Slocum and the Devil's Rope Read online

  Hashknife had been trampled to death.

  “He—”

  Slocum shoved Garvin along in the dust to a spot just beyond the chuck wagon. The stampeding cattle crashed into the wagon and knocked it over. Slocum had judged just right. The chuck wagon fell onto its side and sent a cascade of food and supplies through the air. Slocum threw up an arm to protect his head from the rain, shoved Garvin back toward the wagon and then slid so his back was pressed against the wagon bed.

  “What?” Garvin started to run when the entire wagon shook hard.

  “Stay put,” Slocum said. “We might get out of this alive if we use the wagon as a shield.”

  “Hashknife, he was trampled.”

  “Dead,” Slocum said harshly. He wanted to break Garvin out of his shock and have him start thinking about ways to stay alive.

  The impact of one heavy cow after another on the far side of the chuck wagon began to take its toll. Nails popped free. Wood planks splintered. The entire wagon was moved foot after foot every time a steer rammed headlong into it. Slocum hunched up, as if this would make him a smaller target. Mostly he wanted this nightmare to be done. Once he had survived a stampede by shooting the lead cow and using its carcass as a shield. He had been badly cut up and shaken by the experience, but he had come out alive.

  He could survive again.

  Garvin held his rope in slack hands, staring at it. The silver thread caught the sunlight and somehow formed a beacon through the din and dust kicked up by the stampede.

  “I had him. I shoulda saved him.”

  The roar of hooves slowly died away, and after an eternity Slocum saw the last of the cattle pass the sanctuary of the overturned wagon.

  “They’re not runnin’ no more. They’re just walkin’.” Garvin sounded outraged.

  “They ran along because the others were. The cattle at the rear of the herd weren’t as scared, didn’t have any reason to run other ’n the others were, too.” Slocum stood and brushed off the thick layer of dust on his clothing. He created a brand-new dust storm and sneezed as it tickled his nose. Spitting, he got the grit from his tongue. A nearby canteen helped wash even more from his mouth so he didn’t bite down on sand.

  “That don’t make sense.”

  Slocum didn’t ask what didn’t make any sense. Garvin was still in a daze.

  Walking around the wagon allowed him to see the real damage. Hashknife had been trampled to the point that he was only recognizable by his dirty apron. Here and there a few head had suffered the same fate, but there weren’t as many dead cattle as Slocum had anticipated.

  “I never seen nuthin’ like that,” Garvin said, his voice shaky.

  Slocum heard a hissing sound and glanced over his shoulder. Garvin spun the rope, not even knowing he did so.

  “Find a shovel,” Slocum said. “We got some digging to do.”

  He heard Garvin puking out his guts. He didn’t blame the tenderfoot. Seeing a man stomped to death by a herd of cattle wasn’t something to get over easily. Slocum went and pawed through the debris left from the chuck wagon, wondering as he did so how they were going to finish the drive. Maybe if they divvied up the food among all the riders, they could reach the railhead without having to live off the land. Shooting dinner was bad on a couple scores. The rifle shots would spook the herd and it took a fair amount of time to track down and kill even a rabbit. Better to make as quick a trip of it as possible.

  They could always slaughter a cow a day, but without the chuck wagon to carry what they didn’t eat, that meant they’d have to butcher a cow for every meal. That took time and Slocum doubted Magnuson would be overly pleased.

  He found a small shovel and went to where Hashknife had been killed. Garvin stood over the body, staring down with wide eyes.

  “Th-there, over there,” he said, pointing to a spot between a couple low-growing bushes. “I think Hashknife would like there.”

  Slocum doubted the cook cared one whit now, but he went, stuck the shovel into the ground, and found the digging easy enough. It took the better part of an hour to finish the grave. By the time he finished, Jonesy had come up with two others.

  “Reckon we’re lucky,” Jonesy said. “Only Hashknife got himself kilt. Everyone else got out of the way.”

  “I’ll bury him, then you and the others take everything you can from the supplies. That wagon’s not going to roll another inch.”

  “Don’t know what happened to the team, neither,” Jonesy said. “Might be all the way to Saint Louis by now, if they ever stop runnin’.”

  “Should we say something over him?” Garvin asked as Slocum and Jonesy dragged the blanket-wrapped body to the grave.

  “Say whatever suits you,” Slocum said. He had been to too many funerals for the words to carry any real meaning for him. There might be a promised land and it might be better than this world, but he found himself more worried about staying where he was. Fine words and heaven were too alien for him to understand or appreciate after all the men he had known who had died violently or even in bed with their boots off.

  “We got every crate and sack divided into parcels. I’ll get the boys to come by and each take one,” said Jonesy. “What more do you want us to do, Slocum?”

  Again Slocum found himself faced with being looked up to as the trail boss. They expected him to know what to do.

  “The cattle are all tuckered out. Bed ’em down early while we still got sunlight. At the crack of dawn we ought to be on the trail again.”

  “I kin use a bit of rest myself,” Jonesy said. “And you need to fix yourself up, too, Slocum.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your leg’s all tore up,” Garvin said. “I kin do some bandagin’. I seen how Dr. Abbey worked.” He smiled ruefully. “My time in the doc’s office ought to have been for some worthwhile end.”

  Slocum felt a dull ache in his left leg, then remembered the steer that had batted up against him. The horn, though it had been robbed of its sharp tip, had torn open some skin. Somewhere during the stampede the wound had clotted over, but walking now presented a chore he was hardly up for.

  “I’ll need a horse. Garvin, too. Both of ours were killed.”

  “The boys’ll keep an eye out. You rest up here a spell, Slocum, and we’ll take care of everything.”

  Jonesy rode off, leaving Slocum and Garvin at the wrecked wagon.

  “Found some of this here iodine in Hashknife’s supplies. Get that boot off and cut open your pant leg so’s I kin dab some on.”

  Slocum leaned back and closed his eyes. The pain was bearable. He had experienced far worse in his day, but he found it hard to remember when or why. Before he knew it, he drifted off to a fitful sleep, only to come awake with a start when the sound of approaching horses filled his ears.

  “We got ourselves some horses, Slocum,” Garvin said.

  Slocum glumly agreed. These were the scrubs from the remuda, now scattered across the prairie. Still, even the worst of the Bar M horses was better than walking. He had done that too often recently.

  “Let’s find what happened to our horses,” he said.

  “Why?” Garvin looked confused. He idly spun the black rope around and around, as if this was all he needed.

  “Our gear. The horses are dead, but the saddlebags likely escaped too much damage. And riding bareback doesn’t suit me.”

  “Could be, could be,” Garvin said. He smiled. “Let’s mount and ride!”

  “You ride bareback?” Slocum looked at the horses Jonesy had brought. Definitely horses from the remuda.

  “I kin do what I have to,” Garvin said with more confidence than Slocum had.

  Jonesy passed over the horses. Slocum thanked him for rounding up the two and said, “Got the outriders posted?”

  “Surely do, and even
set up a rotation. I don’t think it’s a good idea to let the shifts go more ’n a couple hours.”

  “Everyone’s kinda nervy,” Garvin said, nodding. “You got a good head on yer shoulders, Jonesy.”

  Jonesy ignored the young cowboy and said to Slocum, “What else you want? Help findin’ your gear?”

  “That’s what Slocum said we’d need to do,” Garvin said. When neither of the others paid him any attention, he subsided, grumbling to himself.

  “I don’t think we’ll have to hunt too far,” Slocum said. “You tend the herd. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “If you’re back ’fore dawn, that’ll suit us,” Jonesy said.

  Slocum knew what the cowboy meant. Again he was being acknowledged as the trail boss. He had considered just riding away when he retrieved his gear, but Jonesy’s confidence in him kept him from doing that. And he had business to settle with Christine after the drive. If Magnuson officially promoted him to foreman, this might put him in a better position to ask for Christine’s hand in marriage.

  “What’s on your mind, Slocum?”

  “Nothing,” he said to Garvin. It irked him that the cowboy got any hint of what was going on outside the drive. One was business, the other was personal. Slocum kept the personal as private as he could.

  He vaulted onto the horse, gathered the bridle, and started back to where he had last seen his horse. Garvin trailed silently, having figured out Slocum didn’t want idle conversation.

  Slocum circled the area. He found what remained of his horse farther from where the chuck wagon had been demolished than he would have thought possible. He slipped from his mount and got to work dragging out his saddle from the dead horse’s carcass. He finally held up his saddlebags, glad to have this little of his gear still in one piece.

  Without a word to Garvin, he saddled the horse from the remuda—his horse now—and slung the saddlebags. He stepped up and looked around.

  “Your horse set off in that direction,” Slocum said, pointing toward a low hill. “Let’s see if we can find it.”

  “This one suits me,” Garvin said.

  “I want to look around. If we find another horse, it’s to all our benefit. We don’t want to ride our horses into the ground.”

  “That’d slow us down, that’s for certain sure,” Garvin said. “Let’s go.”

  Slocum let his horse walk. The ground was chopped up until they reached the foot of the hill. The herd had flowed around the contours and hadn’t tried running uphill. If it had, the stampede would have been over in a few minutes. The slope was greater than it looked and Slocum found his mount straining.

  He dismounted to walk the horse, then stopped and looked at the ground.

  “Find something, Slocum?” Garvin trailed him a couple dozen yards.

  “Shod horse came this way.” Slocum scowled. From the way the hoofprint had been pressed into the soft earth, there had to be a second horse on the same trail, finding footing in the same spots. He ran his finger around the edge of the hoofprint. The edge of dirt furrow crumbled easily. The tracks were recent. Any wind or rain would have begun erasing the print otherwise.

  “Then let’s go get it,” Garvin said.

  “There’s no hurry.” Slocum held back telling what he had discovered, and he didn’t know why. Perhaps the young cowboy proved increasingly arrogant for no good reason. Slocum had seen men who deserved to boast of their deeds and never once took an occasion to do so.

  Most of those who had gone through the war were like that. The ones doing the most boasting either had not seen that much action or were like William Quantrill and could never shut up about the men they had killed. Then there were some who bragged on what they had done and were lying through their teeth. Slocum got the feeling that Tom Garvin would turn into one of those if he didn’t set himself on the right path soon.

  “You’re lookin’ fer somethin’, ain’t you, Slocum?”

  Whatever else Garvin might be, he wasn’t slow to understand what went on around him.

  “Several riders, not just one horse.”

  “Ain’t seen nobody ridin’ along this ridge, but then I was busy with the stampede.”

  “That might have sent them to the top of the ridge. That’d be the smart thing to do to get away from the herd,” Slocum said. He kept walking until he crested the rise and got a good look all around.

  The riders had gone along the ridge, paralleling the direction taken by the herd. That wasn’t too suspicious if they had come along after the stampede started. Otherwise, travelers might just stop by and invite themselves for dinner. No trail cook was going to pass up the chance to serve a juicy steak to both the trail hands and visitors. Ranchers found it worth their while to give freely of their steaks, too, since this bolstered their reputation.

  Slocum mounted and walked his horse slowly until he came to a faint trail leading down to the flats where the herd was bedded down for the night. He squinted, hand shielding his eyes, as he slowly surveyed the area.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  “What’s wrong? What’d you see, Slocum?” Garvin crowded close and tried to find what Slocum already had.

  Slocum had worried that Pendergast had other plans than robbing the bank. The man was crookeder than a dog’s hind leg, but why’d he have to rustle cattle right now?

  “Come on,” Slocum said, heading down the path. “We got ourselves some rustlers to catch.”

  12

  “We gonna shoot it out with ’em?” Tom Garvin’s eager voice worried Slocum. The six-shooter resting on the youngster’s hip was proving too much of a novelty not to use. For all the skill he had shown cleaning the gun, he might end up killing half of Magnuson’s trail hands if he opened up with it.

  “If we have to. They’re not taking a single head of this herd while I’m in charge.” Slocum rolled the words around and tasted them, listened to the way they sounded, tried to weigh them against what he knew. It finally came to a simple idea. The others thought he was trail boss, so he was, no matter what Magnuson had said—or hadn’t.

  “Let’s git ’em, then!”

  “Whoa, hold on,” Slocum said. Garvin was going for his six-gun. “We can’t gallop a couple miles and get there in time or shape to do anything useful. We trot, we get to our outriders, then we get down to taking back our cattle.”

  Garvin pouted but thrust his six-shooter back into its holster. They made good time the couple miles to the back of the herd. The anxious cattle stirred as they approached. The beeves still remembered the stampede. By morning this day’s disaster would be forgotten.

  “Get Jonesy,” Slocum said to a rider who trotted up to see what he wanted. “I spotted rustlers.”

  “How many?”

  “Saw four.” Slocum didn’t venture his opinion that he knew them. This had to be Pendergast. He had at least two more and maybe a half-dozen others in the gang. That was too much firepower to tackle all at once.

  The cowboy cantered away, leaving Slocum and Garvin behind at the post he had abandoned.

  “We kin git ’em ourselves. There’s no need to get Jonesy or the others.”

  “You in a hurry to get yourself killed? I’d’ve thought this afternoon would have given you a close enough shave to last a week.”

  “Them’s only cows,” Garvin said dismissively. “These are outlaws!”

  “One can kill you as dead as the other. Now hush up and listen.” Slocum waited for Jonesy and the first cowboy to come over.

  “I brung some spare ammo,” Jonesy said. “You boys need it?”

  Garvin still rode bareback. Whatever ammunition he needed had to be run through his S&W. Slocum saw the rest of them wore Colts, but his Colt Navy had been refitted to load .38 cartridges. The others carried .44s.

  As Jonesy split his ammo with the oth
er cowboy, Slocum sketched out what he had seen and what they had to do.

  “Jonesy and I’ll go after the rustlers. You and Garvin stay with the herd. Don’t let any other rustler ride off with even so much as a flea off the back of any of our cattle.”

  “Slocum, I wanna go!”

  “You don’t even have a saddle. You need stirrups to stand up in to fight.” Slocum shot Jonesy and the other cowboy a dark look as they snickered. Both knew why Slocum wanted Garvin left behind. Hell, even Garvin knew. He was no one’s fool.

  “You see how many head they made off with already?”

  “They might have as many as a dozen.”

  “Four men might not want to work with more ’n that,” Jonesy said. Slocum didn’t bother telling him that he knew the size of Pendergast’s gang and that they could herd five times that.

  “We’ll have our hands full, no matter how many there are. You up to tangle with so many?”

  Jonesy laughed. “I was born ready.” He looked over his shoulder at the antsy Tom Garvin. “Him, now, he’s learnin’ to be ready. You meant the rustlers when you said there’d be a handful of trouble?”

  “Garvin, too,” Slocum said, having to smile.

  “Can’t say he’s learned much, but what he’s learned right’s all been from you. That’s why me and the boys’ll follow you, Slocum. No two ways about it, we’d rather have Blassingame headin’ up this drive, but you’re doin’ a good job.”

  “We’re going to find out real quick,” Slocum said. He pulled his Winchester from the sheath and saw how the wood stock had been cut up by flying hooves during the stampede. Unsure if the rifle still worked, he carefully levered a round into the chamber.

  “How you want to handle this?”

  “Just ride up and ask real polite for our cows back,” Slocum said. He urged his mount forward, topped the small hillock, and saw four rustlers with a half-dozen head of Bar M cattle.

  Never slowing, never rushing, Slocum rode straight for the outlaws. He didn’t recognize any of them, but Pendergast might have more than had ridden behind him earlier.