Slocum and the Glitter Girls at Gravel Gulch (9781101619513) (9 page)

They walked along a worn path next to the other creek.
There were a few men on that side of the canyon valley and they were busy dipping their gold pans into the stream. Apparently, without much luck. One would dip gravel and water, swirl the sediment by tilting his pan one way then another, and peering into the pan as he eliminated small portions of sand and water. Then shook his head when no color showed and repeated the process.

“Howdy, Carl,” Laurie said as they passed the man.

“Mornin’, Laurie.”

He bent down to dip more water and sand into his pan.

They walked about a mile then Laurie turned away from the creek and headed straight for the other buttes that flanked the right side of the canyon. There were miners and prospectors plying the other creek, and some were digging into the base of the butte with picks.

Slocum could smell their sweat as they drew near.

Laurie spoke to none of them, but turned left and stopped in front of a mine adit, a gaping black hole in the side of the bluff, at the very bottom of the butte.

“Drop your sacks,” she said. “I’ll see if Harvey is inside.”

Slocum and Hornaday set their sacks down. They clanked with the airtights.

Laurie disappeared into the cave.

Slocum lit his cheroot and looked around. Men lined the creek while others jabbed holes in the butte with picks. He saw a box of dynamite at one of the camps, stacked with tools and grub and wooden canteens. But so far, he had heard no explosions. Some of the holes were deep; the others were just getting started by men doing backbreaking work.

Moments later, Laurie appeared at the cave entrance, the canteens dangling from her shoulders. Behind her was a man in his thirties, his face covered with grime, his rumpled hat askew on his head. He had black hair and
brown eyes. The sleeves of his chambray shirt were rolled up to the elbows, and his hands were infested with dirt and calluses.

“Harve,” she said, “you know Wallace, but this is John Slocum.”

Harvey’s eyes widened.

He stared at Slocum as if he were seeing a ghost.

“Slocum?” he mumbled.

“Pleased to meet you, Harvey. Unless we’ve met before,” Slocum said.

Harvey walked up to Slocum and held out his dirty hand to shake Slocum’s.

“No, no, we never met, but I seen you in Abilene. I mean I saw you there. Man, what I saw.”

“Now, Harve,” Laurie chided. “Don’t carry on so.”

Slocum shook his hand with a powerful grip.

Harvey grinned wide and pumped Slocum’s hand up and down as if he were running for political office.

“I never thought I’d meet you in person, Slocum,” Harvey said. “Gawd, it’s an honor.”

“Harvey…” Laurie said.

“I can’t help it,” Harvey said. “Slocum, I’ve thought about you for years. Ever since I saw you shoot down those gunmen in Abilene. Man, you sure know how to tame a town.”

Slocum pulled smoke into his mouth from the cheroot and took a backward step as if to put some distance between him and the adoring Harvey.

“I’ve told Harve where we’re going,” Laurie said. “Wallace, he’ll check on you every morning before he comes to his mine here.”

“Much obliged,” Hornaday said.

“We’ll be on our way, Harvey. Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”

“You know me better than that, sis. I know what Canby
tried to do to Wallace and what he did to Harlan. It’s a damned shame.”

“How’s the mine going?” Slocum asked, spewing a plume of smoke into the air.

“I’m getting’ close to a vein, I think. I’m seein’ more chunks and flakes.”

“You might strike it rich,” Slocum said. “I hope so.”

“Way I figure it,” Harvey said, “there was once a great river running through this valley. It carved out these buttes from pure rock and left lots of gold embedded here and there when it passed through from way up north.”

“That’s probably what happened,” Slocum said. “I’ve seen other mines in the Rockies that showed the earth was once hot and that gold was liquid, flowing south like water.”

“You boys can talk mining and gold some other time,” Laurie said. “We’ve got to get Wallace tucked away safe and set up in his hiding place.”

“See you soon, I hope, Slocum,” Harvey said.

“Soon,” Slocum said. “You can call me John, if you like.”

“Yes sir. John.”

Harvey grinned. Slocum and Hornaday picked up their flour sacks and followed Laurie as she walked down the butte wall next to the creek.

As they were nearing the end of the valley, Slocum looked up and saw puffs of smoke, bright against the blue sky.

He counted the puffs and made a mental note.

He could read some of the sign and he didn’t like what he saw.

Laurie looked up, too.

“Oh, look,” she said. “Smoke.”

Wallace tilted his head and looked at the puffs of white smoke.

Slocum didn’t say anything just then. He just knew those smoke signals meant trouble.

The Apaches were calling out for a powwow in three days.

That much he knew.

Three days, and then what?

He stubbed out his cheroot and tramped on, worry lines furrowing his brow under the brim of his black hat.

At the end of the long valley, Laurie turned away from the creek and passed behind the last butte. She walked another two hundred yards toward a smaller butte that could not be seen from the valley.

Beyond the small butte, Slocum saw a low mesa that seemed isolated and out of place among the statuary of elegant buttes. Laurie turned toward the mesa and they passed the butte.

At the foot of the mesa, there was a great pile of rocks, as if part of it had been exploded. They approached the pile of rocks and Slocum saw that they were the remains of a small butte that had crumbled due to age and weather. Beyond the pile of rubble, as they stepped over the rocks, he saw a hole in the wall of the mesa.

“There it is,” Laurie said. “Just like I remembered it.”

“I thought the cave was in one of those buttes back in the valley,” Slocum said.

“There is one there, another cave I mean, but I thought this might be safer for Wallace. It’s more remote, and most
of the folks in Deadfall have probably never known about it, or have forgotten it.”

The three of them stepped inside the cave. They had to hunch over, but once inside, the walls widened and there was a large space that appeared to have been used as a shelter in recent times.

Overhead, there was a feeble light from a hole in the ceiling.

Slocum set down his sack and walked over to where the light sprayed down. He looked up into the hole. In the dimness, he saw blue sky.

“That’s odd,” he said. “That air hole seems to go clear to the top of the mesa.”

“It does,” Laurie said. “Whoever started this mine drilled a hole so that he could breathe fresh air. Look at the ground around it. You can see where water has dripped and drained into the soil.”

Slocum looked down and saw that there were dry rivulets and furrows in the ground where water had dropped and run over a considerable length of time.

He breathed the air that came down through the hole.

Hornaday set his sack down.

Laurie unslung the canteens and walked over to a small bench and wiped dust from it.

“If you’ll open those sacks, I’ll help us stack the food behind this bench,” she said. “And to christen the cave, I brought something extra for all of us.”

Slocum and Hornaday dragged their sacks to the bench and opened them.

In the top of Slocum’s bag was a packet.

“I’ll take that,” Laurie said. She bent down and snatched the oilskin packet from the top of his bag.

Slocum began to remove airtights and beef jerky from
the sack. He laid them on the bench while Laurie walked away.

Hornaday began pulling out the contents of his bag.

He set the items on the unused portion of the bench: peaches, some potatoes, a can of Arbuckle’s coffee, dried string beans, a tin of apricots, another of raisins.

“Better stuff here than me’n Harlan had to eat,” Hornaday said.

“It all looks good,” Slocum said.

Laurie sat on a flat rock that was set among other flat rocks. They all seemed to have been carried into the cave from outside, from another place.

She unwrapped the oilskin packet and pulled out cloth napkins, forks, a paring knife, and spoons. There was also a can opener, which she laid out with the other utensils on one of the flat rocks.

Then she opened a linen towel that had been folded over the foodstuffs.

Slocum smelled the tang of sugar and looked over at her as he set the last item from his sack on the bench.

“Do I smell bear claws?” he said.

Laurie smiled. Even in the darkened cave, Slocum could see that warm pretty smile.

“You do,” she said.

“I smell them bear claws, too,” Hornaday said. “Makes my stomach churn.”

“Well, if you’ll look down the back part of this cave, Wallace, you ought to find a big box made into a cabinet. Open the door and you’ll find all kinds of cook pans, a skillet, and a coffeepot. Bring me the coffeepot.”

“Yes’m. Hot coffee would be a luxury right now,” Wallace said.

“John, you’ll find wood back near that cabinet and kindling. If you’ll make a fire, I’ll make us that coffee.”

Slocum and Hornaday walked back to the far end of the cave and saw another big tunnel. The light was dim, but Slocum saw the stack of firewood and kindling. Alongside it was a hatchet.

Wallace found the box and opened the door. Someone had made shelves and he saw all the cooking utensils, including a small coffeepot. He brushed away the dust and grit as he walked back into the biggest part of the cave.

Slocum laid down kindling and chunks of firewood cut from cedars and junipers. He made a pyramid of firewood over squaw wood from pines and lit a match. The fire blazed into life, throwing shadows against the wall.

Laurie measured out four heaping tablespoons from the Arbuckle’s can and poured them into the pot. Then she added water from one of the large wooden canteens.

She handed the coffeepot to Slocum.

“See if you can find a place for this,” she said.

Slocum pushed the pot next to the fire. The smoke rose up through the hole in the cave’s ceiling.

“This place will be perfectly safe for you, Wallace. Those piles of rocks outside will hide the entrance. The smoke going up that chimney will be wisps by the time it reaches the top of the mesa. You’ll find bedding way back beyond that storage cabinet. It’s probably moldy and smelly by now, but it’ll do. It can get quite cold here at night.”

“You stayed here, Miss Laurie?” Hornaday asked.

“Harve and I stayed one night here, about a year ago. We were hunting antelope.”

“Get any?” Wallace asked as the coffeepot began to rumble with the agitated water.

“Nope. Had fun, though. We killed four jackrabbits and a roadrunner.”

Wallace and Slocum laughed.

They sat around the flat stones and Laurie handed out
sugared bear claws she had baked herself, strips of fried bacon, and biscuits that had not yet gone hard.

When the coffee was ready, she poured some into three tin cups that lay on the bench with the foodstuffs.

They ate and drank coffee.

When they were finished, Laurie asked Slocum the question that was burning in her mind.

“You could read some of those smoke signals, John. What do they mean?”

“From what I saw, those signals were calling to all the Apaches to gather someplace. Probably a mesa somewhere around here.”

“Do you know why?”

Slocum shook his head.

“No, I don’t,” he said.

Then he fished around in one of his shirt pockets and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

As Wallace and Laurie watched, Slocum unfolded the paper.

It was a wanted flyer.

At the top, there was the legend: $1000.00.

Underneath, the words wanted for murder were printed in bold black letters.

And beneath the printing was an artist’s rendition of the wanted man. The name beneath it was Junius Collins.

Then followed a brief description of the killer and his victim, one Faron Longley and information on how to contact the sheriff in Dodge City, Kansas.

“Recognize him?” Slocum asked.

Laurie held the paper at a slant so that Wallace could read the flyer and look at the picture.

“Why, that looks just like Orson Canby,” Hornaday said.

“Spittin’ image,” Laurie declared.

“When I got the order for those horses, I did some checking with the local sheriff,” Slocum said. “I didn’t find an Orson Canby, but I did see that dodger and so I asked whether or not anyone in town had seen such a man.”

“And?” Laurie said.

“Seems when Junius Collins left Dodge, he headed west and by the time he got to Kansas City, he had changed his name to Orson Canby. People there remember him because he beat a man half to death. That man had been at the Long Branch in Dodge when Collins murdered one Faron Longley in cold blood.”

“Yes, go on,” Laurie said.

“I talked to the man in Kansas City. His name was Dennis Walpole. He said he recognized Collins, and Collins beat him up, tried to kill him. Walpole’s friends saved him from certain death. But Canby had to leave town in a hurry.”

“So you knew who Orson Canby was before you even came here to Deadfall,” she said.

“Faron Longley was a friend of mine,” Slocum said. “He and I used to trade horses we got in Mexico. He was a good man and a good friend.”

“My God, that’s an incredible story. So is that why you brought those horses to Canby?”

“Yes. The only reason. Now I’ve seen the man and I know he’s Junius Collins.”

“And you want the reward,” Wallace said. “Boy, a thousand dollars. That’s a heap of money.”

“Faron left a widow and a couple of young kids. If I collect that reward, the money will go to Alice, Faron’s widow, who still lives in Dodge.”

“You’re a strange man, John.” Hornaday slurped his coffee. “Mighty strange,” he said.

“I hate to see a man like Canby get away with murder,” Slocum said. “And it doesn’t look like he’s changed much.”