Slocum and the Devil's Rope Read online

  “Can you do anything for him?”

  “You were right. Shot through the heart. Bullet still in him?” Abbey looked up over the top of his eyeglasses.

  “Far as I know.”

  Dr. Abbey reached over and took a long, slender metal tool like an icepick and began probing with it. After a tiny click sounded, he looked up.

  “Found the slug. What I haven’t found is his heart.”

  “What do you mean? He doesn’t have one?”

  “It’s not where it should be, that’s for certain. Get out of here and fetch a drink.”

  “For you?” Slocum remembered what Magnuson had said. He got a snort for an answer.

  “You must work for that old reprobate Mordecai Magnuson. He’s the only one who thinks I’m a drunkard. Get yourself out of my office while I work. I meant that you looked like you could use a drink.”

  Slocum saw the doctor turn back to Garvin and begin peeling back his shirt preparatory to pouring carbolic acid all over the wound. He backed to the door, then left. The sight of blood didn’t bother him. He had seen more spilled during the war than he cared to remember, and some of it had been brutal. During one shelling in the Battle of the Wilderness, a Yankee cannonball had taken off the head of the soldier standing next to him. One instant he had been yelling insults at the enemy and the next he was geysering blood an improbable height into the air from his headless body.

  Slocum had seen blood aplenty but the way Garvin had shot himself wore on him. He should have made sure the man realized the six-shooter had to be unloaded. And how was it his heart wasn’t in the right place? Slocum had never heard of such a thing.

  The night air wrapped itself around him, chilling him. Only then did he realize how he had been sweating like a pig. Shaking all over, he got himself back to feeling halfway normal. His legs were still knotted up, but walking down the street to the saloon loosened him up. Light spilled from the open doors and invited him in.

  There wasn’t much more than the sound of a piano player banging at the keys and trying to sing. It took Slocum a couple seconds to even identify the song. When he did, it took him back to the war. “Tentin’ on the Old Campground” raised memories he didn’t care to relive. He considered finding another saloon where the piano player wasn’t inclined to play old war songs, then decided he could endure the last few notes. He went to the bar and leaned forward, elbows resting on a well-polished wood surface. The entire section of bar was a Brunswick and mighty fancy for a cow town.

  “What’s your poison?” The barkeep cinched up the cord around his waist so his apron wouldn’t flop about.

  “The piano player’s going to get lead poisoning if he doesn’t play something else.”

  “Can’t rightly say what else he does know. Been playin’ that same ole song over and over. That and the ‘Yellow Rose of Texas.’” Seeing Slocum’s expression, he pursed his lips, then nodded. “All right, wait a second, mister.” The barkeep roared for the piano player to pick something livelier.

  “‘Camptown Races’ suit you?”

  “It does,” Slocum said. “So would a shot of whiskey.”

  “Trade whiskey or some of Billy Taylor’s Finest? I kin fix you up with one of my special mixed drinks. I’m the best damn drink mixer in town and do a tasty Peach French Fizz.”

  “Billy Taylor’s been a friend of mine for quite a while.”

  “He doesn’t disappoint any of my customers,” the barkeep said, pouring a shot from a squat brown bottle with the proper label.

  Slocum sipped, nodded approval, then downed the drink in a single grateful gulp. It might have been actual whiskey all the way from San Francisco. Didn’t matter much, though, since it left a warmth in his belly that slowly spread to steal away his aches and pains. With the piano blaring out its off-key song that didn’t remind him of the war, Slocum was on his way to feeling halfway human.

  The mellowness went away when he heard a voice behind him.

  “Didn’t expect to see you again, Slocum.”

  He looked up but couldn’t catch sight of the man in the back bar mirror. It was always like Wiley Pendergast to be cautious. That was how he had stayed alive so long. That was how he had avoided catching one of Slocum’s bullets.

  “Thought you’d be in prison somewhere. Yuma, maybe.”

  “Yeah, you’d think that, the way you turned me over to that federal marshal.”

  “My memory’s a tad different on that score,” Slocum said, remembering that he carried an empty six-shooter at his side. “You tried to get him to arrest me. I can’t be held responsible if he got confused and nabbed you instead.”

  “Not as if I hadn’t done enough for a federal lawman to get on my trail.” Pendergast sidled up to the bar next to Slocum.

  He hadn’t changed in the three years since they’d rustled cattle together down in Arizona Territory. If anything, he was uglier, but his face still carried a touch of baby fat, making him look like he was in his teens. Slocum knew he was over thirty. He just didn’t show it then or now. All the miles on the trail, all the hours under the burning sun, none of it had furrowed Pendergast’s face with lines or even the weathering most honest cowboys showed after a season on the range.

  “You get caught?” Slocum wanted the outlaw to keep talking. If it came down to gunplay, he was a goner.

  “Left a federal marshal floatin’ facedown in the Colorado River. Lit out for California, worked my way up the coast to Oregon. Thought I found you there workin’ on an Appaloosa ranch. Turned out to be somebody who just looked like you.”

  “Too bad.”

  “It was too bad for him. I killed him by mistake.” Pendergast shook his head sadly. “That was a waste of a good bullet. But it did change me.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I gave up huntin’ you, Slocum. Turned my attention to other pursuits, you might say.”

  “Those Appaloosas were too inviting to pass up?” Slocum knew the answer by Pendergast’s chuckle. The man had gone into horse thieving.

  “Thinkin’ back on it, that bullet wasn’t wasted at all. I got fifteen mighty fine horses and sold them for a thousand dollars.”

  “Gambling? Booze? Whores?”

  “You know me too well, Slocum. All three, though the whores took most of my money. Made me bound and determined to start afresh. And I did. I worked my way eastward, found a bank or two that wasn’t too careful with how they stashed their money—one banker actually took the greenbacks home with him every night and tucked them into his mattress because he mistrusted his own safe. Can you believe that?”

  “The Bar M cattle are quite a draw for you,” Slocum said.

  “You didn’t recognize me out there in the canyon, did you? You was too surprised when I come up behind you a minute ago.”

  “Shouldn’t be any more surprised when I step on a rattler. You lost a couple men out there.”

  Wiley Pendergast made a shooing motion with his left hand. Slocum saw how he kept his right near the Colt holstered on his hip.

  “Those boys are a dime a dozen. Now, them cows you stole from me, that’s another matter.”

  “They were Bar M beeves, not yours.”

  “I talked this over with a lawyer once, and he told me strays out on the range are for the takin’. Anybody what finds them can keep ’em. Sounded all legal to me.”

  “No more legal than to run the brands.”

  “Bar M is an easy one. I can make a Bar Star Bar out of it mighty quick. Over the years, I’ve learned some metal working and am a fair smithy when the situation calls for it.”

  “Set up shop and shoe horses. You’ll live longer.”

  “Now there you go, Slocum, threatenin’ me again, jist like you did down in Yuma. To show you I don’t hold a grudge, I’m gonna do you a favor.” Pendergast ste
pped back a pace and turned so he could throw down. “I’m invitin’ you to take the place of one of them gents you killed.”

  Slocum blinked in surprise. It took him a couple seconds to get his wits about him since this was the last thing he had expected from Wiley Pendergast.

  “I’ve got a job,” Slocum said carefully.

  Pendergast grinned, showing a broken front tooth. He rested his hand on the butt of his Colt and tapped nervously with his trigger finger. Slocum considered how he could rush him before he cleared leather and didn’t see any way open unless he heaved the shot glass at him. Pendergast wasn’t the kind who distracted that easily.

  “Why, so you do, so you do. Just happens this fits in real nice with my plans of taking a hundred head of cattle off that range.”

  “All legal like, the way the lawyer told you?” Slocum couldn’t help smiling at the notion. Pay a lawyer enough and they’d say whatever you wanted. The way the law was administered in most places, the lawyer who did the most jury bribing won.

  “You always were quick on the uptake, Slocum. The way I see it, you owe me. Not for my dead partners. Hell, I can’t even remember their names now. No, you owe me for siccing the marshal on me in Yuma. You owe me for too many years of trackin’ you down.”

  “The horses you stole up in Oregon should have been pay enough.”

  “A reasonable man might think that,” Pendergast said, his voice getting an edge to it, “but I ain’t never been a reasonable man. You’re gonna help me get those beeves.”

  “Or?”

  “Now, Slocum, you know me better than that. I don’t make threats. I keep my promises, and I promise you’ll regret it if you don’t snap to when I tell you.” Pendergast stepped forward and pushed Slocum into the bar. This would have been enough to have Slocum reaching for his Colt Navy in another circumstance.

  But not with six empty chambers in his pistol.

  Pendergast stopped at the door and smiled. There wasn’t any humor in it, then he disappeared into the night.

  “You want another?” the barkeep asked. His voice trembled just a mite.

  “I’ve got to see about a dead man,” Slocum said. He stepped into the cool evening and looked around for Pendergast or any of his gang. The street was as quiet as a cemetery.

  He headed for Dr. Abbey’s office to get the rest of the bad news before heading back to the Bar M.

  7

  Slocum took a deep breath as he went into the doctor’s office. Dr. Abbey was covered in blood as he stood over the table where Garvin stretched out, unmoving.

  “I got it out,” the doctor said, reaching to a tin plate. He lifted the bullet and held it between bloodstained thumb and forefinger before tossing it back into the pan with a sharp rattle. “One of the easiest extractions I ever made. Drove in the probe, scouted the periphery, and got forceps on the slug. Came right out.”

  “I’ll take him now,” Slocum said.

  “You willing to pay for his funeral?” Abbey asked sharply.

  “He doesn’t have any family, so I reckon so.” Slocum walked over, then stopped dead in his tracks. He looked at the doctor.

  “You move him, and he dies. He’s still alive, and if I can venture an opinion, he’s rallying.”

  “Getting stronger?”

  “Exactly that,” Dr. Abbey said.

  “But the bullet went into his heart.” Slocum saw how the doctor had a bandage over the wound. “Nobody lives through that.”

  “True, nobody can, but there’s one thing wrong with what you just said. The bullet didn’t go through his heart. His heart is on the right side. I’ve heard tell of such a thing but never saw it ’fore today. Oh, the wound was serious, no question about that. But it didn’t drill through his heart, though it would have in you or me.” Abbey squinted at Slocum. “Unless you want to tell me your heart’s on the wrong side, too.”

  “Don’t think so,” Slocum said. “He’s going to live?”

  “Unless you insist on moving him. Give him a week or so to recover before loading him back into that wagon. You can tell Mordecai that he’s not going to get a decent day’s work out of this one for a month.”

  Slocum didn’t know what to say.

  “And you tell Mordecai that he can pay me direct, since this is one of his boys.” Abbey grinned wolfishly. “Be even better if he sends that daughter of his to pay the bill. She’s the only one on that ranch that bothers to bathe—and is the only one it wouldn’t matter to me.”

  “I’ll tell Mr. Magnuson,” Slocum said. “And I’ll bring back clothes for him.” He couldn’t believe Garvin had survived such a nasty wound. Men ran several paces, sometimes more, in the heat of battle filled full of holes, but they eventually keeled over dead. Garvin was something special.

  Slocum reached to pull the black rope from under the man, only to have a surprisingly strong hand grip his wrist. Garvin’s eyes flickered open and fixed on him. Words formed on his lips, but Garvin was too weak to speak. He didn’t have to. Slocum got the message.

  “Don’t touch the rope.” Dr. Abbey gently moved Slocum’s hand away.

  Slocum dropped the rope onto the table beside Garvin and stepped back.

  “Now that’s the second most astounding thing I ever did see,” the doctor said. He took Garvin’s hand and checked the pulse. “The first being him living through my surgery, of course. But to be this strong so soon after . . .” He put the wrist on the table so it wouldn’t fall off and stretch the sewn-up wound in Garvin’s chest. “If all my patients recovered this fast, might be some of them would see fit to pay me.”

  Slocum went to the wagon and climbed into the driver’s box. He didn’t know whether to return to the Bar M or head in the opposite direction and keep driving until he had put a hundred miles behind him. It wasn’t natural for Tom Garvin to heal up as fast as he had. It wasn’t natural to be so damned lucky, if shooting yourself cleaning a six-shooter could ever be called good luck. But he hadn’t died.

  Slocum snapped the reins and got the team moving. He wasn’t thinking clearly, but when he realized he was on the road back to the ranch, he knew the reason. That was where Christine was.

  Letting his thoughts drift, Slocum took the turns in the road and didn’t try to avoid the worst of the potholes. In the dark, it was almost impossible anyway. The moon would rise in another hour, but it wouldn’t give enough light, not with the thin wisps of clouds forming into heavier ones that promised rain. Slocum reflected on how the rains that the land had been denied for long weeks always came when a trail drive started. Make the cowboys and cattle as miserable as possible. That seemed like some inscrutable law of Nature.

  As he drove along, his reverie died away as small sounds demanded his attention. He glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye more than once. Even a swift turn and steady gaze did not reveal anything in the dark. At first he thought an ambitious wolf might be stalking him—or his team. When the feeling of being watched did not go away, he knew it wasn’t a wolf paralleling the road. A wolf would have given up after a mile or two.

  A human wouldn’t.

  Slocum’s anger rose as he thought about Pendergast and their meeting in the saloon. The last thing he wanted was to jeopardize his position at the Bar M. Unlike Tom Garvin, he had no designs on taking the foreman’s job. He wanted something more precious.

  Christine. The name rolled over and over in his head like the most beautiful song he had ever heard. If the saloon piano player had only plinked a single key and sang that name the rest of the night, he couldn’t have pleased Slocum more.

  Slocum swung around fast, looking at the road behind. He thought he saw shadows moving in trees off to one side but couldn’t be sure. He touched the butt of his Colt, remembering he was out of ammo. If he’d carried a full cylinder in his trusty six-shooter, he would have returned to find
if he was being followed. Instead, he snapped the reins and got the team pulling a bit harder. The horses weren’t happy; neither was he.

  His mood changed as he pulled in to park the rig behind the barn. A single light burned in the ranch house. Christine was up late. After putting the horses in their stalls, he made sure the wagon was secure, worn wood blocks under the front wheels since it was parked on a slight incline. Slocum hurried to Christine’s window and peered in, ready to tap on the pane. Luck rode with him. He had almost rapped on the window when he saw Jed Blassingame in Christine’s bed. The foreman tossed and turned and finally flopped flat on his back.

  His groans of pain came through the closed window. Slocum watched as Christine came in, robe pulled around her slender form. She poured Blassingame some water and added a drop or two of medicine. Slocum thought it must be laudanum. The foreman’s injuries must have been more severe than anyone thought at first.

  Even if they weren’t, his recovery wasn’t as amazing as Tom Garvin’s.

  Christine made sure Blassingame had finished the water and put the glass on the bedside table, then turned down the lamp. As she did, she looked out and saw Slocum. She jumped as if he had poked her with a stick. A quick glance back assured her that Blassingame had not seen the nocturnal visitor, then she hurried from the room.

  Slocum moved as silently as a shadow crossing another shadow and waited at the rear porch. Christine came out as silently as he had.

  “John, you frightened me!”

  “Didn’t mean to. Just got back from town.”

  “How is Tom?”

  He took her arm and steered her from the ranch house.

  “Come on out to the barn. I don’t want your pa waving around that shotgun of his if he overhears us.”

  “Oh, and what might he overhear?” She took a deep breath and pulled back her shoulders. Her robe opened, revealing a cotton nightgown that should have been chaste. Slocum saw how her nipples had hardened and pressed into the thin fabric.