A Time to Slaughter

by William W. Johnstone

Shawn asked for the names of Zebulon Moss’s saloons and the clerk, a rodent-faced man with sly eyes, said, “If you’re looking for wine, women, and song, then the Lucky Lady is the place. If you want peace and quiet, then try the Gentleman’s Club on Lincoln Street. No ladies are allowed, but they serve only the finest liquors and Cuban cigars.”

  After nodding his thanks, Shawn stepped into the muddy street. Despite the funneling snow there was a steady pedestrian traffic and a few freight wagons made their slow, creaking way through the crowd, Mexicans in bright serapes at the reins.

  Lanky cowboys and bearded and booted miners rubbed shoulders with businessmen wearing velvet-collared coats and ogled the languid señoritas gliding past, their beautiful black eyes seductive and knowing. The white Santa Fe belles were just as bold, dressed in the height of fashion, their bustles huge, tiny hats perched on top of swept-up, ringleted hair.

  Above it all was a constant babble of conversation in Spanish, English, and a half dozen other languages. The cold air smelled heavily of peppers and spices for sale in booths lining both sides of the street.

  Shawn stood for a while on the steps outside the Lucky Lady, taking in the sights, aware that he was acting like an openmouthed rube. More than a few kohl-lashed eyes turned in his direction and the bolder belles coyly smiled at him, their teeth white in moist pink mouths.

  Santa Fe had snap aplenty, Shawn decided, but he wasn’t there for pleasure and that weighed on him.

  After one last glance at the bustling street, he turned on his heel and stepped into the saloon.

  The Lucky Lady was a long, fairly narrow building with a full-length mahogany bar behind which hung two French mirrors. A piano and small stage were at the far end, along with the usual assortment of tables and chairs. Unusual for a New Mexico saloon, a whale’s jawbone adorned the wall opposite the bar. A narrow staircase led to the upper floor and the small, curtained rooms where the whores plied their trade.

  Three bartenders lined the bar, magnificent creatures with slicked-down hair and curled mustachios. Each wore a brocade vest and sported a diamond stickpin in his cravat.

  It seemed, Shawn thought, that Moss treated his male hired help well.

  Although the day was dark, by the clock it was still early afternoon and the sporting crowd was still abed, gathering their strength before making their appearance at the witching hour. Two gray-haired businessmen stood at the bar talking in earnest tones and a puncher crouched at a table, nursing a beer, a hangover, and a broken heart.

  A pair of young Texas guns caught and held Shawn’s attention as they looked him over with insolent, challenging eyes. Dressed like the businessmen at the bar, down to the elastic-sided boots and plug hats, they didn’t have weapons in view, but the cut of their coats suggested their tailor had made an adjustment for shoulder holsters.

  It was not in Shawn’s interest to tangle with a couple gents who sported big Texas mustaches and gold watch chains and had hired guns written all over them.

  Pretending an indifference he did not feel, Shawn stepped to the bar and one of the magnificent mixologists smiled at him. “What will it be, mister? The beer is cold, the whiskey is bonded, and we have a large selection of the finest cigars.”

  Shawn ordered a beer and a Cuban cigar that he took time to light. Then, behind a curling cloud of turquoise smoke, he said, “I’m looking for someone.”

  “Aren’t we all.” The bartender had quick, intelligent brown eyes and at one time could’ve been anything.

  “Her name is”—Shawn was about to say Julia, but stopped himself in time—“Trixie Lee.”

  “Is that a fact?” the bartender said, his face guileless. “I haven’t seen Trixie in a six-month.” He turned and called down the bar, “Miles, Pete, either of you seen Trixie around?”

  Both men shook their heads, and the bartender said, “Plenty of pretty girls will be in come dark, cowboy. You can take your pick.”

  “Trixie is a friend of mine,” Shawn said. “We go way back.”

  “Mister, Trixie has a lot of friends.” The man retreated down the bar, where he and the other bartenders exchanged glances and slight shakes of the head.

  Worried that he’d tipped his hand, Shawn pretended to be unconcerned and stepped to the door as though looking through the stained glass would give him a different perspective on Santa Fe and its denizens. As a precaution, he unbuttoned his coat. He had much more confidence in the Colt .44-40 on his hip as a man killer than he did the .32 in his pocket. After a while he turned and had to step around the outstretched feet of one of the guns, who grinned at him. The other gunman said, “Trixie ain’t around anymore, cowboy. Maybe you should try Albuquerque.”

  Shawn nodded. “I’ll remember that the next time I’m there.”

  “Um . . . maybe you should leave today. It takes time to find a woman in a big city,” the man said in a Texas drawl. He smiled without warmth. “Like leave right now.”

  “Thank you for the advice,” Shawn said, “but I enjoy it around here. The town has snap.”

  “Ah, that’s a complication.” The Texan looked at his companion. “Is that not so, Mr. Tabard?”

  “Indeed it is, Mr. Bohan.”

  “Well, when you boys sort it out, let me know,” Shawn said.

  “Impertinent, don’t you think, Mr. Tabard?” Bohan inquired.

  “I’d say so, Mr. Bohan.”

  Bohan rose from his chair, uncoiling like a slender, lithe serpent. His black eyes met Shawn’s. “The air around Santa Fe has just gotten unhealthy for a man of your inquisitive nature.”

  “You mean you want me to leave?” Shawn asked. “Pack up and ride on out of Santa Fe, and me only arrived?”

  Bohan nodded. “Just that.”

  “Which of you two boys is faster with the iron?” Shawn said around the cigar clenched in his teeth.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Bohan grumbled.

  “It’s a simple question. Who’s quicker on the draw and shoot? Mr. Bohan, meaning you, or Mr. Tabard?”

  “We’re both fast, cowboy, faster than you know.”

  Shawn nodded and pulled his coat back from his gun. “So it doesn’t really matter who I kill first, huh?”

  Alarmed, the two businessmen stepped away from the bar out of the line of fire.

  The brown-eyed bartender reached for something, his face grim. “Cowboy, you’re not killing anybody.” He pointed the business end of a Greener shotgun at Shawn. “Now you just slide on out of here. The beer and cigar are on the house.”

  Shawn arched a brow. “What about Mr. Bohan and Mr. Tabard? Will they give me the road and let me slide in peace?”

  “I’ve got your back,” the bartender said. “I’ve got faith in this here scattergun and every gentleman in this establishment knows it.”

  “Just remember, what I said still goes,” Bohan cautioned. “You’re a questioning man and that can get you killed in Santa Fe.”

  Shawn said nothing, but he turned and left a dollar on the bar. “I pay my way.”

  The bartender nodded. “Ease on out. Real nice and friendly, like you’re saying so long to kinfolk.”

  Without a glance at the two gunmen, Shawn walked to the door, his spurs ringing in sudden, hostile silence, and stepped outside. The snow, heavier now, blustered around him and there were fewer people on the street, the belles and señoritas having fled to where it was warm.

  Asking about Julia had touched a nerve with the two gunmen, presumably employed by Zebulon Moss. Shawn was convinced the girl was in Santa Fe, hidden away somewhere. But where was he going to find her?

  He had no answer to that question, no answer at all.

  Chapter Ten

  Shawn O’Brien woke from sleep, immediately awake and aware.

  From somewhere in the hotel he heard a clock strike two, then leave an echoing silence. He listened into the night and heard the wind shivering along the street outside and smelled the ever-present aroma of spices and the metallic tang of sno
w.

  The clock hadn’t wakened him, he was sure of—

  There it was again! A soft fall of footsteps in the hallway outside, muffled by the rug. That’s what had wakened him. A couple drunks returning late maybe? Or something else?

  Shawn slid the Colt from the holster by his bed and rose to his feet. Pulling his pillow into the middle of the bed, he covered it with the quilt until it looked like a man deep in peaceful slumber. He padded across the room in his long-handled underwear and dragged the easy chair to the foot of the bed to serve as a barricade. Flickering scarlet light from the fire played across the white ceiling of the room and the burning log cracked and sent up a shower of sparks.

  Shawn crouched behind the chair, a flimsy enough barrier, and waited, his eyes on the door. It had a lock, but no key, the proprietor of the hotel having long since decided there was no profit in continually replacing keys taken by careless guests.

  There was faint thud as a booted toe accidentally hit the bottom of the door, immediately followed by a muted, “Shh . . .”

  Shawn swallowed hard, then wiped the sweat from his gun hand on the leg of his long johns. Fear, sharpened by anxiety, spiked at him and his mouth was dry as mummy dust.

  The door handle turned.

  His revolver up and ready, Shawn kept a steady gaze on the door. Sweat beaded his forehead and suddenly the room felt hot. Snow drifted past the window.

  Slowly . . . one low creak at a time . . . the door opened a couple inches. Then two more . . . then a few more . . .

  In the ruby fire glow Shawn saw the barrel of a gun ease through the opening, then a man’s hand, his finger on the trigger.

  Shawn jumped to his feet, the Colt in his hand bucking and spitting flame like a blue dragon.

  A man shrieked and the gun disappeared. The heavy thud of a body hitting the floor was followed by the pound of running feet.

  Shawn crossed the floor in three long steps and threw the door open wide with his left hand, his Colt cocked in the other. Despite the darkness, it was easy to recognize the sprawled form of the man called Tabard, elegant even in death.

  Doors opened along the hallway and a woman yelled, “Get the sheriff.”

  Another screamed, probably thinking it was the ladylike response to a shooting.

  Shawn took a knee beside the body. He’d hit Tabard twice in the chest, the bullets so close he could’ve covered them with the palm of his hand. His third shot had hit the doorjamb and driven a dozen splinters into the gunman’s cheek that stood out like porcupine quills.

  A plump man wearing a hastily donned dressing gown flapped past on carpet slippers. He looked in horror at the dead man and then at Shawn and hurried his pace.

  “And good evening to you, too,” Shawn said after him.

  But the man made no answer, his fat buttocks bouncing like pigs in a plaid sack.

  “My name is Tim Woodruff. I’m Sheriff Shern’s deputy,” said the man with the star on his chest and the iron on his hip. “Andy Shern is an early-to-bed man and he don’t turn out unless I send for him.”

  Shawn nodded at the body on the floor of the hotel hallway. “There were two of them and this one tried to kill me.”

  “So you say.” Woodruff pointed out.

  “Yes, so I say.”

  Woodruff was a big man, heavy in the belly, and he didn’t kneel beside Tabard, content to bend a little as he studied the body. “Good shooting.”

  “He didn’t give me any choice.”

  Woodruff motioned for them to step into Shawn’s room. He thumbed a match into flame and lit the oil lamp on the table by the bed. “Need some light in here.” He looked at Shawn, his eyes as dark and flat as chocolate buttons. “His name is Lou Tabard. Him and his sidekick Rance Bohan drifted into town a three-month ago and went to work for Zebulon Moss. Heard of him?”

  “I reckon I have. He’s a big man in this town.”

  “He’s a big man in any town.” Woodruff nodded in Tabard’s direction. “That one killed a miner in the Lucky Lady a couple weeks ago. Everybody said the tinpan drew down on him first, so that was that. But folks said it was a real pity because Andy Brown left a real nice wife and a passel o’ young ones.”

  “Then he should’ve stayed out of saloons.” Shawn was full of advice.

  Woodruff nodded. “There’s always that.” He reached under his mackinaw and produced a tally book and a stub of pencil. He licked the lead, then said, “Name?”

  “Shawn O’Brien.”

  Woodruff seemed surprised. “You wouldn’t be kin to Colonel Shamus O’Brien down to Glorieta Mesa way?

  “I would. I’m his son.”

  “Know a tough old reprobate by the name of Luther Ironside?”

  “He’s the colonel’s segundo and close friend. They founded Dromore together, with my ma, of course.”

  “Ironside’s as mean as they come,” Woodruff said. “And he sure loves his whiskey and the ladies.” The lawman shook his head. “I swear when he sets his mind to it he can raise more hell than an alligator in a drained swamp.”

  “Not the man I know,” Shawn said. “Luther spends more time with his Bible and doing good works than anyone else in the territory.”

  Woodruff smiled. “Yeah, and that’s the biggest big windy I’ve heard in a coon’s age.”

  “You plan to arrest me, Woodruff?” Shawn was tired of the conversation.

  “Well, that’s up to Sheriff Shern, but I reckon not. It’s as clear as mother’s milk that it was self-defense, or so you say.”

  “You don’t believe me?” Shawn said, his anger flaring.

  “You say it was. Who’s to say otherwise? You were the only witness.”

  “Not the only one. There’s Rance Bohan for a start.”

  Woodruff shook his head. “Then he’d have to confess that he was here, outside your room, when the killing went down. No, ol’ Rance will claim he was asleep in bed with a whore when this happened.”

  The deputy stuck his head into the hallway and said to the wide-eyed crowd that had assembled, “One of you men get Masheck Pettwood over here. Tell him I’ve got business for him.” To Shawn he explained, “He’s the undertaker, and a damned good one, too.”

  “I’m sure Lou Tabard will be happy about that,” Shawn said. “Wherever he is.”

  Pettwood, a scrawny crow of a man wearing a clawhammer frock coat and a somber expression, removed Tabard’s body and told Woodruff that he’d charge the city at his normal rates and supply a planed pine coffin “at cost.”

  “Damned robber,” Woodruff said after the man had gone. “I’d lock him up, but I might need him my ownself one day.” He stepped to the bottle of whiskey Shawn had left on the dresser and poured a glass. “I don’t know if it’s too late or too early, but I need a heart-starter.” Over the rim of the glass, he said, “Get out of town, O’Brien.”

  “Are you telling me to leave, Deputy?” Shawn said.

  Woodruff refilled his glass. “No, not me, but you’ve killed one of Zeb Moss’s boys and he won’t let that go. Son, when you gunned Tabard, you ran out of room on the dance floor.”

  Shawn let that go. “I’m looking for Trixie Lee.”

  Woodruff’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead like a pair of hairy caterpillars. “What do you want with Trixie?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “She ain’t here. I mean, she isn’t in Santa Fe.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Hell if I know. Whores are like gamblers, they stay for a while, then drift.”

  “Zeb Moss kidnapped her from our ranch,” Shawn said.

  “Is that so? It don’t seem hardly possible since he hasn’t left town in months.”

  “It was one of his men, tall skinny feller by the name of Silas Creeds.”

  A less steady man would’ve spluttered whiskey all over the front of his vest. As it was Woodruff contented himself with an unbelieving shake of the head. “O’Brien, when you go after folks you believe in starting at the top, don�
�t you?”

  “When I find Creeds, I’ll have found Julia . . . I mean Trixie.”

  “When you find Creeds he’ll gun you for sure. He’s always on the prod.”

  “Where is he, Deputy?”

  “I don’t know and if’n I did know I wouldn’t tell you. Boy, you’re not in Creeds’ class when it comes to the draw and shoot.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Shawn declared.

  Woodruff shook his head. “Not in my town you won’t. Come first light get out of Santa Fe. And I don’t mean after your pork chops and eggs. I mean I want to see a heap of git between you and this town come midday.”

  “I’ll take that advice under consideration.” Shawn folded his arms across his chest.

  “I’m not advisin’, boy, I’m tellin’. I’m an easygoing man and I probably won’t gun you if you ain’t left by sunup, but Zeb Moss sure as hell will.”

  Woodruff laid his glass on the dresser and stepped to the bullet-holed door. “You heed me, boy, or Mash Pettwood and you will become real good friends.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The mighty sea wolf Abdul-Basir Hakim stood at the port rail of his anchored schooner and studied the curving Mexican coastline a hundred miles north of the city of Mazatlan and the Tropic of Cancer. Protected by the Baja Peninsula to the west and the Sierra Madre to the east, the Gulf of California was dead calm, the cobalt sea shimmering in hard winter sunlight. His skin was tanned almost black by the sun and his great beak of a nose and hazel eyes gave him the look of a piratical hawk. He took the telescope from his eye and said, “They return.”

  A dory rowed by two men crossed the sparkling sea at a fast clip toward the Nawfal and its waiting commander.

  Hakim put the glass to his eye again and studied the village on the shore. Yes, he decided, there was some kind of fiesta going on. The plaza was full of people, their clothes a riot of color against the drab stucco buildings. Faintly, almost lost in distance, he heard a band play with more enthusiasm than skill.

  He nodded. Where there was a fiesta there would be women, and at least a few of them would surely be pretty and shapely of body enough to command a good price. The sheik turned to his second-in-command, a scar-faced rogue he’d saved from a French gallows. “A fiesta, Najid.”