Slocum and the Three Fugitives (9 page)

Using every trick he knew to throw off pursuit, Slocum found himself riding into a broad mountain pasture that would be his death if the posse spotted him before he reached the far side. Rather than risk the gallop across the broad grassy expanse, he backtracked.

Immediately he saw he had made a poor decision trying to find another rocky canyon that would conceal his trail. The lead riders pushed their horses to the breaking point. From the lather sloughing off the flanks, the flaring nostrils, and whites around the eyes, these horses approached exhaustion.

He realized that was part of their strategy. A few men ran him down, slowed him, let the rest of the posse on less spent horses come up and arrest him. Or string him up, depending on how pissed they were at the pursuit. While Byron Locke might be part of the band so aggressively chasing him down, he dared not count on that as his salvation. More than once he had seen a bloodthirsty posse take the law into their own hands.

Posses turned to lynch mobs mighty easy.

Too late to make an escape attempt across the meadow, Slocum angled back away from the canyon mouth hunting in the fringe of trees in the foothills for any place to hide. The pines and junipers provided some cover, but the land was stripped clean, telling him cattle grazed in the woods. This might be X Bar X land or belong to someone else. It was all Spanish land grant territory, ensuring someone laid claim to it thanks to some distant Spanish king's generosity.

He wove in and out through the trees, keeping his Appaloosa to the patches littered with pine needles. They crushed but did not show hoofprints the way leaves did. A careful tracker had no trouble following him, but he counted on the posse being townspeople bent on collecting a quick reward, not experienced trailsmen.

His horse struggled up a steep slope. The trees grew closer together here, providing cover but making it more difficult for him to ride faster. He suddenly burst out on the crest of a low ridge.

He cursed his bad luck. A steep, rocky slope in front of him went to a river. Going either way along the ridge gained him nothing.

And behind he heard the eager shouts of a posse closing in on its prey.

Shooting it out meant death. Slocum had no qualms about putting a few holes in the men so doggedly pursuing him, but he saw no way to avoid being killed if he fought. He slid off the saddle and stood at the top of the steep slope. It came close to being a cliff, falling some thirty feet away to the river below. He took a last look through the woods and saw flashes of color, from the men's bandannas and glints of sunlight off their weapons.

He swatted the Appaloosa on the rump and sent the already spooked horse galloping away down the ridge. Slocum wished there had been a ghost of a chance of escaping that way. As it was, he needed the horse as a diversion. If he had stayed astride it, he would have been caught within minutes.

A deep breath, then he stepped off the rim and fell. He clamped his jaw tightly to keep from calling out or biting his own tongue when he hit. The impact almost knocked him out. The rocks slashed and cut at his back, forcing him to partially sit up. But this proved worse. The rocky slope tore at his jeans. And then he plunged into the river. The sudden cold stole away his breath.

He sucked in a lungful of water and sputtered, gasped, and floundered about as the swift current carried him from the spot where he had fallen in. He tried to blink and clear his eyes. Only blackness swirled about. His strength faded and the current felt more powerful around him. Slocum knew he was drowning. When he smashed hard into a rock, he gasped and took in even more water.

For a moment all he could do was wish for death. Then the pain hit him, forcing him to flop about like a fish out of water. His thrashing was weak. It took almost falling off a water-smoothed rock back into the water to make him realize he had been washed out of the river and was safe. He gagged and vomited up water.

He tried to push away from the rock but a strong hand held him flat. Slocum tried to draw his Colt, but the leather thong on the hammer prevented it. Coordinating his efforts became his only goal, and he failed.

“Lay still. You need to get more water out of your lungs.”

He cried out as the hand shoved down hard on his back, crushing into his shoulder blades. More water gushed from his nose and mouth, but this time he felt better. Rather than fighting, he remained draped over the rock, waiting for something more to happen.

“You can get up. You're strong enough. I know it.”

The hands moved over his back, tracing out the bones in his spine, kneading his muscles, moving him off the rock. He scrambled to get his feet beneath him and flopped forward onto the grassy riverbank. Only when he felt strong enough did he roll over and look up at his savior. The sun blinded him, but he squinted and turned away, looking out of the corner of his eye.

“Damn,” he said.

“You could be more appreciative,” Marta Deutsch said. She put her balled hands on her flaring hips and glared at him. “You have no sense of payback.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you came on me bathing in the pool, I was buck naked. Here you are, sloshing around in the river completely dressed. Really.”

Slocum squeezed out as much water as he could from his coat and then shucked it off to work on his vest. The woman watched him like a hawk eyeing a rabbit.

“Keep going.”

“You're enjoying this too much,” Slocum said, getting to his feet. He took off his vest and wrung out the water. Even so, his soaked shirt and pants weighed a ton, but the warm sun worked to dry the clothing.

“Why not?” Marta said, coming closer. She ran the palm of her hand over his chest. Streams of water ran down to his belly. With a movement quicker than a snake, she leaned over, licked up the water, then turned her face up to his. Her bright blue eyes danced. “You can't stay here.” She backed away after stating what, to Slocum, was obvious.

Slocum wondered how much she knew, and if he ought to spin his yarn. She could pass it along to her father and brothers. That might make it sound a bit more
verdad
.

“What do you know?”

“Well, Mr. Slocum,” she said, “I know your name. From the condition of your jeans and your coat, you slid down the cliff back at Suicide Hill. The only reason you would do that is if you were thrown. Now, unless I miss my guess and I don't think I am in this case, you are too good a horseman for that.”

“So?”

“So you went down willingly. How many men in the posse almost cornered you?”

“Six, eight. I couldn't tell exactly.”

“The trees. That's quite a stand of mixed conifers—those are pine trees.”

“I know all about pinecones.”

“I am sure you do. And piñon, along with spruce, fir, and other needled trees.”

Slocum got a chance to study her more objectively now. She almost burst out of her crisp white blouse, and the jeans she wore looked as if she had been born in them. The pants were tucked into the tops of ornately tooled boots. Depending on where he rode, this style meant one of two things. Cowboys going into town on Saturday night to whoop and holler wanted to show off their fancy boots. This hardly fit Marta. The other explanation was a rich rancher asserting his authority over his hands. Wearing the pants legs so they showed off the expensive boots rather than protecting the tops showed she wasn't out on the range where they could get scratched and cut up on thornbushes or rocks.

She stood close to five-foot-five and had her long blond hair tucked up under a broad-brimmed hat. At her slender waist she wore a S&W Model 3, up high and difficult to draw fast. He doubted she needed to slap leather, but wondered how accurate a shot she was.

“Very,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “I prefer the .38 because it doesn't have the recoil of heavier models like the Peacemaker. Your Colt has been rechambered for cartridges. I believe that is a .36 caliber?”

“Did you see the posse or were you guessing they were after me?”

Marta laughed and said, “You have a delightfully one-track mind, Mr. Slocum. May I call you John? Yes, I saw them, though I did not witness your descent at Suicide Hill. That was all conjecture.”

“Is there someplace to hide until the posse leaves?”

“Why, yes, the X Bar X is filled with such places. I'm sorry but I cannot direct you to them.”

“I'm on foot. Anywhere I go has to be close, or they'll catch me wandering around.”

“No, I don't think so. Come along. Oh, don't be so shy, John.”

She took his hand after he pulled away from her. He let her lead him away from the river, up over rocks carried from higher in the mountains to a rocky ravine. During spring runoff it ran full, but this late in the year it was dry.

“You caught my horse?”

“And I brought it with me. I deduced you were in the river. I know the entire ranch, at least along the rivers since I bathe often, and knew you had to wash past this point.”

Slocum went to the horse and patted its neck. He saw that the rifle was still in the sheath but the saddlebags had been removed, then replaced. The leather cords had been retied, but not as he had done before leaving Taos.

“Thanks,” he said. He dropped his coat and vest across the cantle, then stepped up.

Marta smiled up at him, pleased as punch with herself.

“You owe me, John Slocum. Perhaps you owe me twice over since peeking at me back at the pond pleased you so.”

“I got the feeling you enjoyed being watched then,” he said.

She grinned.

“I'm sure you got a feeling, but that wasn't it.” Her smile melted away as she said, “You'd better go now. The posse will have reached the far end of the ridge and, not finding you, be working its way back in this direction.”

Slocum took in the lay of the land. The ridge ran southwest. That had to be where the posse hunted for him, coming this way looking for his tracks.

“If I follow this arroyo east, how long before the banks drop down low enough for me to ride my horse out?”

“If you start now, you'll find out soon enough. Good day, John.”

She clambered up a hillside. He watched as her jeans tightened even more, her slender legs pumping to keep her moving up the slope. It took only a couple minutes for her to stand atop the ridge. She waved to him.

Something about the way she did so reminded him of what she had done back at the pool. She had shrugged, smiled, and silently apologized as she screamed for her brothers to rescue her.

He barely rode a dozen yards when he heard Marta calling to the posse. He looked back over his shoulder to see if she sent them in his direction. This time she decoyed his pursuers away.

That was likely the difference between explaining to her brothers why she allowed a stranger to ogle her naked and a posse coming on her clothed. More than this, she could have let him drown in the river if she had meant him any harm. Slocum rode faster and found a break in the sandy bank a hundred yards farther. Scrambling up the crumbling wall, he came out on a broad, grassy stretch with a hiding place promised on the far side.

He galloped across the expanse and entered another wooded area. The hilly region provided plenty of cover. Unless the posse got lucky and found his hoofprints in the meadow, he had reached safety.

Or had he?

He inhaled deeply. His lungs still burned from the recent water in them, but he coughed for a different reason. The pungent odor caught in his throat and choked him.

Slocum had smelled this before. A slow smile crossed his lips. The Deutsches' still wasn't far off.

His horse shied from the heavy odor, but Slocum kept riding. When he came within a hundred yards of the still, he saw curls of white smoke twisting skyward. The source of Deutsches' Taos Lightning was close at hand. He dismounted but did not advance to scout the still. Instead, he worked his way back through the woods to watch his back trail for close to a half hour. He didn't want the posse surprising him at the still. Making moonshine wasn't illegal, but the deputies would partake of the whiskey, get shit-faced, and be more likely to hang him just for the hell of it.

He doubted Rory Deutsch would deny them the Taos Lightning or their pleasure stringing him up. If anything, Deutsch would take real pleasure in furnishing the rope and even in tying the noose.

Nose twitching, Slocum began the long, slow circuit of the hill where the still churned out the potent liquor. He found a trail leading off to the south. He had gotten turned around a mite when the posse chased him, but he thought the dirt path led to the X Bar X ranch house a couple miles away.

He heard a man singing off-key, missing words and generally turning himself into a beacon in the quiet forest. Slocum flopped on his belly and watched for fifteen minutes as the man chopped wood, stoked the fire under the boiler, and fed in the garbage being turned into whiskey. Old potato peels, rotting vegetables, corn husks, anything that might yield alcohol if heated enough and then the liquid distilled went into the vat. A coil of copper spiraled around, cooled by the air so the drops coming from the open end could turn from gas to liquid.

The man was shorter than Slocum by a head and scrawny as a scarecrow. He took frequent nips from a pocket flask, and once Slocum saw him refill it from the slowly dripping tube. How he kept working after drinking so much was a testament to his practice at downing such potent whiskey. Slocum had seen men like this before. Without booze, they shook like a leaf. Get a couple shots under their belt and they looked like the soberest preacher going before his flock on Sunday morning. It took a powerful amount more to get them roaring drunk.

This distiller was only starting the day and moved with the sureness of a teetotaler.

As Slocum watched, he thought on what to do. The way to hit back at Deutsch was to cripple his business. If he couldn't supply his Taos Lightning to the saloons in town, the bar owners would find their spines and hunt for other sources. Deutsch could go only so far burning out the owners and killing people. Running the businesses himself wasn't his intent. He wanted to control it, keep the owners dancing to his tune, and rake in the money.

It was simple and going his way if the still produced the hooch he forced those in Taos to sell.

Slocum crept closer. The workman continued chopping wood for the fire, but now he only split a few pieces before knocking back some of his handmade whiskey. The way he wobbled told Slocum he was crossing the line of apparent sobriety and venturing into completely liquored up. Before the sun set, he would be crawling on his belly.

But Slocum didn't want to wait that long. It was hardly past noon, and sundown, even surrounded by the tall mountain peaks, was hours off. He slid his colt from the holster, then silently cursed. The six-shooter had been soaked in the river. He should have stripped it down, dried and oiled the mechanism, and loaded it with new cartridges. The pistol might fail him when he needed it most because of his own thoughtlessness.

The distiller stopped, wiped his face with a rag, then paused, the silver flask halfway to his lips. He continued the motion, getting the flask to his lips, but Slocum knew what that hesitation meant. He had been found out.

Surging to his feet, he cocked the Colt and declared, “You'll be dead before you hit the ground if you don't get them hands up!”

The order confused the man. He stared at the flask, not sure what to do with it. Finally realizing he might get a slug through his head if he didn't obey, he stuck the cork in and then lifted his hands, the flask clutched in his left hand.

“You're makin' one helluva mistake, mister,” he said. A slight slur to his words was all that betrayed his heavy drinking. “You're trespassin' on private land.”

“How many gallons a week do you produce?” Slocum asked, coming closer. He looked around to see if the man had a rifle leaning against the small shed holding the still or any other firearm.

“'Nuff to keep me happy,” the man said. He dropped the flask. The bright silver flash stole Slocum's attention.