Slocum 382

“He deserved it,” John Slocum said. He returned his Colt Navy to his holster, ignored the moaning outlaw on the sawdust-strewn barroom floor, and clicked his shot glass on the wood. When the bartender didn’t stir, Slocum slammed it down hard. “Give me another one. And a pitcher of water.”

“We already water down the whiskey,” the barkeep muttered, but he poured Slocum the shot and rummaged about to get a large beer stein, which he filled with only slightly muddy water. He slid it across to Slocum, but his attention was on his fallen patron. He licked his lips and looked around as if judging the distance to the nearest window or door so he could escape as quick as possible.

Slocum knocked back the whiskey. It burned all the way down to his gullet and took away some of the dust he had accumulated on the trail getting to Las Vegas, New Mexico. He turned and stared at the stretched-out James. For two cents, he would have shot him rather than only laying the hard steel barrel alongside his head a couple times. Jesse James had never done a damned thing for him and never would.

A hot, dry wind blew through the open door and decided Slocum. He picked up the stein of water, took a sip, and washed it around in his parched mouth. He considered spitting it on Jesse and then simply dumped the water over him. The water splashed off the outlaw’s dirty face and caused soggy clumps to form in the sawdust on the barroom floor. Jesse stirred, moaned, and reached for his head. He winced as his fingers found the bloody groove Slocum had laid on his temple.

“Damnation, that popskull you serve’s powerful,” Jesse James said. He sat up, held his head in both hands, and then looked up. For a second his eyes didn’t focus. And then they did. He went for his six-shooter.

“Go on, Jesse,” Slocum said, lounging back, both elbows resting on the bar. “It’ll be real interesting to see if you can get your gun out before I can draw.”

Over his shoulder, Slocum said, “He’s not the only one. Might not even be the best killer in this room.” Since there were only the three of them in the saloon, it didn’t take the barkeep long to understand what he was getting himself into. He backed off, finding the spot as far as possible from both Slocum and Jesse James. The painting of the reclining naked woman behind the bar was the only one looking down on the outlaw and his nemesis when the barkeep disappeared down a trapdoor.

“It’s too hard for that, Jesse.” Slocum drained the few drops of water he hadn’t already splattered on the outlaw, then set the heavy beer mug down on the bar. It wasn’t likely now he’d have to use that on the outlaw’s skull, too.

“I was there,” the outlaw insisted, getting to his feet. He leaned heavily against the bar. “You shot off your mouth about not likin’ the way Quantrill wanted us to kill the little boys. I remember.”

“No, I wasn’t at that massacre,” Slocum said. Old memories crowded in to bedevil him. He had protested Quantrill’s murder of boys as young as eight years old in Lawrence, Kansas, and the guerrilla leader had told Bloody Bill Anderson to cut him down. And he had. Slocum had taken two slugs in the belly and was left to die in agony alongside the road leading away from the Kansas town.

Only he was tougher than that. He had survived, though it had taken long months to recover. By then Quantrill’s Raiders had moved on to kill, rape, and maim throughout Kansas and into Missouri. But Jesse James had not been at the Lawrence raid, no matter how much he claimed to the contrary.

“See?” Jesse James said. His fingers came away red and sticky from the pistol-barrel-shaped groove in the side of his head. “Where’s that barkeep?” He bellowed for him but the man was either hiding in his cellar or had figured out a way to clear out of town. Slocum was beginning to appreciate the man’s point of view and thought it was about time for him to ride on, although he had just come in from a hard, dry ride from Santa Fe. The spring winds kicked up constant dust storms and his only traveling companions had been the occasional hundred-foot-tall dust devils spiraling their way across the desert.

“Why’d you buffalo me like that? I was just gonna buy you a drink. Hell, let me do that right now.” The outlaw went around the bar, found a bottle, and poured two shots of whiskey. “This might be the good stuff and not that trade whiskey the barkeep was foistin’ off on me.” He tossed back the shot, made a face, then poured himself another. “Yup, this is the good stuff. I can’t hardly taste the rusty nails or the gunpowder in it.” He held it up and squinted at the label. “Ain’t never been within five hundred miles of Kaintucky, though.”

“You’re a ways from Clay County,” Slocum said. He didn’t have that much of a quarrel with Jesse but felt he had owed him for being such good friends with Bloody Bill. As he had recuperated, first in Kansas and later back at Slocum’s Stand in Calhoun, Georgia, he had followed the newspaper reports and had grown angrier every time he finished reading. War was war but what they did amounted to cruelty for the sake of inflicting misery.

Killing a man because he wore a Federal uniform and wanted to drive his bayonet through your guts was a world away from riding into a town filled with civilians, a dozen six-guns hanging from your bandoliers, and emptying first one and then the next pistol at anything that moved. Even the Centralia Massacre had been brutal, injured Federal soldiers slaughtered as they lay in a field hospital.

“I am surely that, Slocum.” Jesse James leaned over the bar and whispered conspiratorially. “You want in on a sure thing? A man like you, real smart and good with a gun, you can be something special.”

“George Pickett wasn’t so outstanding,” Jesse James said, “but we had some of the finest generals. Not even the fight-ingest men and cleverest generals amounted to a bucket of warm shit because the Yanks wore us down, Slocum. They didn’t have anybody as good as Longstreet or Jackson or Early or good ole’ Robert E. himself.”

“He was a Northerner,” Jesse James said without any animosity. “You got to admit he gave his own side a run for their money, but he was an Ohio boy born and bred.”

Slocum poured himself another drink since it wasn’t likely for the bartender to keep track of what was owed. He was tuckered out from the trail and knew he had quite a few miles ahead of him if he wanted to get through Raton Pass and into Colorado. Nothing waited for him there, but it wasn’t Las Vegas—and Jesse James wasn’t there, wherever there might be at the end of the trail.

“You on the run?” Slocum asked. He was beginning to wish a mirror hung behind the bar rather than the garish picture of a voluptuous woman. The hair on the back of his neck prickled up as he wondered if the town marshal was likely to come in with shotgun blazing. More likely, if the lawman had a lick of sense, he would surround the saloon and set fire to it, then let a dozen deputies shoot anything that came scurrying out.

“Well, sir, not exactly,” Jesse said, looking as thoughtful as he was likely to. “That’s why I wanted to enlist your aid.”

“I saw it on the way in,” Jesse said, “and you got quite the eye for that, Slocum. If there’s a thousand dollars in the vault—ever—it’d surprise the hell out of me.” He leaned forward and whispered so low Slocum could hardly hear. “This is bigger. A lot bigger.”

Slocum hesitated. The James Gang was wanted by every sheriff and marshal from here all the way to the Mississippi—and even on the eastern side. Tales of their robberies were little more than campfire boasts, if Slocum was a judge, but there wasn’t any doubt Jesse had been successful and had gotten away with more than his share of loot. If anyone could be called an outlaw pioneer, it was him and his brother Frank. Before they had put their mind to it, nobody robbed trains and their rolling bank vaults carrying payrolls and other valuables from one city to another.

“Got your attention, I see,” Jesse James said, grinning. He was the sort of man who ought to be selling snake oil. His manner was slick and his words sounded so truthful. Slocum had to tell himself this was the same man who had slaughtered innocent civilians during the war.

He snorted. So had he, but the difference was great. He hadn’t liked it and he had stopped. He put his hand on his belly where the two bullets had ripped through his flesh. The scars went deeper than his skin. Those slugs had turned him around and put him on a different path, not that he hadn’t robbed a bank or stagecoach in his day. Compared to Jesse James, though, he was an amateur.

“How much gold you want, Slocum? A fistful of double eagles? More bullion than your horse can carry? More than a damned pack train of mules can carry?”

“Nobody in New Mexico has that kind of gold,” Slocum said. “Not even the garrison over at Fort Union calls up a payroll that big.”

“You need to be a hell of a lot more specific to get my attention.” Slocum eyed the bottle. Only a few drinks had been taken from it, and it was good whiskey. His mouth was still cottony and the aches and pains from being in the saddle for weeks yearned to be dulled with the alcohol.

“You’ve heard of the Knights of the Golden Circle,” Jesse started. He reared back and his hand flashed to his six-shooter as galloping horses outside caught his attention.

Slocum looked over his shoulder and saw familiar faces enter. He recognized Frank James and another of the gang who was always bad news. Charlie Dennison was as cold-blooded a killer that ever sat astride a horse. He swung a sawed-off shotgun around when he saw Slocum.

“Wait, Charlie, don’t. Get your fingers off them triggers,” Jesse ordered. “Me and Slocum, we’re discussing some important matters.”

“It was so damned easy, Jesse,” Frank said. “The grade almost caused the boiler to explode as the engine struggled up into Apache Pass. We jumped down off real high rocks on either side, got into the mail car, and it didn’t take a minute to get the clerk to open it up.”

“You’re still the lily-livered coward you ever was, Slocum,” Charlie Dennison said. He started to lift his room-sweeper again, but Frank James forced the barrels down.

“How much did you take?” Jesse became more animated than before and color came to his cheeks. His breathing was faster and his eyes sparkled. Slocum recognized the emotions. He had felt them himself right after a robbery, anticipating what the take might have been but before seeing how little there really was to go around a goodly-sized gang.

“They’re here!” came the shout from outside. If the lookout said anything more, Slocum couldn’t hear for the fusillade that made his ears ring. The last time he had heard so many guns firing all at once had been in battle during the war.

Two more of the gang shoved through the swinging doors, their rifles firing out into the street. The glass windows exploded as the posse opened fire, not caring what they shot at or what they hit.

“Can’t get out this way,” Jesse called, peering through the back door. “They got the whole damned place surrounded.”

Slocum had the cartridges in his Colt and maybe a dozen more rounds. He doubted any of the gang had more ammunition than he did. That didn’t make for a long standoff.

He cursed under his breath. Just being in the same room as Jesse James was enough for any lawman to drop a noose around his neck, too. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t committed the train robbery. Slocum fired twice as an incautious posse member thought to look inside. He might have winged the man but doubted it. There wasn’t the gut feeling he got when he knew a round had found its target. He wasn’t as inclined to kill any of the posse since that would only infuriate the ones remaining and maybe let them recruit more from the local townspeople.

“What are we going to do, Jesse?” Frank fired steadily. From the sounds outside, his aim was better than it had any right to be. But even as Slocum hoped they might drive away the posse for a few minutes, he heard Frank’s rifle come up empty. When he reached for his six-shooter, that signaled how dire their predicament was.

Charlie Dennison fired repeatedly using his shotgun, but Slocum saw he was running out of shells as his coat pocket looked more and more starved.

Slocum found the trapdoor the barkeep had used to escape and yanked it open. A ladder went down but he didn’t bother. He jumped down and found himself in a dimly lit cellar. Kegs of beer stayed cool underground, but only a couple cases of whiskey were stored here. Slocum had to walk slightly hunched over since his six-foot frame wasn’t built for the low ceiling, but it didn’t take an expert tracker to follow the barkeep’s footprints out. The man had pissed himself and left muddy tracks.

The far side of the cellar had another trapdoor in the ceiling. Slocum pushed it up and peered around an abandoned building that might have been a bakery at one time. With a surge, he threw back the trapdoor and pulled himself up.

Slocum didn’t hear him. He was already out the door and squinting into the bright spring sun. Forcing himself to follow his own advice was hard. Jumping into the saddle and riding like the demons of hell were nipping at his spurs was quite a lure. He passed one man wearing a deputy’s star pinned on his vest and grabbed him by the shoulder. He shoved him toward the saloon.

“Move!” Not for nothing had Slocum been a captain in the C.S.A. His voice carried the sharp edge of command. The deputy ran to the swinging doors as if he’d sat down on a hill of red ants.

Slocum got to his horse, swung into the saddle, and turned. The entire posse had rushed into the saloon and were shouting at each other, wondering where their quarry had gotten off to. The getaway would have gone smoother if Charlie Dennison hadn’t let out a rebel yell, ridden up on the boardwalk, and started shooting through the shattered windows at the lawmen inside.

Putting his heels to his horse’s flanks, Slocum rocketed away. He was creating quite a stir because the local citizens were peering out from drawn-back curtains and through barely opened doors to see what was going on. This much gunfire convinced even the bravest man it was time to go to earth and wait out the hail of bullets.

As Slocum passed the gunsmith’s store, he saw a rifle poke out. He ducked as the smith fired at him. The heavy slug harmlessly ripped past his head. Slocum used his spurs now to convince his horse that galloping was the only gait out of Las Vegas.

Slocum ignored Jesse James and cut off the road, heading westward for the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, where he could find some shelter until the posse’s fervor cooled down.

He hadn’t ridden a mile when he realized the posse had ignored Jesse and followed only one rider—him. Slocum rode faster, but his mare tired quickly. Reaching the mountains would be more than a chore. It’d be impossible.