Slocum and the Golden Girls
Page 1
A Hard Man
“A damned town tamer,” Cordwainer muttered.
Then he looked at the three men. His gaze fell on each face in turn as his mind captured thoughts, worked them over, and formulated them into the words he was about to speak.
“Well, that makes it simple, then,” Jess said. “You men know what you have to do.”
“What’s that?” Creek asked.
“Bushwhack Slocum any way you can. I want his damned lamp put out. Pronto.”
“Well, we know where he’s stayin’,” Hutch said. “We can pump a couple of barrels full of buckshot through his winder and splatter him all over that hotel room.”
“Be easy,” Creek said.
“Don’t kid yourself, Joe,” Jess said. “Slocum hasn’t lived this long because he’s a fool. Wherever you take him down, you’d better make sure he don’t get up. I’ve heard stories about this bastard that would curl your hair. He won’t be easy.”
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JAKE LOGAN
SLOCUM
AND THE
GOLDEN GALS
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SLOCUM AND THE GOLDEN GALS
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Jove edition / September 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
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Slocum and the Texas Twister
1
John Slocum heard the screams long before he saw the burning man.
His horse, Ferro, nickered and the gelding’s ears stiffened into cones that twisted to pick up the sound.
The screams rose in pitch to a terrible shriek, and Slocum scrambled out of his bedroll and picked up his pistol and holster. He strapped on his gun belt and stooped down to scoop up his hat.
He slipped his rifle from its scabbard attached to his saddle, which was draped across a small boulder, and he ran across the road. He jacked a shell into the firing chamber of his Winchester and ran toward the screams onto Cactus Flat.
Dawn hovered above the mountains in a painted sky that was all faint pastel pink and gray clouds, their edges turning yellow gold under sprays of gauzy light.
Slocum scrambled over the rocks and skirted the prickly pear, weaved through sentinels of cedar and pinyon. Then he saw the man just as he stopped screaming. He was nailed, or tied, to a small juniper, and flames engulfed him and spread over the limbs like bright red and orange flags.
He heard the crackle of the dry limbs as they burned and released their gases. The man’s face was black with blood boiling off his skin, melting his face as if it were made of wax. The man’s arms twisted in the fire and dripped hissing fat onto the ground. His loins rippled with flame and the cloth of his trousers hissed as they turned to ash, dropped away to reveal the blackening bones of his legs.
Slocum heard the sound of hoofbeats and ducked down. He peered past the burning man and saw three riders leading a riderless saddle horse break from the trees and gallop up the road toward Halcyon Valley. He could hear their laughter as it floated on the morning air, and his jaw tightened in anger.
The smell of burning flesh was sickening and he turned away, gulped in air to keep from vomiting.
There was nothing left of the man by the time Slocum recovered from his nausea. Around the tree th
ere was nothing to reveal his identity nor why he had been so brutally murdered. Nor had he seen a recognizable face amid the torturous flames that melted the man’s flesh.
Slocum cursed under his breath, turned, and started back toward his campsite at Whiskey Springs.
That was when he heard a noise, a noise that threw him into a fighting crouch and impelled him to grasp the butt of his Colt with his right hand.
It was a man clearing his throat, or hawking up phlegm.
Slocum turned in a half circle to face the direction of the sound.
Beyond the charred corpse, he saw movement. Someone scuttled furtively amid the trees and cactus.
Slocum stood up.
“You there,” he called. “You come over here or I’ll drop you where you stand.”
The man had frozen in place. He wore a battered hat and a frayed coat. He carried a white bundle under his arm. His pants were baggy and soiled, evident even from a distance of more than fifty yards.
The man threw both hands up in the air and his bundle dropped to the ground. It made a muffled sound, like a pillow being punched with a fist.
“Don’t you shoot! Don’t shoot!” the man yelled. “I ain’t your enemy. I ain’t no enemy.”
“Pick up your bundle and walk over to me,” Slocum said.
The pale ghosts of blue shadows slid from the trees as the sun rose over the mountains. A hawk sailed on silent pinions from the foothills and floated over the flat, its head shifting from side to side as it gazed downward for mice or rabbits.
The man hobbled toward Slocum, his bundle tucked again under his arm. Slocum saw the long strands of gray hair streaming from under his crumpled hat. He squeezed his bundle when it was about to slip from his grasp and it rattled like a diamondback.
“Yes, sir, here I am. Innocent as a dove and not your enemy.”
Slocum pointed to the charred corpse. The man’s head swiveled around to look at it. His body jerked as if he had been whipped, and he brought a hand to his mouth.
“You see what happened here?” Slocum asked.
The man looked up at him, his eyes sheepish, his lower lip atremble.
“Some of it. Yeah. I reckon. Too much of it.”
“You scared?” Slocum asked.
“Plumb scared, yep. It ain’t somethin’ you see ever’ day.”
“You know who did this? There were three men who rode off. They were leading a riderless horse.”
The man looked around him as if afraid of being overheard. The sound of hoofbeats had long since died away.
“Well, I seen ’em before. All four of ’em. But I didn’t know none of ’em, ’ceptin’ that burnt man over yonder.”
“You walk down here?” Slocum asked. “And what have you got in that bundle, baby rattlesnakes?”
The man cackled and shook his head.
“No, sir, I been shakin’ pinyon nuts outen them trees. I spread out this sheet and they fall there like rat shit. Mighty fine tastin’ when I roast ’em.”
“What’s your name?”
“Caleb. Caleb Butterbean. That’s who I am. I rode down here from Halcyon Valley on my mule. He’s tethered in a draw back yonder where I was shakin’ down pinyon nuts. I was real surprised when them boys rode down here and tacked Lonnie Taylor to that juniper. He was screamin’ and yellin’ the whole time and I didn’t know they was goin’ to burn him.”
“Why did they do that?” Slocum asked.
“I reckon it was over some gal up in Halcyon Valley. One gal in particular, Ruby Dawson. Purty as a newborn bunny she is and, well, I guess poor Lonnie didn’t listen when Jess Cordwainer told him to back off. Them three men work for Jesse and he’s a bad ’un.”
“Tell me more, Caleb,” Slocum said. He fished a pair of cheroots from his pocket and held one out for Butterbean. “Smoke?”
“Well, that’s mighty kind of you, stranger. Say, what’s yore name, if you don’t mind me askin’?”
“Slocum. John Slocum.”
“John Slocum. Hmm. Sounds some familiar. Heard it somewheres, I reckon. You from Victorville?”
“No.”
“Hesperia maybe? Barstow?”
“No, I’m not from anywhere,” Slocum said.
Slocum struck a match and lit their skinny cigars. Butterbean puffed and looked up at Slocum, his forehead wrinkling and unwrinkling as if he were trying to place a man he had never seen before.
“You headed for Antelope Valley?” Butterbean asked, his mouth obscured by a wavery scarf of smoke.
“Nope,” Slocum replied.
“Where you headed, then?”
“Halcyon Valley.”
“Not much there, ’ceptin’ a heap of trouble.”
Slocum said nothing as he pulled smoke from his cheroot.
“You don’t give up much, do you, Slocum?”
“Not if I don’t have to,” Slocum said, a thin smile curving his lips around the cigar.
“Let me get my mule over yonder and I’ll ride up there with you. Pinyon pickin’s ain’t that good nohow.”
“You got a shovel with you?”
“A small one. Why?”
“Bury that corpse yonder,” Slocum said.
“Well, I reckon we could maybe dig a hole for him. You wait here. I’ll get old Josie. Ah, my mule.”
Slocum waited and smoked until Butterbean and Josie waddled across the flat toward him. He walked over to the burning man and began to throw loose dirt on the remaining flames. The stench of the burned body was sickly sweet and nauseating.
Butterbean dismounted and pulled a short-handled shovel from the rolled-up slicker and blanket lashed down behind the cantle of his saddle. He walked over toward Slocum, scuffing the ground with the heel of his boots. He stopped at a patch of soft earth that was not too stony nor sprouting clumps of cactus. He drove the blade of the shovel hard into the ground and grunted with satisfaction.
“This might make a good spot for poor Lonnie Taylor, God rest his soul.”
Together, the two men gingerly removed the burned body from the tree. The man’s eyes were boiled out and there was just a waxy white substance where they had been. His body was ravished to the bone, and they laid the skeletonized remains in the hole. Butterbean shoved dirt over him.
“One of us should probably say a few words over him,” Caleb said.
“Suit yourself,” Slocum said.
“You don’t have nothin’ to say, I take it.”
“He can’t hear us and I don’t think any words of mine will help him. Wherever he was going, he’s already there,” Slocum said. “If you’re going back up to Halcyon Valley, I’ll meet you at the spring.”
“I’ll be along,” Butterbean said.
He watched Slocum walk away toward Whiskey Springs and blew out a soundless whistle of air.
“Now there goes a hard man,” he said to himself as he took off his hat and commended the dead man’s soul to whatever heaven might exist.
2
Slocum was just pulling his single cinch tight around Ferro’s belly when Butterbean rode up on his sorry mule.
“Mighty fine horse you got there, Slocum,” he said.
“He’ll do to ride the river with,” Slocum said as he flipped down from the left stirrup. He patted his bedroll behind the cantle, felt the firmness of his shotgun wrapped inside, and stood by his horse to survey his campsite one last time.
“I brung a bottle,” Caleb said. “I see you left you one under that rock yonder.”
“My friend in Halcyon Valley told me that was the custom.”
“Yep, that’s why they call it Whiskey Springs. Folks campin’ here or passin’ by always leaves a full bottle of whiskey for the freighters and mail haulers. Kind of a way to show gratitude and wet a few whistles.”
“It’s a good custom,” Slocum said as he took the bottle of Old Grandad from Butterbean. He walked it over to the large rock beneath the talus slope of the limestone bluff and placed it a few inches from the bottle he had placed the
re, Old Overholt. He returned to Ferro and climbed into the saddle.
“Mighty fond of black, ain’t ye?” Caleb said as the saddle creaked with the tall man’s weight.
“I reckon,” Slocum said. “Makes me easy to spot in daylight in case folks don’t want to tangle with me, and at night, they have a hell of a time picking me out of the shadows.”
Caleb chuckled.
“I got to remember that,” he said. “Might come in handy someday.”
The two men headed up the long winding road toward the mountains. The sun was up by then and its rays glistened off the high snow-capped peaks, bright enough to blind a man who looked at them directly.
“Who you goin’ to see up in Halcyon Valley?” Caleb asked as he accepted a cheroot from Slocum. He leaned over as Slocum held a hand cupped around the flame of a lighted match.
“Wally Newman,” Slocum said. “Know him?”
He couldn’t be sure, but he thought that Caleb had let out a light gasp at the sound of his friend’s name.
“Wallace Newman,” Caleb intoned, as if he were reading a name on a tombstone.
“You know Wally?” Slocum said.
“I know he’s got a big target on his back, and Cordwainer’s lookin’ down the barrel of a Sharps.”
“You better explain that, Caleb.”
“Your friend Newman was runnin’ against one of Cordwainer’s men for constable. Wallace claims he can clean up Halcyon Valley, get rid of the claim jumpers and bandits that have been stealin’ the prospectors and miners blind. Cordwainer don’t want no reforms and your friend Newman has been in hiding for two weeks with men a-huntin’ him down who aim to do what they done to Lonnie Taylor, or worse.”
“I know Wally’s been prospecting,” Slocum said. “I didn’t know he was a politician.”
“Wally, I hear, has a mine where he struck a heavy vein or maybe a mother lode and don’t nobody know where it’s at. That’s another reason he’s got hard men on his tail.”
“In Halcyon Valley?” Slocum said.
The two men climbed up toward the lavender sky where the air thinned and the sun slid over the high peaks, spraying a golden mist over Cactus Flat. The hills were more rugged there and the road grew steeper.