Slocum 421 (12 page)

“Sure,” he said and put his arm on her shoulder.

“I'm going to miss that too. You being close to me.”

He looked at the gathering clouds. “It's going to rain this evening.”

“I bet so.” She stopped at the front door and kissed him. “After lunch, before you go back to shoeing him, we need to honeymoon.”

“I agree.”

“You are so hard to convince.” She snuggled to him as they crossed the yard.

It rained that afternoon, and at dawn, when he had Spook saddled and ready, everything dripped from the rainfall the night before. They had not slept much. But it had been a dreamy night, with bright flashes and rumbles of thunder to match their last flight together.

He kissed her, shook Jon's hand, and rode away, trying not to imagine her lithe, willowy body or the light perfume she wore—reminders that he'd left another terrific lady.

Deadwood was booming like he'd expected. But while he might have found some souls who knew him, United States marshals and Pinkerton pricks also hung out there, looking all the time for wanted men and fugitives who had escaped prisons. He wore a suit coat, white shirt, and string tie, plus a beard by then, so it might be less of a giveaway who he was. Card games there were crooked, but he could mark cards too, and in the confusion win some hands. John Clark was his name, and he found a room to share with a lady of the night named Sherry Taylor, whom he met in a hillside saloon on his second night in town. She was in her late twenties and had a soggy figure, but most men liked chubby women who weren't too fat. His roommate fit the bill, and she earned a few bucks more than common street women, enough to keep up her dope habit. She took cocaine more like it was aspirin, when in pain or when she was feeling despondent. Didn't matter which either.

He played cards till all hours, and by the time he got back to the room, she'd have sent her john for the night home or away somewhere. A few nights she sought his lovemaking instead of powder and said he was always rewarding to her. So their time went on until he knew he had to move on and took the stage to Cheyenne.

 * * * 

In Fort Laramie, he bought a horse, having sold Spook for a good profit up north in Deadwood. He had won a few hundred at gambling, so he was far from broke. He strapped his saddle on this new horse, a bay gelding about five, and set out. He hoped that his having bought a stage ticket to Cheyenne would throw them off track if they were on his heels—no telling—while in the meantime he rode north.

Spring was starting to bloom across the country. He met a Texas outfit who'd been wintering their cattle west of Fort Laramie, and the outfit's boss, Big Jim Caltron, a burly, gravel-voiced man in his forties, with a smile and large handshake.

“Where you headed?” Caltron asked after they had talked about several things in general.

“Not anywhere in particular. Why?”

“You look like a man who could deliver these cattle for me in Montana. I started out last summer, and when I got up here they warned me I might have snow all the way it was so late. So I bought a lot of hay from area farmers and brought these longhorns through the winter. But I need them driven up to Bozeman and sold. I've got a big ranch in Texas needs my attention and a wife I miss real bad. You said you'd taken cattle to Abilene and Wichita. Can't be any worse than that. You get them up there, sell them, pay the boys and take your share, then ship the rest to me by Wells Fargo—to my bank in San Antonio. I'll pay you four hundred bucks to handle the deal. Fair enough?”

Slocum sat under the flapping canvas shade and looked out across the new grass and wildflowers of the Wyoming countryside to the distant purple mountains. “I reckon you've hired yourself a trail boss.”

They shook hands, and Caltron went for a bottle of good whiskey and two glasses. When he returned, Slocum held the glasses and Caltron poured it. “These boys are a little winter-weary, but they will work, and they know the business. I can show you my pay plan for them. I am damn sure glad I ran into you. You should get in on the early market. I don't know of too many herds this far north this early.”

“Yes. We should be there well before any others. You know I'm not God, and we might have some tough storms to net us between here and there.”

“Everything you do in this world has risk. Do the best you can and I'll understand. Send me some telegrams and let me know what is happening. Hell, I'll be two months getting home.”

The whiskey was good. That evening after supper, he met the outfit's other leaders and then the rest of the men. They were all young and tough. Caltron had a rule that he'd fire you for fighting in camp or while on the job and wouldn't pay you a dime. That kept that from happening, as far as they were from home. Dan Black was his
segundo
and about twenty-two. Several of the boys were in their middle teens. Rack and Trumbo were Caltron's point men. They were athletes and horsemen, and Slocum could see them tending to directing the herd. An Indian boy was the horse wrangler, and they called him Chalk. Rufus Digby was the cook, an old army man who smoked a pipe and ran the camp. The rest of the boys Slocum still had to learn the names of.

“We were planning on leaving in two days. That suit you?” Caltron asked Slocum, sipping on a whiskey.

“Fine with me. I figure we are two months from where you want me to deliver them.”

Caltron agreed. He left him a sheet of addresses and his bank's address too.

“I am going to catch a train east from Cheyenne, then take a riverboat and another train back west.”

“Be careful so you make it.”

“Oh, hell, I have to make it. I miss my lovely wife so damn much I can't even think about anything else.”

“I know how you feel. We'll get them cattle up there and get them sold.”

The next day, Caltron shook Slocum's hand and left. One of the boys took Big Jim to Fort Laramie to catch a stage and to bring his horse and saddle back to the camp.

 * * * 

The very next morning they were on the move. Rufus's two teams of mules, hitched to the chuckwagon and the half wagon on behind, had to be led the first mile, but they settled down. The steers, after the long winter, were placid and headed north for twelve miles that day. They lost one horse who had stepped into a badger hole and had to be destroyed. Slocum noted this in his new logbook. Jimmy Evans, the scout, found them a new camp for the next day and reported back in. He also told Slocum they had pine forest ahead and a mountain range that he'd learned about from a freighter. Slocum rolled out the map and they looked hard at it. The mountains were there, and he hoped they'd find graze, but they might have to drive farther than usual to find a suitable place to stop.

He thanked the boy, maybe almost eighteen years old. He had made a good hand for Caltron, and Slocum saw why. His trust in the hands grew as the days passed. On the drive to Billings, they were warned that the Crows would want a fee for crossing their land. As many as a dozen head of cattle. Slocum talked that over with Dan Black. They'd cut them out the limpers if they had to.

“But I'd rather not pay them a damn thing,” Black said.

“Peaceful passage has a price,” Slocum said. “Highway robbery is where I draw the line.”

Black laughed. “This ain't your first cattle drive, is it?”

“Certainly not my first, and I hope not my last.”

They both laughed then. One cowboy, Pete Combs, took sick on them. Rufus made him a bed in the trailer, and everyone thought he'd die. High fever and he was near out of his mind. But they were halfway across the Crow reservation when one day he got well enough to climb down and eat with them. A miracle, and his recovery cheered up the crew, especially when, in a few days, he was back on horseback.

Rufus treated two hands for boils on their butts and set one broken arm for a boy in a horse wreck. The old pipe-sucking ex-noncom was almost a surgeon in Slocum's book. His food wasn't as good as Murty's, but it was good enough to eat, and he cooked some really good elk meat on an occasion or two.

The Crows missed charging them a fee by not being in their camp, but Slocum and his men gave some poor, begging squaws a limper that could hardly walk. Everyone smiled. If Slocum hadn't feared they all had the clap, he'd have let the squaws entertain his boys.

They found enough graze north of Billings that Slocum split the crew and let half go to town the first night and the others the next, on his advance of three dollars each from Caltron's petty cash. They came home whooping and none were arrested. In the end they lost three days, but Slocum's help was acting much more alive on the job, and tales of beautiful whores and fantastic feats were the topic of the next week's drive.

“You sure know men, Slocum.” Black shook his head. “I'd never have thought about shutting down for three days. But that one-night furlough did us more good than Christmas at home would have.”

“Boys need to be boys sometimes.”

“I agree. They've been new men all week. Caltron had you figured out pretty quick as the man for this job. I was dreading him piling this job on me. I knew I'd get scattered or the crew would quit. Man, they really missed home feeding hay all winter in the cold up here and all.”

“I'd have allowed those squaws to screw our boys, down there on the Crow reservation, but I figured they all had the clap.”

Black threw his head back and laughed. “What you worry the most about never happens, does it?”

“You're right.”

The boys had got some letters from home at Billings too. One boy told them his letter said that someone else had got Caltron's wife pregnant while he was gone.

“What do you reckon he did about that?” Rufus asked Slocum, joining in the conversation.

“I'm glad I wasn't there for it,” Slocum told him.

“Much as he loved her, you wouldn't think that would happen,” Rack complained. “What do you think?”

“Any of you got a wife at home?” Slocum asked.

The heads of those gathered around the table shook.

“Ain't none of us married, Slocum.”

“You ever leave a wife unattended long enough, there's a chance some sweet-talking guy is going to get in her britches. Trust me, temptation is always there.”

They laughed.

“But he was so in love with her—”

“You heard me,” Slocum said and shook his head.

“By damn, I get one, I won't leave her that long.”

“Boys, we have about a heavy push ahead to get there. If you are going back to Texas, I want you to decide by then. Caltron told me if there wasn't six men to take the horses and wagon back, to sell everything. Otherwise I can issue you enough money for supplies to get it all back home.”

“How long will it take us?” one boy asked.

“Three months. You will make better time than driving cattle, but I figure roughly that long.”

“I'm going home,” another said. “Somehow.”

Slocum felt certain that enough would go home to be able to return Caltron's stock and gear to Texas. He wondered if Caltron had been more worried than he'd let on about his wife running around on him, which was why he was wanting to get back to her. Tough deal if she was pregnant. Slocum would probably never know how it turned out.

They were less than week from Bozeman when his scout Jimmy Evans came in early one afternoon. He could tell the young man was vexed when he dismounted up by the chuckwagon, where Slocum was looking over the books.

“What's wrong, Jim?”

“I think some hard cases are sizing us up. Maybe make a try to grab the herd.”

“What did you see?”

“Last three days they've been using field glasses to watch us. I first didn't think nothing about it. But I had a look at them and they look like tough hombres, and I figure they may try to jump us and try to take the herd.”

“Let me go get my field glasses. My horse is saddled, and we'll go see what we can learn about them. I sure appreciate you watching out for us. Things have been almost too quiet.”

“I'd hate to holler fire and there only be smoke.”

“No, that's your job, and I appreciate that your scouting has been all no-nonsense so far.”

“Thanks. It's a great job and I have appreciated your trust in me.”

“Rufus, tell Dan we're going to go check on a few things. Keep an eye out and a Greener handy.”

“Aye, boss man. I'll put off my nap today.”

“We may have trouble coming.”

“I'll tell the boys too.”

“Do that and be careful. We're so damn close I can smell it.”

“Me too sir. You two be careful.”

Glasses in his saddlebags, he followed Jim's lead. “They were on that hill over there when I saw them last. Should we circle around back?”

“Good idea. Don't push too fast; we might run into them.” Slocum motioned for Jim to lead the way.

In a short while, they found tracks coming and going. Both men nodded, and Jim led the way though the jack pines until they heard running water and could smell campfire smoke. They dismounted, hitched their horses and proceeded on foot. From a high point, they bellied down, and both men used their field glasses.

The camp was made up of some old brown sidewall tents, around which several squaws worked fixing food. The men were mostly half-breeds, except for one black-bearded, heavy-set white man who looked like he ran things.

“I wonder who he is,” Jimmy said.

“I sure have no idea, but he looks like he doesn't earn a living doing anything.”

Jimmy agreed. “But can we do anything before they try to take the herd?”

“Be sort of hard. I wonder if the law would come up and check on them for us.”

“We could ask them to.”

“Why don't you ride over and ask the law and explain what they've been doing?”

“I can do that. Might get us some help, huh?”

Slocum figured that with his beard and with everyone calling him Clark, his disguise as John Clark should hold with the law. The bunch he was watching could run off some of his cattle, but he doubted they could take the whole herd. Still, there was no need in taking any chances. He gave Jim some money for expenses. In the old days he'd have shot the camp up, run off their horses, and ended that matter. But things were getting a lot tighter in the West. Vigilante law was getting frowned on more and more.

With Jim gone to ask for help, Slocum rode back to camp. He'd have Dan scout ahead the next day, and he'd also keep an eye out for any sign of the breeds preparing to raid the herd. When they came in for supper, he told the men about the problems they might face and to be watchful. While the herd was trail-broke, they'd be hell to ever reassemble if they were stampeded in this timber country.