Slocum and the Rebel Canyon Raiders by Jake Logan

Author:Jake Logan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

11

The old bay mare proved as hospitable as she’d looked, and responded well, if a bit slowly, to his urgings. He roved back and forth for what seemed an eternity. He knew every minute he spent looking for something he wasn’t sure existed was another wasted minute. But he had no choice. The sun was still high enough that he could see it above the western edge of the canyon. It beat down with particularly unrelenting force, and Slocum found himself missing his brimmed hat. He kept wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, readjusted the bandanna a few times, but it didn’t seem to help—still the sweat ran into his eyes.

They’d made it all the way to the southwest corner of the canyon when he saw one of the reasons for the Apache’s anger and refusal to give up their fight for the canyon. The remnants of an Apache burial ground lay before him, skulls smashed as if stomped by boots, others strewn about the graveled place. A slight breeze stirred aged, thin feathers still tied with bleached, curled rawhide strips to snapped lances, the wood as pitted as the bones. Scraps of blankets poked from the dirt, as if someone had spent time trying to cover up the dead with dirt, but gave up not long into the job.

Some of the bones were obviously those of children. Too many, he noted, and the puckered remains of small suits of beaded buckskin lay torn, curled, and puckered with wind, sun, and time. The entire scene looked as if it had been visited upon by a number of drunken, angry giants who had stomped the sacred place with abandon, as if such places deserved no reverence at all.

The sight set Slocum’s teeth together hard, and it was all he could do to restrain himself from slipping down off the horse and making it right by restoring some sort of order, and thus dignity, to the desecrated holy site. Instead, he urged the horse to his right, turned around, and headed back the way they’d come. He would put it out of his mind, but he knew he could never forget or forgive the act. And he knew it had to be Deke’s clan. Who else? Probably the trio of crazies, Rufus and her brothers.

Slocum had turned and almost reached the midpoint of the end of the canyon for a second time when the bay lowered her head and nudged to the left. He gave the horse her head—he had nothing to lose, after all—and it proved to be the right move.

She nosed between two boulders standing what seemed too close together for a man to edge between, let alone a girthy old mare. But it was the angle he’d seen them from that made them look that way. And as soon as they entered between the boulders, the sunlight’s glare was cut in half and Slocum was able to see a well-trod trail, part gravel, part churned soil, and wide enough for two or three horses to walk side by side.

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