Slocum and the Sawtooth Sirens Read online

  The men around them laughed.

  Madge returned with a tin cup full of hot broth. By then, Jessie was sitting up, and although he looked woozy, the color was back in his face and he appeared to be fully conscious.

  Slocum fished a cheroot out of his shirt pocket, lit it with a wooden match, and sat down, his back against a sturdy pine. He heard the rattle of rifles being unloaded from the wagon, the drone of men’s voices as they looked at their new weapons.

  Rod walked up to Slocum carrying one of the new rifles.

  “You done us a big favor, John,” he said as he squatted down next to Slocum.

  “Be careful what you wish for, Rod,” Slocum said. “You might get it.”

  Rod laughed. He was a slender, muscular man in his late twenties with a cowlick sticking out from under a small felt hat that was stained and crumpled from hard work and wear. He hadn’t shaved either, but his beard was thin and scraggly. He wore a converted Remington New Model Army in .44 caliber on his gun belt stuffed with cartridges in most of the loops.

  “We got to take Sawtooth back,” Rod said, his voice low and deep. His Adam’s apple bobbed when he spoke and looked sharp enough to cut through his skin.

  “Madge explained the situation to me,” Slocum said. “How Hiram Bledsoe owns the town.”

  “He built it and owns it sure enough. But he’s not satisfied makin’ money off the miners and prospectors at his dance hall and gamblin’ parlor. He wants the mines we dug and blasted and he’s killin’ whoever gets in his way.”

  “He must have an army,” Slocum said.

  “He’s got more’n a dozen men with rifles and pistols and knives who do his dirty work for him.”

  “You still have him outnumbered, I reckon,” Slocum said.

  “Haw!” Rod exclaimed. “Them men workin’ for Bledsoe are full-fledged gunslingers. Backshooters. Bushwhackers. Hired guns. Hired by a madman.”

  “Fight fire with fire,” Slocum said.

  “You mean sink to their level,” Rod said.

  “Or pull up stakes and light a shuck for someplace else.”

  “Can’t do that, Slocum. Me’n the others got too much to lose here. Most of us put our last dollar into prospectin’, and now that we’ve struck pay dirt, we aim to hang on to our claims.”

  Slocum blew a stream of blue smoke into the air. He was halfway through the length of his cheroot.

  “I wish you luck, Rod,” Slocum said. “Now I’ll go hunt down some more meat for you boys.”

  Rod shook his head.

  “No need to hunt for us no more, Slocum. We got us rifles now, and most of us can hunt elk and deer.”

  “Well, then, I’ll just mosey on back to Cheyenne, I reckon.”

  Rod put out a hand and grasped Slocum’s arm.

  “No. There’s a meetin’ tonight. I want you to stay for that. And you’re still on the payroll.”

  “I’m no miner,” Slocum said.

  “But you could help us, I’m thinkin’.”

  “I’m no town tamer either, Rod.”

  “Just come to the meetin’. Get to know us, what we want, what we aim to get.”

  “I don’t think so,” Slocum said.

  “Madge wants you to come,” Rod said. “She told me so. Practically begged me.”

  Slocum drew smoke through his cheroot and looked up through the pine boughs at the blue sky. Something inside him told him to shake his head and decline Rod’s offer. But there was something else working through his mind. He didn’t like what Bledsoe was doing. He knew some of it, but not all. Rod had told him about two miners who had been drygulched and their claims taken over by Bledsoe. The injustice of it shrieked in his mind like a wounded animal.

  “Please, Slocum,” Rod said as he squeezed Slocum’s arm with his fingers.

  Slocum looked closely at the man’s face. He saw the pleading, the fear, the urgency that seemed to be boiling behind the blue eyes.

  He should ride out, go back to Cheyenne, forget about these godforsaken prospectors and miners.

  The voices of the men rose and fell in the ebb and flow of the fragrant mountain breezes. Slocum could hear the clicks and snaps of rifle actions as the men worked the locks. He knew they would have to clean the barrels and receivers before the rifles could be fired. He heard the creak of wood as men pried open the cartridge boxes, and then the clatter and clink of cartridges being pulled from those boxes.

  A horse whickered. Another snorted.

  He heard the high-pitched scree of a hawk and the caw-caw of warning from a small flock of crows.

  The mountains were a place of peace and serenity, yet he could sense the tension and fear among the men behind those enormous boulders, digging holes to hide in like voles. No man, he thought, should have to fear another. Yet there was unrest among these men as if they were preparing for battle. One man had been wounded by a drygulcher. Others had been shot dead in a corrupt town. It galled Slocum that men had to live this way and that crooks like Bledsoe were allowed to breathe the same air as these honest and hardworking prospectors and hard rock miners.

  But Slocum had seen greed before, in other towns, other settlements, and when it reared its ugly head, he had seen monsters in the guise of men.

  “So Madge wants me to stay up here?” Slocum said as if he had just emerged from some private reverie.

  “She does,” Rod said. “And I want you to stay. I think you could be a big help to us, in one way or another.”

  Slocum puffed on his cheroot, blew out smoke, then stubbed it out in the dirt. He drew in a clean breath.

  “I’ll stay the night,” Slocum said, “and listen to what you all say in your meeting. But no promises beyond that.”

  “No promises. Fine, fine, Slocum. Now I got to clean the grease out of this rifle.”

  Rod rose from the ground and walked back toward one of the half-concealed lean-tos.

  Slocum sat there for long time, wondering what he had gotten himself into. He’d come to hunt game, and now he was pretty sure he would be hunting men.

  Sometimes, he thought, there wasn’t much difference.

  4

  Sawtooth Mountain’s jagged peaks jutted into a blazing sunset sky, their slopes descending into sooty shadows. There was a silence in the town below that scarlet and golden sky, with all the miners gone, and Bledsoe’s men stationed at strategic positions among the long shadows, shotguns at the ready, their eyes peering upslope toward the timber, their eyes scanning old game trails for any sign of human movement.

  Bledsoe sat in a chair on the darkening balcony outside his hotel room. He chewed on an unlit cigar, and his beady eyes shone with the last light of the sun. He knew that his men were on guard and prowling the vacant mines just in case any of the miners returned.

  He liked the taste of the tobacco as he mashed the juices out of the tightly wrapped leaves of the Cuban cigar. He might smoke it after he had a taste of the whiskey from his bottle of Old Taylor, which he was saving for the arrival of Tom Brody, the man he had made head of his outfit of town marshals. He called the men who worked for him marshals, not out of respect for the law, but to make the townfolk see the military side of his nature. Bledsoe had not fought in the war, but his father and brother had, and he loved to listen to their tales of slaughter with musket, cannon, grapeshot, and canister.

  And the word marshal had two meanings for him. He knew that it meant to “gather forces or energies,” and it also meant authority. He had worked as chief accountant for a firm in Biloxi, Mississippi, and had embezzled a tidy sum of money from his firm before he was found out. He had shot his boss and that had given him his first taste of blood. He had liked that taste, and killing a man who was going to put him in prison solved all of his immediate problems. When he had come out West, he visited a ghost town, saw the tailings from the played-out mines and the deserted
buildings, and that had given him the idea of following the prospectors, building a town, then sucking it dry, leaving it as empty as the shed skin of a rattlesnake.

  He heard the knock on the door. It was a special knock, three raps, a pause, then a single rap. He knew that was Tom Brody and rose from his chair. He slipped the latch and opened the door.

  “Boss,” Tom said.

  “Come on in, Tom. I’m out on the balcony. There’s whiskey and glasses. Pour us a couple, will you?”

  “Sure,” Tom said and swept past Bledsoe. He headed toward the open double doors that led to the small balcony. He was a tall, angular man, with a large black mustache, wavy black hair, and sideburns that ended in points on his flat cheeks. He wore a brace of .45 Colts, with elkhorn grips, and his gray gabardine trousers fitted snug on his hips and legs. Leather thongs kept his holsters tied down tight and his boots were as shiny as his silvery silk shirt. He looked like a dandy, Bledsoe thought, but Tom was a stone-cold killer who enjoyed his gun work and was a crack shot with nerves of pure steel.

  Bledsoe locked his door, waded across the room on gimpy legs, and stepped onto the balcony as Tom was pouring the drinks.

  “You always have the best likker, Hiram,” Tom said.

  “I gave you a bottle of Old Taylor last week,” Bledsoe said as he sat down in his chair. Tom handed him a glass and sat down in the other chair.

  “It lasted me a couple of days,” Tom said.

  Bledsoe chuckled. He set down his unlit cigar and sipped from his glass.

  “Anything new in town, Tom?” Bledsoe asked.

  “Nope. Purty quiet. I got men scoutin’ the hills, but they ain’t found nary a sign of them renegade panhandlers.”

  “Nolan and the others with him are pretty smart. Or think they are.”

  “Jerry told me that Cass got shot, but he said Cass winged Jessie Nolan. Said he had a wagon full of grub and rifles and boxes of ammunition.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Jerry told me. I sent him back to scout where that wagon went, but he said he lost track of it.”

  “Jerry’s not the sharpest knife in the kitchen,” Tom said. He swallowed half of the whiskey in his glass. His hazel eyes brightened, but did not shed tears. Nor did his face change hue.

  “When them miners lit a shuck, they didn’t go all at once. They sneaked out at night and rubbed out their tracks. They could be anywhere. Hell, they might be up in Nevada or Oregon for all I know.”

  “Oh, they’re here, all right, Tom,” Hiram said. “Or they wouldn’t haul in rifles and cartridges.”

  “Yeah, I know they’re around here. I just can’t figger out where.”

  “Don’t you worry about it. I’m just concerned about that man who killed Cass Hobart. They might have hired themselves a gunslinger. You got to keep your eyes peeled. He could be a bushwhacker and start pickin’ off you and the other marshals one by one.”

  “I got two-man teams prowlin’ about and orders to watch each other’s backs. No backshooter’s goin’ to drop any of us.”

  Hiram watched Tom drain his glass of whiskey.

  “Good,” he said. “That’s right smart thinkin’.”

  “We’ve all seen gunslingers before, Hiram. Most of ’em are now in Boot Hill.”

  “Pour yourself another glass, Tom.”

  Tom poured a generous amount of whiskey into his empty glass.

  “Accordin’ to Jerry, that gunny should be easy to spot. He’s big and he wears black and rides a black horse. He’ll stand out like a sore thumb iffen he comes into Sawtooth.”

  “Well, I want him in Boot Hill, too,” Hiram said.

  “I still don’t know what them miners will do when they get their hands on them rifles.” Tom tilted his glass and filled his mouth with whiskey.

  “I ain’t much worried. After tomorrow, when them Celestials get here, you and the boys will be able to hunt and watch full-time.”

  “Celestials?” Tom’s eyes widened and his eyebrows arched in puzzlement.

  “That’s what them Chinese call themselves,” Hiram said.

  “Oh.”

  “They’re good at diggin’ mines and they got good mules with ’em,” Hiram said. “Besides, I got more’n one ace in the hole.”

  “We got some rich mines here, all right,” Tom said. “What’s this ace in the hole you got?”

  Hiram smiled wanly. He took another sip of whiskey, smacked his lips.

  “Ralph Fossey,” Hiram said.

  “Ralph Fossey? Ain’t he one of them miners? Kinda quiet, all eyes, like a bush full of baby owls? A loner.”

  “That’s the name he uses. Up here anyways.”

  “I don’t get it,” Tom said.

  “His real name is. . . . well, no matter. He’s my eyes and ears in the mining development part of Sawtooth. Has been from the beginning. Wherever them miners are, Fossey’s with ’em, and he’ll let me know their plans before anything drastic happens.”

  “How?”

  “Once he knows when the miners are plannin’ to attack, he’ll let me know. We’ll be ready for them.”

  Tom sat back against the chair and raised his head. He tried to remember what Ralph Fossey looked like and how he acted. An image of the man flowered in his mind. Fossey was quiet, stayed to himself. He didn’t look like a gunfighter. Didn’t even pack a pistol on his belt. He wielded a pick and shovel just like any other man. But now that he thought about it, Fossey moved like a cat, walked on the tips of his toes, wore boot moccasins. His shirt was always dirty and soaked with sweat. He had deep-sunk eyes and high cheekbones, a straight thin nose on a face that looked like it had been carved out of stone with a hatchet.

  Fossey looked like any other miner, not a gunslinger.

  “What’s Fossey’s true name?” Tom asked. “Would I know him from somewhere?”

  “You might. He was a soldier, rode with Quantrill, spent time in Yuma Prison after the war. I knew him in Biloxi and he did some work for me down yonder.”

  Tom searched his mind for a name, a reputation. He scratched the back of his head with a tobacco-yellowed fingernail.

  “Man don’t ring no bell,” Tom said.

  Hiram smiled and lifted his glass.

  “Ever hear of Pat Sumner?” Hiram asked.

  “Part Cherokee, kilt a dozen or more men in the territories? That Pat Sumner?”

  “You keep his name under your hat, Tom. Nobody knows about him ’cept me and Del. It’s our little secret.”

  Tom shook his head.

  “My lips are plumb sealed, boss.”

  Both men were silent for the next few minutes.

  Tom had heard of Sumner. A lot of men had. But he was like a shadow. Few had seen him and lived to tell the tale. He was a killer and good men paid him to do bad things to other men. He was a reputation without any substance. He killed and then vanished like some kind of ghost. Tom had first heard of him down in Abilene and later in Deadwood. They said he was fast and he never missed with a gun in his hands.

  “When the time comes, Sumner will let me know. We’ll be ready for those damned renegade bastards.”

  Tom was silent for several moments. There were a lot of questions he wanted to ask Hiram, but he knew how testy the man could get, even when asked one or two simple questions. Also, he wanted to talk to him about Veronica Sweet, that bitch. Ronnie was charging him two dollars every time he slept with one of her glitter gals, Linda Lee Lamont. He had complained about this once before, several weeks ago, but Hiram had told him that Ronnie was boss over her girls and he had no say in the matter. Ronnie had told him that none of her girls worked for free and that when they slept with a man, that was what they were paid for.

  Now, he knew, was not the time to bring up this matter.

  Hiram jerked him out of his reverie when he broke the silence.

 
“Tom, you’d better see to the men. I want them razor-sharp from now until I get word from Sumner. I’ve got a hunch it won’t be long now that they are armed with rifles and cartridges.”

  “We’ll all be sharp as a barber’s razor, Hiram,” Tom said. He splashed the rest of his drink into his mouth and swallowed. He arose from his chair.

  “I’ll let you out,” Hiram said, and walked with Tom to the door. He let Tom out then checked his latchkey and tested the door to see if it was secure.

  He walked back to the balcony, deep in thought. Numbers kept coming up in his mind. This was September, the twenty-ninth, and October, with its cold and snows, would soon grip Sawtooth and flock the mountains with deep snow. Dates were important to Hiram and so were numbers, with their mystical connotations. If he added two and nine together, they formed eleven, two ones, and two ones were lucky numbers for him. September had thirty days and three was not so lucky. Three on a match. Deaths came in threes.

  The miners would need time to sight in their rifles and make sure they had enough firepower to invade Sawtooth. So they would not attack on the thirtieth.

  And the Chinese workers would be there tomorrow.

  He gave the renegades three days to a week before they got up enough gumption to mount an attack. By then, he would be ready. He had a few more aces up his sleeve.

  He sat down and sipped on his drink. His mind was working at a mile a minute. Plans, plans, plans, he told himself.

  A man had to have plans.

  And Hiram knew he had plenty of plans. He could not wait to put them to work.

  In the meantime, there was only the smallest of worries.

  Who was the man in black and would Sumner take care of him, or would he sneak into town in the dead of night and kill some of his men?

  Hiram squinted his eyes. He wished he could see into the future.

  One thing, he knew.

  The man in black must die. And he wanted to personally drink his blood.

  5

  Slocum was surprised to see so many men at the meeting. Madge was there and so was her father. His arm was bandaged and in a sling.