“John, over there. Horses. Three or four of them. Did a pack of wolves bring down a horse?”

  “You’re close to the truth,” he said. “I think Montrose or Molly—or both of them—took care of four of his clan. Don’t know what happened to the others, but I doubt they’re riding with Eustace or Molly any longer.”

  “What’ll we do?”

  “We don’t disturb dinner, that’s for certain sure.” Slocum guided her at a deliberate walk in the direction of the frightened horses. It took the better part of twenty minutes before he had captured all four of the animals.

  “We can ride in style. If one gets tired, we switch to our spare,” he said. Even better than riding, he had one of his six-shooters in his holster again. He had found it in the saddlebags of a big roan, where one of the gang must have stashed it.

  “Are you sure we’re heading in the right direction, John?” she asked. “Maybe we ought to get the sheriff.”

  “I can track them just fine,” he told her. He knew Erin’s problem. She was thinking of the four dead men back in the meadow and what that meant about the man and woman they were going to tangle with. “There’re supplies in the saddlebags. Why not camp? I’ll finish this off and come back for you.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Even if you find the gold?” Before he could answer, Erin rushed on. “Never mind. I’ll ride along and keep my yap shut. You won’t even know I’m here. I promise.”

  Slocum shrugged. It would get bloody before the smoke cleared. Watching after Erin was a chore, but he could do it, if he had to. He had promised Michael Preston to deliver the map and had tried. He had eventually found himself thinking more of Erin and keeping her from harm than he ought to. She was a mighty fine-looking woman, had guts and determination, and wouldn’t turn tail and run when the shooting started. But he didn’t want to be forced to decide between her and a million dollars in gold bars.

  He rode slowly to be certain he didn’t miss anything left by the riders ahead. Occasionally he dismounted to be sure the riders had not veered away and taken a side canyon. Mostly, they stuck to the main road leading southward. An hour later, he found spoor showing they had turned west and headed into the mountains.

  “We’re closing in on them,” Slocum said, eyeing a pile of fresh horse dung. Montrose and Molly had passed by within the hour.

  “Who do you mean?”

  “Molly and Eustace,” he said. Then he realized he was making an assumption that didn’t match what facts he had. All he knew was that four people had died in the meadow. Eustace and Molly might have been half that dinner for scavengers, done in by Eustace’s brothers or even his sons. There was no honor among thieves, much less between members of the Montrose family. Then he considered how mad-dog vicious Eustace was and how conniving Molly could be.

  “Molly and Eustace,” Slocum said with more determination. “They’re the two we’re following.”

  “But—”

  Slocum held up a hand to silence her. Echoes from deeper in the canyon came out. He listened hard and knew he heard voices, even if he could not make out the words.

  “They’re arguing,” Erin said. “The words are all jumbled up, but they’re mad and shouting at each other.” She looked at him with new respect. “One voice is shriller than the other.”

  “Molly’s,” he said. A deeper voice sent shock waves down the canyon. “And Eustace.”

  Slocum slid his six-gun from its holster and checked the loads in the cylinder. He was loaded for bear—or Eustace Montrose.

  They rode more slowly now, straining to make out the words. The argument rose in pitch, then died down below the whistle of wind blowing through the canyon. By the time the sun was above the mountains behind them, they might have been riding into a deserted canyon.

  “Do you think they stopped to eat?” Erin asked. “I’m getting mighty hungry.”

  “Get some jerky from the saddlebags and gnaw on that. We keep riding.” Slocum wanted this over. They had swapped horses several times during their ride from the meadow and had narrowed the gap between them and their quarry to what Slocum estimated to be a mile or two. He doubted Montrose would spend any time worrying about anyone on his backtrail because the glint of gold would lure him on.

  Less than a half hour later, Slocum and Erin entered a broad valley where canyons crossed.

  “Which way?” Erin looked around and looked confused. “There’s a road coming down from the other canyon big enough to take ten wagons with bullion.”

  Before Slocum could decide which direction Eustace and Molly had gone, he heard a gunshot from the left-hand branch. He looked at Erin, then drew his Colt Navy and put his spurs to his horse’s flanks. Erin hung back but not by much. Less than a mile deeper into the canyon Slocum saw a frightened horse, eyes wide and white with fear, galloping past off to his right.

  Slocum cocked his six-gun and advanced at a walk.

  He drew rein and looked down a slope to the rocky shore of a stream running through the canyon.

  “What happened, John?” asked Erin. Then she saw the body and gasped. “Molly!”

  “Reckon Eustace figured out that she wasn’t going to find the gold with the map and only half the coin.”

  “They argued earlier. That’s what we heard. They argued and he shot her dead!”

  “Looks like it,” Slocum allowed. He had started to ride deeper into the canyon, when Erin called to him.

  “Aren’t you going to do anything for her?”

  “She’s dead,” he said. “I doubt Montrose would leave the map and coin half on her. He might not figure out where the gold is actually stashed, but he’s not going to leave what clues he has on the likes of her.”

  “We should bury her. It’s the only d-decent thing to do. Otherwise, s-she’ll be ea-eaten by coyotes like the others back in the meadow.”

  “She would have left you to drown or starve to death in that glory hole,” Slocum said.

  “She would have,” Erin said, her courage coming back, “but we’re better than that. We should do the right thing.”

  Slocum thought the right thing was putting a couple rounds into Montrose’s putrid heart, but he reluctantly agreed. It took better than a half hour to dig a shallow grave for Molly Preston and cover her with rocks too large for the coyotes to move easily. It was more than she deserved.

  “Thank you, John,” Erin said. “You know it was what had to be done.”

  Slocum said nothing. His mind already ranged far and wide, trying to figure how to take down Eustace Montrose. The additional time Montrose had gained since killing Molly gave him several miles’ head start. Or did it?

  The hair on the back of Slocum’s neck rose. Eustace Montrose was close. He felt it.

  Slocum motioned Erin to stay back, then put his finger to his lips, cautioning her to silence. He rode a hundred yards deeper into the canyon, hoofbeats muffled by the burbling stream running off to his right. Slocum slowed and finally drew to a halt. He dismounted and walked around a bend in the road, expecting Montrose to be waiting for him with a rifle trained on his head.

  Slocum saw the giant of a man hunched over in the middle of the road. Eustace cursed a blue streak as he worked, turning the coin this way and that over the map, then finally throwing down the half coin in a fit of rage.

  Slocum reached under his shirt and pulled out the other half of the gold double eagle. He let it swing in the bright sunlight poking through the clouds. A ray flashed across the map and caught Montrose’s attention.

  Eustace Montrose whipped around, his hand going for the six-shooter hanging at his side.

  “You need the other half of the coin, Montrose,” Slocum said. “You need this.” Slocum held the coin at arm’s length in his left hand.

  Montrose lifted his six-shooter, but Slocum shot first. His .36-caliber round hit the giant of a man in the middle of his chest. Montrose staggered back a step, looked at the tiny red spot blossoming into a deadly flower on his chest and continued to bring up his six-gun.

  Slocum fired again. This time his round hit Montrose in the middle of the forehead, just above the nose he had mashed. The man swung around, facing away from Slocum, took a step and then crashed to the ground, facedown in the dirt.

  “You stupid son of a bitch,” Slocum said, looking down at the body. “You looked at the gold coin, not the hand holding the gun on you.”

  He knelt and saw the map held down with rocks at the corners. He retrieved the half of the coin Erin had carried and fitted it together with his.

  “You’re going after the gold now, aren’t you?” Erin looked down at him with a disgusted look on her pretty face.

  “Can’t hurt to see what that much bullion looks like,” Slocum said. “I have to hand it to Molly. She almost had it right.” Slocum took the coin, studied it and the surrounding mountains, then aligned it to the west instead of the more usual north—the broad three-line scratch he had thought was a lightning bolt was yet another trick. The scratch on the other half of the coin matched up with an apparently extraneous line on the map to point the way to the gold cache.

  “There, across the stream,” Slocum said. He bundled up the map and coins and tucked them into his pocket. He mounted and rode in silence to the hillside on the far canyon wall. Slocum was aware how Erin fumed at this excursion, especially since she knew what he would do once he located the stolen bullion.

  The ruts left by ten heavily laden wagons showed in the grass once they reached the softer dirt. Slocum’s heart beat faster as he saw a small opening in the side of the canyon wall overgrown with blackberry bushes. The wagon tracks leading in had been brushed out with weeds used like crude brooms, but he knew that trick. His heart raced as he realized he had found the gold.

  “In there,” Slocum said. He gingerly pulled back the thorny bushes and slipped past them. The crevice was hardly wide enough to accommodate a wagon, but it took Slocum only a few minutes of walking to come upon the last one in the wagon train. He jumped up into the wagon bed and looked into the shadows farther ahead. Nine more wagons. He had found the mother lode.

  Ripping back canvas on the end wagon, he saw bar after bar of gold. Each weighed forty or fifty pounds, but he also discovered dozens of leather bags of gold dust. A single bag weighed a couple pounds. He could take ten of them and have damned near two thousand dollars’ worth of gold in his saddlebags and not even touch the huge stash hidden here.

  “It’s wrong, John. You can’t take this gold. It’s stolen property.”

  “How those San Francisco bankers got it in the first place is certainly a matter to argue, but stealing gold that’s been stolen twice seems just fine to me.”

  “John,” she said in a disapproving, schoolmarm tone.

  “Here,” Slocum said, handing her the map and complete coin. “You take that on back to Virginia City and give it to Sheriff George, if you like. If you think that’s the right thing to do, then do it. Don’t begrudge me this much.”

  Slocum left Erin standing in the narrow crevice, staring at the map and coin in her hand. He loaded the gold dust into his saddlebags, then weighed down his spare horse with four bullion bars. Sweating from the work of loading so much gold, he wiped his forehead and looked around to get his bearings. If he kept riding along this canyon, he might come out onto the Nevada desert. With a bit of hard riding, he might beat the coming storms and reach Denver in time to find a nice place to spend the winter.

  He reached the road, looked down at Eustace Montrose’s body and figured that the coyotes might puke if they ate him. Slocum had nothing against coyotes and buzzards. He dismounted and buried the man, wishing him a speedy journey to hell.

  Slocum mounted and was hardly on the road leading to Denver when he heard hoofs pounding behind him. He looked over his shoulder. A flushed Erin Finnigan pulled up beside him.

  “I’m glad I caught you, John.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I thought real hard for a spell back there and came to a decision.” She patted her bulging saddlebags, then fumbled in a pocket and handed him half the map and half the gold coin. “In case we want to find the gold again. I don’t know how long a few thousand dollars will last me—or you.”

  Slocum laughed, leaned over and kissed her full on the lips. They’d have a hell of a fine time spending the gold. And if they spent it all, they could return to get more.

  Together.

  Watch for

  SLOCUM’S SWEET REVENGE

  316th novel in the exciting SLOCUM series from Jove

  Coming in June!

 

 

  Jake Logan, Slocum's Gold Mountain

 

 

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