got to his feet, wiped the blood from his head wound on his coat, and thrust out his hand. “Reckon we're on the same side, after all. Me and Riley took you to be one of the gang.”

Slocum shook the bloody hand and resisted the urge to wipe the blood off on his coat.

“We'd better clear out. A dead lawman's going to bring out the whole town.”

“This here's a deputy's badge,” Riley said, poking the corpse with his rifle barrel. “That must mean a marshal is likely to take offense. You know what we gotta do, Harry.”

“We ride. The varmint went that way. You with us, mister?”

Slocum nodded. He was reluctant to let these two hear his name. They'd be caught eventually for murdering the deputy, and the first words out of their mouths would be how John Slocum had put them up to it. He cursed his bad luck when Harry slapped his thigh and declared, “You must be that Slocum gent. Right? That's you? Underwood described you good enough if we ran into each other.”

Slocum reluctantly acknowledged, then said, “We're wasting time standing around here.”

“Then let's ride!” Riley let out a whoop and headed back toward the restaurant.

Slocum skirted the building and got his horse. The mare looked the better for the quick grooming and some feed and water. Slocum wished he'd had time for the same. What little he had ordered in the restaurant hardly filled him up.

The trio rode past the deputy's body and farther along the trail Drury had taken. Slocum kept a sharp eye out for tracks, but the dirt path carried a considerable amount of both foot and horse traffic, making it impossible to find a single set of boot prints. When the trail curved back downhill, Slocum drew rein and studied the area.

“He kept going, off the path.”

“What gives you that idea?” Harry asked.

Slocum had seen a freshly broken twig on a low bush as well as grass only now popping back up from where a man had trod on it recently. Nothing said this was Drury's doing, but they hadn't come on anyone else following the path, going in either direction.

“There was two of 'em back in the restaurant. That means we kin get rewards for half the gang,” Riley said.

“You want to split up and go after the other one?” Harry said. “You think we kin tackle 'em like that, one on one?”

Slocum waited to see what conclusion they reached. Tamara had been absent for so long, he reckoned she had taken up with the gamblers who had been in the game with Drury. But the two specials were right about the man with Drury in the restaurant being another robber. Slocum had overheard enough to know, but if they split and each went after a robber, that left Slocum to decide which man to team up with. Harry and Riley were of a kind, neither a mental giant. That gave Slocum the chance to grab the silver from under the nose of whichever special he took up with.

“We stay with Drury,” Riley said, the one of the pair most inclined to worry on such matters.

Slocum felt a little disappointed. Drury was the easy one to nab. The other man wasn't carrying the burden of being a narcotist. Slocum had seen how Drury was suffering from lack of hop. He would make mistakes and even blunder straight for his silver cache with the intent of taking a bar or two into San Francisco and an opium den. Slocum had seen men out of their minds. The drug made them unpredictable, but as long as he kept that in mind, Slocum knew tracking Drury would be easier than the other robber, who had argued against smoking the opium.

“We stick together. That set well with you, Slocum?”

He simply pointed in the direction of the trail he had been following, then urged his mare up a steep slope. Along the rocky trail he saw occasional bright silver streaks where a shod horse had nicked the rock with a sharp-edged steel shoe.

“Dang, Slocum, you could track a ghost through a snowstorm,” Harry marveled as they came out along a rise. Even he spotted the trail now. “How'd you learn to follow spoor like that?”

“I bet he was a scout fer the army. You got the look of a man used to bein' out and after Injuns and robbers. That so, Slocum?” Riley looked hard at him.

“You fellows spend most of your time in San Francisco?”

“We don't hit the trail much, if that's what you're sayin'. Harry 'n me, we help out the railroad however we can.”

“Collingswood hired you before the robbery?”

“Naw, it's not like that,” Harry said. “We do odd jobs, but now and again, Underwood comes up and asks us to do certain chores.”

“Union bustin',” Riley said. “They get this bug up their asses that the railroad ought to be closed down. Me and Harry take care of that, but there ain't been so much work like that recently.”

Slocum kept his mind on how to find Drury and get away from the two specials. They were strikebreakers and as likely to shoot him in the back once they were done with him as to give him the time of day. Considering how much silver was at stake, Slocum knew they were less likely to return it to the Central California Railroad than they were to keep it for themselves. When they found Drury's cache, splitting it three ways wasn't in the cards either.

“He's headin' there,” Harry said in a low voice.

“Shush.” His partner sounded like a faulty steam valve as he hissed out the order.

Slocum had overheard the exchange and realized the two specials knew more about Drury's destination than they let on.

“There's a town ahead,” Slocum said, staring at a huge plume of rising smoke. “Nobody starts a fire that size without it getting out of control.”

The two whispered frantically again. This time he couldn't overhear but got the gist of what they argued over. Finally Riley rode alongside.

“That there's Newburg. A small mining town that's danged near empty now.”

From the smoke, Slocum doubted that. More than one chimney sent that curling plume aloft. They wound around an increasingly well-traveled trail until they came out on a rise looking down on the town. Riley had overstated how much of a ghost town Newburg was. There had to be a couple hundred residents. Slocum cast a sideways look at the two specials. They were whispering furiously again, Riley getting more agitated than his partner.

“We ought to get on down there,” Riley said. “That's a good spot to spend the night.”

“It's hardly past noon,” Slocum said.

“I'm feelin' a mite peaked,” Harry piped up. “And it's past mealtime fer me.”

Harry might be hungry but it wasn't for food. The smell of silver came from Newburg—or at least the scent of Drury and his partner.

“What was the other one's name?” Slocum asked. “The one with Drury at the restaurant?”

“Heard him called Baldy,” said Harry before his partner shushed him.

“Nothing more than that?”

“Harry's likely wrong 'bout that. It might be that Drury knows a lowlife with the moniker of Baldy. That's nothin' to worry over, I'd say.”

Slocum rode down the trail toward the town, thinking hard. He had names for all but one of the robbers now. Riley and Harry didn't know about Jackson, and he wasn't inclined to share this with them. Riding with men he didn't trust wasn't all that unusual for Slocum, but seldom did so much money hang in the balance. The two bragged of their employment by the railroad, but this much silver had to tempt a saint. Slocum had given his word to David Collingswood and would have returned every ounce he found—until the vice president fired him, insulted him, and threw him out.

“I'm feeling a tad dizzy,” Slocum said as the two specials passed him to ride on either side. “Why don't you two go on ahead and let me rest here?”

“Partners don't abandon a friend, 'specially a new one. Let's git on over to the saloon and buy you a beer.”

Slocum looked around but didn't see a saloon. He rode slowly after the two, who headed to a cross street and took it without a second thought. They had been here before, giving Slocum an uneasy feeling they expected more than Drury to hole up here.

“Ain't much of a saloon, but Newburg ain't much of a town,” Harry said, stepping down.

Slocum trailed the other two into the small gin mill but didn't immediately join them at a table toward the rear of the long, narrow room. Windows had been opened at the side of the room to let in some fresh air, but it did little to kill the smell of vomit and spilled, stale beer. Two other customers leaned against the bar, which had once been a thing of beauty. Now too many boot toes had kicked at the front, leaving ugly white gashes, and the surface itself had been scratched deeply. In those wooden trenches, filth and more had accumulated. Slocum tried not to identify the black, gummy substance, but spilled blood came to mind.

“Don't you want some booze, Slocum?” Harry motioned for Slocum to join them.

He walked slowly and studied the two specials. Now that they had reached Newburg, all urgency had passed for finding Drury.

“You been in this town before?”

“Fact is, Slocum, we never knew it existed until we spotted it. But it surely does give a chance for us to kick back and rest 'fore we get on that robber's trail again.”

“You don't know if he's in town,” Slocum said. “Why not look for him?”

“We need to get some food and maybe swill some of that filthy whiskey you got behind the bar!” Riley spoke loudly enough for the barkeep to grab the bottle and bring over three glasses.

Slocum settled into a chair not already occupied by Riley's boots. The special leaned back, laced his fingers behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling. He let out a long, loud sigh.

“Yes, sir, this is the life. Findin' bad men and drinkin' whiskey.” He sat up a bit, took hold of the shot glass, and knocked back the whiskey. He belched loudly, then resumed his position, staring up as if he didn't have a care in the world.

Slocum sipped his shot, made a face, and put it back virtually untouched. He could drink the worst swill, but not this. The trade whiskey had been concocted with too much nitric acid in it. The sip had caused a blister to spring up on his lip. What it would do to his gut had to be a damned sight worse.

“You gonna drink that, Slocum?” Harry pointed to the barely touched drink. When he got a shake of the head, Harry slid it close, then knocked it back. His eyes glazed for a moment, then he sank back and stared out a window.

The change in the two turned Slocum wary. He sat quietly. Silence demanded to be interrupted, and he wanted to hear what they said.

“You know, Slocum, this is the kind of place where we ought to rest up. Me and Harry are about at the end of our rope.”

“You'd let me keep on after Drury?”

“You're more dedicated than me and Harry,” Riley said. “Mr. Collingswood made a durned good decision hirin' you on.”

“I'm going to look around town, ask some questions.”

“You do that,” Harry said. “Me and Riley, we ain't got enough energy to budge. You can find us here when you get tired of nosin' around.”

They signaled for another drink. Slocum pushed away from the table and left the saloon, his mind racing. They had wanted his tracking skills, but once they caught sight of the town, they wanted to get rid of him. That meant they knew something they hadn't shared. Slocum decided they had overheard Drury and his partner say something, maybe about meeting in a town when they split up. This was the town.