Slocum splashed around in the water, struggling to keep from being swept deeper into the tunnel. Bennigan had said he had a second, lower gallery. If Slocum was swept to a hole over that gallery, he would be pulled under and drowned.
He fought for his balance and got to his feet. His boots slipped on the slick rock as the water tried to knock him over like a ten pin. Fingers grasping, he caught an outjut of rock and held on until his hands were running with blood. He gritted his teeth and pulled hard, forcing himself to stay under the mouth of the pit.
Looking up, all he saw was the blue-white light cast by the carbide lantern he had left beside the pit. No shadows of Bennigan moving about, and not even a hint that the rope that had given way was still in place. His mind jumped to wild schemes. If he could jump high enough, he could catch the severed rope and pull himself up. But the edge of the pit was more than ten feet above his head. Even if he could jump that far, the rope would be useless. It had cut at the sharp edge of the pit. And if he could jump that high, he could not even hope to hang on to the rocky lip. It had severed a rope. It would cut through his already lacerated fingers.
“Bennigan!”
All he heard was the rush of water around him. Grimly determined, Slocum tried to edge his way up the rocky walls by forcing his feet against one side and his back against the other. The water made the rock too slippery to climb like this. He fell back heavily.
“You down there, Slocum? What happened?”
“The rope broke!”
Another rope came snaking out into sight and splashed down only inches from him. Slocum wrapped it around his middle and tied it the best he could.
“I can’t pull myself out. You need to help. Watch out for the edge of the hole. It’s like a knife.”
Slocum grunted as the rope tightened under his arms, and he was jerked a foot above the water. Bit by bit, he was painfully pulled aloft until he could reach out and grab the edge of the pump. Using this, he dragged himself free and flopped on the dirty mine floor. It took him several seconds to get his breath back.
“Where the hell did you go?”
“Got to the top. Thought I heard somebody outside, so I went to take a look. Was only a racoon rootin’ around, huntin’ fer food. When I hied on back, I heard you cryin’ down there.”
“I damned near drowned,” Slocum said.
“Lucky that the ’coon waddled off so I could git on back to you, wasn’t it?”
Slocum started to tell Bennigan what he thought of a food-stealing racoon and a man who tended that before making sure his rescuer was safe, but he held his tongue. He sat and wiped the water off the best he could, but he was getting a chill.
“Let me outside,” he said. Drying off would take only minutes in the hot desert sun. The air was like a sponge, and the hot wind blowing from the direction of the Mojave soon dried his clothing to his body. His boots had to have the water dumped out, but otherwise Slocum was no worse for the dunking. If anything, he was a sight cleaner than when he had entered the mine.
“You don’t think I tried to kill you, do you, Slocum?” The worry in Bennigan’s voice told Slocum all he needed to know.
“You saved me. That’s what matters. And did the ’coon get your booze?”
“Nope, I—” Bennigan stared at him. “How’d you know that was a whiskey-stealin’ racoon?”
“That’s about the only thing that’d make you leave me like that,” Slocum said, laughing.
“Here, have a snort.” Bennigan held out his precious whiskey. Slocum took a small nip and returned it to the miner.
“What are you gonna do? ’Bout me and the Holey?”
“I offered you a mountain of money and you turned it down. That ends the job for me. It’s between you and the judge now. You should take the money, though, since he’ll find enough loopholes to close around your neck like a noose. He wants the mine, he’s not going to stop until he gets it.”
“Over my dead body!”
Slocum nodded. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t stand beside Bennigan when it came to that. From what the judge said about having to get the mine in weeks, if he missed his deadline he might not want the mine at all. Marshal Delgado was all shot up and didn’t have a deputy. Slocum couldn’t see Tunstell’s law clerk being much good in a gunfight. Alton would never put on a badge to come after Slocum. The rest of the town was just too downright peaceable for the judge to foreclose without a fight he might lose.
For once, Slocum felt that time was on his side. But why did the judge and his partners want the mine at all?
“Where’d he go?” Slocum asked the judge’s clerk. Morris peered up at him with his rheumy eyes and nervously licked his lips.
“Don’t know, can’t say,” the man said. “He left real early.”
“What about the mayor?”
“Him, too. Him and the judge.”
“And Williams?” Slocum saw the clerk shake his head furiously. This one he did not know and moreover did not care. Slocum left the office and looked around the courthouse. It was as if a holiday had been declared. With both judge and mayor gone for the day—or however long—the majority of the employees had taken the day off. Slocum couldn’t blame them. He wanted to quit, too, but this was an opportunity he could not pass up.
He went outside the courthouse and headed directly for the schoolhouse. As he got there, a string of children came out silently. Each one let out a whoop when they stepped away from the building and then tore off like they had been set on fire. Slocum waited until Angela came out. She pushed her hair back and looked as if she had been through a fire. Dark smudges on one cheek added to the impression. Her chestnut hair was in disarray and her clothing was wrinkled and mussed, as if she had been wrestling a grizzly bear.
“What does the loser look like?” Slocum asked.
“John,” she said, startled. “I didn’t see you. What do you mean?”
“You look like you’ve gone fifty rounds of bare-knuckle. Since you’re still on your feet, you must be the winner.”
“I don’t feel it,” she said, sinking back against the school door. “They are devils. All of them. Someone set off a smoke bomb.” She touched the smudge on her cheek. “I had hardly put that out when—oh, never mind. I totally lost control of them all.”
“So you sent them home early?”
“They won’t go home. They’d have to do chores. It’ll be our little secret. They get out early and I don’t have to deal with them—and nobody will know.”
“You’re about the first teacher I ever heard of who couldn’t control her class.”
“I need a whip.”
“Heard that works on some children. Maybe not the boys, but certainly the girls,” Slocum said, grinning. Angela found nothing humorous and said so.
“So,” she went on, “what brings you by? You look a bit the worse for wear yourself. Was last night that tiring for you?”
“You wore me down,” Slocum said.
“Oh, no, not that. I might have worn you out but never down. You’re too big for that.” She finally smiled.
“Most of city hall’s gone. The judge and mayor are off on a trip somewhere. I wondered if you would help me search the city records.”
“Search them?” Angela asked, frowning. “Whatever for?”
“Can’t rightly say. That’s why I need help.” Slocum quickly explained the situation with Cal Bennigan and his Holey Mine.
“They want it pretty bad, don’t they?” Angela asked.
“Seems like it, but I can’t figure out why. Even Bennigan admits he is barely scraping out a living from the gold. I saw the ore he pulled out.” He shook his head.
“What do you want me to do?” Angela actually blushed. “Right now, I mean. Later, we can explore other things you might want me to do.”
“I want to go over the records and see if there’s any hint about what makes that land so valuable that Williams would actually offer me money to kill Bennigan.”
“The son of a bitch,” Angela said. She ground her teeth together, then said, “I shouldn’t say things like that, but he does not seem like a nice man.”
“Nice man,” mused Slocum. “That’s a description that never occurred to me.”
“Let’s hurry, John. The sooner we finish the search, the sooner we can…” She let the sentence trail off, but Slocum understood. And approved.
They got to the courthouse just as Morris locked the door and turned to leave. Slocum grabbed the keys from the man’s hand. Before he could protest, Slocum hushed him.
“It’ll be all right. The judge won’t care.”
“My keys,” the man said. “He’ll skin me alive if I give them over to you.”
“He’ll do more than that if he finds you left work early. It’s not even close to sundown,” Slocum pointed out. He opened the door, then tossed the keys back to the clerk. Morris mumbled to himself as he left.
“Going straight to the Desert Oasis, unless I miss my bet,” Slocum said.
“No argument. Are all the others there?” Angela looked around the deserted building as if she had never seen it from the inside. He almost asked if it looked different from this side of the mayor’s window but did not want to anger her.
“The record books are over there, next to the judge’s office,” Slocum said. He held the door for her and appreciated the way she smelled as she pushed past. There might have been a lingering gunpowder smell from the smoke bomb, but beneath it all was a perfume that made his heart beat a little faster.
“Let me see,” she said, looking over a map spread on a table. “These are the map coordinates.” She went to a larger map on the wall and finally located Bennigan’s mine after some searching. Her finger stabbed down. “From this we can go to the proper record book.”
“Lead on,” Slocum said as he looked out into the lobby to be certain the clerk had not returned to spy on them. The building was empty, save for the two of them.
He turned back in time to see her standing with her hands on a book she had taken from a long bookcase.
“Well?”
“Rules of the game, John,” she said. “I find this information for you, then you find something for me.”
“Wouldn’t mind doing that,” Slocum said, thinking of all the things Angela might have hidden that they both would like him to search for.
Angela smiled, flipped open the book and spent the next ten minutes comparing numbers from the map to entries in the record book. She frowned and shook her head.
“I don’t understand this. Somebody’s bought all the land surrounding Bennigan’s mine.”
“Tunstell, Grierson and Williams?” It was not much of a leap of faith. Slocum was surprised at the answer.
“No, some company called the Mojave East Farming Company.”
“Farming? In this country? It’s dry as a bone.”
“I can find who owns the company.”
“Go on,” he said, watching as Angela moved through the files, making notes and going to other cabinets filled with stacks of paper. Her trim form moving back and forth, sometimes silhouetted by the light and other times half hidden in shadow, kept Slocum occupied. When she let out a cry of satisfaction, he jumped.
“What is it?”
“You guessed right on the owners of the company. It’s really complex. They have hidden their tracks but the judge, banker and mayor own the Mojave East.”
“I’d heard the judge say something once about missing it back East where he had orchards,” Slocum said.
“Cherry trees,” Angela said unexpectedly. “He said something to me about cherry trees and how he wanted to raise them.”
“Talk about a fool’s errand.”
“They are spending a considerable sum to buy up all that land.” Angela’s finger traced the region on the wall map. “I can’t think of any of the men as fools.”
“Maybe Williams,” Slocum said. The woman’s reaction took him aback.
“He’s a cold-blooded murderer,” she snapped. “He’s a coward and—” Angela cut off her tirade, then contritely said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go on like that.” She took a deep breath, settled herself and said, “I found what you wanted. Now you have to find what I want.”
“Where do we go?”
“That’s the problem. I’m not sure. But I know where to begin.”
Slocum took a step forward, intent on showing her where he wanted to begin, but she whirled away and her finger stabbed down on the map again.
“We start here,” she said. It took Slocum a few seconds to orient himself on the map.
“Are you certain? That’s the route the bank robber used to get out of town after the last robbery.”
“I’m sure. I’ve got a score to settle with him.”
Slocum looked at her. Angela was determined. And he had promised, although what she wanted was different from what he had expected.
“You have a horse? No buggies in that country.”
“I’ll meet you at the stable in fifteen minutes.” She paused, gave him a quick kiss and then was gone, leaving behind only the faint odor of gunpowder and perfume.
Slocum took one last look at the area outlined on the map from Angela’s clever searching of the records and shook his head. The area owned by Mojave East held most of the gold mining claims—and all of the abandoned mines except Bennigan’s. It didn’t make sense.
Slocum went to the stables and saddled Conchita for the ride south and around back into the maze of hills where the robber had hidden. It was also unclear why Angela wanted to find the robber. Her venom when Roger Williams was mentioned had to be part of it, but Slocum was too tired to figure it all out. He checked to be sure he had a full cylinder in his Colt Navy, then made certain he had a couple of spare boxes of ammo for the rifle he had slid into the saddle sheath. Going up against the outlaw without enough firepower didn’t sit well with him after he had two horses shot out from under him, probably by the same man.
“Don’t worry, old girl,” Slocum said, patting Conchita on the neck. “You won’t go down like that.”
“I’m not sure I want to know what you meant, John.” Angela stood in the door of the livery, reins trailing from one hand.
“I’m sick of having the damned outlaws shoot my horses,” he said. “That’s not going to happen this time.”
“I hope not,” Angela said fervently. Then she grinned. “It would be ever so much more fun if I went down…on you.”
“After we find your robber?”
“You sound doubtful it will happen. It will, John, it will.” Steely determination came into Angela’s voice.
“Why do you want to find the robber?”
“He’s got something of mine,” she said.
“From the bank robbery?” Slocum considered. It had to be from the second robbery since Angela had not been in town when the first one had occurred.
“Let’s ride,” she said.
Slocum tried a few times to engage her in conversation. He was itching with curiosity over her reasons for finding the bank robber. When he reached the trail leading into the hills, though, he stopped trying to pry the information from her and began concentrating on tracking. It was dark now and finding the trail was more difficult, even with the moonlight.
“I’ve found hoofprints but don’t know if they belong to the robber or someone else. The posse came this way when we found the strongbox.”
“I know,” Angela said, “but you rode toward town. These are going into the hills, aren’t they?”
Slocum looked up at her and wondered. Angela sat astride her horse as if she had been born there. She had ridden well. Slocum had expected the hothouse flower Eastern schoolmarm to have trouble in the saddle. Angela had shown herself to be a decent horsewoman, riding easily and flowing with the motion of the horse.
“Where’s this going to take us?”
“Into the hills,” she said, pointing. “Over there.”
“That’s off the trail leading to where we found the robber’s camp.”
“There,” she insisted.
Slocum walked along the trail, doing his best to follow increasingly faint hoofprints. The tracks vanished entirely on him along a rocky patch. More than once he looked in the direction Angela had pointed. If a man wanted to hide there, he would have ridden across the patch of rock to hide his trail.
Slocum began to edge toward the hills and ignored the better traveled trail.
He found a pile of fresh horse flop.
“Someone’s been here recently,” he said. “Not more than a few hours. How’d you know?”
“I’m a schoolteacher. I know everything,” she said.
“Tell me right now. You dived in on this trail like a hawk screaming down to pick off a rabbit. No mistakes, straight here.”
“Yeah, tell me how you came to find my trail so easy,” came a cold voice.
Slocum spun, hand going for his six-shooter, but he froze when he saw he was looking down the barrel of a rifle. The man sighting along the barrel was belly-down on top of a boulder and presented no target at all. He could get off a couple shots before Slocum could clear leather.
Slocum slowly reached for the sky.