Slocum and the Town Killers Read online

  “How many of them did you kill, Marshal?”

  “Enough. Not many. They lit out when we started shooting at them. If it hadn’t been for two women what came in with the tale of what happened in Cherokee Springs, I wouldn’t have had anybody ready to fight.”

  “Two women?”

  “Right good-lookin’ women, they were.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Don’t know. Things are still a mite confused around here.”

  “Where are the dead outlaws? You have any objection if I look them over?”

  “You lookin’ to rob the corpses? I don’t hold with that, mister.”

  Slocum said nothing until the marshal jerked his gun around and pointed to a pile of about half a dozen bodies. “That’s them, the ones we shot out of the saddle.”

  “Why’d the rest up and leave before everyone was dead?” Slocum asked.

  The marshal shook his head, then turned to answer questions from two men more intent on putting out the fires that threatened their town. The lawman ignored Slocum now, leaving him to his searching of the bodies.

  After ten minutes of turning out pockets and hunting for anything that might identify the outlaws, Slocum gave up. They all had money on them—upward of a hundred dollars between five men. Slocum left it in plain sight for the marshal to find. The money would go a ways toward rebuilding Charity. Not far maybe, but it seemed fitting that the men responsible for such wanton death and destruction would have their money used to remedy their crimes.

  The one thing Slocum hunted for and did not find was Jerome Nickson’s West Point ring. It had been too much to expect that one of the dead outlaws carried it in a pocket, or even wore it on a finger. From the number of hoofprints, Slocum reckoned there might be thirty or forty killers left in the small army rampaging across Oklahoma. One of them must have Nickson’s ring. But even when—if—Slocum found the ring, he still had to track down Nickson’s son.

  He abandoned his search and left the already decaying pile of bodies so that he could wash his face and hands in a rain barrel, only to find it empty. The water had been used to put out a fire. Slocum used his bandanna to wipe away what gore he had accumulated, and then walked back into the middle of the main street. Charity was coming alive, like a prairie-dog town after the coyote had left. Heads popped out of windows and doors swung open until most of the survivors had gathered to listen to the marshal.

  “Folks, I ain’t the best talker in the world,” the marshal said. “I’m about all that’s left in the way of a town official. Mayor Gladstone’s dead and so’s all the town council.”

  “You’re not takin’ over, are you, Lester Vannover? I want a vote. We elect our leaders in Charity!”

  “Shut up, Ferguson,” said a man in the crowd behind the speaker. “You’re still all twisted up ’cuz you weren’t elected mayor.”

  “I wish he had been,” said a woman near Slocum. “Maybe then he’d be dead.” Her eyes went wide when she realized what she had said. She looked around at the destruction and the bodies and went pale. The man with her steadied her, and then helped her to sit on the edge of an unburned boardwalk.

  Slocum had seen reactions like this before. The survivors were glad others had died, and then felt guilty for it. Worse, some might feel they should have died instead of those that had. Guilt might wreck their lives or turn them into something they had never been before. Some men became stone killers and others became preachers. Slocum had no desire to stay in Charity long enough to see how this tragedy would affect those remaining.

  “I’m ’bout all you got till you have an election,” Marshal Vannover went on. “Hurry up and git a new mayor. I got my job to do, and I want to track the sons of bitches who did this. They got to be brought to justice.”

  “They killed damn near half of us, Marshal,” protested another man. Ferguson had slunk off, tail between his legs. Slocum knew men like Ferguson would not stop kicking up dust for long, though.

  “Don’t matter. They got to be arrested, tried, and hanged for what they’ve done here today,” Lester Vannover said. Slocum heard more in the marshal’s words. The lawman was pissed that he had not taken the warning given by the two women more seriously. He blamed himself for not stopping the onslaught, and maybe thought he was responsible for not only the deaths but the burning of his hometown. Slocum saw that as a dangerous way to think. The men who thought nothing of destroying entire towns so thoroughly would not be stopped by a jerkwater town marshal, no matter how big his posse.

  “I want a posse to trail them. Where’d Ferguson git off to? He’s a good tracker.”

  A murmur passed through the crowd. Ferguson had hightailed it. Slocum looked around and saw a few men volunteering, but not enough to matter. If they found the owlhoots responsible for hurrahing the town, they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it—except die like their neighbors.

  “You! You, mister,” the marshal said, pushing through the crowd. Slocum froze. He knew the marshal had singled him out. “You got a dog in this fight, don’t you?”

  Slocum cursed Nickson and the promise made to the dying man.

  “I’m looking to get back some stolen property,” he said.

  “Then you can ride with us. You’re hereby deputized.”

  “Don’t like that much,” Slocum said. More often than not, he found himself on the wrong side of the law. He wasn’t above a little bank robbing or holding up stage-coaches if the need arose. Mostly, he preferred a legitimate game of poker or faro or punching cattle. He was good at that. He had even worked as a miner, but being a deputy struck him as a whale of a lot more dangerous. Especially when he knew the type of men the marshal was likely to find at the end of the trail.

  “Then you ride along without a badge. Don’t have enough to go around anyway,” Vannover said, a small smile curling his lips. Then he sobered. “You can track. You have the look of a man who’s spent his life either running or running after.”

  “Done both,” Slocum admitted.

  “You do a good job of going after ’em and I won’t pry into what you’ve been runnin’ from,” the marshal promised.

  Slocum reluctantly agreed. Then he asked, “What about those two women who warned you? Are they anywhere to be seen?”

  “Their buggy’s still in front of the café, but their luggage’s gone. I would like to ask them some more questions about this here Clayton Magee. And Kimbrell. I got a wanted poster on him. That’s what made me take what they said the least bit seriously.”

  The marshal fumbled in his shirt pocket, pulled out a blood-soaked wanted poster, and handed it to Slocum. “You know him?”

  Slocum shook his head. Likenesses on wanted posters were seldom good, and this was probably no exception. He scanned the crimes Albert Kimbrell was wanted for, and tried to remember if he’d ever crossed paths with him. The West was wide open, and the patch around Slocum was always small. He had never set eyes on Albert Kimbrell before.

  “The women were running from the leader of this gang? Clayton Magee?”

  “One looked old enough to be the young one’s mother, so I took ’em to be his wife and daughter. They mentioned how he was a major in the Union army. Don’t reckon you ever served under him then?”

  Slocum laughed ruefully. There was no chance in hell he had served under a Federal officer.

  “I need to tend to my horse,” Slocum said. “When are you setting out on their trail?”

  “As soon as I can,” the marshal said. “Poke ’round in the general store. If there’s anything you can use, take it. No need to square it with the owner. He’s dead.” Marshal Vannover’s voice took on a hollow quality. He started to say something more, then turned and went to the small knot of men who had volunteered for the posse. Slocum gave them a quick once-over, dismissing the lot as sodbusters and clerks. Not a one of them would be worth his weight in shit if they got into a fight with Magee and Kimbrell and the brutal killers riding behind them.

  Slocum wondered
about the women who had warned Vannover. Wife and daughter of Clayton Magee. On the run and fearful of what the man could do. Slocum wanted to talk to them. While the marshal was whipping his posse into shape, Slocum explored the area in and behind the café, eventually finding small footprints. It was the work of a few minutes to figure what had happened. The women had been eating in the café when the shooting started. The waiter was killed and the two women grabbed their bags from the buggy and ran out back. By then, stray horses were running everywhere, and they took a pair of them.

  Slocum wanted to track them down, but the marshal had other ideas. Once they were on the trail of the outlaws, it might not be difficult for Slocum to slip away and find the two Magee women to get real answers. Slocum doubted it was possible, but he might get some useful information about Nickson’s ring from them, too. More likely, they had already been on the run when whoever took the ring by severing Nickson’s finger committed the deed.

  As Slocum went back through the café, he stopped and took a deep whiff. The same scent of roses that he had scented back in the Cherokee Springs church lingered here. Slocum frowned when it occurred to him that the odor had not been present when he had first entered the café.

  He stepped out into the street and looked around. He saw nothing other than what he expected. The marshal waved at Slocum to join the group of unhappy-looking men. Slocum saw how they fingered their rifles and shifted uneasily. Riding with them might be worse than trying to tackle Magee’s renegade army all by himself. At least he would be certain where the bullets would come from. These men were so on edge, they would shoot at their own shadows.

  “We got ourselves one of the finest trackers in all of Indian Territory,” Vannover said by way of introducing Slocum to the others. They gave him a quick look and then retreated to their own worries.

  “What you expecting to do, Marshal?” Slocum asked. “We can’t arrest forty or more men, not when we’re only a handful.” He left unsaid that Magee’s men would likely murder anyone they saw on their trail. There would be no palaver before lead flew.

  “Find them. We’ll track them and see what we might tell the cavalry ’bout them,” the marshal said. “If we’re lucky, we might catch a couple of them off scoutin’. We can find out more ’bout them that way.”

  Slocum’s mind rested a little easier hearing that the marshal hadn’t any highfalutin notions of what to do if they caught up with the rampaging army of killers. He was still worried that the marshal would try to be a hero to avenge what had been done to his town. The marshal’s speech earlier had warned Slocum he dealt with a man whose ideals might get in the way of his common sense.

  “There’s not a whole lot of guesswork needed to know they rode that way,” Slocum said, pointing toward the west end of town. The fires had begun on the easternmost part of Charity, and had been snuffed out before a quarter of the town had been consumed. However, men and women lay dead all the way out past the city limits to the west. Magee’s gang had left town shooting as they went. “What scared them off?”

  “Can’t rightly say,” Vannover admitted, “but if I was a gamblin’ man, I’d say Magee saw his wife or daughter and lit out after them.”

  Slocum did not contradict the marshal, but he knew that wasn’t true. Mother and daughter had gone due south and Magee’s small army had gone west. Whatever had sparked the retreat on Magee’s part was something other than the two women.

  “I want to find out fer myself,” the marshal said.

  Slocum looked hard at the man. Somehow, Lester Vannover had read his mind. Slocum was a good enough poker player not to let his thoughts run all over his face. The marshal was more than he appeared, but that didn’t make him any less a fool wanting to tangle with a force ten times the size of his posse.

  Slocum left the marshal and the nervous posse members to fetch his horse. The paint had been ridden hard, but did not protest as Slocum climbed into the saddle. He patted the horse’s neck, then gently urged the animal forward to join the marshal and his deputies. Slocum took the lead, following the trail without any effort. He thought hard as he rode on the trail of Magee, Kimbrell, and the others.

  He thought, but found no answers. Nickson’s ring had to be on the finger of an outlaw, but winnowing them down to find the thief would take more than a few men in a posse. Slocum couldn’t keep his promise by brute force; he had to find a way to sneak up and steal the ring back so he could deliver it to Patrick Nickson, wherever he might be.

  “Stop!” Slocum barked. He held up his hand, then pointed along the road toward a grove of trees.

  “What is it, Slocum?” The marshal was keyed up and his hands shook as he clung to his reins. “You spot ’em?”

  “Take a deep breath,” Slocum said. The marshal did, then shook his head.

  “Don’t smell nuthin’.”

  “It’s your clothing,” Slocum decided. “You still reek of smoke from having your town burned down around your ears. That masks the campfires.” He watched the horizon carefully for even a single wisp of rising smoke, but saw nothing. Only his keen nose warned that the outlaws were ahead.

  “What do you think we oughta do, Marshal?” asked one of the nervous posse. “If we found ’em, we ought to fetch the army to arrest ’em. Right?”

  “Right,” Slocum said. “Send them back, Marshal.”

  “But—” The marshal bowed his head in defeat, then gave the order. The men who had ridden from Charity all turned tail and galloped away into the twilight. Slocum hoped the pounding hooves wouldn’t alert Magee’s sentries. He put his index finger against his lips to keep the marshal silent, then waited until the dusk turned into inky darkness. The stars gave the only illumination, but the moon would rise within the hour. Slocum had to reconnoiter and get out of the outlaw camp before that. Otherwise, the bright lunar light of a waxing three-quarter moon would give him away.

  Slocum dismounted and made sure his Colt Navy slipped easily from his holster. He looked at the marshal and said, “Time to earn my pay.”

  “Deputies in a posse don’t get paid,” the marshal said.

  “I know.” Slocum turned and set out to scout Magee’s encampment. At least he didn’t have to worry about who should get his salary if he didn’t come back.

  5

  “Go on, kill the bastard!”

  The cry went up around the circle of men as the two faced off. Clayton Magee stood back and watched dispassionately. To maintain discipline, sometimes a good leader had to let the men blow off steam. Bare-knuckles fighting was unlikely to see either man kill the other, but the major would have still let them have their pointless battle even if they had armed themselves with knives or guns. One look at his second in command would have told him that would be the right thing. Albert Kimbrell was bloodthirsty, but the best lieutenant a leader could have in the field. He kept the men fed, with munitions and weapons—and in line.

  Magee wanted to keep Kimbrell happy, and seeing one man fight another made Kimbrell the happiest.

  “Go on, you stinkin’ cowards. Fight!”

  The cheer went up around the circle until Magee looked away. He had to keep the men’s spirits up—along with their courage. Without those traits, he would never find his wife and daughter. Magee sucked in a chestful of air and held it until the buttons on his uniform jacket almost popped free. Someone had taken his wife and daughter and moved them constantly to stay just ahead of his rescuing them. That was the only explanation for not finding them right away.

  Whoever it was that had kidnapped Louisa and Sarah Beth had to be powerful. To counter such mightiness, he needed his small army. Magee let out his breath slowly. They were killers, each and every one over there watching one man bludgeon another with his bare hands, but they were his killers. They were loyal to him and would fight without asking needless questions.

  “Mix it up. Fight!” Kimbrell stepped forward and grabbed each of the men by the collar and shook them like a terrier would a rat. He shoved them forward unt
il their heads banged before he released them. They took the hint and squared off.

  One took a wild swing that would have felled an elephant. He missed by a country mile, but his opponent’s short, sharp jab to the ribs connected. The man staggered back, stunned by the blow. He recovered fast and the fight was on. One fought wildly, and the other took his licks while waiting for better-chosen jabs and hooks.

  “To the death,” Kimbrell called out. “I want to see some real blood spilled.”

  “Albert, a word with you,” the major said.

  “But the fight. I don’t want to miss it.”

  “Albert.” When Magee spoke now, cold steel edged his tone. This brought Kimbrell around, the wildness in his eyes dying.

  “What, Major?”

  “We need the men. We need them all. It’s all right to goad them to fight harder. It is another matter to urge them to kill one another. No one in my company is the enemy.”

  “‘Whoever stole away my family is your enemy,’” Kimbrell said, repeating words he had learned by rote.

  “He’s our enemy, Albert. Never forget that.”

  “We got a new town to hurrah?”

  “I was sure I saw Louisa and Sarah Beth,” Magee said. “I had hoped they’d escaped their captor, but I was wrong.” He heaved a deep sigh. He had been so sure he had seen one of them leaving Charity that he had called off the attack to go after them, but he had not found them or the one responsible for kidnapping them. “This is new territory for me. They would be taken to the next town, whatever it is. We must catch up with their captors and deal with them.”

  “In the next city,” Kimbrell said, grinning like a hungry wolf spying a lamb.

  “I hope so. I miss them,” Magee said. Then he stood straighter. It did not pay to show any sentimentality in front of subordinates, even ones as loyal as Kimbrell.

  He turned and watched intently as the two men continued their bout of fisticuffs. Both were bloody from the fight and staggered even when not hit, but the cries from those watching spurred them on to swing weakly. Kimbrell knew neither of the men would pull their weight in the next day or two, but this was for the morale of the entire unit. Magee jerked around at the sound of an approaching rider.