Slocum sauntered back toward the marshal’s office with the thick wad of papers ordering Calvin Bennigan off his property. In no particular hurry because he remembered too well how he had felt when the carpetbagger judge had come to throw him off the family land, Slocum peered into the Desert Oasis. There were a few men bellied up to the bar, but no serious drinking had started. He licked his lips, thinking how just a taste of whiskey would sit well with him. Then he backed away and turned toward Delgado’s office. Duty first. The sooner he passed this unsavory chore along to the lawman, the sooner he could be out of town.
Slocum was not certain when he had decided that Dry Water was no longer a decent stopover for him on his way to the coast. Desert held no real attraction for him. Not like standing on a bluff looking out over a vast expanse of water. But mountains were where he felt most alive. He could ride the Kansas prairie and appreciate the majesty of the open range, but seeing the soaring Grand Tetons or the Front Range looking down over Denver made his heart beat just a tad faster.
“The ocean first, then the mountains,” he promised himself out loud. He opened the door to the jailhouse and poked his head in. Louder, he called, “Marshal? Marshal Delgado?”
No response. He looked around the door. The office was empty. Crossing it quickly, he looked into the cell block at the rear of the jailhouse. Also empty.
Slocum grumbled to himself. He had no idea where the lawman had gotten off to. He dropped the eviction papers on the man’s desk. Let Delgado find them and serve process when he got around to it. Still, Slocum felt an obligation to tell the lawman that the judge was in a mighty big hurry to get Bennigan off his claim. If Delgado postponed it, he would end up in hot water with both the mayor and the judge. In a town like Dry Water, that would mean he would be hunting for a new job somewhere else entirely before sundown the next day.
Slocum pulled up a chair, rocked it back on its rear legs so he could balance against the wall and sat gingerly. He pulled down his shot-up hat and within minutes was asleep. It had been a long day.
Slocum came awake with a start when the door banged open.
“What the hell are you doing here, Slocum?”
“Waiting for you, Marshal,” he said. “Got papers from the judge he wants served right away.”
“Damnation.” Delgado almost collapsed into his chair. He pawed through the pages and then looked up. “You know what these are, don’t you?”
“Kind of hard for me not to. That’s the way Judge Tunstell handed them to me.”
“You were out at Bennigan’s claim to deliver a letter ordering him to quit the claim. When he didn’t vamoose, you told the judge.” Delgado tapped the tall pile of papers. “You got these.”
“That’s it in a nutshell,” Slocum said. He tipped the chair forward so all four legs were on the floor. Standing, he pushed his hat up. “I’ve done my duty. Do yours.”
“Hold on, Slocum,” the marshal called. “Get your ass back here.”
Slocum turned and saw Delgado holding a battered badge. He almost kept from catching it when the lawman tossed it to him.
“Pin that on your chest.”
Slocum held the badge as if it had turned fiery hot.
“You’re not deputizing me again. I went along before because that owlhoot shot at me. Killed the horse I was riding, shot Old Jack, maybe killed your prisoner. But I’m not letting you deputize me to serve process on a miner whose only crime is not paying his taxes.”
“There’s more to it than that. You’re no man’s fool, Slocum. You’re going with me. I need someone to watch my back.”
Slocum started to say no but saw the iron resolve in Delgado’s face. The lines were etched on his forehead as if scored across old copper. His jaw was set and his dark eyes blazed.
Slocum heaved a sigh and nodded.
“I’ll do it, but this time only. And I’m not wearing the damn badge.” He tucked it into his vest pocket.
“Don’t care if you do, but you’re coming with me. You’re the only one in town who knows what I’ll be up against. I don’t want to shoot Bennigan if I can get him to leave.”
“You won’t. He’ll only go feet first,” Slocum said. The look in the miner’s eyes told him that. This was a matter of life or death. There was no ground in between the two extremes.
“With you, I might be able to hog-tie him and drag him away. He won’t like it, and I don’t, either. But it’s the only chance Bennigan has of staying alive.”
Slocum knew that was probably true. The pair of them might be able to circle the miner and catch him. Anything less than all the skill Slocum had acquired during long years on the frontier, watching and learning from Indians, hunting and being hunted, fighting for his life, would result in Bennigan’s death.
“Dawn?”
“Dawn,” Delgado said, relaxing a mite. “You won’t try to hightail it, will you?”
“Not my horse. I’d be stealing a horse if I did.” Slocum hesitated, then asked, “What are you willing to sell Conchita for?”
“We’ll dicker over her when we get back and have Bennigan safely locked up.”
“I’ll be at the Desert Oasis. Alton owes me a drink or two,” Slocum said.
“Be sure he doesn’t give you the tarantula juice that causes your eyes to bug out and your belly to shrink like a prune. I want you in good shape tomorrow.”
Slocum laughed as he left. The smile on his face died as he walked down the street to the saloon. The only reason he had agreed to go with Delgado was the reason the lawman stated. If the marshal took anyone else, Bennigan was likely to end up dead. Slocum owed the miner nothing but felt a bond with him. He had lost his family’s land to an identical legal ploy. Slocum knew nothing of the background but could hardly believe Bennigan was more in arrears on his taxes than a dozen other miners out in the hills. For whatever reason, Judge Tunstell had taken a fancy to the land and this was his way of getting it.
As he stepped onto the wood planking outside the saloon, he heard someone whisper his name. Slocum looked down the boardwalk and saw a shadowy figure at the edge of the building.
“Come here. Come on!” The man gestured for Slocum to join him.
“I’m going to get a drink. Join me or not,” Slocum said. “It don’t make no never mind to me.” As he started to push open the swinging doors, the man moved from the shadows and grabbed for Slocum’s arm.
Without thinking, Slocum whirled around, broke the grip and grabbed the man by the lapels. He cocked his other hand back in a fist, ready to punch hard. He hesitated when he saw he had grabbed hold of Roger Williams.
“What do you want?” Slocum asked the banker.
“I mean you no harm, Slocum. Really!”
Slocum relaxed his grip and shoved the banker back a step.
“You got a piss-poor way of showing it.”
“I have an offer. A lucrative one. Just for you.”
Slocum stood and waited. Williams got nervous and shuffled his feet, then summoned up whatever courage he had and blurted out what he had to say.
“Two hundred dollars. I’ll give you two hundred in gold if he never makes it back to town.”
“Who? The owlhoot that robbed your bank?”
“No, no, Calvin Bennigan. I don’t want him coming back to Dry Water and raising a fuss.”
“What do I have to do with this Bennigan?” Slocum fixed his steely gaze on the banker, who tried to stiffen his spine but failed. His eyes darted all over the place like a little boy caught stealing from the apple barrel.
“You’re going out with the marshal to evict Bennigan tomorrow. He’s a troublemaker. I don’t want him to drag this out. He’ll put up a fuss. I know him. It won’t be hard to just plug him.”
“You mean you want me to murder him.”
“Call it what you like, Slocum. I don’t want him returning to town alive. I’ll even pay for the funeral so he won’t have to be buried in the potter’s field.”
“That’s right generous of you,” Slocum said. “Now I have some serious drinking to do.”
Slocum left Williams standing outside. He felt his gut churning. If he had stayed with the banker another second, there would have been need of a new grave to be dug in the cemetery.
Somehow, the whiskey didn’t taste near as good as Slocum had anticipated.
The sun wouldn’t poke over the distant hills for another half hour. The desert chill settled all the way into Slocum’s bones, but he hardly cared. He would be done with this disagreeable chore soon. Delgado had wanted him along to keep Bennigan from getting too rambunctious, but bringing the miner back to Dry Water might be just as dangerous for Bennigan if Williams was up to offering blood money for his death.
When Delgado came around the corner of the jailhouse, he was leading Conchita but sat astride his own horse.
Seeing Slocum’s puzzled expression, the marshal said, “Bennigan doesn’t have a horse and I’ll be damned if I’ll put up with that balky mule of his. For all I know, he ate the critter.”
Slocum mounted and wondered what he should tell the marshal. Delgado was sharp enough to see his hesitation.
“Spit it out, Slocum. You’ve got something you want to say. So just come on out and say it.”
“Why would Williams want Bennigan dead?”
“What’d he do, go and offer you money to be certain Bennigan ended up dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Son of a bitch.” Delgado continued to grumble, switching to Spanish and then back to English. “He’s poking his nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“Why? What’s so all-fired important about the Holey Mine?”
Delgado shrugged. “Politics. That’s all it is. It’s Bennigan’s bad luck he got caught in the middle.” Delgado glared at him. “You try to shoot Bennigan and I’ll see a rope around your neck.”
“You make it so easy to wear a deputy’s badge.”
Delgado had to laugh.
They rode out of town and headed south. After taking a break to rest their horses at the watering hole, Slocum saw the day-old tracks he’d noticed before. Delgado saw his interest.
“What are you staring so hard at, Slocum? Those are old tracks.”
“Weren’t yesterday,” Slocum said. “I watched the rider along yonder ridge.”
Delgado followed where Slocum pointed. The marshal sat a little straighter in the saddle.
“Who was it? The bank robber?”
“Might have been,” Slocum said. “I seem to remember the bank robber wearing a blue-and-white checkerboard shirt like the rider.”
“You let him go?” Delgado roared. “There’s a huge reward on the man’s head and you let him go?”
“What huge reward?” Slocum asked. “The fifty dollars Williams offered? He offered me two hundred to kill Bennigan.”
“Fifty? The bank’s put up a thousand-dollar reward.”
“Seems Williams is mighty generous when it comes to offering money to see people dead.”
“I want the robber. He killed my prisoner. Nobody’s ever done that to me before. I swear, Slocum, nobody’s ever going to do it again!” Delgado began shouting in Spanish so fast Slocum could pick out only a word here and there. Delgado was not happy that the robber had slipped away yesterday.
When the marshal slowed enough for Slocum to get a word in edgewise, he said, “I never saw the robber’s face.”
“Of course not,” Delgado snapped. “He wore a damn mask.”
“The man I saw wore the same color shirt. That’s mighty slim evidence to go tearing off after a man who might have nothing to do with the robbery.”
“You were just too antsy to tell Bennigan to get the hell off his property.”
“You think that, Marshal?” Slocum reached to trace the outline of the badge in his pocket. He was within a second of throwing the badge in the lawman’s face. He didn’t care if he stole the judge’s horse or not. He was fed up with Dry Water and the people in it.
“I’m sorry, Slocum. I’m too angry over having that owlhoot killed in my jail to think straight. You don’t have any ax to grind.”
“I’m just a drifter,” Slocum said.
“Don’t drift on until we’ve seen this to its end. Then you can go, with my blessings.” Delgado hesitated, then said, “With Conchita. I’ll give you the horse if you stay with me on this.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Delgado paused, looking from the road to the Holey Mine and then to the ridge where Slocum had seen the rider.
“Go after him. Find out if he’s the one who robbed the bank. I’ll deal with Bennigan. He’s a cranky old turd, but I can get him back to town alive.”
“You know he won’t think twice about plugging you,” Slocum said.
“I’m a lawman. I live with that every day, wondering if some drunk cowboy’s going to shoot me in the back because it’s Thursday or if a road agent will put me in his sights. I can handle Bennigan just fine.”
“I could see to Bennigan with you and then go after the rider,” Slocum said.
“Time’s a’wasting,” Delgado replied. “Every hour might put more miles between us.”
“He seems to be sticking close to town,” Slocum said, but his mind was already on the trail and how he would track the rider over the rocky terrain. That was a better use of his time and talent than chevying a half-starved miner.
“He might have something keeping him here,” Delgado said.
“He might not have killed his partner in your jail. He might want to settle the score with whoever did. The shooting doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“He might have circled and come back to shoot his partner so the partner wouldn’t reveal his identity,” Delgado said.
“But nobody was in the jail,” Slocum said. “And he got all the money.”
They could sit and argue all day and never come to an answer. It struck Slocum that he and Delgado had switched sides in the futile argument. The marshal was now making all the arguments Slocum had done and now Slocum had come around to believe what the marshal originally had thought—that the robber was innocent of shooting his partner. Finding the robber was the only way to discover what had really gone on.
“See you back in town,” Slocum said.
“Here’s hoping we both have our man,” Delgado said.
Slocum set off along the trail taken by the rider. After an hour he reached the ridgeline and found the narrow path cut along it. Here and there he saw small traces of a rider passing recently. He hardly paid such spoor any attention. He was more interested in the spot where the rider had vanished from sight, heading down the back side of the hill.
This was a game trail, but hoofprints were visible as Slocum studied the ground. He looked up and tried to figure where the rider had been going. The steep slope ended in a rocky ravine that worked its way back into the hills. Hot wind blew from that direction, giving Slocum a hint of smoke. He inhaled more deeply and a slow smile came to his lips. Cooking meat. Someone had a camp upwind.
The steep trail forced him to dismount and lead his horse down to the bottom of the ravine. At one time a considerable amount of water had rushed from higher elevations and cut a deep gorge, but how long ago that had been was a mystery. Even the hardy cactus and creosote bushes that somehow survived in the burning desert found it difficult to grow here.
Once in the ravine, Slocum mounted again and rode slowly. Now and then he took a whiff of the air to make sure he was going in the right direction. He tried to determine how far he was from the source of the smoke, but there was no way of telling. The wind whipped through the deep V in the hills. The source of the cooking fire might be a mile or more away in some canyon.
Slocum hesitated before riding deeper into the mountains. He studied the slopes on either side from the base to the rim, hunting for sentries. If the rider he trailed was the bank robber, he might have partners. Slocum was not convinced the same man who had robbed the bank had also killed Delgado’s prisoner. The bank robber had run from town like a scalded dog and had left enough of a trail to tell Slocum he was miles away when the murder happened.
That meant another man in the gang might be roaming around. Nowhere did Slocum spot a guard standing watch. More cautiously than before, he entered the deep notch and felt the canyon walls rising on either side, crowding in until he could have touched either wall by simply reaching out. His horse shied more now, jumping at every sound. Taking as much time as needed, he soothed his horse to keep it quiet. A loud neigh would echo up the canyon and alert whoever was cooking.
The scent of cooking made Slocum’s mouth water and reminded him how long it had been since he had eaten. He pushed on. The sooner he caught the outlaw responsible for robbing Williams’s bank, the faster he could move on.
The canyon walls fell away and widened into a sere valley dotted with stunted trees. The oppressive heat from the narrow passage died down a little, but it was still desert country. The heat boiling off the acres of rock assured him of that.
He turned slowly, nose in the air like a prairie dog. He could make out the scent of roasting meat now and turned his horse in that direction. Without an idea how far he had to go, Slocum slowed to a walk and then began stopping every few minutes to study the ground around him. When he saw a single set of hoofprints going in the same direction, he knew he was close.
Loosening the leather thong keeper over the hammer of his Colt Navy, he readied himself for what might turn into a gunfight.
Barely twenty yards closer to the campfire, he heard a horse ahead. From the noise, he knew the horse was being saddled in a hurry. Slocum put his heels to his own horse and shot forward. He whipped out his six-shooter and burst through a stand of trees into a sandy spit where a fire sputtered and burned. Dangling over it was what remained of a slab of venison.
“Where…?” Slocum looked around for the man who had been in this campsite a few seconds earlier.
The shot rang out and took his horse out from under him. This had happened before during the bank robbery, and Slocum had been trapped beneath deadweight. Kicking free as the horse collapsed allowed Slocum to hit the ground and roll away. He frantically sought the sniper.
All he heard was the sizzle and pop of grease dripping into the fire and the soft wind sneaking through distant trees. He got to his feet and went to his horse.
“Son of a bitch. Somebody’s out to kill every last damn horse the judge owns,” he said. The bullet had caught the horse just above the leg, had drilled through both lungs and had come out the far side. Slocum looked around but the shooter was long gone. He set to work getting his saddle and other gear free of the horse.
“It’s going to be a long walk back to Dry Water,” he said aloud, then dropped his saddle beside the fire. “Might as well have something to eat.” He tore into the haunch of venison. Whoever the unseen horse killer was, he had left behind a tasty piece of cooked meat.