Slocum's Great Race 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

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Going Down

  Slocum dropped to the ground and made his way toward an empty watering trough he intended to use for cover. Halfway to it, he felt wobbly in the knees. At first he thought he was simply sinking into the ankle-deep mud. Then he realized the ground was giving way beneath him.

  He let out a startled cry as he plunged downward to smash hard into the bottom of the pit. He forced his eyes open to focus on the moving blurs fifteen feet above him, and then the effort was no longer possible.

  Slocum blacked out.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  SLOCUM’S GREAT RACE

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / December 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All rights reserved.

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  1

  The reek of decaying fish mixed with even less savory odors inside the saloon, but John Slocum hardly noticed. He concentrated on the poker game to the exclusion of anything else, and rested his elbows on the nicked edge of the poker table to lean forward and better study his opponent across from him. The river man was so drunk he could hardly sit upright in his chair—or was this an act to make the cowboy think the man was unable to bet sensibly?

  Slocum had been gambling in the saloons along the St. Louis docks for more than a week, and had seen every possible scam ever conjured up by the crookedest con men on either side of the Mississippi. The river men lived in their own private world aboard the steamboats working their way up and down the river, and thought it all carried over when they came ashore. He had seen more than one game of chance aboard riverboats, and knew better than to ever get involved there. The tinhorn gamblers fleeced all the other passengers with easy contempt using their experience, and if that failed, they relied on elaborate cheats far beyond dealing seconds or using a marked deck. Anyone calling them on their double-dealing ways ended up with a lump on his head and getting tossed overboard.

  This was no riverboat gambler he faced. Slocum figured the man had been ashore less than a day to have any money left in his pocket. The river man drank like there was no tomorrow, and his eyes crossed now and then. Or maybe they were permanently crossed, and the cheap rotgut served in the Floundering Fish Drinking Emporium merely corrected the problem.

  “I’ll bump that another ten dollars,” Slocum said, pushing forward a stack of almost worthless scrip he had taken off another river man in an earlier game of dice. He pushed the whiskey-soaked bills into the pot, and kept his arms against the table to detect any unusual vibration. He had noticed several sailors who thought they could get away with sticking high cards under the table with a dab of tar, then pulling them loose when the need arose. It had taken him only a few seconds to realize that the sticky tar caused the table to shake as the cheater tugged on the hidden card.

  He felt nothing through his forearms as the river man hiccuped and tried to look at his cards. One eye might have focused on the battered cards, but the other tried to run and hide.

  “What’ll it be? Call, raise, or fold,” Slocum said.

  “Don’t rush me,” the bleary-eyed sailor said. “I got to figger how to get the most outta you with sich a fine hand as this.”

  Slocum let the man talk out his strategy, take another drink, and finally belch as he came to a decision.

  “All I got. Twelve more dollars.” The river man pushed it in with a shaking hand.
>
  “I’ll see that and raise another five,” Slocum said.

  “I ain’t got enough to call. You know that!”

  Slocum had done a quick inventory on the man’s poke and knew to a dime what he could meet and what he couldn’t.

  “If you can’t call, you have to fold. Those are the rules.”

  The river man looked around, and Slocum prepared for trouble. The man was hunting for others from his crew to back him up. Before getting into the game, Slocum had considered this and decided the sailor was on his own, going from saloon to saloon until he was so drunk he had to be poured back onto whichever barge or steamboat he came from.

  “I got a damn good hand,” he said. “I ain’t givin’ up.”

  Slocum said nothing. The river man’s hands remained in plain sight above the table, but Slocum slid his right hand around on the table so his fingers rested only inches from the butt of his Colt Navy in the cross-draw holster.

  “Look, mister, you got the eye of a man willin’ to gamble,” the man said.

  “That’s why we’re sitting here. To make money.”

  “I don’t wanna do this, but I kin put up somethin’ worth a thousand times whass in the pot.”

  “There’s fifty dollars there,” Slocum said. He inched a little closer to the ebony butt of his six-shooter. Too many times, drunks thought they had treasure maps or knew ways of getting money that never panned out. With this pot, and the rest he had won during the prior week after he had drifted down from Minnesota, Slocum could finally leave town. He was sick of the docks, the river men, the pervasive fish stench, and cutthroats, and all the rest that made St. Louis a booming river port. It was time to head West again, get across the Nebraska plains and into the mountains where he could get away from civilization.

  “Th-this is worth fifty thousand,” the river man said, and then belched again.

  “Let’s see it.”

  The man fumbled at his shirt. Slocum tensed and curled his fingers around the butt of his six-gun, not knowing what would come flopping out. The boatman drew up a greasy string tied around his neck, and finally revealed a small golden key. A furtive look around told Slocum the man was either a good actor or thought this was worth stealing. No one else in the Floundering Fish noticed.

  “Here it is. The key to the lock.”

  “So?”

  “The treasure box, man! The strongbox with fifty thousand dollars in it!”

  Slocum said nothing. If the man could open a single lock and spill out that much money, he would have done so already and not been getting drunk in riverfront dives.

  “You ain’t heard?” The drunk leaned closer. Slocum watched carefully to be sure the man didn’t hide a quick attempt to swap his punk hand for a royal flush. The man was too intent on hiding the key and letting only Slocum see it. It was cupped in his calloused, grimy hands, and he held it like some sacred relic to be cherished.

  “This is the key to riches,” he said. “Opens the lock on Colonel J. Patterson Turner’s strongbox out in Frisco. Or somewhere. Not sure where, but thass the point.”

  “Or somewhere? You have a key to a colonel’s strongbox and don’t know where it is?”

  “No, no, where you been? This is it, I tell you. This is the real key, the only one that’ll open the box. You gotta join the race, solve the clues, and when you find the box—nobody knows where it is ’cept the colonel—you git it all.”

  Slocum flicked away a fly trying to land on his nose. The annoyed fly’s buzz melted into the buzz from the saloon patrons getting increasingly drunk and rowdy.

  “I might have heard about this,” Slocum said. “He’s started a transcontinental freight line, and he’s letting anybody who wants join the race.” Slocum had ignored the details since they struck him as a waste of time. This was the first he had heard of money involved.

  “Why join if you ain’t got the key?” asked the river man.

  “This is the only key? Then why would anyone else join the race?”

  The river man laughed harshly, then belched. “He handed out fifty keys, so there’s fifty in the race, but only one key’s good to open the strongbox.”

  “So fifty people will damn near kill each other getting to California, but only one of them will have the right key?” Slocum had never heard of such foolishness.

  “Might not be Cali-forny,” the boatman said. He took another drink. “Might be Oregon or Washington. Somewhere out thata way.”

  Slocum looked at the key and wondered if it was painted gold or made of actual gold. He reached for it, but the river man yanked it away and hid it in his palm.

  “You ain’t gonna win this pot,” the man said. “I got the best hand.”

  On the chance the key might be real gold, Slocum nodded once.

  “You’ll let me use the key to call?”

  “It might not be worth anything,” said Slocum. “Truth is, you’ve only got one chance out of fifty having it fit the lock.”

  “This is the real one, the only one,” the river man assured him. “I cain’t go myself since my brothers ’n me own our own boat.”

  “You called,” Slocum said. “Show your cards.”

  The river man laughed out loud as he turned over three aces.

  “You ain’t gonna beat that!” He reached for the pot, but Slocum pinned his hands down.

  “Flush,” Slocum said. “Spades, ten high.” He half drew his six-gun when he saw the shocked expression on the other player’s face.

  “You cheated,” the river man said. He looked around desperately for an ally to bolster his claim. Seeing no one, he reached for a knife sheathed at his belt, then stopped when Slocum slid his six-shooter the rest of the way from his holster and laid it on the table.

  “You don’t want to do that. You’d better leave.”

  “You sonuvabitch. You cheated me. I had aces. Nuthin’ beats aces.” The river man stood and kicked over his chair.

  “Leave the key.” Slocum might have been inclined to simply take the money in the pot if the boatman had been a good loser. Then again, a cardplayer ought to pay his debts. When he lifted the pistol and centered the muzzle on the man’s chest, he got what he wanted.

  “Take it and die,” the sailor spat. He threw the gold key to the table. From the sound it made when it hit, Slocum knew it wasn’t pure gold, but only base metal painted gold. It didn’t matter. He had won it fair and square and it was his now.

  Only after the river man disappeared out into the close, sultry night did Slocum relax. He holstered his six-shooter and raked in the money. Most of it was paper money drawn on St. Louis banks, but he might outfit himself with a decent horse and enough beans and oatmeal to get him all the way to the Rockies. After tucking the wad of bills into his coat pocket, he lifted the gold key and let it spin slowly, catching the light and showing him what he had already guessed.

  A steel key had been gilded to appear as if it were pure gold. He laughed ruefully, but took out his watch and fastened the key to the gold chain as a reminder about drunks, losing poker hands, and gullibility. He should find out more about Colonel Turner’s race. If the key was the admission ticket and only fifty existed, selling it would bring him a few more dollars.

  Slocum leaned back and looked around the Floundering Fish to see if he might land another sucker. The Regulator clock above the bar ticked slowly and surprised him so much, he drew the watch from his pocket again and opened it.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, snapping the cover shut and returning it to his watch pocket. The gold key pressed between his chest and the watch as it rested in his vest. “It’s almost dawn.” Sudden tiredness overtook him. He stretched, yawned, and decided it was time to catch a little shut-eye before continuing about his business. He could almost see the purple-cloaked Front Range now. Rumors that Denver was undergoing a new boom enticed him since the rest of the country was hurting. He had heard it called a depression, but Slocum could ignore anything that happened to banks and railroads as long as
he had a rifle, an open range, and deer to hunt. The Coinage Act had cut the legs out from under the Western silver boom, putting the entire country on the gold standard. It didn’t much matter to Slocum whether his coins were gold or silver, but metal was always preferable to the stained, crumpled scrip that floated around the cities. The doings of government and business didn’t bother him the way it did town dwellers if he had elbow room and a river of crystal-clear water to drink.

  He took one last look at the hangers-on, and knew the barkeep would be the only one profiting from anyone inside the four sagging walls. Even the whores had gone to hang up their bloomers and rest before their next round of drunk sailors came into St. Louis with the morning.

  Stepping out into the hot breeze was like swimming in a bucket of water. In spite of this, all drowsiness vanished and he felt up to licking his weight in wildcats. With some luck, he could find a decent horse and be on the trail by noon. The promise of leaving the crowded, smelly city invigorated him.

  As he walked down the street, he heard the familiar sounds of a fist hitting flesh, followed by loud moans. Slocum knew better than to get involved in another man’s fight, but an outcry stopped him in his tracks because he recognized the voice.

  Cursing under his breath, he drew his Colt Navy and held it at his side as he went to the mouth of an alley alongside the Floundering Fish to see a pair of men whaling away at the river man who just had lost his poke in the poker game.

  “Not on him. The damned key’s not anywhere on him,” complained one attacker.

  “I ripped open all his pockets. You got a knife? If he swallowed it, I’ll cut it out of his gizzard.”

  “He ain’t got nuthin’ else. He’s cleaned out.”

  “I know he had the key on a string around his neck. I seen it!”