by Jake Logan
Hutch kept to the shadows as he walked down the street, his eyes on the tall stranger who was talking to the old folks on the hotel porch.
He waited outside the hotel until he saw the stranger leave several minutes later after the people on the porch got up and went back inside the hotel. He stood in the shadows between the assay office and a store that sold mining tools, Abercrombie’s. Abercrombie was a snaky little man who made more money than the prospectors and reported his sales to Cordwainer, as did the clerk in the assay office.
After the stranger rode off, Hutch entered the hotel and looked at the register without asking Sammy. He saw the name and asked where Slocum was rooming.
Sammy told him.
“You keep your mouth shut about this, kid,” Hutch said. “I was never here.”
“No, you were never here,” Sammy said, his voice trembling. He knew who Hutch was and he knew what he could do to people who crossed him.
Hutch went around to the back of the hotel and looked into Slocum’s room. He saw the rifle, saddlebags, and bedroll on the bed.
When he returned to the Polygon House, his companions were in the lobby, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.
“What did you find out, Hutch?” Windom asked. His long legs were stretched out full length. His face was stippled with two days of stubble, and the scar across his nose was like a small river in the sand of his sun-tanned face.
“The man checked into the Excelsior, took a room at the back. He rode off but I seen his name in the register.”
“Who is he?” Joe Creek asked. He blew a ghostly smoke ring into the still air of the lobby and squinted as the tail stung his ochre eyes, which straddled a button nose. He was short and stocky, with arm muscles bulging out his shirtsleeves and his neck staving off the wrinkled collar of his chambray shirt as if it were about to burst out of his clothes and leave them in shreds.
“The name he signed in the hotel register was John Slocum,” Hutch said.
Cory stiffened as if he had been drenched with a pitcher full of ice water.
“Mean anything to you, Cory?” Hutch asked.
Cory stubbed his cigarette out in a clay ashtray. His expression turned sour.
“I seen a dodger on someone with that name. Wanted for murder someplace in the South. Seems like it was in New Mexico.”
“Register had him hailing from Laramie,” Hutch said.
Joe Creek leaned forward in his wicker chair. The chair creaked as his weight shifted.
“Slocum,” he said, as if to try out the name himself, see if it jogged his memory. “Seems like I heard his name, too, down Texas way. Horse trader who left some waddies shot dead down in Abilene.”
“He’s a gunslick all right,” Cory said.
“We’d better tell Cordwainer who he’s got in town,” Joe Creek said.
“I wonder what in hell he wants up here,” Windom said in a musing tone of voice.
“Maybe somebody sent for him,” Creek said.
“Gun for hire? Could be,” Windom said.
“Yeah, but who?” asked Hutch.
“That ain’t hard to figger,” Creek said. “He rode straight by here to The Excelsior. Who owns that hotel?”
Both Cory and Hutch uttered the name at the same time.
“Wally Newman.”
Creek nodded in agreement.
“And Abby runs the hotel, Newman’s high-and-mighty sister,” he said.
“We better get over to Jess’s cabin and tell him.” Hutch shifted his weight as the two men rose from their chairs.
“Yeah, that Abby gal don’t know Slocum’s in town yet. She don’t come to the hotel until nigh noon.” Windom started for the doors, patted his full belly, and belched.
Creek farted loudly.
Hutch fanned his face to wipe away the sudden odor of expelled gas.
“Joe, you reek of coal oil. You blow once more, you’re liable to bust into flames.” Windom made a show of waving away the putrid fumes.
All three men laughed as they stomped down the steps to their horses at the hitch rail.
“What do we do with Lonnie’s horse?” Hutch asked.
“Take him with us to Cordwainer’s,” Windom said. “Tell him what we done with Lonnie.”
“He’ll probably take the horse up on a bluff and shoot it,” Creek said. “Jess’s hate goes real deep.”
“We could sell it and the tack and maybe split the money,” Hutch said.
“Leave the nag here, then,” Windom said. “We still got to see Jess.”
The three men slipped their reins from the rail and mounted their horses.
They rode past the hanging tree and headed toward the edge of Union Flat, where Cordwainer had a small cabin surrounded by piles of large smooth boulders. During the war, the miners and prospectors chose sides and the Union sympathizers built their shelters on Union Flat. Most of the cabins were deserted now, which was the way Cordwainer liked it.
They rode through deep woods in the shade of pines as the sun climbed to its zenith.
“I’m still hungry,” Hutch complained as they spotted the boulders guarding Cordwainer’s house.
“Tighten your belt,” Creek said.
“Maybe Jess will give you a bear claw,” Windom cracked.
“Haw,” exclaimed Hutch in derision. “He wouldn’t give me the sweat off his balls.”
“Nobody would,” Windom said as they approached the log cabin at a walk.
They knew Jess’s place was guarded, and if they weren’t recognized, they’d all be blown out of their saddles.
The thought made Hutch’s skin crawl and the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen into wire bristles.
“Hello, the house,” Creek called out when they cleared the jumble of boulders. He raised a hand and waved at an unseen guard.
“Ya’ll ride on up,” a voice called from a clump of pines.
Cordwainer came out of the cabin and stood on the porch. He wore a Colt .45 on his hip and stood over six feet tall. He was square-shouldered and square-jawed, a man nearing forty who was as lean as a whip, all muscle with eyes brown as roasted coffee beans and flaring sideburns that matched his neatly trimmed mustache.
“You boys better have some good news for me,” he said as the three men rode up to the hitch rail at the side of the cabin.
“We got good news and bad,” Windom said.
Cordwainer’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, but he said nothing.
He waited there on the porch listening to the creak of leather as the men dismounted. He watched them walk toward him, their boots crunching on the gravel and pine needles that glistened auburn in the pale sunlight.
The men stopped and stared up at their boss.
“Give me the good news first, Cory,” Cordwainer said. “And it had better be damned good.”
Hutch felt a shiver run up and down his spine as he stood in the shade of a tall pine. He could still smell the coal oil on his hands and smell the burning flesh of Lonnie Taylor. His half-empty stomach roiled with a sloshing lake of sour bile.
5
Abby Newman began to stack the groceries she had brought from town on her brother’s table. She had left Halcyon Valley before dawn and ridden a circuitous route to her brother’s hideout cabin above Jackrabbit Valley. She had stopped often to make sure she hadn’t been followed.
“I hate to see you have to do all this for me, Abby,” Wally said. “You have enough on your hands running the hotel.”
“I don’t mind, Wally,” she assured him as she put a can of peaches next to a sack of flour. “I put out posters where I could yesterday. Had them printed in Grizzly Lake. I hope you get elected to constable come November.”
“It’s a long shot,” he said, “but maybe I can run out Cordwainer and his cronies if I get the job.”
“You’ll get the job,” she said. “People in town are getting fed up with Jess. I’m fed up with him. The miners and the prospectors are paying him protection money and they don’t like it one
bit.”
She took off her bonnet, sighed, and pulled out a chair and sat down. Her brother started putting the canned goods, coffee, flour, sugar, and tobacco into the kitchen cupboards, which he had made himself after building the log cabin up in the rocks above Dead Horse Canyon.
“Any sign of Slocum yet?” he asked. “John is my only hope of getting Jess Cordwainer off my back.”
“No. How’s the mine? Ruben working there today?”
“Thank God for Ruben Vallejo and Elisando Gonzalez. I took some gold down to Victorville yesterday. Elisando works on the arrastre and in the laboratory. Ruben is filling up the ore carts with rocks that just shine with gold.”
“Wally, when will you quit? You work too hard.”
He looked at his sister as he closed the cupboard door.
Abby was a delicate flower, with her mother’s sea blue eyes and dark hair. Her locks flowed over her shoulders and cascaded down her back. She was slender and small, with the figure of a young girl, although she was almost twenty.
He sat down in a chair facing her across the table.
Wally was lean and muscular from hard-rock mining. His face was open and honest with brown eyes that reflected love and tenderness when he looked at Abby, as he did now. He was only five foot nine, but to her, he was as tall as any man. His short sideburns masked the scars left by forceps when he was born back in Ohio, some thirty-two years ago.
Abby’s facial expression became waxen as she looked away from her brother and twirled one of the ringlets of hair that dangled in front of her right ear. It was a habit he recognized. She only did this when she was troubled, or had something weighing heavily on her mind. Her eyes clouded up as she stared out a window, lost in deep thought.
Wally reached across the table and stroked the back of Abby’s hand. It was a soothing touch and yet she pulled her hand away as if it had been scorched.
“What’s troubling you, sis?” he asked quietly.
“Nothing,” she said quickly. Too quickly.
“Cordwainer still trying to court you?”
“Yes, but that’s not it,” she said. “He’s persistent and he’s a pest.”
“Then, what is it?”
“It—it’s that Ruby. Ruby Dawson.”
“She’s nothing but a—”
“I know what she is,” Abby snapped.
“Then you shouldn’t have anything to do with her, Abby.”
“She’s been coming around. Trying to be friendly. I am polite to her, but she keeps after me.”
“To do what?” he asked.
Abby’s eyes filled with mist. She wasn’t crying, but she was fighting back tears.
“Do you really want to know, Wally?”
“Of course I want to know. What is she ragging you about?”
“It’s all so horrible. Just to think of it.”
“Go ahead, Abby,” he said. “We should have no secrets between us.”
She drew in a breath as if steeling herself to say what was bothering her.
“She offered me a thousand dollars to come and work for her at the Polygon House.”
“What?” Wally was aghast.
“She—she said I could make a lot of money just to be friendly with the saloon patrons. Just sit at their tables and be affectionate. She said…”
Wally waited while his sister composed herself.
Abby pulled hard on the ringlet and her eyes filled with shadows. She looked sad and angry at the same time.
“She said that I was wasting my time at our hotel and she could make me rich.”
Wally sucked in a breath.
“What did you say to her?” he asked.
“She pulled a bunch of double eagles—gold double eagles—from her purse and stacked them on the table in front of me. ‘That’s one thousand dollars,’ she said. ‘All yours. No strings attached. Money to keep. Money you don’t have to pay back.’”
“The devil’s temptress,” Wally said.
“I got up and walked away, but I can’t get those double eagles out of my mind.”
“Abby, I can shower you with twenty-dollar gold pieces. You don’t need Ruby’s filthy money.”
“I know,” she said. “I told Ruby to leave the hotel and not to bother me again. I told her I would never work for her. For any amount of money.”
“Good for you, sis,” he said. He patted her hand and this time she did not pull it away. “Ruby and Jess want to corrupt Halcyon Valley. They are greedy and evil.”
“Wally, I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Jess and Ruby are so persistent. I know what they are, but they hide behind their smiles and their pretended kindness and niceness. I get mad at them, but they just act pleasant and sweet, as if they were my friends.”
“You know what they really want, don’t you?”
Abby shook her head.
“They want to find my mine and jump my claim. They think they can go through you and you’ll tell them what they want to know.”
“I guess I know that. Deep down. Oh, Wally, you have to hide from them. Cordwainer will kill you and…”
“Now, now, Abby. That’s why I asked John Slocum to come up here. He’s the only man I know who can stand up to a thieving tyrant like Cordwainer. John will know what to do, and he will help us. I trust him.”
“I barely remember him,” she said.
“He’s a good man. You bring him here and he’ll know what to do. I can’t keep hiding from Cordwainer forever. Sooner or later, he’ll find out about this cabin and discover my mine. His men are out hunting me every day.”
“I know,” she said. Then she stood up. “I’d better get back to town and take care of business at the hotel.”
“And wait for Slocum,” he said, rising from his chair.
“I hope he comes soon,” she said.
“He’ll be here.”
“Good-bye, Wally,” she said.
He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tight. “Don’t worry,” he said as he released her. “And be careful.”
Abby picked up the oversized saddlebags next to the door and carried them out to her horse, secured them behind the cantle, and mounted the dun gelding.
Wally watched her ride away and his heart filled with a deep sadness.
“As soon as I find that mother lode,” he said to himself, “I’ll take us both far away from this place.”
He said it to himself, but he meant it. He knew the mother lode was somewhere in the valley and he was pretty sure he could find it.
That was what kept him going. That and his love and concern for his younger sister.
6
Alvaro, curious, saw Slocum staring at the back of the hotel. He also saw the man peering in the window of the room in the rear.
“Ah,” he said to Slocum, “already they are wondering who you are, Mr. Slocum.”
“You know that man, Alvaro?”
Alvaro nodded. “I know who he is. He is called Allen Hutchins, but they also call him Hutch. He is a bad man. A very bad man.”
“I know,” Slocum said. Then he walked away from Alvaro.
“Where do you go?” Alvaro asked.
Slocum didn’t answer. Hutch had gone through the back door of the hotel. Slocum ran to the front of the hotel, passing between the hotel and a wooden building. As he reached the street, he saw Hutch descending the porch stairs. He followed the man to the other hotel in town, the Polygon House, and saw him enter.
Slocum waited in the narrow shaded corridor between the hotel and a small mercantile store where he could not be seen. He stuck a cheroot in his mouth, but did not light it. He was a patient man and would wait all day if need be. There were four horses tied to the hitch rail in front of the hotel. One of them, he surmised, had belonged to the man he had seen burn to death down on Cactus Flat. The other three horses belonged to the three killers who had performed the dastardly deed. Sooner or later, the men would emerge and ride their horses somewhere. Perhaps they would report his p
resence to Cordwainer. Or maybe they would ride to one of the saloons. The town was small. He could follow on foot if they went to either place.
He did not have to wait long.
The three men emerged from the hotel and walked to the hitch rail. Slocum heard them argue about what to do with Lonnie Taylor’s horse. He was relieved when they rode off and left the dead man’s saddled horse for his benefit.
He kept the men in his sight as he walked to the rail and unwrapped the reins of the sorrel gelding with the white stockings. He climbed into the saddle and followed his quarry at a safe distance. The three horses kicked up dust and he was able to follow the riders past the hanging tree and over the valley to a pine forest.
He halted when the three men approached massive piles of huge boulders. He saw them stop and hail the house nestled just beyond in the thick growth of tall pine trees. They rode on and Slocum angled the sorrel to a cluster of junipers, spruce, and fir trees within earshot. He saw a man come on to the porch and, hearing what they all said, determined that he was looking at Jess Cordwainer.
The three men entered the house and Slocum waited, patting the withers of Taylor’s horse to keep him calm.
After a time, he realized he could learn no more by staying there, so he looked up at the sun and got his bearings so that he could ride back into town and return the horse to the hotel where he had found it.
He rode back on a different route so that he could learn more about the lay of the land. The sun streamed its rays down through the woods and he felt like he was riding through an ancient cathedral with its panes of stained glass. It was peaceful and quiet.
Suddenly, the sorrel pricked its ears and Slocum saw them twist to pick up sounds. The horse’s rubbery nostrils flexed as it turned its head to catch scents somewhere in the thick of the pine forest.
He peered in the direction of the horse’s attentive gaze and saw a shadow moving through the columns of light. A horse and rider moved very slowly along a trackless stretch. Soon, he heard the soft crunch of iron hooves on dried pine needles, the crackle of a branch. The rider moved into a clearing and hauled in on the reins. The horse stopped as the rider looked around. Slocum patted the sorrel’s withers, but the horse whickered. The rider looked straight at him, and he saw that it was a young woman.
