Slocum and the Bixby Battle Read online

  The second man was past thirty, with a handlebar mustache, a little thicker built than his partner. A gold watch chain swung across his gray wool vest. A thick red scar under his right eye marked his rugged pocked face, and his blue eyes carried the look of a wolf—hard and merciless.

  “I’m certain you gentlemen can find places to sit,” Slocum said, having already had his fill of their bald-faced openness toward her.

  He saw the hint of surprise in her brown eyes at his words, like she didn’t want any trouble. To calm her, he reached over and covered her hand on the table.

  In a calculated move that bore his contempt, the young one thumbed his felt hat loose so it rode further back on his head. “We kinda wanted to eat with her.”

  She looked indignantly at Slocum, as if she would not tolerate such company.

  He shook his head, first to settle her and second to answer the boy. Calm as a still glass of water, he rose and stepped close to the boy. In the flick of his wrist, he had ahold of the youth’s gun hand by his forearm and his own Colt’s muzzle jammed into the boy’s belly.

  “Did you come in here to die or what?” Slocum asked through his teeth.

  “Holy Christ, who are you, mister?” Eyes big as saucers, the boy tried to look down at the gun shoved hard into his gut.

  “Apologize and shake your spurs the hell out of here,” Slocum ordered through his tight teeth.

  “Ma’am, been a . . . a misunderstanding. Me and Clyde’s leaving.” Slocum released his arm and watched them, the Colt still grasped in his fist beside his right leg. Everyone in the restaurant warily watched the two as they went toward the front door.

  “We was just funning,” the younger one said for all to hear and then disappeared outside.

  “Who was that younger one?” Slocum asked.

  “Colonel Bixby’s nephew, Cave.” She twisted to look at the empty doorway, as if fearing their return, then turned back. “His name is Cave Bixby and the other is Clyde Wilson.”

  “Nice folks.”

  “Oh, señor, I am so sorry that those men they insulted you,” the young waitress said.

  “No problem.” But he noted that the girl too looked frequently at the front door, as if in fear of the men’s return.

  “What will you have to eat?” Slocum asked Amanda.

  “I’m not certain—”

  “Bring us some beef and frijoles. Tortillas, too,” Slocum said to get by the impasse.

  “Sí,” the girl said and hurried away.

  “Those two will shoot you in the back,” Amanda hissed, looking concerned. “They shot my husband like that.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  She frowned as if deeply concerned. “Oh, I didn’t ask you to defend my honor.”

  “Stop worrying. Their kind only understands one thing.”

  “What is that?”

  “An iron fist.” He leaned over to refill her wineglass. “Drink your wine and relax. For the moment, they’re gone.”

  “But for how long?”

  “Awhile. They aren’t used to being driven off, are they?”

  “No. No one is that foolish.”

  “Then it was time they learned better.”

  She shook her head, still not convinced. “If they kill you, what then?”

  “Gunhands are cheap in San Antonio.”

  “I didn’t see any when I was there.”

  “You didn’t go in the bars where they reside. Tony could hire you a dozen like that.” He snapped his fingers to make his point.

  “Oh,” she said and raised the glass to him. “To your health, my husband. So you live for a while.”

  He clinked his glass to hers. “So our life is all roses and the beds soft.”

  Amanda blushed and shook her head at his words.

  The girl brought their food on a tray and set plates before them. “Anything else?”

  “Not now,” Slocum said and went to filling Amanda’s dish.

  “We will be at my ranch in two days. I have a room in the casa.”

  “I better sleep in the bunkhouse. I wouldn’t want to ruin your reputation.”

  “Who cares?”

  “You will later. We can be discreet.”

  “Yes,” she agreed softly.

  He handed her the plate of food, and she shook her head in disapproval at the size of her portions.

  “Eat. We may not find such food at our next stopover.”

  “Aren’t you thinking about those two and what they plan to do to you?” She shook her head as if amazed.

  “Nothing I can do at this moment. If they’re stupid, they’ll try something else. Smart, they’ll ride on.”

  “I suspect that they are out there in the street right now ready to gun you down.”

  “Hmm, I wonder if they have good suits with them?”

  “Why?” She looked cross at him.

  “Most men like to be buried in their best suits.”

  “Do you have one with you?”

  He shook his head. “It won’t be my funeral.”

  “I hope not,” she said, and, with a look of dread, glanced at the open doorway again.

  The meal complete, Slocum paid the girl, and then with his hand on Amanda’s elbow he steered her swiftly through the kitchen and out the back way. “You think they’re . . . ,” she managed to start to ask.

  His index finger silenced her. “No telling. Simply being careful.”

  He led the way down the alley. In the darkness, cats ran for cover and the smell of refuse was strong. The alley opened to a street and he forced her to stand in the shadows close to the wall.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He eased himself up on the stone sidewalk and under a canopy. Step by step, he slipped along the darkened front of a store. He could make out the familiar hat on the individual leaning with his shoulder to the next building. All of the man’s attention was centered on the lighted doorway of the cafe.

  Slocum drew his Colt, stepped behind the unsuspecting man and slashed him on the back of the head. He went down with barely an audible grunt. Where was Wilson? Careful to watch for any movement or threat, Slocum knelt down, swept up Bixby’s sidearm and jammed it in his waistband. He felt certain Bixby would have a severe headache in the morning.

  Not seeing Wilson, he backtracked, took Amanda by the arm and then went the opposite direction. Soon they were inside the hotel.

  “What happened back there?” she asked, looking relieved when they were in the lobby.

  “That Bixby boy is sleeping in the alley.”

  She put her hand to her mouth to control her chuckles. “Oh, did he surrender his pistol, too?” She indicated the butt sticking out from behind his waistband.

  “Not voluntarily, but he did. And I could have notched his ears, too, but I didn’t.”

  “Ow.” She made a shudder of disgust and drew out the room key.

  “Hey, you’d recognize him that way.” He glanced around to be certain they were alone. Nothing.

  “Where was his partner?”

  “I never saw him.”

  She swung the door open. The night wind fluttered the muslin curtains. Swiftly, he went to check and see if there was anyone out there. In a minute, after his eyes adjusted to the night and he could make out the scene, he felt satisfied there was no threat.

  “I’ll fix the bed,” she offered.

  “No, we’ll make a pallet on the floor,” he said. “Sorry, but I won’t like being shot to death in a bed.”

  “Oh—” She clapped a hand to her mouth.

  “Just to be on the safe side.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  He put her close to the wall on the blanket they would share, his Colt beside him on the floor. They kissed, and she turned to lie on her side, facing the wall.

  “I have gotten you in a mess,” she said, sounding concerned.

  “No, you’re in one and we’re going to extract you from it.”

  “Oh, I hope so.”

 
Slocum awoke and listened. Something had jarred him from his slumber. He had been sleeping light anyway. His fingers closed on the redwood grips of the six-gun. He turned an ear to hear better. If they were out there—they better have their funeral bills paid.

  Then he heard the ring of a spur not far from the window and he sat up. Whoever was out there was stupid enough to wear them to his own funeral. The outline of a pistol soon came past the curtains and the Colt in Slocum’s hand came alive. A red muzzle blast and a scream in the night—Slocum charged to his feet and was to the window in a flash. He could see someone was on the ground, moaning. Slocum could make out another’s outline on horseback, twenty steps away, holding the second horse.

  His Colt drawn up and sighted, it barked a red flash in the night. But the clatter of hooves told him enough—the rider was getting away in the darkness. Slocum stepped out the window for a better look and to be certain the downed one was unarmed.

  “I’m hit bad,” Bixby cried when Slocum kicked his pistol away.

  “You’re lucky,” he said, seeing someone with a lamp coming out the rear door of the hotel.

  “What happened out here?”

  “Get the law. A man tried to kill us in our bed.”

  “Oh—” The person with the lamp ran back inside.

  “You all right?” Amanda asked in a sleep-filled voice from inside the window.

  “Yes—fine. Go back to sleep. They’ve gone for the law.”

  “How?” She climbed over the low windowsill and wrapped the robe tighter around her. “Who is it?”

  “Bixby.”

  “I’m dying, ma’am.”

  “Oh.”

  “Shut up,” Slocum said. “Where did your pal go?”

  “How am I . . . to know that?”

  “What’s going on back here?” someone of authority demanded.

  “You the law?”

  “Yes, I’m the marshal.”

  “This guy’s hit. He tried to kill me and her while we slept.”

  “I’m dying,” Bixby moaned.

  “Hmm, what did he try that for?”

  “Better ask him.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to die,” the marshal said, looking over the dark faces cautiously gathering in the alley. “Couple of you grab him and take him to the jail. Monroe?”

  “Yeah, Sam?”

  “Go get the doc. Have him meet us at the jail.” The lawman turned and faced them. “Sorry, was there more than him?”

  “Yes, the other one rode off when the shooting broke loose.”

  “Come by the office before you leave town, sir. I didn’t catch your name?”

  “Slocum’s my name.”

  “Sam Haze’s mine.”

  They shook hands and Slocum led Amanda back to the window.

  “All right, clear out,” the marshal said to the onlookers as three men carted off the wounded Bixby.

  “Oh, I was so afraid,” Amanda said, burying her face on Slocum’s chest when they were alone again in the room.

  “We’re fine. We can even sleep on the bed this time,” he said to soothe her.

  “What about—”

  “Wilson won’t dare come back. Let’s get some sleep.” They’d need their rest. There would be two more days on the road to reach her ranch.

  4

  “Señor! Señor!”

  Bixby tried to clear his head. What loco jackass was pounding on his bedroom door? He looked over at the frightened brown eyes of the girl Edora hugging the sheet to hide her nakedness.

  “Stay there,” he said to her in disgust.

  He waded across the room to the door with a blanket wrapped around his flank. “What is it?”

  “Your nephew, he is shot.”

  “Huh?” He jerked open the door and glared at the older woman standing there. “Where is he?”

  “In jail in Boerne. Wilson send word that Señor Cave was badly shot, señor.”

  “Where’s Wilson at?” he roared at her.

  “Gone.” She held up her palms. “I know nothing more. They say Wilson, he ran for the border.”

  “What the hell did they do, for Christ’s sake?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Fix my breakfast and send word to the bunkhouse I want two men to ride with me in thirty minutes.”

  “Sí, señor.” The old woman hurried off down the hall, as if glad to be sent away.

  Bixby blundered back into the room. He looked at the cowering girl holding the sheet and then dismissed her. Instead of messing with her tight pussy, he better get dressed and learn about his nephew’s welfare. Who in the hell shot him? Whoever did it would damn sure pay.

  He pulled on his pants and roared like a lion at her. “Get me some clean socks!”

  She hurried to obey as he put on his shirt. What in the hell had that stupid horny boy gotten himself into? The dumb ass, anyway.

  5

  The live-oak- and cedar-clad rolling hill country spread out before them. Slocum drove the matched team at a hard jog and his bay saddle pony came along behind the spring wagon. Amanda under her parasol sat to his left, so the six-gun riding on his right hip was less encumbered. Before him in the scabbard on the dashboard was the loaded .44- 40 Winchester he’d traded for before leaving Boerne, to be jerked up in case of an attack.

  They splashed through the small spring-fed creeks and drove up the other side. Pretty time of year, he decided. There would be a light frost in the next thirty days, but winters were always mild in the hill country. Compared to Montana or Oregon, this was banana land.

  “Tell me about Slocum,” she said.

  “Not much to tell. I came from Alabama, fought in a gray uniform, and after the war I drifted west.”

  “Never married? Never engaged?”

  “Age when mostly folks were doing that, I was off fighting the war.”

  “Never even were engaged?”

  He shook his head. He explained how at sixteen, his life on the family plantation was as close to heaven as anyone could get. Good horses, real treeing hounds, dancing with pretty girls at house parties and learning about the mysteries of womanhood from the black house help. My, my, a boy could get lots of lessons from some hatch-assed wench. At age seventeen, he was wearing a uniform. Before his eighteenth birthday, he watched his best buddy’s head explode when he was hit by some grenade shrapnel.

  Four years of war left him spent, without purpose, and he returned to the ravaged ruins of the home place. Sherman had burned her to the ground. His mother dead. His father, only a shell of the man he’d left. It was over the land taxes the carpetbaggers slapped on the place. He killed one of them when he came to foreclose. That forced Slocum to ride away. But he was no stranger to avoiding those after him—he’d done that for years.

  He was holed up on the Cherokee Reservation in the Nation. Lots of Southern sympathy in those people. General Stande Waitie and others had fought for the South. Slocum soon found the trustworthy ones and how to tell who were the Pins, who worked for the Union Army.

  It was near the Grand River. A Cherokee woman, Rose Many Tree, owned a small ranch, and they went there to help her gather some hogs. Late in the fall, the colorful hardwoods were fast shedding their coat of brown, red and gold.

  The name of the other white boy who rode up there with him was Ivan Groom. Dark brown headed, they were both wiry and lanky. In fact, Rose asked them when they rode up if they were brothers. Just there by happenstance—they’d heard she needed some help.

  A woman in her mid-thirties, her skin was darker than a copper penny. Facial features too sharp to be handsome, but her coal black eyes and the smiles she gave them while they talked to her made her a pleasing-looking person. Willowy figure in the wash-worn dress, she went and found some whiskey after she told them how she wanted them to do this hog catching on the shares and they agreed.

  Rose never mentioned a man, or if she’d ever had one. Slocum didn’t bother to mention this part of the story to Amanda, but if the c
hance came along either him or Ivan would have plied on top of Rose and screwed her till she was too sore to walk.

  They had some luck early on in the hog hunting—they caught ten head in a log trap. Five of the pigs bore her ear mark, and three others, the owner Pete Dead Horse came by when she summoned him and gave them three dollars apiece for them. They turned the last two out. Pete didn’t know the mark, so they released them.

  They invested ten dollars in a catch dog, and he put them in the hog-getting business. A half bulldog, he could grab an ear and hang on to the squealing pig till they could scramble through the winter-bare hardwoods, vines and saw briars and tie their catch up.

  Merve Thunder came by Rose’s place one night asking if they’d seen his big boar. They were sitting up late playing cards with her. While he didn’t divulge this information to Amanda either, Slocum always considered him and Ivan real lucky to have found this job, because by dark most nights, one or two of the boys had Rose up in the four-poster bed, banging hard on her ass.

  “He’s mostly red and weighs over three hundred pounds,” Thunder said. “Got a fork in his right ear and three slashes in his left. I get him up, I’ll cut his balls out and feed him corn for two moons, make a lot of damn good pork for my family.”

  Rose laughed. “Them Merry boys got a leg broke cutting a boar that big last year.”

  “Shit fire, Rose, them dumb boys could screw up a good thing.”

  “They ain’t too smart, are they?” She smiled, amused about those Merry boys’ intelligence.

  The next day, a northern blew in and they stomped around Rose’s stove till mid-morning before going pig hunting. An hour out, they spotted a big red hog cutting down off a mountainside and set their dog and horses in after it.

  “Woo dog! Woo dog!” Ivan shouted as they rode over persimmon and hickory saplings, bearing down on the big critter.

  The dog, Bull, got the idea and he tore like a shot off through the post oaks on the hillside after the runaway. They had to whip their ponies to keep up. Twice they caught sight of the king pig, but he was a cagey one.

  Then Bull went to baying, and soon the damndest screams came from ahead.

  “Bull’s got him eared,” Ivan shouted and Slocum agreed. They whipped and rode hard until they found the dog and hog in the Grand River. Trouble was the large boar had the best of the ear-gripping dog and he was under the surface. Ivan never slowed down; he drove his horse off in the thick, ice-edged water and dove in to save old Bull’s life.