Slocum 297: Holding Down the Ranch

“You really think you can take me, McMahon?” Slocum said, a whole lot more calmly than he felt at the moment. He knew he could dodge to the left, to the shelter of the side of the barn, or right, toward the house. The barn was a long ways off, though.

“I do,” McMahon sneered, his face lit by the lamplight coming through the windows. “You’re not so damned tough. You’re nothing but tall tales told by a bunch of drunken cowboys.”

“I killed your boy, Crowfoot,” Slocum drawled. He was still leaning in the doorway, but every muscle was tensed to leap to the side should anybody begin shooting. “Find him yet?”

He added, “One of Becky’s hands took out that fancy-dude shootist of yours, too. What was his name again? LeGrande, wasn’t it?”

“Wouldn’t be too quick to draw, Mr. McMahon,” said a new voice: Drug Cassidy, who had come around the side of the house, effectively trapping McMahon between his gun and Slocum’s. “Might be one’a them mistakes you don’t live to regret,” he added.

Slocum would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so serious. There were still a total of thirteen armed men in the ranch yard, all with their guns already drawn. They were scared now, but Slocum was well aware that sometimes frightened men could be more dangerous than brave ones.

“Now, don’t go shootin’ him, Drug,” Slocum called. “Not yet, anyhow. Maybe we could have us a little parley.”

“Parley?” snapped McMahon. Slocum could tell he was good and mad now. His face had taken on something akin to the color of a beet. “What the hell do you mean by ‘parley’? I’ve got twelve men behind me. Looks like you’ve just got two.”

“I’m the seventh, and the one what shot your fancy man,” called Pete from the darkness. “And there are about a dozen more, up in those hills. Just waitin’ for an excuse to nail you.”

By now, heads were turning every which way among McMahon’s riders. Slocum could see a couple of the boys at the rear quietly backing their horses away from the mob.

Smart fellows. They knew it wasn’t their time to die, particularly over a cause that wasn’t their own.

But Tate McMahon was another case entirely. His jaw working furiously, he did the last thing Slocum expected. Suddenly, he threw himself off the porch, at the same time firing his gun directly at Slocum.

Cassidy fired at almost the same instant, and took out the minion standing right behind where McMahon should have been.

Slocum fired, too. He thought he’d at least clipped McMahon, since he heard somebody shout in pain, but there was no time to think. He was running toward the side of the house, and McMahon’s bunch were all firing.

Well, most of them, anyway. The ones in the center of the mob couldn’t shoot without hitting one of their own men, and the two at the rear had taken off at a hard gallop down the road, joined a couple of seconds later by a third.

The boys in the hills opened up. Distant flashes of gun-powder rose into the night sky, and two of McMahon’s men went off their horses and down under the milling hooves of their frightened mounts.

The rest of McMahon’s men tried to get off their horses. Most succeeded. One was dragged, his foot caught in the stirrup, back in the direction of town.

All this happened in the split second it took Slocum to sprint the twenty feet from the smokehouse to the side of the house.

Once there, he dropped to his knees and peeked around the building, surveying the situation. All McMahon’s men—the ones that were left, anyway—had taken cover behind trees or posts or the water trough or just lay plain flat on the ground.

For a long moment, the sound of gunfire was deafening, and Slocum shouted, “Hold it! Hold it! Stop shootin’, dammit!” until he was finally heard and the shots petered out to nothing, the last ones coming from the hills like tardy firecrackers.

“Ready, willin’, and able,” came the reply. “McMahon don’t look to be in such good shape, though.”

“You men who came in with McMahon!” Slocum shouted. “You can go. Nobody’ll back-shoot you. Got my word on that. Pick up your dead and wounded, and get the hell out of town. For good. You got that?”

A murmur arose from the yard and the grounds around it, and at last, a single voice called out, “You really are Slocum, ain’t you? For real and true, I mean. Not a made-up legend?”

Slocum groaned, but Cassidy answered for him. “He’s the real thing, all right, boys. And you should get down on your knees tonight and thank the Lord Jesus that he was in a generous mood.”

Slocum rolled his eyes, and he heard Pete—at least, he thought it was Pete—cough to cover a laugh.

“Get movin’, boys,” he said, easing around the corner. He leveled his pistol at the nearest member of McMahon’s gang. “And before you get started, I reckon you oughta pile your guns out there in the center of the yard.”

Bodies started to creep out from behind tress and bushes, from behind posts, and rise from the ground. Slocum heard the metallic thunks as men tossed their weapons in a pile.

The S Bar J men were coming out of hiding, too. Guns drawn, they formed a wide, loose circle around McMahon’s men. Pete, his arm in a sling, had a great big smile on his face.

The rival gang began to sling the bodies of their dead over their horses. Two were wounded and just needed help mounting.

“I ain’t goin’ back to town,” one of the men said wearily. “Don’t think nobody is. You can keep him, Mr. Slocum.”

Except that just then, the dead weasel in question rolled over on his belly and fired, catching Slocum in the arm.

It stung like hell, but Slocum was mad enough that he didn’t feel it right away. He simply fired back, purely on instinct.

His shot took McMahon right through the center of his worthless skull. He jerked just once, then went still.

“And His daddy and mama, too,” said another, pausing to cross himself. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

In less than three seconds, the yard was clear of strangers, and all that was left was McMahon’s body and a roil of dust.

The S Bar J men began to come forward, and the ones farther out began to ride down from the hills.

“Shut up. I’m lucky you didn’t clip me yourself, seein’ as how you’ve got such great night vision and all,” grumbled Slocum. He checked his sleeve. It looked like the slug had just grazed him, but he was sort of looking forward to the fuss the women would make.

“Yeah, sure,” Pete replied. “I’ll go get ’em out of that cellar, and I’ll take Dave with me, if’n you don’t mind.” He grinned wide. “Bet them women smell like goat cheese by now.”

By the time Pete and Dave got back with the women—and Slocum had temporarily dragged McMahon’s corpse to an empty stall in the barn—he and Drug Cassidy, who turned out to be a pretty fair cook, had drummed up a meal. It was late, and Slocum figured that if everybody else was as hungry as he was, there’d be a couple horses missing from the string come morning unless they got to work, and fast.

Tia Juanita stopped the second she bulled through the door and sniffed the air. “What it this?” she said suspiciously.

She sniffed the air again, smiling slightly. “I think I will eat,” she said.

Next in was Becky, who ran directly to Slocum and kissed him all over his face and jaw, muttering. “Are you hurt? Did somebody patch you up? Was it bad? Pete said you killed McMahon!”

“Slow down, girl,” Slocum said with a grin, noting from the corner of his eye that Cassidy had purposely turned his back. He had it bad. Slocum couldn’t exactly blame him.

“I’m just dandy,” he continued. “But ol’ Drug there took a slug in the leg and didn’t say a damn word. Got it fixed up fine, though.”

Becky turned away from Slocum and toward Cassidy. He felt a pang of something akin to jealously, but quickly—and sternly—reminded himself that he was leaving. And first thing in the morning, if he knew what was best for him and everybody else concerned.

Besides, nothing against Becky, but he was getting a little itchy-footed. Time to move on. Time to find a new adventure.

Evie Siddons had made her way directly to the kitchen without saying a word. She appeared at the door to the dining room bearing a big platter of fried chicken and wearing a bigger smile.

“My goodness!” she said. “I guess men can cook after all! I wouldn’t count on them having cleaned up the kitchen though, Tia Juanita.”

Muttering in Spanish, the housekeeper stomped off toward the kitchen. Grinning, Evie placed the platter of chicken on the table, then went back for another load, probably the mashed potatoes or green beans that Drug had whipped up, or the pickled cukes and beets that Slocum had laboriously laid out on a tray.

And Slocum? Well, he just grabbed himself a drumstick. He was hungry enough to eat a buffalo on the hoof.

That night, in bed, Slocum made long, tender love to Becky. She came with a long, drawn-out gasp that spoke as much of sorrow as ecstasy. And when she had quieted, she began to cry.

Slocum wasn’t exactly accustomed to this sort of reaction from females, and gently turned her head to face him.

He hadn’t said a word to her yet, but somehow she knew. Women would always be a mystery to him.

She pulled her head away and buried it in the pillow. “It’s me, isn’t it?” she said, through a muffler of linen and feathers.

“No, Becky, never,” Slocum said, and he meant it. “It’s me. I don’t know why, but I’ve just got to keep movin’. Can’t stay too long in any one place.” He shrugged. “Just my nature, I reckon.”

She looked up at him again, and her eyes were red and swollen with tears. “I know. I know, Slocum. It’s just so . . . hard.”

But she said, “I understand. Some men are just that way. And you’re the king of them, Slocum.”

He ran his knuckles gently down her torso, following the rise and fall of her breast, the bell of her rib cage, the tininess of her waist, the flat of her little belly.

She put a finger to his lips. “I know. But you’ll never be. I guess I knew it when you rode in again. History repeats itself, you know.”

She sighed, her breast rising and falling dramatically beneath his lips. “Just promise that if you go—when you go—this time, that you’ll never come back. Ever.”

He could tell she was serious by the look in her eyes, and he said, “I promise, honey. You gotta promise me something, too.”

“That after I leave,” he said, “you’ll find yourself a good man and settle down, and be happy. Be awful happy. You’re sittin’ on a pile of silver, girl. You oughta be able to pick and choose. And you sure as hell oughta be able to do better than a beat-up saddle tramp like me.”

She appeared to think this over. “Yes. I should, shouldn’t I?” She grinned quite suddenly. “Pick and choose, I mean, Slocum. Don’t look so wounded!”

He hadn’t realized that his expression had gone that way, but he covered it quick with a wink. “Once more, honey?” he asked, and gave her nipple a little tweak.

Several months later, while Slocum was spending some time up in Nebraska, waiting out the last of the winter with twin Mexican gals named Conchita and Maria, he got a letter. It had been postmarked and forwarded six ways from seven, but it had finally reached him.

It was from his old pal Drug Cassidy, and the original postmark was Indian Springs, Arizona Territory.

He didn’t wait until he got back to the cabin to read it. He sat down right there in the post office, cozied up to the potbelly stove, and tore the envelope open.

It seemed that the folks of Indian Springs had finally banded together into a real town. All the land that McMahon had bought or stolen was turned back to the rightful owners, due to a little creative bookkeeping on Evie Siddons’s part.

The owners had then brought in a mining crew—the very one Cassidy said that McMahon had been in touch with.

The operation was moving right along, Cassidy said, and it was turning out fo be a rich strike. It wouldn’t be too awful long before they started tunneling on the S Bar J.

But the news that had brought the biggest grin to Slocum’s face was that Becky was now Mrs. Drugman Cassidy. They had wed about a month after Slocum’s departure.

Now, part of Slocum was just a little bit pissed that Becky had taken him at his word, and that Cassidy had felt the need to move in so damned fast.

And now Drug would have somebody to take care of him when his eyes went, and Becky would have a good man to take care of her. And also, somebody who could cook pretty damned fine American-style food.

He stood up, stuck the letter in his pocket, and snugged his sheepskin coat around him in preparation for the outdoors. It was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey out there.

He picked up the bag of supplies he’d bought for himself and the twins, slung it over his shoulder, and went outside where Horse was waiting at the rail, his saddle dusted with drifting snow.

Good for Becky, bless her heart, he thought. And good for ol’ Drug. Good for everybody.

And especially, good for him. Conchita and Maria awaited, and tonight was bath night. For all three of them.