Slocum 428 Page 8

  Ermaline dropped into a stuffed chair with a sigh. “Oh, Daddy. That’s not a fair question.” She looked at him. “Since I got back to Timber Hills, my life has gotten more . . . complicated. Otherwise I’d be out at the camp right now. You know that.” She smiled.

  “Do I?” He knew it was a low blow, but he had to get to the truth. Here goes, he said to himself.

  “What do you mean, Daddy?”

  There was a hint of suspicion in her voice, and justifiably so, he thought with a sliver of pride. After all, he’d raised her to be savvy with folks, to get to know what they were really talking about. The words behind their words, so to speak. That skill had rarely let him down.

  “What I mean, daughter, is, well . . . ” Dang it! Why couldn’t he just get to the point where she was concerned? He didn’t have a problem telling his men just where the bear went when he had to, so why was his little girl any different?

  “Out with it, Daddy!” She stamped her feet just like her mother used to do.

  “Okay then. It seems to me you are bound and determined to roust me at every turn.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That Whitaker boy. He’s, why, he’s nothing but a . . . lump! Just like his father, only near as I can tell, he ain’t fit to make a patch on the old shyster’s ass. And I don’t give backhanded comments easily, especially to the likes of that weasel, Whitaker.”

  Then he saw another look that reminded him of his long-dead wife and mother of this child—she had that jaw set firm, and sparks nearly shot right out of her eyes at him. But she said nothing—yet. He knew it was coming. So he took his chance while he could.

  “I’ve been told that you intend to marry up with that . . . great lump of a boy. Is that the case?”

  Her fists were balled now, and though he knew she wasn’t about to lay a hand on him, he wasn’t quite sure just what she intended to do.

  “I don’t know where you heard that, Daddy.” Her voice was measured, and she spoke through clenched teeth. “But I will tell you that maybe I just will. Nothing of the sort has been said, but you would have been the first person to know—at least from me!”

  Jigger smiled and slapped his knee. “I knew it! I knew that sack of dung was lying to me. Right to my face! I should have expected no less!”

  Then his daughter did a curious thing. She narrowed her eyes and, in an even tone, said, “Maybe Mr. Whitaker is right, Daddy. Maybe it’s time for a change of guard in Timber Hills.”

  “What are you saying, daughter? What’s that evil man done to your thinking?”

  “He hasn’t done anything. But it seems to me he’s not all that wrong. He said that since I know a thing or two about logging, and since I also went to school back East, he’s asked me to help him manage his business dealings.”

  “What?” Jigger’s own fists clenched and unclenched, like two callused hearts beating out of control.

  “You heard me,” she said with a smirk. “He also said that maybe you should step aside, let others come in and set up shop here in Timber Hills. Fresh blood.”

  “Step aside? Step aside?” Jigger whirled about the small, fancy room, waving his arms as if he were trying to take flight. “Why, you know that this town wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me and my two dead partners, rest their souls! I employed every person in this town at one time or another. Logging is the lifeblood of this town, hang it all!”

  “But times are changing, Daddy. There’s more to life than chopping down trees!”

  Jigger felt as if he’d been punched straight in the gut. The air left him in a whoosh. What could he do? This was no daughter he knew. “Can’t believe you just said that to me, girly. I . . . I don’t know you anymore.” He turned his back to her and reeled from the room, and she just watched him go. They each knew the other was as stubborn as a kicking mule and would never consider giving in to the other. So she let him go.

  Once he was outside, the cold air helped sharpen Jigger’s senses. It stung going in, pinched his nose, and burned his cheeks. It felt good, and reminded him of why he had come to town. This situation with his daughter was not good, not good at all. But surely the girl would come to her senses.

  He had to think of a way to make that happen even faster—just needed time, time to think, time to come up with a plan to run Whitaker and his dumb boy out of town once and for all, before they did anything more to foul his dear Ermaline’s mind. He just didn’t understand it; she’d always been an independent sort, able to see through the fancy trickeries of magic makers. Bu not this time.

  He shook his head. Save it for the trail, Jigger—you got a whole camp of men back in the mountains waiting on you, he told himself. He made straight for Bumpy’s General Store, knowing that while the man would have closed up for the night, he’d fill Jigger’s order, have it ready to go on the back loading dock by first light.

  And then he’d have himself a drink or three, see if the whole town felt as his daughter did. Might be he’d wind the night up at the Bluebird, find out what Whitaker had to offer.

  13

  Slocum awoke early the next morning with a single thought compelling him to get up and out before the rest of the early-rising camp stretched and yawned. Something had gnawed at him all night, even as he’d had a surprisingly peaceful sleep.

  The night spent in the stable, tight though it was, was also vastly more comfortable and restful than spending time in the bunkhouse with all its stinks and groans and snores. Horses brought their own such potential interruptions to sleep, but he’d always preferred the company of animals to people, and for that he was grateful.

  He’d awakened with a single mission on his mind—come hell or high water, he was determined to get to the bottom of this skoocoom business. In all his days roving the trails of the West, he’d come across a number of things that were either outright lies, slowly explained away as hoaxes, or genuine mysteries. He suspected this would fall somewhere in the middle, though even he had doubts as to its status as inexplicable. He certainly couldn’t explain it away—yet.

  As he tugged on his second boot, he vowed, too, to find the source of his suspicion regarding those two men who’d attacked him. They’d scampered off before he’d returned. At least he had roughed them up good, enough so that they would be sporting evidence of their lost battle for some time to come. Now all he had to do was track them, or whoever had ripped apart the storehouse. Were those two men pretending to be skoocooms? He hoped to find out once he hit the woods and looked for sign—no easy task considering all the foul weather they’d had.

  As he high-stepped along the drifted-in path to the savaged storehouse, Slocum bent low, the just-rising sun offering enough reflected glow to assist him in his search for clues. But it was a fruitless search, as he suspected it might well be, given the weather’s turn.

  Still, if the loggers wouldn’t take the opportunity to follow the filled-in dimples of the tracks that led away to the edge of the close-by forest and beyond, into the still-dark trees, then he would.

  “Wish I wasn’t so curious,” he said in a mumble, as a stiff breeze kicked up and slapped him in the face. He flipped up the tall sheepskin collar of his mackinaw and cradled his rifle in the crook of one arm. In the other he hoisted the Colt Navy free of the holster, thoughts of the unearthly shrieks and howls of the other night dogging him. He pulled in a deep breath and headed on in.

  Once he found himself well into the tree line, the stiff wind became nothing more than a high-up soughing in the treetops. Down at ground level there was barely a breeze. And as he’d hoped, the well-trammeled path had barely been dusted in. He bent low and peered down into the snowy tracks, cursing himself for not bringing a lamp. The daylight slowly filtered in through the trunks of the trees, but it would be chasing him the deeper he ventured into the forest.

  He didn’t have all that much time to pursue this path, as he h
ad to get back for breakfast—something he sorely wanted—or he’d go without until lunchtime. And the prospect of limbing trees on an empty stomach was not a possibility. He didn’t think he could withstand that for too many swings of the axe.

  He squinted into a couple of the deep prints, tugged the end of a leather glove off with his teeth, then felt down in there. Despite the numbing cold, his fingertips felt a series of deep founded depressions where a man’s boot toe would be, should be. But the print was much wider at the toe than at the other end. The rest of the track also bore little resemblance to a man’s boot print. And overall, it was much, much larger—both in length and width—than any print he’d seen made by a man. It was not unlike a grizzly track, but he’d never seen anything that big, and he’d seen a few big ol’ bull grizzlies in his day. Even tangled with a few, and counted himself far too lucky to have lived.

  What would happen if he tangled with whatever the hell this thing was? What if it was something more than a couple of pissed-off loggers plotting out some odd revenge on Jigger McGee?

  And the kicker of this entire set of tracks he was following was that it was made, as near as he could tell, by two creatures. He paused, crouched in the snow, in the quiet, dim forest, looking around at the slowly lightening landscape. And that was when the creeping, hair-raising feeling once again overtook him, draped itself over him like an invisible cloak of tremors and icy fingertips.

  Something was watching him. And whatever it was, it wasn’t very far away. All of a sudden, the idea of tracking and following this cold trail didn’t seem like a very good one. Not at all. He couldn’t put a finger on it, but he knew, just as he knew that if he stopped breathing he’d die, that he had to get out of there and back to the camp. Something in this forest was watching him—had probably been watching him since he’d walked in there—and really didn’t want him there.

  The feeling clung to him well past the edge of the trees and back into the camp clearing.

  14

  Even before he opened an eye, Jigger knew why he would get a later start than he wanted, hitting the trail away from Timber Hills and back toward his mountains and the Tamarack Camp. He’d overindulged at the bars. Hell, after the first two he didn’t know where he’d ended up.

  “Oh . . .” he mumbled as he dimly recalled his thoughts from earlier in the evening of stopping off at the Bluebird to give Whitaker a piece of his mind. It seemed like he hadn’t ever gotten there, though he couldn’t say that with full confidence. All he could recall was that people he knew—and that was just about everyone in town—insisted on buying him drinks. That was grand, until now.

  He groaned again. How many had he had? Snake juice never trailed fond memories behind, much as he and every other person who’d ever overindulged in it sought to prove otherwise. He sat up in the stable—yes, that was where he ended up, thank God. By his boys—he could sense them before he saw them. They must have done the same, and knew he was waking, for they nickered in the dim light of the barn.

  What time it was, he had no idea, but judging from the sunlight slanting through the gaps in the boards, it was near midmorning. Half the day wasted! No wonder his bladder pounded with each strained thud of his heart, like a cranky grizz cub stuck in his gut, trying to punch its way out. He slowly pushed to his feet and, scrabbling with shaking hands, felt for the side of the stall, found the puckered boards, cribbed slick by countless bored horses, and slowly dragged himself to his feet. Relieved to feel he still wore his boots, Jigger took a hesitant, faltering step forward, then another. Good, he was on his way.

  He ambled slowly, if not entirely steadily, to the back door of the place, past ol’ Amos, proprietor of the livery, who wisely kept his comments private, and relieved himself on a steaming mound of dung-soiled straw. As he made his way back inside, wincing from the piercing sunlight, he said to Amos, “Whatever I done, just tally it up. I’m good for it.”

  “Only thing you done is followed the recipe for a large-size hangover. And that’s one thing ain’t nobody can help you pay for!” That time he didn’t keep any comment to himself. He let loose with a laugh, slapped his knee, and shook his head as he tucked into a stall that required his services.

  “Funny man, Amos. You’re a funny man. Ha.”

  It took Jigger another hour to collect his gear and his wits, and to drink a potful of hot coffee spiked with Amos’s own approved solution—liberal splashes of red-eye. By the time he’d finished his third such cup, Jigger was feeling downright alive, and he never had to help hitch the boys. Amos had it done. Then the liveryman helped him hoist up into the sledge and pointed him in the direction of the mercantile.

  “Bump says he has all your goods ready and waiting. Even has a boy to load it up so’s you don’t have to climb down.”

  “Seems like everyone’s catering to my every whim today,” said Jigger.

  “Well.” Amos smiled. “We all figure it’s the least we can do. After all, it ain’t every night we all get treated to a rendition of something you called ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’—and especially not by a half-dressed logger—now is it?”

  He smacked the nearest Belgian on the flank and laughed, watching Jigger’s eyes widen and jaw drop as they slid away toward the store.

  Jigger experienced more of the same, but not much more of the story of how he’d spent the previous night. He had been assured he’d not broken anything other than some sort of unwritten laws concerning singing and the human ear. Soon the sledge was loaded, strapped down tight, and as he was ready to slap lines, ol’ Bumpy handed up a back-pocket bottle of whiskey.

  “Keep the edge off and the skoocooms from gettin’ too close on your ride back up into the hills!”

  “I thank you kindly, Bump. ’Til next time!”

  “Thanks for the warning!”

  • • •

  From high in the northward hills overlooking the little smoky town of Timber Hills, two men stood just inside a thick stand of trees. The larger of the two, wearing a crude and bloodied bandage wrapped across his swollen face, lowered a brass spyglass and handed it to the smaller man.

  They melted back into the shadows of the trees as Jigger McGee’s loaded sledge, towed by a brawny two-horse team, made its slow, steady way out the west end of the little town’s main street, then angled north toward the foothills that led to the mountains.

  15

  Well into his day limbing freshly felled giant pine trees, Slocum had shucked his heavy wool coat and was considering doing the same for his heavy button-down shirt, when a shout stayed his axe’s rising swing.

  “Ho there! Slocum!” Ned shouted from a standing position on a sledge pulled by two stout black horses he remembered from the stable back at camp.

  Slocum paused, grateful for the rest. “What can I do for you, Ned?”

  The man pulled his pipe from its customary spot clamped between his lips. “I tell you, Slocum. Me and the boys are getting mighty jittery.”

  “About what?”

  “Balzac and Titus just came back to camp.”

  “Who are they?”

  “If you met ’em, you’d never forget ’em. They’re Jigger’s pride and joy, his team of Belgians. We have other teams, but he babies those two something fierce. And we heard tell there’s a storm coming. Fixing to be a real whopper. Make that one we had just before you got here to look like kitten’s work.”

  “Has anybody set out to find Jigger?” said Slocum. “Might be he’s holed up wounded alongside the road somewhere between here and town.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I sent out Donny and Bert, but they came up short—empty-handed, so to speak.”

  Slocum slammed his axe head into place. The blatant worry on Ned’s otherwise mellow face was undeniable. “I imagine you need someone with trail experience who can take a look-see, find out where in the heck ol’ Jigger might be.”

  “That’s the lo
ng and short of it, yep. We need someone who can find his way in and out of these woods on snowshoe. If the storm shapes up to be half as bad as ol’ Fincherson’s game leg is telling him—and it’s never wrong—this one’s going to be a doozy. If Jigger’s hurt and stoved-up somewhere along the trail, we need to get to him before it hits.”

  “I’ll gladly do all I can to help find Jigger, but Ned, if you need someone with snowshoe experience and who knows these woods, why are you sending me out? I’m the newest one here. And I have more saddle experience than snowshoe time.”

  The man let out a snort of laughter. “Don’t let it bother you. You’ll be helping me. We’re going out together. Frenchy will be in charge of the boys. I’ve sent half of them back to camp to lay in more firewood, sent a few boys out to scare up some meat, and Frenchy’s cooking up a storm. Those skoocooms all but cleaned us out of food stores. And now that Jigger’s team come back only half-filled, as if someone had cherry-picked through it—we need all the food we can get.”

  “Especially if there’s a storm coming.”

  “Yep.”

  Slocum was only too glad to get a respite from his work. He enjoyed the steady, mindless labor of lopping off branches, big and small, but after a few hours, it truly was numbing. His arms ached and he suspected, despite the full days the men seemed to be putting in, that he was working twice as hard as everyone else. Well, no, he knew that wasn’t really the case, but he couldn’t help thinking it. He also was about ready to eat a whole side of beef himself.

  As if the mere thought of the word “skoocoom” was enough to conjure up sounds from the beasts, roars and howls erupted from the dark woods on each side of the trail. Ned and Slocum exchanged raised-eyebrow looks, then Slocum gathered his gear and climbed onto the sledge.

  With his pipe clamped fiercely between his teeth, Ned whipped the two-horse team into a mane-flying frenzy. But it didn’t seem enough to outdistance them from the source of the sounds. Nor did it outrun the rocks and chunks of snow-crusted branches that rained down on them from either side.