Slocum and the Grizzly Flats Killers (9781101619216) by Jake Logan

in fighting shape when he ran those bastards to ground.
    â€œI don’t want to put you out. I can give you directions.”
    He knew she tried to find reasons not to torment herself with the site that had changed her life so drastically. Although he hated to force her, he needed her to go over every move and show him every spot where the killers had stood, how they had set up the attack, the direction they had taken when they left. Even if she gave him exact directions to the campsite, none of the other information so necessary to learning what the outlaws had done would be available to him without her showing him.
    They rented the buggy from the stable owner for a dollar. Slocum hitched up his horse, helped Mirabelle into the buggy, then settled himself and snapped the reins. The horse preferred a rider on its back, and Slocum commiserated. This was necessary, as was torturing Mirabelle with the crime scene once more.
    The trip along the muddy road passed in silence. For Slocum’s part, he didn’t need anything more than occasional stabs of Mirabelle’s finger, pointing the proper route. Trying to remember everything about the attack that had laid him up proved futile. He’d as soon chew off his own leg than admit he couldn’t identify the men he had promised to kill.
    If he’d had only slight interest in bringing them to justice because of what they had done to Isaac Comstock and the others, it had sharpened after the men waylaid him. Although the gang ambushing him might be a different one from those who had killed the Comstock party, he doubted it. Rupert Eckerly was the bridge between the attacks. Mirabelle identified the dead man as one of her assailants. It would be too much of a coincidence if Eckerly had been part of two gangs.
    â€œUp there,” she said in a small voice. “We camped just inside the mouth of that canyon. Spring Canyon, Terrence called it.”
    Slocum worked the buggy up the trail as close as he could to where Mirabelle had indicated the camp, but the slope was too great and the rocks too large to get closer than a hundred yards. He set the brake, made sure the horse was tethered and close to dry clumps of grass, then helped the woman to the camp.
    The closer they got, the more Mirabelle shook. She cried openly when they came to the site of the massacre.
    Slocum had seen savagery during the war—and had taken part in more than his share—but the bodies showed how brutal the outlaws’ questioning had been.
    Animals had dined on the corpses, but there was no mistaking how one man had been skinned. From what Mirabelle had heard that night, the torture had occurred to make the man talk. He didn’t find enough left of the women’s bodies but had no doubt they had been raped because of the way their clothing had been ripped. Coyotes wouldn’t care. Indeed, some pieces had been carried off by scavengers. Arms and even legs were missing, but that didn’t take away from how Slocum reconstructed the scene before him.
    *   *  *
    Coyotes were animals operating on a simple instinct to stay alive. The men responsible for the deaths were cold-blooded and calculating in their actions.
    â€œCould any of them have known where the gold was hidden?”
    â€œNo, no,” Mirabelle said in a choked voice. “I don’t even know where Ike found those coins, but he thought they were part of the treasure.”
    â€œHow’d you get the information this was the place to search?”
    Slocum paced slowly around the site of the killings, trying to decipher what was left of the tracks. Animals had obliterated much of the spoor, and the rain and light snow had added to the problem of finding how many had attacked the camp. Once, he dropped to his knees and brushed away a drift of unsullied snow. He was rewarded with a pair of boot prints.
    â€œDid you find anything, John?”
    â€œStill looking,” he said. “Who told