Slocum 428 Read online

  Slocum tugged the brim of his fawn hat low over his eyes, a futile effort to cut the bright glare slanting in. “I’m here for work.”

  “Oh?” The hat disappeared. An axe rose up then came down hard. With a thunking sound. A few seconds later a man emerged, similar in height to Jigger, but broader of shoulder and obviously younger, given his full, bushy black beard and ruddy red face. He also carried an ample paunch, over which was spread a soot-and-food-stained apron that had at one time been white.

  “Who be you, then?” said the man, striding straight toward Slocum on the well-trammeled snowy yard.

  Slocum swung down from the Appaloosa. “I’m Slocum, John Slocum, and I was told down in Timber Hills that there was need of workers up here at the Tamarack Camp.”

  “Well now, mebbe oui, mebbe non.”

  “What’s that mean?” said Slocum, offering a wry half smile.

  The Frenchman nodded while he pulled out a stump of a pipe and clamped it in a corner of his mouth, jammed a thick thumb into the bowl, and worked whatever was in there with a vigorous motion before dragging a match across the stained apron and setting the pipe’s contents alight. “You were told by someone to come here then?”

  “Yep, that’s what I said.” Slocum thought for a moment, then figured, what the heck, give it a go, and said, “I also ran into a fellow name of Jigger McGee on the trail. Told me to come on up.”

  The effect of Jigger’s name on the Frenchman’s face was as if someone had conjured a magic trick. It brightened his glowering, drawn, black brows, and Slocum was sure there was a smile hidden somewhere in the thick bush of the man’s beard.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” The man advanced and stuck out a burly hand. “Any friend of dat boss of ours is a good man, eh? I am Emil D’Artagnuile, but most folks call me Frenchy!”

  I wonder why? thought Slocum, smiling. “Pleased to meet you, Frenchy.”

  Within minutes, Frenchy was giving Slocum a quick tour of the log-and-snow camp. They conversed from the start as old friends, chatting all the while as Slocum stabled the Appaloosa, watered and fed him, and lugged his gear to the bunkhouse.

  “Frenchy, if Jigger’s the boss, why was he headed to town on a supply run on his own?”

  The Frenchman looked at him as if he’d stuck a grimy hand into the stewpot. “You tink dat’s any of your business, Slocum?”

  “Nah, in fact, I don’t much care. I’m just making conversation.” The last thing he wanted to do was ruffle feathers on his first day on the job. Especially those of a man built like a brick shithouse.

  To his surprise, Frenchy looked left, then right, even though it was plain to see they were alone in the breezy outdoor cooking area between buildings. “Between you and me, the boss, he don’t like nobody much to know his business.”

  “But everybody does anyway, I’ll bet.”

  “You gonna let me talk, or are you gonna run your mouth like a steam engine?”

  “Go ahead, Frenchy. I’m all ears.”

  “Good. So I was thinking that maybe you was one of them chatty fellas who talks and talks but don’t say nothing and everybody finally gets tired and . . .”

  He kept on prattling while Slocum nosed about the small covered cooking space. The big black stove formed almost the entire back wall. From the looks of the behemoth, it gobbled a hell of a lot of wood just to keep the loggers fat and happy. Even now, at roughly ten o’clock in the morning, the sides were working up to a steady orange glow.

  “So anyways, like I was saying to you, Slocum, the boss, he has other reasons for going to town on his own. But don’t you worry.” Emil wagged a gleaming steel spatula in Slocum’s face. He knew the Frenchman didn’t mean anything by it, but anyone else and he’d likely have lost a limb by now. Slocum decided to let it pass. He wanted to hear the reasoning behind Jigger’s solo trek, despite it being one of those things that seemed amiss about the operation.

  In fact, since he’d heard of the Tamarack Camp back in Timber Hills in the bar, there seemed more questions about it than answers. Why was the Tamarack the only camp not filled with loggers at this late date in the season? What was it doing advertising in a bar? Why did the bartender seem to know so much about the camp’s business?

  And oddest of all, what was the camp boss, Jigger McGee, doing riding herd on a big ol’ team down to town for supplies when such a chore was usually reserved for a teamster? Seemed like the camp boss would want to be around to tend to his men and oversee the operation of the camp. Slocum didn’t give voice to any of these concerns; he figured he already had done enough of that.

  “I tell you what, though.” Frenchy dropped a dollop of grease into a bubbling vat of stew. “Jigger, he’s a man who knows his business. He knows logs like I know biscuits.” The big man smiled wide. “And I cook a good biscuit. You will know soon.”

  Slocum was about to ask him if Jigger was part owner of the Tamarack when Frenchy continued talking.

  “But there’s something wrong with things here. Has been for some time.”

  It was almost as if Frenchy were talking to himself as much as, or more than, he was addressing Slocum.

  “What’s that?”

  “Dere you go again, interrupting Frenchy.” The burly cook shook his head and kept talking. “I don’t know the wrong of it, but I know at least that he has some money troubles. It ain’t easy keeping this camp going.”

  That answers my unspoken question about Jigger being owner, or at least part owner, of the Tamarack Camp, Slocum thought.

  “But the log sales are good now, so he went maybe to make deals? Maybe to visit his daughter in town, non?” Frenchy shrugged and fell silent, rummaging on a dusty shelf packed with spice tins and jars.

  “What can I do to help, Frenchy?”

  The man spun on him. “Oh yes, you are here to work! Not listen to Frenchy talk and talk, non?” Again the big man laughed, then said, “I hope you can swing an axe, mister. I have a powerful need for, how you say, beaucoup”—he spread his hands wide, his big wooden spoon dripping stew juice on the wood floor—“split firewood, eh? Lots and lots. Come, I’ll show you to the woodpiles.”

  • • •

  “Well, what in hell do we have here?”

  Slocum turned to see a seedy, rail-thin man, all bone and gristle, with a narrow, wedge-shaped face, in the middle of which was pinned the bulbous red-ended nose of a heavy drinker. Small, too-close eyes topped it, and regarded Slocum with a squinty stare and a half smirk, as if he were looking at a bug he was about to render flat with his hobnailed boot.

  Slocum had seen this very sort of wormy apple in a hundred cow towns, mining camps, and frontier settlements, and they never changed much. He wondered vaguely if they all came from the same place, sort of like a storeroom somewhere in the back alleys of Saint Louis. He could picture them emerging at dusk from the bowels of a great, sagging, sodden warehouse along the river, all looking roughly the same. That is to say, they all would look ratlike, spineless, seedy, stupid, and desperate. But most of all, dan – gerous.

  “What’s so funny, kitchen boy?”

  Slocum guessed he himself must have been smiling at the thoughts he’d conjured of this fool and all his ilk. He didn’t respond, just sighed and rested a hand on the end of his double-bit axe.

  “I said—”

  “I heard you.”

  Rat-face stepped closer, two long, bony thumbs hooked in the waistband of his green wool trousers held up by brown leather braces. His shirt nearly completed the traditional logger’s garb in these parts—a red-and-black-checked wool affair topping familiar pink-tinged longhandles that before long wear and many washings had begun life as red longhandles.

  Atop the man’s head was perched a variation on the same toque Frenchy wore—a knitted wool topper—but this one was black and lacked the decorative pom-pom.

  “T
hen why don’t you answer to me when I speak?”

  Slocum sank the axe into the chopping block and faced the man. Rat-face’s smirk slumped a mite, and he swallowed back what Slocum was sure was a knot of regret big as a peach pit and going down mighty tough. And he knew why.

  Without feeling boastful of it, Slocum knew he appeared a formidable figure to some men. In addition to his superlative skill with a gun, and being better than fair with a knife, he was also deadly when he had to be with his bare knuckles. He had been able to rely on all these skills in dodgy situations over the years. Indeed, he had always had a somewhat imposing size, at well above six feet, and with nary a wasted pound of fat on him. He was muscle and bone, wide of shoulder, and looked as if he’d been chiseled from granite.

  “Let’s get this straight,” said Slocum, slipping his own wool shirt back on over his muscle-tight longhandle shirt. “You are trying to tell me when and to whom I should speak. Now is that right? Can you possibly be telling me such a thing?”

  “Sure he is.” And along from out behind the log pile came another rough-looking character. This one was a fleshy-faced man, dressed enough like the other man that most anyone could tell they were loggers.

  He looked to be a little taller, maybe a little wider at the shoulder and heavier in the hand. But they both shared that desperate look, as if they felt the world owed them something and they’d decided to take everything they could in return. Even if it was nailed down.

  The second man’s appearance swelled the first man’s chest enough that he regained some of his smirk and nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. And—”

  “And what, big boy?” said Slocum, rolling up his cuffs.

  “Uh, um . . .”

  The second man shifted a quid of chaw to his other cheek. “He said that you guessed right. Now tell the man who you are and what you been up to, what you aim to get up to.”

  “Why should I?” said Slocum, his neck muscles flexing with each biting pulse in his jaw. Then the two men advanced on him and a thought occurred to him at the same time. And he smiled. “Oh,” he said, steadying himself. “All right, then.”

  The two men strode up fast, the burlier one in the lead, Rat-face coming in close behind. Slocum could see their clenched fists, guessed that the lead man was an experienced brawler, judging from the scar tissue veining his homely face and the knobbed knuckles on his broad hands.

  The lead man came in quick, almost quicker than Slocum expected. Almost. As Slocum let the man take the first swing, a round-houser sloppily thrown by someone who assumed he was going to land a hard hit, Slocum sidestepped. “I’ll tell you what I’m about to get up to, since you insist.”

  He pivoted on his left leg, snaked his muscled torso outward, then back in just after the lead man followed his own poorly thrown punch. Instead of driving a hard fist into the retreating side of the man’s face, he let the fool’s own momentum work for him and drove the heel of his palm hard against the meat of the man’s shoulder. It wouldn’t render him immobile, but Slocum knew it would buy him time enough to get ready for Rat-face.

  The driven palm-to-the-shoulder did the trick and sent the buffoon sprawling face-first to the packed surface already covered with bark chunks, boot grime, churned muck, and sopping, slushy snow. The combination greased the man’s sprawl and sent him skidding a good six feet before he flopped and grunted to regain his feet.

  In the meantime, Rat-face had surprised Slocum—and probably himself—by howling like a schoolgirl and launching himself straight at the brawny newcomer. He made the mistake of lowering his head and making a bull run straight at Slocum. He must have forgotten what a weak man he was, for his head did indeed connect with Slocum’s midsection, but as it was a plank of ribbed muscle, Rat-face’s neck bent and folded under himself. He curled up like a stunned kitten, a ball of wool and quivering limbs at Slocum’s feet.

  His heaving chest and a strangling whimper told Slocum the man was at least alive, if not neck-broke. He toed the man onto his back and let him gasp, face up.

  The lead man stood some feet away, hands on knees, heaving, blood and grit smearing his homely features, muck pasted to his shirtfront. “What did you do to him?” The bloodied man nodded toward the wreck at Slocum’s feet.

  “I didn’t do a thing to him.” Slocum gestured downward. “He did all this himself.” He looked at the lead man. “Talented fella, isn’t he.”

  Slocum forgot how much vim and vigor the average logger had, and this one proved no exception. The man rose up from his bent position, a wide, bloody leer of raw rage stretched across his foul face, and he, too, ran full bore at Slocum. He wasn’t as ruggedly built as Frenchy, but the man had boldness and power, and he used them in a quick combination that drove Slocum backward, catching him before he could steel himself or, better yet, sidestep again.

  But as dumb as he looked, it seemed as if the lead man at least had the ability to learn from his mistakes. He anticipated that Slocum might sidestep his charge, and at the last second he altered his course, driving his left shoulder hard into Slocum’s side. The blow caught Slocum off guard and drove him backward, his left knee collapsing. He hit the wet churned ground hard, sending up a spray of slush.

  It took him but a moment to recover and wrap a meaty arm around the attacker’s stiff-muscled neck. He wrenched it tight, made to grab his wrist with his free hand, but the man had already begun to buck and twist out of his hold.

  Slocum balled his free hand’s fist and drove it down hard at the man’s face—not because it was the easiest or best course of action at that point, but because in the flash of a second, he’d seen the man lunging with his mouth, trying to bite Slocum’s encircling forearm.

  He would not abide a man who bit another man. That was child’s play, not proper fighting. His fist connected hard with the man’s cheek and nose, made a crunching, snapping sound as it hit. Slocum felt the nose smear sideways under his knuckle, and it felt good, considering the nonsense these jackals had doled out, and all without knowing him.

  The man continued to snap his stumpy teeth, squirm, and now gurgle on his own blood, but he didn’t stop his thrashing attack. He was frenzied, so Slocum gave him another hard drive to the face. This one landed above the man’s cheekbone. Slocum had had enough experience in the manly art of pugilism to know that his punch had delivered the ingredients of a black eye to the rascal. He’d wake up tomorrow with a throbbing blue, purple, and yellow shiner.

  That blow slowed the man’s writhing to a random but weakened struggle. Soon, and with a little more help from Slocum’s tightening arm, the man’s thrashing all but stopped.

  “I . . . gaaah!”

  “What?” said Slocum through clenched teeth.

  “I . . . giiiive!”

  “Damn right you do!” Slocum gave him a hard thrust and rolled the bloodied and bludgeoned mess of a man from atop him, then stood, smoothing the wet grime from him. He didn’t have too much more in the way of clean dry clothes in his war bag, but at least he knew where there was a hot stove.

  As if beckoned, Frenchy appeared, meaty hands on his hips, apron even more soiled than it had been less than an hour before when Slocum had left him to his meal prepping chores. “Mon Dieu! What has happened here?”

  “Ask those two,” said Slocum, nodding toward the flopped, heaving men on the ground.

  “But you bested the two of them?”

  “Yeah, not proud to say one of them got the drop on me, though.”

  “But this has not happened before!” Frenchy sidled up close to Slocum, spoke low. “They are, how you say, bad eggs. They are not from here, but they have the ears of some of the men of the Tamarack Camp. You see?”

  “No, I don’t really see, but I suspect I’ll get the lay of the land pretty soon.” Slocum slid off his wool shirt and shook it.

  “But you don’t understand, Slocum,” said Frenchy, glancing
at the two men, who were just beginning to groan loudly, almost in unison, and beginning to show signs they might stand within an hour or so.

  “Frenchy, pardon me for saying so, but they’re the ones who attacked me, right? So why are you so afraid? Can’t be you’re afraid of them, are you?”

  “I . . .” He looked again at the men. The skinny one fixed Frenchy with a hard stare while he gingerly rubbed his neck.

  “I must go, Slocum.” He turned to walk away, then swung back quickly and said, “Tread with care, you hear me? If not for your sake, then for the sake of Jigger, non?” Then he headed back toward the cook shack, cutting a wide circle around the two rogues. In a louder voice, over his shoulder, he said without looking back, “You had better shape up, Slocum, and get that firewood ready, or you will find yourself without a job, oui?”

  Well, thought Slocum, as the English girl said in Wonderland, this thing just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. He draped his wool shirt on the jutting butt end of a log, then slipped his gun belt and Colt Navy off another log end and strapped them on. He stepped around the chopping block, keeping it between him and the two moaning men. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with them, since according to Frenchy, they weren’t Tamarack men. So who were they? Once they came to, he decided he’d ask, knowing full well they’d not share a thing with him. As he set to splitting stove lengths again, he ruminated on what an odd situation it was that he’d willingly ridden into.

  Wouldn’t be the first time, he told himself. Nor the last, he guessed.

  4

  “There was a time when I would have kicked your ass, boy. You understand me? That time has long since come and gone, though.”

  That night in the dining hall, the man speaking eyed Slocum from beneath two bushy eyebrows that looked like a pair of haired-up caterpillars about to duke it out. The aging logger set down his tin coffee cup and smiled. “But I reckon I’ll let you live today.”