Slocum's Breakout - Jake Logan [29]
“So your cojones did your thinking, eh?” This made Murrieta laugh again. Slocum wasn’t as inclined to feel charitable about it now. “That proves you are a man. What man has not been betrayed by a woman?”
“This one won’t be again anytime soon,” Slocum said. He looked around uneasily. They were only a dozen yards into the woods away from the road. “The sheriff . . .”
“He will not trouble us. Sheriff Bernard is no fool. With only one deputy, he would see he is no match for so many guns.”
“Your gang?”
Murrieta snorted and shook his head.
“I am not my father. I am no outlaw by intention. But the law makes me into one. All I want is to raise crops and a family. In peace.”
“You were in prison because your pa was an outlaw.”
“Whenever a crime is committed, I am the first the sheriff seeks. If I cannot find an alibi, I am arrested. So it is with all those who follow me.”
“Follow you?”
“I am alcalde for my small village. I try to lead them, to keep order according to our own laws, but it becomes more difficult.”
Four men rode up, all sporting bandoliers crammed with shells. They could stand off an entire army with that much ammunition. Slocum decided the sheriff wasn’t such a coward after all if he saw even one of Murrieta’s band and hightailed it back to town.
But simple peones wouldn’t be armed to the teeth, even if it was as Murrieta claimed.
“You see their guns, eh? We are no longer pushed about. We fight. I did not ride with my father, but I still learned a great deal about rifles and fighting from him. Come along, Slocum. We go to my village.”
Slocum swung into the saddle, happy to put even more distance between himself and Sheriff Bernard. As they rode slowly, he asked, “How’d you get out of San Quentin? After you gave yourself up so Valenzuela and I could get away, I figured you would be clapped into solitary for a year.”
“The time to make a good escape is when they least expect it. I returned to their prison, tail between my legs like a whipped cur, and they thought I was defeated. They became careless and I escaped before they had even returned me inside the walls.” Murrieta rocked back in his saddle and held out his leg, pulled up his pant leg and showed where the skin had been cruelly abraded. “I got off one leg iron, and the rest was easy.”
“But you had to get away from their search parties,” Slocum said.
“You wonder if I had a way to freedom and denied it to you and Valenzuela? No,” Murrieta said. “Luck favored me. I got to the Bay and found a boat. It leaked, but I rowed hard and found a fog bank. I continued to row, but when the fog lifted, I saw I had rowed back almost to where I had found the boat.” He chuckled. “It was then that my strength almost fled, but I refused to surrender. I rowed across the Golden Gate and lost myself in San Francisco. Once there . . .” He shrugged eloquently.
Slocum figured Murrieta had plenty of friends there willing to get him back to his village. They might even have ridden with his father, though Procipio would be hesitant about making that claim since he obviously wanted to be thought of as law-abiding.
Slocum wondered how much of the law Murrieta actually followed as they rode into his town. The adobe buildings were pockmarked from bullets, and the men who came out were all heavily armed. This might be an outlaw hideout rather than a simple farming village. But farther to the east Slocum saw fields of beans growing. Acequias had been built for irrigation, and farm tools were stacked near many houses. Whatever the truth, it was more complicated than casually looking around would ever reveal.
“You are tired. Hungry, too, eh? Come into my house, and we will see to your needs.”
Murrieta dropped to the ground. A young boy of ten or twelve rushed out to take the reins. He took Slocum’s, too, and led the horses away. The rest of Murrieta’s gang had disappeared among the houses.