A change came over the woman. Her mouth turned harsh and her eyes narrowed. She looked Balum over again, her measure quite different, then said, ‘Valeria is my best friend. She tells me everything.’
‘She tell you where she was going?’
‘No. She didn’t plan on running off like she did. She said Joe was waiting for you to show up, then they’d make a run for it.’
‘So you don’t know where she went.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
Balum wrapped an arm over the chairback. Kiki’s breasts were still out, suspended in the air before him and begging for his touch. Chloe wore a red and black negligee. Balum’s heart thumped in his throat. He swallowed, said, ‘Do you or don’t you?’
‘What do you plan to do once you find out?’
‘Plan to do?’ He wanted to pull the negligee down. Rip it off. ‘I plan to ride after them.’
‘Just you?’
‘Just me.’
Chloe glanced backward. Bucky held a bottleneck just above an empty highball. His hand shook and splashed brandy over the rim and onto the tabletop.
‘Valeria told me once where she would hide out if she could ever escape from here. I can tell you where that is,’ she said, ‘but on one condition.’
‘I’m not a man fond of conditions.’
‘Well that’s tough. Because the condition is that I go with.’
Balum felt his face sour. ‘Go with?’
‘She’s my best friend. Big Tom took eleven men with him. Valeria needs all the help she can get.’
‘Oh no,’ Balum started, but before he could get his objections in order, Kiki interrupted.
‘I’m going too,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I came to Tin City thinking I’d make a buck, but Big Tom keeps most the money to himself. He keeps the girls locked down, and I’m sick of it.’
‘You don’t even know where you’ll be going.’
‘I don’t care. If I’m to get anywhere in life, it won’t be with Big Tom around. This is my chance. Besides, Valeria is my friend too.’
Balum shook his head like a buffalo withdrawing its muzzle from an icy stream. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not a chance in hell. I just got done playing chaperone hauling a woman across the desert, and I’ll be damned if I repeat that anytime soon.’
‘What woman?’ asked Chloe.
‘That…’ Balum took a breath through his nose and let it out. ‘Ms. Josephine Wilsey, Doctor Friedman’s nurse.’
‘Hm,’ Chloe’s eyes moved up and away. ‘She could be useful.’
‘Stop fooling around and tell me where they went.’
‘Promise you’ll take us.’
‘I already said no.’
In a fluid movement Chloe was off the chair and standing above him. ‘You’re not going to chase after Big Tom and his men without help. I can shoot a weapon. Kiki too, for that matter. When you’ve come to your senses come back and find me.’ She turned and flounced through the tables and disappeared around a stage.
Kiki pulled up her bra. She tucked each breast away and then shook them like settling batter in a loaf pan.
‘Isn’t there someone else who knows where they went?’ said Balum.
‘Chloe’s the only one. Her and Valeria are best friends.’
‘She’s a stubborn woman,’ muttered Balum.
‘Hey,’ snapped Kiki. She wiggled off his lap. ‘Chloe’s not the stubborn one — you are. Your friend needs help, our friend needs help, and you’re the one holding it up.’
Balum snorted and crossed his arms. He watched Kiki’s ass wiggle until she rounded the stage, then took another look around the room. Bucky lay sprawled over the table. The option was there to walk over and club the man’s face in until he started giving answers, but even as Balum considered it he knew it was futile. The only person who seemed to know was Chloe.
He popped off the chair and grabbed his hat and stormed out of the chandeliered lounge through the curtain and into the barroom where the barkeep loafed sleepily on an elbow. Balum stomped past him. He fit his hat over his head and squared it tight and shoved through the swinging doors and smack into Josephine Wilsey.
He nearly bowled her over. Reflexively he reached out to grab her. He caught her by the waist and pulled her against him.
‘Mr. Balum!’ she shouted and smacked his cheek with a gloved hand. ‘Shame on you!’
‘Ms. Wilsey,’ he stammered.
‘I knew it all along. Business . Why, everyone in town knows what goes on in the back of the Acropolis. You get your blood boiling in there and then come out to grope a decent woman?’
‘It’s not what you think, Ms. Wilsey.’
She stood close enough he could feel her body heat, her face clean and pretty. The oversized green frock was gone. Instead she wore a light grey dress that hugged her form. She saw his eyes dart down and back up. She drew even closer then, lowered her voice so only he could hear. ‘I bet you’re thinking of the river right this minute. Of my naked body wet from the water and my hands barely able to cover myself from your dirty eyes.’
‘I…’ he started, but she’d caught him. It was exactly what he was thinking of.
She turned on a heel and stormed away. The third woman in three minutes to leave in a huff.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. He was tired. Dark though it was, he needed to keep searching. Maybe Chloe knew where they’d run off to, but he’d be goddamned if he was going to take two women traipsing through the desert with him. There had to be someone else. Anyone else.
12
He’d been right; Big Tom and his men had gained ground all that day. So much so that as twilight approached, Joe found himself looking back over his shoulder every few minutes at the growing dustcloud and the small black smudges that appeared and disappeared within it, flickering in the waves; the shapes of riders.
Under the weight of two, Joe’s horse faltered. The tips of its hooves began to scrape along the desert floor and when Joe tightened his knees against its flanks and prodded it forward, the pace hardly changed. They descended into a dry wash and clopped over the hardpack and back up a slope of loose sand. Once topped out, Joe turned his head back. The cloud remained, harder to see in the scant light. Another mile further and night took over. A few pinpricks of stars and a small slice of moon offered a poor beacon by which to see. It made the going rougher, but for what Joe needed to do that night he considered himself fortunate.
They drove the horse deeper into darkness despite its weariness, choosing not to stop until they rode upon a stand of desert willows clutching to a patch of low-cut earth. They stopped and dismounted and spread Joe’s bedroll, made a fireless camp. They watered the horse but did not remove the saddle.
What little conversation between them dealt with logistics, nothing more. How long he might be gone. What they would do once he returned. What to do should he not return at all.
He checked the cartridge loops on his gunbelt and kissed Valeria’s forehead and walked out of the stand of desert willows and into the black of night. For as little light the sky provided, his eyes adjusted. Nevertheless, he walked slowly; cacti littered the ground. Turk’s head and cat claws and the long gruesome needles of hedgehog cactus. It made travel at night a difficult venture. Whether to his benefit or not could be debated.
He carried no water, his load was light. Only the gun and the knife. Even his hat he left with Valeria. He wove a path over his backtrail with his ears attuned to the sounds of the night and honed for anything not belonging to it. When the echoes of laughter met him he stopped and crouched, but the source was far yet, and after a while he stood again and continued on, adjusting his route toward the sounds of their camp.
It took him less than an hour. He circled halfway around so as to be downwind. The men expected nothing, but horses were ever alert. Some sixty yards from their fire he stretched out on his belly and counted twelve men. He might have seen some of them before, mos
t likely in the Acropolis, but none struck him as familiar. Not the men nor their voices, which carried clearly in the night.
The strangeness of it struck him that he had never met Big Tom. The driving force behind this, the looming figure representing death and loss and heartache. But not having met him did not stop Joe from picking him out from the rest. If there was any question as to why folks called him Big Tom, it was answered the second Joe sunk belly-down into the sand to surveil their camp. The man towered over his underlings. He paced before the fire with a mug in his hand, back and forth, looking off into the night and muttering curses that drifted to Joe’s ears through the thin desert air. His underlings responded as subservients will; affirmatives and flattery.
‘Ain’t no doubt about it, boss,’ said a man sitting cross-legged at the fire. ‘We’ll catch ‘em tomorrow.’
‘I wanted them caught today,’ barked Big Tom.
‘They ain’t gonna get to wherever they’re going. Damn fool injun on one horse.’ The man guffawed and others joined him in laughter.
‘Hey, you want we should keep him alive? Once we catch him?’
‘I want him dead is what I want.’
The cross-legged man shrugged. ‘I figured maybe you’d like to string him up or something. Make a show of it. Say, this is what happens when you run off with Big Tom’s woman!’
‘Shut your trap, Pete.’
The man bowed his head and said no more.
‘What happens if they reach them cliffs in the Scarlands before we catch ‘em?’ ventured another. ‘They ain’t headed no other place, is they?’
Big Tom had marched out to the edge of the fire’s reach. He remained there a moment after the question was voiced, staring out into the darkness, then turned and tramped back. ‘We corner the bastard and wait till his water runs out.’ He tossed the dregs of his mug into the fire.
‘Ain’t that gonna put your woman in jeopardy? You know how them injuns treat womenfolk. He’ll let her water run out before his own.’
Big Tom considered this. ‘We storm the damn cliff houses and shoot him out if need be.’
‘Won’t that put her in danger too?’
‘Damn it!’ Big Tom threw the mug into the fire. A flurry of sparks exploded upward. ‘That’s why I wanted to catch them today.’
‘Let’s catch ‘em now,’ said Pete. ‘They can’t be more than a few miles up the trail.’
‘I let you ride that horse through the desert at night and its hocks will be so full of cactus spine by morning I’d have to shoot it. I told you to shut your trap already, Pete, now shut it. I don’t feel like listening to any more of your jackass ideas.’
Another bout of silence followed. The fire worked itself down to a dull glow. Still the men sat around it. Big Tom resumed his pacing.
‘Boss,’ a man with a foot-long beard broke the calm. ‘There’s something else to consider.’ He waited for Big Tom to stomp back to the fire, then went on. ‘The other two times that indian came to town it was with some other feller. Rough looking type. We ain’t taken him into account. You figure he’s tied up in this?’
‘He ain’t around,’ came another voice. The same from the hotel lobby. The man sat on the ground with his legs spread out and his hair hanging over his shoulders nearly as long as Joe’s. ‘There was only two men in that hotel — the indian and a Slovak miner. Weren’t no other.’
‘Maybe he was smart enough to take a room in a different hotel,’ said Pete. ‘You wouldn’t know it. We don’t even know his name. You think of that, Fletcher?’
‘I tell you, there weren’t no one else.’
‘Shut up you two,’ interrupted Big Tom. ‘I know the man’s name. And it’s taken care of.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Balum.’
From where Joe lied he watched the men squirm. They rubbed their beards and scratched their bellies and shifted where they sat.
‘What did you do about it, boss?’
‘I left Pat Swinton with clear instructions, should the man show up.’
A collective murmur went around the fire loud enough to reach Joe. The flames spit and crackled. After a while Pete said, ‘Swinton’ll take care of him.’
‘As long as he has a clear shot at his back,’ said Fletcher.
Another murmur of agreement.
‘I don’t give a damn if he’s a backshooter or not,’ said Big Tom. ‘And that goes for all of you as well. We catch that goddamn indian and you shoot him wherever you can hit him, front or back, it makes no difference to me. As long as his last breath is a piece of hot desert air. Is that clear?’
Voices mumbled agreement.
‘Now get some shuteye, all of you. We start early tomorrow.’
They gathered themselves up from the fire, each man to his bedroll.
Sixty yards out, Joe rose from the ground like liquid taking form. He flipped the loop from his knife and unsheathed nine inches of razored metal, the point sharp enough to slice air. He held it facing down with his thumb closest the butt end and, eyes centered on the horses, he closed in.
13
Balum roamed the town late into the night until fed up with the banter of drunks at saloon bars, tired of the lure of whores, his legs sore and his feet swollen and a ball of worry knotting in his gut with each hour that passed, knowing somewhere Joe was trying to outrun a dozen killers and needed help. He woke several times in the night amid visions of Josephine bathing. He kicked his sheets, tossed on the strange bed. Before daybreak he was up and dressed and walking the drag.
He followed the smell of grub through the door of a griddle house and took a seat at an unsanded table and ordered a plate of whatever they served. That and a mug of coffee. When the plate came he bent to it like a man set on a job. Halfway through he stopped. Looked up. A man sat across the table from him.
‘You the fella goes by the name of Balum?’ asked the stranger.
Balum chewed, swallowed. ‘I am.’
‘You been asking a question around town, and I’m the man with the answer.’
Balum set his fork down and leaned back. He took a study of the stranger that lasted only a couple seconds but told him plenty. First the eyes. They flashed everywhere; over Balum, the food, the customers, the door. His hands were no less shifty. He rubbed one over the other, massaging his knuckles and pulling at his fingers and drumming his uncut nails over the table, beyond the edge of which Balum could just make out a gun butt poking up from its holster.
‘You’ve got my name,’ said Balum. ‘Now give me yours.’
Again his eyes flashed around. When he finally brought them back around to Balum, he gave it.
‘Pat Swinton,’ he said.
The name meant nothing.
‘Alright Swinton, you’ve come to give an answer. Give it.’
‘Lemme see if I got the question right. You want to know where that injun took Big Tom’s woman. Am I right?’
Balum sipped his coffee. He set it down. ‘That’s right.’
‘Well…’ Swinton glanced around. ‘He done took her to the mines. Hiding her in one of the abandoned shafts.’ He nodded his head when he said it.
‘Here’s a question for you,’ said Balum. ‘Like you say, that’s Big Tom’s woman. Big Tom runs this town. You could get in a lot of trouble for helping me out.’
Swinton’s left eye squeezed tight. His head jerked and he looked again at Balum as if seeing him for the first time.
‘So why are you?’ said Balum.
‘Because… um, because Big Tom, well everybody’s done with him. He treats everyone real bad, bullies the whole town, and don’t let no one in peace.’
‘What’s in it for you?’
‘In it for me?’
‘If Big Tom finds out you helped me, what’s going to happen to you?’
Swinton’s head twitched again. ‘I just want to see him get what’s coming to him is all. I figure now’s the opportunity for this here town to get free of him.’
&
nbsp; Balum drained his coffee. Pat Swinton was nervous as hell, and his answers struck Balum as vague, but at the end of the day it was the only lead Balum had. And besides, of course the man was nervous; he was ratting out the town boss, and risking his life to do it.
‘So how do I find this mine shaft?’
‘It ain’t easy. I thought I might just take you there.’
‘Is your horse saddled?’
‘It is.’
Balum stood up and tossed a nickel on the table. ‘Meet me at the livery in ten minutes.’
They swung around town and rode south at a hard gallop, no food or blanket rolls or provisions, outfitted with nothing more than full canteens and a desperate look about their faces. Balum could feel that look in his own face. He could see it plainly in Pat Swinton’s. The man’s eyes were no less sallow than before, his hands no less fidgety. He sat the saddle bent hard at the waist, and every minute or so would turn his neck to throw an eye on Balum.
They took a route away from the main road leading to the mines and instead drove the horses up a ridge onto an old indian trail and then back down into rocky desert studded with shrubs and barrel cactus.
After a half hour hard riding they slowed the horses to save them and untied their canteens and drank. Swinton’s eyes shifted over the lip of his canteen rim and when they met Balum’s they darted away again.
‘We’re well shy of the mines,’ Balum commented.
‘He’s got her hid in the old sites. Where all them miners work now is the mother lode, but before that everyone was digging further south.’
‘How far?’
‘It ain’t far. Couple hours is all.’
The sun climbed to a sharp angle. Sweat ran from under Balum’s hat and stung his eyes. He wiped a hand across his forehead and ran things over. A few hours from town was all it was then. Yet they’d escaped three days ago.
He preferred to sit and puzzle over conundrums such as this with a plug of tobacco in his jaw and time to spare, but he had neither. And then Swinton picked his horse up to a trot, so Balum fell in line.
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