Free Slocum and the Glitter Girls at Gravel Gulch (9781101619513) by Jake Logan Page B

the airtights.
    Laurie disappeared into the cave.
    Slocum lit his cheroot and looked around. Men lined the creek while others jabbed holes in the butte with picks. He saw a box of dynamite at one of the camps, stacked with tools and grub and wooden canteens. But so far, he had heard no explosions. Some of the holes were deep; the others were just getting started by men doing backbreaking work.
    Moments later, Laurie appeared at the cave entrance, the canteens dangling from her shoulders. Behind her was a man in his thirties, his face covered with grime, his rumpled hat askew on his head. He had black hair andbrown eyes. The sleeves of his chambray shirt were rolled up to the elbows, and his hands were infested with dirt and calluses.
    “Harve,” she said, “you know Wallace, but this is John Slocum.”
    Harvey’s eyes widened.
    He stared at Slocum as if he were seeing a ghost.
    “Slocum?” he mumbled.
    “Pleased to meet you, Harvey. Unless we’ve met before,” Slocum said.
    Harvey walked up to Slocum and held out his dirty hand to shake Slocum’s.
    “No, no, we never met, but I seen you in Abilene. I mean I saw you there. Man, what I saw.”
    “Now, Harve,” Laurie chided. “Don’t carry on so.”
    Slocum shook his hand with a powerful grip.
    Harvey grinned wide and pumped Slocum’s hand up and down as if he were running for political office.
    “I never thought I’d meet you in person, Slocum,” Harvey said. “Gawd, it’s an honor.”
    “Harvey…” Laurie said.
    “I can’t help it,” Harvey said. “Slocum, I’ve thought about you for years. Ever since I saw you shoot down those gunmen in Abilene. Man, you sure know how to tame a town.”
    Slocum pulled smoke into his mouth from the cheroot and took a backward step as if to put some distance between him and the adoring Harvey.
    “I’ve told Harve where we’re going,” Laurie said. “Wallace, he’ll check on you every morning before he comes to his mine here.”
    “Much obliged,” Hornaday said.
    “We’ll be on our way, Harvey. Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”
    “You know me better than that, sis. I know what Canbytried to do to Wallace and what he did to Harlan. It’s a damned shame.”
    “How’s the mine going?” Slocum asked, spewing a plume of smoke into the air.
    “I’m getting’ close to a vein, I think. I’m seein’ more chunks and flakes.”
    “You might strike it rich,” Slocum said. “I hope so.”
    “Way I figure it,” Harvey said, “there was once a great river running through this valley. It carved out these buttes from pure rock and left lots of gold embedded here and there when it passed through from way up north.”
    “That’s probably what happened,” Slocum said. “I’ve seen other mines in the Rockies that showed the earth was once hot and that gold was liquid, flowing south like water.”
    “You boys can talk mining and gold some other time,” Laurie said. “We’ve got to get Wallace tucked away safe and set up in his hiding place.”
    “See you soon, I hope, Slocum,” Harvey said.
    “Soon,” Slocum said. “You can call me John, if you like.”
    “Yes sir. John.”
    Harvey grinned. Slocum and Hornaday picked up their flour sacks and followed Laurie as she walked down the butte wall next to the creek.
    As they were nearing the end of the valley, Slocum looked up and saw puffs of smoke, bright against the blue sky.
    He counted the puffs and made a mental note.
    He could read some of the sign and he didn’t like what he saw.
    Laurie looked up, too.
    “Oh, look,” she said. “Smoke.”
    Wallace tilted his head and looked at the puffs of white smoke.
    Slocum didn’t say anything just then. He just knew those smoke signals meant trouble.
    The Apaches were calling out for a powwow in three days.
    That much he knew.
    Three days, and then what?
    He stubbed out his cheroot and tramped on, worry lines furrowing his brow under the brim of his black hat.

12
    At the end of the long