Free Slocum and the Grizzly Flats Killers (9781101619216) by Jake Logan

attacked.
    He stood there a moment, letting the ringing die in his ears. Not sure if he had been shot again, he ran quick hands over himself. The pain in his side came from the earlier wound and not a new one. Squeezing back through the narrow gap between the rocks, he retraced his way to the canyon floor. He kept his six-shooter on the man’s dark form although he saw the rifle lying some distance away.
    Hideout guns weren’t unusual, but his sense again spoke to him. He had killed the man.
    Using the toe of his boot, he rolled the man over. Dead. Slocum dropped to his knee and saw that his first shot had taken the man in the throat. The killing shot had drilled through his heart, more by accident than good marksmanship in the dark.
    He stood and looked back up the hill in the direction of the canyon wall. The man had come from this spot and had returned. There had to be something around the area that would give Slocum a clue as to the others who had killed Mirabelle’s husband and the rest. Picking up the fallen rifle, he examined it. He frowned. The mechanism was rusty. It was a small miracle that it hadn’t blown up in the sniper’s hands.
    Slocum turned uphill and began climbing, following the footprints in the snow and soft dirt. Where the trail crossed rocky patches, the mud from the dead man’s boots marked the path as surely as if signs had been put up. The trail opened into a level area. On the mountainside he made out tailings spilling from the mouth of a mine.
    There didn’t seem to be any other mining activity in the area. Slocum continued following the tracks to a spot where he saw a line shack hidden away in a stand of scrubby trees. The vegetation and side of the mountain would protect the ramshackle building from the worst of the winter storms and in the summer might be cooler than if it had been built out in plain sight.
    He shook his head at this. It hardly seemed likely the killer lived here, much less worked a claim. Slocum got the sinking feeling the man he had killed wasn’t one of those responsible for the deaths back at the canyon mouth.
    Using the rifle barrel, he poked the door, which opened on well-oiled hinges. Inside the dark shack he saw two pallets, one on either side of the room. Between them a Franklin stove pumped out waves of heat. Someone had fed the stove recently. He backed away and looked toward the mine shaft. Faint sounds of digging came out.
    Slocum went to the mine and chanced a quick look in. Deep within guttered a single miner’s candle. It didn’t cast enough light for him to see anything other than rusted tracks for an ore cart and dancing shadows.
    â€œHello!” His call echoed into the mine and was eventually swallowed by distance.
    â€œAin’t no reason to shout,” came the gravelly voice from behind.
    Slocum didn’t spin around because the prickly feeling at the back of his neck warned him a gun was trained on him. He slowly put down the rusty rifle and kept his hands where they could be seen.
    â€œThis your claim?”
    â€œIs. My partner’s, too, but he’s a lazy good-for-nothing. Not sure where he got off to.”
    â€œHe tried to shoot me,” Slocum said. He turned slowly until he faced a man dressed in canvas pants and a plaid wool shirt. The man wore a strap around his forehead holding an unlit carbide lamp.
    â€œAin’t got money fer the carbide pellets,” the man answered Slocum’s unspoken question. “Ain’t gettin’ ’nuf outta this here hole in the ground to stay alive, but me and Bertram do what we can.”
    It wasn’t the smartest thing to do when he looked down the barrel of an old black powder Remington, but Slocum repeated that he had shot the man’s partner.
    â€œYou kill the son of a bitch?” The heavy pistol never wavered in the miner’s grimy paw.
    â€œIt was him or me.” That wasn’t strictly the truth since Slocum could