Slocum and the Big Timber Belles Page 4

  “We’ll go with you,” Slocum said.

  “You and Donnie, you mean?”

  “And me,” Velva said. “And, you know, Albert and I have a stable. You can use my horses. I want to change out of these widow’s weeds anyway.”

  “Well, shit fire,” Jenner said. “Let’s get a-goin’ then. That makes my job a whole hell of a lot easier.”

  He grabbed his hat off a wooden hat rack and took a Winchester and a box of cartridges from a drawer at the bottom of the cabinet.

  Jenner stuck his rifle in its boot, put the box of cartridges in his saddlebag, and mounted the mottled bobtailed gray.

  “Our horses are at the Big Timber,” Slocum said.

  “I’ll ride old Mousey here so’s we can leave from there.”

  “You don’t lock your office?” Slocum asked.

  “Nobody’s in the jail and ain’t nobody wants in that I know of. We got a pretty quiet town here. At least until now.”

  They walked back to the hotel and mounted up.

  “We passed close to my house when we rode into town, when we crossed Spring Creek,” Velva told Slocum. “I’ll show you the stable. You can take what horses we’ll need while I change clothes.”

  “I didn’t see your house,” Slocum said.

  “You will,” she said, and it seemed to Slocum that she meant more than her words indicated, as if there was a promise in her statement.

  He tried to remember where they had crossed the Boulder and if he had seen any signs of habitation nearby. But the country here was still new and strange to him, and he had seen no sign of a house in that rugged place above Big Timber.

  They rode up Main Street toward Spring Creek, and passed the last homely little frame house made of crude, whipsawed lumber and then they were on rocky terrain. The road paralleled the Boulder River, but Slocum didn’t know how far it went. He figured it probably stretched way up in the timber, the big timber from whence the town drew its name.

  “Did you know the two women who were killed?” Slocum asked Jenner as they rode toward Spring Creek.

  “Rosie Coombs was a widder woman who made fried pies for the hotels here,” Jenner said. “She went to Billings to buy apples and flour. She did that once a month. Camille Gilbert never did marry. She had a young man she was supposed to marry, but he went off to war and was killed at Manassas Junction.”

  “That’s where my father was killed,” Slocum said. “Seems a long time ago. He was from Georgia, like me.”

  “Camille Gilbert was my auntie,” Jenner said. “She lived with me. I got a two-story place down near the Yellowstone. Auntie Camille lived in an upstairs room. I’m goin’ to miss her.”

  “You might not recognize her, Dave.”

  “Oh, I’ll recognize her all right. I might not be able to see her real good, though.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I ’spect I’ll be cryin’ pretty hard. I loved that dear woman. My mother’s sister, God rest their souls.”

  “I’m sorry I was the bearer of such bad news, Dave,” Slocum said.

  “I’d like to get my hands on the bastards who raped them women and killed them. But there’s just me wearin’ a badge in this town, and most of the able-bodied men are dumb as a sack full of sash weights.”

  “I’d like to catch them, too, Sheriff,” Slocum said. “If you need an extra hand . . .”

  “What I need is an extra hand and an extra gun,” Jenner said.

  He looked over at Slocum. Looked him up and down.

  “Looks like you’d do just fine,” he said. “I could use some help.”

  “You got it,” Slocum said.

  They rounded a bend in the road then turned off to the right on what appeared to be a tree-lined lane. The trees were aspen with bright white trunks that were scarred by dark patches. In the distance, Slocum saw the outline of a large home, surrounded by a grassy sward.

  His horse neighed and bobbed its head up and down.

  “Ferro smells your horses, I reckon,” he said to Velva.

  “You and Ferro are both welcome,” she said, and her voice melted something inside him. He felt a tug at his heart and, when he looked at her regal face, a tug somewhere else, somewhere deep in his loins.

  7

  Velva led the party to the rear of the large, three-story house that sprawled over a quarter acre of land. Slocum was surprised at the size of the livery stable, and the enclosed corral where horses drank at water troughs and ate from grain bins. There were twenty-four stalls inside the large stable.

  “The tall sorrel gelding with four white stockings and a star blaze is my horse,” Velva said. “My saddle’s the first one you see in the tack room. I won’t be long.”

  “I’ll saddle your horse for you,” Slocum said.

  “That would be very nice of you,” she said as she swung out of the saddle, as graceful as any woman Slocum had ever seen. When she rode, she seemed part of the horse. The tall gelding that was hers was a beautiful animal, a russet horse that stood at least sixteen hands high.

  “Let’s get bridles and ropes, Donnie,” Jenner said. “How many horses do we need, Slocum?”

  “Four for the stage and there are two wagons that’ll need a horse each.”

  “All right, six horses,” Jenner said. He and Donnie followed Slocum to the tack room. Slocum picked up Velva’s saddle and blanket from a sawhorse. A bridle hung from the saddle horn. Like the saddle, it had silver fittings. Jenner started handing Donnie bridles that were hanging on wooden pegs on the back wall of the tack room. He found a coiled manila rope that was fifty feet long and grabbed that.

  By the time Slocum had saddled the roan gelding and bridled six horses, Velva emerged from the back door of the house. She was wearing tight-fitting riding pants and a dark blue blouse that fit just as tight. She wore a flat-crowned Spanish hat with leather thongs that looped down beneath her chin. The band around the crown had a geometric design in red, blue, and yellow. She walked to Donnie’s horse and pulled his bedroll off the saddle, removing her sawed-off shotgun. She carried a small black bag slung over her shoulders. It rattled when she walked.

  “Extra shot shells,” she said as she tied the shotgun behind the cantle of her saddle.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Slocum said.

  “No, but you were looking and listening to the rattle of brass in my bag.”

  “You’re hard to miss,” he said.

  She stood close to him and he smelled the scent of fresh perfume she had dabbed behind her ears and on her wrists. His nose crinkled.

  “I see you have a sense of smell, too, John,” she said, her voice as mellifluous as a harp’s delicate arpeggios.

  “You smell pretty good, lady,” he said.

  Her face took on a glow at the compliment.

  “We ready?” Jenner said. “The horses are hooked up. Donnie, you think you can hold on to that rope until we get to the massacre site?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  They set out, back down the road, down Main Street to the Bozeman–Billings Road. Sheep grazed along the Yellow-stone and the lady rancher waved to them as they passed, east of town. On the way to the ambush site, antelope gamboled on the prairie and the blue sky seemed to stretch forever. Few words were spoken.

  “There’s the sign they put up,” Slocum said to Jenner. “I knocked it down.”

  “And I see the wagons and the stagecoach,” the sheriff said. “Godamighty, Will should have knowed better.”

  “Maybe there was somebody standing by that sign with a rifle who waved him up that logging road,” Slocum said.

  “Well, I’m damned sure goin’ to check it out. Tracks tell a tale, you know.”

  Slocum nodded.

  He helped Donnie put the bodies of Rosie and Camille into one of the wagons and covered them with a blanket. Then they hitched the horses to the wagons while Jenner and Velva looked at the two dead women. Jenner picked up two fifty-pound flour sacks and stacked them close to the tailgat
e. Tears flooded his face as he looked at his dead and violated aunt and her friend. Slocum and Jenner put the bodies of Will Purdy and his shotgunner in the coach.

  “Jed Loomis was ridin’ shotgun,” Jenner said. “He wasn’t more than twenty or twenty-one. His ma and pa will take it hard.”

  “These men were slaughtered. Shotgun was still under the top seat,” Slocum said.

  Jenner and Slocum loaded the bodies of several other men into the stagecoach with Will Purdy and Jed Loomis, then hitched four horses to the stage. Slocum closed the boot and turned the rig around, drove it onto the main road.

  “Velva, can you drive this coach back to Big Timber?” Jenner asked.

  “Yes, but why?”

  “Me and Slocum are going to study these tracks, see if we can figure out where them Injuns and white renegades come from, how long they waited here, and so on.”

  “Where do you want it?” she asked.

  “Park it in front of the Big Timber. Slocum and I’ll meet you there in the bar.”

  “I might be in the dining room by then,” she said.

  “Don’t let nobody touch nothin’ till I get back,” Jenner said.

  “All right,” she said. She dismounted and tied her horse up to the back of the coach and climbed into the seat. She released the brake and smiled at Slocum. He smiled back and waved a hand at her.

  She snapped the reins and four horses pulled out.

  “Donnie, you drive one of the wagons back, right behind Mrs. Granvillle. We’ll bring the wagon with the women in it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Donnie said. He tied his horse to the back of the wagon and climbed into the seat. That wagon was filled with lumber, nail kegs, and shingles. It belonged to the lumberyard, but nothing was written on the side panel. There was just a painted outline of a house on both side panels. But everyone in town knew that belonged to the Big Lion Lumber Company, a mile or so upriver on the Yellowstone.

  “John, let’s see what these tracks tell us,” Jenner said as he climbed down from the wagon with the dead ladies lying blanketed in the bed.

  The two men walked over to the knocked-down sign and studied the ground around it.

  “Yep, just as I figured,” Jenner said. “Two men stood their horses here. When they saw the stage comin’, they probably told Purdy the road was out and he’d have to detour up that woodcutters’ road.”

  “Would Purdy have known it was a trap?” Slocum asked.

  “I don’t know. Yet. Let’s see where the bushwhackers waited for the stage and those wagons.”

  They walked up the road and sorted out all the tracks of the horses ridden by the bushwhackers. They traced their paths up a slight ridge and into the timber. In a small clearing, they saw where the Indians and white renegades had waited.

  “But where did they come from?” Jenner asked.

  Slocum walked out of the clearing and saw tracks leading down from the heavy timber.

  “They came down this way,” Slocum told Jenner. “And they rode back the same way. What’s up there? Donnie and I were hunting just north of where those tracks might lead.”

  Jenner looked up through the pines and spruce, the fir trees and junipers.

  “Loggers had cabins up thataway, if I remember right. “But they were built by prospectors long before they started cuttin’ down timber.”

  “How many cabins?” Slocum asked.

  “I don’t know. Five or six maybe. I ain’t been up there in four or five years. Lumberjacks had a big fight one night and had a little shootout. One of the loggers was killed and I had to investigate. Put a damper on the loggers, though. I don’t think they ever came back to this part of the country. Now that I think of it, I think they moved up to the timber above Paradise Valley, near Livingston. It was pretty ugly.”

  “You might want to go up there again, see if there aren’t Crow and white men living in those cabins.”

  “If you’ll go with me, I’m game. Wouldn’t want to go up there by myself.”

  “Just say the word,” Slocum said.

  The two men walked back down and tied their horses to the last wagon.

  “You don’t have to go up there with me, Slocum,” Jenner said. “I mean I can’t pay you nothin’. I might could deputize you.”

  “I’m a curious man, Dave,” Slocum said. “I don’t much like a mystery.”

  “You ought to think about becomin’ a lawman.”

  The two climbed up into the seat of the buckboard. Slocum untied the reins and loosened the brake.

  “I couldn’t stay in one place long enough to watch over a town,” Slocum said. “I got itchy feet.”

  Jenner laughed.

  Slocum rattled the reins and yelled at the horse. It stepped out, bobbing and shaking its head and mane with a soft whicker.

  On the way back, Slocum told Jenner about Jasmine’s ex-husband, Bruno Valenti.

  “Velva heard some of the raiders use his name.”

  “Was he out to kill his ex-wife?”

  “Man couldn’t have her. Maybe he didn’t want anyone else to have her.”

  “Yeah,” Jenner said. “That makes sense.”

  “It also means that Jasmine and maybe her daughter, Lydia, might still be in danger. A man like that won’t give up too easy.”

  “He sounds like he could be a bad one.”

  “You ever heard of him before?” Slocum asked.

  Jenner shook his head.

  “I’ll check through the dodgers in my office, but offhand, his name don’t ring a bell.”

  “I’m wondering how he got together a gang and enlisted the help of Crow to pull off this massacre.”

  “I have heard of some Crow off the reservation down in Wyoming. Mostly, they’ve been rustlin’ sheep and cattle. Not around here, but over toward Billings and along the border.”

  “Well, I counted ten horses in that bunch that jumped the wagons,” Slocum said.

  “I counted eleven.”

  “Did you separate shod from unshod?” Slocum asked.

  “No, I reckon I didn’t.”

  “Well, six of those horses were unshod. That means Valenti has four or five men. You might need a posse to go after them if they’re holed up in those loggers’ cabins.”

  “I doubt if I could raise a posse in Big Timber. Livingston, maybe. Have to pay ’em, though, and there ain’t nothin’ in the kitty.”

  “Then you and I will have to scout that little settlement and be real careful we don’t stir up a hornet’s nest.”

  “Well, the cabins are on a wide ridge but there’s timber all around them. Some bluffs, too, I think. We’d have to be real careful getting’ up there without them knowin’ we were there.”

  “They’ll probably have Crow keepin’ a lookout,” Slocum said. “Keen eyes and keen ears.”

  “Yeah.”

  They spoke little the rest of the way to Big Timber. The blue sky was dotted with small cloud puffs out over the prairie, but behind the Absarokas, large thunderheads billowed up over the peaks. To the northwest, the Crazies were lit by sunshine angling off the Yellowstone, and they stretched over the land like a giant dinosaur, bristling with trees and rocks.

  “We’ll tie up at the Big Timber,” Jenner said as they rolled onto Main Street. “I got a lot to do.”

  “I’m staying there. Holler if you need me,” Slocum said.

  “I imagine you might not spend tonight there, John.”

  “Why do you say that, Dave?”

  “I saw the way Mrs. Granville was lookin’ at you. When you wasn’t lookin’.”

  “She’s a handsome woman,” Slocum said, “but she’s a fresh widow. She’s probably still grieving for her husband.”

  “Albert? Not a chance. There was no love lost between them two.”

  “They lived together.”

  “Separate bedrooms. Albert had him a gal in town and spent most of his time with her.”

  “I didn’t know,” Slocum said.

  “Small towns, John,�
�� Jenner said. “They’re full of secrets.”

  Slocum drew in a breath and let it out slow. He pulled up to the hotel, set the brake, and thought about Velva Granville. There was more to that woman than met the eye, he decided.

  But he would play it by ear. He wasn’t a chaser. Women came to him. He never went after them. He wondered if Velva was a hunter of wild game. He wondered if she was a huntress of men, as well.

  He climbed down from the wagon and untied Ferro, wrapped his reins around the hitchrail.

  He glanced in the stagecoach and saw that it was empty. Then he looked in the bed of the wagon. The two dead women were gone.

  At least, he thought, Big Timber must have an undertaker.

  And perhaps many secrets.

  8

  The lobby was crowded with townspeople when Slocum and Jenner entered the hotel. The crowd buzzed with questions and some of the women were crying, dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs. An old man rushed up to Jenner and began to spray him with rapid-fire questions. Donnie was surrounded by a small group of men and women who wanted to know all the gory details of the ambush.

  Jasmine and Lydia sat on a sofa, tuning up their guitars. Leroy Fenster was telling people about the Lorraines. Ray Mallory stood in front of the counter, watching with interest. Behind him, at the check-in desk, the clerk stared at the assemblage with wide eyes.

  Some of the townspeople, when they saw Sheriff Jenner, left their groups and surrounded him. They hurled questions at him so fast that he held up his hands in surrender.

  He looked at Slocum with the appeal of a drowning man in his eyes. Slocum smiled and walked toward the entrance to the saloon and dining room. He slipped through the people almost without notice and then saw Velva beckoning to him from the foyer that led to the other sections of the hotel.

  “It’s a madhouse in there,” she said. “You’re lucky you escaped.”

  “Jenner’s getting all the questions,” he said.

  “Trouble is, he probably doesn’t have any answers.”

  Slocum laughed.

  Velva led him to a door midway down the hall to the dining room. These were actually batwing doors that swung both ways. They entered a saloon that was dimly lit with lamps inset into plastered walls and by a candelabra that hung high in the center of the room. She led him to a table for two in a dark corner and beckoned to a barmaid who stood at the end of the bar, talking to the bartender.