by Jake Logan
She wore a small pistol, possibly a Smith and Wesson .38. She drew it from her holster and pointed it at Slocum.
“You there,” she said. “Ride up real slow so’s I can see your face. One funny move and I’ll fire. I’m a crack shot.”
Slocum ticked the horse’s flanks with his spurs and rode at a slow walk toward the woman with the pistol.
She looked calm and her arm was steady as she held the pistol chest high with both hands and lined him up in its sights.
“Don’t shoot, ma’am. I’m just out for a ride.”
He got to within fifty yards of her when she took one hand from her gun’s grip and held it up flat to halt him.
“Just stay right there, mister,” she said. “I recognize that horse. What are you doing on Lonnie Taylor’s horse? Did you steal it from him?”
“No, ma’am,” Slocum said. “I just borrowed it. Lonnie Taylor’s dead.”
He heard the young woman utter a gasp and her flat hand closed around the butt of her pistol once again.
“Ride up to that dab of sunlight about ten feet from me and then stop,” the woman said. “I want to see your face.”
Slocum eased the sorrel up to the spot indicated by the woman with the pistol. There was a circle of light that came from the sun’s position overhead. He tipped his hat back on his head so that she could see his face.
“Satisfied?” he said, a sarcastic twist to the question.
“Johnnie? Is that you?”
He looked at the woman more closely. He had been staring at the .38 in her hands. Now he examined her face, partially shaded by the trees. But then she moved a foot or two closer and her face lit up as if illuminated by a bright candle.
And nobody called him “Johnnie.”
Except one person. A little girl, the sister of his friend, Wally Newman.
“Abby?” he said. “Little Abby?”
Abby laughed.
“Not so little anymore, Johnnie. I’ve been expecting you. I just left Wally. He’s anxious to see you.”
She eased the hammer of her pistol back down to half-cock and holstered it. Slocum rode up, leaned over, and gave her a hug.
“Yeah, you have grown a mite,” he said, smelling the perfume in her hair, the scent of her like a fine wine in his nostrils.
Abby laughed.
“Did you get a room at our hotel?” she asked when he sat back tall in his saddle.
“Yes. Haven’t had a chance to settle in yet.”
“What happened to Lonnie Taylor?” she asked as she patted her hair on the side facing Slocum.
“You might not want to know. You headed back to town?”
“Yes. I just took Wally some groceries. He’s hiding from men who want to find his mine and jump his claim.”
“Cordwainer,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, a bitter tone to her voice. “Ride with me back to the hotel?”
“Sure,” he said.
They rode off into the woods. She zigzagged over a course he couldn’t define. She stopped often to listen and look. He watched her and saw a determined woman who was trail savvy. They saw no one, heard nothing out of the ordinary.
“I want to hear about Lonnie,” she said after a few minutes of silence. “I tried to warn him about Ruby Dawson, but he wouldn’t listen. Did Cordwainer kill him?”
“I think he may have ordered his death,” Slocum said. “Can’t prove it, but I just tracked three men who killed Taylor. They wound up at Cordwainer’s.”
“On Union Flat,” she said. “His house is very well protected and not easy to find.”
“You’ve been there?”
She laughed.
“I tracked him once, out of curiosity, and saw where he lived. A very secretive and devious man.”
“The more I hear about him, the more I don’t like him,” Slocum said.
“Now tell me about Lonnie. Did they shoot him or torture him? Ruby is Jess Cordwainer’s gal and Lonnie made a play for her. I think she led him on. I wouldn’t trust her any more than I would trust Cordwainer and his bunch.”
Slocum told her about camping at Whiskey Springs and hearing a man scream. When he described what he saw on Cactus Flat, a man tied to a tree and burning up, she cringed and he thought he saw a tear run down her cheek.
“How horrible,” she said when he had finished. “I’m glad you and Caleb buried him. But now his life is in danger.”
“I’m supposed to see him tonight,” he said. “At the Hoot Owl Saloon.”
“You tell Caleb he’d better watch his back. And you’d better do the same. Cordwainer’s men go to that same saloon,” she said. “And now they know who you are.”
“Your clerk, Sammy, must have shown Hutch my name in the register.”
“He probably had no choice. Johnnie, these are dangerous men. You know Wally. He’s not a coward, but he has gone to a great deal of trouble to hide his mine from Cordwainer and he knows he’s outnumbered. That’s why he sent for you. He said you’d know what to do.”
“I hope that’s true,” Slocum said.
They came to the fringe of the town. They could hear the oval arrastre grinding, as well as the snatches of conversation from the prospectors gathered around it.
“Tomorrow, I’ll take you out to see Wally. He’s anxious to talk to you.”
“I’m anxious to see him.”
She reached over as they approached a road that encircled the town. She touched the back of his hand.
“I want you to have dinner with me tonight,” she said. “In my private suite at the hotel. We can talk about old times.”
“And probably about what’s going on here in Halcyon Valley,” he said.
“It promises to be a long evening,” she said.
And Slocum wondered if there was more behind that statement than just talk.
The more he encountered women, he thought, the less he knew about what they were really thinking. He had last seen Abby when she was in pigtails and wearing black patent leather shoes. Now she was a grown woman and seemed to possess all the wiles of her sex without being blatant about it.
Abby had more of her shrewd mother in her than either her father, Whit, or her brother, Wally.
It promised to be an interesting supper, he thought, with more than food to devour.
7
Jess Cordwainer knew two things for sure. The first was that most people were stupid, and the men he hired to work for him were only slightly less stupid than the men he preyed upon. The second, which he had learned early in life, was that it was better to be a leader than a follower.
There was another facet of his character he kept hidden from most of the world. This was a secret belief that he never discussed with anyone else, because he was a man without a conscience. He did not care about people. He did not care about their feelings. He had no truck with sorrow or grief. He wasn’t sorry about anything, and he had never grieved for anyone or anything.
That secret Jess bore was his conviction that he had the right to kill anyone who stood in his way, threatened him, or did not bow to his wishes.
Now, as he listened to Hutch, Joe, and Cory, he kept his anger in check. But his mind was racing like a whirlwind across a flaming prairie, burning inside him with the intensity of a blowtorch.
The three men sat on a handmade sofa covered with a thick pair of bearskins. His cabin was rustic, but boasted hardwood floors and animal skins that softened his footfalls, the hides of wolf, cougar, buffalo, deer, and elk. This was his own world, well protected and guarded by those lesser men he dominated and controlled.
When he heard Hutch utter the name John Slocum, his eyes narrowed to thin slits with a gaze as sharp as two razors.
“Slocum,” Jess said, “is what I would call a town tamer. He’s left a trail through Western towns from the Mississippi River to the Pacific shore. He’s wanted for murder back in Georgia. I heard about him up in Socorro and even in Montana when I sold a herd of cattle up in Bozeman.”
“Gosh,” Hutch said, “what in hell is he doin’ here in the valley?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Jess said. “And what was he doin’ with Caleb Butterbean? Was Caleb carryin’ anything with him on that sorry mule of his?”
“Nah, just them bags of pinyon nuts. They was full.”
“So, he was down on Cactus Flat, where you men burned Lonnie to a crisp,” Jess said.
“Likely,” Cory said. “I never thought about that.”
“So he either met Slocum down on the flat, or maybe met him down in Jackrabbit Valley.”
“What’s the difference?” Cory Windom asked.
Jess fixed him with a look of both contempt and pity.
“If they met down on Cactus Flat, it was likely they both saw what you did with Lonnie Taylor, you dumb bastard.”
Cory winced. “Butterbean’s always sneakin’ around down there pickin’ up pinyon nuts but we never saw him.”
“How about Slocum?” Jess asked.
“No, sir, we never saw him until he come ridin’ into town with Butterbean.”
“They come in from the direction of the Ettinger mine, so they probably come from either Jackrabbit or Cactus Flat,” Hutch said.
“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 aid. “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.”
“We bushwhacked before, Jess,” Cory said. “That prospector Jed Crane who wouldn’t pay up, and Doolin, that Mick what insulted you one night at the Hoot Owl. Neither of them knew what hit ’em.”
“And neither will Slocum,” Joe said. The men had removed their hats when they sat down on the sofa and Joe twirled his in his nervous fingers. Cory looked at the walls of the front room. They bore no pictures, but instead, rifles and carbines were on wooden pegs and over the hearth. A Kentucky rifle with a curly maple stock hung with a cow powder horn and a brass powder flask. It was a beautiful rifle made in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the 1830s by a master gunsmith. He had never been inside Jess’s cabin before, and he was awestruck by all the pistols and knives dangling from wooden pegs and the long guns on display. He even saw a single-shot Remington shotgun leaning in one corner, as shiny as when it was brand new.
“While you’re at it, boys,” Jess said, “you might as well take care of Butterbean.”
“Old Caleb?” Joe said in shocked surprise. “Why, he never hurt a flea and he ain’t no count.”
“If he saw you burn Taylor,” Jess said, “he’s got eyes and a mouth. You don’t want no witnesses just in case he opens his trap at the Hoot Owl and names you boys as the ones he saw puttin’ Taylor in the furnace.”
“He’s right,” Hutch said. “Caleb might have seen us.”
Cordwainer smiled.
“He probably did see you,” Jess said. “Now get to it. I’ll be in town tonight and I don’t want to see either Slocum or Butterbean.”
“That’s mighty quick, boss,” Cory said.
“Quick is better than slow,” Cordwainer said. “Get it done.”
The men stood up and put on their hats. They all looked sheepish as they raised hands to gesture good-bye to Cordwainer.
“See you at the Hoot Owl,” Cordwainer said.
Cory was the last to go through the door. He turned and spoke to Jess.
“Better make it late, Jess. It might take a while.”
“Two easy targets, Cory. Three against two.”
Cory said nothing. He closed the door behind him.
Cordwainer picked up a pipe, filled the bowl with tobacco. He stood by the window and lit it as he watched the three men ride past the boulders and disappear. A man came around the side of the house and looked inside the window. He carried a Winchester that rested on one shoulder, his hand on the stock and lever.
Jess gestured for the man to come inside, then opened the door for him.
“Everything all right, Jess?” the man said.
“Maybe. You saw Hutch, Cory, and Joe ride out of here?”
“Sure. I was right outside in case you had need of me.”
The man was Terry Bowker, and Jess trusted him.
“I want you to get Pat and Lou out here early this evening. Can you do that for me, Terry?”
“Sure, Jess. Bud’s due to relieve me at four o’clock this afternoon. Pat and Lou are camped on the far end of Union Flat where I bunk. That soon enough?”
“Yeah. Make sure they get here before sundown.”
“You got it, Jess. What’s up?”
“I need them to take care of a little insurance matter. With those three who just left.”
“An insurance matter?”
Terry was a small man, wiry and lean, with reddish hair, hazel eyes, wattles on his neck from a close call with a hanging tree when he was just a kid. Jess had saved him and hired him as a personal bodyguard.
“Let’s just say I want Lou and Pat to track some trackers. Just in case.”
“I got you, Jess.” Terry chuckled. “Insurance.”
“Who did you say was relieving you?” Jess asked.
“Bud Rafferty. He’s like an owl at night. I swear he can see in the dark.”
Jess laughed. “What I need is someone who can see in the daylight and not be spotted.”
“You know what’s best, Jess. Them are three good men, though. Whatever you got them to do for you, they’ll likely do it.”
Jess said nothing.
They were all stupid to his mind. Dumber than a sack full of metal washers.
But he didn’t need smart at this point. He just needed sneaky, and those men fit the bill. They were experienced bushwhackers.
Just what he needed right now.
He puffed on his pipe and waved Terry back outside. He was hungry and it was just past noon. He hoped he would hear some good news by evening when he met Ruby and took her to the Hoot Owl. There he would pick up on the latest gossip, news of gold strikes, or fresh claims.
It was all part of his grand scheme and he wasn’t going to let a man like Slocum spoil any of it, much less that dolt, Caleb Butterbean.
8
Slocum left Abby at The Excelsior while he rode Taylor’s horse back to the Polygon House. He wrapped the reins around the hitch rail and walked back to his hotel.
“Miss Abby left a message for you, Mr. Slocum,” Sammy said when Slocum stopped at the desk to pick up his key. “I’ll be going off duty at four o’clock, when the night man, Donald Fenway, will take over the shift.”
Sammy handed Slocum the key to Room 6.
“Thanks, Sammy. I’ll be at lunch if anybody stops by.”
“Yes, the dining room is open, sir.”
“Food good?” Slocum said.
“Yes, sir, the food here is excellent.”
“We’ll see,” Slocum said. “I could eat the southbound end of a northbound buffalo right now.”
Sammy laughed, and Slocum walked into the dining room. There were a few diners, but he did not see the elderly people who were trying to find Lonnie Taylor. He wondered if they knew by now that Lonnie was dead. For that matter, he wondered if anyone in town knew, besides Caleb and Abby, and the men who’d murdered him.
He sat down at a table and o
rdered beefsteak, boiled potatoes, coleslaw, and peaches with cream. He ate slowly and smoked half of a cheroot before he went to his room. He placed his bedroll, saddlebags, and rifle on the floor and napped. When he awoke, the sun was setting in the west, and he looked out at the long shadows of the livery and the trees with dark puddles around their trunks.
Abby had said she would have him to supper in her suite around seven that evening, so he poured water from the pitcher in the bowl and dug out his razor, mug, and soap from his saddlebags. He shaved with cold water and changed his shirt. He smoked another cheroot and lit the lamp on the little table next to his bed.
Then, as he looked out the window, he arranged the two pillows under the blanket and cover on the bed so that anyone looking through his window would think that he was sleeping. He closed the window, but left the curtains open. He shoved his rifle, saddlebags, and bedroll under the bed and waited as the sky outside darkened and pools of light from the upstairs room left geometric designs on the ground behind the hotel, all yellow and golden as the twilight retreated into the dark maw of night.
The knock on the door brought Slocum to his feet. He had been sitting in a dark corner of the room looking out the window, listening for any sound outside. He opened the door.
“Mr. Slocum,” the man in the doorway said, “I’m Donald Fenway, the night clerk. Miss Abby wishes me to bring you up to her suite.”
Fenway was a dapper man in his mid-fifties, with a handlebar mustache, neatly trimmed pork-chop sideburns, slicked-down black hair parted in the middle, and close-set dark eyes that flanked a nose sporting a large pink wart on its tip. He wore pin-striped trousers, a white shirt, and suspenders that were a dusky green.
Slocum brushed his hair on both sides with the palms of his hands and stepped into the hall. He locked the door and slipped the key into his pocket. He squared his hat on his head and followed Fenway down the hall and up the stairs to the second floor.
He waited while the clerk knocked discreetly on the door. The door had no number on it. He heard the latch click and the door opened.
