A few days later—Slocum tried his best to figure out just how many had passed, but his strength, though gaining each day, was building back up from that of a mewling kitten—and with no warning, Deke strode up to the camp. Slocum was sitting on a chair outside the cave’s entrance, recovering from the latest round of working over that Julep had given him. He was getting savvy to her techniques, though, and knew that she’d strike when he was most vulnerable, just after he’d put in a bit of exercise.
She’d not allowed him any weapons, said they would only hurt him, though how, she didn’t elaborate on. She also couldn’t tell him if they’d found any of his own weapons, save for his boot knife, which she had, only with great reluctance, given back to him. A show of good faith on her part, after he told her in no uncertain terms that he did not appreciate being held prisoner.
She’d protested, said that wasn’t the case at all, but then would avoid the topic of how to leave, where the entrance and exit to the canyon were located, and above all, she rebuffed his repeated attempts to find out where Deke and the others—that much he’d gotten out of her, there were other men with him—had gone.
And then, after a few days, Deke strode on up the southward path that Slocum had been slowly trailing, gaining distance down along it day after day. The two men exchanged wordless glances, sizing each other up and down. Finally, Deke broke the silence with a wide grin accompanied with a quick rip of laughter, and then clapped Slocum on his less-sore shoulder. Slocum hoped Deke wasn’t just playing him for a fool and that he knew what Slocum and Julep had been up to. Telling Deke he hadn’t much say in the matter wouldn’t carry much weight.
He wasn’t letting on to Julep just how recovered he really felt, but it was substantially more than he let on to her. He felt that keeping her in the dark as much as possible might prove beneficial somehow, though just how he had no idea.
One by one a number of people—young, old, children, and above all, he noticed mostly men, other than old women—began to show up around the campfire. The afternoon had begun to wane, and Deke and Slocum had exchanged a long, boring line of pleasantries. Slocum had eventually just come out and asked the big man what he had been doing, couching it in an offer of help as soon as he healed up enough.
“We’ll see, Slocum. We’ll just see. For the time being, I’d like for you to meet a few of the folks we have settled here in the canyon.”
“Okay, Deke. And since you insist on being so cagey about what it is you do here, I’ll go ahead and tell you something about myself. I’m sure it’s close to the same thing you can’t bring yourself to tell me about you.” Slocum eyed the rows of people, young, old, men and women ringing the blazing, snapping campfire, their faces already expectant as they leaned forward. They want to hear what I have to say, thought Slocum. I’ll bet they figure it’s going to be something great. Well, I’ll give it to them.
But before he could speak, Deke gestured toward him with his big bear face. “You’re a wanted man. I bet that’s it, ain’t it.”
The big man’s correct guess shocked Slocum for a moment. All he could do was stare back. Finally his eyebrows rose and he chuckled. “Well, yeah, I guess that’s about what I was going to say.”
Deke held up a ham of a hand. “We none of us wanna hear just what it is you done, nor why you done it. But it does make sense.”
“How’s that?” said Slocum.
“You being here and all. If I was a man who believed in such things as fate, I’d say you were destined to drop down here like you done.”
“But you’re not,” said Slocum.
“Not what?”
“A man who believes in that sort of thing.”
“No sir.” Deke rasped a hand under his nose as if he had the sniffles.
“I do.” The voice came from Julep. She stood and scuffed a boot toward the fire, dislodging a couple of rocks.
“What about me? Don’t I have a say in the matter?” said Slocum. “And what are you so all-fired cagey about anyway?” Slocum figured he’d come right out with it, and addressed everyone. “I’ve had about enough of this hemming and hawing. It was fine when I was still under your care, but now that I’m healed up, you won’t even help me find my way out of here.”
“You don’t mind my saying it, but you’re still in no fit shape to travel. Just how long you think you can survive up there, Slocum?” said Deke.
“I don’t know . . . yet,” said Slocum. “But I aim to find out.”
“Nah, no you ain’t neither.” Deke shook his head. “’Cause I ain’t about to let you.”
“You know, Deke, a whole lot of men have tried to best me over the years, but it hasn’t much happened yet.”
Deke fixed Slocum with a hard gaze. Suddenly a scream sounded from far off, down the little green valley. Deke’s eyes perked up. “Oh no! It happened again. We got to go—come on!”
Slocum followed Deke along the west edge of the camp’s center fire pit, and others hurried by them, a few ambled along after. As he worked to keep up, Slocum relished the work he was putting his sore limbs through. Any muscles he might have had back when this deadly adventure had begun were now slack shadows of themselves. All the more reason for him to really exert himself. His shot leg throbbed, but a quick glance down at his bandages told him the wound hadn’t opened. He’d have to thank Julep again for doctoring him so thoroughly.
The path was beaten down trail that wound along the stream’s edge, around boulders, through a couple of marshy spots, and finally they rounded a copse of stout pines. Close by the west edge of the canyon wall a cluster of men stood with their backs to them, tight-packed but fidgety. They looked to Slocum as if no matter how many times they experienced whatever it was they were staring at, it still scared them plenty. As he walked closer, he could see they stood less like men than children; some of them held hands to their mouths.
“Let me through, lemme through!” The big man elbowed his way into the midst of the crowd all staring at a downed man. Then Deke, too, drew up short and gasped. “That’s Henry! What happened?” Deke looked up the path, then back down again. Then he looked straight up the canyon side to their right.
Deke bent down near the old man, his big hand checking for signs of life, but even before he shook his head slowly from side to side, affirming what he found, Slocum knew the old man was dead. When a man had seen as much death as John Slocum, one could tell if a man was still among the living just by looking.
Henry was dead; that much was plain to see. His head had been bashed by a rock that had come from on high. The old man lay flat to the ground, his head flopped to one side as if he were in mid-snore, his toothless mouth sagged open. Seeing his puckered mouth pooled with glistening blood and chaw juice reminded Slocum for the briefest of seconds of so many of the battlefield wounds he’d seen back in the war.
Old Henry would never slice a hunk of chewing tobacco off his greasy old knob ever again. He’d never wink or tell a bawdy joke or swig liquor from the bottle or rock back on his heels as if he and he alone were the possessor of vast stores of infinite wisdom. And he truly was a wise man—for who wasn’t, really, in this life? thought Slocum. We all are as wise as we say we are, living up to our potentials as much or as little as we dare to in our day’s, week’s, month’s, year’s, and lifetime’s worth of living.
What happened to Henry was something Slocum very much wanted to hear explained. It looked to him as if Deke had assumed it had been something from above that struck the old man.
“You see that?” said Deke. “Them savages are up against forces they have no idea about. They will all die by my hand or I ain’t a Southern man, born and bred.”
“You ain’t going to do anything of the sort, and you know it,” Julep said, not taking her eyes from Henry’s still body.
Slocum hadn’t seen her come up behind them.
Deke turned to look at her. “Julep, you shouldn’t be here. This ain’t nothing for a woman to have to see.”
“I’ve seen worse. Remember Slocum when we found him? Now that was a man who looked about done for.”
“Aww, knock off the chatter. My old friend’s laying here with his head bashed in and you should show some damn respect.”
The crowd fell silent, Slocum with them. The old man, Henry, might have been a pain in the ass, but he was likable, too. And a damn sight smarter than most of the men in the encampment. To end up with your head split open from a fallen rock, after having lived all those years, just didn’t seem fair. Here was another act that proved to Slocum that life was anything but fair, and far from kind. It also told the loner that it wasn’t any old rock that had mysteriously fallen from the tall canyon walls and miraculously hit the old man on the head.
As if reading his thoughts, Deke said, “The foul Apaches did this.”
“How can you be sure?” said Slocum.
“Don’t mistake my kindness so far for anything but Southern hospitality. Now that you are about healed up, I expect you to pull your share of the load around here.”
“And what, exactly, is the load we’re all pulling?”
Deke regarded him a moment, then pushed by him on the trail, grim anger clouding his features. “Follow me, Slocum,” he said in a low voice. Louder, over his shoulder, he shouted, “Marsden, Pickle, and Jimbo, you keep a watch up above, see they don’t pick off anyone else. Tyson and MaryBean, you all help Julep fetch Henry back to camp.” He looked at Slocum. “Come on.”