Slocum and the Big Timber Belles

by Jake Logan

  Still he waited. He held his breath.

  Another crunch, and then another.

  The last one sounded so close, Slocum felt as if the man would appear at any second. He thought the man might round the corner and stand inches away, that pistol of his bury itself in Slocum’s gut.

  He let out his breath slow.

  Then he drew another and held it.

  No matter what happened next, Slocum knew that he had the advantage. However, if he made one mistake, the man would blow a hole in him and he might well die while the gunman ran off and retrieved his horse.

  Still, he waited, telling himself he would spring out of hiding and start shooting in the next ten seconds or so.

  Crunch, scrape, crunch.

  Now Slocum could hear the man’s heavy breathing. He heard it or he imagined it. He couldn’t be sure.

  The man was close. The next step was a loud crunch of boot.

  Slocum could wait no longer.

  He went into a fighting crouch and slid his body around the corner of the brick building.

  “Drop it,” he said.

  The shadowy man was less than five yards away when Slocum thumbed the hammer back to full cock. The man’s arm moved as he raised his pistol to fire at Slocum.

  The ticking in Slocum’s head stopped.

  He squeezed the trigger and the Colt barked, bucked against the palm of his hand. Orange and blue flame burst from the barrel like a comet with trailing sparks. The man grunted as the lead bullet smacked into his belly. He jerked and Slocum fired again, raising the barrel slightly higher. The man was close enough to see plainly and there was no distortion because of low light or darkness.

  The slug caught the man square in the chest and Slocum saw a dark stem spew into a black flower in the man’s chest. He sagged to his knees and gasped for a breath that was not there; that would never be there again.

  The man’s gun spun downward, its barrel pointing at the street. He slumped to his knees and tried to lift his head. He toppled forward onto his face. His fingers went slack and the unfired pistol fell from his grasp.

  The echoes from the two shots faded away among the buildings and the distant trees.

  Slocum stood up straight and drew in a long heavy breath.

  The night was chill and the breath felt good in his chest.

  He slid his pistol back in his holster and walked over to the man. He toed him with his boot. The man’s body lifted and half-turned, then slumped back to where it had been.

  Slocum knew the man was dead.

  He turned him over and looked at his face. Even in the dark, he knew it was a face he had never seen before.

  He grabbed the man by his collar and dragged him around the building and down to Main Street. He left him by the buckskin, and walked to the hotel. The horse would not go anywhere. Slocum knew the animal, had brought him to Montana all the way from Missouri. The buckskin wasn’t gun-shy and he wasn’t a runaway that spooked at every shadow or noise.

  There was a splotch of blood where the wounded man had lain.

  Slocum looked at it and let out a sigh.

  He braced himself for what he might find when he went back inside the hotel.

  This had been a deadly night and he knew there were stories yet to be heard. Hunters, men tracking a cougar, had ventured into Valenti’s outlaw camp and found themselves in a hornet’s nest.

  The horses they had ridden in were flecked with dried foam, sweat. The buckskin, as well, had those same streaks on its light tan hide. The horses had been ridden hard, out of fear, and the lone gunman sent to silence them had almost done it.

  Almost.

  Slocum looked up at the night sky.

  As usual, the stars were impervious to what happened on this small planet so far away from their brilliance.

  Like the mountains, they were eternal and wise, and darkness was their domain.

  17

  Slocum stepped onto the hotel porch. He could see people milling around in the lobby. One of them, Donnie, burst through the front door with its cut glass inlay and rushed up to the hatless man.

  “Mr. Slocum, where you been? Two of our guests have been shot. They’re inside.”

  “I know, Donnie. Look, I need you to do something for me.”

  “Sure, anything, Mr. Slocum.”

  “First, tie up these loose horses in front of the hotel. Go get that buckskin down the street and bring it back here and secure it.”

  “Sure, Mr. Slocum.”

  “There’s one other thing, son. Go back down to the end of the block where the buckskin is, and go to that next street yonder. You’ll find a six-gun lying in the dirt. Bring it back to me and be damned careful. It’s loaded.”

  “Okay.” Donnie seemed ready to leap from the porch. Slocum put his hand flat on Donnie’s chest to keep him from running off to accomplish those tasks.

  “There’s a dead man near that buckskin. Don’t look at him or touch him.”

  “A dead man?”

  “An outlaw I just shot,” Slocum said.

  “Holy cow. You shot an outlaw?”

  “Get going,” Slocum said, and pulled his hand back. Donnie dashed down the steps and ran to one of the hunters’ horses.

  Slocum walked into the hotel lobby with its overstuffed chairs and divans, its potted plants and gawking spectators, all staring down at the two wounded men. Jenner kneeled next to one of them. He was trying to staunch the bleeding with towels. Ray Mallory stood over him, holding a stack of washcloths.

  Jasmine and Lydia were among the onlookers. Their faces were drawn, but with their ruffled bodices, they looked like two flowers among a plot of weeds. Fenster stood there, rigid as a post. His face was impassive and expressionless. In his drab suit, he looked like a mourner at a pauper’s funeral.

  Both women looked at Slocum, their eyes wide and bright.

  “Ray,” Slocum said to Mallory, “can you get all these people out of the lobby and back into the dining room?”

  Mallory appeared stunned and bewildered. But he snapped out of it and spoke to the people around him.

  “Please, folks,” he said, “return to the dining salon. Jasmine, will you and your daughter please return to the stage?”

  Jasmine nodded, and with one last glance at Slocum, she and her daughter led the procession back down the hall to the dining room.

  “Thanks, John,” Jenner said. He glanced up at Slocum, a look of helplessness on his face.

  Soon, only Jenner, Mallory, the desk clerk, and Slocum remained in the lobby. Slocum looked at the first man he had seen rushing into the lobby, yelling for help. He sat on the floor in a dazed state, his face contorted in pain. His trousers were wet with blood and he was putting pressure on the wound in his leg.

  “Did you get him?” the man said to Slocum.

  “John, this is Luther Bradley, one of the hunters staying here at the hotel.”

  “Was there just one man chasing you?” Slocum asked.

  “Far as I know. Me and Lou Tinsley there barely escaped with our lives. We near run our horses to death gettin’ here. Them sonsabitches killed our friend Jasper Langley. Shot him right in the head before we knew what we’d run into.”

  “I got the man who chased you,” Slocum said.

  “He’s dead?” Bradley said.

  “As a doornail,” Slocum replied.

  Bradley looked over at his wounded friend.

  “Is Lou going to make it?” he asked Jenner.

  Jenner shook his head. “He’s shot up pretty bad. Lost too much blood.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Ray, don’t you have a doctor in this damned town?” Bradley gave Mallory an accusing look.

  “We got one, Luther, but he might be out to one of the ranches. I sent for him.”

  “This man’s beyond doctoring,” Jenner said, and sat down on his haunches, his arms limp at his sides. They all heard the dying man’s breath as he fought for his life. Soon, Tinsley began to wheeze and his chest rose and fell lik
e a bellows as his breathing became more difficult.

  It was painful to watch, Slocum thought. His jaw hardened as he watched Tinsley in the last throes of dying. Tinsley’s eyes fluttered open and closed, and each time he opened them, they became glassier and more cloudy.

  There was a slight gurgle that sounded like pebbles rattling in an air-tight jar. His body twitched a few times and then was still.

  “We lost him, looks like,” Mallory said.

  Jenner put two fingers beneath Tinsley’s chin, pressing on the carotid artery. He left them there for several seconds, then sighed and took his hand away.

  “Yeah, he’s gone,” Jenner said.

  He stood up, walked over to Slocum.

  “You say you shot one of ’em?” he asked.

  “I think there was only one.”

  “I better take a look,” Jenner said.

  “He’s outside, in the street. Follow me,” Slocum said.

  Jenner turned to Mallory.

  “Coroner ought to be here any minute. Have him take Tinsley to the morgue.”

  “I will,” Mallory said. He helped Bradley to his feet. “I’ll take you to your room,” he said. “I’ll have the doc look in on you as soon as he shows up. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “I can make it until then. If I don’t bleed no more.”

  Slocum and Jenner walked out of the hotel. They met Donnie outside. He was wrapping the buckskin’s reins around a hitchrail. He drew a pistol from his belt and handed it to Slocum.

  “Here’s that pistol you told me to get, Mr. Slocum.”

  “Thanks, Donnie. See if your pa needs any help. There’s another dead man in the lobby.”

  “Another one? God amighty. What a night.”

  Donnie took the steps two at a time and disappeared on the other side of the hotel’s double doors.

  “What did you find out, Dave?” Slocum asked as the two men walked toward the streetlamp and the still figure lying in the street, just beyond the pale circle of tawny light.

  “Seems like three men were tracking a cougar up near that old loggers’ camp. They rode in and were attacked by Valenti and his men. Valenti killed one man outright. The two in there lit a shuck, and knew they were being chased. They got to town and the shooting started. You know the rest pretty much.”

  “Now Valenti will know that we know where he is.”

  “Yeah, he’ll probably figure it out. He may move his camp, or show up here. We’ve still got to talk to Jasmine and Lydia, get them someplace safe.”

  Jenner kneeled down to look at the man Slocum had shot.

  He turned the dead man’s face toward the streetlight, examined it closely.

  “That’s one of ’em, all right,” he said. “Man’s name is Angus Macgregor. There’s a two-hundred-dollar bounty on him. Dead or alive. It looks like you made yourself a little money, John.”

  “The hard way,” Slocum said. “And I sold Valenti that buckskin Macgregor was riding.”

  “Then it looks like you’ve got yourself a horse and saddle, a rifle, six-gun, belt, and holster.”

  “To the victor belongs the spoils, Dave?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Jenner stood up.

  “Looks like the coroner’s going to be busy again.”

  “Not to mention the undertaker,” Slocum said.

  The two men walked slowly back to the hotel.

  They could hear the Lorraines singing as they approached.

  Their voices quavered in the clear night air, harmonizing on “Camptown Races.”

  “They won’t want to leave,” Slocum said.

  “They’ve got to leave. Once Valenti finds out that Macgregor’s not coming back, he’ll figure two men know about his hideout. He’ll make a move.”

  “He won’t know right away.”

  “That gives us some time,” Jenner said. “And my little posse will be at my office at sunup.”

  “You going up there after Valenti?”

  “That’s all I can do,” Jenner said.

  “You’ll be outnumbered with only you and three men.”

  “Four men, counting you, John.”

  Slocum halted at the hitchrail.

  “I haven’t been deputized,” he said.

  “I’ll do that first thing in the morning.”

  “Maybe we ought to spend the rest of the night making out our wills,” Slocum said.

  “If you make out yours, put me down as your beneficiary, will you? Because I aim to get out of this alive.”

  “You wouldn’t get much. A couple of horses, some tack, guns and ammunition, a few measly dollars.”

  “Well, that’s more’n I came into this world with, John.”

  “Sunup, eh?”

  “Sunup,” Jenner said.

  “It looks like tomorrow’s going to be another long day,” Slocum said.

  “And this one ain’t over yet,” Jenner said. “We still have to have a little talk with them gals.”

  “What about Fenster? He’ll have something to say about those women leaving town.”

  “I’ll take care of Fenster,” Jenner said.

  “How?”

  Jenner grinned.

  “I’ll lock him up as a material witness if he gives us a hard time.”

  “You’ve been too long at the law books, Dave.”

  “Just enough.”

  As the two men ascended the steps, they heard the Lorraines break into another lively number. They were singing “Little Brown Jug.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Slocum said.

  “I could use a taste myself.”

  The two walked back into the hotel. Someone had put a blanket over the dead man. There was no one at the desk, nor in the lobby.

  The two men went straight to the saloon. The room was packed, but they could hear the music from there.

  And they could hear the riotous applause for the Lorraines.

  “Memory is a funny thing,” Slocum said as they sidled up to the bar.

  “Oh? How so?”

  “It doesn’t last long. You hear a song or two and the dead are forgotten.”

  “Ain’t that why they sing hymns at funerals, John?”

  “I reckon. Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.”

  “I thought it was ‘beast.’ ”

  Slocum looked at Jenner with a hard stare.

  “You ever sing to a charging bull or a bear? It’s ‘breast.’ ”

  “I stand corrected,” Jenner said.

  As they drank, Jenner and Slocum listened to the Lorraines singing an old-time hymn with poignancy and feeling.

  The song was “Bringing In the Sheaves.”

  “Makes a man want to cry, don’t it, Slocum?”

  Slocum said nothing. He was remembering his boyhood in Georgia when he had to go to church with his mam and pap.

  All the singing in the world won’t bring back the dead, he thought.

  The bourbon warmed his throat and his belly. The pistol in his belt was starting to chafe. A dead man’s pistol, and a Colt to boot.

  Life did have its rewards, he thought. And death had none.

  18

  Jenner left the dining salon when Mallory notified him of the coroner’s arrival, but Slocum stayed to listen to the Lorraines.

  Jasmine looked at him often during the remainder of the concert. Lydia seemed unaware of her mother’s attention to Slocum. The audience rose to its feet when they finished their final number and took their bows. The patrons were slow to leave, but Jasmine walked to Slocum’s table and sat down while Lydia finished tidying up the stage.

  “I’m so glad you were able to see Lydia and me perform, John,” she said.

  “It was a pleasure.”

  “I wonder if you’d consider coming up to our room for a libation.”

  “If a libation means a drink, I’d like that,” he said.

  Jasmine laughed, and her laugh was as beautiful and as sonorous as her voice.

  “I know you favor Kentucky bo
urbon and it so happens I have a bottle up in the room.”

  “I’m surprised. Kentucky bourbon’s hard to get out here in the hinterlands.”

  “The hinterlands. Is that where we are?”

  They both laughed.

  “Fenster was able to obtain a bottle from the hotel,” she said.

  “Will Mr. Fenster be joining us?” Slocum asked.

  “No, he surely will not. And neither will my daughter. Mr. Fenster has invited her to his room.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s not what you think, John. Lydia is also my business manager as well as my bookkeeper. She and Fenster must go over the new contracts Mr. Mallory has given us and settle accounts to date.”

  “I think Dave Jenner would like to be invited up for a drink also,” Slocum said.

  Jasmine hesitated, then recovered quickly.

  “I thought he was off chasing those bad men who attacked us,” she said. “But of course, he can come. I have whiskey and cordials, too.”

  Slocum puffed on his cheroot. Through the haze of blue smoke he saw Lydia pick up a large bowl that was at the corner of the stage. The bowl was filled with paper currency, bills put there by the appreciative patrons. Fenster walked up to the stage and spoke to Lydia. He couldn’t hear what Fenster said, but he saw Lydia swing the bowl to her side and then put it behind her.

  Fenster stepped up to the stage and reached out for Lydia. She retreated, but Fenster pursued her. He ran to her side and grabbed one edge of the bowl. He pulled on it and Lydia pulled back. For that instant, the two were locked in mortal combat over the contents of the fishbowl.

  “Excuse me, Jasmine,” Slocum said. He rose from his chair. His eyes were narrowed and he was staring at Fenster and Lydia, who were still engaged in a tug-of-war over the glass bowl.

  “Where are you going?” she asked as Slocum swept by her, the cheroot in his mouth trailing smoke past his face as if from a locomotive.

  “Your daughter’s having a tussle with Fenster,” he said.

  Jasmine whirled around and looked at the stage. Slocum was halfway there when she bolted from her chair and started to run after him.

  Slocum got there first and climbed onto the stage. He grabbed Fenster by his suit collar and jerked him backward. Lydia held on to the bowl and almost fell as she backpedaled, suddenly released from the opposing energy exerted by Fenster.