Slaughter of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  “You will be going to the grand opening of the play tomorrow night, won’t you?” Joel asked, changing the subject.

  “Of course I will, that’s why I came to New York,” Falcon said. He chuckled. “I mean, that’s why I thought I came to New York.”

  “It is why you came,” Joel said. “I want you to have a wonderful time while you are here. Please allow me to pay for your hotel and dining expenses. It’s the least I can do to repay you for what you are doing for Emma and me.”

  “Oh, well, if I had known you were going to pay for the hotel, I would have gotten the finest suite available,” Falcon teased, and the others laughed, the more so because Andrew and Rosanna knew he had taken a suite at the Grand Central Hotel, perhaps New York’s finest.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Phoenix

  The very first thing Ben Hanlon did when he left the bank with money in his pocket, was buy himself a new change of clothes. After that he went to the bathhouse and bought himself a bath. When he was clean, really clean for the first time in a very long time he went to the Boar’s Head Saloon.

  As he stepped inside he stood there for a moment, looking around, savoring actually, the fact that he was in a saloon, and he actually had money in his pocket. A piano stood at the back of the room, but there was no one playing it. Because it was early afternoon, the saloon wasn’t very crowded.

  There were three bar girls, but they were together in a cluster at the far end of the bar, talking among themselves. There were only four others in the saloon, the bartender, and three men who were sitting at a table.

  Hanlon stepped up to the bar, then pulled out a ten dollar banknote and slapped it down. “Barkeep, I would like to buy a drink for everyone in the house,” he said.

  “The girls too?” the bartender asked.

  Hanlon looked down at the three girls, and smiled. “Especially the girls,” he said.

  “Thank you, mister,” one of the girls said.

  “Ben,” Hanlon said. “The name is Ben.”

  “Maxine,” the bartender said, handing one of the girls a bottle. Go refill the drinks of the gentlemen at the table.”

  “All right, Wally,” the girl said. She flashed a wide smile at Hanlon. “But don’t you go away, Ben. I’ll be right back.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, darlin’,” Ben replied.

  The bartender looked at Hanlon. “And what would you like?”

  “You got any Champagne?” Hanlon asked.

  Wally laughed. “Champagne? This is Phoenix, not San Francisco. We’ve got beer and whiskey.”

  “Then that is what I will have.”

  “Which? Beer or whiskey?”

  “I’ll have beer and whiskey,” he said.

  The barkeep put both drinks in front of him, and Hanlon tossed the whiskey down, then chased it with the beer.

  Within a very short time, Ben Hanlon was drunk. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t handle his liquor, which was true, or that it had been over a year since he had last had a drink, which was also true. It was because he was trying to make up in one night for the dry spell that had lasted for so long. He was in the Boar’s Head Saloon, spending the money so freely the soiled doves gathered around him were being rewarded by having bills stuffed in the tops of their low-cut dresses.

  “Old-timer,” Wally said after pouring another drink for Hanlon. “I’m happy to take your money as long as you want to spend it, but don’t you think you ought to slow down a bit?”

  “Don’t you be a’ worryin’ none ’bout me, sonny,” Hanlon replied. “I got money all right. I got me more money than you ever seen before.”

  Hanlon took out his little leather pouch and poured out a few gold nuggets. “You see this here? Just one of these nuggets would pay for ever’thing I done spent in this here saloon so far tonight.”

  The bartender examined the nugget for a moment, at first with skepticism, then with surprise. “This is real.”

  “It sure as hell is real.”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Ha! Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “You think you can find it again?”

  “Damn right I can find it again,” Hanlon said. “I got me a map that will take me, or anybody that looks at it, right to where I found this gold.”

  “A map, huh?” Wally said with a chuckle. “Now Ben, you ought to have been around long enough by now to know better than to buy a map.”

  “I didn’t buy it, sonny, I drawed it up my ownself.”

  “Yeah? Where is this map now?”

  “It’s in a safe place.”

  “You got it hid out, have you?”

  “No, it ain’t hid. It’s down to the bank. That’s where you’re s’posed to keep valuables, ain’t it?”

  “I reckon that’s so,” the bartender said.

  Luke Mueller came into the saloon then, and though he came in too late to hear any of the conversation about the map, he did see the gold nuggets Hanlon had scattered out on the bar.

  “Yes, sir,” Hanlon said, as he scooped the nuggets up and put them back into a small, rawhide bag which he stuck under his shirt. “Bet you ain’t never seen nothin’ like this, have you?”

  “I can’t say as I have,” Wally replied, then moved down the bar to Mueller. “Yes, sir, Mr. Jones, what’ll it be?”

  “I’ll have a beer,” Mueller said. He nodded toward Hanlon, who had gone back to talking with the three soiled doves. “What’s that ol’ fool got that has them women buzzin’ around him like flies on a turd?”

  “Gold,” the bartender said. He turned around and drew a mug of beer, then set it in front of Mueller.

  “Gold?” Mueller asked.

  “Yes, sir, gold. He’s got himself a whole sack of gold nuggets.”

  “Well, I reckon somethin’ like that would get the ladies’ attention.”

  Wally chuckled. “Yes, sir, I reckon it would.”

  Talk of the gold had gotten Mueller’s attention, too, and he nursed his beer as he watched Hanlon out of the corner of his eye. Hanlon was drinking heavily and soon, Mueller knew he would get his chance.

  It took no more than fifteen minutes before the opportunity presented itself.

  “I gotta go outside and take myself a pee,” Hanlon announced. “You ladies wait right here ’til I come back. That is, lessen one of you would like to come along with me, maybe help me hold on to it,” he added with a ribald chuckle.

  “Really now, what kind of girls do you think we are?” one of them asked, giggling at Hanlon’s comment.

  “Oh, darlin’, I know what kind of women you be,” Hanlon replied as he started toward the back door. “You be the kind I can buy if I got enough money, and that, I got. I’m just decidin’ which one of you I want.”

  “Hurry back now, Ben, honey,” Maxine called out to him. “If you are nice enough, and spend enough money, you can have all of us.”

  “All of you?” Hanlon laughed. “Well now, I ain’t never thought of nothin’ like that. Could be, maybe I might just want to try that.”

  No one noticed that as Hanlon left by the back door, Marshal Cairns’ cousin, Jesse Jones, was moving quickly toward the front door.

  Hanlon walked back to the outhouse, stepping inside even as Luke Mueller hurried around back. Looking around to make certain there was nobody watching, Mueller waited by the door of the outhouse until Hanlon came out again, buttoning his pants as he did so.

  “Was you waitin’ to get in?” Hanlon asked. “Sorry. But I’m all done now.”

  “Thanks,” Mueller said in a gruff voice and he put a foot on the step as Hanlon walked away. Then, from behind, Mueller brought the butt of his pistol down hard on Hanlon’s head, and the old prospector collapsed to the ground in front of him. Working quickly, Mueller took what was left of Hanlon’s cash money, as well as the little bag of gold nuggets.

  He hefted the bag in his hand and from the weight of them, he figured he had to have at least two or three hundred dollars worth
of gold. The problem would be in getting rid of it. The old fool had been too eager to show it off, and everyone in the saloon had seen it. But he also had almost fifty dollars in cash, and Mueller could spend that money anywhere. He went back into the saloon and retook his seat. It had all happened so quickly, he didn’t think anyone even noticed he had left.

  “Bartender,” he called.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Jones,” Wally replied.

  “Another beer. He nodded toward the bar girls. “And something for the ladies,” he added.

  “Wally, what do you think is takin’ Ben so long?” Maxine asked.

  “He’s an old man,” one of the other women said. “You know how old men are. Sometimes it takes them a real long time to pee.”

  “Doris, you are awful!” Maxine said, but she and the other girl were both laughing at Doris’s comment.

  When more than ten minutes went by and Ben hadn’t returned, Maxine asked Wally about him again. “Now I’m beginning to get worried,” she said. “Do you think the old man is all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure he is,” Wally said. “He was drinking a lot. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t get outside then realize just how drunk he is, and how much money he was spending. He probably just went somewhere to sleep it off.”

  “I hope he is all right. I thought he was cute,” Maxine said.

  “Ha. You just liked the money he was spending,” Wally said.

  “Yes, I did. But I also thought he was cute. And I do hope he is all right.”

  Deputies Forbis and Appleby were making their rounds with Appleby on one side of the street and Forbis on the other. When he looked into the alley behind the Boar’s Head, Forbis thought he saw something lying on the ground so he went back to check.

  It was a man, lying facedown on the ground.

  Forbis thought he was dead, and he dropped down to one knee to check him out. The man let out a little groan.

  “Appleby!” Forbis shouted. “Appleby, over here!”

  Responding to Forbis’s call, Appleby trotted across the street, with his pistol drawn.

  “You won’t be needing that,” Forbis said.

  “What is it?”

  “This man has been hurt.”

  “Hurt? More’n likely he’s just passed out drunk.”

  “Help me get him up,” Forbis said.

  “What for? Just leave him here.”

  “We can’t do that, Bert. Come on, help me get him up. We’ll take him down to the jail, just so he’ll have a place to sleep it off tonight.”

  With Forbis on one side, and Appleby on the other, the two deputies managed to get the old man on his feet.

  “Rhoda,” he said.

  “Rhoda? Who’s Rhoda?” Forbis asked.

  Appleby snorted what might have been a laugh. “Prob’ly the whore that got him drunk.”

  “Rhoda is my mule. I want Rhoda.”

  As they half carried, and half facilitated his walk, they came back out to the street. Glancing toward the front of the saloon, Forbis saw, tied at the hitching rail with four horses, one mule. “Is that Rhoda?” he asked.

  “Yes. She will be worried if I don’t come back.”

  “Don’t worry, old man,” Forbis said. “I’ll take care of Rhoda for you.”

  “My head hurts. Someone hit me.”

  “Nobody hit you old man. You’re just drunk,” Appleby said.

  “Someone hit me.”

  When Ben Hanlon woke up, he wondered for a moment where he was. He was lying in a bed, or at least a bunk, but he didn’t remember checking in to a hotel. In fact, he couldn’t remember anything since standing at the bar in the saloon, talking to the bar girls. He sat up, and as he did, his head began to spin. He fought a bout of nausea and felt a rather severe pain in the back of his head. Looking around he saw that he was in a little room, and, upon further examination, realized he was in a jail cell.

  “What the hell? Hey!” he called out. “Hey! Anybody here?”

  “Keep it quiet back there.”

  “Hey, what is this, a jail? What for am I in jail?”

  A broad-shouldered man with a bushy moustache came back to the cell. He was wearing a badge over his left pocket.

  “Who are you?” Hanlon asked.

  “My name is Cairns. Jimmy Cairns,” Drumm said. “Maybe you’ve heard of me.”

  “No, I ain’t never heard of you.”

  “I’m the mashal here. Who are you?”

  “Ben Hanlon is who I am. What I want to know is, what am I a’ doin’ in this here jail?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I don’t remember nothin’ since I was down at the Boar’s Head, talkin’ with all the girls,” Hanlon said. “What did I do? Did I do somethin’ wrong? I don’t remember doin’ anything wrong. Why am I in jail?”

  “You’re in jail because you are an indigent. We found you passed out in the alley behind the Boar’s Head Saloon.”

  “What’s an indigent?”

  “That means somebody that don’t have no money, and no way of takin’ care of themselves. I don’t like folks like that in my town. They’re the kind that winds up stealin’ from the decent folks.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ll have you know I got me some money,” Hanlon said. “Fac’ is, I got me lots of money.”

  “Do you now?” Drumm asked with a sarcastic chuckle.

  “I sure as hell do.”

  “Let me see it.”

  “It’s right here,” Hanlon said, reaching inside his shirt. He stopped when his hand didn’t encounter the little leather bag. “What the hell?”

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Drumm asked.

  “The money,” Hanlon said. “It ain’t here.”

  “Of course it ain’t there, ’cause it never was there,” Drumm said. “Like I said, you are an indigent.”

  “I ain’t no such a’ thing!” Hanlon said. “I got me lots of money. Why, I got me more money’n you done ever seen.”

  “If that’s so, just where is it?” Drumm asked.

  “I had me some money that I got from the bank, and I had me a sack of gold nuggets.”

  “Gold nuggets, huh? You expect me to believe that?”

  “Yeah, I expect you to believe that. I had lots of ’em. Why, you could ask Mr. Montgomery over to the bank. How else do you think I got the money I was spendin’, iffen I didn’t get it from the bank?”

  “Are you tellin’ me you sold some of the gold to the bank?”

  “No, I didn’t sell none of my gold. What I done was, I borrowed money agin’ the map I showed him for”—Hanlon stopped midsentence while he searched for the word—“collateral.”

  “What is this map?” Drumm asked.

  “It is a map to the richest gold mine there ever was,” Hanlon said.

  “Where is it now? The map, I mean.”

  “Montgomery’s got it,” Hanlon replied. “Like I said, I give it to him for collateral.”

  “Hello, Marshal Cairns,” Wally Cook said, as the lawman entered the Boar’s Head.

  “Was there sort of a wrinkled up old man in here last night with some gold nuggets?” Drumm asked.

  “Yeah, Ben was his name. He may have give his last name, but I don’t recall it.”

  “He had a sack full of gold nuggets?”

  “He had some gold nuggets all right.”

  The Boar’s Head was quiet at that time of morning, and the bartender was washing glasses. Only one of the bar girls was downstairs. She was sitting alone at a table, drinking a cup of coffee. An old Mexican man was mopping the floor.

  “Fac’ is, he had a lot of ’em. You can ask Maxine over there, she seen ’em, same as I did. Hell, we all did.”

  “That true?” Drumm called over to the woman at the table.

  “That’s true, Sheriff,” Maxine said. “He had a whole sack full of ’em.”

  “What happened to them?”

  Wally shook his head. “I don’t know. He said he had to go take a leak and he we
nt out back, but he never come back in. Why do you ask?”

  “My deputies found him passed out drunk last night,” Drumm said.

  Wally chuckled. “Passed out, huh? Well, I ain’t surprised. He put away enough whiskey last night to make three men drunk.”

  “He said he hadn’t had a drink in over a year, and he had some catchin’ up to do,” Maxine said.

  “Your deputies that found him, did they say anything about the gold?” Wally asked.

  Drumm shook his head. “There wasn’t nothin’ on him when they found him.”

  “You say both your deputies found him?”

  “Yes.”

  “If it had just been Appleby who found him, I’d be suspicious. But if Forbis was with him, then he probably didn’t have any gold on him when they found him.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Come on, Marshal, you know what I mean,” Wally said. “Forbis is an honest man. I wouldn’t trust Appleby as far as I could throw him. For the life of me, I don’t know why you put him on as one of your deputies.”

  “You’ve got Appleby all wrong,” Drumm said. “He’s a good man.”

  “I guess you are entitled to your opinion, bein’ as you are the marshal and all. But like I said, if Forbis said there wasn’t no gold when they found him, then more than likely what happened is that Ben went outside and passed out, drunk as he was. Somebody passin’ by must’ve seen ’im and when he went over there he discovered the gold and all the money the feller had on him.”

  “Yeah,” Drumm replied. “You may be right about that.”

  “’Course, you could ask your cousin about it,” Wally said.

  “My cousin?”

  “Ain’t this little feller that’s come new to town, Jesse Jones, ain’t he your cousin?”

  “Oh, yeah, he’s my cousin.”

  “Well, he was in here last night, he seen ever’ thing that was goin’ on. Maybe he’s got an idée as to what happened.”

  “At least Ben didn’t have the map on him, so they didn’t get that,” Maxine said.