Slocum and Little Britches Read online

  Slocum did some riding and some scouting. He spoke to a few herders out with flocks, but they knew little about the outlaw. Then he found an old man who made jewelry. Seated cross-legged on the ground, he used a hammer and a fractured piece of railroad iron for an anvil.

  “You have crosses for sale?” Slocum asked him when he dropped down from his horse.

  “Ah, sí, señor. I have many.” Under the lacy shade of the mesquite, his gentle face looked like soft leather as he nodded. He called out to his wife to bring out the samples.

  A short woman in a brown dress held the choices out on a board.

  “Gracias,” Slocum said, and chose one he liked for the woman. “How much dinero?”

  “Two pesos is a fair price.”

  Slocum nodded and squatted down close to the man. He put the money in his hand and the man smiled. “Gracias.”

  “There is a bandit lives in these hills,” Slocum said.

  “Ah, there are many bad men live around here.”

  “The one I want is St. John. Henry St. John.”

  The peel of the hammer striking the sliver on the anvil rang like a bell. The man did not look at him. “I know this man. He is very bad.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “In the Tangue.”

  “Where is that?”

  “A few kilometers east of here is a dry river. Once it ran, but there was an earthquake and it went dry. There is a deserted ranchero a few kilometers up that dry bed.”

  Slocum gave the man two more pesos and thanked him. The man nodded, but did not raise his head when Slocum stood up.

  At the gray’s side, Slocum checked the girth and swung up. “Thanks again.”

  The man only nodded.

  In a short while, Slocum found the dry riverbed lined with the dead white trunks of cottonwoods. Kind of eerielooking, he decided as he headed upstream. He could see the crude remains of an irrigation ditch on the once-productive land east of the dry river’s course.

  Short of the home place, he smelled smoke from a cooking fire, dismounted, and used his field glasses to survey the place. Several old and young women worked around the buildings and the corrals. No sign of any man.

  It was siesta time.

  Slocum never knew for sure why he did it. He went back and mounted his gray. Then he rode him straight for the ranchero. Startled women saw him approach and blinked in shock. Hand to her mouth, one ran for the main house.

  No doubt she’d wake St. John. The gray kept cutting down the distance. In a few minutes, a hatless St. John appeared in the doorway. He was strapping on his gun and his clumsiness showed as he fed the belt tongue into the buckle. Maybe he was so out of sorts because he’d just been asleep.

  “You come a long ways to die?” St. John said.

  “I was thinking the same thing of you.” Slocum dismounted.

  “This is my hacienda.” St. John made a sweep with his hand to indicate the size.

  “I didn’t come to talk this time.”

  St. John nodded. “It was that girl, wasn’t it?”

  “It was the girl.” Slocum punctuated the sentence with his .44. With the acrid smoke in his face, he watched the outlaw crumple. St. John dropped his unfired six-gun.

  “You sumbitch . . .”

  Slocum never bothered to answer him. The red blood on the man’s chest told him enough. St. John would never rape another woman, never rob or kill anyone else.

  Slocum mounted the gray and looked back at the wailing woman bent over him. Don’t cry for him. He wasn’t worth it. Then he turned the barb and rode away.

  Damn Little Britches—he’d miss her.

  22

  It was past sundown when Slocum drew up at her jacal. The gray dropped his head in the dust and snorted wearily. The soft candlelight inside shone from the door on the dirt outside. A cur dog slunk over, wagging his tail and looking for affection, but carefully.

  She rushed outside and looked for him in the starlight, then wrapped herself in the shawl against the cooling night as she ran to him. “You must leave. There are men here looking for you—bad men.”

  “Where are they?’

  “In the cantina. One rides the spotted horse you told me about.”

  He hugged her and rested his cheek on top of her head. “The Abbott brothers. Deputies from Fort Scott, Kansas.” He spoke it aloud more for his own benefit than hers. “You did good. I brought you a present.”

  From his pocket, he dug out the silver cross on the rawhide thong he’d strung it on and put it in her hands. It shone, and she nodded in approval.

  Then, impulsively, she stood on her toes, swept off his hat, and made him bend down so she could put the cross over his head.

  “You will need this more than I will—to escape these men.”

  He never argued, just kissed her hard, and she clung to him for a long moment. Then he released her and looked regretfully in the direction of the cantina. “I better go.”

  He reached back and adjusted the leather thong so the cross hung free over his chest under his shirt. With a nod for her, he went to his saddlebags and removed a buckskin pouch. He put the heavy leather gift in her hands.

  “There is gold in there. Enough to care for you for some time.”

  “Gracias, hombre.”

  Then he stepped in the stirrup, swung up, checked the gray, and nodded. “Vayas con Dios, my love.”

  “And you.”

  A week later, Slocum crossed through the rock malpais of Texas Canyon and in the midday sun studied the jacales and corrals of Dragoon Springs. He took a swig out of the neck of the whiskey bottle. He’d visited the Denning Methodist Church Cemetery, and the headstone he’d ordered for Little Britches’s grave looked nice.

  He wiped his hand over his whisker-bristled mouth, then took another swig. He had lots of forgetting to do. Lots of it.

  Watch for

  SLOCUM AND PEARL OF THE RIO GRANDE

  356th novel in the exciting SLOCUM

  series from Jove

  Coming in October!

  DON’T MISS A YEAR OF

  Slocum Giant

  by

  Jake Logan

  Slocum Giant 2004:

  Slocum in the Secret Service

  Slocum Giant 2005:

  Slocum and the Larcenous Lady

  Slocum Giant 2006:

  Slocum and the Hanging Horse

  Slocum Giant 2007:

  Slocum and the Celestial Bones

  penguin.com

  M230AS1207