by Jake Logan
“We’ve got ourselves a Mexican standoff, John,” she said. “If I shoot Locke with my second barrel, you can fill me and Lucas full of holes.”
“That’s right,” he lied.
“What say my brother and I leave? I don’t kill the deputy and you don’t kill us?”
Even as she spoke, she pushed her brother away so she could roll up to her knees and then stand. The shotgun wavered but aimed close enough to Locke to put him in a world of hurt if she fired. She bent, grabbed Lucas by the collar, and pulled him to his feet with surprising strength.
“Good-bye, John. We would have made one hell of a team.” Marta backed away with Lucas leading the way.
The outlaw whistled and his horse trotted after him. In a couple heartbeats, the sound of retreating horses echoed through the tiny stand of cottonwoods. Then only silence reigned.
Slocum let out breath he hadn’t even known he had kept sucked into his lungs. The six-gun dropped, then he tucked it into the holster as he went to Byron Locke.
The deputy stared up at him.
“You should have shot them. Both of those snakes.”
“Sorry about your horse,” Slocum said. He had to dig down in the soft earth to free the deputy’s leg pinned under the horse’s dead weight.
“Why didn’t you shoot? I’m nothing to you.” The deputy stared hard at him.
“After she took you hostage, what did you hear?”
“You aren’t part of the gang.”
“That’s why I have to get you back to Taos, to tell your pa. He pretty much knows it, but hearing the words from your lips will seal it.”
“We’re not going after them?”
Slocum lifted his six-shooter and fanned the hammer six times, each time falling on a spent chamber.
“You bluffed her?” Locke’s eyes went wide. “I never saw anything like that in all my born days.”
“You hurt bad?” Slocum asked. He helped the deputy to his feet. “With a horse as tired as my Appaloosa is right now, it might take a week to get to Taos.”
The metal click of a rifle being cocked froze Slocum. He looked up—and down the barrel of a Winchester.
20
“Do we shoot him or hang the varmint?”
“Wait, hold on,” Locke said, pushing Slocum to one side and hobbling between him and rifleman. “You know me, don’t you?”
“We’re rescuin’ you from this here murderin’ son of a bitch.”
Slocum saw others in the posse filtering through the stand of trees, all with rifles pointed in his direction. If one sneezed or mistook any movement he might make for an attack, he would have more holes in him than a pair of woolens left to the moths.
“He’s a legal deputy. My pa, Judge Locke, deputized him,” Byron Locke said.
Slocum remembered when that had happened, even if it did skirt the truth a mite. Since then the judge had swung back and forth thinking he was a road agent and killer more times than a Regulator clock pendulum.
“He saved me from the real outlaws.” Locke pointed in the direction taken by Marta and her brother. “You can overtake them. Lucas Deutsch has a couple bullets in him Slocum put there rescuing me.”
The man sighting down the barrel of the rifle blinked. Slocum took that as a good sign. Then he lowered the rifle and waved, “That way, boys. We got crooks to catch and a reward to claim!”
The entire posse galloped off before Slocum could ask for one of their horses—not that he expected any man among them to willingly give up his mount. It still left him and Locke to share one horse.
“Reckon this means we go back to town,” Slocum said, “unless you want to walk and let me join them.”
“Could be I take your horse and let you walk back to Taos,” the deputy said. From the crooked smile, Slocum knew he was joshing. As bunged up as Locke was, he couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag, much less shoot it out with Lucas and Marta Deutsch.
“I don’t see you have much ammo,” Slocum said.
“They took all I had when she caught me. Snared me real slick, too. I was feeling low about guarding a bank that’d never have anything in it to rob. She rode up bold as brass and we got to talking.”
“Then you realized she had saddlebags full of gold coins from the train robbery.”
“Something like that, Slocum, something like that.”
Slocum knew then that the deputy had never suspected Marta until she had the drop on him. He didn’t fault the lawman for that. She had pretty much pulled the wool over his eyes, too.
His willing eyes, he amended. Admitting such a lovely filly was evil to the core didn’t come easily.
“I have a horse and no ammo. You’ve got an arm that looks all busted up, not to mention a leg that got twisted when the horse fell on you.”
“My horse, which you shot. You’re going to buy me another one.”
“But I’ve got the only horse around, so we ought to make our peace with one another.”
Byron Locke had already thrust out his hand. They shook. Then they got on the trail back to Taos.
• • •
“Don’t know how I can make it any more legal, Slocum,” Judge Locke said. He blotted the ink and handed over the document.
“Never got a piece of paper signed by a judge saying I hadn’t committed any crimes,” Slocum said. He folded it and tucked it into his coat pocket. “Not sure anybody would believe it.”
“I don’t think anybody reading that would either, but if you’re in Taos, folks will know.” Judge Locke looked hard at him. “Don’t try to pass that off as a pardon for any crime you might have committed before coming to New Mexico Territory.”
“What crime?” Slocum tried to sound innocent and failed. The judge snorted and shook his head.
“My boy’s on the mend. Doc Zamora fixed him up real good. Won’t even lose use of his gun hand.”
“Not sure that’s a good thing,” Slocum said.
“It is. We still got two of them varmints to catch.”
Slocum settled in a chair and tried to figure out what thoughts darted behind the judge’s cold eyes.
“What about Rory Deutsch?”
“Him? He’s not guilty of anything but extortion, beating on a few saloon keepers, and making the vilest whiskey this side of the Big Muddy. Taos Lightning, indeed.”
“You’re sure he had nothing to do with the Denver robbery?”
“I asked around. He was in town expanding his moonshine empire. He’s not got the spine to actually hold up a bank, not like his young’uns. Extortion and moonshining are his crimes of choice.”
“It gnawed at the back of my mind, but I sort of knew that a long time back. He couldn’t make a go of the X Bar X so he fired up a still and set out to corner the market in whiskey.”
“I asked a couple of his former wranglers. That about sums it up. His wife died a couple years back and all the heart went out of him. About that time, his children took to robbing stagecoaches and then worked their way north into Colorado and banks.”
“And trains,” Slocum said.
“They were an ambitious bunch.”
“Marta Deutsch was,” he said. “She was the ringleader. I thought that paint she rode was her pa’s because they’re both about the same height. Wearing a duster, it’s hard to tell more. She made an excuse about her horse pulling up lame.”
“Lame excuse,” Judge Locke said. “The posse’ll fetch her and Lucas back anytime now.”
Slocum wasn’t so sure. He got to his feet and said, “I’ll be at the Black Hole.”
“Knock back a beer for me. I’ll join you when I finish this report that’s going to the district judge.”
“Be sure to spell my name right,” Slocum said. The judge laughed. Slocum wasn’t kidding.
He wandered through the winding Taos st
reets until he came to the adobe building that was the Black Hole Saloon. His saloon. He went in and saw a good crowd had already entered.
Pete waved to him from behind the bar.
“That ’shine you brung me’s about all gone. You git me more?”
“I’ve been thinking on this,” Slocum said. “Why not fire up your own still?”
“Brew my own pizzen?” Pete scratched his chin. “Tried that but the Deutsch boys busted it up and threatened me.”
“They won’t be back to bedevil you,” Slocum said.
“Heard tell Rory Deutsch is out on his ranch but he shut down his still. That cut off our whiskey supply.”
“When his boys are brought to justice, there’s no reason for Deputy Locke not to go after him for trying to corner the whiskey sales in town.” Slocum took the beer Pete slid in front of him. It went down frothy and cool and about the smoothest he had ever tasted. “Where does Doc Zamora get his alcohol?”
“Him? Don’t know. Buys it somewhere else since he don’t come in here.”
“He uses it to clean his instruments. Might be he makes his own. If he does, that means he knows how to run a still, even if he doesn’t call it that.”
“You’re just brimmin’ over with ideas, Slocum.”
“I’ve got another one. How much money do you have in the till?”
Pete turned wary.
“I ain’t stealin’ from you.”
“How much?”
Pete pulled out a crate and began pawing through it, counting. Then he looked up.
“Couple days’ take here. Almost two hundred dollars.”
“The Black Hole is yours in exchange for what’s in that box,” Slocum said.
“You ain’t joshin’ me?”
Slocum searched through the clutter behind the bar, found a piece of paper and some ink. He scratched out a bill of sale, signed it, and passed it over.
“The Black Hole Saloon is yours.”
“That makes me the owner of two gin mills.”
“You’re going to be the robber baron of Taos. Here and the Santa Fe Drinking Emporium are the foundations of your empire.”
“If I kin find me a fellow who kin run a still, I kin take over supply from Deutsch.”
Slocum looked to the door when Byron Locke poked his head inside.
“Posse’s back. They got ’em, Slocum. They got both of them.”
Slocum stuffed the money from the saloon into his pocket, finished his beer, and nodded in Pete’s direction. The barkeep stared at the bill of sale, pleased as punch.
“You got them in the hoosegow?” Slocum asked the deputy.
“Undertaker’s got Lucas. Looks like your bullets finally killed him. They said he was white as a bleached sheet from lack of blood. That’s how they found him. The blood trail.”
“Marta Deutsch? She’s dead, too?”
“Looks like,” the deputy said. “They found her horse near a bluff overlooking the river. She must have tried to escape going down a trail too narrow for the horse, slipped, and fell into the Rio Grande.”
“But her body?”
“Swept away. Somebody downstream’ll find her in a few days or a week. I’m heading out to the X Bar X to bring in Rory Deutsch for all he’s done here in town.”
“Good idea,” Slocum said. “He used his children to run all the whiskey peddlers away.”
“He’s responsible for more ’n one killing, less I miss my guess. I’ll find out.”
Slocum’s mind wandered as the deputy rambled on about how he and his pa would clean things up, then install a new town marshal.
“I’m riding on,” Slocum said. “Can you tell me where Marta Deutsch went over the cliff?”
Byron Locke blinked at this, then scratched out a map in the dusty street.
“Obliged, Deputy.”
Slocum walked away, not wanting to get into a long discussion with the lawman. He had run his race in Taos. It was time to move on.
Slocum mounted his Appaloosa and put ten miles behind him before the sun sank behind the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Before noon the next day he found the spot where the posse claimed Marta had fallen to her death. Slocum studied the evidence and agreed. Rocks dislodged, earth cut up by horses’ hooves, even a bit of fabric from her coat left on a fishhook cactus clinging to the cliff face a foot or so down from the rim.
He swept in a circle, found brush marks in the dirt, and set out due east away from the river.
Slocum found her camp a little after sundown.
He rode up. Marta Deutsch was slow to respond, but when she did, she turned a beautiful, smiling face to him.
“I wondered if you would believe the posse. I overheard them saying they thought I’d plunged to my death into the river.” She poked at the cooking fire, then tapped the coffeepot. “You want some coffee, John?”
“Why did you shoot Annabelle in the back?” He dismounted and went to a stump across from the woman.
“So, you don’t want coffee. I hope you don’t mind if I have some.” She poured some into a tin cup and sipped. “Very good.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t know you then. It was all intended to divert Judge Locke. That man is so single-minded.”
“You killed his son. And you shot Annabelle with my gun.”
“Both are true, but I didn’t mean to cause you any distress, John. I came to know you afterward. It was necessary to send Locke and his son sniffing away in a direction other than . . . mine.”
“Your pa never took part in any of the robberies, did he?”
“Oh, I made sure he thought of himself as patriarch, but he’s not a bright man. He couldn’t even make a success of the X Bar X. The ranch is—or could have been—one of the finest in the Taos Valley. All he wants to do is distill his moonshine.” She shrugged. “It isn’t a bad racket, but it’s so limited.”
“But killing folks like Tom and Annabelle Harris and robbing banks and trains—that’s not limiting?”
“Oh, no, not if you’re smart. I am, John. So are you. Is Timothy dead?”
“Nope. But he’ll stand trial and hang.”
“That will satisfy Judge Locke’s bloodthirstiness,” she said, putting the cup down beside her. “I made the offer before. You and me. We can get rich by pulling only the best robberies. No penny-ante banks or trains. Only those with the most gold.”
“The way you sent Byron Locke on a wild-goose chase before robbing the AT&SF train was smart.”
“You weren’t fooled. You wouldn’t wait for the gold to be put in a bank vault before stealing it.”
“You murdered Annabelle and framed me for her killing.”
“I told you, John, that was before I knew you. Let’s let bygones be bygones. I won’t hold shooting Timothy and killing Lucas against you. So don’t hold that woman’s death against me.”
She went to pick up her cup again. Slocum moved as fast as he ever had, his aim as accurate as he had ever fired. His slug caught her in the middle of the forehead. She died with a smile on her face—and a derringer in her hand. Marta toppled to the side and lay still.
Slocum edged around the fire, keeping a close watch on her. Any ordinary woman would be dead from such a shot to the head. Slocum knew snakes never died until the sun went down. Marta might have some life left in her.
He knelt and opened her saddlebags. They were filled with gold coins from the train robbery. Her share. Timothy and Lucas’s share had been turned over to Judge Locke back at the X Bar X. As far as the law knew, all three fugitives from the Denver bank robbery and killing of Locke’s son were dead or in custody awaiting trial before being hanged.
Slocum saw no reason to return Marta’s share of the train robbery. He had a couple hundred dollars from selling the Black Hole Saloon, but this amounted to a couple thousand.
/>
It didn’t come close to making up for Annabelle’s death. Nothing ever could.
He slung the heavy saddlebags over his shoulder, stepped back from the corpse, and returned to his Appaloosa. In an hour he was two miles away. By sunrise he had put ten miles behind him. A week later New Mexico Territory was far behind, even as the memories lingered.
Watch for
SLOCUM AND THE DARLING
DAMSELS OF DURANGO
419th novel in the exciting SLOCUM series from Jove
Coming in January!