Slocum and the Texas Twister Read online

  “You pulled me inside?” His voice grated in his throat.

  “Timothy’s not able. Got busted ribs, like you said. I can feel them. And he surely can, too.” She looked at her husband with a mixture of pity and love.

  He forced himself up on one elbow and saw that the man had gone pale under his tan and the mask of dirt on his face. When he coughed, he spat up more than a gob of blood dotted with pink froth. Slocum doubted the man had long to live if his lungs were filling with blood.

  “Who’s shooting at us?” He shook his head and got the beehive of buzzing insects to go away. Coming to his feet, he steadied himself against the wall as he looked out. A slug nearly took his life. Slocum ducked back out of sight.

  “Must be them outlaws,” Timothy Yarrow grated out from between teeth clenched against the pain. “All we got’s the rifle the missus has. Never had no call for a side arm.”

  “It was a luxury we could not afford,” the woman said bitterly, now obviously regretting spending the few dollars on something else.

  Slocum glanced around the sparsely furnished house and thought they had probably used the price of a pistol for seed grain or something similar. None of the money had been squandered on fancy furniture or knickknacks to feed the woman’s vanity. If anything, the Yarrow family was barely squeaking by.

  “If it’s the outlaws I ran off,” Slocum said, “there are only two of them and one’s wounded.”

  “There’s nothing here they could possibly want. They ran off our livestock.” Yarrow tried to stifle a cough and ended up spitting blood through his fingers.

  Slocum wondered if they might want the mail he carried, then realized he was still blurry from the fall he had taken. The outlaws had been torturing the dog before he had arrived.

  “You know them? This might be something personal?”

  “Never laid eyes on them before,” Yarrow said. To his wife, “Get the girls. Back to the woods. You, too, Slocum. I can hold ’em off long enough for you to get away.”

  “No!” Mrs. Yarrow’s denial came fast and hard. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “I’ll take them on and give you a chance to get to the woods,” Slocum said. “You know it and can hide where no man can find you.”

  “No.”

  Slocum looked at her, then glanced toward the two girls. They had their arms around the dog’s neck.

  “Girls, you take Windmill and go to your special place in the woods,” their mother said. “Your pa and me and Mr. Slocum have to tend to those terrible men.”

  “We want to stay.”

  “Audrey, do as I tell you.”

  It took a few minutes of family argument. Tears flowed. Slocum ignored what was being said and took the chance to scout where the outlaws were. One was behind the water trough. The other he couldn’t locate. That worried him. He might be able to eliminate the one he knew about, but didn’t want to catch a bullet because he’d put himself into a crossfire.

  “I’ll flush out the second man,” Mrs. Yarrow said. She shoved the rifle past Slocum’s ear and fired, almost deafening him.

  He saw that she had chosen her spot well. Her slug ripped through a clump of prickly pear cactus and caused the missing outlaw to yelp.

  Slocum didn’t waste any time while the outlaw was concerned with being shot at by the woman. He ducked low, slid out the front door, and dodged the best he could to get to the side of the house. From this vantage he had a good shot at the one behind the trough. He got off three quick shots, winging the man. Slocum cursed under his breath. He had hoped to end the man’s miserable life then and there. Now he had to deal with return fire and was exposed.

  He dived, hit the ground, and skidded along until he came to a halt behind a woodpile. The man behind the trough was wounded. He was the one who’d been shot earlier and had a fresh hole in his shoulder from Slocum’s most recent fire. He smiled without humor when he saw the man had to swap hands with his six-shooter. His right arm hung limp and useless.

  Taking a chance, Slocum ran from the woodpile using another round as cover and almost died. The man could shoot as good with his left hand as he did with his right. Having committed himself and not seeing anywhere he could take shelter, Slocum ran on, knowing he had only two rounds left now. The frontal assault caused the man to pause for an instant, and this was all Slocum needed. Two more rounds ended another life.

  And then he faced the man’s remaining partner, his Colt Navy empty.

  He ran as hard as he could with the notion of grappling with the man. He saw the outlaw take careful aim and fire. The slug slammed hard into Slocum and stopped him in his tracks. He tried to reach out and felt himself falling. As he smashed into the ground, all he knew was pain in his gut. Then Slocum blacked out.

  How long he was unconscious was something of a poser. It seemed as if he had been out of the fight for only a few seconds, but the sunlight slanting into his eyes told him it was late afternoon, almost sundown. Forcing himself to hands and knees, he tried to shake off the grogginess. He flopped over and sat in the dirt. He touched his belt. The outlaw’s bullet had cut through his gun belt as it slammed into his belly. This was what had brought him down. But other than the new hole in his belt and a nasty bruise behind it, Slocum was untouched.

  It finally occurred to him to worry about the remaining outlaw. He spun around in the dust and saw the outlaw he had shot facedown on the ground behind the water trough. Fumbling at first, then with more sureness to his touch, he reloaded and went exploring to find what had happened while he was unconscious.

  There was no sign of the one who had shot him. The silence shrouding the farmhouse made him fear the worst. A quick check of the house confirmed his suspicions. Nan Yarrow lay sprawled on the porch, still clutching the rifle. From a quick look, he saw that she had been shot at least four times. The bullet through the side of her head had killed her outright, if the others hadn’t.

  Pushing inside, propping himself against the doorjamb, he saw Timothy Yarrow seated in a chair. The man had likely died before his wife. She might have seen this and stepped onto the porch to take her revenge.

  But what of the children?

  Slocum called but got no reply. He prowled about and found no sign of them or their dog. The lowlifes had been torturing the dog. If they had taken the little girls, he feared what they might do. It would be better if the two girls had died with their parents.

  Try as he might, Slocum couldn’t find any tracks left by the girls or the outlaw. It was getting too dark for real tracking. Slocum gave up his hunt for spoor and set to the task of digging two graves. He put the Yarrows side by side some distance from the house on a small rise. Then he got his paint, made sure the mail bags were secured, and started riding through the dark in the direction of Fort Stockton.

  He arrived at the fort just before dawn, bone tired and wobbling in the saddle.

  * * *

  “Halt, identify yourself!” came the challenge from the alert sentry.

  Slocum did so and asked to be taken to Captain Legrange.

  “Captain might not want to talk to you. He’s got a powerful lot of worry right now,” the sentry said, nervously running his hand up and down the barrel of his carbine.

  “That’ll be enough, Private,” snapped Sergeant Wilson, marching up. “Didn’t expect to see you again, Slocum. You get lost?”

  “Something like that. Have a road agent that needs taking care of.”

  “So you hightailed it straight here to the U.S. Army? That’s real clever of you,” Wilson said. “Get down. Let’s talk.” He dismissed the sentry.

  Slocum stepped down wearily. He hadn’t realized how much his entire body hurt. Every bone ached and every muscle felt as if he had dipped it into liquid fire.

  “Where’d you run afoul of this varmint?”

  Slocum quic
kly filled the man in. He watched the sergeant’s face go through a rainbow of emotions. The usually cynical noncom sucked in a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

  “You think the outlaw stole away the little girls?”

  “Couldn’t find any trace of them,” Slocum said. “I can only think of one reason a man like that would take young girls.”

  “I can think of a couple more, and they’re no prettier. There’s a big trade with Mexico for putas, the younger the better.”

  “They can’t have too much of a head start. It took me six hours to ride here. Get in the saddle right away and we’d overtake them in a day or two, especially if the girls slow the man down.”

  “The captain’s dealing with a powerful lot of woe right at the moment,” Wilson said. “He just got word that Major Conrad was caught in the twister, him and his entire company. Not more ’n five survived, and the major wasn’t one of the lucky bastards.”

  Slocum said nothing to this. He caught an undercurrent in what the sergeant said linking the two officers closer than most.

  Wilson saw he understood.

  “They went to West Point together, were best friends for years. The cap’s takin’ it mighty hard.” Wilson spat. “Moreover, there ain’t a dozen troopers that could be spared, and I don’t know he’d send any of them out when there’s other trouble brewin’.”

  “I didn’t know the Yarrows, ’cept the time I told you about, but I can’t let those girls be sold across the river. Can you spare some victuals?”

  “You’d give up deliverin’ mail for Underwood to track them down? This something personal with you, Slocum?”

  “Just doing my duty as I see it.”

  “How’s that?”

  “With Timothy Yarrow and his wife dead, that means I have to deliver the mail to the next of kin. That’s those two girls.”

  Sergeant Wilson stared at him a moment, then burst out laughing.

  “You are one hell of a barracks lawyer, Slocum. You wait here. I won’t be more ’n a few minutes.”

  Slocum shifted from foot to foot, mentally replaying everything he had seen that might give him a lead on going after the outlaws. The best he could think, considering he hadn’t seen hoofprints, was that they had gone west. That made sense since it was only a week’s travel to get across the Rio Grande. If they wanted to sell the girls, that was the shortest route to a few pesos jingling in their pockets.

  He looked up to see Wilson astride his horse with a large package in his arms. The sergeant tossed it to Slocum.

  “That’s enough for both of us, ’less you’re a big eater.”

  “Both?”

  “The captain won’t miss me for a day or two, not with his grievin’.”

  “Like hell,” Slocum said. “You’re going AWOL?”

  “Can’t say that’s the way I see it. Besides, you can defend me at a court-martial, if it comes to that. There’re only two outcomes. I get killed, in which case it doesn’t matter so much what the captain does to me. Or I find the girls and bring them back. He might be mad, but he’d be more inclined to give me a medal than drum me out or stand me in front of a firing squad.”

  “There’s a third possibility,” Slocum said, snugging down the supplies and mounting. He looked hard at the sergeant. “We might not find the outlaw or the girls.”

  Wilson shook his head.

  “That’s not going to happen.” He rode to the sentry, leaned over, and spoke rapidly for several minutes. The guard obviously argued, then was quieted. Wilson rejoined him. “Folkes is going to be mighty surprised to find he has temporary corporal’s stripes while I’m gone.”

  He rode off so fast that Slocum had to push his horse a mite more than he liked to catch up.

  “Why’re you doing this?” he asked.

  Wilson took a deep breath and stared ahead. The sun has risen enough to warm Slocum’s back and cause sweat to bead on his forehead, but the moisture he saw on the cavalry sergeant’s cheeks wasn’t sweat.

  “Me and the missus, we lost two girls to the flu a year back. Hasn’t been the same ’tween us.” He looked at Slocum, face as hard as stone. “She can’t have no more children and those two were the sun and the moon to us.”

  Wilson said no more as he urged his horse to an even quicker gait. This time Slocum let him ride on ahead since his paint was tuckered out from riding for hours already. Besides, he knew when a man needed to be alone. He wasn’t averse to simply riding and not jawing either.

  When they arrived at the Yarrow house, it was late afternoon. Wilson let his horse drink from the trough where the dead outlaw had stunk up the place. Slocum hadn’t bothered burying him. It didn’t seem fitting to go to the effort, not when he had put the man and his wife into graves away from the house.

  “I recognize this yahoo,” Wilson said. “He’s one o’ the five Terwilliger boys. Their pa got a ranch twenty miles from here.”

  “Tight family?”

  “Couldn’t be tighter,” Wilson said. “When you killed one of them, Bert here and the others couldn’t let it be. They had to even the score. Blood demanded it.”

  Slocum’s mind raced. A family so close hadn’t come back to bury one of them cut down in a gunfight. That told him they had better things to do—and that might have to do with kidnapping two little girls.

  He took out his six-gun, checked the cylinder, then nodded to the sergeant.

  “Let’s ride. We’ve got business to attend to.”

  8

  Slocum couldn’t find tracks anywhere he looked. The recent twister and the hailstorm around it counted for some of the problems he experienced, but he had to admit he was unusually anxious, and this robbed his keen eyes of their usual skill. He stood in the stirrups and looked across the increasingly sparse ground. The prairie was turning into desert. If they traveled another couple days, they would get through Wild Rose Pass to Fort Davis in the mountains and not far beyond that roared the Rio Grande. Cross it and Mexico opened up wide and inviting to any road agent.

  Or kidnapper.

  He seethed at the thought of how he had let one Terwilliger boy get away from him. He felt some obligation to the Yarrow girls because he had not kept the outlaws from killing their pa and ma. It wasn’t his job, but he had been there and had failed. That galled him. He had seen too many orphans during the war to ever get used to the notion. The reason William Quantrill had told Bill Anderson to kill him was how he had protested the Lawrence, Kansas, massacre. Quantrill had ordered every male over the age of eight cut down without mercy—and Slocum had seen some of the Raiders mowing down children even younger. And not worrying about their gender.

  The tornado had ravaged the land, taken lives, and destroyed towns, but it was not likely to come back and follow the same track. Outlaws like the Terwilliger brothers never stopped returning like bad pennies until they were stopped. Two lay dead with his bullets in them. One had had his throat torn out by a dog. One more would be buzzard bait before he stopped.

  “Don’t see anything,” Wilson said. The sergeant took a long draft from his canteen, then stuffed the cork back in and looked longingly at it, obviously wanting more. He was an experienced trooper and knew finding water out here in the arid land was increasingly difficult.

  “You say their spread is close?”

  “Think so,” Wilson said. “I’ve ridden on patrol this way a time or two. The captain would be a better one to answer that. Before the twister struck, this was his patrol area. Fort Concho patrols to the north and Fort Davis comes in from due west.”

  “Don’t see any cattle or much of anything to show this land is claimed.”

  “The Terwilliger clan’s never been much for decent work. We keep an eye on them, but they range wide enough to give us headaches following them.”

  “Not this time,” Slocum said. “
This time they can ride to the gates of hell, and I’ll be on their heels.”

  “You ever been a lawman, Slocum? No, didn’t think so. But you’ve got the fire in your belly to track these miscreants.” Wilson spat, then rubbed his chapped lips. “You might be better suited as a Texas Ranger.”

  Slocum snorted in disgust. He and the law seldom saw eye to eye. More times than he cared to think on, he had been on the robbing side of the six-shooter when he stopped stagecoaches and entered banks. The lawless behavior wasn’t anything to be proud of, but sometimes the crook was more honest than those being robbed. Other times, it had been all Slocum could do to keep body and soul together.

  He was not an entirely honest man, but he had never kidnapped small girls after murdering their parents.

  “When we follow that road yonder, we’ll go straight to them,” Wilson said, pointing. He shielded his eyes against the sun, then added, “Looks like they’re coming to us.”

  Slocum squinted and caught sight of a pair of riders traveling north. His heart beat a little faster. The two were alone.

  “It’s never easy, Slocum. Never,” Wilson said, answering Slocum’s unspoken complaint. “We can ride parallel to them. That road curves around and will come our way. We can wait for them to come to us.”

  “Where are they riding?”

  “Could be to Fort Concho. They’re rumored to supply white lightning to post sutlers, though they aren’t carryin’ anything this time. Could be they’re headin’ elsewhere.”

  “Let’s talk it over as we ride,” Slocum said. “I don’t want to let them get too far away if they don’t follow that road into our guns.”

  “Yes, sir, Slocum, you’re not a man I’d want on my trail. You get a thought lodged in your head and nothing shakes it loose.”