Slocum 382

There wasn’t any way in hell Slocum could reach the mountains and find sanctuary there. A quick glance to his right showed that the southern way was out of the question. It was open desert, cut through with arroyos that might provide a little cover—but so what? The posse was hot on his trail. All of them. Somehow, they had lost Jesse James’s trail and had come pounding along after him.

Slocum took a quick glance to the north, hoping the terrain would be different. It was rocky desert also, but had a few ridges running through it where he might duck down out of sight. If any of the lawmen following him was a tracker, he was a goner. If he’d had an hour or two head start, he could have hidden his trail, but they were almost on top of him. His horse was tired from the ride up from Santa Fe and badly needed some water. For all that, Slocum could do with more than a sip of something liquid that wasn’t whiskey. The rotgut he had swilled in the bar tore away at his insides. It had gone down his gullet just fine back in town but now it was almost torture enduring the way it burned at his belly.

If he didn’t think of something soon, that might be the last taste of liquor he’d ever get. The posse seemed inclined to turn into a lynch mob from the way they hooted and hollered behind him.

He dropped down into an arroyo that slanted toward the northwest and safety in the mountains. This wouldn’t fool them long. Slocum wanted to buy a minute here and a second there with his little tricks. Staying ahead of them was the only way he was going to stay alive.

Gunshots rang out behind him, but he knew he was still too distant for the men to get a good shot. They wanted to spook him, nothing more. Slocum had been in tight spots before and wasn’t going to be herded like some damned sheep. But the way his belly groaned and protested all the whiskey he had drunk!

Every bounce of the horse caused another drop or two of the acid inside him to splash up. When some came to his mouth, he wanted to puke. Holding it back was the best he could do. There wasn’t time to get rid of the foul load he carried inside, and if he did, he would mark his trail as surely as if he had painted red arrows on the rocks all around showing which way he had ridden.

Slocum maneuvered his way up the sandy-bottomed ravine, climbed up to the far rim when he found a part of the embankment that had collapsed under its own weight, and kept moving steadily for the mountains. Among the trees and rocky stretches, he could lose a posse a hundred times as big. But he had to reach higher ground first. This stretch of the desert sported only low-growing shrubs with occasional scrub oak that was so stunted it barely grew chest-high. He wove in and out through the increasingly tall piñon pines and slowly left the ruckus raised by the posse behind. They might have taken a wrong fork or they might simply be tiring.

He had ridden with Jesse and his brother Frank only a couple times before the Lawrence raid—and no matter what lies Jesse James told, he hadn’t been there. Every man’s face on that raid was etched in his brain. He knew the ones that had gotten excited when they began killing small boys and even a woman or two. And he remembered the others who, like him, had ridden through the sleepy Kansas town with grim expressions etched on stony faces. They were the soldiers following orders and took no pleasure from the killing.

Bloody Bill Anderson’s laughter as he gunned down anything that moved still rang in Slocum’s ears. The image of William Quantrill’s face, eyes bright and expression fixed hypnotically on each of his victims, was even worse. Slocum’s hand moved to the two bullet scars on his belly.

He almost lost the liquor again as he traced across those circular pink scars. Forgetting the men on that raid was impossible. Jesse James hadn’t been among their number.

Sounds from behind told him the posse had found his tracks leading out of the arroyo. He made for a stand of pines, hoping to get out of sight. For a moment he thought he had succeeded and then a slug ripped away part of a tree trunk a few feet away and spattered him with sap. He recoiled, jerked his horse in the opposite direction, and quickly found it was too late to change his path. The lawmen were on two sides, cutting off escape. He urged his horse up a game trail, through the woods, and finally into the foothills, where huge boulders were strewn about as if a careless giant child had dropped them after tiring of such stony toys.

He wedged himself between two and kept going up the increasingly steep trail until he came out into a clearing. His heart sank. The posse was too close for him to get to the far side without being seen. His only hope of getting out of this alive was to make a stand at the rocky passage. He could hold off the entire posse until his ammo ran out.

He wished he had a couple sticks of dynamite. Blowing up the trail would bring an avalanche down, sealing the way. Slocum might as well have wished for a mountain howitzer.

Wheeling his horse about, he dragged out his Winchester and levered in a round. The best chance he had was of wounding a few of the posse and scaring them off. If he accidentally killed one, they’d have blood in their eye and never give up the chase. He was a good shot—one of the best—but firing down such a narrow passageway would cause unpredictable ricochets. He was as likely to blow off a man’s head as his hat.

Slocum swiveled at the waist, bringing the stock to his shoulder and sighting high up into the rocks to his right. His finger stopped halfway from firing when he saw a woman waving at him.

“Come on up, and be quick about it. You don’t have much time ’fore they get through that gap. The trail’s over there.” She pointed. For a moment, Slocum didn’t see what she meant. Then he saw a tiny dirt patch that vanished into rocks. He wouldn’t be able to ride such a narrow trail. He swung his leg over and dropped to the ground, yanking on the reins to get his mare moving behind him. He clung to his rifle in the other hand, fearing the posse would burst through at any instant.

“They’re scared to come after you because that would turn into such a duck blind,” she called down. “But they won’t wait forever. There’s a deputy sheriff egging them on.”

The trail was hardly the width of Slocum’s boots, but it was wide enough. He hurried up, pulling his reluctant horse behind. The horse’s flanks rubbed against rock, first on one side and then the other, but the drop wasn’t too great and he eventually came out on top where the woman had built a small campfire. A pot of coffee sat beside the fire.

“Get your horse unsaddled and rubbed down as quick as you can. And keep your mouth shut.” She shoved the ceramic coffeepot into the fire so that it came to a boil within a minute. The fragrant odor curled up and made Slocum’s nose wrinkle and belly turn somersaults.

“They’ll smell it,” he said. He dumped his saddle to the ground next to the woman’s, then spread his blanket so it caught some of the afternoon sun to dry. His horse had lathered up from the chase followed by such a steep climb.

“I told you to shut up,” she said. She began breaking open boxes and unwrapping parcels wound with oilskin, preparing a decent enough meal of dried meat and bread so hard it could be used to drive nails. Along with it were jars of mustard and relish, or maybe it was preserves. From where Slocum rubbed down his horse, he couldn’t tell.

The smell of the boiling coffee grew stronger. Below he heard the excited cries of the posse as they finally summoned up the nerve to come through the narrow crevice in the rocks.

He kept wiping off the flecks of lather but got a chance to study the woman more closely. At first he had thought she was older than he was, but that came from a heavy layer of trail dust on her face. She might have been in her mid-twenties. From the strands of unruly hair poking out from under her wide-brimmed hat, she was a brunette, although her hair might have been auburn and completely caked with dirt. She wore men’s britches but a decidedly womanly blouse that might have been fine linen. Like everything else about her, it hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. Expensive boots on her feet hinted at money the rest of her outfit didn’t bespeak.

What interested Slocum most was the shiny patch on her jeans at the right hip, as if she rode with a holster rubbing the cloth smooth. Where the six-shooter might have been placed, he couldn’t tell. As she turned, he saw more evidence that she usually wore a hogleg. She turned and was slightly off-balance, as if compensating for the lack of three pounds of iron at her side.

“What are you looking at, mister?” Her lips thinned and she tried to look hard at him. He laughed. She didn’t do a very good job of appearing stern.

“My savior,” he said. “Never thought you’d be this pretty either.” He wasn’t blowing smoke when he said this. Her finely boned face might have been filthy but he saw the beauty there. She was slender and had quite a shape under the ill-fitting clothing. The blouse was far too big for her and the jeans were far too tight. Slocum only objected to the blouse.

She saw him staring at her and self-consciously checked to be sure the buttons were fastened all the way up to her chin. Slocum held back a broad grin because he didn’t dare make the woman angry at him when she was going out of her way to make it look as if the two of them had camped here all night long.

Slocum ducked under his horse and rolled so he came up on his blanket. He dropped his head down to his saddle and pulled his hat low to make it look as if he was asleep. He wished he’d had time to change his shirt because he was certain the posse had gotten a good look at him somewhere during the chase.

“Howdy,” the woman called, holding up an empty tin cup to her lips. She made a smacking sound and dropped the cup to the edge of the fire. “You gents want some coffee? Just fixed up a fresh batch since we drank the first.”

“Truth is, this oaf got us lost. He can’t read a map for love nor money. And after stranding us out here all night, he’s not getting much of either.”

“Seen lots of ’em,” she said. “You want some coffee, you’ll have to use your own cups. All we got’s two, one for each of us.” She poured some of the witch’s brew she had boiled into the cup. It poured like mud.

“Fact is, the gent we’re after looks a powerful lot like him.” The deputy threw down and got his six-gun from his holster in a respectable move. He pointed the muzzle straight at Slocum.

“What’d you go and wake me up for?” Slocum said, rubbing his eyes. He turned from the deputy as if he didn’t have a six-gun leveled at him and asked, “That acid you call coffee ready to drink?”

“It’s only fit drinking for a human being. That leaves you out.” She looked at the deputy and said, “Put that thing down, unless it’s a crime not to be able to read a map. If it is, then you take him into custody. He’s one piss poor guide.”

“Fifty! I told you I had to be there by the tenth of the month. There’s a wedding. The Armijos’ daughter is getting hitched, and I’m in the wedding party. You know her? Consuelo Armijo?”

“That’s not half of what he owns. Consuelo and me went to boarding school back East. You ever hear of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania? She and I—”

“All night and for the past week,” she said with just the proper amount of disgust in her voice. Slocum saw the subtle shift in her expression as she watched the deputy closely. She knew she had carried off the lie. “Now, as I was saying, Consuelo and I—”

“Taos is in that direction,” the deputy said, using his six-shooter to point westward. “You bust your hump and you might make it ’fore the tenth. Today’s the sixth.”

“I ought to be there early, for the wedding rehearsal,” the woman said. She took off her hat and let long strands of auburn hair cascade down. She ran her fingers through it and got some of the caked mud free. “I’ll need a day to get all cleaned up, too.”

“I mean today. In the past hour.” The deputy looked around and everything appeared to be as the woman said. Slocum held his breath. If any of the posse checked his horse, they’d see he’d only had time to rub down the side facing them. The far side was still lathered up.

She saw how the deputy was looking at Slocum’s horse so she stood, turned, and pointed back down the trail. “I thought I saw a rider not fifteen minutes before you came up the trail. He was riding like his horse’s tail was on fire, making for the far side of that clearing. If he kept going the way he did, he’d be in Taos by now.”

“Deputy sheriff, ma’am,” he said. But Slocum saw the man’s attention had been diverted from the horse to the stretch between the rocky gap and the far side of the clearing. “Git on along, you mangy cayuses,” the lawman said to his posse. “Turn ’round and head back down the trail.”

“Three other riders,” she finished for him. “You brought up the rear. The marshal and his other two deputies were ahead of you, so of course you saw tracks.”

The woman started to speak, but Slocum caught her eye. She was going to ask what the outlaw had done. That was a natural question, but if she asked, the deputy would answer and prolong the time in camp. Eventually one of them would twig to Slocum’s recent arrival. The fourth man in the posse almost had. Slocum wasn’t sure what he had seen along the trail, but it should have been conclusive evidence everything wasn’t as it appeared in camp.

“If you’re heading in that direction, Marshal—I mean Sheriff,” she said easily, pretending to make the same mistake repeatedly. “You drop on by the wedding reception. It’s going to be a jim-dandy one. The Armijos are known for the parties they throw, and this is a special one, even bigger than Consuelo’s quinceaños festival.”

With thoughts of free food and booze flowing like water, the four men retraced their way to the rocky gap, where they joined three others before riding hard across the clearing.

She brushed back her hair and came to sit beside him. She pressed close, her breasts against his arm. Slocum wasn’t inclined to move away, not with her face only inches from his.