Slocum's Breakout - Jake Logan [36]
“Michael Durant,” Murrieta said as if the name burned his tongue. “I do not know what more he could have done to keep Atencio from the gallows, but there must have been something. A law, a loophole as they say. Durant did not try hard enough.”
“You just saying that or are you sure? He might have been paid off by the banker,” Slocum said.
“That is possible. I do not understand much of what was said in the court. It is only a way to imprison us, not help us.”
“Or stick your necks into a noose,” Slocum said, nodding. He got the same feeling about most courts and judges. Lawyers argued tiny points and let the big ones fall by the wayside in their attempts to look smarter than their opposition.
“How do you find the Valenzuelas, much less the loot from the bank?” Murrieta asked.
“I doubt they returned to the house where I took José,” Slocum said. He looked up to see Maria frown. She started to speak, then clamped her lips tightly.
“What have you heard?” Slocum demanded.
“Nothing of them,” the woman said, “but there is another thing that I overheard in town.”
“In Miramar?” Slocum asked. She nodded and then rushed to tell what she had learned.
“There is a stagecoach coming with a great deal of money in it. It is for the Army in the Presidio.”
“Why isn’t it being brought in by ship?” Slocum asked.
“There was a fire aboard a ship to the south. It sank quickly. Perhaps it had the garrison payroll on it,” Murrieta said. “I heard this but did not know of any money being brought by land.” He looked hard at Maria. “Where did you hear this?”
“I was leaving the office of Durant. I had gone to plead with him to help Atencio.”
“What did you . . . pay?” Murrieta half stood and leaned forward, fists on the table. Slocum rocked back, surprised at the man’s vehemence.
“Nothing, Procipio, nothing! I swear! The men I overheard were talking of a telegram. The telegrapher himself was taking the message to the bank.”
“That’s the kind of bait I need to lure the Valenzuelas from hiding,” Slocum said. “When’s the stage due to pass through?”
“Any time now,” Maria said. “The schedule is for one this very afternoon, but it might be that the money is with another.”
“They wouldn’t send along a cavalry detachment to protect it,” Slocum said, his mind racing to figure all the angles, to find all the pitfalls. “Every gang in California would go after it then. It’s being shipped from Los Angeles?” He saw the quick glance between Procipio and Maria, then the woman fixed her deep, dark ebony eyes on him.
“I do not know. Where is all the Army money kept?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Slocum said. “Here’s my plan.” He began building on a sketchy idea. Procipio was as skeptical as Maria was hopeful that his wild-ass scheme would work.
“You ought to be a highwayman,” Slocum said. “This is the perfect spot for a robbery.”
“That was my father,” Procipio said indignantly. “I farm and that is all I want from life.”
“Didn’t mean anything by it,” Slocum said, his attention fixed on the way the road made a hairpin turn and the boulders on either side. Those rocks could protect the stage and driver but also provided an excellent spot for a rifleman to take out any guard who refused to surrender. One robber need only stand in the road to stop the progress up the trail while an accomplice did the necessary work if the driver or shotgun messenger protested. The tight notch in the road prevented the driver from wheeling the stage about and trying to run, as if any driver would. Being held up on a California route was an all-too-often occurrence. If the driver surrendered his cargo, the highwaymen obliged by not killing him and his passengers.
“I was falsely put into San Quentin,” Murrieta went on. “Just as Atencio was, though they did not see fit to frame me for horse thieving.”
“Hush,” Slocum said, motioning Murrieta back. Two riders trotted into the notch from the direction of Miramar. They were ten miles outside town, about perfect