Slocum and Belle Starr by Jake Logan

Author:Jake Logan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

12

Slocum’s crew crossed the Arkansas and laughed. After so many yarns told around camp about the half-mile-wide raging river and quicksand at the crossing, they kept asking Slocum if it was really the mighty Arkansas River. He nodded with, “That’s all there is this time.”

But he’d seen the debris from past floods in treetops, and knew she could sure run out of her banks. A hundred plus miles to go and he had lost only a few cattle and nary a hand. God help him.

“I can stake a man to two dollars from his wages if he wants to go over to that saloon and store we passed back there. But we have to night herd and not be so drunk you fall off your horse and spook the whole herd.”

They laughed. An uneasy laugh, like the men didn’t know if they should laugh at his words or not. But they must have found his words funny.

“Go in there three at a time. Stay together. These places are like rat dens. No law in this country. The scum that rides the waves of the western advance are killers, and would do so for a quarter ’cause they have no conscience. We met their kind back there in our own camp.”

Bonner, Pike, and Dawson won with the longest straws. Slocum gave them the money. Bonner rode by and spoke to Belle. “Miss Belle, you need anything from town?”

“No, Bonner, but you better mail her that letter I wrote for you.”

Leaning out of the saddle, he clapped his vest pocket and then straightened. “I sure will first thing, and thanks a lot. Susie Ann’ll die getting it. She knows I can’t write nothing.”

Belle came back to the wagon shaking her head. “Ain’t that boy a hoot?”

Coalie spit off in the grass and came back, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “How come a boy as bright as Bonner can’t read and write?”

“Said his folks during the war never stayed in one place long enough to enroll him in school. Then he got too big to go to class.”

“It’s a damn shame. Damn shame.”

Belle agreed. “When are we going to town?”

Seated cross-legged on the ground, Slocum rubbed his palms on his chaps. “Tonight. I want to play some poker.”

“What can I do?”

“They’ve got a piano. No more business than he has, I figure you can play it to your heart’s content.”

She wet her sun-dried lips. “That sounds amazing. You noticed it?”

“Talked to the man in there about the cattle business and saw it sitting in the corner.”

She jumped over, knocked his hat off, and kissed him. “That is really nice of you.”

“We’ll see.”

“Oh, what if it doesn’t work?”

He held up his hands in surrender. “I don’t know anything about a piano. Never tried it.”

With a smirk written on her face, she bobbed her head confidently. “It has to work.”

God. He hoped it did.

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