Slocum and the Rebel Cannon 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

  AN OLD FRIEND

  The Rangers raced past on the road.

  “Too bad I can’t claim the reward,” said Slocum.

  “Too bad you mighta cost me a pair of good men,” came a cold voice. “Like you already cost me the services of Rufus Toombs.”

  Slocum swung around. He had not heard the man with the shotgun approach. He stared down the double barrels of that deadly weapon and knew the man holding it would squeeze the triggers and never think twice.

  Slocum knew him all too well.

  “Howdy, Jack,” Slocum said. “It’s been a spell.”

  “That it has, Slocum,” answered Rebel Jack Holtz as he raised the weapon and sighted along the barrels. “And it’s gonna be a lot longer till next time. See you in hell, Slocum.”

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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 AND THE REBEL CANNON

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / July 2008

  Copyright © 2008 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

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  1

  Some days, a man’s luck ran dry. Other days, it was a torrent and he needed a slicker to keep from getting soaked. John Slocum drew rein, pushed back his battered black Stetson, and stared at the iron box sitting all bright and shiny on the bank of the arroyo. He had ridden due west most of the day after having crossed the Pecos near Red Bluff Lake. The hot Texas sun had beaten down on him mercilessly, but he had kept riding, wanting to reach El Paso in a couple days. He had no place to go and nothing to keep him where he was. It had been like that for the better part of a month after he had been fired at the Double Cross Ranch just north of Fort Worth. The ranch owner had gone bankrupt and gotten rid of most all his cowboys, Slocum included. There hadn’t been any ill feelings. Slocum knew what it was like not having two nickels to rub together, and Xavier X. Benton had had a run of bad luck. Texas fever had ravaged his herd for most of a month; then lightning had struck a steer and stampeded the rest of the cattle.

  By the time they had finished rounding up the beeves that had not been killed outright or run themselves to death, Benton had only one cow for every five that he had begun with that season. Slocum counted himself lucky in getting twenty dollars pay. He doubted the handful of cowboys sticking with Benton would end up with that much. Bad luck, sort of good luck. Slocum had taken his money and ridden away without so much as a glance back.

  Pulling his bandanna from around his neck, he wiped sweat off his forehead, then carefully tied the bandanna again before standing in the stirrups and looking around. He was alone on the stretch of desert running all the way to the looming Guadalupe Mountains a day’s travel ahead.

  Slocum dismounted. His mare nickered in gratitude, and shifted about without a rider’s weight for the first time in hours. He patted the horse’s neck, then dropped the reins and went to the strongbox. Staring at it a moment, he wondered what the chances were of finding anything in it.

  “Slim, none,” Slocum said, pushing his Stetson even higher on his forehead. Still, his luck hadn’t been all bad lately. He knelt and swung the box around. A sturdy lock held the hasp shut. Grabbing a nearby rock, Slocum hammered away at the lock for a minute or two before it gave up and broke with a loud snap. He jerked away the lock and tossed it aside.

  Not sure what to expect, he opened the lid slowly. A smile spread across his face, like the first rays of dawn lighting up an entire day with sunlight. Slocum pulled out a thick sheaf of greenbacks and leafed through them.

  “I spent two months punching
cattle for Benton and got twenty dollars. By keeping an eye on the trail, I just made myself at least five hundred dollars.” Laughing, he stood, kicked the box away, and put the wad of scrip into his saddlebags. It might take him a couple months to spend this much money, even with a full bottle of whiskey a day. If he rode on into Mexico, chose tequila or pulque over rye whiskey, he could live like a king for six months.

  The thought of a pretty señorita to go along with the tequila made spending the money even more alluring. He mounted and put his heels to his horse’s flanks. El Paso beckoned. And maybe San Miguel de Allende down south in the heart of Mexico. Or one of the towns along the western coast of Mexico. The notion of sitting with that señorita, staring out over blue water and enjoying a cool breeze, provided him with incentive to keep riding in the heat of the day.

  He was so lost in the warmth of the sun and the heat of his Mexican fantasies that he failed to see the two soldiers sitting under a mesquite bush near the road until he was almost upon them.

  “Hold on, mister,” called the one with corporal’s stripes on his arm. The soldier levered himself to his feet using his rifle, which he hoisted to his shoulder so he could draw a bead on Slocum.

  Slocum squinted at the two troopers.

  “You from Fort Quitman?” he asked.

  “We’re the ones askin’ the questions,” snapped the private. He lifted his rifle and trained it on Slocum, too.

  “Didn’t hear any questions,” Slocum pointed out. He wasn’t unduly upset over the way the soldiers poked their rifle barrels in his direction. The Apaches in this part of West Texas were a constant problem, and the men who supplied them with rifles and ammunition were even more so. Since he obviously did not drive a wagon loaded with guns for illegal trade, he had nothing to worry about.

  “You got a mouth on you, don’t you?” The corporal drew back the hammer on his carbine and his finger turned white as he squeezed the trigger. This got Slocum’s attention. He turned slightly in the saddle and inched his hand toward the hammer of his Colt Navy. He didn’t have a ghost of a chance to draw and fire before the soldier pulled off his round, but he was not going down without a fight.

  “My curse,” Slocum said easily. He studied the men more carefully now and wondered why neither wore standard-issue cavalry boots. One wore plain boots, and the corporal had fancier hand-tooled ones, probably bought in Mexico. This didn’t mean neither was a cavalry trooper since supply problems on the frontier were always a concern, but other things made Slocum wary of them.

  “That curse’ll put you in a grave,” the private said. Slocum didn’t glance in the man’s direction. He locked eyes with the corporal. Slocum’s green eyes made the man uneasy enough that the rifle wavered a mite. The muzzle dipped down, away from Slocum’s torso.

  “What can I do for you?” Slocum finally asked.

  “Been a robbery. We’re lookin’ for the road agent responsible. ”

  “Now what was it that got robbed? A stagecoach?”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Found a strongbox a couple miles back,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

  “Do tell.” The corporal sighted in on Slocum again.

  “If you’ll point that carbine in another direction, I’ll show you what I found inside it.”

  “You got the money?” The private almost dropped his rifle in his eagerness to go to Slocum’s side.

  “Found maybe five hundred dollars in greenbacks,” Slocum said, wondering if he should have even mentioned finding the strongbox. He had little choice, though, since the soldiers had the drop on him and were likely to search him and his saddlebags eventually. Better to confess to finding the money than to let them come across it on their own.

  “You look, Hez,” the corporal said eagerly. “I got the varmint covered. Mister, I’ll ventilate you if you so much as twitch.”

  “No need. I’m willing to turn it in. Is the stagecoach company offering a reward for finding it?”

  “Ain’t no reward,” the private said, ripping off the rawhide string holding Slocum’s saddlebags to his saddle. The man staggered away in his hurry to paw through the contents. He let out a whoop like an Apache warrior and held up a handful of money. “Lookee here what I got!”

  “Reckon we got the money and the robber,” the corporal said.

  “Why would I tell you I had anything in my gear if I was the road agent responsible for stealing it? How long’s it been anyway? I don’t see stage tracks along the road. The way I figure it, the driver tossed the strongbox down while he was being chased by the road agents to keep it from being stolen.” Truth was, the soft sand filling the twin ruts of the road Slocum followed wouldn’t hold tracks for more than a few hours. The restless hot wind would erase any trace. He hadn’t even seen any hoofprints left by the two soldiers’ horses.

  “’Cuz you’re one sneaky son of a bitch,” the private said. “That’s why you’d tell us, to get us all het up so you could get the drop on us and kill us.”

  “Shut up, Hez,” the corporal said without venom. He had endured all this rambling before and had tired of it.

  Slocum heard the private reaching for his rifle and saw the way the corporal tensed up. They were going to gun him down. He let out a loud moan, threw up his left hand, and knocked off his hat, sending it sailing through the air behind him. Both men shifted their attention to the hat. This was enough for Slocum to slap leather and drag out his six-shooter from his holster.

  He fired at the corporal and caught the soldier square in the center of the chest. The man grunted and simply sat down. He dumbly reached for the tiny red spot blossoming on his blue jacket. Slocum paid him no more attention, bending low, sawing at the reins, and getting his mare moving in a tight circle. The private was getting his wits back and fired a wild shot that ripped across Slocum’s back. He felt a moment of hot pain and then nothing.

  His attention focused entirely on the soldier who had been in the road behind him. Slocum snapped off another shot at the private, but missed. Then his horse reared, making another shot impossible.

  By the time Slocum got his mare under control, the soldier had lit out for the cover of nearby sand dunes. Slocum got a shot off at the man as he disappeared over the rise.

  “Whoa, calm down, good, good,” Slocum soothed. The mare snorted and showed whites around big brown eyes. Slocum patted the horse on the neck and soothed her further. Then he had to make a decision. The private had lit out with the money from the strongbox. More than that, Slocum doubted any cavalry trooper would let his partner’s death go unavenged. The corporal lay sprawled on his back. Flies already buzzed about the body, and a quick look into the clear blue sky showed hungry buzzards spiraling lower and lower.

  If the two soldiers were part of a larger detachment, the sight of the vultures would bring the rest of the squad on the run. Slocum could ride off, leaving behind the private—and the cash—or he could tend to it. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind that the two soldiers had intended to murder him for the money.

  That made his ire rise. He slammed his Colt Navy back into its holster and drew the Winchester from its sheath. Levering in a round, he called out, “Give me the money and I’ll ride on.”

  “Go to hell!”

  Slocum turned a little in the saddle. The private had moved along behind a sand dune, going westward, paralleling the road.

  “Come on, Hez. It’s not worth you ending up like the corporal. You tried to dry-gulch me. Nobody’s going to hold that against you,” Slocum lied, “but I want the money.”

  “It’s not yours!”

  “Hez, come on. It’s not yours either.” Slocum listened hard for a reply. He wanted the soldier to keep talking so he could track his progress behind the dune. At the end, about twenty yards away, it sloped down into a saddle. If the private wanted to find safety behind the next dune over, he had to cross that depression.

  Even as the idea hit Slocum, the soldier bolted from cover and ran as h
ard as he could. Slocum lifted his Winchester to his shoulder, let out a breath, and squeezed the trigger at the same time. The hard slam against his shoulder went unnoticed. He was too busy watching the private.

  The man had gone down with Slocum’s shot, but there wasn’t the right feel to it. The shot had been good—but not a killing shot.

  “Quit playing possum,” Slocum called, dismounting and walking toward the fallen man. He got no response, but this only made him more alert. He kept his rifle trained on the soldier, and it saved his life.

  When he got within a dozen feet, the private rolled over and fired a pistol he must have kept hidden under his shirt. His awkward position caused the shot to go wide. Slocum’s return fire caught the soldier smack in the middle of the face.

  Even knowing it was an instantly lethal shot, Slocum advanced cautiously and kicked the pistol from the soldier’s hand. Only then did he roll him onto his back. He quickly found the wad of greenbacks and tucked them into his own shirt pocket. Slocum patted the big lump and backed away.

  High above, he heard the raucous calls from a dozen or more buzzards. Not ten feet away, a coyote watched him with hot yellow eyes. Slocum walked faster. The coyote rushed to his meal.

  Slocum returned to his skittish horse. He gentled the horse again, mounted, and rode away from the four buzzards already pulling at the corporal’s flesh. Glad to leave the massacre behind him, Slocum kept his horse at a trot for longer than he ought to in such heat, but the mare was willing. The smell of fresh blood had caused her nostrils to flare.

  “Not a very hospitable place,” Slocum said, looking around the barren landscape. It had not changed in the past hour, but his appraisal of it had. Finding the money had been a stroke of good luck, but the two murderous cavalry troopers had turned the luck against him again. To reassure himself, Slocum patted the wad of scrip in his pocket. He had sweated so much, the once-thick bundle had flattened and even molded itself to the shape of his body.

  His horse began to flag, so Slocum hunted for a watering hole. The Guadalupe Mountains were not one inch closer, or so it seemed. Distances in the desert were always deceptive. But the terrain had changed a little, going from hard desert to one spotted with greasewood and ocotillo to go along with the mesquite. Occasional patches of prickly pear cactus told him there must be some water nearby. They could seemingly grow on solid rock, but their roots did not go down to the center of the earth like those of the mesquite. He had heard that five hundred feet of mesquite root had been pulled up by some enterprising rancher farther south. To keep the thorny bush from taking over the prairies, the Comanche had burned them off every year. Even this had not killed the hardy plants, only kept them down so grasses fit for grazing horses could grow.