by Jake Logan
He checked around in the twilight and satisfied they were alone, spoke softly. “I work for the express company they robbed.”
With a sharp nod, she swallowed hard. “I must go in and help the other women serve the food—” She swung her skirt around, then paused with her back to him. “I am sorry, but I think for you to visit me would only provoke them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She went inside. He stood for a moment in the cold wind. He’d heard the warning of Sims for him to get out. It made more sense to him now than it had at the time. He needed One-Eye turned over to the authorities and then he’d get back up to Perla’s ranch. Under the circumstances, it might be hard for Collie Bill to pull away from Juanita. He wasn’t sure about Bledstone—but he’d soon figure him out on the way to Española.
The man was due to arrive there anytime.
16
Bledstone arrived the next morning on the stage. He carried his felt hat in his hand and looked like he was hurting as he got out of the coach. His head was bandaged and both eyes were black.
“What got hold of you?” Collie Bill asked.
Bledstone shook his head wearily. “Sumbitches tried to kill me.”
“Didn’t I warn you?”
“Yeah, but they was in her room waiting on me. Had her tied and gagged on the bed. I got a shot off. I hit one of them. Then they knocked me out and used their boots on me. I reckon they were spooked by that shot of mine and worried about the guy I shot, so they fled.”
“She know who they were?”
“If she did, she wouldn’t say. You know whores’ lives are cheap.”
“You talk to Thorpe?” Slocum asked.
“Oh, yeah, before I left.” Bledstone lowered his voice. “One-Eye robbed another stage. Thorpe heard that the boy he calls Kid is living with a Mexican woman in Española. He thinks he’s our best lead to Davis.”
Slocum looked around to make sure the driver and the two other passengers were inside the building. Then he spoke. “What’s her name?”
“Tonyah Vasquez.”
Slocum looked at Collie Bill. He shook his head. “Must be one I missed.”
“She lives on the road east,” said Bledstone.
“We can find her,” Slocum said. “Collie has to stay here. The woman’s husband was killed in a wreck and he’s helping her.”
“Damnit, I thought—” Bledstone looked pissed at the news.
“We ain’t going after Jesse James. They’re three two-bit stage robbers.”
“Yeah, but what if?”
“What if what? Get some food inside. You and me’re taking the stage down there and getting them,” Slocum said, out of patience. He wanted to settle with Sims, and staying at the Flores place another day would only prolong the whole business.
“All right. All right. You never were beat to a pulp like I was.”
“Goes with the territory. Is Thorpe coming down?”
“Yeah, he said he’d be down there in three days and help us.”
Slocum shook his head. “They’ll be in the jail by then.”
“He wanted in on arresting them.”
“You better go eat.” Slocum folded his arms over his chest. He’d need his saddlebags, .44/40 Winchester, and bedroll.
Collie Bill looked concerned. “I could go.”
“No, she needs you here. Don’t take on Sims if you can avoid it. I’ll be back and handle him.”
“What do you expect to happen down there?”
“We’ll find the Kid and he’ll tell us where the others are at.”
“What if he won’t?”
“There’s ways to get trash like that to talk.”
Collie Bill nodded, looking put out. “I know you counted on me.”
“I’ll be fine.” Slocum looked up and Perla was on the porch. With concern written on her face, she beckoned to him.
“I’ll go see what I can do to help,” Collie Bill said to excuse himself.
“Sure,” Slocum said, and walked over to where Perla stood.
“Yes?”
“This is the express man? What happened to him?”
Slocum looked up at her on the porch. “That’s him all right. He looks pretty, doesn’t he?”
“Who did that?” She frowned. Small lines appeared in her smooth forehead.
“I think one of your neighbors, Cal Booster.”
“These men won’t stop at anything.” She folded her arms and looked away.
“Right now we have some stage robbers to go see about in Española.”
“Who?”
“That one-eyed man we met on the road and his gang.”
She nodded. “Collie is staying with Juanita? I hope that he is going to—she needs him.”
“Yes.” He looked hard at her, but she never returned his gaze. “I have to get my things. Anything else?”
“No.” She moved to go inside, and he about bumped into her when she stopped reaching for the door handle and turned around.
He was too close. They were inches apart and she drew in her breath. For a moment, she looked ready to faint. Then, to escape his eyes, she put her forehead on his chest and squeezed his arms. “God be with you, Slocum. I will burn a candle for your safety.”
“Thank you.”
“I know you are not a Catholic.”
“Any faith is good. You have a strong one.”
With that, she opened the door and hurried for the kitchen, leaving him on his own.
“I’ll be taking the stage to Española,” he said to the driver, who was cradling a cup of coffee.
“Fine, get your things. We’ll be heading out of here in five minutes.”
“Collie, get my saddlebags and Winchester. I’ll tie up the bedroll.”
“Gotcha.” Collie Bill left on the run.
In the end, he added his saddle to the boot in back in case they needed to rent horses. He shook Collie Bill’s hand, hugged Juanita, and nodded to Perla.
“I’ll be back in five days.”
“Be careful,” Juanita said. “Thank you for all you have done for me.”
He waved and slipped into the coach beside the grumbling Bledstone. He saw Perla standing there even after the other two went inside. Leaving her there hurt him, but she wasn’t ready for help. When she was, she could invite him to her ranch. He’d left that door open.
“That Mexican bitch is sweet on you,” Bledstone said.
“You mean Señora Peralta?”
“Yeah, the old snow queen. She’s a widow, too?”
Slocum shed his remarks like a duck does water. He settled his back against the seat. They should have taken the backward-facing seat; that was the better one to ride. “Yes and she’s hardly stuck on me.”
“Fooled me. That’s Whistler.” Bledstone motioned to the bald-headed drummer. “And the other one is Phillips.” He was younger and dressed in miner’s clothing and high-top lace-up boots.
“Nice to meetcha,” Slocum said, removing his hat and leaning back to sleep in the rocking coach, complete with the sound of harnesses and horses’ hooves and the ring of the iron rims rocking him to slumber.
Slocum woke up at the various stops. The other three were playing five-card poker for nickels and Bledstone was losing. He couldn’t even draw a high card when the others had nothing.
By the time they reached Española the next day, Slocum was worn out, his belly hurt from bad food, and he was tired of Bledstone’s whining about losing nickels, his sore head and body, and how tired he was. They went to the Alhambra Hotel and got separate rooms. Slocum went out and found a bath, a shave, and a haircut. Some Oriental cleaned his clothes while he bathed, and the barber thought the Vasquez woman lived on the Truchas Road somewhere up near Chamayo.
Slocum paid him and went to the cantina across the street. For forty cents, he bought two full fingers of whiskey and the word that Tonyah Vasquez lived on the right across the second dry wash past the church on the Chamayo/Truchas Road. The whiskey cleared
some of the staleness from his mouth. He left the cantina and walked to the livery. Most of the snow was gone at this low altitude. It was late afternoon, and he rented a horse and buggy for a day.
“I am going to see my aunt in Chamayo. I will be back in the morning,” he told the livery man.
“What is her name?”
“You know people up there?”
“Oh, yes,” the man said and beamed. “I know many people up there.”
“What is your name?”
“Victor Obregon.”
“I will tell my aunt I have met you. Maybe she will know you.” He clicked to the horse and swung him into the traffic.
“Wait! Wait!” the man shouted. “What is her name?’
Slocum waved to him and made the horse trot away. Her name was Tonyah Vasquez and the bartender in Franco’s Cantina said there were prettier whores upstairs than her. But the stable man didn’t need to know his business either.
He couldn’t risk anyone knowing his business—at least no more than necessary to find out information. If he could bring in the Kid that evening, maybe they could ride out and take One-Eye and the old man Nelson before they were spooked off. Then they could wire Thorpe and he could come take them.
Past sundown, he went by the small dark church and crossed two dry washes that had spread sand across the hard-packed road. The second one had some tailwater from an irrigation ditch overflow coming down it. He reined the horse to the side of the road. The jacal sat under some gnarled bare cottonwoods. With the horse tied to a fence post, Slocum checked his Colt and crept up on the place.
Easing his way to the dimly lit window, he could see through the distorted glass a naked chunky girl lying on her back with a hatchet-assed boy pounding her. Slocum about laughed as he went around to the front door and listened to their efforts and hard breathing. Quietly, he raised the latch with the string they’d so generously left out for him, and the door creaked on the hinges as it swung open.
Bug-eyed, the Kid looked back in half stride on top of her. “What—”
She screamed as the Kid, with his waving pole, scrambled off her onto his knees. By then Slocum had him by the hair of his head and held him up off his butt. The chunky girl had crawfished to the head of the bed and looked in wide-eyed fear at the gun Slocum held on them. Her short drawn-up legs resembled stuffed sausages, and her wide belly was like bread dough around her deep navel, with a large patch of curly black pubic hair below that.
“I ain’t asking you twice,” said Slocum. “Where’s One-Eye Davis?”
The Kid shook his head. Slocum drove the pistol muzzle into his privates and cocked the hammer back. “You won’t ever screw anyone ever again after I pull this trigger.”
“He’s in—in Bernallio.”
“Where?” He jabbed the gun hard into the Kid’s scrotum.
“Tell him. Dear Jesus, tell him!” the girl screamed.
“At his mother’s house. It is down by the river.”
“What’s her name?”
“Felicia—Gawd, man, I’m telling you, please don’t shoot me.”
“What’s her name?”
“Felicia Moore. Her new husband is Phillip Moore. They live on a farm on the Rio Grande. I swear to God that is where he is at.”
Slocum jerked on his hair. “When is he coming back here?”
“In a week or so.”
“No, when?”
“Next week there is a stage coming . . .”
“What stage?”
The Kid’s erection had dissolved and he no longer offered any resistance. Slocum shoved him down on his back across the bed. “Now, where’s Nelson?”
“In Española. He lives with some old woman.”
“What’s her name?”
“Hell, I don’t know—”
“Valerie—” the large-eyed naked girl said, with her back pressed hard to the wall to get as far away from Slocum as she could.
“Valerie what?”
“Valerie Myrez.”
“Good girl.”
She looked a little relieved at that and drew in a deep breath. “What else do you need?”
“I’m going to tie you two up while I go get my partner. I won’t be gone long, but if you try to escape while I’m gone, when I catch you I’ll cut his pecker off square with his belly.”
They both nodded gravely.
“Get over in this chair,” he ordered the boy.
He obeyed, and Slocum soon had his hands secured behind his back and him bound to the seat. Then he ripped a strip off the old sheet and made a gag and a blindfold for him. Then he motioned for her to get on her belly.
“You won’t hurt me, will you?”
He blinked at her. What she meant was some kind of sadistic sex. “No, but if you two escape while I am gone, you know what I’ll do.”
“Oh, we won’t, I promise. I swear to the Virgin Mary.”
He couldn’t risk One-Eye learning his two henchmen were in jail and then hitting the high road. They needed Nelson, too. But he couldn’t deliver them to the law—not yet. Bledstone wouldn’t be happy over this all-nighter. With her facedown on the bed, he looked at her plump ass as he tied her ankles. Maybe Bledstone could take that out on her.
He gagged and blindfolded her. No need in taking any chances. Then he leaned down by her ear. “You two better be here when I get back.”
She nodded her head vigorously and mumbled from behind the gag that they would be there. He put a few logs in the fireplace, blew out the candles, and hurried for the buggy. The trip to get his man would take two hours, if he was lucky.
The drive to town was effortless, and he was soon pounding on Bledstone’s hotel room door. “Get up. We’ve got business to take care of.”
“That you, Slocum?”
Slocum looked at the tin tile ceiling for help in the dimly lighted hallway. “Who in the hell do you think is out here?”
His sleep-husky voice replied, “I didn’t know.” He cracked the door. “What now?”
“Get dressed. I’ve got the Kid and his girlfriend tied up at her place and we’ve got to get back there.”
Standing in the dim light of the room, scratching his privates, Bledstone made a face at him. “Girlfriend?”
“We can’t have anyone running to One-Eye and warning him. Her included. And One-Eye don’t need to hear we’ve captured his henchmen and decide to take a powder before we can arrest him.”
Bledstone began pulling on his pants. “What’s she look like?”
“Kinda plump. She’s young and scared to death. I threatened to blow his balls off if he didn’t tell me where One-Eye was. Him and her were naked on the bed when I caught them. He went to talking.”
“I bet he did. Shit, I’d’a told you anything with a gun pointed at mine.” He put up his suspenders. “We keeping them as prisoners for very long?”
“We’re wiring Thorpe to get down here. Then he can decide what to do with them.”
“Sure, sure, he wanted to be in on it.”
“I want this wrapped up in a few days. I’ve got other things to do.”
“Sure.” Bledstone took down his suspenders to put on his shirt with his hair hanging in his face. Then he gave it a toss back that was only partially successful in clearing his vision.
Damn, Slocum missed Collie Bill already. Bledstone was not only dull-witted, he was slow.
Slocum sent a wire to Thorpe. Then, sharing the narrow seat with Bledstone’s big butt, he trotted the buggy horse out on the road, which was shaded from the starlight by the towering bare cottonwoods. Their breath came in clouds in the cold night air. He was anxious to see if his prisoners were still there.
He reined up and they climbed down. “I’m unhitching the horse. Get your gun out and be ready. Go see about them.”
“Sure.” Bledstone went for the jacal with his gun in hand. There was no telling about him. Slocum unhitched the horse and put it in the pole corral with the Kid’s horse. Coming back, he could see by l
ooking in the small window that his man had the naked Tonyah, still tied, sitting up on the edge of the bed, and he was building up the fire in the small fireplace. Good. That meant the Kid was there, too.
Bledstone turned from his task when Slocum came inside. “Say, she ain’t half bad-looking.”
“I said she was all right.”
“You mind if me and her do some business?”
Slocum shrugged. “I’m going to bed somewhere. You guard them.” He looked into the dark side room with the low ceiling and saw the cot. “I’ll be right in there if you need me.”
The Kid’s head hung down, he was half-asleep. No way Slocum wanted him to get some good sleep—his mind might go to figuring out a way for him to run off. He went over and jerked him upright. “You thinking about escaping?”
Still blindfolded and gagged, the Kid shook his head.
“Good, stay awake then.” Slocum left Bledstone seated on the bed beside Tonyah, fondling her small breasts and talking to her. In the room, Slocum could hear her giggling about something. Then he lay down on the cot and pulled the sweat-stinking cotton blanket over himself. He awoke once, and could hear them breathing like runaway horses and grunting like pigs. He went back to sleep.
It was before dawn when he awoke. The fire was about out and he could see four bare half-moons sticking up on the bed. The Kid was slumped in the chair and Bledstone, with his arm slung over Tonyah, was snoring away. Fine guard he made. On his knees, Slocum stoked the fireplace coals, and then he set in some more split-aspen blocks on the red-hot ashes. The heat reflected off the coals felt good. Soon, flames were licking up and he rose.
One or the other of the two had pulled a blanket over them and then snuggled closer. Maybe she’d done it, because Bledstone had never missed a rasping snore.
Slocum slipped outside and emptied his bladder in a long stream. Everything was frosted under the starlight; the temperature must have really dropped overnight. Finished, he shook it and put it away. He had no intention of using his dick on Tonyah in there. He wiped his mouth on his calloused hand. In a week, he needed to be at May’s cabin—he wanted to know all he could about the Booster operation before he took it on, and besides that, she sure wasn’t half bad in bed either. A place where he’d probably never get to taste the sweetness of Perla Peralta.
