Slocum and the Gila River Hermit Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  NORTH OF HELL

  “So Mayerling is nothing more than a bounty hunter?” That fit Slocum’s idea of the man more than him wearing his badge, even though he had seen some of the most crooked owlhoots north of hell appointed as lawmen.

  “An assassin. A killer. That’s what he is, Mr. Slocum,” Edna said. “Let it lie at him wanting Rolf dead. Very powerful politicians in Texas would gladly rejoice.”

  “There’s more to them wanting your husband dead.”

  “He . . . knows things. They want him silenced,” she said.

  “And you just want him back? To keep you company at night?”

  Edna realized her carefully built facade had slipped and spoke to cover it. “He might not be a killer, not like they say, but he is a sick man. I have found a sanatorium and a doctor who may be able to help him.”

  “He’s sick?”

  “He’s not crazy, as you might think. He just . . . has visions. They talk to him and tell him to do things. But he can be helped!”

  “He only developed this craziness recently?”

  “He’s not crazy. Don’t say that. He’s got a condition. That’s the way Dr. Foreman describes it.”

  “A condition,” Slocum mused. It sounded as if Rolf Berenson was a raving lunatic who might have killed people and was almost certainly a danger to powerful men down in Texas . . .

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  SLOCUM AND THE GILA RIVER HERMIT

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / August 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

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  ISBN: 978-0-515-14336-2

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  1

  The cow let out a horrible lowing as it was washed down the raging river. John Slocum settled back in the saddle and watched as the cow was thrown about in the raging water, until its head was crushed by a rock. Then only the roar of the water and a pathetic ringing of the bell around the dead animal’s neck could be heard.

  “Oh, John, how horrible,” Arlene Castle said. Slocum looked down at the petite woman and saw only the lace-trimmed bonnet pulled over her brunette hair. Her face was hidden but he knew she stared in horrified fascination at the vanishing cow.

  “That could be any one of us trying to cross the river. The spring runoff is mighty strong this year.” Slocum looked up at the towering mountains surrounding them. Mostly they were carpeted in green from the new growth of trees and vegetation after too many years of drought. So much greenery had brought abundant game to the mountains and made his work all the easier. He had been hired to lead the party of settlers south from Fort Wingate to Silver City, nestled cozily in the middle of Gila River country. It had started as a trouble-free trip and they crossed the Plains of San Augustin easily enough, but when they reached the Elk Mountains, it had turned into hard going. He looked over his left shoulder at lofty Black Mountain, then down to the Middle Fork River, which had just claimed more than its fair share of beef. It would have taken them days out of the shortest route to have skirted this wide, dangerous river, going on the east side of Black Mountain, but the man hiring him had vetoed that notion. Get to Silver City as fast as possible. That was what Arlene’s father, Caleb Castle, demanded.

  Arlene’s father paid his salary, so Slocum obliged. Now he was sorry he had given in without more of an argument. Crossing anywhere
along this stretch of the fierce river looked impossible. The way the cow had been so easily washed away showed the full fury locked in the river.

  And they hadn’t even gotten to crossing the Gila River. That would come later, maybe three days. If any of them survived this leg of the trip.

  “You think your pa might be willing to spend an extra week on the trail so we can skirt the worst of this river?”

  “John, please, he’s set on getting to Silver City right away.”

  “What’s so powerful important that he has to reach there by the end of the month?” Slocum tried to remember the times he had passed through Silver City and mostly could not. The town was like a hundred others he had seen in his day. There was mining in the area. Copper. Lead. Some coal. Not much silver, in spite of the town’s name. At least there was more silver in Silver City than there was Shakespeare in the town of that name.

  “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” Arlene said. She turned her face up to look at Slocum. Her wide brown eyes captured his heart, but he said nothing. It wasn’t right fooling around with a man’s daughter under his nose. And Arlene’s brother, Perry, was even more solicitous of his sister than their father was. A world of trouble stood there staring up at him, but he had learned which head to think with over the years. As pretty and frisky a filly as Arlene was, her pa paid his salary.

  Even if Caleb Castle was a blithering idiot.

  “We might have to camp here for a spell,” Slocum said. “Every wagon in the train will end up like that cow.” He lamented the loss of so much meat, but if it saved even one of Castle’s wagon train from ending up dead, the loss was worth it.

  “What will we do? What do you think we should do, John? You’re the trail boss.”

  He heaved a sigh, took off his black, floppy-brimmed hat, and wiped sweat from his forehead.

  “I’ll have to scout to find a wider spot. If I can find one wider, the water won’t run so fast and it won’t be as deep as it is here, so we might be able to ford there. This canyon is funneling too much water for us to ever hope to get across.” He paused, then said, “How’d the cow happen to get down there ahead of us?”

  “I don’t know,” Arlene said. “That was our cow. I recognized the markings—I think. She was rolling over and over so fast in the water, it was hard to tell.”

  “It was the bell cow,” Slocum said. “Your cow.”

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t hear the bell.”

  “Think I can get your brother to scout downriver while I go up? That cuts the time spent camping here in half. One of us will have to find a better crossing.”

  “I’m sure Perry would agree. He’s getting a little antsy doing nothing but driving the wagon all day.”

  Slocum didn’t think much of her brother. Like father, like son. Perry Castle was hardheaded and set in his ways for such a young man, but that blind determination would suit Slocum’s purpose right now. Perry wasn’t likely to give up, driven as he was, and scouting got him out of Arlene’s hair, too. She never complained about either of the men in her life, but Slocum saw how they treated her and how she obeyed them without any back talk. If either tried to hit her, Slocum would be out of a job in a hurry—and whoever did the swinging would be in a shallow grave covered with rocks to keep the coyotes from eating his worthless corpse. But the two men restricted their abuse to words.

  So far as Slocum could tell. It was like a burr under his saddle, but Arlene wasn’t complaining. If she did . . .

  “John?”

  He snapped back from his consideration of her situation to the reality facing the entire wagon train.

  “The canyon looks to widen in both directions,” Slocum said. “We won’t have any trouble finding a spot to cross. Won’t be easy, but we’ll make it without losing any more livestock. You’d better find out how that cow broke loose. I don’t see others following it into the river, but cows aren’t so bright, sometimes.”

  “I’ll see to it, John. And it is important that we reach Silver City. It really is.”

  He nodded to her, then turned his horse’s face and started upriver. She could tell her brother to head in the other direction. The less Slocum had to do with either of Arlene’s menfolk, the better off they would all be. What had happened to her mother was another mystery, but they never hinted at why she was not with them. The frontier was a hard place, and the area around Fort Wingate always had more than its share of Indian trouble. If it wasn’t the Navajo, it was the Apache or one of the pueblo tribes kicking up a fuss. As often as not, the tribes fought each other and woe to anyone caught in the middle of the war.

  Slocum had to dismount to lead his horse down a slope covered with small rocks. His horse slid a few feet, protesting every inch of the way, then got its footing again. Slocum reached the narrow shoreline of the river and saw how the water had moved up more than six feet over the past month or so. The runoff was going to make for a passel of trouble farther on, too, when they reached the Gila River. This branch was only a hint of what was to come.

  And Caleb Castle was in a hurry to get to Silver City. Slocum was reluctant to take Arlene’s word that their business there was so all-fired important that they would be willing to risk not only their own lives but those in the other three wagons with them.

  When the shore widened, Slocum mounted again and rode slowly, eyes working along the sheer red rock canyon walls for hope that there would be a better crossing. If anything, the canyon narrowed and the water roared with even more ferocity. After going two miles, Slocum doubted he was going to be successful. He heaved a deep sigh and turned back. It wouldn’t be any kind of luck if Perry Castle found a spot to get over the river. Slocum would have to bear the disapproval from Caleb and outright mockery from Perry. Still, the money was worth taking a little ribbing.

  He had been down on his luck when he had reached Fort Wingate. The past month had been spent making his way over from Las Vegas, hunting for work in Taos, finding none. The entire area was uneasy with rumors of new Indian uprisings, although no tribes were fixed to the rumors. Just “Indians” and nothing more made for jumpy people whenever they sighted a red man, whether he be Ute or Navajo or some other tribe. Along with this came a willingness to shoot first and then see who their victim might be.

  Getting shot at twice for no good reason had made his ride westward faster and riskier. When he had arrived at the army post, he had been more than ready for a paying job leading a small wagon train of settlers headed south. Slocum figured they were religious missionaries from the way they lived their lives and kept to themselves, but one of them had been friendly and willing to talk to him.

  Arlene. It was as if she were an interloper, like Caleb Castle and his son seemed to consider Slocum in spite of being willing to hire him as scout.

  Slocum returned to the overlook where he had left them and their wagons. His heart skipped a beat when he found they were gone. Tracking them was easy enough, even across the rocky ground. They had driven downstream. Slocum put his heels to his horse’s flanks and, when he rounded a bend in the canyon, caught sight of them. Four wagons were poised to start across a spot where the river widened. The current was still strong, and Slocum worried that the river might be too deep to simply drive across. If they tried without proper flotation, the wagons might be swamped and lost.

  “Wait!” he called when he saw a wagon heading out. He stood in the stirrups at exactly the wrong instant. His horse reared and kicked out at a rattler. Slocum tumbled from horseback and landed hard. A sharp stab of pain in his back made him think of the times he had been shot—or knifed. The burning length of the blade slid from his back as he sat up and clutched at the wound. He had fallen on a Spanish bayonet plant, its sharp tip dangerous enough to go through a boot sole. It had cut through cloth and mere human flesh without slowing.

  Slocum swung about on the ground as he pressed his hand into the wound. It was small but bled freely. Wincing, he got to his feet. He lit out, grabbing the
dangling reins, and led his horse downslope away from the rattler. He gave it wide berth, wishing it well in this rocky domain. By the time he reached the river again, he was stumbling and pain jabbed his side something fierce. The settlers were out of sight, and Slocum felt he had to hurry. For the world it looked as if Castle was going to try going across without first checking the river’s depth.

  The wound refused to stop bleeding, so Slocum had to take a few minutes to unfasten his bandanna from around his neck, dip it in the river and wring it out, then tear it into strips, tie them together, and finally bind up his injury. The rude bandage wouldn’t stay where it was for long, in spite of being soaked over the wound so the blood caked and held it, but it would do. Slocum swung into the saddle, stretched, and decided he could tolerate the pain. He had been hurt worse and done more.

  He rounded the bend in the river and shouted again, “Stop! Wait!” His words were drowned out by the roar of water rushing like a runaway locomotive. He watched in sick fascination as the Castle wagon reached the midpoint in the river and twisted sideways. The horses vanished and then bobbled back to the surface a dozen yards away, struggling for their lives. But the animals were not what held Slocum’s attention. The wagon tipped over and began spinning like a leaf in a millrace. He saw Perry Castle fighting to grab on to a piece of the wagon. Of Arlene and her father there were no traces.

  “Why’d they try to cross without me?” Slocum demanded of the nearest settler. The scarecrow-skinny man mutely shook his head. Slocum didn’t need an answer. He knew it. The Castles thought they were smart and knew more than the man they had hired. Why they had wanted to pay Slocum to scout was beyond him. They had made it clear from the first day on the trail that they thought they knew more than Slocum ever could. He had let their arrogance slip by, knowing he was being well paid.