Slocum and the Bixby Battle Read online

  Slocum got out his lariat and pushed his horse into the river after the hog. He made a good loop and caught the front quarters and one front leg of the surging boar. Slocum dallied his rope on the horn and sent his pony for the bank. On the land, the angry, wild boar charged Slocum and his boogered horse until at last Slocum got him tied to a thorny tree and rode over to see how Ivan was doing.

  Soaked to the skin, Ivan was shaking so hard his teeth were rattling, but he was trying to build a fire. Slocum took over the job and had things going in a few minutes. They were over an hour’s hard ride from the cabin and Slocum worried he might die of exposure in that long of a ride. But the sharp wind and low temperatures never let him warm up. His wet clothes froze. He finally decided it would be best for them to ride for Rose’s.

  He raced the horses home and delivered the shivering Ivan to her. She stripped off his ice-stiff clothing and forced him on the bed, then she stripped and told Slocum to cover them up with all the blankets in the cabin as she huddled her naked body against his chilled-to-the-bone form.

  Ivan never warmed, until he took pneumonia two days later. He shivered under all the quilts they could pile on him, plus Rose’s fierce body heat. Then the fever came and replaced the chills. Six days after he dove in the Grand River to save Bull, Ivan went to his reward, delirious and congested to death.

  “I’ll make him a grave,” Slocum said.

  Rose held her hand out to stop him. “Ain’t you wanted by them federal marshals in Van Buren?” she asked. “Now poor Ivan, he’s dead. But he looks enough like you I say take him down there and get the reward on Slocum. They’s ain’t got no pitchers of you, have they?”

  “No, but it sounds awful mean, and cruel.”

  “That boy woulda give his life for you like he did that dog. He won’t’ve cared no way where they buried him.”

  So Slocum rode the hard, frozen military road to Van Buren, Arkansas, and told the desk man in Judge Story’s courthouse that he had a wanted man’s body outside belly-down over a horse.

  “Who is it?” the fat-faced man asked, not looking up from the papers he was stamping.

  “John Slocum.”

  “What’s he wanted for?”

  “Killing some federal man in Alabama.”

  “How you know you got him?”

  Slocum pulled off his mittens and dug out a wanted poster. It was worn on the creases, but he unfolded and smoothed it before him. The man raised his eyes up to look at it. “John . . . Slo-cum all right. How you know you got him?”

  “He told me his name ’fore he died.”

  “You shoot him?” the man asked, back at his stamping again and not looking up.

  “No, he died of pneumonia.”

  “I’ve got to be damn sure before I pay any federal reward.”

  “Here.” Slocum handed over the last two letters his mother had wrote him, before she died. “These was on him.”

  The man looked them over and then returned his gaze to Slocum. “Guess he was John Slocum, all right. What’s your name?”

  “Ivan Broom.”

  “Well, Mr. Broom, you’re forty dollars richer if that guy out there is John Slocum.”

  “It’s him all right.”

  “Take him to the undertaker down the street, get a receipt for John Slocum and come right back up here.”

  Slocum put his gloves back on. Damn cold had locked up the whole country. The Arkansas River was frozen thick enough they told him he could ride his horse across it and never fall through the ice.

  Slocum delivered the body to Weir, Weir and Naylor’s funeral home. The big man who worked there went out and shouldered Ivan’s body off the horse and carried it into the parlor by himself, with Slocum opening and closing doors for him. The blue-faced body was laid out on a marble slab in the back room. Slocum waited for the man to go back into the heated portion of the building. Their breath was making clouds of fog in the morgue.

  “Bet that outlaw will be glad to go to hell, cold as it is here,” the big man said, filling out the receipt at his desk.

  Slocum nodded in agreement.

  “John Slocum, huh? He was a killer?”

  “I guess. He said he shot a federal tax man in Alabama.”

  “Hmm,” Weir said. “Ought to give him a marble monument for doing that, huh?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “I do.” He signed off on the receipt and handed it to Slocum.

  The paper in his coat pocket, Slocum put on his gloves. “You know anyone needs a good horse?”

  Weir shook his head. “I don’t. Have to feed him till spring.”

  That might be a long ways off, too. Slocum left. The secretary at the court told him he could give him a warrant for the forty dollars, but it wouldn’t be paid until Congress made the next appropriation of money for the court.

  “What do I do?” Slocum asked, confused why the richer-than-hell U.S. government didn’t have the money to pay him.

  “There’s folks will discount it around town. Oh, you should get twenty-five for it.”

  “Twenty-five dollars? But the reward said forty.”

  “I told you, you’ll have to wait until Congress . . . Do I look like I run Congress? No. When they allocate the money, then your warrant will be worth forty dollars.”

  “When’re they going to advocate that money?” Besides anger over the possible wait, Slocum felt confused about why he wasn’t getting the total amount promised.

  “November—oh, probably March, or it may be before they recess in July, this ain’t no election year.”

  “All right.” Slocum surrendered. “Who discounts them?”

  “Mr. Dover at the First National Bank. Mark Dannier at the Van Buren Mercantile.”

  “Yes,” Slocum said and wanted to know what this clerk got out of the deal. The whole thing about not paying him the full cash amount looked fixed to him.

  “Find some more outlaws, dead or alive, bring them in, boy.”

  Slocum nodded that he’d heard him and went back out in the cold. The howling wind swept ice particles off the porch into his face. He left the hipshot horses at the rack and walked the half block to the bank. Inside the bank, Slocum waited his turn, seated on a wood bench, and when at last he was ushered into the banker’s office, he found a red-nosed man with gold wire frames who was willing to pay him $27.50 for his warrant.

  “Congress may not pay this till next summer. You understand I must be careful. You drive a hard bargain for a man so young.” He was overseeing Slocum writing his name on the back: Ivan Broom.

  “Would you like to deposit this money in my bank, Mr. Broom?” Red Nose asked.

  “No, sir, I’ve got bills to pay.”

  “I see. Here’s your money, sir.” He counted it out on the polished desktop and Slocum shoved it deep in his pockets.

  “Who buys horses?” he asked the man.

  He shook his head. “They’re hard to sell this time of year.”

  “Everything’s hard to sell around here,” Slocum said in disgust and left Van Buren.

  When Slocum finished his story, Amanda nodded and smiled at him. “Some story.” He drew up the team in the bright midday sun to let them drink from the stream. Brake set, he tied off the reins.

  “So you aren’t wanted any longer?” she asked.

  He paused, ready to get down. “Not by the federal marshals.”

  “Oh.”

  “There’s another story I’ll tell you later.”

  A shot rang out, and in an instant he reached for her, catching her by the waist, and swept her off the seat to put her down on the gravel. The far horse in her team reared when a second bullet thumped hard into him. The animal screamed and fell over in the harness as Slocum jerked the Winchester out and levered in a shell, trying to tell from what direction the shots were coming.

  “Stay down,” he warned her, desperately searching the thick cedars for a sight of the shooter.

  “Oh, god, they’ve shot Big Man.”r />
  “Stay down. He’s still out there.”

  Then the sound of hoofbeats racing away were all he could hear besides the wind rustling the live oak and swishing through the cedar boughs. It was a lonely place to ambush anyone on purpose. Couldn’t get a clear shot at them either for all the brush, so instead he shot one of their horses. Wilson, you bastard.

  “He ride off?”

  “I’m not sure. Stay on the ground.”

  “What will we do now?” she asked.

  “Hook Buck up,” he said.

  “He broke to harness?”

  “He will be by the time we get to your place.” He laid the rifle on the wagon floor.

  “Perhaps you’ll wish you’d never seen me,” she said in a small girl’s voice.

  “No, my dear. You’ve been the bright star in this matter since I met you.” He helped her up, still wary, but convinced that the shooter had run away.

  “I can’t see how,” she said and brushed the dirt from her dress tail.

  “You are,” he repeated. How was Buck going to take to harness? They’d know in a few minutes. He would need to get the bloody horse out of the harness and try it on Buck. That might be a real new deal.

  Bent over, he began to unbuckle and unharness the dead horse. Then he took the live one off the tongue and led him over to the shade to rest. She brought Buck over there for him. In places, Slocum strained to pull the rigging out from under the dead horse. Old Buck better like this new job. They were still a day and a half away from her ranch.

  At last the saddle horse was harnessed and both horses hooked to the wagon. Slocum clucked to the new team. Buck reared and then plunged forward. The steady horse on the inside didn’t let Buck’s foolishness spook him, and they rode off with Buck pulling the entire wagon load and the inside horse holding back enough to let him do all the work.

  Rafterville was a sleepy place, with a few stores and three cantinas. The storekeeper who came out the front door, scratching his belly through his soiled white apron, leaned on the porch post and told them, “Howdy.”

  “Anyone been through here in the last hour?” Slocum asked.

  “A rider going west.”

  “Know him?”

  The man shook his head. “Never seen him before in my life. Drifter, he looked like most of them.”

  “Someone shot one of the lady’s horses.” Slocum jumped down, then helped Amanda off the spring seat. “You got a livery here?”

  “Down there.” The man indicated with his thumb, then made a half bow for Amanda. “Ma’am, anything you need in my humble establishment, I’d be more than glad to find it for you. That is if I’ve got it in stock.”

  “While you’re doing that, I’ll go see about another horse,” Slocum said to her and clucked to the team.

  She nodded that she had heard him, then put on her best face for the merchant. “I do need a few things.”

  Slocum traded for a black horse that about matched Amanda’s other one. The livery man hadn’t seen anyone pass through. So with the new team in place, Slocum hitched Buck to the tailgate and drove back to the store.

  “Thank you, Mr. Canton,” she said and handed Slocum the poke of food and items she’d purchased to put in back. Slocum gave her a hand up.

  “Ma’am, I’m right put out that sorry outfit shot your good hoss.” Canton scratched his belly through his shirt. “In a case like that he needs to be strung up.”

  “He needs a lesson,” she agreed. “Good day, sir.”

  “Thanks again, ma’am.” He waved and Slocum drove off.

  “Well, I have coffee, some beans to boil, bacon, some flour, baking soda and lard, and can make some bread. His meat looked a little aged.”

  “Well, ma’am . . . ,” Slocum said in imitation of Canton’s bass voice, and they both laughed.

  She glanced back, then turned forward. “He was a character. We should be at Corral Springs by tomorrow.”

  “Can we make your place from there in a day?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “So we have one more night under the stars?”

  She hugged his arm. “I usually look forward to arriving home. This time I may not be so sure.”

  “Are there children?”

  “No, we never could have any of our own. But I’ll have to again think about the ranch and the people who work for me and the problems. I have been on a big absence from my business, and the things that usually worry me all the time have vaporized since I’ve been with you.” She put her forehead against him. “It has been a nice few days save for all the shooting.”

  He looked off at the hills ahead. “I can’t stay forever. Someday I’ll have to leave you—without warning.”

  “But I thought that you had all the wanted poster problems solved?”

  He clucked to the horses to keep them moving. “A few years after that, in Fort Scott, Kansas, a boy of eighteen tried to egg me into a gunfight over his losses at cards. I threw him out the door, and he came back armed and shot at me. To make a long story short, his father was a wealthy man; he owned the sheriff, judge and jury. There’s a murder warrant up there for my arrest and he keeps two Kansas deputies on my backtrail.”

  “But it was in self-defense—”

  “Too much water’s gone under the bridge. I just keep moving. They aren’t particularly smart, but they hound me.”

  “What if something happened to them?”

  He shook his head and slapped the lazy black horse on the butt with the lines. “Then he might hire real dogs that bite.”

  “I see what you mean.” She smiled. “I’m ready to camp for the night. There’s a good place about two miles ahead.”

  “Guess you like sleeping out under the stars as well as you do sleeping in a bed.”

  “I do, Slocum, with you.” She nodded smugly and squeezed his arm. “You have spoiled me. I never thought I’d ever meet a man who would turn me into such an uninhibited flossy as you have.”

  They both laughed. He was thinking about this Colonel Bixby and his bunch and her troubles with them. He still owed Wilson for killing her horse.

  6

  Rainbows shone in the droplets of water she threw by the handful at him. As she stood knee deep in the flowing stream, the late-afternoon sun glistened on her olive skin. The dark rings of her pointed nipples were puckered by the water’s cold temperature. Her face showed every intention of her dampening him with efforts at splashing water. Then in a final charge, he rushed inside her defenses and took her in his arms.

  Lips clung to lips. The overpowering need for each other smothered out all the excitement of seconds before and swept over both of them as their water-slick bodies meshed in each other’s arms and they sought to become one.

  He swept her off her feet in his arms and headed for the shore.

  “Put me down . . .” Her mouth smothered his and her tongue tasted his.

  “Not until—” He turned an ear to listen to something he’d heard. The distant drum of horse hooves caused him to set her down.

  They were far enough off the road—still, he motioned for her to head for their clothing, and followed close behind on her heels. He swept up the Winchester. By the time they reached the cedars, she was struggling into her dress.

  “Who—”

  “I’m not certain. But our wagon tracks going up here are obvious enough to see from the road.” He noticed that their grazing horses were looking north at the unseen intruders.

  Out of breath, and working her dress down, she joined him. He handed her the rifle and quickly pulled on his britches.

  “They’re still coming?” she asked, with her head turned, trying to hear.

  His arms in his shirt, he listened keenly. Men were talking in the direction of the road. No doubt they’d discovered the wagon tracks that turned downstream. Then he heard someone shout, “This way.”

  He took the repeater back from her and checked the chamber, then drew the butt to his shoulder. In a few seconds, they burst into
camp.

  “It’s him—Bixby,” she hissed.

  Slocum nodded.

  “Whoa! Look about for them,” the tall figure on a dun horse shouted.

  “Drop those guns!” Slocum ordered. His first round took the hat off the big man’s head and he levered in a new round.

  The three wide-eyed men dropped their six-shooters and threw up their hands. The one she called Bixby had turned beet red with anger.

  “Who in the hell’re you?” Bixby demanded.

  “The man who’s going to send you to hell. Where do you get off riding into a man’s camp, guns drawn and looking for trouble?”

  “You killed my nephew?”

  “Mister, that boy came looking to die.” Slocum by this time could see that Wilson wasn’t with them. “And that other ranny of yours named Wilson shot one of her horses. Guess you’ll pay for that.”

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  “Act dumb, but dig out her forty dollars. Wilson’s on your payroll.” By this time, he had figured that the two with Bixby weren’t much of a threat. One wore a mustache, the other needed a shave; he considered neither of them tough as the Colonel. In fact, he figured he could tie a tin can to their tails and send them packing quicker than a cat could switch its tail.

  “I ain’t paying for no damn horse.”

  “Wilson works for you. He’s the back-shooter that couldn’t hit a bull in the ass, and shot her horse. I expect you to pay for it.”

  “I don’t know your name.”

  “Keep your damn hands in the sky,” Slocum said as Amanda picked up the last handgun and came back with her collection to the wagon. “You don’t need my name, mister, you just need to know there’s other folks in this country that got a right to be here besides yourself.”

  “I’ll get you.” Bixby narrowed his eyes in anger.

  “Don’t be making threats. You ain’t in any position to do that.”

  “I’ll—”