“Evenin’, friend.”
Nate Wysong glanced up upon hearing the gruff greeting, and involuntarily sucked in a sharp breath. “Ah . . . ah, evening,” he stammered, unable to hide his shock. “Can I help you?” he managed. The man was huge, grizzled, and woolly as a bear, with a long white scar down the side of his face. Nate felt around under the counter for the shotgun usually kept there, but could not locate it.
Slocum grinned, amused by Nate’s apparent fright, knowing it was fostered by the mere sight of the giant bounty hunter. “Lookin’ for a friend of mine,” Slocum said. “Jim Culver—I was told he’s hereabouts somewheres.”
Nate exhaled, able to breathe again. “Oh, you’re a friend of Jim’s, then. Well, he was here, all right, all winter, but he’s gone now.”
Slocum’s grin froze on his face for a few seconds in his effort to hide his irritation. “Where’d he go?”
“I ain’t sure. I just know he rode out of here a few days back.” When the surly brute’s face turned into a scowl, Nate suggested that Katie Mashburn might know. “Jim stayed over there while him and his brother built Katie a new cabin.”
“How do I get to Katie Mashburn’s place?”
After giving Slocum directions to Katie’s cabin, Nate stood in the doorway of his tiny store and watched as the huge man climbed aboard an iron-gray horse and rode off toward the river. Nate expelled a long sigh of relief as soon as the stranger rode out of sight beyond the bluffs. He said he was a friend of Jim’s, he thought. I hope I ain’t sent Katie no trouble.
* * *
“Somebody coming,” Luke Kendall said.
Katie paused. Leaning on her hoe handle, she pushed her bonnet back a bit in order to see better. It didn’t look like anyone she knew, and even at that distance this one looked like trouble. She unconsciously reached down to feel the handle of the Colt she always wore.
Taking another look at the rider coming up the trail, then glancing back to notice the look on Katie’s face, Luke dropped his hoe and walked over to the corner of the garden where he had left his bow. With the weapon in hand, he went back to stand beside Katie.
“Mornin’, ma’am,” Slocum said, reining the gray up at the corner of the garden. He took a moment to look Luke up and down, a natural habit, before he turned his gaze back to the slender young woman. A damn odd pair, he thought, a woman packing a .45 and a half-breed boy carrying a bow. Doing his best to affect a pleasant facade on a face that had seldom experienced one, he tipped his hat and spoke. “Feller over at the store told me you might know where Jim Culver was headed when he left here.”
“Oh?” was Katie’s only reply.
Overhearing the conversation outside, Lettie Henderson appeared in the doorway of the cabin, an apron tied around her waist. Slocum nodded politely in her direction before gazing back at Katie. “Yes’m. I’m a friend of Jim’s from back in Virginia. I promised him I’d look him up if I was ever out this way.”
Katie cut her eyes at Luke in a brief warning, but the boy’s face was expressionless. According to what she had learned from his brother Clay, Jim had left Virginia rather suddenly—in the middle of the night, if she remembered correctly. It didn’t seem likely that he would have had the time to tell friends where he was going. She didn’t like the look of this dark and grizzled stranger, and she had doubts that he was any friend of Jim’s. “Well, mister, I’m afraid we can’t help you. He didn’t say where he was heading. Most likely he headed toward Oregon territory. Sorry you missed him.” That said, she immediately started weeding with her hoe again, dismissing the stranger.
Ignoring her obvious signal that the conversation was ended, Slocum sat there for a long moment, eyeballing the woman and boy in the field. Glancing at the cabin, he noticed that the young lady was no longer standing in the doorway. He considered the possibility that Culver was inside the cabin, but a look around him seemed to indicate otherwise. For one thing, there was no sign of the big Morgan stallion Jim rode.
His ruse as a friend of Culver’s obviously a failure, he decided to take a different tack. “Might be you folks could improve your memory a touch if I told you the U.S. Army sent me out here to look for Jim Culver. He murdered an army officer. If you don’t help me, I reckon it’ll just take me a little longer to find him. But I’ll find him. I always do.”
Katie looked up again. “Then you’d best get started,” she curtly advised. “Oregon’s that way.”
A slow smile curled the corners of the sinister brute’s mouth. “You’re a sassy little bitch, ain’tcha?”
Luke tensed at the comment, and started to reach for his quiver of arrows, but Katie stopped him with a raised hand. She did not reply to Slocum’s remark, standing defiantly with her hand resting on the butt of her pistol.
Glancing in Luke’s direction, Slocum grinned openly. “You pretty handy with that bow, sonny?” Luke’s expression didn’t change as he continued to stare stone-faced at the unwelcome visitor. Laughing at the lack of response from the half-breed boy, Slocum jerked on the reins, turning the big gray’s head back toward the trail. “Much obliged,” he said to Katie, his voice heavy with sarcasm. Not one to miss many things in the pursuit of his business, he did not fail to notice the tip of the rifle barrel in the corner of the cabin window.
Heading back down the wagon track at a leisurely pace, he was confident that what the storekeeper and the woman at the cabin had told him was true. Culver had, in fact, left the valley. He was confident the rifle he spotted in the window was being held by the woman he had seen standing in the door. There were still possibilities, however. He was not convinced that they had no idea where Culver was heading. So the thing to do now was to find a good spot to hide out where he could watch the cabin for a while. One thing for sure: Culver ain’t headin’ for Oregon territory.
* * *
When Slocum had ridden out of sight, Lettie emerged from the cabin, still carrying the rifle. She walked into the garden to join Katie and Luke. “What did that awful-looking man want? He scared me so bad just looking at him that I thought we might be in trouble.”
Katie couldn’t help but smile. “So you were going to shoot him,” she chided, impressed by the young girl’s show of bravado.
“I don’t know. I guess I was, if he made one move toward you. That was the meanest-looking man I’ve ever seen.”
“Bounty hunter,” Katie said. Then she related Slocum’s story to Lettie.
“Jim didn’t murder anybody,” Lettie exclaimed. “You know what happened in Virginia. That lieutenant shot at Jim first, and Jim shot in self-defense.”
“I know,” Katie calmly replied. She was thinking hard on what she could do to warn Jim. “We need to let Jim know that animal is after him.” She turned to Luke. “You and Clay talked to Jim about seeing the mountains and all that horseshit you men think is so important. Do you have any notion where he was going?”
Luke shook his head. “Nope. He was just going. Him and Clay talked a lot about the Wind River country. I expect he might have rode up that way.”
Seeing the sudden distress in Lettie’s eyes, Katie laid a comforting hand on the young girl’s arm. “Jim strikes me as a man who is pretty good at taking care of himself, honey. I wouldn’t worry.” Then she looked back at Luke. “All the same, Luke, you’d best go find him. You know that country as well as anyone. If he’s up there somewhere, maybe you can strike his trail.”
“Yes’m,” was all Luke replied. Wasting no more time, he immediately went about getting some possibles together for a long scout in the mountains. In a matter of no more than half an hour, he was in the saddle and on his way.
* * *
“Well, that didn’t take long,” Slocum muttered. “I didn’t have a chance to even make myself comfortable.” He stood at the head of a shallow ravine, hidden by thick pines, watching the young half-breed boy as his horse loped by. Motionless until Luke had passed out of sight, he then stepped up in the saddle and rode after him. “All right, sonny, lead me to him.”