Slocum 374

The telegram was sent out to be delivered by a wiry boy with thick red hair. When he knocked on the door of the hotel and handed the message over, he was given a nickel and sent on his way.

After that, the message was sent up to room number seven. Less than a minute later, two men emerged from room number seven and marched out of the hotel. Each man wore a gun strapped around his waist and the grim visage of someone who wasn’t afraid to pull the trigger.

The two men went down Market Street, toward the little shop run by the Hawes family. Before they got there, someone emerged from a neighboring doorway to block their path.

Slocum cleared leather and burned the men down with two shots fired in quick succession. Keeping the smoking gun in hand, he asked, “Is that all of them?”

Mick crossed the street and took a look at the bodies. “Should be. There’s no reason for Mr. Surret to send more than this to take care of a few shopkeepers. So does this make us even?”

“You knew just what to put in that telegram to bring these assholes running, so yeah. We’re even. Best get out of here while you can, though.”

“Already on my way.” The big fellow stepped up to Slocum just long enough to shake his hand. Once that was done, he collected his horse and was gone.

“Not anymore,” Slocum replied. “You and your sister should buy a ticket to Fort Griffin. Your pa and Val are waiting there for you.”

Scott and Jenny Hawes looked at Slocum in astonishment. “You show up here less than an hour ago,” Scott said, “inform us we have killers after us and that our family’s in some sort of trouble. Can’t you just tell us the rest?”

“Just go to Fort Griffin. I’m sure your father would rather be the one to tell you all about it. While you get ready, would you mind if I had a look around your father’s workshop? It’s a personal matter.”

The young man looked outside, where a small crowd was already forming around the bodies lying there. Holding his hands out as if he didn’t know quite what to do with them, he sputtered, “Go on ahead. I barely knew we were in trouble, but it seems we owe you our lives. His workshop is in the livery where you put your horse.”

Slocum was too tired to accept any more thanks. After he and Mick had ridden away from what was left of Owen’s wagons, they’d raced to the closest set of train tracks, followed them to a station, used all of Slocum’s money to purchase tickets to get them and their horses into Dallas, made the train ride, disembarked, found the shop, explained the situation, had Mick write the telegram, sent it, and then confronted the men who’d responded to it. Slocum’s day wasn’t even over, since he intended on staying close just in case anyone else tried to harm William’s children. In the meantime, however, he decided to follow the rest of the old man’s directions.

When Slocum had first put Dusty into the livery behind the shop, he hadn’t realized it was also a workshop. Even as he went there again, he still couldn’t see much more than what one would expect to find in a livery. A few stalls had been built into one end, and Dusty was in one of them. The other end had tools and supplies you would need to mend carriages, as well as a pair of old rigs propped up on sets of four boxes where wheels would normally be.

Slocum walked up to the closest rig and squatted down to look at a side that had been stripped away, revealing what William had been working on. The floor of the old wagon looked more like a wall, complete with studs for support and a small space in between the two layers of wood. Stuck within that space, like the meat of a sandwich, was a metal box.

Reaching into the rig, Slocum found the recessed little handle to a trapdoor embedded in the upper floor. He pulled it open to reveal the top of the metal box.

The second rig was similar to the first, but there was no trapdoor. Instead, this box appeared to have been built directly into the floor. Slocum ran his finger along the upper section to find a small knothole where the box’s keyhole should be.

Suddenly, Slocum recalled seeing William fidget with Dusty’s shoes when they’d still been at the ranch. At the time, Slocum had figured the old man was tending to the horse’s shoes like he would tend to any of the other horses. Now that he thought a bit harder, Slocum hadn’t seen William fidget with the shoes of any of the other horses that night.

“Look a gift horse in the feet, huh? Well,” Slocum said as he walked over to Dusty, “you are kind of a gift horse. Let’s see what’s so special about your feet.”

Slocum dropped to one knee and examined Dusty’s shoes. The even-tempered horse lifted his legs, one at a time, for Slocum to examine them in turn. When he got to the front left shoe, Slocum hit pay dirt.

Stuck into the upper curve of that horseshoe, wedged into a pair of grooves that William must have put there himself, was a slender chip of metal that was about half the size of a silver dollar. The chip was positioned so it would press flat against Dusty’s hoof and not disturb the horse in any way, while also staying in place. It took some work with a small set of William’s pliers, but Slocum pulled the chip loose. Once it was in his hand, the chip revealed itself to be two halves pressed tightly around a small key.

The key didn’t fit in the box of the rig with the trapdoor, but it did fit into the false knothole of the second rig. Upon second glance, Slocum even thought a knothole like that would go unnoticed by captive lawmen riding in a similar wagon for an extended amount of time. And with the false floor on the bottom, the wagon would easily pass inspection if anyone knelt down to get a look at its underbelly.

With a half twist, one plank of the rig’s floor swung loose to give Slocum access to the metal box. Inside, there were several stacks of money that would not only compensate Slocum for his train ticket to and from Dallas, but also make having worked for a pig like Owen Surret worth his while.

Slocum thought about splitting the money with William’s family, but he stuffed it into his saddlebags instead. He’d pay for their train ride to Fort Griffin, and if the lockbox in William’s wagon was hidden as well as this one and was just as fully stocked, the old man had more than enough to set his family up for a long while. Come to think of it, if the rigs in front of Slocum were only working models, the safes William actually brought to Owen were probably much bigger and packed with even more money.

Shortly after leaving the shop, Slocum had a talk with the Dallas law to explain how he’d been forced to defend himself against the two dead men lying in the street outside William’s shop. Scott and Jenny Hawes backed up the story, which matched the accounts of plenty of eyewitnesses. Slocum wasn’t allowed to leave town for a spell, but that didn’t bother him much. There were plenty of pretty ladies, smooth whiskey, and fancy rooms to be found in Dallas, and he could afford every single one of them.