Slocum #396 : Slocum and the Scavenger Trail (9781101554371) by Jake Logan Read Free Book Online

might have been mistaken for another thief and murderer who could bring immense, immediate wealth to the merchant in return for his silence.
    The road reached a plateau and leveled off. Marmotspoked their heads from burrows and watched him warily. Enough prospectors had come past for the small rodents to know they might end up as dinner in a stewpot if they weren’t careful. Slocum took the opportunity to look down and see where earlier travelers had gone along this stretch. Most followed the path but enough veered away that he wondered if Baransky had done so only to find himself in an ambush amid a stand of trees. There were still plenty at this altitude. The tree line was another fifteen hundred feet higher on the mountain.
    Slocum reared back and looked up at the summit of Desolation Mountain on his right. The saddle pass formed between it and the mountain to the left was at least two thousand feet higher, well above the timberline. It was deceptive, he knew. Two thousand feet was nothing—only this was straight up and his lungs already strained just a mite to suck in air. It would be far worse by the time the pass opened up to spill gold seekers onto the far side of the mountain.
    “Where might he have gone?” Slocum asked the mule. The long-eared head turned and a big brown eye fixed on him. Slocum had no better idea, so he dismounted and gave the mule its head. It might go after a tuft of grass or hunt water, but it might also remember the trail it had traversed before with Clem Baransky on its back. Slocum had no better way of tracking.
    The mule kicked and tried to free itself of its load. When it realized Slocum had cinched the supplies down too securely, it settled down, turned back to the road, and then started walking at a brisk pace that forced Slocum to lengthen his stride to keep up. He doubted the mule would continue with him on its back, but it seemed content to go along without a rider.
    He only hoped this was the same track taken by Baransky.
    His hope flared when the mule suddenly veered off the road and went to a small, grassy meadow. It positioned itselfnear a clump of grass and began eating. Slocum examined the grass and saw it was already half eaten, whether by this mule or some other creature he couldn’t tell. But the mule had shown considerable memory before. This might be a safe place for it to eat because it had done so before.
    As it grazed, Slocum began circling the area, his search spiral widening until he found footprints. The grass here was crushed as if several men had milled about—or maybe fought. He thought about what he saw and constructed a small stage play of what had happened.
    Baransky had let his mule graze, then walked in this direction. A shallow ravine still held spoor where several men had hidden. Or Slocum thought that might be what had happened. Baransky had approached for some reason, then he had been jumped. The scuffle was brief but fierce enough to kick up the thin mountain dirt and grass growing on it.
    From here they all headed toward the far side of the meadow.
    Slocum lost the tracks because of a rocky patch, but he reckoned that the kidnappers walked straight ahead since Baransky wasn’t putting up a fight any longer. Here and there Slocum had found double ruts in the dirt that showed where a man was dragged along facedown, his toes digging into the ground.
    As he crossed the rocky patch, he heard a moan. His hand flashed to his Colt Navy, but he did not draw. Flopped on his back a dozen yards away stirred a man. He tried to push himself up on his elbows and failed, to collapse back to the ground.
    Slocum hurried over.
    “You all right? What happened? You get robbed?” The man was short and squat. Not Clem Baransky. But if he had been dry-gulched recently, he might have seen where Baransky went—or where he had been taken.
    “Help me. Head. Hurts. Hit me.”
    Slocum hurried over, then whipped out his pistol and gota shot off at the man on the ground. He