Slocum's Breakout - Jake Logan [16]
“Who tipped ’em off?” The second smuggler was more composed. Slocum took him to be the leader.
Addressing him, Slocum said, “Doesn’t much matter. We’ve got to get across the water, back to the city.”
“We?” The leader laughed harshly. “How are you dealin’ yourself into this game?”
“Four men rowing will get us across the Bay faster than just two.”
“Four?” The leader understood what Slocum meant, whirled, and found himself staring down the barrel of Valenzuela’s six-gun.
“I can shoot them both,” Valenzuela said.
“Four of us rowing’ll make better time,” Slocum said. He walked forward and saw six small caskets secured with iron straps in the bottom of boat. “We might have to leave the contraband.”
“No!”
“Then you definitely need a couple extra sets of hands on the oars.” Slocum let the two smugglers whisper back and forth a few seconds, then pressed his advantage. “We can leave you here with those casks and just take your boat.”
“No! We . . . we can all get across. The tide is out. It’s dangerous anytime, but in the dead of night it’s goin’ to be damned near suicidal.”
“Then let’s get to killing ourselves,” Slocum said. He motioned to Valenzuela to join them. For the first time, he was glad Valenzuela was with him, watching his back, making the right play and doing it without a lot of lead flying. The sound of gunfire might draw the prison guards. By now they must have reached the shoreline some distance along the coast closer to San Quentin.
“You ain’t gonna rob us?”
“We’re honest crooks. All we want to do is stay ahead of the law,” Slocum said with enough sincerity that the two men both nodded at the same time. They climbed into the boat and took their places on the bench seat while the one Slocum pegged as the boss pushed them off. He got them into the choppy water, then dropped the frayed end of the bowline to the bottom.
That explained what they were doing. Without the line, it wasn’t possible to tie up the boat at a dock. On this rocky beach, they had simply pulled the boat far enough onto land and didn’t have to secure it otherwise.
“We take turns. You two start,” the head smuggler said.
“I have a better idea,” Slocum countered. “My friend and you row, then we switch off. That way somebody’s always watching to be sure nothing goes wrong.”
The smuggler thought about it a moment, then agreed. Slocum sat in the stern while the other smuggler took the prow. His boss and Valenzuela took the oars and began rowing.
The Bay proved even choppier than Slocum had anticipated, and by the time they reached the far side, avoiding the curious eyes of soldiers at Fort Point, he was sick to his stomach from the bouncing motion. He thought Valenzuela would make some snide comment about how shaky he was when he climbed onto a low dock at North Beach, but Valenzuela was as wobbly-legged as he was.
“Good luck,” Slocum said to the smugglers.
“We had that already, if we really avoided the law,” the boss said. He reached for his shotgun but didn’t pick it up. “Did we?” he called.
“Did we get away from the law?” Slocum asked. “We sure as hell did.”
The smuggler relaxed. Slocum had told him what he wanted to know.
“We should have killed them both,” Valenzuela complained when they were out of the smugglers’ earshot. “They will ask about a reward. The guards will lie, we will be back behind bars before the sun comes up.”
“I don’t think so,” Slocum said. “I don’t know what they were carrying in those barrels, but they’re not going to the law. Not about us. They want to keep as much distance as we do from anyone wearing a badge.”
Valenzuela grumbled, but Slocum ignored him. He was too busy looking for a means to speed them along their way to the Valenzuelas’ house south of town. He slowed and then stopped when he saw a man shoved out of a carriage hitting the cobblestones hard. He stirred drunkenly on the pavement but didn’t show any other signs of life. The man who had struck him shifted over to the middle of the hard seat in the buggy and started to snap the reins,