“So only Davies and the men with him have come into the post in the past few days?” Slocum saw the answer on the man’s face. He knew then where the soldiers’ payroll had come from. He doubted Finnigan would rest easier knowing he had bankrolled an entire post.

  Slocum rode to the stables and tended his horse, stowed his gear in the barracks and then sauntered over to the colonel’s office. He wondered if Davies was still there. Whatever the commander had to say must have been important to take at least an hour with his subordinate. Slocum knocked on the colonel’s door and heard a growl within that he interpreted as “Enter.”

  “Reporting in, Colonel,” Slocum said as he stepped into the dimly lit office. The lamp on the desk had run low on coal oil, causing it to sputter fitfully. The shadows cast on Colonel Holman’s face turned him into something demonic. But was the officer such a bad sort if he ordered his most trusted men out to steal gold dust to pay the rest of the company?

  Slocum knew the answer to that. What remained to be answered was if Holman knew of Davies’s other activities, killing outlaws and stealing what had already been stolen. The sergeant, along with his partners, worked diligently enough to force an experienced road agent like Laredo Jack Lansing to move on.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Holman said with ill grace.

  “If it’s a bad time, I can report later. I just wanted to back up what Sergeant Davies said about the shoot-out at Finnigan’s mine.”

  “Nasty business, losing Private Sims in such a fashion. Did you scout the area afterward?”

  Slocum hesitated because he had no idea what Davies had reported. He felt as if he was slogging across quick-sand. Any misstatement he made would be an indictment that might put a noose around his neck.

  “I’ll write it up for you, Colonel,” Slocum said.

  “Yes, yes, do that. Unusual to find a scout who can write. Not used to it.”

  “I’ll need more supplies if I’m going back out anytime soon,” Slocum said. He used this as a hint for the colonel to send him away from the fort. Slocum had the feeling that poking around here would give him no more good information, especially about Joshua Atkins.

  “Eager to be in the field, aren’t you? I like that. Shows dedication to your job.”

  “Has Sergeant Atkins reported back yet?” Slocum saw the sudden change in the colonel’s demeanor. One minute he had been happy enough with the idea that Slocum was fitting into his role as scout and the next he was on guard.

  “He remains in the field and has not reported in yet. I have no worry about the sergeant, however. He struck me as a competent soldier,” Holman said in a measured tone.

  “I speak a couple Indian dialects. Might be he could use some help. Where’d he go on his patrol?”

  “He can handle his mission by himself. I said he struck me as a capable man and I meant it. I want you to range southward, sweeping through the countryside hunting for the Lansing Gang. There is a considerable reward on their heads, you know.”

  “Heard that,” Slocum allowed.

  “If you find them, either return directly so we can send out a force sufficient to engage them, or you might try to capture one of the gang for interrogation.” Holman made a dramatic pause, then went on as if he had reconsidered such foolish adventurism. Slocum read the calculation in the colonel’s eyes. “No, don’t try to tangle with them by yourself. That’d be too dangerous for you personally.”

  Slocum allowed himself to bristle the proper amount. “Colonel, there’re no outlaws I can’t deal with.” Slocum saw that was the answer the officer sought. He wanted to rile Slocum enough to make him go after the gang by himself and get killed. That told Slocum a couple things. Holman thought Laredo Jack was a dangerous hombre—and the colonel wanted Slocum dead. Davies’s failure to gun down Slocum had to be remedied.

  Slocum started to leave, then stopped at the door and looked over his shoulder.

  “Where’s the paymaster? I need to draw against my pay, and the sentry on the gate said everyone’d been paid.”

  “Why, yes, yes, they have. A courier arrived with a payroll adequate to catch up on back pay. I’m not sure there’s any left for an advance. You know how it is, Slocum. We have to scrabble to stay current and are usually a payday or two behind.”

  “I’ve heard that said,” Slocum agreed. He left without waiting to see if the colonel volunteered any more information.

  Slocum headed directly for the mess hall and found himself the last one in line to be fed. He looked around for Davies or his two cronies, but they were nowhere to be found. Settling down next to the private who had been on the gate when he rode in, Slocum said, “You might get paid but the food’s no better than it ever was.”

  “Might be a tad better than under the major,” Colin O’Leary said, gobbling up the tough meat as if he hadn’t eaten in a month of Sundays. “Everything’s just a tad better, actually.”

  “Not the discipline, that’s obvious,” Slocum said. “The parade ground needs to be policed and the buildings are falling down.”

  “The colonel’s got his priorities,” O’Leary said, scraping his tin plate to get the last of the squash off it. Slocum wondered if the young man would lick the plate. “We got a plague of outlaws to deal with. And the Injuns. They’re off the reservation and a threat to everyone. Those are important chores, more than make-work around the post.”

  “It’s been a spell since Sergeant Atkins went to palaver with the Indians,” Slocum said. “What I don’t understand is why he went south toward Pine Cliff.”

  “What’re you sayin’, Slocum? Atkins’d never do that. He went into the hill country northwest of here. You know that peak? Red Spur? The sarge’d heard rumors of the Injuns making a camp there. Made sense, them goin’ off the reservation. They’d want a place where they could hunt and pretend they was free as a bird.”

  The private stood and went back to the chow line, but the last of the food had been dispensed. He dropped his plate in a tub and left, giving Slocum a jaunty wave as he returned to duty. Slocum finished his meal slowly, then came to a conclusion. Staying around the post would eventually end up with someone shooting him in the back. Davies and Holman might or might not be in cahoots, but that didn’t matter when it came to finding Joshua Atkins. He would find the sergeant—or his remains—and let Laurel know.

  Then he would deal with Davies and the remaining road agents wearing U.S. Army uniforms. Even if it included a colonel.

  Slocum got what supplies he could from the quartermaster, slung them in a sack over the rump of his horse and rode from the post.

  “Headin’ out so soon, Slocum? You’re one busy fella,” O’Leary said, the private once more at the gate.

  “No rest for the wicked,” Slocum answered, riding away at a trot to put as much distance between him and Fort Crumpland as possible. He doubted Holman would believe he had actually gone south scouting, but Slocum turned in that direction while still in view of the sentry. Only when the rolling hills hid him did he return to the road to confuse his tracks, then head due north for Red Spur Peak.

  The first trooper’s throat had been savagely slit. Slocum tried to estimate how long the body had lain in the gully and figured it at nigh on a month. Most of the meat on the bones had been ripped away by coyotes and other scavengers, but the cause of death was obvious. Slocum pictured it in his mind as surely as if he had witnessed it. The knife had cut all the way through the throat with such force that it had nicked the spine. A brutal twist had severed the head from the body, with only a few tatters of skin holding it together. Slocum poked at the evidence with the toe of his boot. Sinews held skull to torso, nothing more.

  He studied the body a few more seconds, then turned away. He had some burying to do. The scalp remained on the top of the head, but Indians didn’t always take such trophies. If a pitched battle had been fought, the attackers might have been driven away. More likely, since the body had been left rotting in the bright Utah sun, the soldiers had been retreating as fast as their horses could take them. There hadn’t even been enough time to pick up one of their company who had fallen. They had even left the body with all its possessions in a cloth pouch fastened around the dead man’s middle, hidden under his blue wool jacket.

  “They were more worried about their own necks,” Slocum said aloud. He bent to the task of digging a grave in the rocky ground and had only gotten a couple feet when he hit bedrock. Rather than start over at some other spot, he moved the body into the shallow hole, then covered it with stones. The scavengers were long past dining off the body, but Slocum didn’t want it washing away come spring runoff next year.

  He spread out the contents of the linen pouch but found nothing that identified the man. A faded photograph of a woman and child were the only things that could give proof who had died.

  He swept everything together into the pouch and stashed it in his saddlebags. Figuring out who the dead man was and notifying his family was up to someone at Fort Crumpland.

  Slocum searched the area, starting where the body had been and spiraling outward for almost fifty yards. He found some corroded brass cartridges that might have been there a couple months or even years. He examined them. They had all been fired from Army carbines. Slocum couldn’t tell for certain, but he thought he was on the trail of Joshua Atkins’s patrol. And it wasn’t looking good right now for anyone surviving.

  He mounted and rode up the draw. Within a hundred yards he saw two more bodies. Surrounding them were packs and enough equipment for an entire squad. Slocum decided the reason for the equipment being abandoned the way it had been was to lessen the load on the survivors’ horses. Slocum repeated his action of checking for identification, stashed what personal belongings he could find in his saddlebags and then set about digging another grave.

  Slocum put both bodies in the same grave. “I hope you two were good friends. You’re going to be together through the remainder of eternity.” The rocky terrain afforded little chance of him digging separate resting places. He wiped sweat from his forehead, then brushed the dirt and dust from his hands. If he found many more bodies, he would spend the rest of his days burying them.

  Silently vowing not to bury any more he found and knowing he lied to himself, Slocum continued to ride up the draw. The going got rockier, the incline steeper. Here and there he found spoor showing that at least four other horses had reached this point. Bright nicks against rock were turning dusty; piles of horse manure had dried out and crumbled in the hot sun; spent brass shone occasionally. He was on the right trail, but Joshua Atkins and the others in his squad must have turned into mountain goats to keep riding this trail.

  If he was even following Atkins’s trail. Slocum wished he had learned the names of the troopers who’d been with Atkins, not that he had found any positive identification in the belongings of the corpses. He wasn’t even certain how many had been in the missing squad.

  But Slocum had a gut feeling he had found what remained of the patrol. He wondered if Colonel Holman truly believed Joshua Atkins was still out convincing Indians to return to the reservation or if the officer was lying. He might spend a fair amount of the day deluding himself about the fate of Atkins’s party, but Slocum doubted it. If the commander at Fort Crumpland cared, he would have sent out a few scouts to catch up with Atkins and find out if he needed reinforcements—or aid escaping from some deadly predicament. From the evidence on the ground—and in it—the commander had done nothing to reach Atkins.

  Slocum dismounted and led his horse up the increasingly steep slopes. As he trudged along, he wondered how Atkins had ever crossed such land. Ahead was a saddle pass. The sergeant might have thought he could reach it and escape down the far side of the mountain. For Laurel’s sake, Slocum hoped that were true, but where had Atkins been for more than two months? If he had been injured and any of his men had survived, the sergeant would have sent word back to the fort.

  Gasping for breath, Slocum got to the pass and knew he had to rest. In the distance rose Red Spur Peak, gleaming a dull crimson in the setting sun. He considered continuing down the far side but took a look around first, hunting for any trace of Atkins’s attackers. He had found plenty of evidence of casualties on the Army’s side, but nothing to indicate that Indians had attacked.

  Letting his horse crop at tough buffalo grass, Slocum began a careful search of the saddle pass. He stopped and stared when he saw a buckle sticking out from under a rock. There was no way in hell it could have worked its way under such a large, flat stone. It had been placed there deliberately. Hidden.

  Kicking the rock away, Slocum saw a canvas dispatch bag. The elements had already begun working at the stitching, and even the canvas itself, rotting them away, but the contents were intact. Slocum spread everything out on the ground in front of him as he sat on the displaced rock.

  An envelope filled with papers had become so water soaked that Slocum couldn’t make out what had been written, but the emblem embossed on the top of the first sheet showed it to be an official U.S. Army document of some kind. He dropped that and picked up the only item to have escaped being waterlogged. Dangling from a simple gold chain was a locket.

  Slocum held it high to reflect the light of the setting sun. On one side he found a small latch. Using his thumbnail, he popped open the locket. Inside were two pictures. One was of a pretty woman who bore a resemblance to Laurel. On the other side was a small child, perhaps three years old.

  A cold knot formed in Slocum’s belly. The woman looked a little like Laurel, but he knew with a certainty that couldn’t be shaken that the child in the picture was Laurel Atkins.

  His eyes refused to focus on the pictures anymore. Slocum looked around the area but saw nothing else to show that anyone had passed through here in the last hundred years. He snapped shut the locket but did not put it with the other belongings in his saddlebags. This he tucked into his shirt pocket for safekeeping until he returned it to Laurel.

  10

  Slocum had ridden fast to return to Fort Crumpland and was half-dead in the saddle from exhaustion. He wobbled a bit as he rode up and touched the brim of his hat in salute to the sentry at the gate.

  “You’re Slocum, ain’t ya?” the guard called. “Good to see ya back. We was bettin’ on whether you’d return. Good to see ya. I just won two dollars.”

  The guard’s winning wager meant nothing to Slocum, other than to show he was about the biggest topic of conversation on the post.

  “Is the colonel in? I’ve got some bad news for him.” Slocum had thought hard on the matter all the way back. Colonel Holman had ordered him south to hunt for Laredo Jack, but Slocum knew the outlaw wasn’t camped in that direction. But he had gone in the exact opposite direction to trail Joshua Atkins and his ill-fated patrol. Slocum felt an obligation to report the deaths of at least three troopers and more likely all of them—however many that had been.

  Slocum didn’t much care what Holman would do, but the commander had to know Atkins wasn’t sitting around a campfire, smoking a pipe stuffed with trade tobacco and arguing with Indians to get them to return to the reservation.

  Then Slocum would ride south to Newsome and tell Laurel what he had found. Or not found. The lack of a body worried him, but finding the locket meant that Atkins had thought his end was near and wanted to hide it from his attackers.

  “He’s as jumpy as a long-tailed cat settin’ beside a rockin’ chair. Don’t know what’s got him so spooked, but yeah, Slocum, he’s in his office.”

  “Who’s with him?” The question slipped from Slocum before he had a chance to think about it.

  “Strange bunch, if you ask me,” the guard said. “He’s got Sergeant Davies in there with him, him and Lieutenant Tartaglia, of course. Been there all morning long, like they was the commanding generals plottin’ and plannin’ some big campaign.”

  “Do tell,” Slocum said. “I need some food. You think the cook still has any slop left from the midday meal?”

  “As bad as it was today, I don’t know why he wouldn’t have it all left. He’d throw it out, but the post dogs might eat it and die.” The guard laughed.

  “Thanks,” Slocum said, then rode to the stables to tend his horse before finding if the cook’s meal was as bad as the guard hinted. As Slocum rode past the colonel’s office, he heard loud voices inside. He slowed and tried to make out the words but couldn’t. All that he knew was that a powerful argument was raging. Slocum considered his chances of sitting on the step and trying to get some sense as to the cause of the dispute, then shrugged it off. He was too tired and knew that after he reported what he had found, Holman was likely to throw him off the post.

  And Davies was even more likely to back-shoot him. Slocum needed to be alert when he went into the colonel’s office.

  He tended his horse and chowed down before heading to the colonel’s office. At least it was edible. Halfway to the building he saw a patrol returning. Slocum pulled down his hat brim to shield his eyes from the sun as he studied the men riding into the fort. There was a palpable difference between these soldiers and the run-of-the-mill Fort Crumpland trooper. They looked more alert, and their uniforms, in spite of dust from the trail, were neater. The captain at their head had shining brass and a look of disdain for everything he saw as his head swiveled about, taking in every detail. Slocum didn’t remember seeing the officer before.

  “You,” snapped the captain. “Announce me to your commander, regards from Captain Wilson out of Fort Douglas.”

  Slocum perked up hearing this. Fort Douglas was to the south of Salt Lake City. Why a patrol would venture here from such a distance was something worth hearing. Stride long and sure, Slocum went to greet the captain.

  “I’m scout here, Captain. What brings you to these parts?”

  Slocum felt more than disdain. There was outright hostility in the captain’s eyes.