by Jake Logan
Silence was all that issued from Billy, although he might have muttered something into the saddle leather. Slocum didn’t know, and frankly, he didn’t care.
But Lydia piped up, “Love to, Slocum. You’ll tie him up so that he can’t move—other than to scream, I mean—no matter what I do to him?”
He looked over at her. She was grinning, but there seemed to be a thread of seriousness running through her threat. He couldn’t say he blamed her much.
Slocum smiled back. “Promise.”
“I hope there’s still a jail cell with a working lock on it,” she said.
Slocum grunted. He’d been thinking about that, as well.
“But at least we’ll have the hotel all to ourselves,” Lydia went on hopefully. “I just pray that the mercantile isn’t completely cleaned out.” She lifted her gaze upward. “Just a few cans of milk, Lord, that’s all I ask for.”
“There might be a few people left down there,” Slocum said, trying his best to sound optimistic. He wasn’t counting on any milk for miles around, which didn’t bode too well for little Tyler. “Towns usually take longer than this to die out all the way.”
He didn’t add that at the very end, they were usually inhabited by the dregs of society. That was all he and Lydia needed.
They neared the town and rode past a few deserted houses. Their little yards were weedy, their truck gardens had gone to pot, and abandoned tools rusted in their yards. Many had broken windows. “Looks like somebody’s had their fun here already,” he said.
Lydia didn’t answer.
They crossed the wooden bridge that still stood across the barely trickling river, and entered the town. Buildings stood, their paint already peeling and their whitewash already cracking. The desert was hard on anything man-made.
Dodging tumbleweeds, they rode down the center of the main street, finding more shattered glass, more shutters banging softly in the breeze, but no signs of life. Not even a dog.
“There’s the mercantile,” Lydia piped up, and pointed.
Slocum reined Tubac toward it.
“You might’s well turn me free and let me have my way with her,” Billy offered. “Ain’t another town for miles and miles.”
“Shut up,” Slocum snapped.
“Can I just shoot him, Slocum?” Lydia asked as Slocum reined in next to the hitching rail.
“Not now,” he said, dismounting. He tossed Tubac’s reins over the rail, then walked around to help her with the baby. “Maybe later.”
“Looking forward to it,” she said. She dismounted, then took the baby from Slocum. She walked around Billy’s horse and slugged Billy, just as hard as she could, in the ear.
“Hey!” shouted Billy. Tears came to his eyes.
“You sorry bastard,” Lydia said. “As soon as I feed this poor child, you’re getting gelded.”
“Listen, bitch, I—”
“Didn’t I tell you to shut the hell up?” Slocum asked, and took a few steps toward Billy, who quieted and turned his head away. “C’mon, Lydia,” he said, taking her arm. “Stop teasin’ the prisoner.”
Slocum didn’t think things were looking too awful good. He found himself repeating Lydia’s prayer that there’d be canned milk in the store.
They left Billy tied over his saddle and mounted the steps to the boardwalk, and Slocum had just put a hand to the mercantile’s front door when a gravelly voice called out.
“Hey there! Stop, looters!” This last command was accompanied by the sound of a shotgun’s double cock.
Slocum turned around to see a bandy-legged old coot standing about twenty yards away in the center of the street they had just ridden up. Although he looked more like a prospector—and one who hadn’t had much luck as of late—there was a sheriff’s badge pinned to his ragged shirt.
Slocum raised his arms. “We’re not looters, Sheriff. And we brought you a prisoner.”
The old man cocked his head and squinted toward Billy Cree. “He a real wild one?”
“Wild as they come,” Slocum replied.
The sheriff walked a few steps closer, then stopped again. “You got a name?”
“I’m Slocum,” Slocum said. “This lady’s Mrs. Lydia West.”
The sheriff took a few steps closer. “Put your hands down, young feller. You’re makin’ me nervous.”
Slocum eased his arms down. He noticed the sheriff didn’t lower his shotgun, though.
“And this young feller strapped acrost his pony?”
Slocum said, “This is your prisoner, Sheriff. One young hot-blood by the name of Billy Cree. He murdered Mrs. West’s husband. Among other things.”
Billy snorted into his saddle leather. He craned his head up and around and got a view of the sheriff. “Doubt this hole’s got a cell strong enough to hold the likes of me, Sheriff,” he said, his voice cocky and full of himself.
“Billy Cree,” the sheriff mused. “Billy Cree. Yup, it seems to me like I’ve heard of him. ’Course, seems like I heard of you, too, Slocum.”
The way he said it made Slocum’s mouth crook up into a smile. “You want me to put my hands back up?”
The sheriff screwed up his face. “Nope. Heard more good than bad. That is, if you’re the same one. You have a hand in that Bent’s Arroyo business last year?”
“That I did,” replied Slocum, suddenly wondering if the old man was going to shoot him or slap him on the back.
As it turned out, the sheriff did neither. Walking the rest of the way up to them, he said, “Well, now, I reckon you know my friend Cosmo Kulick.” He waited expectantly.
“That I do,” said Slocum, feeling a little like a kid who’s been given a surprise test by his teacher. And he had no doubts that any man holding a Greener on him was in charge, all right.
“Cosmo’s about five-foot-nothin’,” he continued, “and slab-sided as a steer after a yearlong drought. Got him a black mustache the size of Tennessee, and he’s one of the funniest bastards ever to come down from Canuck country.”
Simultaneously, the sheriff broke out in a toothless grin and dropped the nose of his shotgun. “That’s old Cosmo, all right. I heared you saved his life up there, so you’re okay with me, Slocum.” He offered a grimy hand. “My name’s O’Keefe. Dusty O’Keefe. Sheriff, mayor, judge, chief bottle washer, and total population of Cross Point, Arizona Territory. At least, this week. Say! What’s that you got there, ma’am? A baby?”
“We wondered if you’d have any milk,” Lydia said, nodding. “He’s in dire need.”
Sheriff O’Keefe took off his floppy hat and bent his balding head in a semblance of a bow. “Mrs. West, is it? If we got any, it’s in the mercantile, all right. Francis Clarke didn’t take all his inventory to the grave with him.”
Lydia looked shocked. “Mr. Clarke is dead? But he was a young man!”
“Oh, Francis were young, all right. Couldn’t have been more’n thirty-five,” O’Keefe said, nodding his head. He paused to slap his hat back in place. “That didn’t mean nothin’ to the wild bunch that rode through here about five months back. Francis got shot over a can of beans. Can you believe it? A dang can of plain lima beans! Didn’t even have no meat in ’em!”
“Terrible,” said Lydia.
“Dang right, it’s terrible,” O’Keefe said as he mounted the steps, then opened the mercantile’s front door for her. “I owed Francis sixty cents, and didn’t have a chance to get square with him. Ma’am?” he said as he ushered her in. “Take whatever you feel like you can use, and welcome to it. Francis would have wanted it that-a-way.”
And then he turned to Slocum. “I’ll be hanged. Slocum, right here in my town.” He shook his head. “It surely is a small world, like my wife, Letty, used to say. A real small world. Now, what you say we take this here junior-grade killer on up to the jail?”
“Be glad to,” Slocum said, and pulled the breakaway knot on the rope. Momentarily, Billy slid to the ground like a sack of beans, head first, and landed with a soft thump.
<
br /> “Hey!” Billy yelped.
No one paid him any attention.
“And then,” Slocum added, “I got a real interesting story to tell you.”
O’Keefe lifted Billy from the ground with surprising strength, Slocum thought, especially for a man as old and skinny as he was.
O’Keefe took Billy’s arm in one bony hand and hefted his Greener in the other. “I’m lookin’ forward to that, Slocum. Yessir, lookin’ forward to it.”
19
Lydia’s eyes traveled over the dusty shelves until her gaze settled on tinned milk—a whole row of it! Sighing happily, she muttered, “Tyler, we just hit the treasure trove!”
The baby gurgled at her in response.
He was so good-natured. If she’d been him, she’d likely have been screaming her head off the whole way. Well, he almost had. Poor little thing.
She lay the child on the counter, after dusting it first with her sleeve—Sheriff O’Keefe might have been living off Francis Clarke’s goods, but he certainly wasn’t much of a housekeeper. Or a gourmet, either. The only shelves that showed signs of recent pillage contained the last few parcels of beans, canned and dried, and tinned meat.
O’Keefe seemed to favor potted pork.
After putting the baby down, she picked up a can of milk, then searched the store for something to open it with. Finding a can punch behind the counter, she opened the milk, then took a new bottle down from the shelves. It was bigger than Tyler’s old one, and one more in proportion with his growing appetite.
Which was about to be fed.
She poured a little milk into the bottle, then went outside and poured an equal amount of water into it, shaking it as she went back inside.
She picked up the baby and sat down in Francis Clarke’s old rocking chair. “Sorry it’s still not warmed, Tyler,” she said as the baby greedily took the nipple, “and still thinned, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea to feed you richer food all at once.”
She rocked the baby, humming, but then suddenly stopped.
Beans. Beans and pork.
Didn’t Sheriff O’Keefe say that Francis Clarke—a man she’d known, although not well, but who had always been pleasant and chipper and willing to lend a hand—had died over a can of beans? One without any meat?
A shudder went though her, unbidden, but then she shook her head.
No, that was just too silly.
Billy sat in his cell, sulking and listening to Slocum tell the sheriff his story. Billy couldn’t hear it any too well, since they’d gone back outside, but he could hear most of it plain enough if he listened hard.
Didn’t sound too good for him.
He rattled the cell door. It was locked good enough to hold him in, that was for certain.
He tested the bars in the window.
Maybe one of them was a tad loose, but Slocum would have him out of here and on his way to a necktie party before he could begin to get it dug free.
Especially since he didn’t have his knife anymore. Slocum had taken that this afternoon, after he’d pulled that fool stunt and tried to ride down on them, shooting.
That was stupid. Asinine! What had made him think that he could catch them by surprise?
Billy had been kicking himself for it ever since he woke and found his head stinging in two places instead of one. It just seemed like he was doomed to get shot in the head, over and over.
Now, what kind of a deal was that?
When he came out of this, he’d have more parts in his hair than any natural man ought to have. If he came out of it, that was.
Billy slumped on his cot, letting the murmur of voices turn into a drone in the background. What he needed right now was nothing short of a miracle, and he knew it. He had gone through all the possible escape scenarios he might face on the trail, but this Slocum was no slouch. It seemed he was ready for anything.
If Billy didn’t want to find himself dangling from the end of a rope in some two-bit town—and before he’d even had half a chance to make a real name for himself—he’d best start praying right about now.
And curiously enough, that was exactly what he did. He prayed for the hand of God to just stretch in and open his cell, so that he could sink a slug into Slocum’s head, not just into his scalp. He prayed for divine intervention so that he might show that Lydia bitch just what was what, goddamn it.
Hell, they’d both tried to kill him! Didn’t that justify his killing them?
To his mind, it sure did.
And unbeknownst to him, Billy Cree’s prayers were about to be answered. Not in the form that he’d imagined, but it was as close as he was going to get.
High in the rocks, an exhausted Charlie Frame sat, staring down on what had, not too long ago, been the thriving mining town of Cross Point. He had left the bay back a bit, where he wouldn’t be poking his head into view in case anybody from the town decided to take a look up this way.
“Well, hell,” he mumbled. “I’ll be damned. Silver must’a dried up.”
He cast a long shadow down the hillside, for the sun was behind him, sinking toward the western horizon. Realizing this, he readjusted his position until not even his shadow was visible.
He figured to wait until dark to go on down. He also figured they wouldn’t be expecting him, but that was no reason to go and announce himself by riding down there in broad daylight, or even by casting his shadow down the rise.
Besides, he needed to rest up. He planned on a real exciting night.
As best he could, he settled back into the unforgiving rocks pressing hard against his spine, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep.
“Terrible thing,” Sheriff Dusty O’Keefe said through a mouthful of beans and chopped pork. It was a fairly unappetizing sight, although Slocum didn’t say anything. If the leprechaun at the end of your rainbow was a toothless old codger who gummed his food and yammered nonstop even while he was gumming it, he was still your leprechaun.
The sheriff swallowed. Thank God. Before he took a fresh bite, he added, “You say them Frame boys kilt the boy’s pa, too?”
Slocum helped himself to another biscuit before he said, “That’s right. They ought to be trickling down here in a day or so. If I was you, I’d watch my step with ’em.”
Sheriff O’Keefe nodded seriously. “I surely will. You folks takin’ off in the mornin’, then? These is sure mighty good biscuits, Mrs. West. Cain’t say as when I’ve had better.”
Slocum had to agree. “Me either, Lydia. They’re light as a feather on a canyon breeze.”
Lydia blushed, but Slocum couldn’t tell if it was because of the compliment. It might have been on account of the bean juice slowing drizzling from the corner of the sheriff’s mouth.
Coloring hotly, she looked down at her own plate. “Thank you, gentlemen.”
It was the bean drool, then, Slocum figured. He couldn’t say that he blamed her.
They were taking their meal in the abandoned Blue Bird Café. Lydia had dusted a table and chairs, baked the biscuits and something for dessert—which smelled to Slocum like a mouthwatering apple cobbler, or maybe a pie—and O’Keefe had volunteered to provide the main meal.
“It’ll be beans, you wait and see,” Lydia had whispered to Slocum. “If I never see another bean, it’ll be too soon.”
“It’s his town, Lydia,” Slocum had replied in his best diplomatic tone.
She had snorted. “Only by default,” she’d said, and stalked off into the kitchen.
However, later at the dinner table, she seemed to have forgiven him, for one of her little hands was curled over his thigh. For the third time since sitting down, Slocum willed away his erection and tried to concentrate on his beans.
“Do you get much traffic through here nowadays, Sheriff?” she asked.
Slocum doubted that she cared. She was just trying to make conversation, he supposed.
“Since the silver gave out, you mean, ma’am?” O’Keefe asked. And then without waiting for an answer, he sa
id, “Not so much anymore. Only folks as ain’t realized the town’s gone to pot. That number gets smaller all the dang time. I was real heartened to see you folks.”
“Yes, Sheriff,” Lydia said, tearing daintily at a biscuit. “I could tell by the way you were pointing that shotgun at us that you were thrilled at the prospect of our company.”
It was O’Keefe’s turn to color, and he did: beet-red. A smile flickered over Lydia’s mouth before it turned back to the innocent line it had been.
Slocum was just beginning to realize what a fine, dry sense of humor she had.
Still, he figured he really ought to save the sheriff. “Aw now, Lydia honey, the sheriff was just protectin’ his town. Any man in his boots would’a done the same.”
Lydia stood up and looked first at the sheriff, then Slocum. “Dessert?” she asked innocently.
“Sounds good,” Slocum replied.
“Mighty fine!” said O’Keefe. He had scraped his plate clean, and was on his fifth biscuit. “Sure smells like a good apple pie you got cookin’ out there, ma’am. Ain’t had a pie in a couple’a months of Sundays!”
“I’m afraid it’s going to be a few more Sundays, Sheriff O’Keefe,” Lydia said as Slocum watched her swish through the swinging door to the kitchen. She reappeared almost instantly, carrying a rectangular baking pan. “It’s a cobbler, made with dried apples from the mercantile.”
With mitted hands, she slid the pan to the tabletop. “Careful,” she said, slipping into her chair again. “It’s hot.”
“Don’t bother me none,” O’Keefe said. He was already digging into the cobbler. Slocum dug his spoon in and started heaping cobbler on his plate. He figured that if he didn’t hurry, there’d be none left.
And then he remembered Lydia.
As she blinked, he began piling cobbler on her plate with the speed of a man possessed.
“Enough, Slocum!” she said, and put her hand on his.
He grinned at her sheepishly. It was a good thing he’d piled his plate, though, because when he turned back toward the pan, it was empty, and Sheriff O’Keefe’s plate was piled a good six inches deep in steaming spiced apples and sweet biscuits.