by Jake Logan
“Tell me about this Ruby gal. Where does she fit in?”
“Ruby hands out love like it was sugar candy, but Cordwainer has a hold on her. He thinks. She runs a brothel for him, but she grants favors to men he don’t know about. Oh, she’s a whizbang, that one. Your friend Wally got tangled up with her, I hear, but she was just tryin’ to find out where his gold mine is. He dropped her, wisely, but she’s one determined bitch. Or so I hear.”
“You think she’s sweet on Wally?”
Caleb shrugged.
“Could be, but Cordwainer don’t want him killed until he finds that mine.”
“Can’t Cordwainer find out from the register where Wally recorded his claim?”
“That’s just it. Nobody can find his claim. Not in San Bernardino or Los Angeles. I figger he recorded his claim maybe up in Sacramento and maybe under a different name.”
They topped a rise and rode toward a dry lake with a wooden structure at one end of it. The lake bed was mottled white, dry as a bone.
“Lake Ettinger,” Caleb said. “That’s his mine up there. In spring, the lake is full of water, but when it’s dry, like now, you can see the cyanide Ettinger uses to separate the gold from the ore they bring out of his mine.”
“It looks abandoned,” Slocum said.
“Well, it ain’t. Barney Ettinger is a millionaire from Los Angeles. He says there’s a lake of pure gold underneath Halcyon Valley. That mine of his is burrowing a tunnel straight under the valley. It’s slow work and tedious as hell, but he’s finding veins of gold somewhere down in them rocks.”
“I thought all the gold was taken out up at Sutter’s Mill.”
Caleb’s laugh was a scratchy cackle.
“’Bout ten, eleven years ago, a feller named Rick Hammond come up here from Grizzly Lake and saw a promisin’ piece of limestone. He took some dynamite sticks and blasted a big old hole in the outdroppin’. He found some big chunks of gold, and when he went to the assay office down in San Bernardino, the word got out and folks streamed up to the valley and started pannin’ and diggin’. Gold petered out and folks left the valley. Now that Ettinger’s up here, more prospectors are pokin’ around. That’s when your friend Wally come up, ’bout two year ago, and struck it rich. Ha. A lot of good it did him. He’s a marked man, for shore.”
“He didn’t tell me about his mine,” Slocum said. “Just that he was in trouble and needed help.”
“Did he tell you he owns a hotel in Halcyon Valley?”
“Yeah. He’s got a room waiting for me at that hotel, The Excelsior.”
“Yep, he owns it and his sister, Abigail, runs it. Pretty little thing, but smart as a whip.”
“She was just a young girl when I last saw her. Little Abby.”
“Well, she’s a full-blown woman now and drives off the men like they was a herd of moonin’ calves. She don’t take kindly to the rough old boys who want to spark her.”
They rode past the Ettinger mine and down a tree-lined road into thick woods. The woods opened up into a large valley with signs of life. There was a main street and at least two hotels, a small bank, a constable’s office and jail, a grocery store next to an arrastre, where a mule was circling as the ore was being crushed in a large round hole. Men stood around, smoking and talking. But they all stared at Butterbean and Slocum as they rode in. They passed one hotel, the Polygon House, a crazy structure of angles and wings that seemed slapped together with whipsawed lumber by a drunken carpenter. Farther down the street was The Excelsior, which was square and almost staid by contrast, with three floors, and a porch with chairs and benches occupied by two elderly women and three whiskered and bearded men smoking pipes.
“Well, there you are, John. I hope you know what you’re gettin’ into. Town looks pretty tame now, but at night, the two saloons are lit up and the whiskey is flowin’ and you can get into a game of cards or a fistfight.”
“I don’t see any saloons,” Slocum said as they rode up to the hitch rail in front of the hotel.
“Over in them trees yonder is one, the Hoot Owl, and at the other end of Main Street is the other’n, the Jubilee.”
“Where do you bunk, Caleb?”
“I got me a little shack over beyond that big juniper on the edge of town. See it? That ’un with the double trunks.” Caleb pointed.
“I see it.”
“That’s the hangin’ tree, John. Many a man has had his neck stretched from that big ol’ limb that shoots out from the trunk.”
Slocum had a queasy feeling when he looked at the twin limbs of the large juniper. He rubbed his neck as if to reassure himself that he had no rope around it.
“It looks peaceful enough now,” he said.
“Just an illusion. They hung a boy from that juniper just last week. Stole a horse, he did, and they caught him down in Grizzly Lake.”
Slocum wondered what he was getting into as he looked once more at the sleepy little settlement. Maybe it came to life when the sun went down. He was not sure what kind of life there would be, but the town was right in the middle of a beautiful valley surrounded by green, pine-studded hills.
He wondered what Wally wanted him to do. He was not a hired gun, and was himself a wanted man, back in Georgia, wrongly accused of murdering a judge.
“See you, Caleb,” Slocum said as he dismounted and wrapped his reins around the hitch rail.
“I’ll be at the Hoot Owl tonight. I’ll buy you a drink and bring some of these roasted pinyon nuts.”
“That would be fine. We’ll see.”
Caleb leaned over and spoke to Slocum in a low tone of voice.
“I been thinkin’, John,” he said. “’Bout Wallace registerin’ his mine. You might be lettin’ the cat out of the bag by comin’ up here.”
“What do you mean?” Slocum asked.
“Maybe Wallace registered his mine under your name.”
“Where did you get that, Caleb?”
“Well, I knowed they checked for Abigail’s name and Wally’s widder’s name, Lorelei, and anybody else he knows up here. But nobody knows about you yet and my bet is he used your name. You may be the owner of a gold mine and not even know it.”
“I’ll ask Wally when I see him,” Slocum said and touched two fingers to his hat brim in a sign of farewell.
Caleb rode off toward the double-trunked juniper, the hanging tree.
3
Slocum lifted his saddlebags free of Ferro’s back, pulled his rifle from its sheath, and walked up the stairs to the hotel porch. He left his bedroll with the sawed-off shotgun lashed to the horse’s rump behind the cantle.
As his boots struck the porch, one of the women lifted her fan, folded it, and waved him to approach. Slocum walked over to her. The other people on the porch bent their necks to hear what the woman had to say.
“Young man,” the jowly woman with the silvery hair said, “may I ask you a question?”
“Why, sure, ma’am,” Slocum said.
“Did you just ride in from Victorville?”
“I passed through there yesterday,” he said.
“We wonder if you might have seen our grandson, Lorenzo Taylor. People here told us he rode to Victorville. But we were supposed to meet him here yesterday.”
Slocum felt something grip his heart and squeeze it. His stomach swirled with a minor queasiness as he thought about the man burned to death down on Cactus Flat.
“We call him ‘Lonnie,’” one of the old men called across the porch. “Said he wanted us to meet his betrothed. Planned on marrying a woman he met up here in Halcyon Valley.”
The old man had a bald pate bordered by slabs of white hair, which gave him the look of an albino sheep dog.
The other man leaned forward in his chair and added his comment. Slocum felt hemmed in by old folks.
“He told us the name of his bride-to-be, Ruby Dawson. She told us Lonny had to go to Victorville, but that’s a long ways for us after our trip from Los Angeles by stage.”
“Did
you see a young man riding to Victorville?” asked the other matron, who was fanning away gnats that buzzed around her perfumed head of bluish hair, which seemed to have been plastered on with pomade.
“No, ma’am, I didn’t,” Slocum said. “Nobody was on the trail from Victorville when I rode through yesterday.”
The faces of the people on the porch fell and he could see that they were disappointed. But he hadn’t lied to them. He never saw their grandson on the trail because he was being nailed to a tree and set afire. He didn’t have the heart to tell them they would never see Lonnie Taylor again. Not in this life.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and walked toward the heavy doors of the hotel. He heard them all chattering as he entered the hotel and kicked the door shut behind him.
The old carpet had pathways worn into it, faint but visible to his trail-practiced eye. Off to his right was a small dining room. The aroma of cooked beef and bacon drifted through the opening, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw the flickering silhouettes of early diners, steam rising from their coffee cups, sunlight streaming through glasses of water like vaporous mists. He walked to the desk and cleared his throat as he leaned his rifle against the outer wall next to a potted plant with shiny green leaves.
A young man appeared in a doorway behind the counter. He wore a black vest and a striped white shirt with a garter belt around the right sleeve just above his elbow. He was short and thin, with deep-sunk eyes bracketing a slightly aquiline nose. His upper lip was bristling with the sandy fuzz of a beginning mustache, which barely matched the thick tawny hair sprouting in unruly spikes in several directions on his head, as if they’d erupted out of his skull then frozen solid. Yes, sir,” the young man said. “Do you wish a room?”
Slocum looked down at the young man, whom he judged to be no more than eighteen or nineteen. A slight smile curled his lips.
“If you have one reserved for me, son. I’m John Slocum.”
The young man’s mouth opened, and he blinked his pale blue eyes. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed his own slight trickle of saliva.
From the dining room came the tinkle of eating utensils clinking against plates and the tiny ringing sounds of water glasses jostling together on trays. The overstuffed furniture in the lobby gave off a musty odor, which clashed with the warm scents of coffee and cooked food.
The young man opened the ledger on the counter and turned it around. He lifted a pen from a small inkwell and proffered it to Slocum.
“Yes, sir, there is a room reserved for you, Mr. Slocum. If you’ll just make your mark on the empty line just below the last signature, you’re on the first floor, really one of the nicest rooms we have, with a back entrance at the end of the hall. And we have a livery stable two hunnert yards behind the hotel, just a little ways into the woods.”
“I’ll find it,” Slocum said as he signed the guest register. “Miss Abby around?”
“She don’t come in till nigh noon.”
“What’s your name, son?”
“Samuel Davis. Folks call me Sammy.”
“All right, Sammy. If you’ll give me a key, I think I can find my room.”
Sammy went to the sidewall and took a skeleton key off a metal hook. The key had a tag on it with the room number. He handed it to Slocum.
“Last room down the hall, on your right, Mr. Slocum.”
“Thanks.” Slocum scraped the key off the counter and hefted his rifle.
“I’ll tell Miss Abby you’re here when she comes in,” Sammy said as Slocum walked toward the hallway next to the stairs.
Slocum said nothing, but continued down the hall to his room, number 6. He unlocked the door and went in. He tossed his rifle and bedroll on top of the bed and walked to the window. It looked out over bare ground and into woods. The woods were mostly pine, with a few spruce and fir mixed in. He saw the log structure through the trees, parts of it, and decided that was where the stable was, just out of sight.
The room had a table and two chairs, and a mirrored bureau with a washbowl and a porcelain pitcher sitting atop a doily. Two water glasses had been provided. To his surprise, a bottle of Kentucky bourbon also sat in front of the small mirror. There was a note stuck under its bottom.
“Make yourself at home, Johnnie,” the note read. It was signed “Abby,” and there were X’s and O’s beneath her name.
Slocum smiled.
Abby had always called him Johnnie. He hadn’t seen her since she was in pigtails, but he remembered her freckled face, her bright eyes, and her politeness when he’d visited Wally in Texas before Wally’s wife, Lorelei, died. She and Wally had raised Abby after the accidental deaths of his parents, then he took care of his little sister by himself after the death of his wife.
Slocum left the room, locked it, and walked down the hall to the lobby.
Sammy hailed him from behind the check-in counter.
The young man held a piece of paper in his hand.
“Oh, Mr. Slocum, if you’re going to the livery, here’s a chit. You give that to Alvaro and he’ll put up your horse, feed him, and curry him. All paid for by Miss Abby.”
Slocum took the slip of paper and slid it into his shirt pocket.
“Thanks, Sammy,” he said.
“You must be real important, Mr. Slocum. This is the first time I seen Miss Abby give out a free room and pay for boarding your horse.”
“Just you see you keep me out of your conversations, Sammy. Otherwise, you could come to harm.”
Sammy gulped and his face paled.
“My lips is sealed, Mr. Slocum,” he whispered loudly.
Slocum smiled and walked across the empty lobby, his boots muffled by the carpet, the sound of them absorbed by the overstuffed furniture. The porch was empty, too, as he stepped outside, and the only sound he heard was the grinding of rocks in the arrastre as the mule walked in a circle, hitched to the wooden flange like some creature in perpetual bondage.
Slocum mounted Ferro and rode to the next street and turned to the right. He rode along the fringe of woods, the scent of juniper, pinyon, and pine strong in his nostrils. He found the stable and saw that it and the corrals had all been constructed with logs and the place reeked of horse droppings, hay, corn, and horse sweat.
He dismounted in front of the double doors and led Ferro inside the large structure, where the smells were even stronger. He stopped just inside and looked back out toward the rear of The Excelsior Hotel.
A man stood on tiptoe and was peering into the window of Slocum’s hotel room. He stood there for several seconds, shading his eyes with one hand. He wore a strapped-down holster with a hogleg jutting from it and a belt crammed with the glistening brass of .45-caliber cartridges.
Slocum’s mind flashed back to that morning when he had seen three men ride off from Cactus Flat. This man, with his faded red shirt and denim trousers, had been one of those men.
No mistake.
Slocum watched as the man turned away from the hotel window and entered the building through the back door.
He wondered if Sammy’s lips were sealed. He’d bet money that the clerk had shown the man the hotel register with his name scrawled on the last line.
He had written, “John Slocum, Laramie, Wyoming.”
A voice came out of the darkness of the barn.
“That man you look at, he is called Hutch,” said the voice with a Spanish accent. “He is a bad man. He is a killer. He is very dangerous.”
“Do you know who I am?” Slocum asked.
“No, I do not know you, but I see the dust on your horse and you look tired. It is one dollar a day to board your horse, four bits more for grain or hay, and another four bits if you wish me to curry him.”
“If you’re Alvaro, Sammy gave me this chit to give you.”
The man walked over and Slocum handed him the slip of paper.
“I am Alvaro Cardona,” he said as he read the scrawl on the paper. “Yes, sir, I have been expecting you, even though I do not know
how you are called.”
“Me llamo John Slocum,” he said in Spanish.
Alvaro grinned and held out his hand.
“Mucho gusto en conocerlo,” he said, and Slocum knew he had made a new friend.
Alvaro took the reins from Slocum’s hand and led Ferro to a water trough near the rear entrance.
As Ferro bent his neck to drink, Alvaro began to loosen the saddle cinch while he patted the horse’s neck.
“I will take care of this fine animal,” Alvaro said as Slocum walked up and stood near him.
Then Alvaro turned and looked at Slocum.
“Ten cuidado con Hutch,” he said in liquid Spanish.
Slocum understood him all too well.
Beware of Hutch.
4
The three men were eating breakfast in the dining hall of the Polygon House when they saw Butterbean ride by on his mule. There was another man, dressed in black and riding a black horse, riding into town with him.
“There’s that old bastard Butterbean,” Cory Windom said.
“Yeah, I’ll bet that bastard was shakin’ pinyon nuts out of the trees down in Cactus Flat when we burned Lonnie Taylor,” Joe Creek said. “He’d better keep his mouth shut if he seen us.”
“Who’s the jasper with him?” Allen Hutchins asked. He was the man they called Hutch. “He shore don’t look like no prospector to me.”
The three men looked Slocum over with keen eyes narrowed to slits.
“He looks like a gunslick to me,” Creek said.
“What in hell would he be wantin’ up here?” Cory asked. “Hutch, you better foller him, see where he goes.”
“I ain’t finished my breakfast yet,” Hutch complained.
“All right, I’ll tell Cordwainer you was too busy stuffin’ your damned craw to check on that pilgrim what just rode by.”
Hutch shoved his plate to one side and got up.
“I’ll eat a big lunch,” he said, glaring at Cory. “One thing about a town this small, that tall drink of water can’t go fur.”
Cory and Creek both laughed and continued to shovel fried eggs and beefsteak into their mouths.
Hutch walked out of the dining hall and left the lobby of the Polygon. He saw Butterbean ride off on his mule, after the man on the black horse had wrapped his reins around the hitch rail and ascended the porch steps.
