by Jory Sherman
The fly landed on the wall and crawled into a small crack. Its green body dulled to a faint sheen in the dark.
“Well, let’s mosey up to the Silver Slipper, Wally.” Jigger opened a drawer and took out two pairs of handcuffs and tossed them across the desk. He stuffed another two pairs into his back pockets. “Stick those in your poke, case we have to make an arrest or two.”
Wally picked up the handcuffs, eyeing them warily. He had never had to use handcuffs before. Sheriffs Brown and Dimsdale had used them when taking reluctant or unruly prisoners to court. He put the cuffs in one of his back pockets, jamming them in so that they didn’t show.
The Silver Slipper Saloon glowed with yellow lamplight pouring through its windows. Horses tied at the hitch rail stood saddled and hipshot outside, switching their tails and tossing their manes whenever anyone entered or left the saloon. A piano tinkled above the thrum of a bass fiddle and the undercurrent of a plinking banjo, the rattle of a snare drum.
“You foller my lead,” Jigger said as he pushed through the batwing doors into the warmth of the saloon, which was crowded with rough men and gaudily dressed glitter gals showing off legs and tantalizing garters, high-heeled patent leather shoes and low-cut bodices trimmed in lace or white pleats over tight-fitting bustiers.
The two walked to the long bar at the left and stood between empty stools. The small bandstand was at the back, surrounded by lamps with chimneys painted red or green used as footlights in a sunken wooden trough below the stage.
One of the bartenders walked over and saw the badges pinned to Wally’s and Jig’s vests.
“What’ll it be, gents?” he said. “Howdy, Wally. This the new sheriff?”
“Yeah, Glenn. Glass of water for me.”
“Beer for me. I’m Sheriff Jigger.”
“Glenn Tobin, Sheriff. Beer’s on the house. Two bits for the water, Wally.”
Glenn and Wally both laughed.
“See them Mexes down at the other end of the bar, Wally?” Jigger’s eyes glittered like a serpent’s peering at prey.
Wally looked down at the other end of the bar. There were three Mexican men drinking beer and speaking Spanish. He could just make out the liquid sounds of the language but not the actual words.
“Yeah. They work up in one of the mines, I think.”
“See any in here who are shop owners?”
Wally scanned the room. He felt a knot growing on the back of his neck, a faint fluttering of apprehension just in back of his eyes as if something ominous was growing in his head, like moss or an unidentifiable fungus pressing against his rational mind.
He spotted two men sitting at a table sharing a bottle of tequila, a saucer of sliced lemons and a salt mill next to it. He stared at them, wondering if he should tell Jigger who they were.
But Jigger was watching him, following his gaze.
They hardly noticed when Glenn set the beer in front of Jigger and the glass of water where Wally was standing. He vanished without a word, a puzzled look on his face.
“Them two over yonder. You know ’em?” Jigger asked Wally.
“I . . . think so. One of them owns a little feed store at the edge of town. Been here for several years, I think.”
“What about the other one? The one with the long Injun hair?”
“I think he owns a little freight business, hauls feed to the ranchers and farmers.”
“Names?”
“Octavio owns the feed store. Octavio Fuentes, I think is his name.”
“And the other feller?”
“Pedro or Pablo. Pedro Mendoza. He owns one old wagon and two old tired horses. Never had no trouble from neither of ’em.”
“Well, they’re both takin’ white men’s jobs. They don’t belong here. They belong in Mexico where they came from.”
“Hell, Jig, most of this town’s populated by Mexicans. They do a lot of jobs white men won’t work at, like diggin’ in the dirt to grow vegetables, or growin’ fruit trees, going into them black mines and usin’ picks to get at the carbonite, settin’ dynamite and buildin’ roads and such.”
“There are too many Mexes, you ask me.”
“Well, some of ’em came here before any of us did.”
“What in hell do you mean by that?”
Wally could sense Jigger’s growing anger, the prejudice in his heart. He wished Dimsdale were still alive, still the sheriff. He didn’t like Jigger’s questions and his interest in two innocent men who were doing no harm.
“I mean, we all got to live together, don’t we? I mean they’s Mexicans and Negroes livin’ all over Colorado and here in Leadville. Good men, most of ’em, with blood the same color as ours.”
“Blood don’t make them our brothers, Wally.”
“I didn’t say they was brothers.”
“What are they then?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Fellow men?”
Jigger snorted in disgust.
“No, Wally, they’re a blight on the face of this grand country, a damned blight.”
Wally lifted his glass and drank.
Jigger swallowed two gulps of beer and beckoned to Glenn, who was wiping the bar where a man had left his stool and gone out to cut in on a couple dancing. The band was playing a lively Irish jig, and the floor was crowded with glitter gals and patrons pushing their bodies together as if trying to mate through cloth.
Glenn walked over.
“Something wrong with the beer, Sheriff?”
“No, it tastes like piss and it’s warm as piss, but it’ll be piss anyway once it runs through my innards. I want to ask you something, Glenn.”
“Go right ahead, Sheriff.”
“Call me Jig. I just wanted to know if you serve Injuns in here?”
“No, sir, we don’t serve Indians at the Silver Slipper. But there ain’t been an Indian in here since before the war. Least I never seen one since they drove out the Utes and ’Rapahoes.”
“Well, what’s them three Mexes doin’ in here sittin’ down at the end of the bar, swillin’ down the same beer I’m drinkin’?”
“Them are Mexicans, Sher—er, Jig. They come in here a lot. Don’t never make no trouble.”
“Mexicans got Injun blood in ’em.”
Glenn stepped back and looked down his nose at Jigger.
“Indian blood?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Well, I maybe got a little Indian blood in me, and I know plenty of fellers, some old-timers, who had squaw mothers and some what are bastard sons of mountain men and Indian women.”
“You ain’t Mex, Glenn. You ain’t greaser and Injun like them down there.”
“Sheriff, er, Jig, that’s kind of dangerous talk in these parts.”
Glenn looked at Wally, a question in his eyes. Wally shrugged and looked away. The knot in his neck grew larger and harder, and he felt the pressure of something dark and taloned on his brain as if something were trying to claw its way out a dark abyss and gobble him up from the inside.
“Go on about your business, Glenn. I’ll have a talk with them three. Come on, Wally.”
Jigger downed his beer, leaving bubbly foam streaks in his glass. He walked around the bar, Wally in his wake, and braced the three Mexicans, tapping each one on the shoulder.
“You three,” he said. “Come outside, I want to talk to you.”
The three young men turned and looked at the pair of badges gleaming in the lamplight.
“What you want?” one of them said.
“Just to talk. Follow me.”
“We ain’t under arrest, are we?” asked another.
Jigger did not answer but beckoned for the three men to follow him.
Wally followed behind the three men. The weight was now in his heart. He felt a sickness in his stomach and rubbed the imaginary knot on the back of his neck.
Outside, Jigger beckoned to the three men.
“Foller me,” he said.
He walked down to the dark corner at Harrison and
turned into Second Street, where it was even darker. Then he stopped.
The three men stopped, and so did Wally.
“Yes?” one of them said. “What is it you want?”
“Any of you got Injun blood in you?” Jigger stood with his feet apart, his hands close to the butts of both his pistols.
“El pregunta si tenemos el sangre de Indios,” the oldest of the three said to the other two.
“No somos Indios,” the youngest protested. “Somos Americanos de Mexico.”
“He says—” Wally began.
“I know what the hell he said. I savvy Mex real good.”
To the men, he said something that caught Wally by surprise.
“Do you boys know what ley de fuga means?”
Two of the men shook their heads. The oldest one stared at Wally, his eyes wide in disbelief.
“Yes, I know what it means. In Mexico. We are not criminals. We do not break the law.”
“You were drinking illegally in that saloon. You were breaking United States and Colorado law. That makes you criminals. I’m going to take you to jail and haul your asses up before the judge.”
“No, no,” the three men chorused.
“Then start running. Go on. Just run back to wherever you live and we’ll forget all about this.”
The three men looked at each other and spoke in rapid Spanish that neither Jigger nor Wally could follow.
Jigger drew both his pistols and pointed them at the three men.
He cocked them as he said, “Corre, cabróns.”
The three men turned and started running down the dark street.
Jigger aimed both pistols and began firing. One, two, three shots rang out, and the three men fell to the earth. They looked like rag dolls or marionettes with their strings cut. They lay there like bleeding rags, one of them whimpering his last breaths.
“Ley de fuga,” Jigger said, blowing tendrils of smoke from the barrels of his pistols.
“What in hell is ley de fuga?” Wally asked.
“The law of flight, Wally. If a prisoner runs, a law officer has every right to shoot him dead.”
“Mexican law?”
“Well, they’re Mexes, ain’t they? Now, let’s go back to the Silver Slipper and have a talk with them two jaspers you pointed out to me.”
Wally doubled over and vomited, spewing up all the bile in his stomach, retching and retching until there was nothing more to retch. The knot on the back of his head turned to lead and his brain filled with black wings and long talons, the growling squawk of some prehistoric bird ripping into all that he believed, all that he had held dear for most of his life.
“You’re a pussy, Wally,” Jigger said as he ejected the hulls from his pistols and slid fresh .45-caliber cartridges into the empty cylinders.
The music from the saloon drifted to their ears as they turned the corner onto Harrison.
I should just kill Jigger now, Wally thought. Shoot him in the back of the head.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t have the nerve. But he knew someone who did, and his name was Brad Storm, the man they called Sidewinder.
TWENTY-FIVE
The lobby of the Clarendon Hotel was deserted when Brad, Felicity, and Carlos entered it a few hours before dawn. It smelled of cigar smoke and the musty fabrics of the overstuffed chairs, the scented oils on the wood writing table near one window, the decaying leaves of chewed tobacco in the brass spittoons, the mixture of soil and horse manure in the flower pots, the lingering aroma of cigarette smoke and stubbed-out butts in the ashtrays.
Brad lifted the small bell on the check-in counter and tinkled it. The door beyond the desk opened, and a grizzled old man appeared, adjusting his spectacles with one hand and adjusting one of his suspender straps with the other. His white hair jutted like wires over his bald pate, and his shaggy sideburns reminded Brad of a white-haired terrier.
“I’m Brad Storm. I’d like the key to my room.”
The clerk, Ebenezer Scroggins, looked at the three people with tired, wet eyes. Scroggins opened a drawer, rummaged through it, then consulted the register. “Ah, yes,” he said and turned to the keys hanging on hooks. “Here’s your key, second floor.”
“I know.” Brad took the key. He was tired, and he knew Felicity and Carlos were exhausted.
“They’s a message for you, Mr. Storm. Urgent.” Scroggins pulled out another drawer behind the desk. There was a flutter of papers as the clerk shuffled through them. He handed Brad a folded note.
“And I want a room for my friend here, Carlos Renaldo. He works for me.”
The clerk consulted some notes in his drawer and slid the registry toward Brad.
“Sign here,” he said. “Will this be billed to the Denver Detective Agency, Mr. Storm?”
“No. I’ll pay the freight.”
“Fine. Mr. Farnsworth is expecting you, I believe. Right down the hall from you. Number twenty-two.”
Brad opened the note and read it.
Brad. My room soon as you get in. Very urgent. Pete.
Carlos signed his name in the registration book. Felicity covered a yawn with the back of her hand. Her eyes were droopy, and she leaned against Brad.
Scroggins took a key down from the hook labeled “26” and handed it to Carlos after he had signed the register.
“What does the note say?” Felicity asked.
“Pete wants to see me. Do you want to go to our room and lie down?”
“No,” she said, “I want to go with you. After all that’s happened tonight, I don’t dare let you out of my sight.”
“I will go with you also,” Carlos said as he slid his room key into his front pocket. “I am not sleepy.”
“Carlos, you’re not a very good liar.”
“It is my blood. It jumps under my skin.”
“You mean you’re excited,” Brad said.
“Jess.”
The three climbed the stairs. Brad stopped in front of Pete’s room and started to knock on the door. He rapped twice and the door opened. His fist struck only air right in front of Pete’s face.
“Come in,” Farnsworth said.
Brad let Felicity and Carlos enter the room and then he followed. Pete closed the door and locked it.
“I see you’re wearing your pistol,” Brad said. “Who were you expecting?”
“I may wear it to bed if I ever go to bed. I’m glad you brought one of your hands with you. Things are coming to a head here in Leadville.”
“Yes, this is Carlos Renaldo.” Brad said. He turned and saw Wally Culver sitting in a straight-backed chair, stiff-backed as a department store mannequin. Next to him was Quince Mepps in a similar chair. Both men were packing iron, and both lifted their hats and stood up when they saw Felicity. There were extra chairs in the room, and a table in the center with a small stack of wanted flyers on it. There was also a coffee pot sitting on a wire frame with a burning candle beneath it.
“This looks like a war room,” Brad said.
“It is,” Pete said.
Oil lamps flickered atop the bureau, on the low table in front of the divan, and on the nightstand next to the bed. The wallpaper was alive with crawling shadows and the garish yellow-orange flares from the glass chimneys. The room smelled of burning oil, and coffee aromas wafted on the steam from the bubbling pot.
Felicity walked over to the table and picked one of the flyers up off the top of the pile.
“What’s this?” she said as her eyes scanned her husband’s name in bold letters, the amount of the reward. “Is this a joke?”
“Please sit down, Felicity. Carlos, make yourself at home.” Pete waved her to the small divan and guided Carlos to a chair next to it. His bed was at the end of the room, neatly made, with Pete’s hat sitting in the middle of the fluffy bedspread with its design of waterwheels and mills over what resembled flowing creeks.
“No joke, Felicity. The new sheriff, Alonzo Jigger, faked a notarized deposition and got the judge to issue a
warrant for Brad’s arrest.”
Felicity gasped in disbelief as she sat down and continued to stare at the wanted flyer. She felt sick to her stomach and put a hand over her mouth as if to keep from throwing up her supper, eaten hastily at the infirmary.
“And that’s not the half of it,” Pete said, pushing Brad into a chair at the table and sitting in one opposite. “I had extra chairs brought up, and the cook made us some coffee. There are enough cups to go around, cream and sugar if anyone wants some.”
“I reckon you don’t want any of us to go to sleep tonight,” Brad said, looking at one of the dark windows that showed behind the drapes.
“It’s almost morning,” Pete said, “and you’re right. Wally’s got something to tell you.”
“Quince,” Brad said, “you’re off your range, aren’t you? I didn’t know the stage picked up at this hotel.”
Quince nodded toward Pete.
“He’ll tell you why I’m here, Brad.”
“You all look so serious,” Brad said, looking into the faces of Pete, Wally, and Quince. “Did somebody die?”
“Violently,” Pete said. “Go ahead, Wally. Tell Brad what you told me.”
Wally told Brad, Felicity, and Carlos about the prisoner who signed a spurious account of a murder at the old smelter site and how the sheriff forced the notary public to perjure himself by putting his stamp of approval on the signed affidavit. He told of how Jigger had gotten an arrest warrant from Judge Leffingwell, and how they had gone to the Silver Slipper, where Jigger had ordered three young Mexicans out in the street and shot them down as they ran from him in a forced ley de fuga.
“We then went back into the saloon, the music so loud nobody inside heard the shots. Jigger was going to roust a couple of Mexican businessmen like he did those mine workers, but they had left by the time we got back. Or he might have kilt them, too.”
Brad swore under his breath.
“We can’t let Jigger get away with this,” Pete said.
“I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” Brad said, and told him about Ruben’s beating and the rape of his wife by four yellow-hooded men because he refused to pay “insurance” money.
