Slocum 421 Page 12

  “We can do that,” Jon said.

  Carter agreed.

  She fixed them some fried ham, potatoes, and biscuits with gravy. Carter looked interested in her and shared some small conversation with her. She answered him like she was flattered. Slocum busied himself eating her good food.

  “We must leave here about midnight to reach Garvin’s by sunup,” Slocum said.

  “I will fix you food before you leave.”

  “We’d make it, but thanks.”

  “Hey, I count myself lucky to have three such serious men in my house.”

  “We wish we’d been here sooner,” Carter said, cutting the biscuit floating in flour gravy with his fork. “It won’t go unattended, ma’am.”

  She nodded, took her napkin out of her lap, and went for the coffeepot to refill their cups. Slocum thought she was about to cry, but she held it back and filled the men’s cups. She was a tough woman with many struggles in her life. He felt for her.

  She woke them before midnight and served a large breakfast, which included eggs, ham, and more biscuits with gravy, plus coffee. They thanked her and saddled up under her lantern light at the corral. Slocum hugged her shoulder. “We will get him.”

  “Thank God.” She nodded and thanked them.

  Carter was the last one to pass her on horseback. “God bless you, Helen.”

  “You too, Carter.”

  * * *

  They rode for hours under the stars and across the rolling grass, until they reached an overlook and were able to see the dark shadows of Garvin’s ranch headquarters sprawled under them. They dismounted, hung up their spurs, and hobbled their horses over the hill.

  Then, on foot, they headed for the ranch, slipping off the hillside to come out behind the corral that had been repaired some since the explosions. Some poles had been tied on temporary frames to replace the old ones blown away. There were only a few horses in the corral. The three men slipped over to the remains of the bunkhouse. No one was in there.

  Where they sleeping in the old man’s house? Slocum, Jon, and Carter had a short conversation and decided they’d check it out. Slocum went ahead. He eased the door open, six-gun in his fist, and slipped inside. The starlight came in the windows, and he listened for someone snoring.

  Only one person was in the house, He was in a side bedroom. Carter stayed outside to cover things. Jon soon joined Slocum in the house. Slocum pointed at the adjoining room and nodded.

  They crept across the floor. The starlight shone down on the snoring old man in the bed. It was Garvin himself. Jon removed the man’s gun holster from the bedpost, and Slocum set his .44 muzzle in his face.

  “Wake up Garvin,” Slocum ordered.

  The man opened his eyes with a loud “Huh.”

  “Where is that damn Sears hiding at?”

  “Hiding? How the hell should I know? Who are you fuckers?”

  “You want to live to see that sun come up, you better remember.”

  “I swear I don’t know. He quit me yesterday. Rode off. Said he was going to kill one sumbitch then go back to Texas. Hell, they all quit. Yellow-bellied sonsabitches.”

  “Was that your piebald horse?”

  “Yeah, he owes me for him. Why?”

  “He’s dead, but Sears raped a woman and stole her horse now.”

  “He damn sure don’t work for me no more. I don’t have any help. They all run off.”

  “You better sell out and go yourself.”

  “Over my dead body is how I’ll go.”

  “That ain’t hard to arrange. A nickel’s worth of lead would end your misery.”

  “Who the hell are you anyway? You blew up my horse pen, spooked off all my damn horses, put tin cans on their horse’s tails, and caused more wrecks than an army could have set off.”

  “Folks are damn tired of your men running over them. They’ll run off the next bunch you hire to do that, they know how now.”

  “Wait, leave me my gun. I’m defenseless without it.”

  “We’ll hang it on the corral, but don’t go get it before sun’s up or we’ll shoot you down out there.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Garvin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You try running ranchers off again, wear your Sunday suit.”

  “Why?”

  “So the funeral director don’t have to bury you in rags,” Slocum said.

  The old man snorted out his nose with a loud grunt.

  “You better heed my warning, old man. You won’t last long running over folks again.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “You hardheaded old bastard, listen to me. These folks will kill you the next time you try to ride over them.”

  Garvin acted like he never heard him. Carter reported that there was no one else around.

  “What the hell is your real name?” Garvin asked.

  “William Bonney,” Slocum said.

  “I heard about you. I knew you were some big-name outlaw. Well, Bonney, you can shoot me down now. If you don’t, I’ll be back here and nail your hide to my outhouse.”

  “Like a damn steer, Garvin, all you can do is try. Let’s go, boys, he’s through.”

  They started back, and Carter asked Jon to be excused since they had Garvin whipped.

  “I want to go by and tell Helen the news. She’s a real sweet lady and I’d like to help her some.”

  “You do that, Carter. Take a couple of days and you still have your job. I know Sis will appreciate you doing that too.”

  Carter saluted then and rode off in Helen’s direction.

  Slocum still wondered where Sears went. Had he gone back to Texas or was he lingering around looking for revenge? Good question to ask about a riled rattler. Only time would tell.

  Their next trip to town, gossip told them that Garvin had caught a train out of there. Not a word to anyone about his business, but Slocum had it in the back of his mind the old man had gone for reinforcements. He told Glenna so.

  “Don’t count him out. He may be gathering help from down in that country he came from.”

  She hugged his arm as they headed for home with their supplies and the new dress finally done. “I hate that. You guys worked so hard to get them out. But I think he is like that and believes he can move us all out.”

  “I need to ride on soon, so you just be ready.”

  “I think Jon is going to lose Carter, don’t you? He and Helen are getting close, aren’t they?”

  “She needs someone. I don’t blame him. I don’t reckon he’s ever had a wife, and she would be good to him.”

  “I agree. So you’re going to have to move on then.”

  He looked off at the distant horizon and then nodded. “Someone will put things together and say, ‘Why, he’s that Clark fellow out there at the Russell place.’”

  “You know I am going to miss not having you to fuss with.”

  “I’ll miss you, but one has to face reality. The longer I stay, the better their chances of finding me.”

  “What is that like? Never being able to trust anyone and always on the move?”

  “It ain’t fun and games, I can tell you that.”

  “You have money, don’t you?”

  “Enough to get by on.”

  She dropped her chin and shook her head. “I finally find someone tough enough to put up with me and I lose him.”

  He turned and kissed her cheek.

  “That’s what I mean. You are a real kisser and then you will go away like smoke.” She threw her hands in the air like was she throwing out the dishwater. “Oh, brother, I will miss your easy ways loving me too, plus your company to go to church with me and take me to town. But yes, big man, in the end I will survive.”

  “Good.”

  Jon gave him the ch
oice of horses and wouldn’t take any money. He decided on Spook, and Jon agreed he would be the best for a long haul. He reshod him that week, putting off leaving. He planned to go out to Deadwood and then head west for the mountains for the summer. Maybe up in Wind River country—who knew.

  Glenna realized he was going to leave soon, and she never bugged him about it. But while Jon was off checking cattle, she spent the morning sitting on a nail keg and visiting with him while he shod Spook. When he was halfway done with his job, she went and fetched a pail of water along with a dipper and watered the horse down.

  “Hey, it’s getting warm today, isn’t it?” she said, handing him a dipper of water after he dried his sweaty face on a towel she had for him.

  “Thanks,” he said and winked at her. “You never had any suitors before your husband?”

  “No, boys were boys to me. I never would have realized that Russell was interested in me, but he caught me away from the house and took my arm. He said, ‘Let’s you and I get married.’

  “I looked at him like he was crazy. ‘You want to marry me?’ ‘Hell yes,’ he said. So I said, ‘When?’ ‘Saturday night.’ I thought what the hell, no one else wanted me. ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘what do I have to do?’

  “‘I guess just wear a Sunday dress.’ he said. ‘I’ve never been married.’ That was it, we got married. Had a one-night honeymoon. I reckon he’d spent enough on floozies to know what to do with me. Monday morning I was fixing breakfast in the old soddy and my new husband rode off for three days to check on his cattle. I thought that was married life.”

  Slocum had the left front hoof in his lap, trimming on it. “Sounds exciting as hell.”

  “It was, but I didn’t know any better. He hired Jon after Dad died and we put our cattle with his. I got my back up and so they built me this house. Strange man, I am certain he frequented the cathouse in town when he was drinking. But, like I said, I had no measure of what a husband should do. Jon and I were together. We had the ranch, and we sold our old place to pay for my house. All I missed when Granger died was that feeling of contentment I got at the end of him being on me.”

  Slocum looked up and dropped the hoof. She tossed him the towel to dry his face again. Finished, he smiled. “That was some deal.”

  She tossed her hair back. “I could not believe that first night you and I had together that I had missed so damn much. Honest truth, I thought every wife had a husband like mine. Who didn’t care or even think about his partner—just breed her and go to sleep. When I didn’t get pregnant, I wondered what was wrong. I never found out what. He never cared, but he expected he’d get me with child if he tried harder, then later he gave up and I was simply his to rut with.”

  “You grew up a tomboy. No time for courting. You did miss a lot.” He nailed the shoe on the front hoof then snipped the nails and finished that hoof.

  “He will be fine tied there. Let’s go have lunch, and you can finish him later.”

  “Sure,” he said and put his arm on her shoulder.

  “I’m going to miss that too. You being close to me.”

  He looked at the gathering clouds. “It’s going to rain this evening.”

  “I bet so.” She stopped at the front door and kissed him. “After lunch, before you go back to shoeing him, we need to honeymoon.”

  “I agree.”

  “You are so hard to convince.” She snuggled to him as they crossed the yard.

  It rained that afternoon, and at dawn, when he had Spook saddled and ready, everything dripped from the rainfall the night before. They had not slept much. But it had been a dreamy night, with bright flashes and rumbles of thunder to match their last flight together.

  He kissed her, shook Jon’s hand, and rode away, trying not to imagine her lithe, willowy body or the light perfume she wore—reminders that he’d left another terrific lady.

  13

  Deadwood was booming like he’d expected. But while he might have found some souls who knew him, United States marshals and Pinkerton pricks also hung out there, looking all the time for wanted men and fugitives who had escaped prisons. He wore a suit coat, white shirt, and string tie, plus a beard by then, so it might be less of a giveaway who he was. Card games there were crooked, but he could mark cards too, and in the confusion win some hands. John Clark was his name, and he found a room to share with a lady of the night named Sherry Taylor, whom he met in a hillside saloon on his second night in town. She was in her late twenties and had a soggy figure, but most men liked chubby women who weren’t too fat. His roommate fit the bill, and she earned a few bucks more than common street women, enough to keep up her dope habit. She took cocaine more like it was aspirin, when in pain or when she was feeling despondent. Didn’t matter which either.

  He played cards till all hours, and by the time he got back to the room, she’d have sent her john for the night home or away somewhere. A few nights she sought his lovemaking instead of powder and said he was always rewarding to her. So their time went on until he knew he had to move on and took the stage to Cheyenne.

  * * *

  In Fort Laramie, he bought a horse, having sold Spook for a good profit up north in Deadwood. He had won a few hundred at gambling, so he was far from broke. He strapped his saddle on this new horse, a bay gelding about five, and set out. He hoped that his having bought a stage ticket to Cheyenne would throw them off track if they were on his heels—no telling—while in the meantime he rode north.

  Spring was starting to bloom across the country. He met a Texas outfit who’d been wintering their cattle west of Fort Laramie, and the outfit’s boss, Big Jim Caltron, a burly, gravel-voiced man in his forties, with a smile and large handshake.

  “Where you headed?” Caltron asked after they had talked about several things in general.

  “Not anywhere in particular. Why?”

  “You look like a man who could deliver these cattle for me in Montana. I started out last summer, and when I got up here they warned me I might have snow all the way it was so late. So I bought a lot of hay from area farmers and brought these longhorns through the winter. But I need them driven up to Bozeman and sold. I’ve got a big ranch in Texas needs my attention and a wife I miss real bad. You said you’d taken cattle to Abilene and Wichita. Can’t be any worse than that. You get them up there, sell them, pay the boys and take your share, then ship the rest to me by Wells Fargo—to my bank in San Antonio. I’ll pay you four hundred bucks to handle the deal. Fair enough?”

  Slocum sat under the flapping canvas shade and looked out across the new grass and wildflowers of the Wyoming countryside to the distant purple mountains. “I reckon you’ve hired yourself a trail boss.”

  They shook hands, and Caltron went for a bottle of good whiskey and two glasses. When he returned, Slocum held the glasses and Caltron poured it. “These boys are a little winter-weary, but they will work, and they know the business. I can show you my pay plan for them. I am damn sure glad I ran into you. You should get in on the early market. I don’t know of too many herds this far north this early.”

  “Yes. We should be there well before any others. You know I’m not God, and we might have some tough storms to net us between here and there.”

  “Everything you do in this world has risk. Do the best you can and I’ll understand. Send me some telegrams and let me know what is happening. Hell, I’ll be two months getting home.”

  The whiskey was good. That evening after supper, he met the outfit’s other leaders and then the rest of the men. They were all young and tough. Caltron had a rule that he’d fire you for fighting in camp or while on the job and wouldn’t pay you a dime. That kept that from happening, as far as they were from home. Dan Black was his segundo and about twenty-two. Several of the boys were in their middle teens. Rack and Trumbo were Caltron’s point men. They were athletes and horsemen, and Slocum could see them tending to directing the herd. An Indian bo
y was the horse wrangler, and they called him Chalk. Rufus Digby was the cook, an old army man who smoked a pipe and ran the camp. The rest of the boys Slocum still had to learn the names of.

  “We were planning on leaving in two days. That suit you?” Caltron asked Slocum, sipping on a whiskey.

  “Fine with me. I figure we are two months from where you want me to deliver them.”

  Caltron agreed. He left him a sheet of addresses and his bank’s address too.

  “I am going to catch a train east from Cheyenne, then take a riverboat and another train back west.”

  “Be careful so you make it.”

  “Oh, hell, I have to make it. I miss my lovely wife so damn much I can’t even think about anything else.”

  “I know how you feel. We’ll get them cattle up there and get them sold.”

  The next day, Caltron shook Slocum’s hand and left. One of the boys took Big Jim to Fort Laramie to catch a stage and to bring his horse and saddle back to the camp.

  * * *

  The very next morning they were on the move. Rufus’s two teams of mules, hitched to the chuckwagon and the half wagon on behind, had to be led the first mile, but they settled down. The steers, after the long winter, were placid and headed north for twelve miles that day. They lost one horse who had stepped into a badger hole and had to be destroyed. Slocum noted this in his new logbook. Jimmy Evans, the scout, found them a new camp for the next day and reported back in. He also told Slocum they had pine forest ahead and a mountain range that he’d learned about from a freighter. Slocum rolled out the map and they looked hard at it. The mountains were there, and he hoped they’d find graze, but they might have to drive farther than usual to find a suitable place to stop.

  He thanked the boy, maybe almost eighteen years old. He had made a good hand for Caltron, and Slocum saw why. His trust in the hands grew as the days passed. On the drive to Billings, they were warned that the Crows would want a fee for crossing their land. As many as a dozen head of cattle. Slocum talked that over with Dan Black. They’d cut them out the limpers if they had to.

  “But I’d rather not pay them a damn thing,” Black said.