Slocum's Breakout - Jake Logan [60]
No amount of money would erase the festering sore in his conscience should he break his word to her.
He glanced around the side of the cabin. Conchita and her pa were gone, out of sight, on their way to get everything the Valenzuelas had stolen. His Colt Navy slid easily from his holster and felt comforting in his hand. He rounded the corner and jerked away as José unexpectedly came from inside.
For an instant both of them froze. José started for the six-shooter in his belt but Slocum already had his drawn.
“I’ll drop you where you stand. Don’t. Don’t throw down on me. You’ll be a dead man before you touch the butt.”
“You turn up at the worst possible times,” José said. “If you are here to kidnap the old man again, you are out of luck. He is gone.”
“I found the one I want.”
“I will not tell you where we have hidden our money.”
“Good,” Slocum said, smiling wolfishly. He enjoyed the way the man’s face drained of blood. He thought he was going to die. After torture. “I just wanted another hostage.”
José stared at Slocum, then laughed until tears came to his eyes.
“You will ransom me? As you did my papa? Who is to pay? Conchita? She will let me die.”
“You know your sister better ’n anyone else, I reckon,” Slocum said. “But I’m not ransoming you to her.”
“No? Then what . . .” José’s eyes went wide when he realized what Slocum intended. He went for the six-gun thrust into the waistband of his jeans.
17
José Valenzuela moved fast, but Slocum was faster. He squeezed off a round that tore through the man’s shoulder, knocking him backward. Valenzuela took a step, caught his heel, and then his legs turned to jelly. He sat hard, the pistol falling from his nerveless right hand. For a moment, he remained motionless, stunned. He shook himself as if to get his senses back and reached for his fallen six-shooter.
Slocum stepped on his left wrist until he felt bones grating together.
“Stop! You are hurting me!”
Slocum eased up on the pressure, then kicked the gun away. He kept his own pointed straight at the sitting man.
“You’ve got a vivid imagination,” Slocum told him. “What do you think I’m going to do with you?”
“I cannot return to that terrible place.”
Slocum grinned ear to ear. It gave him considerable pleasure to know that others felt the same as he did about San Quentin and that he could inflict this much misery on Valenzuela. He wished he could substitute him for Atencio, but there was no way that’d happen. He’d have to be content with carrying through the plan that still boiled about foglike and nebulous in his head.
He reached down and grabbed the front of José’s shirt. A powerful tug got the man onto his feet. In ten minutes they were mounted and riding north.
“You have become a bounty hunter?” Valenzuela asked.
“Nothing like that,” Slocum said. He didn’t cotton much to bounty hunters, but he cottoned even less to conversation right now. Too much had to go just right for Atencio to escape the noose again. Worthless talk would only slow him down in his single-minded drive to get to the stone-walled prison.
“I will cry out when we ride through San Francisco,” Valenzuela said. “Better to die with a bullet than to—”
He sagged as Slocum rode closer and swung the long barrel of his six-gun with great precision. He clipped Valenzuela just above the ear. A tiny cut appeared, but the shock scrambled brains and turned his grip on consciousness slippery.
Slocum had to support him as they rode the streets of San Francisco, heading north to where the ferry embarked to cross the Golden Gate from just east of Fort Point. The grim fortress that had protected the entrance to the Bay during the war bristled with cannons. A few bluecoats paraded back and forth along the ramparts, keeping watch for who knew what. There had never been a threat to the city during the war, and even less threat existed now.
The Barbary Coast a bit farther along the shoreline was packed with refugees from Australia and