by Jake Logan
He smelled the newcomer before he heard him. Peppermint. Peppermint candy. There came a twig snapping below him, then scraping sounds, and then the limb next to his sagged with weight.
“Hello, Edgar,” he said softly. The boy jumped so hard he almost lost his balance.
“Didn’t expect you to be here. Didn’t expect anyone to be up here in my tree.”
“You can look down on the world from here. Hide things, too,” Slocum said. “But your usual hidey-hole is empty.”
“You got the album,” Edgar said. From his defensive tone Slocum knew there was more.
“I could have shot you earlier tonight.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do. You were at the woodpile near the Bray house when the photographer and I were walking up the hill. Did we flush you?”
“Scared the hell outta me.” Edgar clapped his hand over his mouth. “Pa don’t want me talkin’ like that. I’m sorry.”
“I won’t say a word if you tell me where you hid the photographer’s box of pictures.”
“Don’t know what you mean.”
“It’s a strongbox, with a lock on it, but a clever boy like you could open it. Maybe take a rock to the hasp or pry open the lock. There were a hundred pictures inside.”
“There were not!” Edgar flared. “There was only—”
“Twelve? There were only twelve albums?”
“Eleven,” he said reluctantly, knowing he had been caught in the lie. “Reckon the one you took away from me might make twelve.”
“I want them.”
“Those are real purty women in those pictures, but I don’t understand what’s going on in some of them.”
“I want the albums—all of them. Now.” Slocum’s voice was level and cold. He was tired of playing games with the boy. “You said you’d stop peeking through windows.”
“I did. I ain’t done that since. Not once. But I saw Mr. Molinari cartin’ the two boxes up toward the Bray’s house, so I followed him this afternoon. I thought he was actin’ real funny, the way he hid those boxes and all. You know I couldn’t look through his windows. They’re all blacked out.”
“You followed him and saw him hiding the boxes?”
“I wasn’t gonna keep it. I just wanted to look. One box was too big and heavy for me to take, but the iron box wasn’t so big.”
“Where is it?”
“I won’t steal again either. Honest.”
Slocum waited. Edgar finally broke down and said, “In my special hiding place. I’ll show you.”
The boy climbed down the tree with surprising speed. Slocum was slower to follow, and by the time his boots touched ground, Edgar was heading off at a dead run. Slocum followed at a brisk walk. There wasn’t any place for the boy to hide in Clabber Crossing. All it would take was to ask and everyone would know where he was. Slocum didn’t think the boy was the kind to run away, but considering what he’d been up to, he might.
Considering how he had lost his ma and how he said his pa shunned him when he was bad, ignoring him and making him feel all alone, he might think running away was the answer.
Slocum walked faster and saw the boy at the corner of the church. He ducked behind it. When Slocum got around to the rear, the boy was on his knees prying loose a rock in the foundation. At the bottom of the huge hole there was the strongbox with Molinari’s blackmail photographs in it. How Edgar had removed the lock wasn’t anything that mattered to Slocum. As he had said, the boy was clever.
Dragging it out, Slocum counted the albums. He had no reason to look through them, but he knew the boy already had.
“You see anyone you recognized in these pictures?”
“A couple of them Cyprians that work out at the place where you do.”
“Missy and Catherine?”
“Those are the ones. I recognized them right off since they don’t wear much around the cathouse.”
“And you saw them through the window.” Slocum nodded. The boy could identify them because they matched their photographs. But he hadn’t recognized his mother. At least Slocum hoped the boy hadn’t. He was a liar but there was still time to get him back on the straight and narrow.
“Yeah. They wore different frilly things, but they was the same. All except the one. Missy. Why was she with another woman in—”
“Never mind,” Slocum said sharply. He picked up the box. “Reputations can be ruined. You know what that means?”
“What everyone thinks about you.”
“You never saw these photographs. You never looked through windows at the ladies.”
“I never stole anything,” the boy said, looking at Slocum.
“You never stole anything. You’re starting over. A clean slate. That’s you now. Bust a window with your slingshot or tip over an outhouse, but you’ll never spy on anyone again, especially women.”
“Yes, sir.”
Slocum swung the box up to his shoulder. It was heavy but nowhere near as heavy as the case containing the photographic plates. Molinari might not have some of the plates any longer. Destroy the pictures and the blackmail material would be eradicated. The plates he did have might be mostly those taken of the ladies for Severigne’s catalog.
If so, Molinari was plum out of luck with any more blackmailing.
That meant he had to get rid of the plates and at whatever price he could get and then clear out. With his gunmen dead and Slocum on his trail, he couldn’t run far enough.
“You ain’t gonna tell my pa?”
“You can tell him what you like,” Slocum said. “How much depends on how clear you want your conscience to be.” He struck out down the hill, circled past the shack where Edgar’s ma had shot herself, then cut across the field and reached Severigne’s house in less than twenty minutes.
He wasn’t surprised to see Molinari’s buckboard out front. The photographer had probably come straight here after throwing together what he could from his office, intent on hitting the trail and getting the hell away from Clabber Crossing.
Softly, Slocum went in the back door and made his way down the narrow corridor to the parlor where he heard Molinari’s strident voice telling Severigne what she had to do. He ought to have realized that wasn’t the way to convince the fiery Frenchwoman of anything.
“A thousand dollars. For all of them. You can put your own books together, sell them to your customers. You’ll make twice off a single client that way.”
“You have done this thing, selling the pictures?”
“During the war. The soldiers paid incredible amounts of money for a single photo. Sometimes an entire company would pool their money. I got a hundred dollars a photograph for the best. And all these? These are even better.”
“I do not know how to turn the glass plate into a paper photograph.”
“Over in Laramie is a photographer who’ll help with that. I . . . I have to go.”
“Stay for a cup of tea,” Slocum said, coming into the room. Molinari’s eyes went wide in surprise, then he pulled back his coat. He wore a shoulder rig with a small six-shooter dangling in it. Slocum drew and fired three times before Molinari yanked it free.
“You shot him,” Severigne accused.
“Looks like.”
“Don’t just stand there. Get him off the table. That is oak. Do you know what blood stains do to oak? Impossible to get out!”
By now Alice, Missy, April, and two others had rushed down to see what was happening.
“There’re the photographs you wanted,” Slocum said to Severigne. He heaved Molinari’s lifeless body over his shoulder and went out the front. Alice opened the door for him. He dumped the corpse in the back of the buckboard, rummaged around, and found Molinari’s bags and took them back into the house, intending to see if he might have loose copies of the pictures.
“These are . . . remarkable,” Severigne said. Slocum saw she had stopped at Missy’s. She looked up. Missy had turned white as a ghost. Silently, Severigne held o
ut the album.
“When’s the wedding?” Slocum asked.
“I couldn’t, not after ...”
“Missy,” Slocum said louder. “When’s your wedding?”
The woman clutched the book to her breasts and began crying.
“Soon,” Alice said, answering for her. “As soon as she can go to Hans and explain she just had cold feet.”
“I do not. My feet are always warm. Ask Hans,” Missy said. Then she giggled. The giggle turned into hysterical laughter as Alice led her from the room. The other girls followed them, chattering about the wedding and arguing over who got to be maid of honor.
“What do you do with the rest?”
“Burn them, all except Philomena’s,” Slocum said. “Those go back to her so she’ll know she doesn’t have anything to fret over.”
Severigne nodded. She hiked one of Molinari’s carpet-bags to the table and began going through it. She stepped back, her eyes fixed on the contents, and her jaw dropped. She looked up at Slocum.
“Do you know what this is?”
Slocum tipped the bag on its side and spilled out more greenbacks than he could remember seeing in his life.
“He could have run a long way with this much.”
“He didn’t care about the money,” Slocum said. “He lusted after the power the photographs gave him. The money was only a way of keeping track of how much influence he had over helpless women trying to better themselves.”
“This is all stolen money,” Severigne said. “There is no way to tell whose it is.” She obviously fought a battle with herself, then said, “It is yours. You have earned it.”
“There’re thousands of dollars there,” Slocum said.
“You will get rid of the body so no one ever finds it?”
“The wagon and the photographic equipment inside will be harder to get rid of, but I think I know how.”
Severigne made shooing motions.
“I will destroy these. Such lovely photographs, but I will burn them all.” Severigne let out a gusty sigh. “It is no good having a conscience, not in this business.” She smiled broadly. “But sometimes it makes you feel good.” She leaned forward, her weight on the stack of albums.
Slocum took the carpetbag stuffed with scrip and went outside to the buckboard. After making sure everything was secure in the back, he got his horse, tied it to the back of the wagon, and began driving.
Two days later an hour after dinnertime he rode back into town carrying the carpetbag across the front of his saddle. He rode to the foot of the hill where the Bray house stood, considered what he was going to do—then he did it.
Slocum trooped up to the house and peered in through a window, feeling like Edgar Dawson. Philomena Bray sat in a chair doing needlepoint. She looked up and started to cry out but Slocum held up the album, showing just one page. She stuck herself with the needle and didn’t even notice the tiny drop of blood that stained her work. Slocum pointed to the rear of the house. The woman came out on the back porch, pale and distraught.
“Where did you get that?” Philomena was shaking like a leaf in a high wind. “What are you going to do with it?”
Slocum handed it to her.
“It’s yours to do with as you see fit. It’s a sultry night but you might want to start a fire,” he said, looking past her at the fancy iron stove.
“He . . . he doesn’t have any more?”
“You won’t see him or his pictures again,” Slocum said. The deep ravine out on the lonesome prairie where he had buried both body and buckboard might wash out but that wouldn’t be until spring runoffs in nine months. By then Molinari would be little more than a memory to the people of Clabber Crossing.
Slocum had taken special care smashing every one of the photographic plates before scattering the pieces far and wide across the prairie.
“Thank you,” Philomena said, crushing him with a hug. He pushed her away and handed her the carpetbag.
“What’s this?” She looked inside and began to wobble on her feet. He caught her before she fainted dead away.
“I don’t know how much you paid him, but this is likely most of it,” Slocum said. “However you took it from your husband, you can put it back the same way.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I like to see things all neat and tidy.”
“How do I ever repay you?”
“Keep that son of yours out of fights he can’t win. He’s got an attitude that’ll see him up on Primrose Hill before long if he doesn’t change.”
Slocum felt as if the morals of Clabber Crossing’s younger citizens were his responsibility—and he had discharged his duties the best he could when it came to Randall Bray and Edgar Dawson.
“Philly, where are you?”
“That’s Martin. I had better see what he wants.”
Slocum tipped his hat, stepped back, and disappeared into the night.
Leading his tired horse, he walked back down to Main Street, where Clyde Clabber waved to him.
“Come on over, Slocum. You been away for a couple days?”
“Call it completing my tour of duty with Severigne,” Slocum said.
“She’s a mighty fine woman, that Severigne,” Clabber said. “Mighty fine.”
Slocum took out a sheaf of bills. He had kept some of Molinari’s ill-gotten money as his due.
“You up for a poker game?”
“Now, now, Slocum, you can’t be serious. Remember what I did to you last time. You want me to do it again? You’ll be here through next year’s rodeo, if you have a hand like you had before—and I still have my four little ladies.”
“Luck’s riding on my shoulder ’bout now,” Slocum said.
And it was. He won enough that night to pay for a month of breakfasts at Sara Beth’s, as if she ever let him pay.
Watch for
SLOCUM AND THE FORGETFUL FELON
381st novel in the exciting SLOCUM series
from Jove
Coming in October!
