Stunned, Slocum lay on the ground staring into the bright blue sky above. A sudden pain in his side forced him to move. He rolled and fetched up hard against a rock as another bullet ripped off his hat, sending it spinning away with a big hole in it.

  It took Slocum several seconds to realize that it wasn’t Finnigan shooting at him. The miner worked feverishly to put another blasting cap onto two sticks of dynamite. He had lit the fuse and reared back to throw it when a bullet caught the miner smack in the middle of his chest. Slocum saw the red of the man’s lifeblood begin to spread, then the dynamite went off. Slocum flinched away as the spray of gore rained down on him.

  He forced himself to stand, then dropped back when several more rounds whistled past his head.

  “Who’s out there? Quit shooting!” Slocum shouted. “Finnigan’s dead!”

  Slocum peered around the rock where he had taken dubious refuge, looked for a better hiding place, then got his feet under him and raced for the miner’s shack. He slammed hard into the wall, causing the entire shack to tremble, then spun around and ducked inside.

  “What’s going on?” Slocum had his six-shooter out and pointed directly at Private Sims, who was going through the miner’s belongings. A stack of small leather bags formed a pyramid on the table, the only furniture in the one-room shack other than a bed along the far wall. There wasn’t even a chair to be seen.

  “You—”

  Slocum didn’t let the private say anything else. He had heard the crunch of boots against gravel outside, coming up the hill toward the cabin. With a quick jerk, he dived aside as new bullets ripped through the space where he had been only a fraction of a second before.

  “Get down,” Slocum ordered the soldier. “We got claim jumpers wanting to kill us all.”

  The private drew his pistol, but he didn’t aim it out the door at the approaching men. He put Slocum squarely in his sights and cocked the six-gun.

  8

  Slocum’s eyes darted around and his mind touched on everything like lightning. The undeniable fact of looking down Sims’s barrel galvanized Slocum into action. He kicked out and knocked the table into the soldier’s leg, forcing the private to miss when he fired. He never got a second chance. Slocum’s Colt Navy blazed and sent a round smack into the middle of Sims’s chest.

  The private grunted, tried to raise his pistol again and then sagged to the dirt floor. The soldier fell to his knees and toppled forward, as rigid as any tree felled in the forest by a lumberjack.

  Slocum wasted no time wondering at the thieving soldiers’ motives. He spun around to cover the door. Struggling up the hill, carbines leveled and ready, were Sergeant Davies, Butler and Talmidge. Taking careful aim, Slocum started to squeeze off the round that would end Davies’s foul life. Then he hesitated. Too much went on that he didn’t understand, and he wasn’t sure he could kill Davies and the other two soldiers with him. If he did, it would be his picture on a wanted poster being passed around by Tartaglia and the others at Fort Crumpland. He might as well team up with Laredo Jack Lansing again and hightail it out of the territory.

  “You killed him!” Slocum shouted. He saw Davies recoil and hold his hand out to stop his partners. “You shot the private!”

  “Slocum? That you?”

  “You’re shooting at your own side, Sergeant,” Slocum said, not budging from his position, where he rested his six-gun against the door frame, the noncom still in his sights.

  “Sims is dead?”

  “A bullet came through the door and caught him smack in the chest. Killed him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Why are you acting like this? The miner’s dead. He blew himself up.” Slocum knew that wasn’t quite what had happened, but he wanted to blunt the sergeant’s desire to shoot it out. For whatever reason, Davies and his squad had intended to kill Finnigan from the minute they rode up. The miner had known this and prepared one of the dynamite bundles to fend off the cavalry—or claim jumpers. Caught in the crossfire as the soldiers tried to bring the supposed criminal to justice would be one dead scout.

  John Slocum.

  He looked around for some way to clear out if Davies decided to continue with the fiction that Slocum had died, probably at Finnigan’s hand. He could bang his way through any of the walls, but once there, he’d have nowhere to run. Better to shoot it out with the soldiers.

  “I’m damn sorry ’bout that, Slocum. You know how it is in the heat of battle. We got all spooked and mistook you and Sims for the miner and his partner. They’re both real desperadoes.”

  Slocum took another quick look around.

  There was no sign that anyone but Finnigan lived in the cabin.

  “That’s him!” Slocum shouted. He risked showing himself in the doorway as he pointed to a stand of scrub oak to Davies’s right. The sergeant and his men swung around, looking in the direction Slocum had pointed. “That must be the miner’s partner. I saw him watching, but he lit out when we obviously spotted him.”

  The two men crowded close to Davies and whispered furiously. The sergeant waved them back.

  “Go after him, Slocum. Track him down.”

  “I’ll be careful. If he’s as dangerous as you say, he’ll be a handful.”

  “There’s a reward,” Davies said, as if inventing the lie on the spot. “Get him and it’s yers.”

  Slocum didn’t holster his six-shooter but kept it at his side, ready to react if any of the troopers made a move against him. They stayed close to Davies, as if he would give them much needed direction. From the confused look on the man’s face, it seemed Davies wasn’t going to be giving coherent orders to anybody soon. The revelation of a second miner had caught him off guard, since he’d just made the man up.

  “You men’ll be here at the mine?” Slocum asked.

  “We’ll stay close. You go run that criminal to ground, Slocum,” said the sergeant. The man recovered some of his air of authority and barked orders at the other two to get up to the shack and see what had happened.

  “You intend to take Sims back?” Slocum asked. “Since it was one of your shots that killed him, it might be better to just bury him here.”

  “Why?” Davies looked shocked at the notion.

  “No questions. I don’t rightly know which of you fired. Might have been all three since Finnigan put up such a spirited defense, but it had to be an accident. I’ll swear to that in my report.”

  “Report? To the colonel?”

  “Don’t you file action reports about any gunfight you get into? I’ve scouted before and always hated writing up the report. Always takes longer than the actual shoot-out. But I’ll back you so there won’t be any trouble.” Slocum laid it on thick, convincing the sergeant he had shot and killed his own man. If they bothered to dig out the slug in Sims’s chest, they’d find a .36-caliber slug from a Colt, not the heavier slug from one of the carbines. Slocum counted on the men being too spooked at Sims’s death to want to go to such trouble.

  “That’ll be good, Slocum. You’re a top-notch scout.” Davies looked from Slocum to the stand of scrub oak and then to the cabin where the two soldiers whooped and hollered. This was hardly the reaction anybody would expect to finding their comrade-in-arms dead.

  “Skedaddle,” Davies ordered. “Get that varmint. Don’t matter if he’s dead or alive. After seein’ how he killed Sims”—Davies paused to see how Slocum reacted to this lie piled on top of another lie—“I’d druther he never sucked in another breath.”

  “I understand,” Slocum said. He still didn’t holster his six-gun as he watched Davies huff and puff up the steep slope to the cabin. Only when the sergeant vanished inside did Slocum go to fetch his horse. Nothing had gone right since he had shown up. In a way he was responsible for Finnigan’s death. He had thought he’d outlegged the soldiers reaching the mine, but they had been on his heels.

  Slocum wouldn’t underestimate their determination again. He found his horse and swung into the saddle. If he had the sense God gave a goose, he’d ride like the wind and vanish into the mountains. Heading north with Laredo Jack might not be that bad an idea, either. But Slocum didn’t do anything like that. He rode a quarter mile in the direction he had indicated as that taken by Finnigan’s non-existent partner, then cut uphill and rode until he came to a game trail and followed it back toward the miner’s shack. The entire trip had taken him less than twenty minutes.

  He reckoned that to be plenty of time for Davies and the other two soldiers to finish whatever Sims had started. Slocum dismounted and approached the shack from the side, dropped to his knees and peered through the cracks in the wall. The three stood around the table that Sims had piled high with the small leather pouches. They opened each pouch and poured it onto the table. For a few seconds Slocum couldn’t see what they were doing, then he understood. A ray of sunlight angling through the leaky roof caught some of the powder suspended in the air.

  “Gold,” Slocum said softly. The soldiers had ridden out to kill Finnigan and steal his gold. They were probably going to jump his claim, too, if they could find the deed to the property. If they didn’t want to go that far, Slocum saw enough gold dust piled on the table to make the three of them rich men.

  “Get it into this here pouch, boys,” Davies said.

  “Can’t we take just a pinch or two?” asked the soldier who looked like a weasel—Talmidge. He squinted and wiggled his nose and reached for the pile of gold dust.

  Davies moved like a striking rattler. He grabbed the soldier’s wrist and pinned it to the table, then leaned down hard until Slocum heard bones cracking.

  “You know we cain’t do that. Wouldn’t be right.”

  “He’d never know,” whined the man with his wrist almost crushed to a pulp. Talmidge jerked free and rubbed it. “What’s the point in stealin’ all this gold if we can’t enjoy it?”

  “We’ve got a good thing at Fort Crumpland. I’m not gonna risk it. You know what the boss said we had to do with this here gold.”

  “He’d never know we took jist a pinch,” protested Lem Butler.

  “I’d know,” Davies said hotly. “You’re not stealin’ from me or some dumb ass miner. We stand to get rich, filthy rich. A few grains of gold is nuthin’ compared to what we kin rake in if we keep goin’ for a few more months.”

  “I suppose,” the soldier said reluctantly. “But I want to keep all the loot I’m earnin’.”

  “He needs this to prime the pump. You don’t want the whole scheme to blow up in our faces, do you? Then get this all wrapped up in a big pouch. That miner was a real squirrel, hidin’ it all away in a dozen tiny bags.”

  Slocum saw the two privates exchange meaningful looks and then sweep some of the gold dust off the table into the small pouches that Finnigan had used, before moving the remaining pile into the larger bag Davies had dropped in front of them.

  Talmidge and Butler were taking what they considered their due, but Slocum was more intrigued by what Davies intended to do with the bulk of the gold. Slocum edged away from the shack and hurried back to his horse. He mounted, retraced his path, then drew his six-shooter and fired three times. It took him another ten minutes to take a drink from his canteen, reload and make his way around to return to the mining camp.

  The three soldiers waited for him, clutching their rifles.

  “We heard gunshots,” said Davies. “What happened out there?”

  “I don’t think I killed him, but I winged him,” Slocum said. “He fell over a cliff into a canyon. No way he could have survived that. You want me to lead you back so we can pick up the body?”

  The answer Slocum expected came quickly.

  “No need. Good to know we got them bastards. Real outlaws. Killers, even,” said Davies. “I’ll ask the colonel to give you half the reward for trackin’ the other one down.”

  “There wasn’t supposed to be another one,” groused Butler.

  “Shaddup,” Davies said, rearing back as if he intended to backhand the soldier. “I said there was a second crook, and Slocum spotted him. That’s all that counts, right, Slocum?”

  Slocum nodded, amused at the byplay. The three couldn’t even keep their own lies straight.

  “We got a lot of territory to cover,” Davies went on. “You up to scoutin’ some more, Slocum?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “That Lansing Gang’s still loose out here. There’s a mountain of a reward on their heads, especially Laredo Jack Lansing’s. You find them, you get on back to the post and we’ll roust out the entire company to go after them.”

  “What are you going to do?” Slocum asked.

  Davies looked around, as if he might bolt and run, then lowered his voice, stepped closer and said, “We got to return to the post. I’ll explain how Sims disappeared on us and is presumed dead.”

  “He got family?”

  “Never mentioned it, if he did,” Davies said. “You leave it to me, Slocum, and we’ll get through all them inquiries the colonel’s likely to make. Now you head on out. Last I heard, Lansing was spotted somewhere to the north of here, in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains.”

  Slocum considered what to do. Again there was the lure of throwing in with Laredo Jack, which seemed more than plausible, it seemed the only logical thing to do. But memory of Laurel Atkins and her missing pa returned to bedevil Slocum.

  He stared at Davies and remembered how this man had murdered the outlaws responsible for killing a peddler, guard and stagecoach driver. They had violated their oath to uphold the law. The way they had come after the miner told Slocum they weren’t likely to stop their predations if he rode on out with his old friend.

  “If I don’t find any trace of Lansing or his gang, I’ll report back to the fort.”

  “Be thorough,” Davies said, heaving a deep sigh of relief that he had sent Slocum off on a wild goose chase. From the sergeant’s point of view, he could not lose. If the outlaws killed Slocum, good riddance. If Slocum found Lansing and returned to the post, a dangerous outlaw would be brought to justice and Slocum could be dealt with later. Either outcome was a win for Davies and an eventual loss for Slocum.

  “I always am,” Slocum said, unable to keep a touch of coldness from his voice. Davies didn’t notice.

  Slocum mounted and rode away far enough to watch the three soldiers start on the road leading back to Fort Crumpland.

  9

  Slocum spent three more days riding up and down the canyons adjoining the one where Finnigan had blown himself up when he dropped the dynamite. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he knew he did not find it. With some reluctance, Slocum made the long ride back to Fort Crumpland.

  “Howdy, Slocum,” the guard at the gate said in greeting. Slocum struggled to remember the young man’s name. It finally came to him. “We didn’t expect to see you again.”

  “Why not, Colin?”

  “Well, Sarge said you was attacked by outlaws up there in the hills.” Private Colin O’Leary looked pleased that Slocum remembered his name. “That there other prospector, the one who killed Sims, he was runnin’ around lettin’ lead fly everywhere.”

  “So Davies said I’d been shot?” Slocum saw the guard working on the answer, delving deep into his memory to come up with what the sergeant had said.

  “Not sure ’bout that,” said Private O’Leary. “Sarge said you was a real help, though, and that you’d be filin’ a good report when you got back from the scout.”

  “Is the colonel on post?”

  “Surely is. He and Sarge been holed up, talkin’ a blue streak, for close to an hour now.”

  “I suppose I ought to report to Lieutenant Tartaglia,” Slocum said. “Has he been around, too?”

  “The lieutenant’s out on patrol,” O’Leary said. “We’re a tad short on officers—not that any of us think that’s a problem—so you ought to go on over to the colonel’s and let him know you’re back.”

  “I’ll report in,” Slocum said.

  “Yeah, that’s what they call it. And be sure to get paid, too.”

  “How’s that?” Slocum looked at the private sharply.

  “We been goin’ without pay for danged near a month, but we got paid yesterday. The whole post did. That makes walkin’ back and forth a mite easier. Now all we got to do is get leave so we can go into town and spend it.”

  “What’s the closest town?”

  “Used to be one not a day’s ride down the road, but it upped and died a year back. Nobody wanted to stay here, I reckon, so they drifted away. The buildings are still there, but they took the whiskey with ’em when they left.” Private O’Leary grinned when he added, “I know. Me and some of my squad went and checked it out.”

  “So you’ve got a wad of greenbacks and nowhere to spend them, eh?”

  “No, sir,” the guard said. “No greenbacks for Fort Crumpland! No, sir! The colonel, he paid us off in gold. Never heard tell of that before, and both my brothers, my father and two uncles was in the Army ’fore me.”

  “Gold? Or gold dust?” asked Slocum.

  “Well, gold dust, not that it matters. I don’t earn ’nuff to get a gold nugget, not like the one the colonel paid out to Sarge.”

  “So Davies got a nugget and the rest of the post was paid in dust,” Slocum said, more to himself than to the private. He was even more puzzled about what was going on at Fort Crumpland now. Davies and the other soldiers had gone to Finnigan’s mine to kill the man, steal his gold and maybe jump his claim. That made sense in a twisted way. But it made no sense that they stole the miner’s treasure and used it to pay the soldiers at the fort.

  “I lost a pinch or two last night in a poker game. I think two of my bunkies was cheatin’, though. You play poker, Slocum? Might be we can get a game goin’.”

  “When did the supply train reach the fort?”

  “What supplies? We’re still scrapin’ by. You surely do ask odd questions, Slocum.”

  “Where’d the gold dust for your pay come from if there wasn’t a supply train?”

  “I . . . Now that’s a good question,” the private said, frowning. “The colonel had tole us he couldn’t pay because we weren’t gettin’ money from the paymaster because of the outlaws.”