Slocum and the Runaway Bride, page 10
Slocum pegged Naomi and Agnes as the two who had been outside, watching the Grangers. Sister Dominique, a middle-aged, plump woman, was the one who’d spirited Beth off when they first came in. Beth, however, was nowhere in sight.
“No priest?”
“Father Marcus comes once a month,” Mother Grace said. “He’s not due for another three weeks. Sister Dominique, do we still have that old Henry rifle?”
“Yes, Mother,” came the reply, and Slocum suddenly felt a little better. But then, a little tearily, she added, “There are only two bullets left, though. It’s my fault. I should have gone to Pedro Mondragon’s store and bought more when our supply grew low.”
Slocum’s heart sank, but not for long. Panther. Had anyone tied him?
He was halfway to the front door when one of the shutters was pierced. Splinters flew as Sister Naomi, who had been standing directly before it and beside Mother Grace, suddenly took one faltering step forward, eyes blinking rapidly, whispered, “My God!” and slumped forward, to her knees.
Mother Grace, her check and arm full of splinters, caught her before she toppled all the way to the floor and cradled her in her arms. Beseechingly, she looked up at Slocum.
Slocum didn’t way a word. He turned back to the door and opened it. At least he was sure where the shots were coming from, now. And the shooter had to be using a scope. He had to be a long way off for them not to hear the shots, and he had to be an ace with that rifle.
Panther, he saw, wasn’t tied. He was stuck in a corral, but still saddled and bridled. For half a second he was about to lecture the sisters about turning out a tacked-up horse, then remembered himself.
He whistled.
Panther’s head came up from his hay, ears pricked.
Slocum whistled again.
This time, Panther walked to the closed gate and nudged it with his nose.
Slocum swore softly, under his breath, then whistled again, loudly.
This time, Panther seemed to understand what he wanted. He trotted back to the opposite side of the small paddock, turned around again, paused, eyed the gate, then sprang into a canter.
He cleared the fence easily, trotted over, and when Slocum opened the second door, came right up into the building, ducking to avoid the door’s frame. He whickered softly, and looked around him.
“Christ almighty, Slocum!” Rome said.
“Sir!” snapped Sister Agnes, who was helping Mother Grace with Sister Naomi. “You’re in a house of God!” Sister Agnes, while not hurt seriously, was bleeding from her face.
Rome acted as if he hadn’t heard her, and just kept staring at the horse.
Slocum barely noticed this though. He started taking weapons and ammunition from Panther’s saddlebags and boot. “Hope you don’t mind,” he said as he worked, piling his and the Grangers’ firearms in the back pew.
“Horses are God’s creatures, too,” allowed Mother Grace. She and Sister Agnes stood, Sister Naomi between them. She looked to be conscious.
“She gonna be all right?” he asked.
“She’ll survive,” Mother Grace said.
“You’d best pull those splinters out,” Slocum added as they helped her away, through the back hall and the cells and office.
“Yes, Uncle John,” he heard her say before she disappeared around the corner of the hall, and he smiled briefly.
“Uncle John?” asked Rome, his brows arched.
“Shut up,” explained Slocum.
“Mr. Slocum, what do you wish me to do?” piped up Sister Dominique. For the first time, Slocum noticed a hint of a French lilt tickling at her stern voice.
“Ma’am,” he said as he took stock of his weapons, “I’d appreciate it if you could stay with Mrs. Tanglewood. She’s a might . . . jumpy.”
He just heard a mumbled, “In more ways than one!” as Sister Dominique followed the others down the hall.
Rome, having pushed his brother’s untimely death to the back of his mind—for now, at least—looked expectantly at Slocum. Untie me, you sonofabitch! he thought over and over, like a mantra.
But Slocum was paying him little mind.
Rome watched anxiously as Slocum went through boxes of ammunition—both his, and Rome’s and London’s.
And then Slocum looked up just as another slug came bursting through the shuttered windows. This one went across the open expanse of the church and shattered an icon of the baby Jesus and Mary.
“That bastard ain’t got no reverence at all, does he?” Rome mumbled.
“Doesn’t appear that way,” said Slocum, walking over to him. “Hold out your hands.”
Rome did, as fast as he could.
Slocum, the pocketknife already in his hand, said, “I’m trustin’ you, Rome. Not all the way, mind, but I’m trustin’ you to help protect these women. And your own ornery hide.”
“And you, too,” Rome replied with a nod. “I get you.”
“You’d better,” said Slocum, and cut the ropes.
Joe French was on the move. He’d thought better of staying in one place, and quietly begun leading his horse to another hill, one at more of an angle to the church. From there, he’d be able to shoot at both the side windows and the front door. It would be at an angle, of course, but that only meant that they’d have a harder time getting a bead on his location.
Actually, they hadn’t returned his fire. Not once.
He thought this was a little curious.
Maybe Slocum was having a hard time getting all those nuns corralled. How many were they, he wondered. Ten at the most—the place wasn’t big enough to hold more than that. And then he wondered if he’d killed Slocum when he’d fired through the shutters. Now, that would surely be a lucky break!
He wasn’t counting on it, though. It would be just Slocum’s luck to avoid anything so happenstance as a blind shot.
Also curious was that damned horse going right in the front door of the church! In fact, he’d been in such shock that he hadn’t thought to shoot. At least, not until he realized that the Appy was likely carrying more guns and ammunition, and by then, it was too late.
At last he came to the perfect spot. He staked out his horse, grabbed his rifle and canteen and another box of ammunition, and crawled up to the top of another gentle hill.
He peered over the top.
Good. The church was in full view, and he’d gone far enough that the few squat buildings that comprised the town weren’t in the way.
He seemed to have cleared the streets. There wasn’t one human in evidence. He sat up a little farther and squinted toward the ramada, then gave up and looked through his rifle’s telescopic sight. There was the body, still there. They’d made no attempt to retrieve it while he wasn’t looking.
He swung the rifle over toward the church itself. The front windows were a tad battered, courtesy of his bullets, and he snickered under his breath.
He was just moving the rifle, and its sight, over to the front doors when a slug splatted into the ground, not a foot from him!
As he quickly backed down the hill, his hair standing on end, he saw the front door open. And pulled the trigger. Once with hope, and once out of sheer frustration when it slammed shut.
Damn that Slocum!
16
Slocum pulled back from the doorway just before it was hit by an answering round. He wished he had a telescopic sight. The only reason he’d even known where the shot came from was the tiniest hint of a puff of smoke that rose a second before the slug hit the open door, inches from his shoulder.
What kind of a lunatic would be out there, anyhow?
There was no water for miles, save for the well here in Santa Rosa. There was hardly any cover to shield a man from the sun or the wind or the rain.
His back against the wall, next to the closed, splintered door, he sighed. The point was that the man was out there. Slocum figured it to be one man, anyway. Two would have come at them from opposite sides, and at the same time.
But this one had fired from one position, then moved before he fired those last two shots into the front of the church.
At least, Slocum was pretty damned sure that he had.
He searched the walls until he found where a slug aimed at him had gone home, and then, while he dug it out of the adobe, he said, “Rome?” He nodded to the place where, earlier, the icon had been shattered. “See if you can dig that slug outta the wall.”
Rome, newly equipped with his rifle and gun, said, “Sure thing.”
Rome appeared to be a bit perkier than before, although he was still moving a little slowly. Slocum figured that if it was his brother who’d just been killed, he’d be moving slowly, too.
At last, Slocum freed the bullet. A second later, Rome found his, too.
“Gimme that,” Slocum said, and held the bullets up, side by side.
Same caliber.
Could be the same gun.
He slowly turned both slugs in his hands, and saw that one had a very fine scratch up and down its length. Odd. Of course, it could have come from hitting the wall, running into a little rock in the adobe.
But then he found the same tiny scratch on the second slug. There weren’t any rocks in the door, and it sure wasn’t likely that it, too, had hit a pebble in the wall that left the same, identical pattern.
They were from the same gun, all right.
He stuck the slugs in his pocket and said to Rome, “We’ve only got one shooter out there.”
Rome just stared at him.
Mother Grace appeared in the hallway door. “It wasn’t bad,” she said. “Sister Naomi will be right as rain, thank the Lord.”
“How’s Beth?” asked Slocum.
“She’s resting quietly,” came the answer. “Sister Dominique gave her some tea laced with laudanum. Put her right to sleep.”
“Good,” said Slocum with a grunt. The last thing he needed was Beth Tanglewood throwing one of her fits during a fire fight, but he hadn’t heard a single peep out of her since they’d arrived and Sister Dominique hustled her off. “She sure must have doctored that tea heavy.”
Mother Grace smiled a little. “Sister Dominique is not known for half-measures. In anything.” She entered the church, stuck her hands into the deep folds of her sleeves, and sat primly in one of the pews.
Could this possibly be the teenager he’d taught to play baseball? That he’d admired in her first-communion dress and given pesos to, for candy?
Probably fifteen years had passed since that last visit, he remembered. And out here, the Catholic Church had to promote fast.
Mother Grace. He found himself continually amazed.
“What now, Slocum?” she asked.
He knew her well enough to figure that she meant, “What did you bring down on our heads this time, you sonofabitching bastard?”
He was glad she’d become a nun. Anyhow, it had sure cleaned up her language.
He said, quite honestly, “I don’t know, Mother Grace. But there’s only one feller out there, according to my calculations.”
Rome, who had remained quiet up until now, nodded his head and said, “Yes, ma’am, just one.”
Slocum hauled back his hand, as if to strike him, and Rome cowered.
“Now, gentlemen . . .” purred Mother Grace, ever the diplomat. “Do you have a plan, Slocum?”
Slocum pulled out his pocket watch and peered at it. It was a quarter past five. He said, “We’ll keep an eye on his last known position till dark, Mother. And then I’m gonna try to get round behind him.”
Mother Grace hiked a brow. “On foot?”
“ ’Course not,” Slocum replied, and hiked a thumb toward Panther, who was still standing in a corner of the room.
As if on command, the gelding lifted his broomy tail and deposited a number of fresh, pungent road apples on the floor, then let loose with a long jet of gas.
Slocum, Mother Grace, and Rome watched in silence until Panther was finished, and then Mother Grace said, “Just how long till it gets dark, Slocum?”
Beth Tanglewood drowsed, uneasily tossing on the edge of sleep.
Sometimes, she was aware of a women—a nun?—nearby. Why would there be a nun? But why would anybody else dress all in black?
Sometimes, she half imagined she was on the trail with Slocum, and then it turned into Andy, when she was fourteen and innocent.
Then it turned into something strange, something she didn’t recognize, couldn’t recognize, and then, mercifully, she “went away” again.
When she awakened, it was nearly dark outside. The beams of sunlight that had been filtering through the closed shutters in the little room were almost nonexistent, and the nun—there was a nun!—was lighting a row of squat, white candles on a shelf across the room.
The nun turned toward her in the tiny room, which couldn’t have been more than eight feet by six.
“You’re awake, then!” the nun said in a pleasant voice. She left the candles and sat in a wicker chair next to the bed. She patted Beth’s hand. “And how are you feeling, my dear?”
“Where am I?” Beth asked. The last thing she remembered was waking up in the saloon and seeing Slocum downstairs, asleep on the top of the bar. She said, “This isn’t a bar, is it? Why would there be a nun in a saloon?”
The nun took no offense at this question and said, “You’re safe, mon petite chou. I’m Sister Dominique, and you’re with the Sisters of Mercy. Mr. Slocum brought you. Do you remember?”
Beth shook her head, trying to clear it. Had they given her something? She felt so . . . foggy. “Not really. Where and what is the Sisters of Mercy?”
“The where is just outside Phoenix,” replied Sister Dominique in the same mild, caring tone. “In the town of Santa Rosa, to be precise. The what takes longer to explain.”
Slowly, Beth boosted herself into a sit. “I have time, Sister,” she said, rather groggily. “At least, I think I do. Go ahead. Tell me.”
Out in the church proper, having already cleaned up after the horse—twice—Slocum was tightening Panther’s girth. The sun would be all the way down in the next few minutes, and he wasn’t going to waste any time.
“Easy, boy,” he muttered. “Easy, Panther. In just a shake you’ll be able to shit all you want without anybody pitching a fit.”
Rome, who had been sitting back in the corner of the dim room, snorted. Slocum had tied him up again, since he didn’t trust him out of his sight.
“Don’t light any candles or lanterns till you hear Panther’s hoof beats fade,” Slocum said.
Mother Grace, waiting quietly in a nearby pew, her face bandaged, nodded through the dying light.
“I don’t believe God minds a little horse manure, Slocum,” she said. “After all, His son was born in a stable.”
“Yeah,” Slocum said, and Mother Grace smiled.
“I’m gonna leave you Rome’s handgun,” Slocum went on. “If that jackass out there decides to sneak up on you, or if he gets me before I get him, you’ll need all the guns you can get.”
“Amen and amen,” said Rome. The sound echoed slightly.
“Now, let’s not be insulting to jackasses,” Mother Grace said, and stood up.
She came close to him, ducking under Panther’s neck. To Slocum, she whispered softly, “You still want us to do . . . the other? As we discussed earlier?”
Slocum nodded. He and Mother Grace had had themselves quite a private conversation after the last bullet had splintered the front door.
“Yeah,” he said, and glanced again at the shutters. Nothing was coming through them at the moment except the black of a night sky. “You’re sure you all can handle it?”
“Don’t be absurd, Slocum.” She winked at him then, and he knew she was capable.
“All right,” he said, loudly enough so that Rome could hear him, too. “It’s time. Everybody, remember what you’re supposed to do,” he added, mostly to Mother Grace.
She said, “God bless you, Slocum.”
Sister Agnes, who had been caring for Sister Naomi, emerged from the hall. A candle flickering softly in her hand, she said, “Yes, Slocum. Bless you. Now, go with God.”
She blew out the candle’s flame and Slocum led Panther toward the front doors.
Mother Grace stood there, her hand on the latch. “Ready?” she asked.
“Ready,” Slocum said.
She threw open both doors. Slocum, hunkered down in the saddle, propelled Panther through the opening and out, into the night.
He reined a hard right around the side of the church, out of the sniper’s sight—he hoped—and cantered away. The plan was to come around behind him, and Slocum figured the best way to do that was to cut way back, to the west.
Once he made to the far side of those low hills, finding the sniper would be fairly easy, even with just a half moon.
Slocum was in his element. After all, he was now the hunter, not the hunted.
In an odd way, Slocum was actually looking forward to seeing his face. He wanted to know who the hell was so keen on killing him.
Joe French had been waiting for nightfall, too.
His rifle sight wasn’t any good at night, but he knew where he was going.
When it was time, he slung his rifle over his shoulder, saddled his gray again, and carefully, quietly, began to lead it over the hill.
Down there was Slocum and his bankroll.
Down there was Joe’s future.
And he was going to claim it—no matter what it took.
17
Bass Tanglewood waited in the dark, on his front porch, for Donner to ride in. Donner had been sent to town to check with the telegrapher’s office, to see if the lines were down between there and Prescott.
The Grangers still hadn’t wired. This worried Bass, but it also enraged him.
And so, giving the Grangers the benefit of the doubt, he’d sent Donner into town.
Now, Donner wasn’t the sort that most men sent off on an errand, and he hadn’t been too pleased about it. Donner was a hired gun, the best in the business. Tanglewood kept him on the payroll for . . . special assignments.
